💻 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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🤖 Claude Code AI agent caught a crypto miner hiding on a developer’s overheating Mac

A developer using Claude Code to help build a temperature monitor app got a friendly warning from the coding agent. 😁

“Your Mac is running a crypto miner that I didn’t put there,” — flagged the helpful agent.

“I saw xmrig using about 1175% CPU, roughly 12 cores,” — it informed its human master.

The developer’s Mac was overheating and running slowly due to a CPU issue. The agent helped stop the crypto miner and remove its persistence mechanism.

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⚡️🧑‍⚖️ OCC Advances U.S. Digital Asset Leadership with Final Rule to Implement GENIUS Act

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) today announced a final rule to implement the GENIUS Act.

“Today’s final rule advances President Trump and Secretary Bessent’s vision for American leadership in digital assets,” — said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould.

“We are providing a clear, practical framework for payment stablecoin innovation, with strong standards for reserve backing, redemption, and risk management.”

🔘In one of the biggest changes from its original proposal, the OCC dropped a provision that would have treated certain arrangements between stablecoin issuers and third parties as presumed violations of the GENIUS Act’s ban on interest and yield.

🔘Beyond stablecoin rewards, the OCC eased several proposed restrictions on how issuers manage their reserves. The final rule scraps a proposed 20-day weighted-average maturity limit on reserve assets, giving issuers more flexibility to hold longer-dated eligible investments, including U.S. Treasuries.

🔘Under the new rules, issuers will be able to withdraw surplus reserves at any time, rather than once a month, provided they maintain enough assets to back outstanding stablecoins. The OCC eased certain limits on how much issuers can hold with individual counterparties, while retaining safeguards designed to limit risk.

The final rule and the GENIUS Act take effect on January 18, 2027.

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⚡️🇷🇺🇺🇸 Russia Sees First Diesel Cargo Sailing for US on Thursday

A tanker loaded with Russian diesel will sail for the US on Thursday as Moscow starts to implement a fuel supply deal struck by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, according to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.

“The tanker has a displacement of 40,000 tonnes. We will meet US diesel demand to the extent of our capabilities. Additional tankers will head to the US in the near future,” — Novak said.

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🇺🇸 Trump says data centers should pay communities a ‘dividend’ to win support

U.S. President Donald Trump urged data center companies to “MAKE DEALS” with local communities to ensure their support for the costly facilities.

❗️Trump said that to make them more popular, data center operators should pay the community, “and/or individuals within the community, a ‘dividend.’”

“New and large, in some cases gigantic, Data enters are mandated by me to make their own electricity, and give or sell any excess back to the local community, or grid, and therefore there is electric price increase. In fact, there could be a substantial decrease. Other elements likewise!“ — Trump said.

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🤑 SEC Clears Evernorth Filing to Raise Up to $132 Million to Buy More XRP

The SEC has cleared a filing that could hand Evernorth Holdings up to $132 million — capital the Ripple-affiliated XRP treasury company’s own strategy points toward buying more XRP. The prospectus, dated October 19, 2026, registers 11,499,992 shares of Class A common stock issuable if holders of the company’s publicly traded warrants exercise them.

Buried in the filing’s finer print is a detail investors hadn’t previously seen: the price of XRP fell by roughly 40% between the day Evernorth’s merger agreement was signed, and the day it actually closed a year later — a swing large enough to trigger a built-in adjustment mechanism for several of the deal’s early investors.

#Stellar

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⚡️🇺🇸US to Tap National Diesel Reserve as Prices Soar

The Trump administration is tapping an emergency reserve of diesel set aside to heat homes in the Northeast. The Energy Department plans to loan 315,000 barrels from the 1 million barrel Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve.

Deliveries are scheduled to be completed by Nov. 13.

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🇺🇸🇮🇳 Trump Says US Trade Deal With India Is ‘Pretty Close’

President Donald Trump said the US and India are close to finalizing a trade deal after more than a year of negotiations.

“They want to make a deal. We’re going to make a deal. Pretty close, yeah,” — Trump said.

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🇳🇴🇨🇦 Norwegian Company Pitches 2,800-Mile Undersea Cable Linking Canada and Europe to Bypass the US

Norwegian infrastructure company Bulk Infrastructure is proposing a direct fiber cable from Norway to Canada, routed around the U.S. entirely. The project, named Leif Erikson, remains a proposal, not a construction announcement.

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🇷🇺🇨🇳 Russia Says It May Agree on Key Gas Link With China This Year

Russia said Gazprom PJSC and China National Petroleum Corp. may reach a commercial agreement by year-end on gas supplies via the Power of Baikal link, a route which has the potential to reshape global energy flows.

“We are waiting for our companies to hold commercial talks,” — Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said.

“We hope that by year-end they will reach the necessary agreements,” — he said, referring to deliveries via the future route formerly known as Power of Siberia 2.

#BRICS

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🇩🇪 A German biotech has big ambitions in cancer. Now it needs to get a medicine approved

German biotechnology company Immatics is developing an experimental cell therapy targeting PRAME, a protein expressed in more than 50 cancer types. The treatment modifies a patient’s own T cells to recognize and attack cancer cells carrying this target, potentially opening new treatment options for tumors that have been difficult to treat with existing immunotherapies.

In an early-phase clinical trial involving 16 patients with uveal melanoma, a rare form of eye cancer, all patients experienced tumor shrinkage following treatment. These preliminary results suggest that PRAME-targeted therapy could have potential beyond melanoma, including in ovarian and pancreatic cancers.

Immatics is now working to advance its lead candidate toward regulatory approval and expand the approach to additional solid tumors. The therapy remains investigational, and further clinical trials are needed to confirm its safety and efficacy.

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