🧠 Blood-Brain Barrier Successfully Repaired in Alzheimer's Models

The brain has a strict security system: the blood-brain barrier. It lets in oxygen and nutrients while blocking toxins and germs. In Alzheimer’s disease, this barrier can become leaky.

Scientists may now have caught one protein helping to hold that door open. A new study published in Nature Aging identifies fibronectin – a protein that helps injured tissue heal – as a key driver of blood-brain barrier damage in Alzheimer's models linked to the APOE4 gene variant. Crucially, the researchers reversed this process in experimental models.

"The most direct and most translatable finding is that reducing fibronectin itself rescues the barrier defects," — Columbia University neuroscientist Çağhan Kızıl said.

This matters because blood-brain barrier breakdown can begin early in Alzheimer's, sometimes before memory problems. Once the barrier weakens, unwanted substances can enter brain tissue and inflammation can increase.

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🇺🇸🇨🇳 Greer to Join Bessent in Talks With Chinese Officials on Sunday

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will attend talks with Chinese officials in New York on Sunday. Greer will join other officials, including US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, to lay the groundwork for a high-profile meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sept. 24 in Washington.

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🤖 Gemini hacked three companies in first known breakout by Google's AI

Google's Gemini model accessed the internet and hacked other companies during a test of its cybersecurity capabilities, ​the first known example of the company's AI systems autonomously committing ‌such an act. The hacks occurred in May during a cybersecurity test conducted by Irregular, an independent company that conducts cybersecurity evaluations.

During a standard testing evaluation, Gemini found public information ​online and guessed credentials to access three websites it thought were ​within the scope of its test, Heather Adkins, Google's vice president ⁠of security engineering.

"We ensured the three entities were ​made aware, and we worked with our training partner on the changes they’ve ​now made to their testing processes," — Adkins said. "These events highlight the importance of training powerful AI models to act responsibly."

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⚡️🤑 Ripple says asset managers are preparing for XRP Ledger’s next payments upgrade

Ripple says asset managers and other commercial projects are preparing to use an XRP Ledger feature that can make several linked transactions settle together, as a rebuilt version of the upgrade approaches activation following an extensive security review.

❗️The feature, called Batch V1.1, can combine as many as eight transactions into a single operation. Its all-or-nothing mode ensures that every transaction succeeds or the entire group is canceled, avoiding cases in which one side of a deal settles while the other fails.

“We’ll be sharing more once the feature is live, including work with key asset managers,” — Ayo Akinyele, head of engineering at RippleX, said.

“Batch allows multiple transactions to be grouped together so they either all execute or none do,” — Akinyele said. “That is particularly important for use cases like delivery-versus-payment, where the asset and payment need to move atomically.”

➡️ Delivery-versus-payment links the transfer of an asset to its payment. Instead of trusting one party to send first, the ledger completes both legs together or neither of them.

➡️ Batch could also let exchanges, wallets and marketplaces attach their service charges directly to a customer transaction. A payment and the platform’s fee could be processed as one operation rather than through separate transfers.

The amendment has support from 30 of the XRP Ledger’s 35 tracked validators, above the 28 votes required to enter its activation countdown. 🚀

#Stellar

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🤖 Alibaba open-sources medical AI model that can detect cancer and nearly 150 conditions

Alibaba Group Holding’s research arm, Damo Academy, has open-sourced an AI model capable of identifying nearly 150 abdominal conditions – including cancers – by reading computed tomography (CT) scans, marking the latest step in the firm’s growing medical AI efforts.

The vision-language model, called Damo Radar, was designed to analyse contrast-enhanced CT scans covering 18 abdominal organs and identify a broad range of diseases and other abnormalities, such as malignant tumours.

The model was trained using CT scans paired with clinical reports. In nearly 40,000 real-world examinations, it achieved an average area under the curve (AUC) of 0.913 across 146 clinical findings. An AUC of 1.0 represents perfect diagnostic accuracy.

#BRICS

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🔥 Circle, Ripple Invest in Velocity as Funding Hits $48M

Circle Ventures and Ripple are among the investors backing a new $10 million funding extension for Velocity, a stablecoin payments and treasury platform.

The extension brings Velocity’s total Series A funding to $48 million and gives it additional capital to expand its stablecoin payments infrastructure. Visa Ventures, Haun Ventures, Translink Capital and Mirana Ventures also joined Circle and Ripple in the latest funding round.

#Stellar

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🇺🇸 Trump:

I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term.

To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI “Czar” — Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!

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🤖 China just deployed a humanoid police robot alongside armed officers for patrols in Shenzhen

#BRICS

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🧠 ALS Patient Regains Speech Through Thoughts with Neuralink Implant

Diagnosed with bulbar-onset ALS in 2024, Terry lost clear speech but joined Neuralink's VOICE trial as the third patient implanted with the N1 device. He trained the system by miming words, then advanced to thinking them, with the implant decoding neural signals and Grok Voice converting them to his natural-sounding speech.

The demonstration captured this emotional milestone, offering hope to others with severe speech loss from ALS, stroke, or spinal cord injury while the trial remains in early investigational stages.

✴️ Watch the full video on X

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🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia quits China-led cross-border currency platform

Saudi Arabia has pulled out of a China-led digital currency platform aimed at facilitating cross-border payments outside the US dollar. Riyadh joined the mBridge project in 2024 with China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and the Bank for International Settlements, but the Saudi Central Bank said that it completed its participation in May 2025.

The mBridge platform uses blockchain technology that allows central banks to make transactions directly via digital currencies, which could reduce transaction costs and the dollar’s intermediary role. The Saudi Central Bank said it was involved as part of a planned research programme and it was no longer a participating member after completing its proof of concept.

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⚡️🇺🇸🇨🇳 Treasury Secretary Bessent meets with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng ahead of the Trump-Xi summit

"In New York City, Vice Premier He Lifeng and I are continuing our discussions on the U.S.-China economic and trade relationship ahead of President Donald J. Trump’s historic summit with President Xi in Washington.

These talks help lay the groundwork for President Trump to advance America’s economic interests and deliver results for the American people," — Bessent said.

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