10 Automation Trends Shaping Skilled Trades
Automation is reshaping skilled trades rather than replacing them, as robots, sensors, and AI become commonplace on job sites. Robotic welding cells, autonomous mobile robots, and AI‑driven quality systems are shifting workers toward programming, diagnostics, and system oversight. The rise of EV battery assembly, smart building controls, and predictive‑maintenance sensors is creating new high‑voltage, data‑analysis, and controls roles for electricians, welders, and refrigeration technicians. Industry reports predict continued growth through 2025, underscoring the need for targeted training.
Madagascar Navigates Biometric Enrollment Challenges with Laxton’s Help
Madagascar’s national digital ID programme, PRODIGY, is rolling out with Laxton’s end‑to‑end biometric enrollment solution despite a regime change, civil unrest and a cyclone. Laxton supplied and supported 2,500 weather‑proof kits that capture iris, face and fingerprint data, even offline,...
Tilbury Douglas Deploys £15,000 Humanoid Robot
Tilbury Douglas, a UK tier‑one contractor, has introduced a humanoid robot called Douglas on a live construction site, costing about £15,000 (≈ $19,000). The robot autonomously captures 360‑degree imagery, performs laser scanning and generates progress, defect and safety reports, replacing roughly...
Merck-Eisai’s Kidney Cancer Drug Combo Fail to Improve Survival in Late-Stage Trial
Merck and Eisai reported that their late‑stage trial of Keytruda plus Lenvima with Welireg, as well as a Lenvima‑MK‑1308A combo, failed to improve overall survival or progression‑free survival in clear cell renal cell carcinoma. The study enrolled 1,688 patients and...
Bangladesh Opens Public Land to Utility-Scale Solar Under PPP Model
Bangladesh has rolled out a public‑private partnership framework that lets private developers build utility‑scale solar projects on unused public land, with the Bangladesh Power Development Board acting as the contracting authority. The policy, issued by the Power Division, aims to...
Sentech Urges Investment in SA’s Digital Infrastructure
Sentech CEO Tebogo Leshope urged South Africa to accelerate investment in digital infrastructure, emphasizing data‑centre capacity as a catalyst for economic growth and AI adoption. The government’s Operation Vulindlela 2.0 programme now lists data‑centres alongside electricity, ports and transport as priority...
Here's Why the AI Infrastructure Story Is Just Getting Bigger for GOOGL
Alphabet is expanding its AI‑chip supply chain by partnering with Marvell Technology to co‑develop a memory‑processing unit and an inference‑focused TPU, complementing its existing ties with Broadcom and MediaTek. The company has pledged $175‑$185 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, underpinned...
Researchers Give Malaysian Gov’t Lengthy Digital ID To-Do List
Malaysia’s MyDigital ID, launched in 2023, now serves as a single sign‑on for over 80 government and regulated private services. The Khazanah Research Institute’s discussion paper applauds its security, privacy‑by‑design and governance, but flags gaps in statutory framework, oversight, funding...
Retail Technology Leader Jumpmind Hires Experienced Industry Leaders to Accelerate Global Expansion Across Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific
Jumpmind, a cloud‑native retail technology provider, announced three senior hires to spearhead its expansion across Europe, the Middle East and Asia‑Pacific. James Kelly joins as VP of Strategic Accounts, Lee Clinton as Director of Retail Transformation, and Florent Perrillon as...
Kioxia Debuts Fast QLC Slablet SSD for PC Makers
Kioxia has launched the EG7 SSD, a QLC‑based successor to its BG7 drive, offering identical capacity options (256 GB to 2 TB) and near‑identical performance, with a modest boost to 6.2 GB/s sequential writes. The drive uses 218‑layer 3D NAND, is DRAM‑less, and...
GoTyme Bank in Mall Expansion Drive After Pick N Pay Exit
South Africa’s digital‑only GoTyme Bank is shifting its customer acquisition strategy from Pick n Pay kiosks to a network of mall‑based "customer hubs" across major urban centres. The bank has already launched hubs in Gauteng’s Rosebank, Dobsonville, Centurion and Maponya...
Avricore Health Achieves Milestones and Outlines UK Expansion Roadmap for HealthTab™ Platform
Avricore Health announced that its HealthTab point‑of‑care platform screened over 3,500 patients in community pharmacies across North East and North Central London, completing 2,295 HbA1c tests at 57 locations in a single month. The company unveiled "The Path Forward" roadmap,...
Anthropic Is Building Its First Data Center Team Outside the US
Anthropic announced hiring data‑center contract specialists in Europe and Australia, marking its first dedicated data‑center team outside the United States. The London‑based role will oversee hubs in Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin and emerging markets, while the Sydney role focuses...
IFS Policy Brief Explores the Debate Over AI and Personhood
The Institute for Family Studies policy brief argues that the growing push to grant legal personhood to artificial intelligence is rooted in analogies to corporate and animal‑rights law. It warns that extending personhood could insulate AI firms from liability, amplify...
H2O Audio Tri Run Workout Headphones Review: A Little Underwhelming
H2O Audio’s new Tri Run bone‑conduction headphones aim to capture the sub‑$100 workout market, but the review finds they fall short on audio performance. The design is lightweight, comfortable, and IPX8‑rated, delivering reliable Bluetooth pairing across devices. However, muddy bass, grainy...
Akeso Announces P-II (COMPASSION-26) Trial Results on Cadonilimab + CT in 1L PDAC
Akeso reported Phase II COMPASSION‑26 data showing its bispecific antibody cadonilimab combined with chemotherapy as a first‑line option for advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. With a median progression‑free survival of 11.1 months and median overall survival exceeding 23 months, the regimen delivered 12‑month and...
Sans Institute Preps Live Systems for Nato Cyber Exercise
The SANS Institute will supply a fully operational power‑generation cyber range for NATO’s 16th Locked Shields exercise in Tallinn. For the first time the exercise will use real industrial control systems and physical equipment, letting 16 blue‑team defenders protect a national‑scale...
Data From Bulgarian Stock Exchange Becomes Available on TradingView Supercharts
The Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) has partnered with TradingView, adding its market data to the platform’s Supercharts. The BSE, which lists more than 320 companies, reported a 2025 turnover of €600 million (about $654 million). Traders can now chart Bulgarian equities, funds,...
The US Has a Chance to Rival China in Rush for Longer-Lasting Batteries
Accelerating demand for long‑duration energy storage is opening a competitive window for U.S. and European clean‑tech firms against China’s dominant battery industry. BloombergNEF projects installations of long‑duration systems to nearly quadruple this year after a record 2025, with the United...
ByteDance’s Global E-Commerce Push Lifts Revenue as AI Costs Mount
ByteDance’s overseas revenue surged nearly 50% in 2025, outpacing its domestic growth of about 20%. The boost came largely from TikTok Shop, whose gross merchandise value jumped roughly 70% year‑on‑year and approached $100 billion, pushing the overseas share of total revenue...
Oceaneering Pilots ROV on Brazilian Offshore Drilling Rig From Land
Oceaneering successfully piloted a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) on a Petrobras drilling rig offshore Brazil from its on‑shore Remote Operations Centre (OROC) in Macaé. The test marks the first land‑based control of an offshore ROV in the region, building on...
Deals in Brief: Baskit Raises USD 4.4 Million, Tencent Buys Kaspi.kz Stake, Six China Investments, and More
A wave of capital is reshaping Asia’s tech landscape, highlighted by Baskit’s $4.4 million Series A and a $3 million HSBC credit line to scale its offline‑trade platform across Indonesia and the Philippines. Tencent entered Central Asia’s fintech arena with a $518 million purchase...
M&S One Year On: Turning Anticipation Into Secure by Design
A year after the M&S cyber breach, retailers are moving from prevention to rapid response, treating cyber incidents as core business risks. The attack highlighted how third‑party suppliers can become the weakest link, exposing vast customer data and driving costly...
ESG Beyond Compliance: How Sunwoda’s Long-Termism Is Reshaping the Battery Industry
Sunwoda, the world’s leading smartphone battery pack shipper, is expanding into power batteries, storage, recycling and energy services while embedding ESG into every business layer. The company launched a Battery Passport platform in 2025, earning two spots in the Global...
Government Promises to 'Break the Link' Between Gas and Power Prices
The government announced a plan to break the link between gas and electricity prices, aiming to shield power tariffs from volatile gas markets. The initiative is part of a broader clean‑energy package that includes reforms to the renewables subsidy regime....
Recruitment News: Businesses Prioritize Developers with Lifecycle Expertise
Businesses are increasingly turning to full‑cycle custom software development to secure end‑to‑end control over digital projects. By engaging developers who manage everything from requirement gathering through post‑launch support, firms can build solutions that align tightly with strategic goals. The approach...
Ozow & Lula Partner to Expand Access to Business Funding for SMEs
Ozow has teamed up with South African fintech Lula to embed a digital funding channel directly into its merchant platform. The co‑branded interface lets eligible SMEs apply for loans that Lula assesses and disburses, while Ozow leverages its payments data...
AI Hiring Boom: How Cognitive Technologies Are Redefining E-Commerce Recruitment
E‑commerce retailers are moving from isolated AI tools to unified cognitive AI platforms that combine natural language understanding, vision, knowledge graphs, and real‑time inference. These platforms power conversational interfaces that can remember context, ask clarifying questions, and execute actions such...
American Airlines Will Start Scoring Flight Attendants, And It Won’t End Well
American Airlines is rolling out a new Me@Work program that will assign performance scores to flight attendants based on data from the past year. The metrics include passenger net promoter scores, operational contributions, and delays attributed to flight attendants. While...
Fraudsters May Target AI Mandates as Agentic Commerce Takes Off
AI‑driven agents are set to handle consumer transactions, a trend dubbed agentic commerce. McKinsey projects up to $1 trillion in U.S. B2C revenue by 2030, with a global market potential of $3‑5 trillion. Visa’s security unit observed a 450% surge in dark‑web...
Payscale Intelligence Cloud Sets New Standard in Compensation Intelligence
Payscale unveiled the Intelligence Cloud, a unified suite that merges compensation, talent acquisition, and finance data into a single platform. The solution delivers real‑time pay insights to managers, HR business partners, and executives, shifting compensation from a periodic, siloed task...
Eli Lilly Doubles Down on in Vivo with $7bn Kelonia Buyout
Eli Lilly announced a deal to acquire Kelonia Therapeutics for up to $7 bn, securing its lentiviral‑based in vivo gene‑therapy platform iGPS and an early‑stage multiple‑myeloma asset, KLN‑1010. The transaction includes a $3.25 bn cash payment upfront and up to $3.75 bn in milestone payments...
Cognizant Propels AI Workforce Training with Cognizant Skillspring™: New Talent Transformation Platform Designed to Accelerate Clients’ Workforce AI Readiness
Cognizant unveiled Skillspring™, an AI‑native, multimodal learning platform that embeds conversational tutoring directly into daily workflows. The solution links skill development to specific roles, projects and performance outcomes, and includes an AI Fluency Dashboard that tracks individual readiness in real...
Alamar Lists on Nasdaq, Giving Qiming Its Fifth IPO in 2026
Alamar Biosciences, a proteomics company founded in 2018, debuted on Nasdaq, delivering Qiming Venture Partners its fifth IPO in 2026. The firm’s Nulisa technology provides femtogram‑level sensitivity and a 12‑log dynamic range, while its Argo HT instrument has installed over 100...
South Africa’s Pipeline of Advanced Wind Projects Stands at 17 GW – GWEC
The Global Wind Energy Council’s 2026 report shows South Africa’s advanced wind pipeline at roughly 17 GW, enough to start construction within five years. The country already operates over 4 GW of wind capacity, has 2.8 GW under construction, and a total pipeline...
European Electricity Prices Increase Despite Falling Gas Prices
AleaSoft Energy Forecasting reported that the weekly average electricity price topped €95 ($112)/MWh in most major European markets last week, except France, Portugal and Spain where prices hovered around €50‑€71 ($59‑$84)/MWh. Italy recorded the highest average at €123.19/MWh ($145), while...
Data Security Becomes a Core Skill in Modern Legal Recruitment
Law firms are increasingly recognizing data security as a core competency, driven by the sensitive nature of client information, intellectual property, and legal strategies. Cyber threats targeting these assets are rising, prompting firms to adopt encryption, multi‑factor authentication, and regular...
Nigerian Banks Will Now Verify Fraud-Linked Mobile Numbers Under New CBN–NCC Agreement
Nigeria’s Central Bank and the Nigerian Communications Commission signed a memorandum of understanding that gives banks real‑time access to telecom data through the Telecom Identity Risk Management System (TIRMS). The system lets financial institutions verify whether a mobile number linked...
ANALYSIS: Big Tech Sets AI to Catch AI
Advanced AI is reshaping cyber‑security as both a weapon and a shield. Hackers leveraged over 1,000 AI prompts to breach Mexico’s tax authority, exposing 195 million records and prompting one of the largest government data leaks. At the same time, Anthropic’s...
AI Is The New Ad Space
Debra Aho Williamson, founder of Sonata Insights, argues that AI tools such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews, and retail assistants constitute a new media environment rather than just efficiency enhancers. She calls this “AI media,” where users can...
AI Is The New Ad Space
Debra Aho Williamson, founder of Sonata Insights, will keynote AdExchanger’s Programmatic AI conference in Las Vegas (May 18‑20). She argues that AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and retail assistants constitute a new media environment—“AI media”—that can guide consumers from query to...
Does Walmart Price Match? What to Know About Online and In-Store Price Matching Policies
Walmart’s price‑matching rules differ sharply between its brick‑and‑mortar stores and its website. In‑store shoppers can receive a match to the identical item’s price on Walmart.com, subject to manager approval and several exclusions. Online purchases, however, are largely excluded from any...
Exergy3 Raises £10m to Shake up the Clean Heat Market
Exergy3, a University of Edinburgh spin‑out, has closed a £10 million (≈$12.7 million) seed round to commercialise its ultra‑high‑temperature thermal‑energy storage platform. The technology converts surplus renewable electricity, such as curtailed wind power, into high‑temperature heat for industrial processes that are hard...
Unrestricted Generative AI Harms High School Math Learning by Acting as a Crutch
A randomized trial at a Turkish high school found that unrestricted access to generative AI (GPT Base) dramatically improved students' practice scores but caused a 17% drop in unassisted exam performance. A guided version (GPT Tutor) that forced step‑by‑step hints...
Beats and Jennie Are Back Together With an Unreleased Song and New Headphones
Beats and K‑pop icon Jennie are releasing a new onyx‑black special‑edition headphone on April 24, paired with an exclusive, unreleased track. The design features attachable black bows, music‑inspired ear‑pad symbols, and a matching carrying case. A Seoul pop‑up will let fans...
Float Launches Agentic AI Solution for Corporate Credit Cards
Float Financial introduced Float Intelligence, an agentic AI layer that automatically assigns general‑ledger and Canadian tax codes to corporate‑card transactions. The feature, now live for customers on select service tiers, achieved over 90% accuracy in beta testing with more than...
They Built a Legendary Privacy Tool. Now They’re Sworn Enemies
GrapheneOS, the open‑source Android hardening platform hailed as the gold standard for mobile privacy, was co‑created by Canadian security researcher Daniel Micay and a second lead developer. Over the past year, a bitter personal and strategic rift has erupted between...
Workday Preps AI Tool Aimed at Fraud, Error Detection in Finance
Workday is set to roll out its Financial Test Suite, an agentic AI tool that continuously scans financial transactions for fraud, duplicate invoices, and other anomalies. Currently in a limited pilot, the solution is slated for general availability in the...
Causal Models for Decision Systems: An Interview with Matteo Ceriscioli
Matteo Ceriscioli, a second‑year PhD student at Oregon State University, is advancing causal discovery for decision systems. His research shows that agents robust to distribution shifts must possess causal knowledge, linking adaptability to causal model inference. He has extended this...
New Blood Test Aims to Spot Liver Scarring Before It Paves the Way to Cancer
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have developed a blood test that analyzes cell‑free DNA fragments with a machine‑learning model to identify early‑stage liver fibrosis, a reversible precursor to cirrhosis and liver cancer. In a study of 423 participants, the assay detected...