🇨🇳🇪🇸 China’s SAIC to Make MG Cars at First European Factory in Spain

SAIC Motor Corp.’s MG unit has selected Spain for its first European car factory, a move that will help the Chinese automaker soften the blow of European Union tariffs.

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🍎 Apple Readies Feature to Split Bills by Taking Photo of a Receipt

Apple Inc. is planning a new service for the iPhone that will let users split bills for group dinners or other events, expanding its push into everyday financial tools and challenging third-party apps. The feature will allow users to photograph a receipt, assign items to different people and generate payment requests.

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🇺🇸🇹🇼 New US-Taiwan partnership targets silicon carbide wafers for faster, cooler 6G chips

Purdue University has announced a strategic partnership with GeChi Compound Semiconductor (GCCS) aimed at scaling and reshoring the manufacturing of silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductors. This has resulted in the signing of a five-year MOU focused on strengthening the collaborative research and development as well as on the creation of academic-industry workforce development initiatives.

"By combining our manufacturing scale with America’s leading academic institution, we are taking decisive action to secure the domestic supply chain for silicon carbide," — Kuan-Ming Hsiung, board chairman of GCCS, said.

"This collaboration is not merely about advancing materials; it is about establishing the resilient, high-yield manufacturing capacity within the US that is absolutely essential for national tech security and the future of global critical infrastructure," — he added. 🤝

➡️Silicon carbide is a wide band gap semiconductor. It offers a breakdown electric field roughly ten times that of conventional silicon, as well as higher thermal conductivity and the ability to operate at junction temperatures above 200°C.

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⚡️🤑 MoneyGram debuts MGUSD stablecoin on Stellar for its global payments network

MoneyGram has launched MGUSD, a native U.S. dollar stablecoin, positioning its own digital currency at the center of a global payments network that reaches more than 60 million active customers. 🎉

➡️MGUSD runs natively on the Stellar blockchain. Bridge, a Stripe company, serves as the regulated issuer under the GENIUS Act framework, with M0's smart contract infrastructure handling minting and burning.

➡️Fireblocks provides the custody infrastructure, with MoneyGram holding MGUSD in Fireblocks wallets before distributing funds to customer wallets embedded in the MoneyGram app. The stablecoin launches initially in the U.S., with global scaling planned.

"MGUSD is the stablecoin we built for our customers, for the families sending money home and for the billions of people around the world with limited financial access," — MoneyGram Chairman and CEO Anthony Soohoo said in a statement. 🤪

🤝 The launch also deepens a partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation that stretches back more than five years, during which MoneyGram ran stablecoin-powered money movement using Circle's USDC before graduating to its own issuance.

Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon called MGUSD the "next milestone" in demonstrating what a purpose-built blockchain can deliver when paired with a trusted payments network.

MoneyGram has been methodically building toward this point. 🚀

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🆕 Anthropic Offers Mythos Model Access to 150 Additional Groups

Anthropic PBC is allowing 150 additional organizations around the world to access Mythos, an AI model aimed at finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The new organizations are based in 15 countries and span industries such as power, healthcare and communications.

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🇹🇷🤑 New Partnerships Bring Ripple’s USD-backed Stablecoin RLUSD to Türkiye

Ripple today announced that its enterprise-grade, USD-backed stablecoin Ripple USD (RLUSD) is now available to institutions in Türkiye through three new partnerships with BiLira, Bitexen and Bitlo. 🎉

"RLUSD has rapidly gained traction in financial use cases, serving as a vital bridge for payments, tokenization, and collateral management,” — said Jack McDonald, SVP of Stablecoins at Ripple.

“As enterprise demand scales globally, launching in Türkiye represents a milestone in our expansion. Türkiye sits at the crossroads of traditional finance and the digital economy, with one of the world's highest rates of crypto adoption. By providing a stable, USD-backed asset that is both transparent and fully regulated, we are empowering Turkish businesses to access global liquidity,” — he added.

❗️Türkiye is a global leader in digital asset adoption, and remains the dominant crypto market in the MENA region, facilitating nearly $200 billion in annual transaction volume, outpacing regional peers by nearly fourfold (Chainalysis 2025 Geography of Crypto Report).

Building on RLUSD’s momentum in Türkiye, Ripple is also proud to announce Istanbul Technical University (ITU) as the latest partner in its global University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI). 👏

Funded via RLUSD, this partnership will support advanced research initiatives and graduate fellowships while establishing an XRP Ledger (XRPL) validator directly on the ITU campus.🔣 By integrating academic research with hands-on decentralized infrastructure, Ripple and ITU are ensuring the next generation of Turkish researchers and students are at the forefront of blockchain innovation.

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⚡️🇺🇸 President Donald Trump signed a long-awaited executive order that seeks to address the cybersecurity threats of AI

My Administration will continue to work closely with industry to ensure that the best and most secure technology is deployed rapidly to confront any and all threats to our country. We will continue to lead an America First cybersecurity effort that enhances both our national security and our global AI dominance. 🏆

❗️The order asks some AI companies to submit their powerful new models to a voluntary government review 30 days before releasing the products to the public. (An earlier draft of the document had called for a voluntary review as much as 90 days in advance).

It is the policy of the US to promote AI innovation and security by working collaboratively with the private sector to modernize government and private sector information systems and harden them against external threats; to protect American ingenuity and intellectual property from exploitation and theft by adversaries; and to cultivate America’s advanced AI-enabled capabilities.

It would also establish a “cybersecurity clearinghouse” to coordinate and deconflict software vulnerabilities that pose threats to national security. Agencies will also create classified benchmarks to assess the cyber capabilities of AI models and whether systems should qualify under the executive directive.

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🇪🇺🇺🇸 EU trade lawmakers back compromise on deal with Trump

The European Parliament’s trade committee approved by a wide majority a compromise struck with EU governments and the Commission on legislation to implement a trade deal with the United States. European institutions are now racing to complete the legislative process before July 4.

Lawmakers backed, by 31 votes to six, with three abstentions, changes to legislation under which the EU agreed to eliminate tariffs on U.S. industrial goods and some agricultural products — a key pillar of the agreement struck last summer at Donald Trump’s golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland.

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🤑 Trust and reliable infrastructure are the foundation of Stellar's five-year partnership with MoneyGram 🤝

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⚡️🇺🇸 Trump on Truth Social:

"It was very nice having Flávio Bolsonaro in the Oval Office of the White House — A smart young man who loves his Country, Brazil, very much!"

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🧑‍⚖️🇺🇸 New York lawmakers plan to approve one-year data center moratorium

The New York Legislature appears poised to move forward with a one-year moratorium on new large-scale data centers. The measure could make New York the first state in the country to enact a statewide ban — if Gov. Kathy Hochul signs it.

The legislation sponsored by state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez and Assemblymember Didi Barrett, chair of the energy committee, was introduced on Monday (S10642/A11560). It’s expected to come to a vote in the Senate this week.

“The one year moratorium gives us the time and space to properly promulgate rules and plan for what our energy future can look like, where we are not only protecting our energy grid, but we’re protecting our utility rates,” — Gonzalez said.

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⚡️🤑 Ripple Expands Washington, D.C. Presence, Deepening Commitment to U.S. Digital Asset Policy

Ripple today announced the opening of its expanded Washington, D.C. office, reinforcing the company’s long-term commitment to constructive engagement with policymakers, regulators, and industry partners in the nation’s capital.

“Expanding our Washington, D.C. presence reflects our long-term commitment to constructive engagement, regulatory clarity, and U.S. leadership in financial innovation. As blockchain and digital assets become more integrated into the financial system, Ripple is committed to helping shape policy that protects consumers, supports responsible innovation, and keeps America competitive,” — said Stu Alderoty, Chief Legal Officer at Ripple.

The expanded office will serve as a hub for Ripple’s policy engagement and stakeholder convening in D.C., including conversations with policymakers, regulators, financial institutions, industry partners, and other leaders shaping the future of financial infrastructure.

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💻 Microsoft Launches AI That Works Like an Executive Assistant

Microsoft Corp. launched new AI software designed to function like an always-active executive assistant, the latest evolution of its workplace AI efforts. Scout, a new AI assistant meant to bring the power and flexibility of OpenClaw into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

Scout is based in the cloud, but operates across the desktop and web browser also, so it’s easy to connect to inboxes, calendars and other systems. Scout will come with prepackaged skills for calendar management and drafting meeting agendas, among others.

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🇨🇳 China’s Solar Industry Launches Space Alliance

Chinese solar manufacturers and research institutes launched an alliance to promote solar energy in space, a potential new avenue for growth in an industry beset by terrestrial overcapacity.

A total of 13 founding members, including GCL Technology Holdings Ltd. and Trina Solar Co., inaugurated the Space Energy Development Alliance at the world’s largest solar fair in Shanghai. Shi Zhengrong, founder of Suntech Power Holdings Co. and once the world’s first solar billionaire, is also among the participants.

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🇰🇭🇹🇭 Cambodia Seeks Rare UN Ruling in $300 Billion Thai Energy Spat

Cambodia has initiated rare United Nations compulsory conciliation proceedings against Thailand to resolve a decades-long maritime border dispute, after talks collapsed over an area both countries say holds $300 billion worth of oil and gas.

“We have taken this step to protect Cambodia’s sovereignty and maritime rights in accordance with international law. Both Cambodia and Thailand stand to gain from a fair and lasting settlement agreed with the guidance of the international expert conciliators,” — Hun Manet said.

The Cambodian government delivered formal notices to Thailand and the UN Secretary-General to launch the process under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

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❤️ Microsoft debuts Surface RTX Spark Dev Box — Nvidia-powered mini-PC helps devs get ready for an agentic Windows

With the company pushing Windows as a platform for agentic AI with Nvidia's new processor, the Surface-branded mini PC is set to run sustained workloads with a 100W thermal envelope — more than you can get in a laptop.

Microsoft says that includes "long-running training jobs, agentic AI pipelines and local model fine-tuning."

Nvidia states that the RTX Spark can deliver up to one petaflop of AI compute with 128GB of unified memory and can run models with up to 120 billion parameters locally.

The system will come set up for developers, with Visual Studio Code, GitHub Copilot, and other applications preinstalled. Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) with support for Nvidia's CUDA technology will also come out of the box, along with PowerShell7.

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🤑 Stellar CEO says Clarity Act would help, but tokenization isn't dependent on it

⚪️Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon said said the GENIUS Act gave financial institutions confidence that the U.S. government intends to support the industry through a clearer regulatory framework.
⚪️She noted that firms such as Franklin Templeton were already building tokenized products before recent legislation, citing the firm's money market fund on Stellar.
⚪️While she said passage of the Clarity Act would benefit the industry, Dixon argued that tokenization adoption is unlikely to be derailed if the bill stalls.

🤪 Stellar is positioning its technology stack around compliance, privacy and scalability for large financial institutions.

➡️Dixon said Stellar has maintained 99.99.99% uptime and processes billions of transactions each quarter.
➡️She emphasized that compliance tools were built into the network’s architecture, reducing the need for custom smart contracts to issue assets.
➡️Stellar is also developing privacy features using a composable model that allows institutions to tailor controls to specific assets and use cases.

🔄 Massive transaction volumes remain a key test for blockchain-based financial infrastructure.

🟠DTCC processed $4.7 quadrillion in securities transactions last year, highlighting the scale traditional market infrastructure already supports.
🟠Dixon acknowledged that tokenized settlement volumes will ramp up gradually rather than reaching peak scale immediately.
🟠She said maintaining reliability and avoiding network outages are critical requirements for institutional adoption.❗️

🤝 Dixon expects tokenized assets to be distributed across multiple public blockchains rather than concentrated on a single network.

⚫️She rejected the idea that one blockchain will dominate all institutional tokenization activity.
⚫️Instead, Dixon said a handful of networks will likely capture most real-world asset issuance based on their technical strengths.
⚫️She argued that open public blockchains will ultimately outperform closed alternatives because they evolve rapidly through global developer participation.

📱 Watch the full video on YouTube

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🤑 Mastercard expands settlement capabilities to include stablecoin, intraday, holiday and weekend options

Mastercard today announced plans to expand its settlement capabilities with additional intraday, weekend and holiday card settlement, supporting both fiat currencies and on-chain card settlement using regulated stablecoins.

🔄 Together, these enhancements will give issuers and acquirers greater flexibility in how they settle card-based transactions across Mastercard’s global payments network, helping improve liquidity management and expanding choice in how money moves.

❗️Mastercard will support settlement using regulated stablecoins including Circle’s USDC, which is already supporting early on-chain settlement flows in select markets, as well as Paxos-issued stablecoins including PYUSD, USDG and USDP, Ripple’s RLUSD and SoFi’s SoFiUSD. These stablecoins will be enabled across a range of supported blockchain networks including Arbitrum, Base, Canton, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Tempo and XRPL.

“Mastercard’s move into on-chain settlement is a landmark validation that blockchain technology is ready for the world’s most critical payment infrastructure,” — said Jack McDonald, senior vice president, Stablecoins, Ripple.

“RLUSD’s inclusion in Mastercard’s global settlement network reflects growing demand for trusted, regulated stablecoins built for real-world financial use cases on public blockchains like the XRP Ledger. We’re excited to support the next evolution of faster, more flexible, always-on settlement,” — he added. 🤝

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