Our World in Data

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have seized a US submarine drone in the Strait of Hormuz, saying the operation was carried out for data recovery, according to NDTV. The incident marks a new flashpoint between Tehran and Washington in the strategic waterway, through which a large share of the world's oil passes, and comes amid ongoing tensions over naval activity in the Gulf.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission has fined Google €403 million for violations of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. The decision makes Google one of the companies hit hardest by European privacy enforcement and is likely to fuel ongoing debate about how major technology firms handle users' personal data and whether regulators' penalties are a sufficient deterrent.

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains below its 10-day average following the US-Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28. Before the conflict, the strait typically handled around 125 large commercial vessels a day, including tankers, gas carriers, bulkers and container ships. The continued shortfall points to lingering disruption and caution among shipowners in one of the world's most important oil transit routes.

A World Health Organization pandemic agreement has been signed by countries, yet it remains in limbo over unresolved details, notably financing and how nations will share vaccines and pathogen data. Questions are being raised about what is holding up its implementation, with observers pointing to political and logistical obstacles ahead of countries actually putting the treaty into effect.

A new report warns that climate change and the rapid growth of artificial intelligence are together placing unprecedented pressure on the world's water systems. Rising temperatures are disrupting rainfall and depleting supplies, while AI data centres consume vast amounts of water for cooling, intensifying competition for a scarce resource.

Japan's corporate services price inflation has climbed to its highest level in two years, according to a Reuters report. The rise in what companies pay for services signals persistent price pressure in the world's third-largest economy and will feed into debate over whether the Bank of Japan should raise interest rates further as it winds down decades of ultra-loose policy.

An analysis from Our World in Data examines how current immigration to the United States compares with historical levels. It places recent inflows, including the recent surge in migration, against more than a century of data, showing how today's foreign-born population share stacks up against past immigration waves such as those of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Elon Musk has given a new full interview to CMG, China's state broadcaster, covering a broad range of topics. The discussion touches on Xi Jinping, the Tesla Shanghai factory, the Cybercab rollout, the pace of AI breakthroughs, Grok, SpaceX and Tesla data for real-world AI, and Chinese AI models and the compute gap. The interview is drawing attention for Musk's engagement with Chinese leadership and industry at a moment of high US-China tech tensions.

Researchers at the University of Arizona report that satellite observations show drylands worldwide are greening, but in an increasingly volatile 'boom-and-bust' pattern: bursts of vegetation growth are followed by sharp crashes. The study suggests that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is fuelling plant growth in arid regions, yet this greening masks growing instability, with vegetation swings becoming more extreme over time.

Niantic Spatial is adapting the spatial mapping technology behind Pokémon GO into spatial AI designed for robots, according to a report by South Korea's Chosun Ilbo. The move signals the company's push beyond mobile gaming into robotics, leveraging years of real-world 3D mapping data collected from players. The announcement is drawing attention in robotics circles as spatial intelligence becomes a key area of competition.

Google has announced Project Suncatcher, an initiative to test its AI chips in space for the first time. The plan points to putting data-processing hardware aboard satellites, a step that could eventually move parts of AI computing off Earth. The announcement is drawing attention across the tech and semiconductor world, with observers weighing the engineering challenges of running chips in orbit and what it could mean for the future of data centers.

While public attention stays on AI debates, Meta is moving forward with a massive subsea cable project stretching roughly 4,300 miles across the ocean floor. The infrastructure aims to carry enormous volumes of internet traffic between continents, giving Meta greater control over the pipes that carry its apps' data. Observers note the project underscores how tech giants now build core internet infrastructure themselves, rivaling traditional telecom consortiums.

A new commentary argues that while satellites now give the world a near-real-time view of forests being cleared, detection alone does not save them. Monitoring technology can flag deforestation as it happens, but enforcing protections still depends on governments, rangers, funding and political will on the ground, a gap that continues to hinder conservation efforts worldwide.

Meta's data center expansion is drawing construction and operations workers to communities near its facilities, and purpose-built workforce housing is emerging to accommodate them. Reports describe how these housing developments serve the influx of employees tied to large-scale data center projects, highlighting the local economic ripple effects of the tech industry's infrastructure boom.

Food Tank argues that data and AI technologies can accelerate responses to climate change, but should support rather than replace existing climate action. The piece emphasizes that tools like data analytics and artificial intelligence are complements to established environmental strategies, helping speed up decision-making and implementation, not substitutes for the fundamental work of reducing emissions and adapting to a warming world.

Startup Midcentury has raised a $15 million seed round to build training data for physical AI systems such as robots and autonomous machines. The funding signals continued investor appetite for startups supplying high-quality data to the physical AI sector, where collecting real-world sensor and motion data is considered a key bottleneck for training capable models.