Daily Digest for

Microsoft AI for Good Lab’s AI Diffusion Report finds AI reached 1.2 billion users in under three years and that adoption in the Global North is roughly double the Global South, with a pronounced gap below a ~$20,000 GDP per capita threshold. The report also shows the U.S. and China control ~86% of data center capacity and only seven countries host frontier-level models, while language, electricity, connectivity, and skills remain key barriers.

The UK government will introduce the Railways Bill on 5 November 2025 to create Great British Railways (GBR), a new publicly owned company headquartered in Derby that centralises management of passenger services and infrastructure. The bill establishes a strengthened passenger watchdog, empowers GBR to replace 14 operator ticketing platforms with a one-stop-shop app/website, and includes an accessibility roadmap expanding Disabled Persons Railcard eligibility and rolling out more Welcome Points.

The Minister of Finance tabled Budget 2025, a generational plan to invest one trillion dollars in total over five years, including 280 billion CAD in capital investments and 115 billion CAD for infrastructure, while implementing fiscal discipline to balance operating spending by 2028–29. The budget also includes major measures for housing (Build Canada Homes, 13 billion CAD), defence (30 billion CAD over five years), trade diversification, clean economy tax credits, and investments to attract international talent (1.7 billion CAD).

MeteoSwiss and ETH Zurich released the 2025 Swiss climate scenarios on 4 November 2025 to guide the Federal Council’s adaptation strategy, showing Switzerland has warmed ~2.9 °C to 2024 (global ~1.3 °C) and could warm ~4.9 °C locally under 3 °C global warming. The scenarios forecast more extreme heat (hottest day +4.4 °C; Zurich ~5× more tropical nights), drier summers (+44% typical drought intensity), heavier short‑duration precipitation, and a 550 m rise in the winter zero‑degree line to ~1,450 m.

Taiwan’s Energy Administration revised three sub-regulations requiring new or expanded data centers and colocation facilities with energy use ≥5MW to adopt Best Available Techniques and submit pre-construction energy plans. It sets PUE limits of ≤1.3 for hyperscale centers and ≤1.4 for colocation centers, aligning requirements with EU, Japan, Singapore and Germany practices.