🇨🇳🇹🇼 Xi invites Taiwan’s opposition leader to talk ‘peace’ ahead of Trump summit

Xi Jinping, has invited Cheng Li-wun, the chairwoman of the Nationalist Party for a rare visit aimed at countering Washington’s influence, and arms sales, through a show of good will toward the island and to promote “peaceful development” across the Taiwan Strait. This invitation could help Mr. Xi bolster his argument to Mr. Trump that the U.S. should curtail weapons sales to Taiwan.

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🤖 Xiaomi releases new dual-filter smart air purifier

The Xiaomi Mijia Smart Air Purifier Max is now available in Europe. The product has dual UVC modules, removing 99.9% of viruses like H1N1 and E. coli. The model is SGS certified for allergen removal, tilering out pollen, pet dander and dust mites. It is also said to remove 99% of formaldehyde, with the detected level of the chemical shown in real-time on the integrated display.

Xiaomi claims that the appliance can purify a small 10 m² room in as little as 1.6 minutes, due to its 1,006.5 m³/h clean air delivery rate (CADR). Now it's available in France and Spain. The product is also listed at the brand’s online store in Germany, though it is not currently available to purchase here.

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🤑 Stellar hot off the press: Why Privacy Matters More Than Ever in 2026

In 2026, the race has shifted to something quieter and far more consequential: Privacy. Privacy can’t be abstract. It has to be operational. Transparency builds trust. Privacy is what allows that trust to scale. Stellar is building privacy into an ecosystem that already processes billions in regulated payments.

“Openness and privacy aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, we're making privacy a priority,” — said Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation.

The Stellar network’s X-Ray protocol is brutally honest in its metaphor. X-rays don’t obscure reality. They reveal exactly what matters and nothing more. Privacy is being treated: not as a shield, but as a filter. BN254, an elliptic curve used widely across the zero-knowledge ecosystem, and Poseidon, a hash function designed specifically for zero-knowledge proofs.

These aren’t end-user features. They’re foundational components. The kind of cryptographic infrastructure that everything else has to sit on.

The deeper design choice is philosophical. Stellar doesn’t treat privacy as all-or-nothing. Privacy is opt-in. Configurable. Implemented at the application layer. A token can be confidential. A payment can be shielded. An identity attribute can be selectively disclosed. Or none of the above. The network remains transparent by default.

Transparency and privacy aren’t opposites. They’re complementary components of trust. Transparency creates accountability. Privacy creates safety. Institutions need both. Consumers need both. Regulators need both.

And perhaps most importantly, real-world money already lives on Stellar. Payroll systems, remittances, B2B payments, aid distribution.

#Stellar

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💻 Microsoft unveils AI upgrades, rolls out Copilot Cowork to early-access customers

Microsoft unveiled new features in its Copilot research assistant that would allow users to utilize multiple AI ​models simultaneously within the same workflow. In a new feature called "Critique", Copilot's Researcher agent will now be able to pull outputs from both OpenAI's GPT and Anthropic's Claude models for every ​response, rather than relying on a single model. While GPT generates the response, Claude ​will review the output for accuracy and quality before presenting it ⁠to the user.

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🇺🇸🇻🇪 US reopens embassy in Venezuela

The United States is resuming operations at its embassy in Caracas after a seven-year hiatus, citing a “new chapter” in diplomatic ties with Venezuela. Ambassador Laura F. Dogu, the top U.S. diplomat in Venezuela will lead the effort to reestablish the country’s diplomatic presence on the ground.

“The reopening will strengthen our ability to engage directly with Venezuela’s interim government, civil society, and the private sector,” — the State Department said, calling it a “key milestone” in implementing President Donald Trump’s plan for Venezuela.

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🤑 Pi’s big Stellar upgrade kicks in: the Pi Mainnet is upgrading to Protocol 21

Pi Network (PI) is rolling out a critical chain upgrade, dubbed as Protocol 21. Stemming from the same code like Stellar Lumens (XLM), Pi’s mainnet now requires each network node validator to upgrade the firmware to the latest version by April 6, 2026.

Nodes are the fourth role in the Pi ecosystem and run on laptops and desktops instead of mobile phones. Similar to other blockchains, Pi Nodes will be responsible for validating transactions on a distributed ledger and resolving the challenges in maintaining a distributed currency by having all nodes come to a “consensus” on the order of new transactions that are being recorded.

Unlike nodes that use proof of work such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, Pi Node uses a different consensus algorithm based on the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP). In SCP, nodes form trusted groups (quorum slices) and only agree to transactions that those trusted nodes agree to.

With Pi Network (PI) silently following in the footsteps of Stellar (XLM), the regulatory compliance could accelerate Pi Coin’s listing procedures. This month, Kraken listed Pi Coin on their Spot market offerings.

#Stellar

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🚀 SpaceX eyes record-breaking IPO — with a sizable share for everyday investors

SpaceX is preparing for liftoff. After months of speculation, the company could file for a historic IPO as early as this week — seeking $75 billion in funding that would push the company’s value to $1.75 trillion. Morgan Stanley's E*Trade is in talks ​with SpaceX to take the lead in selling the rocket maker's shares to everyday U.S. investors in its highly anticipated IPO later ‌this year, giving it an edge over rival brokerages Robinhood Markets and SoFi.

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🇨🇳🇨🇺 China sends Cuba another 15,000 tons of rice

China has resumed shipping rice to Cuba amid the supply crisis affecting the island, this time with a new shipment of 15,000 tons that departed from the port of Shanghai as part of a 60,000-ton emergency aid program approved by Beijing. The shipment is part of a bilateral cooperation program meant to ease Cuba’s deep food shortages.

#BRICS

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📱 Meta starts testing a premium subscription on Instagram

Meta has begun testing a premium subscription on Instagram in a few countries. The subscription, called Instagram Plus, give subscribers access to exclusive features. Among the premium features on Instagram:

▪️the ability to view a Story — a photo or video post that disappears after 24 hours — without the poster knowing you viewed it.
▪️creating unlimited audience lists for Stories, beyond a Close Friends list.
▪️extending a Story for an extra 24 hours and choose to spotlight a Story up to once per week, increasing its visibility by bringing it to the front of the Stories tray for followers.
▪️giving an animated “Superlike” on others’ Stories and search their Story viewer list to quickly see if a specific person looked at their Story.
▪️the ability to see how many people have rewatched their own Stories.

While Meta didn’t share which countries it’s testing the premium subscription presumably in Mexico, Japan, and the Philippines.

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🇺🇸 DeSantis signs bill naming Palm Beach International for Trump

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 919, a bill to name Palm Beach International Airport after the President Donald J. Trump International Airport. The name change would hinge on approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and a potential rights agreement for the commercial use of Trump’s moniker.

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💊 Eli Lilly makes $2.75 billion bet on AI-powered drug discovery

Pharmaceutical titan Eli Lilly wants to bring medications developed with AI to market. To that end, the company has struck a $2.75 billion deal, with Hong Kong-based Insilico Medicine. The companies say this collaboration will use Insilico’s AI engine to accelerate the “discovery and development of novel therapeutics.”

The agreement gives Lilly exclusive license to develop, manufacture and market these drugs, with the companies teaming on a variety of research and development programs. Insilico has used AI to develop at least 28 drugs, close to half of which are already at a clinical stage.

“Working with Lilly, we aim to deliver transformative therapies that treat diseases with high unmet need. This collaboration is a testament to the power of AI in tackling the most complex challenges in human health.” — said Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico. 🤝

Eli Lilly has also, with Nvidia, committed $1 billion over five years to finance “the talent, infrastructure and computing needed to tackle bottlenecks in AI-based drug discovery,”

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🌐 Google is now letting users in the US change their Gmail address

Google said that it is now rolling out a way for users in the U.S. to change their Gmail address without starting over or losing access to their data. Users will be able to change their username only once every 12 months and will be able to sign into Google services using both the old and the new addresses.

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🇺🇸 US Labor Department proposes opening 401(k) plans to crypto to implement Trump order

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration issued a historic proposed regulation increasing potential retirement investment options for more than 90 million Americans.

The proposed regulation explains the steps that managers of 401(k) plans should take when considering alternative assets as a component in their investment lineups and establishes a set of process-based safe harbors for plan fiduciaries to use when selecting designated investment alternatives. The proposal follows President Trump’s Executive Order, “Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors.”

Such alternatives include digital assets, private equity, and real estate. The draft rule defines digital assets as "a new form of investing that includes a wide variety of assets that can be stored and transmitted digitally, including cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and other tokens."

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🤑 Imagine sending your money worldwide 24/7... This is possible with Stellar!

For banks to adopt blockchain, money must move easily without sacrificing privacy. But privacy doesn’t need closed infrastructure. At RedStone’s TokenizeThis, Tomer Weller explained why L1s should stay open for builders to create the best privacy solutions.

#Stellar

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🍎 Apple tests Siri feature that handles multiple commands at once

Apple is testing ​a feature that would ‌let Siri, with technology ​from Alphabet's Gemini AI ​model, process multiple requests in a single query, bringing ​the virtual assistant more ​in line with the capabilities ⁠of newer AI assistants. The ​feature is being built into iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS ​27 operating systems, all ​of which are expected to launch ‌later ⁠this year.

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🤑 Jack Dorsey’s Square auto-enables bitcoin payments for millions of U.S. businesses

Jack Dorsey’s Square announced it began automatically enabling bitcoin payments for millions of eligible U.S. small businesses, marking one of the most aggressive pushes yet to integrate crypto into mainstream commerce.

The Block (XYZ) subsidiary said businesses can now accept bitcoin with no additional setup requirements and with transactions instantly converted into U.S. dollars at checkout. The feature includes near-instant settlement and zero processing fees through 2026. Merchants who accept bitcoin for the goods and services they are selling will receive U.S. dollars by default, removing exposure to price volatility and eliminating the need for custody or accounting changes.

The move comes as PayPal recently rolled out its U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, PYUSD, to tens of thousands of its users in 70 markets worldwide, as part of its strategy to push deeper into digital payments, while Square’s BTC payments roll-out is a major milestone for the cryptocurrency industry.

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🖥 Nvidia invests $2 billion in Marvell to deepen NVLink Fusion partnership

Nvidia announced that it has invested $2 billion in Marvell Technology and entered a partnership connecting Marvell to Nvidia's AI factory and AI-RAN ecosystem through NVLink Fusion, the tech that allows third-party silicon to plug directly into Nvidia's proprietary interconnect fabric.

"Together with Marvell, we are enabling customers to leverage Nvidia's AI infrastructure ecosystem and scale to build specialized AI compute," — said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. 🤝

Per the deal, Marvell will provide custom XPUs and NVLink Fusion-compatible scale-up networking, while Nvidia will supply Vera CPUs, ConnectX NICs, Bluefield DPUs, NVLink interconnect, and Spectrum-X switches. The two companies will also collaborate on silicon photonics and AI-RAN infrastructure for 5G and 6G networks.

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♾ Meta expands Ray-Ban AI glasses for prescription users, adds nutrition tracking

Meta has announced two new AI-powered smart glasses aimed at users who rely on prescription eyewear — Ray-Ban Meta Blayzer Optics (Gen 2) and Ray-Ban Meta Scriber Optics (Gen 2). They're designed to support nearly all prescriptions while improving comfort for extended use. One of the key additions is nutrition tracking. Users can log meals by speaking or capturing a quick photo. Meta AI then extracts relevant nutritional information and adds it to a food log.

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💸 Uniblock Raises $5.2M to Unify Blockchain Infrastructure

Blockchain infrastructure has entered a new phase. Uniblock, the managed infrastructure layer for blockchain applications, has raised $5.2 million in funding ($7.5M to date). The round brings together investors across the US, Japan, India, Singapore, and the Solana ecosystem, including SBI, AllianceDAO, CoinSwitch, Blockchain Founders Fund, Hustle Fund, AAF Management, NGC Ventures, Alchemy, MoonPay.

Uniblocks fundraise comes amid broader industry efforts to address multi-chain infrastructure challenges — to operate a “managed infrastructure layer” across more than 300 blockchains, addressing a routing. Uniblock also has shipped a suite of AI-native developer tools built for how blockchain development actually happens today.

A single API connection provides access to 300+ blockchains and 55 data partners through patented auto-routing with intelligent orchestration. AI-native developer tools, including an MCP server, LLM-optimized documentation, and Agent Skills, are live and in production. 3,000 projects and 4,000 developers run on the platform.

"Two shifts are happening at once. Mainstream companies are bringing production workloads to blockchain, and AI agents are starting to read and write chain data autonomously. Both need the same thing: reliable infrastructure across hundreds of chains. That's what Uniblock runs," — CEO Kevin Callahan said.

Customers including Plume Network, Stellar Blockchain, Hypernative, Oku Trade, nReach, and Apechain run production workloads. Plume Network and Apechain run Uniblock as managed RPC infrastructure through ecosystem partnerships.

Capital will accelerate platform expansion: deepening chain coverage, scaling the intelligent orchestration engine, and building new API categories including stablecoins, wallets, and prediction markets.

#Stellar

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