😺 OpenAI Commits $234 Million for New AI Lab in Singapore

OpenAI Inc. is setting up an AI lab in Singapore through a multiyear partnership with the local government. The ChatGPT maker agreed to spend more than S$300 million ($234 million) to establish its first so-called applied AI lab outside the US, it said in a statement Wednesday. The effort will expand its Singapore-based technical team to more than 200 roles over the next few years. OpenAI established its Singapore office in 2024.

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🤖 Alibaba Unveils New AI Chip for Training and Inferencing

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. added a new processor to its expanding AI technology stack, enhancing a push to cover every aspect of AI development.

The company’s chipmaking unit T-Head unveiled its Zhenwu M890 AI accelerator, equipped with 144GB of GPU memory, at an event in Hangzhou, China. The hardware will handle both training and inferencing jobs and will be particularly suitable for agentic tasks, Alibaba said. The company now plans to upgrade its Zhenwu chip every year, accelerating the rate to roughly the same pace as industry leader Nvidia Corp.

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🧑‍⚖️🇺🇸 House passes long-awaited housing affordability bill, awaits the Senate’s next move

The House overwhelmingly passed housing affordability legislation Wednesday after winning the backing of President Donald Trump on some key provisions less than 24 hours before the vote.

The House-amended 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed the chamber by a vote of 396-13 and will be sent back to the Senate. The passage of the bipartisan, White House-endorsed bill marks a win for the House, which had been pressed for weeks to accept a Senate-passed version of the legislation.

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🤝 Stellantis Taps Jaguar Land Rover for US Car Development

Stellantis NV plans to develop cars with Jaguar Land Rover in the US, the latest step in a deep overhaul for the maker of Jeep sport utility vehicles and Ram trucks. Both companies will explore opportunities to collaborate on product development in the country. It’s the first deal Stellantis Chief Executive Officer Antonio Filosa is striking in the US, a lucrative market the company is prioritizing.

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😀 OpenAI claims it solved an 80-year-old math problem — for real this time

OpenAI claims its new reasoning model has produced an original mathematical proof disproving a famous unsolved conjecture in geometry, which was first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. For nearly 80 years, mathematicians have studied a deceptively simple question: if you place n points in the plane, how many pairs of points can be exactly distance 1 apart?

“An OpenAI model has now disproved that belief, discovering an entirely new family of constructions that performs better,” — OpenAI posted on X.

The proof, per OpenAI, came from a new general-purpose reasoning model, not a system specifically designed to solve math problems or even this problem in particular. This marks the first time AI has autonomously solved a prominent open problem central to a field of mathematics.

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⚡️🇺🇸 Trump Set to Sign AI Cybersecurity Directive as Soon as Thursday

President Donald Trump is poised to issue an executive order as soon as Thursday aimed at bolstering AI cybersecurity and has asked tech industry leaders to join for the event.

📑 The order that Trump is expected to sign would revamp existing cybersecurity information-sharing programs to include AI companies while stopping short of mandatory federal approval of cutting-edge models.

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🇨🇳🇰🇵 Xi Plans Reported North Korea Summit After Hosting Trump, Putin

After hosting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in the span of a week, Xi Jinping may already be eyeing the next big move on his diplomatic calendar: a visit to North Korea, as Beijing and Pyongyang move to strengthen longstanding ties.

“There’s a high possibility of Xi Jinping visiting North Korea late this month or early next month,” — Yonhap said.

Such a trip would be his first journey abroad this year and his first to Pyongyang in seven years.

#BRICS

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🇺🇸 US sanctions Sinaloa Cartel-linked cash-to-crypto laundering network tied to fentanyl trafficking

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned more than a dozen individuals and entities, comprising two distinct networks, linked to the terrorist Sinaloa Cartel and its fentanyl trafficking activities.

“As President Trump has made clear, this Administration will not allow narco-terrorists to flood our borders with poison,” — said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. “Treasury will continue to target terrorist cartels and their fentanyl trafficking networks to protect our communities and Keep America Safe.”

❗️OFAC said the group collected bulk cash in the U.S., converted it into cryptocurrency, and routed funds back to cartel leadership in Mexico.

The agency said Ojeda Aviles coordinated cash pickups in the U.S. and facilitated crypto conversions, while associates, including Jesus Alonso Aispuro Felix, brokered digital currency transfers, and Rodrigo Alarcon Palomares facilitated money pickups.

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🤑 Ripple Prime Partners With EDX to Bridge Institutional Access to Digital Asset Liquidity

Ripple announced that Ripple Prime, its global multi-asset prime brokerage platform, has integrated with EDX Markets and EDXM International. The integration enables Ripple Prime’s clients to access EDX's spot and perpetual futures liquidity for digital assets within a unified, capital-efficient prime brokerage framework. 🤝

🟠EDX Markets’ spot trading venue and EDXM International’s perpetual futures exchange are primary price discovery destinations, offering deep liquidity and a non-conflicted structure modeled on best practices from traditional financial markets.

⚫️Clients receive enhanced capital efficiency through Ripple Prime's credit intermediation, net settlement, and collateral management services, addressing common pain points experienced by institutions brought by market fragmentation and counterparty risk.

“EDX is institutional-grade and delivers the performance, reliability, and depth that our clients expect. We’re excited to make its market structure seamlessly accessible through Ripple Prime’s capital-efficient framework, raising the bar for institutional digital asset trading,” — said Michael Higgins, International CEO of Ripple Prime.

❗️The partnership also lays the groundwork for the future integration of Ripple USD (RLUSD), as a settlement and collateral asset on EDX. 🔣 This will enable institutional clients to post and receive margin via a fully regulated, compliant dollar-pegged digital asset and drive enhanced cross-collateralization and margin efficiencies across spot crypto and perpetual futures trading.

#Stellar

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🔰 Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software is creeping into Europe

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) driver-assistance software is now available in Lithuania, the second European country to approve its use, as the company pushes to position itself as an AI and robotics powerhouse and not just an automaker.

Today, FSD is only available in the Netherlands, and now Lithuania. The rollout could accelerate if Dutch regulator RDW, which oversaw the first European approval, is successful in its bid for EU-wide acceptance.

🇬🇷🇧🇪 The Greek transport ​ministry said that an upcoming bill would grant approval of FSD. Belgium is also expected to authorize the use of FSD, following the same authorization process used by RDW.

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⚡️🇺🇸 White House Postpones AI Cybersecurity Order Signing by Trump

The White House has postponed the signing of an executive order by President Donald Trump that would address cybersecurity concerns raised by powerful new AI models. Spokespeople for the White House had no immediate comment.

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🇺🇸🇬🇱 The US will inaugurate a new consulate building in Nuuk on Thursday, its first in Greenland since the 1950s.

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🇺🇸 Army Corps grants final approval for Dakota Access Pipeline, 9 years after oil began flowing

A federal agency officially granted the Dakota Access Pipeline a permit to cross under the Missouri River’s Lake Oahe reservoir, ending a six-year environmental review to determine whether the pipeline could continue operating. The decision, issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, authorizes the pipeline crossing with additional conditions the agency says will make the pipeline safer.

The Dakota Access Pipeline has been carrying crude oil from northwest North Dakota to southern Illinois since June 2017. The pipeline’s owner, Dakota Access, was required to seek the easement from the Army Corps, which manages Lake Oahe, to build the pipeline under the reservoir roughly 10 years ago.

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🇺🇦🇪🇺 German Government Pushes Associate EU Membership for Ukraine

In a letter sent to leaders of the EU’s main institutions, Merz argues that the proposal would allow Ukraine to integrate with the bloc without gaining full membership for now. The push comes before an EU-Western Balkans summit next month in Montenegro where enlargement will be on the agenda.

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😎 Samsung Chip Workers to Get Average $340,000 Bonus in AI Boom

Samsung Electronics Co. will distribute about 40 trillion won ($26.6 billion) to chip employees as a bonus for this year after the company struck a last-minute deal with labor unions to avert a strike. Samsung employs 78,000 people in its semiconductors division. While bonus levels will vary, workers stand to get 513 million won on average, equivalent to $340,000.

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🇹🇼 AMD Commits More Than $10 Billion to Taiwan AI Investments

Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the leading challenger to Nvidia Corp. in AI computing chips, pledged to invest more than $10 billion in Taiwan to expand partnerships and add packaging capacity. 🤝

The company is working with partners including ASE Technology Holding Co., Powertech Technology Inc., Sanmina Corp. and Inventec Corp. to bolster its capabilities in the region, it said Thursday in a statement.

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🤝 UK and Gulf States Hail Trade Deal After Four Years of Talks

The UK signed a long-awaited trade deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council on Thursday, deepening its ties with the oil-rich nations. The free trade agreement marks an end to four years of talks between the UK and the bloc, which includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain.

#BRICS

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