🤝 BlackSky awarded multi-year sole-source $99 million U.S. government IDIQ contract

BlackSky Technology Inc. was awarded a multi-year, sole-source $99 million U.S. government IDIQ contract for advanced, next generation capabilities. The company received an initial $2 million to accelerate the design of an advanced large aperture optical payload for Earth observation and space domain awareness platforms.

This AFRL contract serves to develop additional commercial space-based intelligence capabilities and mission applications distinct from those addressed by current Gen-2 and Gen-3 monitoring systems and the company’s future AROS broad area search system. The contract is expected to advance innovations for optical imaging and overall platform-level utility and support more novel applications in high-cadence Earth monitoring and observing objects in low Earth, geostationary and cis-lunar orbits.

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🚀 NASA launches Artemis II astronauts toward the moon

The Artemis II mission launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35pm ET (2235 UTC), propelling four astronauts on a journey around the moon. Artemis II will pave the way for future moon landings, as well as the next giant leap — astronauts on Mars.

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🇺🇸 President Donald Trump said the war in Iran is “very close” to completion

President Donald Trump in a rare prime-time address cast the war as a success, saying the operation had nearly achieved its military goals, including destroying Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, air force, navy and industrial base. He said those steps would prevent Tehran’s proxies from destabilizing the region and cut off the country’s path to nuclear weapons. Here are some takeaways:

❗️Iran: "I am pleased to say that our core strategic objectives in Iran are nearing completion. We’re sort of pretty much winding that up. Have to take a few more hits."
❗️The Middle East: "We’re now totally independent of the Middle East. We are there to help. I want to thank our allies: Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain. We will not let them get hurt."
❗️NATO: "The last thing I needed was NATO stepping in our way because they’re a paper tiger. So we didn’t need them."
😁 Macron: "I called up France, Macron, whose wife treats him extremely badly and he’s still recovering from the right to the jaw."
❗️Oil: "This short-term increase has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers and neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict."
❗️The Strait of Hormuz: "The countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage. They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily. When this conflict is over, the Strait of Hormuz will open up naturally."

"Our enemies are losing, and America, as it has been for five years under my presidency, is winning, and now winning bigger than ever before! We are unstoppable as a military force. The world is watching, and when we do, when it's all over, the US will be safer, stronger, more prosperous, and greater than it has ever been before!" — said Trump.

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🤑🤑 These three altcoins just got leveraged crypto ETFs

Volatility Shares debuted three exchange-traded funds that amplify price swings for cryptocurrencies, adding to the growing list of vehicles enabling traders to speculate on the digital assets with leverage. The ETFs offer 2x exposure to Cardano, Stellar, and Chainlink, representing some of the largest altcoins in the cryptocurrency market.

In addition to the 2x ETFs, Volatility Shares debuted funds that offer traditional exposure to futures for Cardano, Stellar, and Chainlink. Previously, Volatility Shares moved to establish 2x ETFs for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP.

“The debut of these six ETFs marks a strategic shift from broad market exposure toward granular asset exposure,” — said Sunny Sun, a marketing analyst at Volatility Shares. “The target demographic for these ETFs consists of sophisticated traders seeking targeted exposure to specific digital asset ecosystems.”

#Stellar

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🇫🇷 France plans to award 10 offshore and floating wind projects by early 2027

France plans to hold a big tender for 10 offshore wind projects, and announce winners by late this year or early 2027, as part of its green push. The tender for 5 gigawatts of turbines fixed to the seabed and 5-gigawatts of floating ones is larger than usual. The auction for projects located in seven areas in the English Channel, Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea will include requirements to utilize domestic and European manufacturing capacities, as it seeks to reduce reliance on parts from China.

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🌍 Spark in New Zealand launches data and text satellite-to-mobile services powered by Starlink

Spark’s award-winning network coverage just got better, with Spark data and text satellite-to-mobile services, powered by Starlink, now available to help customers stay connected in some of Aotearoa’s most remote locations.

“New Zealanders love to explore the incredible landscapes of Aotearoa, and many New Zealand businesses have employees working in remote locations. During these times when our customers don’t have access to traditional mobile networks, our satellite service will help them to stay connected,“ — said Spark’s Chief Commercial Officer Mark Beder.

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🤑 Wirex and Ultra Stellar launch native Stellar payment infrastructure to power millions of users and AI agents

Wirex, a leading stablecoin payment infrastructure provider serving over 7 million users globally, and Ultra Stellar, the company behind Stellar's largest wallet LOBSTR and leading decentralized exchange StellarX, announced the launch of a native Stellar payment infrastructure, built directly on Soroban, Stellar's smart contract platform.

This first-of-its-kind initiative establishes a fully integrated, blockchain-native payment layer that enables wallets, fintech platforms, and developers across the Stellar ecosystem to offer stablecoin bank accounts, global card issuance, payouts, and yield — all settled directly on Stellar.

The new infrastructure introduces production-ready financial capabilities for the Stellar ecosystem, including:

➤ Stablecoin-Powered Virtual Bank Accounts: Fully functional accounts enabling users and businesses to store, receive, and manage stablecoins with real-world financial usability.
➤ 1:1 Fiat–Stablecoin Conversion: Instant conversion between fiat and stablecoins at true 1:1 value, removing spreads and friction.
➤ Global Co-Branded Card Issuing: Stablecoin-powered cards accepted at over 80 million merchants worldwide, enabling direct spending from Stellar-native balances.
➤ Global Payouts and Settlement: Seamless transfers via major global payment rails including ACH, SEPA, PIX, FPS, SWIFT, and Push-to-Card, bridging on-chain assets with traditional finance.
➤ Native Stablecoin Yield: Up to 6% APY on stablecoin balances through secure, on-chain yield infrastructure with full liquidity and no lock-ups.

By combining Wirex's global payment connectivity, licensing coverage, and integration with Visa and banking rails, with Ultra Stellar's deep expertise in Stellar infrastructure and millions of active users, the partnership brings real-world financial capabilities directly on-chain. 🤝

The infrastructure is designed to support the next generation of financial applications — including those used by millions of users and autonomous AI agents, enabling seamless global transactions powered entirely by stablecoins.

#Stellar

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✈️ United’s mobile app now shows TSA wait times at select airports

United Airlines is updating its iOS and Android mobile apps with several new features, including estimated security wait times to give travelers a better idea of when they should arrive at the airport. In the “Travel” section of the United mobile app, travelers can now view security wait times for the airline’s U.S. hub airports in Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York/Newark, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. Users will see estimated wait times for specific lanes, including standard security and TSA PreCheck, throughout terminals serving United customers.

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🐣 Elon Musk's X to deploy scam kill switch by auto-locking first-time crypto mentioners

X is preparing a new security measure aimed at shutting down a widespread form of crypto phishing that leverages hijacked accounts to promote scam tokens. The company will soon auto-lock any account that mentions cryptocurrency for the first time in its history, according to the company’s Head of Product Nikita Bier.

Users will need to go through additional verification before being allowed to post again. Bier said the feature targets the core incentive behind these attacks.

“This should kill 99% of the incentive,” — he wrote, referring to the current wave of phishing that tricks users into giving up their credentials, then uses their accounts to push crypto scams.

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⚡️🇺🇸 Trump imposes tariffs on pharmaceuticals, adjusts duties on steel, other metals

Donald Trump announced he will levy tariffs as high as 100% on some name-brand pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical tariffs order contains a raft of exemptions, including for generic drugs and for companies that have already committed to building manufacturing plants in the U.S. Countries that have struck trade agreements with the administration will also receive lower rates, drastically narrowing how many drugs will ultimately be hit by the triple-digit duties.

“We’ve simplified it,” — said a senior administration official. “Made it much more simple to import to America.”

The U.S. also is also changing the way it assesses tariffs on steel, copper and aluminum by basing the levies on the full value of the metals paid by U.S. customers rather than the amount it cost to produce them in a foreign country. The move would eliminate the “windfall” companies receive as a result of “artificially reducing their price” of production and then charging U.S. consumers far more.

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🤑 KBRA Assigns Rating to Ripple Prime CIV US BD HoldCo LLC

Global credit rating agency Kroll has assigned Ripple Prime CIV US BD HoldCo LLC, the intermediate holding company, and Hidden Road Partners CIV US LLC (“Ripple Prime US”) an investment grade issuer rating (BBB), reflecting the financial strength, business expansion and disciplined execution of growing prime brokerage platform. Built at the intersection of traditional and digital asset capabilities, Ripple Prime is meeting the demand for trusted, well-capitalized prime brokerage services. With this rating, the market is taking notice.

#Stellar

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🚑 World’s first solar-powered ambulance designed for remote healthcare needs

AIKO has announced a new collaboration with Solar Team Eindhoven, bringing its high-efficiency ABC (All Back Contact) solar cells to power Stella Juva, the world’s first solar-powered ambulance designed to operate entirely on solar energy while supporting onboard medical equipment.

Developed by students from Eindhoven University of Technology, Stella Juva aims to enable healthcare delivery in remote or infrastructure-limited regions. Expected to hit the road in July 2026, the project represents a significant step in redefining the role of solar-powered mobility, from transport solutions to mobile energy systems supporting essential services.

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⚖️ Crypto market structure bill release pushed back as industries view revised stablecoin yield compromise this week

Representatives of the crypto and banking industries are meeting with legislative staffers on Thursday and Friday to review revised compromise language on stablecoin yield provisions in the market structure bill. Industry representatives first viewed the compromise language, spearheaded by Senators Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), last week.

At the time, the proposed compromise banned yield based solely on stablecoin balances, but did allow companies to pay out yield based on activities. The crypto industry had some issues with the language. The text was originally expected to be released this week, but that is now unlikely.

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💊 This one vitamin may help protect your brain from dementia years later

Higher levels of vitamin D in the blood during middle age may be tied to lower amounts of tau protein in the brain years later, according to a study published in Neurology Open Access, an official journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Tau is a key biomarker associated with dementia.

The study followed 793 adults, with an average age of 39, who did not have dementia at baseline. These results suggests that higher vitamin D levels in midlife may offer protection against developing these tau deposits in the brain and that low vitamin D levels could potentially be a risk factor that could be modified and treated to reduce the risk of dementia.

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🤝 IBM announces strategic collaboration with Arm to shape the future of enterprise computing

IBM announced a strategic collaboration with Arm to develop new dual‑architecture hardware that helps enterprises run future AI and data intensive workloads. Through this collaboration, IBM and Arm aim to extend this track record of innovation by combining IBM's enterprise leadership in systems reliability, security, and scalability with Arm's own leadership in power‑efficient architecture, workload enablement expertise, and broad software ecosystem, to build flexible and scalable computing platforms for the future.

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🇨🇺Cuba frees over 2,000 inmates as energy strains weigh on island

Cuba’s government authorized the release of 2,010 prisoners in a sweeping pardon, a move that comes as the island begins to see some relief from a crippling energy blockade. It's the second time this year its communist-run government has announced a prisoner amnesty amid talks with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Cuba's state-run Granma newspaper called the measure a "humanitarian and sovereign gesture."

The decision applies to inmates who have demonstrated good conduct, served significant portions of their sentences, or face chronic health issues. Those eligible include women, young people, and seniors over 60, as well as foreign nationals and Cuban citizens residing abroad.

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💻 Microsoft charts $10 billion of outlays in AI-Eager Japan

Microsoft unveiled a four-year, US$10 billion investment package for Japan, a major pillar of its Asia-wide AI push. The early OpenAI backer will develop cloud and AI infrastructure alongside Sakura Internet and telecom operator SoftBank with the two Japanese entities supplying graphics processing units and other computing resources. It will invest in cybersecurity partnerships and train a million AI engineers through 2029.

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🪙 Coinbase’s AI payments system joins Linux Foundation, gathers support from Google, Stripe, AWS and others 🤝

Coinbase's AI-focused payment protocol x402 is moving toward becoming an open, standardized infrastructure under the Linux Foundation, the non-profit hub for open-source software development. The open-source consortium also includes initial intent and support being expressed by the likes of Amazon Web Services, American Express, Ant International, Visa and Microsoft.

The protocol has formed an initial governing body, the x402 Foundation, that includes internet services firm Cloudflare and payments giant Stripe. x402 can handle transactions worth only fractions of a cent at high frequency — something traditional credit card networks struggle to manage. The move aims to create a community-governed ecosystem for high-frequency, micro transactions that legacy finance can’t efficiently handle.

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🤑 Stellar supports the Machine Payments Protocol

Stellar now supports the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), the open standard by Stripe and Tempo that lets AI agents pay for services over HTTP. The MPP SDK handles any stablecoin on Stellar with server-sponsored fees so agents never need gas tokens.

The MPP is an open protocol that enables programmatic, per-request payments over HTTP, designed especially for AI agents and APIs. It extends the 402 Payment Required HTTP status code into a machine-readable payment negotiation layer for both humans and autonomous agents.

On Stellar, MPP works with Soroban SAC (Stellar Asset Contract) token transfers so that clients can pay for API requests natively, without an external facilitator. This makes it ideal for micropayments, AI agent-driven APIs, and payment-enabled applications.

#Stellar

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