August 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
Hyundai workers walked out as James Hardie prepared to close a European line
About 40,000 Hyundai workers struck over pay, retirement and automation guarantees; James Hardie agreed to sell its European fibre gypsum business and plans to wind down its fibre cement line.
Japan's budget rate met July price and trade pressure
Set against July inflation, the energy-led import surge and strong factory orders, Japan's 3.8 per cent budget-rate assumption pulled debt, price and growth pressure into the same frame.
July price and trade data put the import bill back in focus
July price and trade data show that even where some pressure eases, the external bill is still clearly keeping price relief fragile through energy and import costs.
Kadim's reopening and the E1 tender intensify settlement pressure in the West Bank
Families returned to Kadim, evacuated in 2005, as the E1 housing tender advanced; Human Rights Watch reported that settler attacks had fully or partly emptied 107 West Bank communities.
Kruger grass rises, seagrass carbon falls and forest regrowth stays cheap
Grass output in Kruger rose 28 per cent, natural tropical regrowth came in up to 96 per cent cheaper than planting, and warmer tanks cut the durable share of seagrass carbon by about 28 per cent.
Liquid AI, Modular, and PyTorch push inference beyond one hardware path
Liquid AI’s draft models, the open-source Mojo compiler, and IBM Spyre adapters seek to reduce inference cost through decoding speed, accelerator portability, and model compatibility.
Microglia, Pol II and ribosomes redrew the flow inside cells
Microglia in ALS mice targeted living motor neurons, Pol II pulled from Drosophila embryos appeared in a stalk-missing elongation form, and ac4C-marked mRNA was read by ribosomes at nearly twice the speed.
Military pressure tested shrinking diplomatic room across three fronts
New attacks in Yemen, around Kyiv, and on the Korean Peninsula show actors increasing military tempo even as they try to keep bargaining room open.
Moscow's terms and Russian drones sharpen NATO's readiness test
Moscow limited new Ukraine proposals to Putin's goals as Romania reported a surge in Russian drone incursions; the Pentagon's allied questionnaire opened a parallel debate over eastern-flank capacity and political alignment.
Nvidia takes the model factory as Waymo brings the chip in-house
Nvidia is licensing Poolside’s model-building software and offering jobs to 109 staff, while Waymo is deploying its own robotaxi chip to lower costs and reduce hardware dependence.