🇨🇳🇨🇺 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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🇦🇺 Australia to ban surcharges on payment cards, cut bank fees

Australian consumers will no longer face surcharge fees on card payments after the country's central bank said it would ban the widely disliked practice as inefficient and opaque. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) announced it would remove card surcharging on designated eftpos, Mastercard MA.N and Visa V.N networks from October 1 this year. The RBA estimated the change would save consumers A$1.6 billion a year.

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💊 Eli Lilly Will Buy a Narcolepsy Drug Developer for $6.3 Billion

Eli Lilly reached a deal to buy Centessa Pharmaceuticals, a company developing treatments for the sleep disorder narcolepsy and other neurological conditions. Centessa has been conducting a midstage clinical trial of its lead drug for narcolepsy and is expected to be years away from a potential approval.

While past medicines have aimed to help patients sleep better, a new generation of drugs like the one from Centessa is also aimed at helping people stay awake during the day. And even though sleep disorders like narcolepsy are rare, drugmakers could eventually tap into a much larger market of people who experience sleepiness due to more common conditions like Alzheimer’s.

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🤝 Amazon, Delta team up for in-flight Wi-Fi, challenging Musk's Starlink

Amazon's Leo satellite internet unit signed a deal with Delta Air Lines to provide in-flight Wi-Fi on 500 of the airline's planes starting in 2028, inking its second major partnership ‌in the skies as it races to launch more satellites and take on Elon Musk's Starlink.

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🇯🇵🇮🇩 Japan, Indonesia pledge deeper ties amid energy concerns

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi pledged deeper economic ties and cooperation on energy security, without elaborating on what the cooperation may entail, as the two countries grapple with market instability brought on by the war in Iran.

“We agreed that both Indonesia and Japan will work hard to encourage all parties to pursue de-escalation. We are also ready to serve as mediators if needed,” — Prabowo said. 🤝

The two leaders also agreed to further defense cooperation given their shared interest in ensuring a stable Indo-Pacific through OSA assistance to the navy and increased capabilities for the coast guard.

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🚕 Waymo starts robotaxi services at San Antonio International Airport

Waymo’s robotaxi service is going live at its fourth major airport today: San Antonio International. The company said its vehicles will drop off riders curbside at the terminals, and pick up passengers at the airport’s designated rideshare area. This is the first airport Waymo is servicing in Texas, where the company currently operates in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, and Houston.

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🇺🇸 Trump’s skyscraper presidential library looms over Miami in newly released images

A foundation overseeing the construction of President Donald Trump’s presidential library has revealed the first renderings of the precedent-shattering project — a towering skyscraper in downtown Miami. Eric Trump, the president’s son and a trustee of the Trump Library Foundation, shared plans for the presidential library in a social media post on X.

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⚔️🇺🇸 Trump says he’s considering pulling out of NATO

Donald Trump has told that he is strongly considering pulling the US out of Nato after it failed to join his war on Iran. The US president labelled the alliance a “paper tiger” and said removing America from the defence treaty was now “beyond reconsideration”.

“Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” — Trump said.

Nato partners have been reluctant to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil typically travels. Tehran has effectively closed the strait for weeks, sending global oil and gas prices spiralling while threatening a global recession.

@QSIMedia