This Week's Brief
Japan's New Bosses, Taiwan's Reform Lady, AI Reporters, ChatGPT For The Lottery Win, Breast Cancer Breakthroughs
This Week’s News
Politics, AI & Health! These are the moves you won’t want to miss. Here’s your weekly lowdown.
(These pins mark the stories with deeply buried, but globally significant signals.)
📌 Japan’s Got Its First Female Prime Minister & Finance Minister
📌 Taiwan’s New Opposition Leader Pushes Reform and Peace with China
📌 Meloni Gets A Ratings Upgrade Boost
📌 The Journo who wasn’t there
📌 Chatgpt’s Lottery Luck
📌 AI’s $1.5 Billion Apology
📌 Breast Cancer Breakthrough Bonanza
📌 Japanese Women Get OTC Morning After Pill
Power This Week
Win For Meloni
DBRS Morningstar has upgraded Italy’s credit rating to ‘A low’ from ‘BBB high.’ The move reflects a more resilient economy and fiscal consolidation under Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. It is a tidy victory for Italy’s conservative right, and a boost for Meloni’s domestic and international standing. Read more at Morningstar DBRS
Japan Gets Its First Female PM Who Rocks the House (and a Motorcycle)
Sanae Takaichi is officially became Japan’s first female prime minister today (Tuesday). The 64-year-old clinched 237 votes in the Lower House and 125 in the Upper, rising to the top of the ruling LDP. A heavy metal drummer and motorcycle enthusiast from the prefecture of Nara, Takaichi brings some unexpected edge to a traditionally patriarchal political scene.
A staunch conservative and Margaret Thatcher fan, Takaichi inherits a country grumbling over cost-of-living hikes and a revolving door of prime ministers. She beat four men to win the party leadership, survived a Komeito snub thanks to a last-minute deal with the Japan Innovation Party, and now looks toward the 2028 elections.
On the world stage, allies and rivals alike are watching. South Korea is cautious of her nationalistic “Japan First” stance, China is wary, and her ultimate test arrives next week when she meets US President Donald Trump. Read more at NHK World
Japan’s 2nd First: Satsuki Katayama is First Female Finance Minister
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has appointed Satsuki Katayama as Japan’s first female finance minister. A key supporter during Takaichi’s LDP leadership race, Katayama is known for her fiscal experience as a former regional revitalization minister. She will coordinate with the Finance Ministry on Takaichi’s agenda, including raising the income tax threshold and exploring a two-year cut to the consumption tax on food.
Yen Bears are in watch and wait mode to see how these measures will test fiscal discipline. Katayama was embroiled in an influence peddling controversy in 2018. Read more at Reuters
Taiwan’s Opposition Chooses Female Reformist
Taiwan’s opposition Nationalist Party elected Cheng Li-wun as its new chairperson last week in a contest shadowed by allegations of Chinese interference.
The only female candidate, Cheng, a former lawmaker, won by a wide margin over former Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin and four others. A reformist, she criticises high defence spending while advocating peace with China, whose sovereignty claims have long strained cross-strait relations. The KMT (a China friendly party) retains strong influence despite losing three consecutive presidential elections to the Democratic Progressive Party. Read more at AP
AI This Week
The Journo Who Wasn’t There
Britain’s Channel 4 pulled off a first and a twist, with its ‘Dispatches’ show special Will AI Take My Job? The “anchor” guiding viewers through the investigation was itself AI-generated, created by fashion-tech brand Seraphinne Vallora for Kalel Productions. The programme explored how automation is reshaping work, before revealing that the reporter asking the questions, Aisha Gaban wasn’t human either. Read more at Channel 4
Digital Poverty Porn 2.0
AI-generated images of poverty, child marriage and sexual violence survivors are dominating NGO campaigns sparking global criticism of a new wave of “digital poverty porn”. The AI generated pictures are flooding stock photo sites and have in the past two years made their way into fundraising efforts, even at the UN. Read more at The Guardian
Dutch Democracy Vs. Chatbots
In the Netherlands, the data protection authority (AP) has warned that AI chatbots giving voting advice are “unreliable and clearly biased”, favouring the same two parties regardless of prompts, red flag just ahead of national elections. In over 56% of the cases, the chatbot recommended the PVV Party or GroenLinks-PvdA Party. For one chatbot, this was even over 80 percent. Read more at NL Times
$1.5 Billion Apology
AI company Anthropic reached a $1.5 billion (£1.1 billion) settlement with authors whose books it used to train its models without consent, downloading works from pirate sites including LibGen and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi). Read more at Chemistry World
AI Ocean Cleanup
WWF Germany, with Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab and Accenture, launched ghostnetzero.ai to locate and remove “ghost nets.” These are the deadly lost fishing gear responsible for up to 89% of marine litter in the Mediterranean. Project lead Gabriele Dederer, a research diver, called it “a quantum leap” for marine conservation, with AI now able to distinguish buried nets from cables using sonar data. Read more at AI Magazine
Chatgpt’s Lottery Luck
We’ve been using AI all wrong it seems. US citizen Tammy Carvey asked ChatGPT to pick her Powerball (Lottery) numbers and won $100,000. Not quite the billion she’d hoped for, but as far as human–machine collaboration goes, that’s a solid start. Read more at Unilad
Semiconductors This Week
TSMC Tops Expectations
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) beat Q3 estimates on AI Chip demand and issued strong guidance, sending shares to a record high before a slight pullback. Read more at CNBC
Vertical Semiconductor Raises $11 Million
Funding for AI driven semiconductor companies is skyrocketing. Co-founders Cynthia Liao, Josh Perozek and Tomas Palacios, secured $11 million for Vertical Semiconductor, an MIT spin-out developing vertical GaN transistors for high-efficiency AI data centres. Read more at Reuters
Nexperia Tensions in China
There is a battle brewing between Europe and China over semiconductors. The Dutch government has stepped in to take control over Dutch company Nexperia, ousting its Chinese CEO. The company’s China unit has told staff to ignore all Dutch HQ instructions. Beijing has blocked most of Nexperia’s final products from leaving China, highlighting the growing geopolitical tug-of-war over semiconductors. Read more in The Financial Times
Health This Week
Gilead’s Trodelvy Cuts Breast Cancer by 38%
Gilead Sciences’ Trodelvy slashed disease progression risk by 38% in patients with advanced triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), one of the most aggressive and treatment-resistant forms. The trial compared the drug to standard chemo in 558 untreated patients lacking the PD-L1 protein targeted by Keytruda. Read more at Gilead Sciences
AstraZeneca’s Datroway Boosts Breast Cancer Survival
AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s cancer Datroway has succeeded in its clinical trial. an FDA approval is most likely as the trials found the drug extends survival in tough-to-treat breast cancer, with patients living 23.7 months versus 18.7 on chemo and nearly doubling the time before relapse. Read more at AstraZeneca
Japan Greenlights OTC Morning-After Pill
For the first time, Japan will allow women to buy an emergency contraceptive (the morning after pill) without a prescription, but a pharmacist will have to be present. This is a major step for reproductive rights in the country. Read more in The Japan Times
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