💧 Thousands urged to evacuate as Hawaii flooding anticipated to cause widespread damage

As Hawaii endures its worst flooding in more than 20 years, officials are urging people in hard-hit areas to "LEAVE NOW." The warning early Saturday came after heavy rains fell on soil already saturated by downpours from a winter storm a week ago. Still more rain was expected during the weekend, officials said.

Raging waters lifted homes and cars and prompted evacuation orders for 5,500 people north of Honolulu. Authorities cautioned that a 120-year-old dam could fail. Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said the cost of the storm could top $1 billion US, including damage to airports, schools, roads, people's homes and a Maui hospital in Kula. 🙏

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💊 For the first time, scientists may have found a way to regenerate cartilage

For many years, doctors have thought that once cartilage wears down, it’s gone forever. Cartilage is the strong and flexible connective tissue that protects joints and bones. Damage to that cartilage can happen for a variety of reasons ranging from genetic conditions like osteoarthritis—which affects 32.5 million U.S. adults—to sports injuries or other traumas.

A team at Northwestern University led by Stupp has designed an injectable material that can both replace cartilage lost and help encourage new growth when injected at damaged sites. They have created the material, which is made of short protein fragments and a modified version of hyaluronic acid, behaved and appeared very similar to native cartilage.

Not only did new cartilage grow, the repaired tissue showed higher quality compared with the control study. This success is a key indicator that the repair could work in humans.

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🇨🇳 China finds million tons of rare earth oxides in major minerals discoveries

Beijing has unveiled significant new deposits of critical minerals, reinforcing its access to resources vital for high-tech manufacturing. The latest surveys identified substantial quantities of other industrial minerals, with 27.1 million tonnes of fluorite and 37.2 million tonnes of baryte at the Maoniuping mine in Mianning county, in Sichuan province.

Fluorite, or fluorspar, plays a critical role in semiconductor manufacturing and lithium-ion battery production, while baryte is indispensable in oil and gas drilling, where it is used to stabilise wells and prevent blowouts. Newly identified reserves are expected to further consolidate China’s dominance in the global supply of rare earths – a group of 17 elements essential to technologies ranging from smartphones and electric vehicles to advanced weapons systems and spacecraft.

#BRICS

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🌱 Mars garden: Scientists grow edible plants using fertilizer made from Martian dust

Mars lacks one critical ingredient, fertile soil. Its dusty surface contains minerals, but not the organic nutrients plants need to grow. Now, researchers in Germany have found a clever solution that involves turning Martian-like dust and hardy microbes into a working fertilizer system that can produce edible plants.

At the heart of the proposed system are cyanobacteria, often called blue-green algae, which can survive in extreme environments and use carbon dioxide, plentiful in the Martian atmosphere. The researchers recreate Martian conditions using a regolith simulant called MGS-1, which mimics the composition of Martian soil. They cultivated cyanobacteria using this artificial dust along with carbon dioxide, allowing the microbes to build up biomass using only resources that could realistically exist on Mars.

The resulting fertilizer was then tested on duckweed (Lemna sp.), a fast-growing aquatic plant rich in protein and already consumed in some parts of the world. Just one gram of dried cyanobacteria generated enough nutrients to grow 27 grams of fresh, edible plant mass. It’s a small but powerful step toward making Mars missions self-sustaining.

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🆕 Tencent integrates WeChat with OpenClaw AI agent amid China tech battle

Tencent launched a tool on Sunday to integrate its WeChat messaging platform with the OpenClaw ​agent, deepening its push into AI agents ‌that have become a key battleground among China's technology companies.

The software, called ClawBot, will appear as a contact within WeChat, ​allowing users of China's most popular app ​with over 1 billion monthly active users to ⁠connect directly with OpenClaw. Users can send and receive ​commands to interact with the AI agent through the ​messaging interface.

#BRICS

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🤖 Huawei crowdfunds world’s first ‘Mesh Crystal Antenna’ Wi-Fi 7 router

Huawei has lined up a magical-looking Wi-Fi 7 router featuring the world’s first "metal mesh crystal antenna". As well as the glowing crystal mountain at the center of the design, the router boasts a “Shark Fin Heat Exhaust System”. Huawei boasts it can prevent any thermal throttling affecting which could adversely affect long hours of online gaming or large data transfers.

The 10-inch (250mm) tall WiFi Mesh X3 Pro supports technologies such as "MLO", "4K-QAM", and "Multi-RU" to stretch its Wi-Fi 7 capabilities. There are also two 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports on the main unit. All this is driven by the custom Huawei Gigahome SoC. It might be the nearest a home tech appliance has yet got to the gadget holy grail of combining sharks and laser beams.

#BRICS

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🇩🇪🇯🇵 Germany pushes new military cooperation deal with Japan

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Berlin had floated a so-called Reciprocal Access Agreement — a framework designed to “ease the exchange of soldiers in each other’s countries and significantly reduce bureaucratic hurdles.”

Such agreements allow partner countries to deploy troops on each other’s soil more easily for training, exercises or operations by streamlining legal and administrative procedures. Japan has signed similar deals with countries like the UK and Australia. 🤝

“How close our partnership is has become clear in light of the current developments in Iran and the Middle East,” he said, pointing to Japan’s heavy reliance on energy imports through the Strait of Hormuz. “The freedom of sea routes must be guaranteed and protected.”

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✅ Reddit is weighing identity verification methods to combat its bot problem

There could be one more step required before creating an account and posting on Reddit in the future. According to Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, the social media platform is exploring different ways to verify a user is human and not a bot.

"The most lightweight way is with something like Face ID or Touch ID," Huffman said during the interview. "Part of our promise for our users is we don't know your name but we do want to know you're a person. It'll be an evolution for us for a while, and probably every platform to find the right middle ground here."

Recent years have brought a rise in bots flooding social media platforms including Reddit, where they've even been used to conduct secret experiments. It doesn't sound like Reddit has landed on how to verify its users' human identity yet, but Huffman did emphasize that the platform still wants to prioritize anonymity for its users.

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🤖 Elon Musk unveils $20 billion ‘TeraFab’ chip project to make chips, memory, and package processors all under one roof

Elon Musk, announced Saturday night that his TeraFab semiconductor project will be built on the Tesla campus in eastern Travis County, Austin, Texas, as a joint venture between the two companies. In a livestream broadcast via X, Musk stated that the facility exists because the global chip industry cannot expand quickly enough to meet his projected demand across AI, robotics, and space computing.

The Austin fab will house equipment for logic, memory, packaging, testing, and lithography mask production in a single building. Musk claimed that capability does not exist at any other facility in the world, and that having everything under one roof enables a rapid iteration loop: make a chip, test it, revise the mask, and repeat without shipping wafers between sites.

The facility is expected to produce two types of chips. One will be optimized for edge inference, primarily for Tesla's vehicles and Optimus humanoid robots. The other will be a higher-power chip hardened for the space environment, which Musk says will run hotter than “terrestrial” designs to minimize radiator mass on satellites.

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🔋 Chinese automotive giant achieves 11-minute full charge milestone with sodium-ion tech

BAIC Group says it has developed a sodium-ion battery prototype that it claims reaches leading industry benchmarks. Across China’s EV sector, sodium-ion batteries are gaining attention as a complementary option, particularly for cost-sensitive vehicle segments and cold-weather use cases.

The prismatic cell design delivers an energy density of about 170 watt-hours per kilogram, according to internal testing. The company highlighted fast-charging performance as a key differentiator, stating the system supports 4C charging and can reach a full charge in roughly 11 minutes. BAIC added that the battery operates across a wide temperature range, from about -40°F to 140°F, while retaining more than 92% of its energy capacity at around -4°F, pointing to improved performance in cold-weather conditions.

#BRICS

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🤖 PepsiCo bets on AI across China operations to boost efficiency

Beverages giant PepsiCo Inc. is deploying AI across its operations in China and beyond to improve efficiency, Anne Tse, its head for the Asia-Pacific region, said. The company is using AI in areas such as precision agriculture, manufacturing management and consumer analytics, allowing it to expand capacity without proportional increases in headcount. Still, PepsiCo is hiring in China as it opens new plants.

PepsiCo is also targeting premium, nutrient-dense products, reducing sugar and sodium while blending local ingredients to align with Chinese culinary traditions. In January, PepsiCo announced a multi‑year collaboration with Siemens AG and Nvidia Corp. to transform its plant and supply‑chain operations using advanced technologies including AI. 🤝

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🚫 GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems

GrapheneOS, the privacy-focused Android fork, said in a post on X that it will not comply with emerging laws requiring operating systems to collect user age data at setup. It is developed by the GrapheneOS Foundation, a registered Canadian nonprofit and is entirely funded by donations.

"GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone around the world without requiring personal information, identification or an account," the project stated. "If GrapheneOS devices can't be sold in a region due to their regulations, so be it."

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💊 Scientists turn bacteria into tiny tumor hunters that kill cancer

Bacteria naturally live in and interact with the human body, influencing both health and disease. Scientists are now exploring whether these microbes can be redesigned to fight cancer.

To investigate this idea, Tianyu Jiang at Shandong University in Qingdao, China, and colleagues modified the probiotic strain Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) so it could produce Romidepsin (FK228), an FDA-approved anticancer drug. They created a version of the bacteria capable of generating this drug on its own. The team tested the approach in mice implanted with breast cancer tumors and treated them with the engineered bacteria.

Results showed that EcN was able to accumulate inside tumors and release Romidepsin FK228 in both lab experiments and living animals under different conditions. This behavior allowed the bacteria to function as a targeted therapy, delivering the drug directly where it was needed.

The research is still at an early stage. The treatment has not yet been tested in humans. The mouse-model study establishes a solid foundation for engineering bacteria, paving the way for future advancements in this field.

#BRICS

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🔧 Windows 11 KB5085516 released after KB5079473 breaks Microsoft account sign-in in popular apps

Microsoft has released an emergency update to address a major issue that breaks sign-ins with Microsoft accounts across multiple Microsoft apps, including Teams, OneDrive, Office apps and Outlook. The list of affected apps also includes Microsoft Edge, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Office apps such as Excel and Word, which display the same error message for features that require a Microsoft account sign-in.

This issue appears after installing the KB5079473 cumulative update that Microsoft released as part of this month's Patch Tuesday, and it warns users that the affected devices are not connected to the Internet. Over the weekend, Microsoft started rolling out the KB5085516 optional out-of-band update, which addresses this bug and includes all patches delivered with the Microsoft 2025 Patch Tuesday Windows security update.

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🇻🇳🇷🇺 Vietnam, Russia set to sign energy deals during PM's Moscow visit

Vietnam and Russia are expected to sign energy deals during ​Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh ‌Chinh's four-day visit to Moscow that started on Sunday. The two sides ​are expected to sign "important agreements", ​focusing on energy, trade and investment, ⁠Vietnam's government said in a ​statement. Chinh's visit comes as Vietnam has ​faced surging fuel prices with gasoline prices up ‌50% ⁠and diesel prices rising 70%.

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🇸🇪 Sweden proposes to cut fuel tax and reduce Iran war price impact

Sweden will lower the tax on petrol by 1 krona per liter and on diesel by 0.4 krona per liter between May 1 and Sept. 30 at a cost of 1.64 billion kronor ($175 million), Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said. The government said it would also compensate households for higher electricity and gas prices in January and February at a total cost of 3.4 billion kronor to allow households to “better meet higher energy prices.”

“In difficult times, we will always prioritize the budgets of hard working families,” Kristersson said.

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💊 Doctronic raises $40 million as race to apply AI in clinical care heats up

Earlier this year the startup Doctronic launched a provocative, first-in-the-nation experiment in Utah to renew drug prescriptions with a chatbot. It can prescribe refills of 190 medications across 9 categories of medicines. In its current first phase, human doctors review all prescriptions before they are sent to pharmacies to check for suitability.

“When we prove it’s safe for AI do to this, that helps a lot of people,” — co-founder and co-CEO Matt Pavelle said.

Doctronic, launched in 2023, introduced a chatbot in September of that year that could suggest possible diagnoses and treatments that patients could take to their doctor. The company built its own team of doctors that patients can have video visits with for $39. It now provides video visits with human physicians in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Now it’s refilling its coffers with $40 million in fresh funding led by Abstract and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Advocates say AI will speed access to care and help the nation confront rising healthcare costs and a shortage of doctors. Systems designed for clinical care can be safer and more effective than general-purpose chatbots.

Do you agree with that? 🧐

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💻 LG produces the world's first mass-production LCD laptop display capable of 1 Hz to save power

Smartphones have been using highly power-efficient, 1 Hz-capable OLED displays for a few years to improve power efficiency, but now that same display technology is finally making its way into laptops. LG has announced the world's first mass production 120 Hz LCD laptop display capable of spinning down to 1 Hz.

LG's new tech takes advantage of an Oxide TFT display that exhibits low power leakage while the display is in its low refresh rate mode. The display can automatically detect when screen changes occur, and will transition from 120 Hz down to 1 Hz when motion is static. LG claims its new display exhibits 48% greater battery efficiency compared to "existing solutions." The company announced it will be debuting OLED counterparts of its 1 Hz-capable LCDs beginning in 2027.

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🔥 Franklin Templeton highlights rising XRP adoption in finance

​Franklin Templeton reported growing demand for XRP from institutional investors. According to Roger Bayston, head of digital assets at Franklin Templeton, XRP is increasingly being used as a utility rather than a speculative asset.

Speaking on the Paul Barron Podcast, he noted that companies are purchasing the token for real-world infrastructure use. This includes cross-border payments and asset tokenization. XRP is gradually establishing itself as an infrastructure element rather than just a trading asset.

Franklin Templeton is actively strengthening its presence in the XRP ecosystem. In particular, the Franklin XRP ETF (XRPZ) has been launched. Tokenized money market funds have also been integrated on XRPL. This expands blockchain use in traditional finance. Bayston emphasized that regulatory alignment between the SEC and CFTC could accelerate institutional adoption. In his view, this will be a key driver of the next market phase.

#Stellar

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