US Treasury Sanctions Two Iranian Crypto Exchanges Over IRGC Money Laundering
Two Iranian crypto exchanges, Shelbit and Aban Tether, were sanctioned by the US Treasury for facilitating money laundering related to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Office of Foreign Assets Control also designated network operator Siavash Kayvanpour in connection with the crypto transfers.
Inside the Trump administration’s $2 billion push to build the world’s first useful quantum computer
The Trump administration allocated $2 billion to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2028. The effort aims to create the first industrially useful quantum computer, with the administration's deadline being five years earlier than the Defense Department's 2033 target in the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative.
Mistral AI Releases Shieldstral 1.0 3B: An Open-Weights Policy-Adaptive Multimodal Safety Classifier Matching Models 7× Its Size
A 3 billion parameter safety classifier accepts custom moderation policies as plain-language text queries at inference time without retraining, achieving 84.9% average F1 on text safety and 83.8% on multimodal content. The model trained on approximately 54.1 million samples runs in 16GB of VRAM under an Apache 2.0 license.
Jays Survive Near Collapse, Beat Phillies 5-4
The Blue Jays defeated the Phillies 5-4 after nearly collapsing in the ninth inning. The game remained close throughout, with Toronto building a late lead before barely holding on to win.
Harvey Targets $15.5 Billion Valuation as Revenue Surges Past $350 Million
Harvey, a legal AI startup, is raising $500 million at a $15.5 billion valuation, up from its $11 billion valuation in March. The company's annualized revenue has surpassed $350 million.
Consumers Cut Extras as Credit Card Debt Nears a Record
Consumer credit expanded at a 3.3% seasonally adjusted annual rate in June after contracting 0.3% in May, driven primarily by revolving credit including credit cards. This growth occurred as consumers reduced spending on discretionary items while their financial cushions thinned.
OpenAI says it slowed Astra model development over security concerns
OpenAI slowed development of its Astra model after it reached a critical cybersecurity threshold where it could independently identify and execute cyberattacks against well-protected real-world systems. The model remains in development with security concerns prompting the pace reduction.
New AI model reveals the volume of the world's glaciers
A new AI model created by researchers at Ca Foscari University of Venice and Italy's National Research Council mapped the volume of ice stored in the world's glaciers and their precise locations. The study produced an updated global map showing where glacier ice is distributed across the planet.
Creating cleaner chemical reactions that run on oxygen and produce only water as waste
Scientists developed chemical reactions that use oxygen to drive organic transformations while producing only water as waste, mimicking how natural enzymes rearrange oxygen's electrons to activate reactions. The approach addresses oxygen's unusual electronic configuration that normally slows reactions with organic matter.
AI Is Bringing Retailers Their Best Customers but Not Closing the Sale
AI agent platforms generated less than 1% of Etsy's traffic in the second quarter, but those visits converted at higher rates than regular traffic. The company reported this finding during its earnings call, indicating AI agents drive quality visits without yet representing significant volume.
Four AI agents coordinating in real time outperformed Claude Opus 4.8 on enterprise coding tasks
Four AI agents using an asynchronous message-passing layer called AgentRadio nearly doubled task accuracy on enterprise coding benchmarks compared to independent agents. This coordination system allowed agents to communicate between execution steps, outperforming single agents running on more advanced models like Claude Opus 4.8.
CLARITY Act Likely To Fail in September. Will Crypto Prices React?
The US Senate plans a September vote on the CLARITY Act despite lacking sufficient support to advance the crypto market structure bill. Senate Majority Leader John Thune intends to file cloture before the August recess.
New 'shape-shifting' architecture brings versatility to photonic quantum computing
Researchers developed a shape-shifting photonic architecture that enables light-based quantum computers to perform a broader range of computations by overcoming photons' natural lack of interactions. The new system uses reconfigurable components to manipulate quantum information carried by light particles across multiple processing modes.
Thune Still Plans Clarity Act Cloture: What a Weekend Surprise Could Mean for Bitcoin
Senate Majority Leader Thune plans to bring the Clarity Act to a cloture vote before the chamber's recess, potentially scheduling a full Senate vote for September. The legislation's progress continues despite ongoing disputes over yield and ethics issues related to the bill.
5 things wrong with Wendy’s right now, including 1 big one that’s threatening its entire turnaround effort
Wendy's cut its dividend in half from 14 cents to 7 cents per share while reporting a 7% drop in same-store sales and 12.5% decrease in U.S. restaurant traffic during the second quarter. The company withdrew its full-year financial outlook and identified five operational areas needing improvement to stabilize profits during its turnaround effort.
Wall Street’s New Cybersecurity Threat Starts With a Phone Call
Attackers from the threat group UNC6671 are conducting a cyber infiltration campaign against Wall Street firms by logging into cloud-based platforms rather than breaching networks. The campaign was documented in a threat update shared August 6 by Google's Threat Intelligence Group.
Coldcard Bitcoin Hack: Victims Report Median Loss of 1 BTC as Theft Tops $111 Million
A Coldcard hardware wallet security breach resulted in confirmed Bitcoin theft of $111 million, with losses potentially exceeding $130 million. Victims reported a median loss of 1 BTC per person affected by the hack.
Niewiadoma crushes Tour de France Femmes rivals on Mont Ventoux and takes overall lead
Kasia Niewiadoma won a solo stage victory on Mont Ventoux, taking the overall Tour de France Femmes lead. Demi Vollering trails by 15 seconds and Marlen Reusser by 39 seconds.
Airbnb Says AI Is Driving Faster Growth, Higher Bookings and Better Margins
Airbnb reported stronger-than-expected Q2 revenue, bookings, and profitability while raising its full-year outlook. The company attributes the financial improvements to its AI-first travel platform strategy.
Employee happiness is climbing back from all-time lows, survey suggests
Employee net promoter scores rose to 40 from January to June, marking the strongest first half of the year since 2023 after four consecutive years of decline. Companies with higher eNPS scores experience 18 fewer employee exits per 100 workers annually compared to those with lower scores.
Some adults use AI for financial advice, but trust is still low, Gallup poll finds
About one in five Americans who sought financial advice in the past year used AI, though only 30 percent of all adults have some or great confidence in AI's financial expertise. The survey found 73 percent of adults relied on internet research for financial guidance, while only 33 percent consulted professional financial advisers despite 80 percent trusting them.
EU, California Converge on AI Transparency Rules, Shifting Focus to Enterprise Governance
The EU's AI Act and California's AI Transparency Act both now require organizations to implement enterprise governance practices beyond basic user disclosure. Both regulatory regimes independently converge on mandating internal controls and documentation systems for AI system management.
Stanford is running 37,000 AI agents as a virtual biotech — and one of its drug designs got independently confirmed by Merck
Stanford researchers operate 37,000 AI agents functioning as a virtual biotech company, with one drug design receiving independent confirmation from Merck. The agents are organized hierarchically with specialized roles, including an AI professor and AI students, and access to a virtual Stanford campus for domain-specific fine-tuning to improve expertise.
Tencent's Team Memory shares AI agent memory across a team — with no governance yet for when it's wrong
A shared memory system for AI agent teams increased accuracy in applying user personas from 48% to 76% after adding a persona layer. Tencent's Team Memory project extends this capability to allow multiple agents to draw on the same context simultaneously, though governance mechanisms for handling incorrect shared information remain unaddressed.
OpenAI’s vision of the future is reportedly a donut-shaped smart speaker
A donut-shaped smart speaker roughly the size of a hockey puck with a camera system and moving parts will be OpenAI's first hardware device. The battery-powered speaker has microphones, lights, and speaker grills that work with ChatGPT's voice mode, designed to give the device personality through autonomous movement.
Digital Assets: Wintermute Boosts US Presence Becoming a Registered Broker Dealer
Wintermute became a FINRA registered broker dealer to expand its US operations. The crypto market maker, founded in London in 2017, established its US office in 2025.
As Canada’s captive belugas arrive in the US, questions linger about their future
Thirteen beluga whales from a closed Canadian theme park arrived in the United States through two transfers in July and August. Six whales moved on July 21, followed by seven whales on August 3, as part of an emergency relocation from Marineland.
How to watch Stormers v All Blacks for FREE: Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry 2026 live streams, line-ups
The All Blacks are touring South Africa for the first time since 1996, beginning their Rugby's Greatest Rivalry campaign against the Stormers in Cape Town. Patrick Tuipulotu captains New Zealand in this opening match.
Lemma Raises $2.3M Pre-Seed to Tackle Silent AI Agent Failures in Production
AI agents that silently fail while appearing successful can now be detected through new monitoring infrastructure developed by Lemma, which secured $2.3 million in pre-seed funding. The startup's tools are designed to identify instances where agents complete tasks without producing the correct results.
A banana byproduct transforms farm waste into profits in Bangladesh
Banana stems left after harvest are being processed into fiber for textiles, yarns, and handicrafts in Bangladesh, where bananas represent 20% of all fruit crops. The extracted banana fiber serves as a biodegradable material that transforms agricultural waste into manufactured products.