Stories from Abroad

China has banned Meta Platforms’ acquisition of artificial-intelligence startup Manus on national security grounds and ordered that the $2.5 billion deal be unwound. China’s National Development and Reform Commission, which has the authority to review foreign investments, said that it has banned the acquisition and ordered it to be rescinded. “The transaction complied fully with applicable law,” a Meta representative said in an email statement.

The Vatican is racing to build digital defenses for the artificial intelligence era—and quietly positioning itself as a global referee of what's real. The Holy See is moving faster than most other legacy institutions to shape rules and guardrails in verifying reality, with urgency that's unfolding amid unusual geopolitical and digital clashes. In February, Leo XIV told priests not to use AI to write homilies or to seek "likes" on social media platforms like TikTok.

Starlink has threatened to shun Australia's satellite mobile market if it is forced into a spectrum auction.

North America is the second most expensive region in the world for broadband, according to a global study comparing internet prices across 214 countries. Broadband Genie analyzed 2,631 fixed-line broadband plans and found consumers in Northern America pay an average of $98.40 a month, second only to Polynesia.

Sustainability in telecom is often discussed in abstract targets and distant timeframes. But for Openreach, the company building one of the largest full‑fiber networks in Europe, the challenge is far more immediate and tangible. “We install millions of these devices every year,” said Trevor Linney, network technology director at Openreach, referring to the optical network terminals installed inside customers’ homes.

A top European AI policy official pushed back on a common critique that the European Union's tech regulation stifles innovation at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. Magnu

Data centers built to power AI produce so much heat that they can raise the surface temperature of the land around them by several degrees—creating so-called data center heat islands that may already be affecting up to 340 million people. Andrea Marinoni at the University of Cambridge saw that the amount of energy needed to run a data center had been steadily increasing of late and was likely to “explode” in the coming years, and set out to quantify the impact. The researchers

The rapid proliferation of digital platforms has fundamentally restructured social, economic, and political life, simultaneously creating a significant regulatory dilemma for states—a challenge often termed a “governance capacity deficit.” To address this, there is a growing imperative to transition from reactive frameworks to a more proactive and future-oriented model. This study focuses on anticipatory governance, a crucial paradigm shift defined by the formulation and execution of risk-prevention plans.

Communications networks do not stop at national borders. Data flows across continents in milliseconds. Fiber-optic cables connect nations beneath the ocean. Wireless ecosystems rely on global supply chains. And increasingly, our digital economies are intertwined. Because of this, network security is not something any one country can achieve alone. Secure networks require cooperation, shared principles and trusted partnerships. This is precisely why gatherings like this one are so important.

China seeks to lead the development of future generations of spectrum management technology. The use of wireless technologies has exploded in recent decades, and technological development is expanding the possibilities for use of the electromagnetic spectrum. As competition between the United States and China intensifies, interest has sharpened in finding better ways to manage the use of spectrum to support critical applications in areas such as warfighting, mobile communications, and remote sensing.