⚡️🚀 SpaceX launches the 13th test flight of its Starship rocket from the Starbase launch site in Boca Chica, Texas

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🔥 Bitcoin Policy Institute, Palantir and Anduril join US State Department's Freedom Tech Excellence Program

The U.S. Department of State has launched a new initiative called the Freedom Tech Excellence Program (FTEP), naming the Bitcoin Policy Institute as a founding partner alongside companies including Palantir Technologies and Anduril Industries, and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. FTEP is structured as a talent-exchange program at the State Department.

"FTEP brings private sector experts like BPI into the State Department to advance diplomatic efforts on key issues including online freedom of expression, privacy-enhancing technologies, countering digital surveillance, and responsible AI governance," — the Bitcoin Policy Institute said.

These assignments could include efforts aimed at protecting First Amendment principles online, countering digital surveillance and online scams, advancing privacy-enhancing technologies and working on responsible AI governance, among other goals.

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🇺🇸 Oregon for first time considers charging use fees for undersea cables

The Oregon Department of State Lands is proposing for the first time to charge multinational telecommunications and tech companies for using the seafloor off the state’s Pacific Coast for fiber-optic cables used to transmit internet data and international calls. Oregon is now considering joining California and Washington by also requiring compensation fees.

The Oregon lands department is proposing tripling new application fees from $5,000 to $15,000, increasing application renewals from $5,000 to $7,500 while extending the renewal period from 20 years to 25 years and charging a one-time compensation fee of $3 per foot of fiber optic cable laid within the 3 miles of coastal, “territorial seas” that the state has jurisdiction over.

That could bring in more than $1 million per new cable laid, according to Dana Hicks, a planning and policy manager at the department.

The application fees would help the agency cover the costs of technical reviews, surveys, inspections, public outreach and other coordination and administrative work while the compensation fees would flow to the Common School Fund and Oregon’s public K-12 schools.

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🤝 South Korea's SK Hynix, Samsung Elec sign $950 bln partnership with US big tech

South Korea's Samsung ​Electronics and SK ‌Hynix will pursue memory chip supply ​partnership with ​U.S. big tech companies ⁠including Nvidia ​worth $950 billion overall. It ​includes the ​long-term supply of $750 billion ‌in ⁠memory chips to U.S. companies by SK Hynix ​and $200 ​billion ⁠in chips by Samsung ​Electronics to ​Broadcom.

President Lee Jae Myung said South ​Korea would lead the way to a new era of AI in partnership with global technology companies, making available its "dynamic AI ecosystem" to expand ⁠the global market for industrial and personal AI use. He unveiled a "San Francisco AI Declaration" that outlined South Korea's AI ambitions for technological cooperation with the U.S.

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🇫🇮 Finland Unveils the World's Largest Sand Battery to Solve Renewable Energy's Biggest Challenge: Intermittency

Commissioned by Finnish district heating company Loviisan Lämpö and developed by Polar Night Energy, the giant sand battery launched last year as part of a push to introduce a flexible heat production technology and reduce carbon emissions generated by the local district heating network. Standing at 13 meters tall and 15 meters wide, the facility uses 2,000 metric tons of crushed soapstone to store clean energy in the form of heat to provide 100 megawatt-hours of thermal energy.

Polar Night Energy said the project is estimated to have slashed greenhouse gas emissions from the heating network by almost 70% and reduced the use of wood chips by about 60%. The town's sand battery can now provide the 5,000 residents of Pornainen with combustion-free heating for most of the year.

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🇮🇳Karnataka to set up working groups with Anthropic to explore AI applications in governance, education

Minister of Home Affairs of Karnataka, Priyank Kharge, announced that the state will form two working groups with the Centre for e-Governance and the Home Department to identify AI use cases across governance, education, and innovation, following discussions with Anthropic in Bengaluru.

We also discussed expanding AI skilling across Karnataka through Claude certifications for students, professionals and enterprises, enabling startups and developers in our ecosystem to leverage Anthropic's AI tools and exchanged ideas on their AI for Science and Claude for Education programmes.

#BRICS

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⚡️🇰🇵 North Korea arrests hackers accused of laundering stolen funds from country's bank via crypto

North Korean authorities arrested former military hackers accused of stealing state funds from two banks and laundering the proceeds through cryptocurrency. The group allegedly breached the internal systems of the Central Bank of the DPRK and Foreign Trade Bank, diverted foreign currency and state trade funds, and moved the money into overseas crypto wallets.

Chinese brokers then converted the assets into U.S. dollars and yuan. Contacts in the border cities of Sinuiju and Hyesan allegedly exchanged the crypto for cash in real time, with the group splitting transfers into small amounts to avoid detection and using encrypted messaging apps, unregistered phones and Chinese wireless equipment.

North Korea’s National Intelligence Agency arrested the suspects at a Pyongyang safe house on July 12 after officials detected discrepancies in foreign-currency payment approvals and suspicious overseas IP activity.

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🛢 Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) Signs US $16 Billion Pipeline Lease-and-Lease-Back Agreement with Blackstone, Brookfield and KKR Consortium

Under the landmark transaction, KOC and the international investor consortium will establish a newly formed Kuwaiti-incorporated joint venture (JV) to lease the usage rights to KOC’s pipeline infrastructure. The transaction represents the largest foreign direct investment in Kuwait’s history and is expected to strengthen the country’s ability to attract international capital into strategic infrastructure assets.

The JV will lease usage rights to all 13 pipelines within KOC’s domestic and export pipeline network, which collectively span approximately 320 kilometres. Under the lease-and-lease-back structure, the JV will grant KOC the exclusive rights to use, operate and maintain the pipeline assets for a period of 20.5 years, in exchange for a volume-based tariff.

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🚀 Starship as seen from Starlink satellites

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🧠 China’s BCI achieves breakthrough with simultaneous brainwave collection from over 1,000 people

Chinese scientists have introduced a revolutionary system that takes neurointerface technology to a new level. For the first time in the world, it has become possible to synchronously collect electroencephalogram (EEG) data from thousands of people located in different regions simultaneously. This discovery is expected to usher in a new era in training AI models based on human brain signals.

The new system allows collecting thousands of hours of synchronous EEG recordings in a single session. This accelerates the process of creating massive datasets to train AI algorithms by several times. As a result, in the future, a new generation of neurosystems will emerge that can directly analyze human brain signals rather than being limited to text or images.

This technology paves the way for creating systems that better understand human cognitive states and can communicate with them almost directly. This could revolutionize not only medicine, but all areas of human-computer interaction.

#BRICS

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🇦🇷 Argentina Plans to Allow Funds to Invest in Digital Assets

Argentina's Minister of Regulatory Reform, Federico Sturzenegger, has proposed a bill to allow investment funds to purchase digital assets. This initiative stems from a draft “Deregulation Bill” prepared by Sturzenegger, which is currently awaiting signature by President Javier Milei before being submitted to Congress.

❗️The draft also involves the tokenization of securities, legalization of smart contracts, and inclusion of digital assets like Bitcoin as collateral.

The draft would allow mutual investment funds to allocate assets to virtual assets and create funds for qualified investors. It also limits the National Securities Commission's oversight of mutual funds to legality and technical solvency checks, while the central bank would exclusively regulate infrastructure for the registration or transfer of crypto and tokenized assets. The proposal would also allow stocks, convertible bonds and other securities to be issued, stored and traded via blockchain networks.

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🌘 ESA Awards ispace-Europe €65M Contract to Develop and Deliver MAGPIE Lunar Rover to the Moon in 2029

The Mission for Advanced Geophysics and Polar Ice Exploration (MAGPIE) is being developed under ESA’s Small Missions for Exploration initiative. The rover will explore the Moon’s south pole, characterising volatile deposits and searching for water ice that could be used to support a sustained human presence on the Moon.

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🇷🇺🏦 Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, plans to build cryptocurrency trading infrastructure and launch a digital depository by Dec. 1, 2026.

“One of the key elements of the new infrastructure will be a digital depository, which will maintain records of clients’ cryptocurrency rights and account for transactions outside the main blockchain.

It will also facilitate transactions on active wallets to fulfill clients’ currency transfer orders. Sberbank plans to implement the necessary infrastructure for cryptocurrency trading and launch the digital depository by December 1, 2026,” according to Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of Sberbank’s Management Board.

📌 The plan follows the Federation Council’s approval of a law regulating cryptocurrency trading through licensed brokers, exchanges, asset managers and depositories.

The framework is set to take effect Sept. 1, though rules requiring transactions to pass through licensed intermediaries will apply from July 2027. 🚀

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