⚡️🇺🇸 Trump officials ready E15 waiver for summer gasoline sales

The Trump administration is preparing to expand the opportunity for sales of higher-ethanol E15 gasoline this summer by waiving the fuel from US volatility requirements. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would issue emergency fuel waivers temporarily exempting E15 gasoline from volatility restrictions that block warm-weather sales of the fuel in areas where smog is a problem. The move is seen as a way to deliver a win to corn farmers, biofuel producers, and rural voters, and to help ease energy costs for consumers.

E15, which is made with 15% corn-based ethanol, generally runs cheaper per gallon than conventional E10 gasoline — though it’s also less energy dense. Since the heat of summer increases the evaporation of all liquids, including gasoline, the US imposes more stringent limits between June 1 and Sept. 15 on Reid vapor pressure, the propensity for gasoline to evaporate and lead to smog. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA can waive those requirements to address shortages.

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🔥 Ripple joins monetary authority of Singapore’s BLOOM initiative and partners with unloq to advance programmable settlement infrastructure in trade finance

Ripple announced its participation in BLOOM, an initiative by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). BLOOM - Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency - is designed to extend settlement capabilities in tokenized bank liabilities and regulated stablecoins.

Partnering with leading supply chain finance technology provider, Unloq, Ripple will pilot a use case aimed at transforming cross-border trade settlements. The project aims to showcase a viable model for Singapore’s future development of innovative and interoperable settlement infrastructure.

The joint initiative features Unloq’s SC+ trade finance infrastructure, which integrates trade obligations, settlement conditions, and financing workflows into a unified execution layer. The solution leverage Ripple’s institutional-grade infrastructure, the XRP Ledger (XRPL), and Ripple USD (RLUSD) - a trusted, enterprise-grade stablecoin, designed for enterprise use cases.

Payments are released only when predefined commercial conditions are met, such as shipment verification. This structure enhances risk transparency and supports improved access to financing for SMEs.

#Stellar

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🇵🇭 Philippine pension fund offers $8,300 solar loans to cut energy bills

Philippine state-owned pension fund Government Service Insurance System is offering loans of up to 500,000 pesos ($8,300) for members to buy and install solar power for their homes amid surging fossil fuel prices. The GSIS said the loans are a major step in making renewable energy more accessible in the Southeast Asian nation. The Philippines aims to boost the share of renewables in its energy mix to more than a third by the end of the decade from about a quarter now and to 50% by 2040.

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🔥 CFTC forms new innovation task force to shape crypto, artificial intelligence and prediction markets

CFTC Chair Michael Selig unveiled the Innovation Task Force, which he said will focus on advancing rules for new products and technologies. The new task force will work with other federal agencies, including the SEC and its crypto task force.

“By establishing a clear regulatory framework for innovators building on the new frontier of finance, we can foster responsible innovation at home and ensure American market participants are not left on the sidelines,” — Selig said.

The Innovation Task Force, in partnership with the Innovation Advisory Committee, will work with the Commission to develop a clear regulatory framework for innovators focused on:
▪️crypto assets and blockchain technologies;
▪️AI and autonomous systems;
▪️and prediction markets and event contracts.

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🤖 Lucid Bots raises $20M to keep up with demand for its window-washing drones

While many companies are trying to build humanoids or tout demos of their robots dancing and doing flips, Lucid Bots’ drones are out in the field making traditionally unsexy and dangerous work, like cleaning windows, safer and more efficient.

“The sad truth is most are still selling a lot of hype and headlines, and we sell performance on the job site that shows up in our customers, profits, and losses,” — Andrew Ashur, the founder and CEO of Lucid Bots, told. “We’re not just in the lab and simulators. We’ve got dirt under our fingernails, and we’re out on job sites getting work done.”

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Lucid Bots is a full-stack robotics company that sells its Sherpa drones and Lavo robot to cleaning companies to help them on their job sites. The company designed and manufactures its own robots in the U.S. and just raised a $20 million Series B round co-led by Cubit Capital and Idea Fund Partners. This brings its total funding to $34 million.

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🔥 Invesco joins tokenization race as it takes over Superstate’s $900 million onchain fund

Invesco, a U.S.-based asset manager overseeing $2.2 trillion in assets, will take over management of Superstate’s tokenized U.S. Treasury fund in a move that brings a large traditional asset manager deeper into blockchain-based finance.

The USTB fund holds short-term U.S. government securities and represents more than $900 million in assets. After the transition, expected in the second quarter of 2026, the fund will be renamed to Invesco Short Duration US Government Securities Fund while its token structure and Superstate's plumbing.

Invesco has been strategically building the capabilities required to support institutional-grade digital asset products. The move marks Invesco's formal entrance in the fast-growing, $12 billion tokenized U.S. Treasuries market, joining rival global asset managers such as BlackRock (BLK), Franklin Templeton and Fidelity Investments.

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🚫 Kentucky farm family rejects $26 million offer for 600 acres of land from unnamed AI data center suitor

A northern Kentucky woman says she declined a $26 million offer for a partial sale of her farmland that has been in her family for generations to build a data center. Ida Huddleston and her family own about 1,200 acres of farmland outside Maysville, Kentucky.

"The big offer is meaningless. As long as I’m on this land — as long as it’s feeding me — as long as it’s taking care of me — there’s nothing that can destroy me if I’ve got this land," — Huddleston's daughter, Delsia Bare, said.

In April, an unnamed Fortune 100 AI company reached out to them to purchase approximately half of the land. Land in Mason County is valued at about $6,000 per acre and the offer of $26 million is ten times this amount.

"They call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not. My grandfather and great-grandfather and a whole bunch of family have all lived here for years, paid taxes on it, fed a nation off of it," — Huddleston told. "Even raised wheat through the Depression and kept bread lines up in the U.S. of America when people didn’t have anything else."

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🇺🇸 ‘First American-made humanoid’ robot arrives with Melania Trump at White House AI summit

A humanoid robot joined Melania Trump at a White House AI summit focused on education, safety, and tech policy. The robot walked alongside the first lady through a corridor before greeting attendees in multiple languages inside the East Room.

It later moved back down the hallway as Trump remarked it was the first “American-made humanoid guest in the White House.” The appearance underscored the broader theme of the summit, drawing representatives from 45 countries, which centers on the role of emerging technologies in shaping education and child development.

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🔥 The Entry Point Is Already Live — Few Noticed

@QSITrainingBot is a new learning format within QSI that complements the existing materials and the collaborative work of the community. It helps create a clearer sequence — to go through key stages, see the connections, and move forward with confidence. It’s the next step that makes the entry simpler.

📱 Watch the video on YouTube

#Stellar

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🇺🇸 Trump names Nvidia, Meta CEOs to science and tech council

The Trump administration has named Silicon Valley leaders including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen, Google co-founder ​Sergey Brin and AMD CEO Lisa Su to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Trump has made securing U.S. leadership ​in AI a central priority of his second term, framing the technology as ​a defining arena of strategic competition with China. The council, which is expected to play a key role in shaping ​Washington's response to intensifying global competition in AI, could ultimately include up to 24 members, ‌the ⁠White House said. Additional members will be appointed to the council in the near future.

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🇲🇽 Mexico bets on supercomputer to combat extreme weather events

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is working to develop climate models that will help prevent extreme weather events, part of a push to set up a public supercomputer that can use millions of data points to tackle national challenges. Mexican researchers will work along with Barcelona’s Supercomputing Center.

Construction has already begun near Mexico City, though it could take at least two years. The supercomputer, named Coatlicue, will be used for climate predictions, energy planning, and corruption prevention. The government will spend 6 billion pesos ($340 million) on the supercomputer, which will reach 314,000 trillion operations per second — seven times more than Pegaso, Brazil’s largest supercomputer.

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💊 Scientists identify protein that slows key effects of aging

Chronic inflammation is a hallmark of aging, but scientists are beginning to uncover the molecular controls behind it. New research on an inflammation-regulating protein reveals intriguing links between immune signaling, frailty, and bone health. In the U.S. the prevalence of frailty in the non-nursing home population ages 65 and older is about 15%.

Researchers focused on tristetraprolin (TTP), a protein that binds RNA and plays an important role in regulating inflammation. In healthy conditions, TTP helps limit inflammatory signals, but its levels tend to decline with age, particularly in immune cells. As TTP levels fall, inflammatory activity rises.

The study involved mice that were 22 months old, an age that corresponds to late life in humans. The animals were evaluated through a series of physical performance tests, including grip strength measurements, walking speed assessments, treadmill endurance trials, and monitoring of energy levels. Male mice with elevated TTP showed significantly lower frailty scores compared with untreated mice.

The increase in TTP resulted in better grip strength, better walking, endurance, and overall physical performance. These mice had healthier bones and reduced bone breakdown. Although the results in mice are encouraging, translating these findings into treatments for humans will take considerable time.

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🇰🇵🇧🇾 North Korea, Belarus leaders meet in Pyongyang, sign friendship treaty

Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held talks in North Korea’s capital on Thursday and signed a friendship and cooperation treaty. Lukashenko, who was in Pyongyang on a two-day official visit, hailed the document as “fundamental,” and said that relations between the two countries are “entering a new stage.” 🤝

“The friendly relations between our states, born during the era of the Soviet Union, have never been interrupted. Today, thanks to comprehensive and steady development, we are entering a fundamentally new phase,” — Lukashenko said.

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🔥 SWIFT has already tested Ripple (XRP) and Stellar (XLM)

Ripple and Stellar have already undergone testing by SWIFT. XRP + XLM SWIFT. Now, it’s time for their live integrations. This development is a progression, indicating that institutional experimentation has already established a foundation for potential deployment.

To support the claim, there is a video excerpt from a SWIFT-hosted webinar. A speaker explained that between 45 and 50 commercial banks participated in early blockchain research efforts around 2015. Those early evaluations included networks such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stellar, and Ripple, along with other available blockchain solutions at the time.

These efforts were part of early projects, including one referred to as Project Genesis, and described the period as one of strong institutional interest in distributed ledger technology. Ripple and Stellar were actively assessed within a structured environment involving multiple financial institutions coordinated by SWIFT.

SWIFT testing was a completed validation phase that supports immediate progression toward integration. Now, testing ≠ adoption. The regulatory environment has changed significantly since the initial experimentation phase.

Whether early institutional trials can be used as a reliable basis for modern adoption decisions, particularly in a financial system that now places greater emphasis on regulatory clarity and risk management? 🤔

#Stellar

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🗣 Mistral releases a new open-source model for speech generation

French AI company Mistral released a new open-source text-to-speech model that can be used by voice AI assistants or in enterprise use cases like customer support. It puts Mistral in direct competition with the likes of ElevenLabs, Deepgram, and OpenAI.

The new model, called Voxtral TTS, supports 9 languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Hindi, and Arabic. It can fit on a smartwatch, a smartphone, a laptop, or other edge devices. Voxtral TTS can adapt a custom voice with a sample of less than 5 seconds, and also capture characteristics like subtle accents, inflections, intonations, and irregularities in the flow of speech.

The model, based on Ministral 3B, can switch between languages easily without losing the characteristics of the voice, which is useful for use cases like dubbing or real-time translation. The company wanted the model to sound human and not robotic.

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🇪🇺🇺🇸 EU lawmakers approve US trade deal after several delays

The European Parliament voted in favor of the deal on Thursday. The pact would erase tariffs on US industrial goods, while setting a 15% tariff ceiling for most EU products. EU lawmakers have held out, repeatedly delaying ratification after the Supreme Court invalidated Washington’s global tariffs.

“The vote is a very important milestone in our efforts to provide stability and predictability to European business, workers and citizens in our trade relationship with the United States,” — said EU Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis.

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💱 Coinbase, Fannie Mae bring crypto-backed mortgages to homebuyers

Coinbase is working with Fannie Mae-approved mortgage firm Better Home & Finance Holding Co., to enable crypto holders to use their digital assets as down payment collateral when buying a home. The Coinbase/Better mortgage is structured as a conforming loan backed by Fannie Mae, meaning it carries the same protections and standards as traditional mortgages.

Borrowers pledge BTC or the USDC stablecoin as collateral to fund their down payment, allowing them to keep their assets intact and avoid creating a taxable event by spending them. In the case of USDC, they can keep earnings rewards.

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💊 FDA approves drug to treat neurologic manifestations of Hunter syndrome

The FDA approved Avlayah (tividenofusp alfa-eknm) to treat certain individuals with Hunter syndrome (Mucopolysaccharidosis type II or MPS II). It is the first product approved to address neurologic complications of Hunter Syndrome, a very rare and often severe X-linked disorder in children, affecting about 500 people in the US, almost exclusively males.

Hunter syndrome is a rare inherited lysosomal disorder in which sugar molecules called glycosaminoglycans build up within the cells’ lysosomes. This substrate accumulation affects physical and mental development by causing abnormalities in the skeleton, heart, respiratory system, brain, and other organs.

The drug’s application holder, Denali Therapeutics, is now conducting a randomized clinical trial that is more than 95% enrolled to evaluate the clinical benefit of this product. In the trial, Avlayah significantly reduced cerebrospinal fluid heparan sulfate (CSF HS), a type of glycosaminoglycan. So, families with young children with Hunter Syndrome will have access to a product that may favorably alter the course of the disease at the crucial time in life when there is the greatest potential for benefit.

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🇺🇸 Trump's signature to appear on US currency

U.S. paper currency will bear President ‌Donald Trump's signature to mark ‌the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, a first for a sitting president. The Treasury ​Department said that the first $100 bills with Trump's signature and ​that of ​U.S. Treasury Secretary ​Scott Bessent will ‌be printed in June, followed by other bills in subsequent months.

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🇺🇸 White House clears review of rule that could open path for crypto in $10 trillion 401(k) market

The White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs concluded its review of a Labor Department rule affecting investment options in the $10 trillion 401(k) market. The economically significant rule, if finalized, would amend fiduciary guidance for the market, potentially allowing crypto and private equity in retirement plans covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

The proposal followed an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last year directing the Labor Department to facilitate the inclusion of alternative assets in participant-directed defined-contribution plans. The order also tasked the SEC, the Treasury Secretary, and other federal agencies with exploring ways to facilitate access to alternative investments, including digital assets, in retirement plans.

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🌐 Google is launching Search Live globally

Google announced that it’s expanding its AI-powered conversational search feature, Search Live, globally to all languages and locations where AI Mode is available. With this expansion, people in more than 200 countries and territories will get access to the feature. It is enabled by Google’s new audio and voice model, Gemini 3.1 Flash Live. The model delivers even more natural and intuitive conversations.

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