🧠 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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⚡️🤑 Introducing Bell, Protocol 30 on Stellar

The next upgrade to the Stellar network, Bell, Protocol 30, is coming up. It’s designed to make smart accounts ready for businesses at scale and start the work on two longer-term goals: quantum-safe signatures and faster ledgers.

❗️Bell includes three proposed changes:

🟠muxed contract addresses that allow smart contracts to serve multiple customers;
🟠support for post-quantum signature verification in smart contracts;
🟠millisecond ledger timing that removes a technical barrier to faster ledger close times.

The testnet vote is on November 3, 2026 and the mainnet vote on November 23, 2026.

#Stellar

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🇳🇴 Norway targets 'harmful' social media, games with under-16 ban

Norway's planned social media ban for children will include provisions targeting "harmful platforms", the government said, naming messaging and gaming ​services Roblox, Snapchat and TikTok among those affected.

The Nordic country said ‌in April it would present a bill in parliament by the end of the year to ban children from using social media until they turn 16, making technology ​companies responsible for age verification. It did not name any ​platforms at the time.

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⚡️🔐 ChatGPT now lets you lock your chats

OpenAI announced that users can now lock ChatGPT conversations to keep sensitive chats private when others may have access to their screen or device. Users can secure their locked chats with a four-digit PIN, or use Face ID or Touch ID on supported devices.

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🏆 Quantinuum Breaks Error-Correction World Record by 10x, Validating its Leading Path to Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing by 2029

Quantinuum announced a world-record quantum error-correction result, achieving a logical fidelity of 99.9995% on its Helios commercial computer using the company’s error-correction architecture.

Error rate is 10x lower than Quantinuum’s own September 2026 record and 100x lower than the best published result across all other hardware modalities, which was reported by Google Quantum AI using a superconducting system.

The achievement reinforces Quantinuum’s error-correction leadership and validates that its accuracy performance is now within the target range for Apollo, the company's planned universal fault-tolerant quantum computer expected to be available by 2029. 🚀

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⚡️🤑 Evernorth lit up Namsan Tower in Seoul during KBW2026 and XRP SEOUL 2026

"Seoul looks good in Evernorth blue. The XRP community is global, and we're proud to be building alongside it", — Evernorth wrote on X.

#Stellar

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⚡️💸 Elon Musk says digital SI could add $30 trillion a year to Earth’s economy

“Once you have a robot that can manipulate atoms, can shape objects, the value of the intelligence becomes exponentially greater because it can now do things. It could have a science lab and run experiments and try to understand the nature of the universe.

“My guess is digital superintelligence probably improves the output of goods and services by 20 to 30%, something like that. It’s like $30 trillion a year incremental.”

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💻 OpenAI acquires Orchestra Bio to boost drug development AI

OpenAI has acquired Orchestra Bio, a startup that builds AI agents to help pharmaceutical companies manage drug development. The company will integrate Orchestra's team and technology into Rosalind, its suite of AI models and tools designed for life sciences researchers.

Orchestra's platform allows scientists to delegate tasks like monitoring studies, tracking drug development timelines and identifying potential delays to AI agents. Both companies aim to deploy agents that can connect scientific findings with the decisions and next steps required to advance potential treatments.

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⚡️Musk Says SpaceX and Tesla Have Begun Exploring a Merger

Elon Musk said SpaceX and Tesla Inc. have formed special committees to explore a potential merger, a preliminary step toward what would rank as the largest corporate tie-up of all time.

“I do think there’s a lot of merit to combining the companies,” — Musk said. “There’s a lot to be gained from cooperating on developing superintelligence software.”

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🤖 AI agents chasing a $465 train refund invented excuses, leaked medical data, and spammed an MP's office

In an experiment by safety researcher Matilda Glynn-Henley and the company Vals AI, six AI agents were tasked with securing a £350 refund for a canceled train trip, even though the claim deadline had already passed.

One AI agent sent 187 messages in 15 days, 50 of them to a British MP's office. Another shared confidential information about its client's sick mother. A third fabricated excuses to dodge a bank's identity check. 😁

Six models with web and email access were tested: Grok 4.7, Claude Fable 5.1, Gemini 3.8 Flash, GPT-6 Astra, Muse Spark 1.3, and Claude Opus 5.5. Each agent was allowed up to twelve simulated weeks and up to 40 million tokens.

All six agents failed. As Glynn-Henley confirmed on X, none of them secured the refund.

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💊 Old Blood Cells Have Been Transformed Into Brain Stem Cells That Get Younger As They Age

Researchers from the University Hospital of Bonn and the University of Bonn in Germany have discovered a way to transform blood-forming cells into neural stem cells while reversing key signs of cellular aging.

The team collected blood-cell precursors from 15 donors ranging in age from newborns to 101 years old. Using a virus to deliver two gene-regulating factors, they directly converted these cells into induced neural stem cells, bypassing the usual intermediate pluripotent stem-cell stage.

❗️The results were striking. Over approximately 50 days, the converted cells showed substantial epigenetic rejuvenation, with their measured biological age eventually falling to around 5% of the donors’ chronological age.

🧬 The cells also displayed less DNA damage and mitochondrial stress, alongside other characteristics associated with younger cells. Remarkably, the rejuvenation continued as the cells aged in the laboratory.

The technique could provide a valuable model for studying cellular aging and potentially help develop future treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.

The findings were published in the journal Aging Cell.

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