Impact

Spotify’s Sound Up looks to amplify female voices in India

Sweden-based music streaming company Spotify are launching a global female empowerment program meant to equip women of the world with proper training within the podcasting realm.   The program, called “Sound Up!”, aims to identify under-represented communities and enables participants to enhance their podcasting skills through training, mentoring workshops, and full-program support provided by the audio streaming […]

Rembrandt's huge 'Night Watch' gets bigger thanks to AI

One of Rembrandt van Rijn’s biggest paintings just got a bit bigger. A marriage of art and artificial intelligence has enabled Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum to recreate parts of the iconic “Night Watch” painting that were snipped off 70 years after Rembrandt finished it. The printed strips now hang flush to the edges of the 1642 painting […]

Automakers face a threat to EV sales: Slow charging times

If the auto industry is to succeed in its bet that electric vehicles will soon dominate the roads, it will need to overcome a big reason why many people are still avoiding them: fear of running out of juice between Point A and Point B. Automakers have sought to quell those concerns by developing EVs […]

New technology ‘listens’ for endangered right whales population

One of the world’s most endangered whale species could have added protection from threats posed by human marine activity, through technology developed by the University of East Anglia (UEA). In partnership with the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and the marine survey company Gardline Geosurvey Limited, UEA researchers have developed machine learning techniques that […]

Ford: Electric vehicles to be 40% of global sales by 2030

Ford expects 40% of its global sales to be battery-electric vehicles by 2030 as it adds billions to what it’s spending to develop them. The automaker said in a presentation for investors Wednesday that it will add about $8 billion to its EV development spending from this year to 2025. That brings the total spend […]

EXPLAINER: How vaccine passports for global travel will work

Boarding pass, suitcase, passport and … digital vaccination certificate? Keen to avoid losing another summer of holiday revenue to the coronavirus pandemic, the European Union, some Asian governments and the airline industry are scrambling to develop so-called COVID-19 vaccine passports to help kickstart international travel. They’re working on systems that would allow travelers to use […]

8th noose found at Amazon site despite additional security

NAACP, state and local officials on Wednesday denounced what they called continued racism at an Amazon warehouse construction site in Connecticut where eight nooses have been found within a month, despite additional security measures added last weekend. The latest noose was found at the site in Windsor on Wednesday morning, the day of a scheduled […]

Daimler Truck says batteries, hydrogen are the future

The world’s largest truck and bus maker is charting an ambitious zero-emission future and says it’s not that far off – despite higher costs and the current lack of support infrastructure. Daimler AG’s truck division says it plans to shift most of its vehicle development resources to zero-emission vehicles by 2025 and predicts that battery […]

Green governor sets bold climate goals for rich German state

Germany’s only state governor from the rising Green party on Wednesday announced ambitious new climate targets that includes boosting new technologies so that “Tesla will soon only see our tail lights.” The wealthy southwest German state, home to German automakers Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, aims to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2040 — five years earlier […]

Biden plan would pick winners, losers in move to green jobs

In Georgia, school bus-maker Blue Bird has visions of going from selling a few hundred electric buses annually to 15,000. In Michigan, Ford plans to produce an all-electric version of its F-150 pickup truck. Both companies are looking to President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal to help transform the automotive sector as electric vehicles […]