Johnson & Johnson announces $5.5 billion settlement of talc lawsuits
Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $5.5 billion to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits claiming its talc products caused ovarian cancer. The settlement resolves litigation that has pursued the company for years regarding baby powder and other talc-based products.
Brundle's verdict on 'relentless' Norris, Piastri-Sainz incident and Malaysia return
The Hungarian Grand Prix showed competitive racing with the top four or five runners frequently visible together on camera, including drivers from all four leading teams. The race provided entertainment before the summer break in the first part of the 2026 F1 season.
Three-time Pro Bowler Adams, 30, to join Vikings
Jamal Adams, a 30-year-old three-time Pro Bowler and former first-round pick, agreed to join the Minnesota Vikings. The 10-year NFL veteran played for the Las Vegas Raiders last season, where he converted from safety to linebacker.
Oportun Deploys AI to Help Consumers Save for Recurring Expenses
An AI-powered feature automatically identifies routine bills and sets aside money for upcoming payments like rent, car payments, and utilities. The Smart Bills feature analyzes members' financial habits to help them save for recurring expenses.
Apple Leasing Program to Replace iPhone Upgrade
Apple is discontinuing its iPhone Upgrade Program and replacing it with a new leasing offering called Apple Upgrade launching July 28. Existing iPhone Upgrade Program members can continue their current agreements temporarily, though the company will stop accepting new enrollments to the old program.
Happen’s Digital Banking Push Helps Deposits Jump 18%
Happen Bank's deposits reached $10.8 billion, representing an 18% year-over-year increase. The bank expanded its digital offerings through LevelUp checking and related products to attract depositors.
Upstart Receives Conditional OCC Approval for Bank Charter
Upstart received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a nationally chartered bank called Upstart Bank, N.A. The approval followed an application the company submitted in March 2020.
New York AG warns CLARITY Act could weaken state crypto enforcement
A federal crypto market structure bill could restrict state regulators' enforcement powers, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James. She urged Congress to impose stronger consumer protections on digital asset platforms before passage.
Artist gives astonishing temporary tats to kids in hospitals so they feel confident in their own skin
An artist creates temporary tattoos for children in hospitals to help them feel more confident about their appearance. The temporary tattoos are designed to boost children's self-esteem while they receive medical care.
Art historian explains why truly ‘reading’ Mark Rothko’s abstract paintings makes people cry
Mark Rothko's abstract paintings use soft-edged rectangular forms in carefully chosen color combinations that evoke emotional responses in viewers. Art historians argue that understanding Rothko's work requires engaging with the psychological effects of his color relationships and compositional choices rather than treating the paintings as simple geometric shapes.
Peregrine Capital: AI conviction intact after volatile first half marked by war and oil shock
An oil price spike triggered by war in March caused significant market volatility that fully recovered by April. Peregrine Capital maintains confidence in artificial intelligence investments long-term despite investor concerns about near-term expenses of building AI infrastructure.
Cross River to Power Elon Musk’s X Money
Cross River Bank will provide FDIC-insured accounts, interest-bearing deposits, and Visa debit card services for X Money, a financial platform embedded within X. The partnership enables users to access payment capabilities and debit cards directly through the social media platform.
Meta AI arrives in Threads DMs for all users worldwide
Meta AI is now available in Threads direct messages for all users worldwide, allowing them to share posts, images, links, and videos in one-on-one conversations. Users can ask follow-up questions and explore topics privately, mirroring the same feature already present on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Kimi AI and kvcache-ai Open Sources ‘AgentENV’: A Distributed System that Powers Agentic Reinforcement Learning (RL) Training for Kimi K3
AgentENV, a distributed system for agentic reinforcement learning training, was open-sourced under MIT license. The system runs agent sandboxes as Firecracker microVMs with millisecond snapshot and resume capabilities plus 16-way fork functionality behind an E2B-compatible API.
The Stablecoin Sandwich Is Missing the Trust Layer
A stablecoin transaction model converts fiat currency into stablecoins, transfers them across a blockchain network, then converts back to fiat for cross-border payments. The article argues this sandwich approach lacks an essential trust layer needed for the process to function reliably.
Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Praises Crypto Clarity Act as “Extraordinarily Bipartisan”
The Crypto Clarity Act has garnered support from both Democrats and Republicans, according to Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad. Shirzad called for lawmakers to vote on the legislation, characterizing it as "extraordinarily bipartisan."
Nvidia may guarantee $250bn so OpenAI can afford the data centre that will house its chips
Nvidia is offering approximately $250 billion in financing guarantees to help OpenAI lease a 10-gigawatt data centre campus in southern Ohio being developed by SoftBank's energy subsidiary. The guarantee would enable OpenAI to secure the massive computing infrastructure needed to house Nvidia's chips.
Listening to birdsong in a forest lowered a person’s stress during experiment
Listening to birdsong in a restored forest lowered stress and improved mood in 106 students during an experiment. The study, published in Environmental Conservation, had participants sit outdoors wearing noise-canceling headphones at campus locations.
Fanatics Buys CFTC-Registered Exchange in Prediction Markets Land Grab
Fanatics acquired a CFTC-registered exchange and clearinghouse from BGC, enabling the company to list and settle its own event contracts. This move mirrors similar strategies by DraftKings and FanDuel as major sportsbooks expand into prediction markets.
Microsoft built an agentic security system with red, blue, and green team AI agents. It enters public preview August 3.
An agentic security system coordinating red, blue, and green team AI agents to find vulnerabilities, assess risks, and fix defenses enters public preview August 3. The system operates in a continuous loop with three classes of agents performing different security functions across environments.
Microsoft launches AI cybersecurity model, agentic defense platform to cut enterprise security costs
Microsoft released MAI-Cyber-1-Flash, a compact security model that scores 96% on the CyberGym vulnerability-detection benchmark while cutting costs roughly in half compared to current production configurations. The company also introduced Project Perception, an agentic security system coordinating red team, blue team, and green team agents that hunt vulnerabilities, investigate risk, and remediate defenses entering public preview August 3.
Mind the ever-growing gap: the Premier League keeps spending big
Premier League clubs have spent over 1.4 billion pounds on players this summer, exceeding the combined spending of all clubs from the Bundesliga, La Liga, Ligue 1, and Serie A by 303 million pounds. When accounting for player sales, the Premier League's net spending reaches 523.6 million pounds, far surpassing other major European leagues.
Google promised not to show ads based on your emails. AI could undo that
Google's AI features can now access Gmail data to make personalized recommendations, potentially enabling targeted advertising based on email content despite the company's 2017 promise against such practices. Currently, Google says it is not using Gmail data for targeted ads in AI Mode or regular searches, but the company has not ruled out future changes to this policy.
Our electric grid wasn’t built for this kind of demand
The U.S. electric grid, valued at approximately $1.5 trillion and spanning nearly 7 million miles, was designed for centralized generation and predictable demand but now faces surging power needs from AI data centers, industrial reshoring, and electrification. The grid infrastructure remains constrained by decades-old manual processes and construction methods that cannot keep pace with the structural shift in where electricity is generated and consumed.
Apple sued after alleged App Store crypto scam cost users $1.8M
Three users collectively lost more than $1.8 million after downloading a fraudulent crypto wallet from Apple's App Store. The lawsuit challenges Apple's assertion that its app review process effectively protects users from scams.
Designing Skill-Driven Financial Analysis Agents with Claude, Python, MCP Connectors, and Automated Deliverables
A tutorial demonstrates building financial analysis agents using Claude, Python, and MCP connectors by mapping Anthropic's repository architecture including agents, plugins, and skills. The workflow parses SKILL.md files into searchable formats to create skill-driven financial analysis capabilities.
The glaring hole in Congress’s plan for an AI kill switch
Congress introduced a bipartisan bill requiring AI companies to immediately shut down all advanced AI programs, but the legislation cannot enforce kill switches on open-weight models that run on private hardware and can be modified by users. Open-source AI models from Chinese companies like DeepSeek and Kimi K3 operate outside the bill's reach, while criminal variants with removed safety guardrails have been sold on underground forums since 2023.
NASA Science Soars During August Total Solar Eclipse
During the total solar eclipse on August 12, the Moon will cover the Sun and briefly reveal the corona, Earth's outer atmosphere. NASA will use this opportunity to study the Sun and better understand its influence on Earth during the eclipse over Greenland and Iceland.
Crypto’s favorite $90 trillion trading product is coming to Wall Street, but big banks are taking it slow
Regulated perpetual futures are launching in the United States for the first time. Major Wall Street banks are adopting a cautious approach while crypto exchanges and trading firms move quickly to serve retail demand for this $90 trillion trading product.
Perplexity Releases pplx, a Single-Binary CLI That Puts Its Search API in the Terminal for Coding Agents
Perplexity released pplx, a command line tool that exposes two commands for searching the web and fetching content through its Search API. The single binary runs on macOS arm64 and Linux, returning JSON objects to stdout and integrating with Claude Code through an Agent Skill.