🤖 China launches $210M diamond semiconductor project to power next-generation chips

China has launched a $210 million project aimed at building the country’s first integrated industrial chain for fourth-generation semiconductor materials, a move intended to expand its capabilities in advanced chip materials beyond its dominant synthetic diamond industry.

The production base will be built in Zhengzhou High-tech Zone in Henan province after the zone signed an investment agreement with Zhongke Powder Research (Henan) Superhard Materials Co., Ltd. Backed by Central South University, the company plans to establish manufacturing across the entire value chain, including diamond chemical vapor deposition (CVD) equipment, single-crystal growth, epitaxy, micro- and nano-processing, and advanced packaging substrates.

Henan is already one of the world’s largest centers for synthetic diamond production. By expanding into semiconductor-grade diamond materials, the province is seeking to move from industrial diamond manufacturing to higher-value electronic materials.

#BRICS

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💊 Scientists Create Tiny “Mini Livers” That Could One Day Replace Liver Transplants

MIT engineers have now developed injectable “mini livers” that, in mice, survived for at least two months while performing many of the functions of healthy liver tissue. The study was published in the journal Cell Biomaterials.

In mouse experiments, the mixture of liver cells and microspheres was injected into fatty tissue called perigonadal adipose tissue. After the cells settled in place, they formed a dense and stable structure. As time passed, new blood vessels grew into the graft, helping keep the hepatocytes alive and functional.

The cells remained alive and continued releasing specialized proteins into the animals’ circulation for eight weeks, which was the full duration of the study. That result suggests the approach could one day serve as a long-term treatment for liver disease, according to Bhatia’s lab.

“The way we see this technology is it can provide an alternative to surgery, but it can also serve as a bridge to transplantation where these grafts can provide support until a donor organ becomes available,” Vardhman Kumar, MIT postdoc, says.

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🤖 Anthropic to restore Claude Fable access on Wednesday

Anthropic has confirmed that the Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on Claude's two most powerful models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5.

"We’ve received notice that the Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5," Anthropic said in a statement. "We'll begin restoring access tomorrow, and will share an update soon."

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🧑‍⚖️🇹🇼Taiwan passes law regulating cryptocurrency firms, stablecoins

The Legislature on Tuesday passed a law establishing a regulatory framework for Taiwanese cryptocurrency businesses, including licensing requirements for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) and stablecoin issuers, as well as penalties for fraud and market manipulation.

→ Under the act, VASPs must obtain approval from the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) before operating and comply with requirements on internal controls, cybersecurity and business continuity.

→ Stablecoin issuers will be required to maintain full reserve backing, with segregated reserve assets held in trust by domestic financial institutions. The reserve assets are protected from claims by other creditors if the issuer enters bankruptcy.

❗️Issuers must also undergo regular audits and are prohibited from paying interest or other returns to holders.

Illegally operating a VASP or issuing stablecoins is punishable by up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to NT$100 million (US$3.14 million).

Fraud or manipulation of virtual asset prices or supply and demand is punishable by three to 10 years in prison and fines ranging from NT$10 million to NT$200 million, according to the act.

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🇦🇪 Abu Dhabi’s MGX Raises $49 Billion for One of the Biggest Ever AI Funds

MGX has raised $49 billion for one of the biggest ever funds dedicated to AI deals, propelling the two-year-old Abu Dhabi firm into the ranks of the most consequential investors in the sector globally. The company is a backer of major AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic, alongside Elon Musk’s xAI, prior to its merger with SpaceX.

The fund has backed 14 companies so far, and is looking to invest across the AI tech stack, including semiconductors, AI infrastructure and AI-enabling technologies and platforms. It was raised from institutional and private investors from across the Gulf, North America, Asia and Europe, and closed above its initial $45 billion target fund size.

#BRICS

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🇳🇬World Bank Backs Nigeria With $1.25 Billion Development Loan

The World Bank approved $1.25 billion in development financing to help Nigeria spur economic growth and create jobs after the West African nation embarked on reforms praised by the lender.

The six-year program will support recent efforts to deepen Nigeria’s capital markets, modernize the regulatory framework for the digital economy and e-governance, and expand energy access, the World Bank said. It will also aim to improve health and nutrition for 40 million people, and provide support for millions of farmers.

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🤖 ByteDance Chooses Brazil for Its Largest Data Center Outside China

ByteDance is dropping roughly $39 billion on a data center campus in northeastern Brazil, a bet so large it would rank among the most expensive single-site infrastructure projects in Latin American history. The facility, located at the Pecém port complex in the state of Ceará, will start with approximately 200 MW of IT capacity and is designed to scale toward nearly 1 gigawatt.

#BRICS

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🤑 USST, powered by STBL, is now live on Stellar

“The launch of USST on Stellar adds another example of how open blockchain infrastructure can support institutional asset workflows and expand utility across the tokenized asset ecosystem,” - said Raja Chakravorti, the CBO at the Stellar Development Foundation.

🎉 USST is now live on Stellar, marking another step in the growth of tokenized real-world asset infrastructure on the network.

Using STBL’s technical architecture, eligible users can deposit supported tokenized assets, beginning with USDY, to mint USST for settlement and other institutional asset workflows.

❗️Through strategic ecosystem integrations, USST is expected to support expanded onchain utility across eligible venues and institutional use cases, including liquidity, settlement, and collateral mobility.

By enabling multiple pathways for liquidity and settlement, USST is designed to support utility within the Stellar network’s growing RWA ecosystem, including for eligible holders of tokenized treasuries and money market funds. 🚀

#Stellar

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🛒 Sony to end physical PlayStation game disc production in 2028

Sony announced that it will stop producing physical discs for all new PlayStation games starting in January 2028, marking a move into an all-digital future. After that, every new release will be sold digitally through the PlayStation Store and other retailers. Games released before the cutoff will continue to be available on disc.

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🍏 Apple Seeks to Buy Chinese-Made Memory Chips

Apple Inc. is in negotiations to purchase chips from two Chinese semiconductor makers on a Pentagon blacklist to help reduce the impact of a global memory shortage that’s forced the company to raise prices across its product line.

The iPhone maker is seeking to buy memory components from ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc. and Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. for use in devices sold in China. Talks between Apple and the companies are ongoing, and nothing is final yet.

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🤖 Honda starts AI data center battery production in US after EV pivot

Honda Motor has begun producing batteries for AI data centers at a U.S. plant where it planned to make electric vehicle batteries. The milestone makes Honda the latest car company to dive into the red-hot energy market.

The automaker’s shift toward energy storage comes three months after Honda canceled its EV programs in the U.S. Batteries for the EVs were slated to be made at a factory in Ohio, which Honda operates under a joint venture with LG Energy Solution. Now, those cells are headed to data centers instead of driveways.

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2 July 2026
Organised fraud forces banks and insurers to pool intelligence
AI alone won't stop it, OCBC warns as criminal networks grow in scale.

Financial institutions can no longer fight fraud alone, with industry leaders saying collaboration across banks, insurers, regulators, and law enforcement has become critical as organised criminal networks become more sophisticated.

"We can compete with each other on innovation, products, margins, revenues, but when it comes to fraud, crime prevention, we have to collaborate together," said Nauman Bashir, managing director and global head of Digital Sales at Standard Chartered Bank.

Soon cited OCBC's Anti-Scam Unit, which works with the Singapore Police Force to freeze suspicious accounts and trace stolen funds. The bank has also stationed staff at the police's Anti-Scam Command to speed up investigations.

Beyond bilateral partnerships, Soon said banks are increasingly working through industry groups to develop common anti-scam strategies.

The next phase of collaboration will involve broader intelligence sharing. Soon highlighted an upcoming initiative led by the police and the Monetary Authority of Singapore that will allow participating banks to review past transactions and identify customers who may have transferred funds to known scam accounts through a shared portal.

The panellists also stressed that technology alone cannot solve the problem. Whilst artificial intelligence has strengthened fraud detection, they said human judgement and accountability remain essential.

"AI alone is not everything. Human judgment is needed, accountability. Human accountability is still needed," Soon said.

Credits: Pen Panda @keanw1

🔠🔠🔠🔠🔠🔠🔣
https://sbr.com.sg/financial-services/event-news/organised-fraud-forces-banks-and-insurers-pool-intelligence

🤖 Alibaba, Payment Firm Will Pay $600 Million to Resolve US Probe

Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and its US digital payment processor agreed to pay $600 million to resolve a federal investigation into whether they failed to prevent the sale and importation of illegal pharmaceuticals and controlled substances, the Justice Department said.

Alibaba entered into a non-prosecution agreement released Wednesday to end a probe of alleged violations of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, or FDCA, between 2016 and 2024, the US said. The investigation was led by the Justice Department and the US Attorney’s Office in Rhode Island.

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🇪🇺 Europe’s MiCA regime is now up for review, known colloquially as “MiCA 2.0,” through a consultation that closes around September

It’s been six years since Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) was first mooted and three years since it was enacted. A lot has changed in the meantime, not the least the growing interest from businesses and individuals in stablecoins for international payments.

➡️MiCA was designed for spot crypto, but that categorization has become too narrow, given the extent of stablecoin and tokenization adoption in institutional and wholesale finance.

The European Central Bank has repeatedly said the strength of dollar-pegged stablecoins could damage its control over monetary conditions in the 21-nation eurozone, though its preferred solution is a central bank digital currency (CBDC), not euro stablecoins.

“If you listen to European Central Bank officials, you'll notice their opinions change depending on the individual,” John Orchard, chairman of the Digital Monetary Institute at OMFIF, said. “But they are now willing to tolerate stablecoins on bank balance sheets and perhaps as a remittance tool, but they don't want stablecoins for wholesale settlement, which the U.S. is prepared to experiment with.”

❗️One major difference between stablecoins in the U.S. and those in Europe is the MiCA requirement to send stablecoin deposits back into the banking system while under GENIUS reserves can be held in U.S. government debt. A key drawback for the EU is the lack of a unified treasury bond market such as exists in the U.S.

“The Commission is said to be toying with the idea of reviewing the reserve requirements so that a GENIUS-Act-like model could exist, where the stablecoin operator might buy money market instruments from European governments instead of routing the money back into the banking system,” Orchard said.

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❤️ Microsoft launches its own AI deployment company with $2.5 billion commitment

Microsoft announced a new operating business called Microsoft Frontier company, focused on delivering successful enterprise AI deployments with Microsoft’s existing AI tools. The project will be backed by a $2.5 billion investment from Microsoft, as well as 6,000 industry and engineering experts.

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