🧠 Small brain structure prepares for sights and touch before they occur, research shows

Researchers from MIT and Northeastern University studied 80 adults using ultra-high-field 7-Tesla fMRI to examine the superior colliculus, a small midbrain structure involved in sensory processing. Participants either viewed images or received gentle mechanical pressure on their left thumbs, allowing scientists to compare brain activity before and during sensory stimulation.

The brain doesn’t just react — it predicts. Published in Nature Neuroscience, the study found that visual stimuli triggered stronger activity in the superior colliculus’s superficial layers, while touch activated deeper layers. Remarkably, the same distinct patterns appeared before the stimuli arrived, when participants were anticipating what they would see or feel.

The findings support the theory of predictive processing: the brain actively prepares for incoming sensory information rather than passively waiting for it. Understanding this mechanism could help scientists better explain how the brain anticipates events and coordinates rapid responses to the world around us.

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🇺🇸 Elon Musk just pledged to give one of his own SpaceX shares to EVERY child in America next year

"Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many," — Musk said.

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⚡️🇺🇿🇺🇸Uzbekistan and the U.S. signed 54 agreements worth about $12 billion covering critical minerals, energy, transport, finance and technology

The deals were signed during Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Samarkand, where he is leading a delegation of more than 200 American business leaders for talks with Central Asian foreign ministers. Uzbekistan also joined NASA’s Artemis Accords on space exploration, becoming the 77th country to sign.

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🤑 XRP Ledger is set to fix its lending code before anyone can use it

A batch of bug fixes is set to go live on the XRP Ledger on Friday, and some of them patch the lending system Ripple has pitched to banks and payment companies since June — a system that hasn’t been switched on yet and is still 10 votes short of approval.

Validators are the independent servers that agree on which transactions count. A change to the network’s rules needs backing from more than 80% of the 35 validators the network trusts by default, which works out to 29, and that backing has to hold for two straight weeks.

👉 Under the plan, a lender deposits XRP or another token into a vault, and a loan broker lends that money out for a fixed term. The ledger records the loan and tracks repayments, and the broker decides offchain whether a borrower qualifies.

👉 Borrowers don’t post collateral, so the broker’s judgment is all that stands between lenders and a default. Ripple has pitched the setup to payment companies that need cash while a cross-border settlement clears.

❗️The bug-fix package, called fixCleanup3_4_0, had exactly 29 votes as of Monday, according to the XRPL Dashboard.

🗳 The lending system has 19 votes. The vaults that would hold lenders’ money are a separate change and have 21. Neither has started a countdown, so even if both hit 29 votes today, lending couldn’t go live before early November.

👉 Separately, the patch also closes a loophole that could let an account allowed only to burn, or destroy, tokens on an issuer’s behalf create new ones under certain conditions, according to the xrpld 3.4.0 release notes.

👉 It will further changes how vaults round amounts and how the lending code decides when a loan is late or in default.

#Stellar

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⚔️ Europe’s biggest telecom operators are teaming up to challenge Starlink

Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone are exploring a joint bid for EU satellite spectrum to offer direct-to-smartphone connectivity. The companies would build ground infrastructure and partner with an existing satellite operator rather than launch their own satellites.

The initiative aims to reduce Europe’s dependence on U.S. satellite providers.

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💰 Mesh and Visa Partner to Make Stablecoin and Crypto Balances Spendable Across 175 Million Merchants

Mesh, the leading crypto payments network, announced a strategic partnership with Visa to make crypto and stablecoin balances spendable across Visa's global acceptance network.

The first-of-its-kind collaboration combines Visa's global acceptance network with Mesh's orchestration infrastructure, enabling consumers to pay in-store and online directly from the balances they already hold in their wallet apps.

Visa's network spans upwards of 175 million merchant locations across more than 200 countries and territories, with $14.2 trillion in payments volume in fiscal 2025. This partnership is designed to make that footprint reachable directly from a crypto or stablecoin balance.

"Consumers increasingly expect to use their money however and wherever they choose," — said Rubail Birwadker, Global Head of Growth at Visa.

"Working with Mesh helps expand how digital asset balances can connect to the trusted payment experiences consumers and merchants rely on every day."

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💊 Gilead’s IBD drug eliminated symptoms for patients, mid-stage study finds

An oral treatment from Gilead Sciences eliminated the symptoms experienced by patients with a type of inflammatory bowel disease, mid-stage study results reported Monday that could boost the biotech’s push to develop new drugs for inflammatory and autoimmune conditions.

A 200-milligram daily dose of the Gilead pill, called emvistegrast, taken for 12 weeks resulted in a 23% placebo-adjusted clinical remission rate for patients with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, the Phase 2 study showed.

“Emvistegrast has the potential to be a best-in-class oral for patients with ulcerative colitis,” — Swati Tole, Gilead’s senior vice president overseeing clinical development of its inflammatory disease medicines, said.

“Patients with inflammatory bowel disease, while they have other therapies available, still have persistent symptoms. A majority do not achieve remission, so seeing these data was encouraging for us.”

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👋🤑 XRP Launches Official Channel on X with a Simple “Hello, World” Post

"This one has been a long time coming… Welcome XRP!" — Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO, said.

The launch offers a dedicated channel for XRP and XRPL updates amid growing institutional interest in blockchain, as noted by Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz.

#Stellar

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🇺🇸 First Lady Melania Trump Champions New U.S. Women’s Health Initiative

First Lady Melania Trump advanced a landmark program to improve women’s health through a new executive order that strengthens research, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care for girls and women throughout every stage of life.

“Previous generations fought for women’s rights. Our generation will fight to discover the cures that will ensure a woman can live her life in health and to the fullest,” — The First Lady said from the White House.

The Executive Order establishes a White House Women’s Health Task Force and establishes a new Women’s Health Division within the National Institutes of Health to accelerate scientific discoveries to improve women’s health outcomes. 👏

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⚡️🇺🇸 Trump Thanks Elon Musk for Giving SpaceX Stock to Millions of American Children

A BIG THANK YOU to our legendary friend, Elon Musk, for his incredible generosity in giving SpaceX Stock to millions of American children through TRUMP ACCOUNTS!

This is exactly what was envisioned when we created TRUMP ACCOUNTS — Bringing together the GREAT PRIVATE SECTOR, Elon and so many more, to invest in our children, by far our greatest and most important asset, and give every American Child a piece of the American Dream. Thank you Elon!

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🇩🇪 Sparkassen, Germany’s largest network of savings banks, has launched cryptocurrency trading directly within its banking app

Germany’s Sparkassen savings-bank group is beginning a phased cryptocurrency-trading rollout inside its existing banking app, taking an asset class it once treated cautiously into a familiar retail-finance setting.

❗️The first participating Sparkassen banks are offering crypto trading from October 19. The rollout is gradual, with 30 to 40 institutions expected to join each month, and is handled through DekaBank.

The opening selection includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Polygon, with a substantial number of interested institutions expected to be connected during the first half of 2027. 🚀

#Stellar

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⚡️🇺🇸 NYC to Expand Free Childcare for Two-Year-Olds by 10,000 Seats

New York City's 2-K program is expanding with 10,000 more seats being added across every borough. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that more than 12,000 children across the city will have access to 2-K starting in fall 2027.

"For far too many New York City families, the joy of welcoming a child comes with a terrifying set of questions: How will I afford childcare? Will I need to give up my job? Will I be forced to leave the city I love? Today, for 10,000 more families, we have an answer," — Mamdani said.

"From Co-op City in the Bronx to Staten Island's South Shore, we're bringing 2-K to every borough and making New York City more affordable for working people. Families have told us what they need. Together with Gov. Hochul, we are delivering."

Each seat is expected to save families an average of $26,000 a year.

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💸 Anthropic to commit 5% of shares to fund for ‘public good’

Anthropic will commit 5% of its shares to a fund for the “public good”, as the AI developer behind the Claude chatbot seeks to bolster its appeal before its stock market listing.

The company announced it would commit the shares, worth around $48bn (£36bn) at its latest valuation in May, subject to shareholder approval. It will add a further 2% of its stock to the fund for every 50% increase in its value above an undisclosed baseline.

❗️The fund will allow Anthropic to “explore large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations”, the company said.

The move comes amid growing public nervousness about AI, from the threat to human labour to the impact on the environment and its influence on social behaviours.

“AI may generate enormous economic value, but it could also cause instability for many workers,” — Anthropic wrote in a blogpost.

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💰 Mastercard introduces risk intelligence to enable more secure stablecoin payments

Mastercard announced Stablecoin Security, a new risk intelligence solution, with Borderless.xyz and Keyrails as initial partners.

🔘Delivered through a platform-agnostic application programming interface (API), Stablecoin Security analyzes signals including transaction context, where the funds came from, exposure to restricted parties and scam indicators.

🔘It generates intelligence across the fiat and stablecoin payment lifecycle, including a risk score before a payment is completed, and can be integrated into existing fraud, compliance and case management workflows. This allows financial institutions to support stablecoin payments without creating a separate risk operating model.

In 2027, Mastercard will continue to expand Stablecoin Security’s reach and adoption, including through BVNK. The solution is launching first in North America, with commercial availability expected worldwide in 2027. 🌎

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🧠 Just 3,000 steps a day may help slow Alzheimer's, scientists find

A new study suggests that even low levels of physical activity could protect the brain from Alzheimer’s disease — but not in the way scientists expected.

The researchers tracked almost 300 older adults with early brain signs of Alzheimer’s for nine to 11 years using pedometers. They found that physical activity didn’t reduce the toxic amyloid plaques that most Alzheimer’s treatments now target.

Instead, in people who already had these plaques, physical activity reduced the accumulation of misfolded tau proteins in specific brain areas. These proteins appear later in Alzheimer’s disease and are more closely linked to cognitive and functional decline. These signs of dementia were reduced by almost half in more active participants.

Benefits appeared at just 3,000 steps — roughly half an hour of walking at a moderate pace. The optimal range was 5,000 to 7,500 steps daily, after which the effect plateaued. More steps didn’t necessarily mean greater protection, which suggests a realistic target for older, sedentary people, rather than the often-cited 10,000 steps.

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🇨🇦 Alberta Voters Reject Separation From Canada as Carney Wins

Voters in Alberta are set to reject separation from Canada, a victory for Prime Minister Mark Carney after a long referendum campaign that created divisions in the country’s energy heartland.

With about 1.2 million votes counted, about 76% were in favor of remaining in Canada, enough for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to project victory for that side. The other option on the ballot was to support starting a legal process that could eventually lead to a second referendum on independence.

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🇫🇷 France Secures Some Diesel From Gulf States as Prices Surge

The French presidency said it secured commitments from three Middle Eastern producers to supply the country with more diesel in the coming months, as the government seeks to ease pressure from soaring fuel costs.

Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates will each supply 100,000 tons, or about 746,000 barrels, of diesel a month for an unspecified period. Saudi Arabia will provide 95,000 tons a month in October and November.

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🚫 US banning Chinese AI DeepSeek from government agency IT systems

The US Homeland Security Department is ordering the removal of DeepSeek products and third-party services ​using the Chinese AI model from US civilian agency IT systems. The department is also banning acquisition of DeepSeek products and third-party services developed using DeepSeek by US civilian government agencies.

DHS said DeepSeek models pose "multiple threat vectors" ​and raised concerns that use of the product "may result in the transfer of ​sensitive data to the PRC if used by US government employees ⁠or vendors."

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