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Drinking water from nearly half of U.S. faucets likely contains “forever chemicals” that may cause cancer and other health problems, according to a government study released Wednesday.
The synthetic compounds known collectively as PFAS are contaminating drinking water to varying extents in large cities and small towns — and in private wells and public systems, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Researchers described the study as the first nationwide effort to test for PFAS in tap water from private sources in addition to regulated ones. It builds on previous scientific findings that the chemicals are widespread, showing up in consumer products as diverse as nonstick pans, food packaging and water-resistant clothing and making their way into water supplies.
The 7 July 2005 London bombings, also referred to as 7/7, were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists in London that targeted commuters travelling on the city's public transport system during the morning rush hour.
Three terrorists separately detonated three homemade bombs in quick succession aboard London Underground trains across the city and, later, a fourth terrorist detonated another bomb on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square.[1] The train bombings occurred on the Circle line near Aldgate and at Edgware Road, and on the Piccadilly line near Russell Square.
Apart from the bombers, 52 UK residents of 18 different nationalities were killed and more than 700 were injured in the attacks, making it the UK's deadliest terrorist incident since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie, as well as the country's first Islamist suicide attack.
The explosions were caused by improvised explosive devices made from triacetone triperoxide, packed into backpacks. The bombings were followed two weeks later by a series of attempted attacks that failed to cause injury or damage.
Bitcoin hit its highest price in more than a year on Thursday as some of the most important firms in traditional finance continue to push into the crypto sector.
Fink’s firm, BlackRock, applied to create a spot Bitcoin ETF last month, after which an influx of TradFi players, such as Fidelity, WisdomTree, and Invesco, followed suit. After the Securities and Exchange Commission said BlackRock’s application was missing information, Nasdaq, which hopes to list the ETF, refiled the application on Monday. The SEC has never accepted an application for a spot Bitcoin ETF, which invests directly in the cryptocurrency.
Last month, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Citadel Securities also backed a new exchange, EDX Markets, that wants to offer crypto trading via a middle ground between the worlds of traditional finance and Web3.
Last week, investors poured $125 million into some of the most popular digital asset investment products, bringing the total invested over the previous two weeks to $334 million, according to a report by CoinShares. Bitcoin represented 98% of the inflows during that period.
The old tech mantra of “move fast and break things” had long been one of the guiding principles of the cryptocurrency movement. The only problem: Too many things broke, leaving a string of high-profile bankruptcies and criminal prosecutions in its wake.
Yet many of the torches lit in the “move fast” phase are now being carried, albeit at a slower pace, by an unlikely group: the same traditional financial firms that crypto was hoping to disrupt. While none of it is as intoxicating as the old “Dogecoin to the moon” days, blockchain innovations are increasingly being appropriated and refined for the more boring — but very important — task of streamlining parts of Wall Street’s plumbing. Frequent attendees at crypto conferences have even noticed a sartorial shift: Fewer hoodies, more suits and ties.
Southeast Asia’s largest bank is launching a new payment solution for China’s digital yuan (e-CNY), expanding the number of businesses who can receive payments in Beijing’s central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Since launching the e-CNY in 2019, China has steadily expanded its use across its economy. Today, the CBDC is being used in 26 Chinese regions across 17 provinces, and saw 13.6 billion CNY in circulation by the end of 2022, according to China's Ministry of Commerce.
In a recent interview with Forbes, the first deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, Olga Skorobogatova, spoke about her country’s plans for a central bank digital currency (CBDC), diving into the possible international implications of a future digital ruble.
Lastly, Ms. Skorobogatova spoke about the upcoming BRICS summit, where members will discuss the creation of a single currency, something that Russia first suggested in 2019.
“A common currency for the BRICS countries could be a breakthrough, a significant simplification of settlements between our economies. But this is not easy, it is a long process,” she admitted.
BRICS countries have gradually acquired substantial economic clout, having recently overtaken the G7 countries in global GDP. Their members conduct a great deal of trade between them, so they would likely benefit from a common currency.
ISO 20022 is the definitive global standard for financial messaging, which aims to regulate the electronic data exchange between financial institutions. As more countries look to adopt this standard to enable faster payments, improve the customer experience, and facilitate automation, news of the UK’s central bank revealed that its payments system had successfully been upgraded to the ISO 20022 standard.
In recent days, there has been a buzz surrounding the upcoming debut of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Fednow project, slated for July 1, 2023. The discussions surrounding this topic have sparked speculation about whether this marks the central bank’s inaugural foray into a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
The Fednow system utilizes ISO 20022, a worldwide standard for electronic message exchange between financial institutions established in 2004. ISO 20022 is widely employed by SWIFT, numerous financial organizations, and financial services.
Some enthusiasts have drawn attention to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks on a central bank digital currency (CBDC) during his testimony before Congress on June 21. Powell stated, “We would not support a central bank digital currency for individuals. If we did have a CBDC, it would be intermediated by banks.” Supporters of XRP believe that Ripple Labs or XRP itself may be involved in some capacity, while others go as far as to suggest potential long-term impacts on XRP’s value.
Furthermore, the “Economic Report of the President” from the White House emphasizes that the Fednow system has “the potential to realize many of the benefits that crypto asset developers have promised.” In mid-March, the Fed explained that changes could be added to the Fednow system at any time. “More features and enhancements will be added in future releases to continue supporting safety, resiliency and innovation in the industry as the Fednow network expands in the coming years,” the U.S. central bank disclosed.
The New York Federal Reserve and several large U.S. banks including Wells Fargo and Citi reported success with an experiment that used distributed ledger technology for domestic and international payments between different financial institutions.
The payments system, referred to as a “regulated liability network,” succeeded in the five areas tested of programmability, privacy, interoperability with other wholesale payments systems, availability at all times of day and week, and speed in settlement.
The proof-of-concept program tested both domestic and international payments between major financial institutions, including the New York Fed and non-bank financial companies.
In particular, the prospect of a global, instant U.S. dollar payment system that could benefit cross-border settlements merits further serious study," Tony Mclaughlin, a Citi executive tasked with emerging payments and business development, said in the statement from the group about the test. "It is important for the regulated financial sector to strongly consider the latest technologies to help ensure that the global, digital economy can flourish in a responsible manner.”
Participants included Citi, BNY Mellon, HSBC, PNC Bank, TD Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Mastercard, the New York Federal Reserve, and the international payments messaging system Swift.
The company plans to do so when it launches iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma later this year, likely around September. Once they roll out, the operating systems will automatically assign a passkey to the user’s Apple ID, the company says.
This means users won’t have to type in their Apple ID and password when signing into an Apple website. Instead, they can simply scan their fingerprint, face or type in a PIN code to unlock access, much like how existing smartphones can work.
Expanding the passkey use could help take the security technology mainstream.
Google is taking another step to kill the password. The company now officially supports Google sign-ins through passkeys, a security system designed to one day replace old-school passwords.
The tech giant is now nudging users to try out passkeys when logging into personal Google accounts, which could help drive adoption and awareness of the security technology.
“Passkeys let users sign in to apps and sites the same way they unlock their devices: with a fingerprint, a face scan, or a screen lock PIN,” the company said in its announcement(Opens in a new window). “And, unlike passwords, passkeys are resistant to online attacks like phishing, making them more secure than things like SMS one-time codes.”
Jordan-based Middle East Payment Services has partnered with Zwipe and Mastercard to launch a series of biometric payment cards.
In the company press release, MEPS representatives revealed the company’s availability to provide banks and issuers in Jordan and the region with the world’s first Mastercard Zwipe biometric card. Mastercard officials talked about biometrics and the way they offer a secure way to verify identity.
In May 2023, Zwipe partnered with the Kuwait International Bank to launch a biometric payment card under the Visa Infinite Black package. Through this partnership, Kuwait International Bank (KIB) became the first bank to commercially launch a biometric payment card.
Even though biometric technology has been around for decades, the technological breakthrough that made it possible for it to be used in payment card manufacturing was introduced recently through the development of special sensors that could be embedded into cards.
Large-language models, LLMs for short, are trained on huge swaths of internet data to help artificial intelligence predict and generate human-like responses to user prompts. They are what power generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Five of these are being put through the paces as part of a broader series of Defense Department experiments that are focused on developing data integration and digital platforms across the military. The exercises are run by the Pentagon’s digital and AI office and military top brass, with participation from US allies. The Pentagon won’t say which LLMs are in testing, though Scale AI, a San Francisco-based startup, says its new Donovan product is among the LLM platforms being tested.
Dozens of companies, including Palantir Technologies Inc., co-founded by Peter Thiel, and Anduril Industries Inc. are developing AI-based decision platforms for the Pentagon.
Microsoft Corp. recently announced users of the Azure Government cloud computer service could access AI models from OpenAI. The Defense Department is among Azure Government’s customers.
For now, the US military team will experiment by asking LLMs for help planning the military’s response to an escalating global crisis that starts small and then shifts into the Indo-Pacific region.
HSBC is the first bank to join BT and Toshiba’s quantum-secured metro network – connecting two UK sites using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) to prepare its global operations against future cyber threats. This technology will be trialled in multiple scenarios, including financial transactions, secure video communications and one-time-pad encryption, as well as AWS edge computing capabilities using an AWS Snowball Edge device.
In the future, experts predict QKD will play a key role in protecting financial transactions, client data and proprietary information across the financial sector. HSBC processed 4.5 billion payments for their customers last year, worth an estimated value of £3.5 trillion. These electronic payments rely on encryption to protect customers and businesses from cyber-attacks.
HSBC’s quantum strategy includes trials of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC). HSBC is also exploring applications in quantum computing across optimisation, simulation, and machine learning.
“As the UK’s leading network provider, it’s critical we ensure our digital infrastructure remains secure against new quantum-based threats. Having launched the world’s first trial of a commercial quantum-secured metro network in partnership with Toshiba, we are delighted that HSBC has become the first bank to join.
The metaverse requires a new kind of global governance to stay open and lawful, according to a leaked European Commission paper.
The draft document, seen by CoinDesk, also proposes relaxing regulations to aid innovation, and says it wants to look at the legal barriers to new forms of digital cooperation like decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Virtual worlds bring unprecedented opportunities in many societal areas,” said the document, a version of which is due to be published next week, citing benefits for healthcare, education and culture. “This technological shift also involves new forms of global governance.”
The Commission will support the creation of a technical multi-stakeholder governance process to address essential aspects of virtual worlds and Web4 that are beyond the remit of existing internet governance institutions,” the document said,
originally posted by: dashen
a reply to: RelSciHistItSufi
Happy Guidestone Day!
Still no arrests!