Amanda Shendruk

Sometime in May, you could receive a smartphone alert from your local health agency saying you may have come into contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19. Such a warning will be made possible by a feature that is nearly 30 years old: Bluetooth. The same wireless standard that lets you play Spotify playlists in your car or link your smartphone to your wireless earbuds is paving the way for the world’s largest experiment in digital contact tracing.

On Tuesday, when most of Geneva—where the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) are located—was already long asleep, US president Donald Trump announced he would suspend funding to the global public health agency, pending an investigation into what he called its “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”

Widespread adoption of electric vehicles could help ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft combat what climate scientists say is a significant pollution problem.

The fund headed by Paul Singer, one of world’s most feared activist investors, has taken a significant stake in Twitter. Elliott Management plans to make changes at the social media company, including potentially replacing its founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, Bloomberg reported yesterday. Dorsey owns only about 2% of the company, making him particularly vulnerable to such plans.

As coronavirus cases surge in South Korea, the country is turning to smartphone apps to avoid the contagion.

Last month, the cities of Barcelona, San Diego, Boston, and Nottingham all officially declared climate emergencies. They kick off a year that is likely to explode with similar civic pronouncements as cities grapple with responding to and mitigating the consequences of a warming world.

If you care about stopping climate change, it’s time to get out your wallet, head to the beach, find the nearest whale, and cut her a check for $2 million. It’s the least you could do.

This is an article from 2020. Read our most recent coverage of the Doomsday Clock: In 2022, the Doomsday Clock didn’t change for the second year running

Gender representation is so poor at the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos that 2020 delegates are more likely to run into someone from North America than a woman.

Two decades ago, an article in the Harvard Business Review made a prediction: “We expect that experience design will become as much a business art as product design and process design are today.”

Women are sorely underrepresented as speakers at technology events, and those who make it to the stage have to fight to get there. So when Ivanka Trump, a woman with no relevant industry credentials, was invited to be a keynote speaker at the world’s largest technology conference, it understandably frustrated a number of women in the sector.

The UK’s general election last week was decisive. It marked a significant win for the Conservatives, a straight-forward path for Brexit, and a resounding denunciation of the Labour party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

For nations and cities across the world, 2020 was set to be a milestone year in their fight against climate change. It’s the first in a series of globally earmarked emission-reduction waypoints—2020, 2030, 2050—with 2020 planned as an initial benchmarking moment, a time to see progress towards meeting targets aimed at limiting global warming.

The results are in for the OECD’s latest global test of 15-year-olds in math, science, and reading. The test, known as PISA (for Programme for International Student Assessment), is administered every three years and used—by some—to measure which countries are best preparing their students for the future.

Unfortunately (or not) for frequent travelers, there is no standardized carry-on bag size. What is allowed on one airline can be too big on another—or too heavy. Cabin baggage rules imposed by airlines can feel arbitrary, but our analysis reveals that some carry-on restrictions are more common than others.

There are only 59 named women on the world’s most valuable banknotes.

Bernie Sanders may find kinship talking politics with Quebec’s nationalist party Bloc Québécois, while Cory Booker and the UK’s Liberal Democrats would see eye-to-eye. As for Buttigieg, he could comfortably hang with Italy’s Forza Italia.

It’s not clear what should be done to tame Big Tech, but one thing is sure: Fines aren’t enough.

The streaming wars have begun and there’s suddenly a lot more TV to watch: Apple’s new service, Apple TV+, launched Nov. 1. Disney’s offering, Disney+, debuts Nov. 12. NBCUniversal’s Peacock and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max will be available in April and May, respectively.

Podcasting is still a white man’s game. Of 480 top podcast hosts analyzed by Quartz, only one in three were women. Even more stark: just over one in ten appeared to be non-white.

If the United States continues to pay late and withhold funds, the UN’s finances could fail. The US is the organization’s largest funder and it is, in part, because of the country’s tardy payments that the UN finds itself in financial turmoil year after year.

As past-their-prime airports are abandoned, what should—or can—be done with the unique spaces and buildings left behind?

The US annually grumbles about how much it pays to the United Nations. The US has also been increasing its voluntary payments to the UN. In fact, between 2010 and 2017, the US increased its voluntary spending by 54% on an inflation-adjusted basis, from $4.5 to $6.9 billion.