Japan is intensifying its campaign to rejoin the top tier of the semiconductor industry, and Hokkaido has emerged as the center of that push. The island – better known for dairy farms, ski resorts, and summer flower fields – is now home to one of the world’s most ambitious chip-building efforts: Rapidus, a government-backed foundry venture aiming to produce 2-nanometer logic chips at scale.

The political and financial stakes are unusually high. Tokyo has committed roughly $12 billion to Rapidus so far, on top of tens of billions of dollars in broader semiconductor subsidies, with additional support from domestic heavyweights including Toyota, SoftBank, and Sony.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.personally directed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to update its website to contradict its longtime guidance that vaccines don’t cause autism, he told The New York Times in an interview published Friday.

His comments provide clarity into who directed the CDC’s website change, after many current and former staffers at the agency were surprised to see new published guidance on Wednesday that defies scientific consensus. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic, has upended the public health agencies he oversees and pushed for and enacted changes that have unsettled much of the medical community, which sees his policies as harmful for Americans.

Spotify hasn’t paid Apple a dime in fees since 2018, but a new lawsuit in France with the EU-dominant music streaming service at its center is challenging the payment rules that help power Apple’s App Store.

Apple is facing a representative action from French consumer group Consommation, Logement et Cadre de Vie (CLCV) over higher prices paid by users who subscribed to music services through the App Store. The claim argues that people who signed up on an iPhone or iPad paid about $1 to $3 more per month than if they had subscribed on the web.

American multinational news company CNN has abruptly pulled its content from Apple News, Semafor reports. CNN quietly removed its stories from Apple News over the weekend and there is no longer a feed from the network to subscribe to in the app. This effectively ends its distribution agreement with Apple while the two sides negotiate new terms.

Apple’s online store has sold out of the limited-edition Hikawa Phone Grip and Stand accessibility accessory it debuted late last week. However, two new color options in production are set to be released in early December and can be pre-ordered directly from Hikawa’s website.

A day after the Justice Department acknowledged to a federal judge that the full grand jury had not reviewed the final indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney overseeing the case abruptly reversed herself, insisting Thursday that the panel properly approved the charges as she tried to contain the fallout from earlier statements that risked imperiling the prosecution.

The latest statements from Lindsey Halligan, the hastily named interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, represent an attempt to backtrack on earlier comments the prosecution team made under persistent questioning from a judge about the seemingly jumbled process leading to the return of the two-count indictment.