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Mark Gongloff, Tribune News ServiceEver wonder about the financial implications of your life choices? Taking one job over another, spending Christmas with your nephew instead of working through it at your financial firm, that time
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Natasha Benjamin, Tribune News ServiceA few weeks ago, my daughter and I went to Paris to visit family and celebrate her high school graduation. As a marine scientist working on the front lines of climate
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After leapfrogging Singapore to become the region’s fastest-growing data centre hub, Malaysia is facing intensifying scrutiny as the resources debate that has complicated the industry’s growth spreads to emerging Asia. Protests over a data centre complex in Johor state’s southern tip - the epicentre of the boom - were the first of their kind in the country. In Selangor, the richest and most populous state, debate about the burden on communities has become politicised. “Two years ago, it was just about building capacity,” said Cheam Tat Inn, managing director at the Malaysian arm of US data centre operator Equinix. “The conversation today is more like, How will you use power? Are you looking at renewables? They want to see how you’re going to grow sustainably and responsibly.” It’s a notable shift for a country - and a region - that has courted hyperscalers hard in a race to secure AI infrastructure investment, offering lower land costs and affordable power. It puts emerging Asia roughly where developed-market data centre hotspots such as Ireland, the Netherlands and Singapore were several years ago, when the industry’s breakneck growth began to stir concerns about competition for water and electricity with homes and farms.Even so, global hyperscalers - in tandem with data centre developers and operators - are pushing forward with massive investments aimed at powering AI services requiring increasingly large amounts of computing capacity, but with a sharpened focus on sustainability to help secure a “social licence” from local communities. Governments are also tightening standards to retain public support.In Johor, China’s ZDATA told Reuters its data centre operates solely on treated wastewater, and it is finalising a renewable energy deal with state utility Tenaga Nasional to ease strain on the electricity grid. Japan’s NTT said its data centre will employ a closed-circuit cooling system to limit water use. Bain Capital-backed Bridge Data Centres said solar energy accounts for more than half of the power supply at its operations in the state.“Data centres have high abstract support because we’re all using more and more data and we all want high speed,” said Chris Howard, an executive director at consultancy JLL. “But this contrasts very sharply with acceptance of data centres in local communities due to the perception of increased energy prices and water usage - or even just ugly buildings.” JLL estimates that rising objections from residents were among factors - also including grid connections and infrastructure equipment - that contributed to delays of at least three months for 57% of projects globally last year. Renewable energy, local contentNew projects in Johor must show how they will source electricity, with renewable energy increasingly a prerequisite for approval. Late last year, the state announced a blanket ban on two categories of extremely water-intensive data centres, requiring as much as 50mn litres daily, the capacity of 20 Olympic swimming pools.Selangor isn’t banning any proposals outright, but is vetting them to meet global standards on energy and water efficiency, the state’s executive councillor for investment, trade and mobility, Ng Sze Han, told Reuters. A centerpiece of its approach is requiring 30% local content in areas such as integrated circuit design and cooling systems.“These are highly capital-intensive projects, but historically they have delivered limited spillover to the local economy,” Ng said.In April, the opposition Socialist Party singled out a 1.75bn ringgit ($428mn) hyperscale project in the state for criticism, saying it prioritised corporations over communities. With Malaysia tightening scrutiny, investment may start flowing to other countries in the region, said Savills director Nicholas Tuan.“We’re already seeing more activity and inbound requests for markets like Thailand, where there are larger scale campuses being built in the south,” he said.At the same time, Johor in particular retains its appeal as “amongst the most stable” in terms of infrastructure, government support and availability of resources, he added. Singapore spilloverJohor was the overwhelming, $35bn beneficiary of Singapore’s 2019-2022 moratorium on new data centres, after its own decade-long build-out strained land, water and electricity supply. Investment poured in from the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, as well as Chinese firms Tencent and Alibaba. Even with stricter vetting since 2024, the state’s planned data centre capacity - including projects both in the pipeline and under construction - will mean an eightfold surge from current levels to 7,000 megawatts, according to JLL. A 50-megawatt data centre can consume as much water as 2,200 households per day, and as much electricity as 22,000, according to Malaysia’s central bank.Resistance to the build-out reached a watershed in February, when residents of southern Johor’s Iskandar Puteri protested construction of ZDATA’s data centre complex. Many vented worries about the potential strain on water supplies, with some complaining of a drop in water pressure even before the 300-megawatt facility came online. ZDATA told Reuters its compound was not the source of the water issues.But not all the concerns were over competition for resources. Complaints about dust from the construction site spurred the land developer, Tropicana Firstwide, to set up two free car washes for residents.But another common objection is harder to address.“I chose to buy a house here because of the greenery and the hills behind the property,” said another Iskandar Puteri resident. “Now the land has been levelled for the data centres.” - Reuters
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Japan’s Prime Minister Takaichi responds to reporters’ questions about the earthquake in Kumamoto Prefecture, in Tokyo, Japan, yesterday. (Reuters) Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is fighting a losing battle in the polls, making a retreat from promised tax cuts more difficult and denying her officials the political backup they need to talk down yen and bond market bears. Takaichi’s approval rating slumped in July to the lowest since she took office last year as rising inflation, blamed in part on high import costs from a weak yen, hit her standing with voters.The prime minister’s strong advocacy of fiscal stimulus and harsh criticism of higher interest rates have heightened investor concerns about worsening public finances in Japan, sending bond yields higher.Those bond market anxieties have also blunted official efforts to talk down speculative bets against the yen, government sources said.“Markets are gaining control over fiscal management, which hasn’t happened in Japan for decades,” one of them said, warning about the danger of being at the mercy of bond vigilantes.Since becoming prime minister last year, Takaichi has sought to pursue a pro-growth agenda while also tempering investor concerns about fiscal discipline and central bank independence.Those competing demands have created a communication challenge that has at times led to unwanted market volatility, which in turn makes policy implementation more difficult.For example, her spending plans, aimed in part at easing rising household living costs, lifted bond yields to three-decade highs in July on concern over Japan’s worsening finances. Mindful of such market pressures, Takaichi told a news briefing on Monday the administration would seek to gain market trust in Japan’s finances through transparent communication.“I would say communication with markets would become more important,” she said when asked what she could have done better. But when pressed about her administration’s sliding approval ratings, Takaichi stressed her determination to break Japan’s “excessive fiscal tightening” with big investment, a sign she had no plans to back down on expansionist policy.“The sliding approval ratings would only solidify the premier’s determination to cut tax and boost investment,” another source said. “Pursuing her policies would jolt markets, while not doing so would hit her popularity. It’s a dilemma.” Those challenges could worsen ahead of a host of events that could ignite a renewed spike in yields. Despite reservations voiced even within her ruling party, Takaichi is set to proceed with a plan to cut by two years an 8% levy on food, domestic media reported. While the move would come as little surprise, a lack of funding clarity could further upset bond markets, analysts say.The government also plans to avoid setting caps on spending requests for key growth areas in an overhaul of budget drafting that could boost expenditure and debt issuance next fiscal year.“Takaichi tried to explain how her administration was mindful of the need for fiscal discipline. But her policies themselves won’t change much, so there’s not much hope in bond markets that things could change,” said Atsushi Takeda, chief economist at Itochu Research Institute.“JGB yields have stabilised somewhat but that’s because of falling oil prices. The premium markets are charging for Japan’s fiscal situation hasn’t changed,” he said.While the government focuses on rising yields, Takaichi’s dovish fiscal and monetary approach has also caused headaches in the currency market with the yen sliding to a four-decade low.Although Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama’s repeated threats of “decisive” action have kept markets on edge, they have failed to give a sustained boost to the sagging currency. Top currency diplomat Atsushi Mimura, who decides how and when to intervene, has stayed quiet since the record $72bn intervention conducted between late April and early May that did little to arrest the yen’s downtrend.The communication strategy has shifted away from yen jawboning to giving the bond market more of the clarity it needs. Katayama said on Tuesday the government has no plan to set a ceiling for annual debt issuance, but would keep the amount “within a range investors would view as reasonable.”Takashi Fujiwara, chief fund manager at Resona Asset Management’s fixed income investment division, said Katayama was positive for the JGB market as she could communicate with the market logically.“The government’s communication on the JGBs is increasing, and that is because every time the government announces something new, there is a ‘shock’ in the market, and that subsequently weakens the yen,” Fujiwara said.Takaichi and Katayama are now pitching the administration’s expansionary fiscal policy as boosting Japan’s growth potential, thereby helping enhance the appeal of the yen and JGBs. For now, markets remain unconvinced with yields on track for further rises amid looming prospects of bigger debt issuance that would strain Japan’s already worsening finances.And the yen could see more volatility this week when the US Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan hold policy meetings. While both are seen keeping rates steady, hawkish hints from the Fed could accelerate yen falls versus the dollar.“The administration faces two big headwinds: slumping approval ratings, and declines in yen and JGBs caused by eroding market trust in its fiscal policy. I don’t think Takaichi has succeeded in fixing either of them,” said former BOJ board member Takahide Kiuchi. “To recover market trust, the administration needs to show with specific facts and figures its focus on fiscal discipline.” — Reuters
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Qatar has become the third country in the world to administer Itvisma, a one-time gene replacement therapy for spinal muscular atrophy — and the sentence that matters most is not the one about rankings. It is this: a 13-year-old boy named Khalid, who has lived with a relentless neuromuscular disease since early childhood, received his treatment in Doha, in a single injection, in a hospital a short drive from his school. Spinal muscular atrophy is caused by a missing or non-functioning survival motor neuron 1 gene. Without it, the body cannot make enough of the protein motor neurons need to survive, and those neurons die. Muscles weaken. Breathing weakens. For decades the vocabulary around the condition was the vocabulary of management: bracing, ventilation, physiotherapy, the careful husbanding of whatever strength remained. Itvisma does something categorically different. It delivers a working copy of the gene, addressing the cause rather than the consequences. As Prof Tawfeg Ben Omran, Division Chief of Genetics and Genomic Medicine at Sidra Medicine, put it, the field has moved beyond managing symptoms and towards the disease’s genetic source. That is not incremental progress. It is a change of register. The procedure itself was a study in institutional patience. Months of preparation across a dozen specialties — genetics, neurology, pharmacy, anaesthesiology, physiotherapy, orthopaedic spine services — preceded a single pass of a needle into the spinal canal. It was performed in interventional radiology so the team could work under real-time imaging, a decisive advantage in a patient with severe scoliosis, where the anatomy offers no easy path. Dr Walid Mubarak, senior attending physician in interventional radiology, described positioning the needle precisely while keeping the patient safe throughout. Precision of that order is not luck. It is the product of a system built deliberately, over years.What gives the milestone its weight, though, is the geography of it. Khalid’s family spent years travelling abroad in search of options — the exhausting, expensive itinerary familiar to every family living with a rare disease in a small country. His mother called seeing him treated here a dream come true. Prof Ibrahim Janahi, Sidra Medicine’s chief medical officer, framed the priority plainly: eligible patients should reach advanced therapies closer to home, through a co-ordinated pathway that supports them before, during and long after treatment. That last clause deserves emphasis. Gene therapy is a single injection. Care is a lifetime.Khalid will remain under scheduled follow-up covering laboratory monitoring, motor function, respiratory health and rehabilitation. No-one at Sidra is claiming a cure, and the honest position is that this medicine is young and the evidence still accumulating. Rare disease care in Qatar will be judged not by one case but by whether the pathway built for Khalid can be opened, reliably and affordably, for the next child, and the one after that.Still, it is worth pausing on what has been achieved. A hospital that did not exist a generation ago, working inside a research and health ecosystem that did not exist a generation ago either, has delivered one of the most advanced therapies medicine currently possesses — and delivered it to a child whose family no longer had to leave home to receive it.Khalid is a high-performing student at Qatar Academy Sidra. He intends to study medicine. Asked what he wanted to do first, he did not talk about walking, or about the future at all. He said he wanted to take his mother to Makkah and Medina. Whatever the science ultimately delivers, that answer is the measure of what has already been given back.
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Somewhere between 18.1% and 24.6% of adults in this country live with diabetes. The gap between those two figures — the Ministry of Public Health’s survey estimate and the International Diabetes Federation’s modelled one — is itself a statement about how hard the disease is to count. What is not in dispute is the scale. On any of the available measures, Qatar carries one of the heaviest diabetes burdens in the world, and the 2021 primary healthcare data showing Type 2 prevalence among Qataris at 19.2% makes clear that the burden falls hardest on the citizen population. Against that, a wristwatch developed at Qatar University may seem a modest thing. It is not. Consider what monitoring actually asks of a patient. Not the annual clinic visit, not the medication, but the daily arithmetic: a lancet, a strip, a drop of blood, repeated before meals, after meals, before sleep, for decades. Every clinician knows what happens next. Adherence decays. People test less than they should, and then less than that, and the readings that would have caught a dangerous swing are simply never taken. Poor glycaemic control is rarely a failure of will. It is a failure of tolerability — a treatment regime that demands a small act of self-injury several times a day, indefinitely. GlucoWatch, developed by a team led by Dr Khalid Abu al-Saud with four computer engineering students, proposes to remove that friction entirely. It estimates glucose by reading heart rate signals, blood pressure and demographic inputs through an AI model, and pushes the results to a phone. No blood. No consumables. Alerts when readings drift outside approved ranges, and the option to share data with a family member or a physician. The significance is not the convenience. It is what continuous, effortless data does to the disease. Diabetes is currently managed as a series of snapshots; a passive wearable turns it into a continuous record, which is the difference between reacting to a crisis and seeing it approach. It also changes who can realistically be monitored — the elderly patient who dreads the lancet, the newly diagnosed adult still negotiating with the diagnosis, the rural or housebound patient for whom every reading is currently a chore. There is a national dimension too. A Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar modelling study put new Type 2 cases at roughly 25,000 in 2021, with obesity the principal driver. Prevention will do most of the work in bending that curve, but detection is not a minor partner. A device unobtrusive enough to be worn by people who do not yet know they are ill is, potentially, a screening instrument as much as a management one. Caution is owed. The device is an estimator, not a laboratory. It is at the validation stage, with a published patent application and a gold medal in Kuwait — encouraging markers, but not regulatory approval. The history of non-invasive glucose monitoring is littered with promising prototypes that could not survive clinical scrutiny. Accuracy across varied physiology, and across the exact edge cases where a wrong reading is most dangerous, is the entire test. But the direction is right, and the provenance matters. This began as a student graduation project at a national university, aimed at a national affliction, with an explicit commitment to affordability. Qatar National Vision 2030 talks about building a knowledge economy that serves the population. This is what that looks like when it works: a local problem, local researchers, and a solution designed for the people who need it most. If the validation holds, the finger prick becomes a thing this country’s children read about rather than endure. That is worth the patience it will take to get right.
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From Nethy Bridge in the Cairngorms, to Bordeaux and its coastal peninsula, Cap Ferret, and then on to Madrid, communities across Europe are being forced to run for their lives from the wildfires now raging
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A Supreme Court ruling and an outbreak of explosive diarrhea seem to have nothing in common, and certainly nothing to do with artificial intelligence. But they’re a warning to the AI industry about the danger
