Technology

Healthcare is changing fast. More and more often, patients are monitored not in hospital beds but in their own homes. What makes this possible? A combination of smart technology, secure networks, and thoughtful design — all bundled into what we call Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM).

The real engine behind this change is the Internet of Things (IoT). Tiny sensors, wearable devices, and connected platforms now let doctors see how their patients are doing in real time — even from hundreds of miles away. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Healthcare providers who partner with a reliable remote patient monitoring software development company can create systems that support personalized, proactive care — not just reactive treatments.

So, What Is IoT in Remote Patient Monitoring?

What Makes an IoT-Enabled RPM System Work?

1. The Devices Themselves

2. Reliable Data Transmission

3. A Secure Cloud Platform

4. Interfaces That Make Sense

The Value IoT Brings to Remote Monitoring

Timely Alerts and Earlier Interventions

Better Care Without Leaving Home

More Control for People with Chronic Illness

Cost and Time Savings

Where It’s Already Making a Difference

After Surgery

Supporting Aging in Place

Monitoring Pregnancies Remotely

Building Secure, Compliant, Scalable Systems

Looking Ahead: What’s Next for IoT and RPM?

Conclusion – Smart Devices, Smarter Care

May 28 (UPI) — President Donald Trump is a strong ally for the growing cryptocurrency industry, Vice President JD Vance told attendees at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

“Crypto finally has a champion and an ally in the White House,” Vance said while delivering the event’s keynote address, CBS News reported.

“We want our fellow Americans to know that crypto and digital assets, and particularly bitcoin, are part of the mainstream economy and are here to stay,” he said.

Vance was this year’s featured speaker at the annual bitcoin conference, which President Donald Trump headlined last year while campaigning for the presidency.

Stablecoins stabilize the dollar

He said the Trump administration does not view so-called stablecoins as destabilizing the U.S. dollar and instead strengthens it, CNBC reported.

“We view them as a force multiplier for our economic might,” Vance told the audience at The Venetian Resort.

A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency whose value is derived from another asset, such as gold or the U.S. dollar, according to coinbase.

Vance said cryptocurrency has transformed how people and businesses conduct transactions, and its decentralized nature makes it a good way to protect personal and business finances against bad policies.

“Crypto is a hedge against bad policymaking from Washington, no matter what party’s in control,” he said.

Political advocacy for crypto progress

Vance encouraged those who are involved in cryptocurrency to increase their political advocacy.

He said $200 million in campaign support for candidates who supported cryptocurrency had a positive effect during the 2024 general election, The Hill reported.

Such financial support enabled Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, to beat Democratic Party incumbent Sherrod Brown in the 2024 Senate election in Ohio.

“Part of the reason that I’m standing here, part of the reason that Bernie Moreno defeated Sherrod Brown in the Senate campaign last year, is because you guys got organized and got involved in American politics,” Vance said.

Brown chaired the Senate Banking Committee, but his election defeat removed him as an obstacle to crypto-friendly legislation.

“There’s a lesson to take from that experience,” Vance said. “Unless you guys get involved in politics, politics is going to ignore this industry.”

Strong support for the GENIUS Act

The Trump administration is advocating for the GENIUS Act, which officially is called the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation in U.S. Stablecoins Act.

Vance said the proposed act’s enabling legislation is poised to be approved in the Senate and likely would fare well in the House of Representatives.

President Trump’s lead crypto adviser, David Sacks, last week told CNBC that U.S. investors have more than $200 billion in unregulated stablecoins.

Sacks said that amount could reach trillions of dollars “if we provide the legal clarity and legal framework for this.”

US electronic design automation software makers were told via letters to stop supplies to China, the FT reported.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered US firms that offer software used to design semiconductors to stop selling their services to Chinese groups, the Financial Times has reported, citing people familiar with the move.

Electronic design automation software makers, which include Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA, were told via letters from the US Commerce Department to stop supplying their tech, the report, which was published on Wednesday, said.

A spokesperson for the Commerce Department declined to comment on the letters but said it is reviewing exports of strategic significance to China, while noting that, “in some cases, Commerce has suspended existing export licenses or imposed additional license requirements while the review is pending”.

Shares of Cadence, which declined to comment, closed down by 10.7 percent, while shares of Synopsys fell by 9.6 percent.

Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi said in a call with analysts that the company had not received a letter, nor had it heard from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry (BIS) and Security, which enforces export controls.

“We are aware of the reporting and speculations, but Synopsys has not received a notice from BIS. So, our guidance that we are reiterating for the full year, reflects our current understanding of BIS export restrictions as well as our expectations for year-over-year decline in China. We have not received a letter,” Ghazi said.

After the market closed, Synopsys reaffirmed its revenue forecast for 2025. Its shares and those of Cadence bounced back 3.5 percent in trading after the close.

Siemens EDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The software of these firms is used to design both high-end processors as well as simpler products.

While the scope of the policy change described in the report was not immediately clear, any move to strip the software makers of their Chinese customers could deal a blow to their bottom line and to their Chinese chip design customers, which heavily rely on top-of-the-line US software.

“They are the true choke point,” said a former Commerce Department official, who added that rules restricting the export of EDA tools to China have been under consideration since the first Trump administration, but were ruled out as too aggressive.

Synopsys relies on China for about 16 percent of its annual revenue, while China accounts for about 12 percent of annual revenue for Cadence.

Synopsys, which partners with chip companies such as Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel, provides software and hardware used for designing advanced processors.

Praise follows conflict of interest concerns after Trump launches his own coin and hosts a dinner for his investors.

United States Vice President JD Vance has urged the domestic cryptocurrency industry to remain involved in US politics, highlighting the close ties of President Donald Trump’s administration to a deep-pocketed industry.

Speaking at a Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday, Vance urged cryptocurrency executives and enthusiasts to keep pressure on the US Congress to pass pro-crypto legislation supported by the White House

“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unleash innovation and use it to improve the lives of countless American citizens,” Vance said in his address. “But if we fail to create regulatory clarity now, we risk chasing this $3 trillion industry offshore in search of a friendly jurisdiction.”

Vance made the speech after Trump promised to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” when he addressed the same Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, last year in the middle of the presidential campaign. The crypto industry, which felt unfairly attacked by former President Joe Biden’s administration, spent heavily to help Trump and pro-cryptocurrency lawmakers win election.

Vance praised how quickly the crypto industry was able to organise and influence US politics during last year’s elections, giving special credit to Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the billionaire founders of the crypto exchange Gemini.

“You chose to speak up, and you chose to get involved, and I believe you changed the direct trajectory of our country because of it,” Vance told the crowd gathered at the Venetian Hotel.

Vance hailed cryptocurrencies as a hedge that can help conservative populists protect themselves against what he called bad politicians, overly aggressive regulators and unethical elites. He predicted continued assimilation of the digital currencies into the financial mainstream and said it was strategically important for the US to be a world leader in the industry, noting that the Chinese government is hostile to crypto.

As president, Trump has established a Bitcoin reserve for the federal government and pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, a black market website that was key to the early growth of Bitcoin.

Trump has also put outspoken crypto backers in his administration, which has undone or paused several enforcement actions taken against large cryptocurrency companies

Several other Trump officials are speakers at the Bitcoin conference, as are his sons Don Jr and Eric.

Conflict of interest

The president and his family’s use of cryptocurrencies as a platform to make money has drawn criticism from Democrats and even crypto enthusiasts as corrupt and unseemly.

The Trump family holds about a 60 percent stake in a crypto project called World Liberty Financial, which recently launched its own stablecoin, a fast-growing form of cryptocurrency whose value is often tied to the US dollar. This month, the US Senate advanced legislation that would create a federal framework to regulate stablecoins, a bill that Vance said the Trump administration wants passed into law quickly.

Trump’s media company announced on Tuesday that it was raising $2.5bn to buy Bitcoin, the world’s oldest and most popular cryptocurrency.

The president and first lady Melania Trump have also launched their own meme coins. Last week, Donald Trump rewarded investors in his coin. About 220 of the biggest investors in the $TRUMP were invited to Trump’s luxury golf club in northern Virginia.

May 28 (UPI) — Nvidia officials have scheduled a 5 p.m. EDT first-quarter earnings report that many expect to reflect the Trump administration’s restrictions on trade with China.

The artificial intelligence firm is expected to show increased earnings from a year ago, when it posted adjusted earnings of 61 cents per share on $26.04 billion in sales during the quarter that ended on April 27, Investor’s Business Daily reported.

Analysts queried by FactSet anticipate Nvidia to report adjusted earnings of 73 cents per share and $43.34 billion in sales during the first quarter this year.

Others suggest the AI chipmaker will report 93 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $43.31 billion in sales, CNBC reported.

Analysts anticipate improved numbers during the second quarter with projected adjusted earnings of 99 cents per share and nearly $46 billion in sales.

The effect of the Trump administration’s restrictions on trade with China should be known better after the Wednesday earnings report by Nvidia.

The Trump administration on April 9 notified Nvidia that it is requiring the chipmaker to obtain an export license for its H20 chip that is designed specifically for use in China’s market.

The chip is a specially designed version of Nvidia’s popular Hopper AI chips and is intended to comply with U.S. trade restrictions.

The Nvidia earnings report also comes on the heels of the Federal Reserve‘s recent announcement that it is maintaining the Fed’s lending rate of 4.25% to 4.5%.

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee met earlier in the month and agreed that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs policy and other inflationary pressures could trigger a rise in inflation.

Despite such concerns, Nvidia is expected to announce increased first-quarter earnings.

Meanwhile, the Dow closed down more than 200 points at the end of trading on Wednesday.

May 27 (UPI) — Officials at San Francisco-based Salesforce have agreed to pay $8 billion to buy tech firm Informatica.

Informatica is a data management firm based in Redwood City, Calif., and agreed to accept Salesforce’s offer of $25 per share for Class A and Class B-1 common stock, the tech firms announced on Tuesday.

Salesforce is the world’s top-ranked artificial intelligence customer relationship management system and will use Informatica’s AI-powered data management tools to improve services for client organizations.

The proposed transaction would enhance Salesforce’s data foundation and improve its AI-powered services for clients, company officials said on Tuesday in a joint news release with Informatica.

“This is a transformational step in delivering enterprise-grade AI that is safe, responsible and deeply integrated with the world’s data,” said Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s chairman and chief executive officer.

“This combination brings together Salesforce’s Einstein and Informatica’s CLAIRE AI engines to forge the ultimate AI-data platform -trusted, explainable and built to scale,” Benioff added.

He said the merger would “supercharge” Salesforce’s Agentforce, Data Cloud, Tableau, MuleSoft and Customer 360 services by enabling autonomous agents to act with “intelligence, context and confidence across every enterprise.”

The proposed deal also fulfils a “shared vision” for helping organizations make the best use of data during the AI era, Informatica Chief Executive Officer Amit Walia said.

The merger “represents a significant leap forward in our journey to bring data and AI to life by empowering businesses with the transformative power of their most critical asset – their data,” Walia added.

If completed, the proposed merger enables Salesforce to:

• Ensure data is clear, trusted and actionable.
• Enable autonomous AI agents to interpret and act on complex data.
• Deliver more personalized and effective customer experiences.
• Fuel AI-powered decisions with enriched, standardized and trusted data.
• Support Tableau users with more accessible and better-understood data.

“Truly trustworthy AI agents need the most comprehensive understanding of their data,” said Steve Fisher, president and chief technology officer at Salesforce.

“Imagine an AI agent that goes beyond simply seeing datapoints to understand their full context – origin, transformation, quality and governance,” Fisher said.

“This clarity … will allow all types of businesses to automate more complex processes and make more reliable AI-driven decisions.”

Investors responded well to the proposed merger, resulting in a 17% increase in Informatica share prices on Friday, Bloomberg reported.

The tech firm’s share price continued its climb on Tuesday with a 6.08% increase to $23.92 at the close of trading on Tuesday, according to MarketWatch.

Law to take effect on January 1 has support of social media companies, but Apple and Google oppose it.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed into law a bill requiring Apple and Alphabet’s Google to verify the age of users of their app stores, putting the second most populous state in the United States at the centre of a debate over whether and how to regulate smartphone use by children and teenagers.

The bill was signed into law on Tuesday.

The law, which goes into effect on January 1, requires parental consent to download apps or make in-app purchases for users aged below 18. Utah was the first US state to pass a similar law this year, and US lawmakers have also introduced a federal bill.

Another Texas bill, passed in the state’s House of Representatives and awaiting a Senate vote, would restrict social media apps to users over the age of 18.

Wide support

Age limits and parental consent for social media apps are among the few areas of wide US consensus. A Pew Research poll in 2023 indicated that 81 percent of Americans support requiring parental consent for children to create social media accounts and 71 percent supported age verification before using social media.

The effect of social media on children’s mental health has become a growing global concern. Dozens of US states have sued Meta Platforms, and the US surgeon general has issued an advisory on safeguards for children. Australia last year banned social media for children under 16, with other countries such as Norway also considering new rules.

How to implement age restrictions has caused a conflict between Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, and Apple and Google, which own the two dominant US app stores.

Meta and the social media companies Snap and X applauded the passage of the bill.

“Parents want a one-stop shop to verify their child’s age and grant permission for them to download apps in a privacy-preserving way. The app store is the best place for it, and more than one-third of US states have introduced bills recognising the central role app stores play,” the companies said.

Kathleen Farley, vice president of litigation for the Chamber of Progress, a group backed by Apple and Alphabet, said the Texas law is likely to face legal challenges on First Amendment grounds.

“A big path for challenge is that it burdens adult speech in attempting to regulate children’s speech,” Farley told the Reuters news agency in an interview on Tuesday. “I would say there are arguments that this is a content-based regulation singling out digital communication.”

Child online safety groups that backed the Texas bill have also long argued for app store age verification, saying it is the only way to give parents effective control over children’s use of technology.

“The problem is that self-regulation in the digital marketplace has failed, where app stores have just prioritised the profit over safety and rights of children and families,” Casey Stefanski, executive director for the Digital Childhood Alliance, told Reuters.

Apple and Google opposed the Texas bill, saying it imposes blanket requirements to share age data with all apps, even when those apps are uncontroversial.

“If enacted, app marketplaces will be required to collect and keep sensitive personal identifying information for every Texan who wants to download an app, even if it’s an app that simply provides weather updates or sports scores,” Apple said in a statement.

Google and Apple each have their own proposal that involves sharing age range data only with apps that require it, rather than all apps.

“We see a role for legislation here,” Kareem Ghanem, senior director of government affairs and public policy at Google, told Reuters.

“It’s just got to be done in the right way, and it’s got to hold the feet of [Meta CEO Mark] Zuckerberg and the social media companies to the fire because it’s the harm to kids and teens on those sites that’s really inspired people to take a closer look here and see how we can all do better.”

PORTLAND, Ore. — One program distributes laptops in rural Iowa. Another helped people get back online after Hurricane Helene washed away computers and phones in western North Carolina. Programs in Oregon and rural Alabama teach older people, including some who have never touched a computer, how to navigate in an increasingly digital world.

It all came crashing down this month when President Trump — on his own digital platform, Truth Social — announced his intention to end the Digital Equity Act, a federal grant program meant to help bridge the digital divide. He branded it as “RACIST and ILLEGAL” and said it amounts to “woke handouts based on race.” He said it was an “ILLEGAL $2.5 BILLION DOLLAR giveaway.” The program was funded with $2.75 billion.

The name seemed innocuous enough when the program was approved by Congress in 2021 as part of a $65-billion investment meant to bring internet access to every home and business in the United States. The broadband program was a key component of the $1-trillion infrastructure law enacted under the Biden administration.

The Digital Equity Act was intended to fill gaps and cover unmet needs that surfaced during the massive broadband rollout. It gave states and tribes flexibility to deliver high-speed internet access to families that could not afford it, computers to kids who did not have them, telehealth access to older adults in rural areas, and training and job skills to veterans.

Whether Trump has the legal authority to end the program remains unknown. But for now the Republican administration can simply stop spending the money.

“I just felt my heart break for what we were finally, finally in this country, going to address, the digital divide,” said Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, a nonprofit that was awarded — but has not received — a $25.7-million grant to work with groups across the country to help provide access to technology. “The digital divide is not just physical access to the internet, it is being able to use that to do what you need to do.”

The word ‘equity’

While the name of the program probably got it targeted — the Trump administration has been aggressively scrubbing the government of programs that promote diversity, equity or inclusion — the Digital Equity Act was supposed to be broader in scope.

Though Trump called it racist, the words “race” or “racial” appear just twice in the law’s text: once, alongside “color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability,” in a passage stating that no groups should be excluded from funding; and later, in a list of covered populations, along with older adults, veterans, people with disabilities, English learners, people with low literacy levels and rural Americans.

“Digital Equity passed with overwhelming bipartisan support,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the act’s chief proponent, noted in a statement. “And that’s because my Republican colleagues have heard the same stories as I have — like kids in rural communities forced to drive to McDonalds parking lots for Wi-Fi to do their homework.

“It is insane — absolutely nuts — that Trump is blocking resources to help make sure kids in rural school districts can get hot spots or laptops, all because he doesn’t like the word equity!”

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which administers the program, declined to comment. It’s not clear how much of the $2.75 billion has been awarded, though in March 2024 the NTIA announced the allocation of $811 million to states, territories and tribes.

‘More confident’

On a recent morning in Portland, Ore., Brandon Dorn was among those taking a keyboard basics class offered by Free Geek, a nonprofit that provides free courses to help people learn to use computers. The class was offered at a low-income housing building to make it accessible for residents.

Dorn and the others were given laptops and shown the different functions of keys: control, shift and caps lock, how to copy and paste. They played a typing game that taught finger and key placement on a color-coded keyboard.

Dorn, 63, said the classes helped because “in this day and age, everything has to go through the computer.” He said it helped him feel more confident and less dependent on his children or grandchildren to do things such as making appointments online.

“Folks my age, we didn’t get this luxury because we were too busy working, raising the family,” he said. “So this is a great way to help us help ourselves.”

Juan Muro, Free Geek’s executive director, said participants get the tools and skills they need to access things like online banking, job applications, online education programs and telehealth. He said Trump’s move to end funding has put nonprofits such as Free Geek in a precarious position, forcing them to make up the difference through fundraising and “beg for money to just provide individuals with essential stuff.”

Sara Nichols works for the Land of Sky Regional Council, a multi-county planning and development organization in western North Carolina. On the Friday before Trump’s inauguration in January, the organization received notice that it was approved for a grant. But like other groups the Associated Press contacted, it has not seen any money.

Land of Sky had spent a lot of resources helping people recover from last year’s storms. The award notice, Nichols said, came as “incredible news.”

“But between this and the state losing, getting their letters terminated, we feel just, like, stuck. What are we going to do? How are we going to move forward? How are we going to let our communities continue to fall behind?”

Filling unmet needs

More than one-fifth of Americans do not have broadband internet access at home, according to the Pew Research Center. In rural communities, the number jumps to 27%.

Beyond giving people access to technology and fast internet, many programs funded by the Digital Equity Act sought to provide “digital navigators” — human helpers to guide people new to the online world.

“In the United States we do not have a consistent source of funding to help individuals get online, understand how to be safe online and how to use that technology to accomplish all the things that are required now as part of life that are online,” said Siefer of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. This includes providing families with internet hot spots so they can get online at home and helping seniors avoid online scams, she said.

“Health, workforce, education, jobs, everything, right?” Siefer said. “This law was going to be the start for the U.S. to figure out this issue. It’s a new issue in the big scheme of things, because now technology is no longer a nice-to-have. You have to have the internet and you have to know how to use the technology just to survive, let alone to thrive today.”

Siefer said the word “equity” in the name probably prompted Trump to target the program for elimination.

“But it means that he didn’t actually look at what this program does,” she said. “Because who doesn’t want Grandma to be safe online? Who doesn’t want a veteran to be able to talk to their doctor rather than get in a car and drive two hours? Who doesn’t want students to be able to do their homework?”

Ortutay and Rush write for the Associated Press and reported from San Francisco and Portland, Ore., respectively.

SANTIAGO, Chile, May 23 (UPI) — Antofagasta, a city in northern Chile, has become the first in Latin America to meet 100% of its drinking water needs with desalinated seawater.

A $130 million investment expanded an existing desalination plant, originally built in 2003, to supply potable water to the city’s 500,000 residents, Public Works Minister Jessica López has announced.

Situated in one of the driest regions in the world, northern Chile faces growing freshwater scarcity. In response, major mining companies, partnering with the government, have turned to innovative and sustainable solutions to secure water for local communities and mining operations.

“Investment from mining companies in these types of projects is crucial. It ensures a permanent and stable water source for operations and benefits the community by freeing up freshwater for human consumption, farming and livestock. It also eases pressure on aquifers and rivers,” said Jorge Vargas, spokesperson for the non-governmental organization Red Ciudadana.

The North Desalination Plant increased its seawater treatment capacity to 1,436 liters per second this year from 602 liters per second in 2003.

Seventy percent of Chile’s 24 desalination plants serve the mining sector, which uses about 4% of the country’s total water. In Antofagasta, major copper producers like Codelco and BHP have reduced their reliance on continental freshwater sources. The model has been adopted in other mining cities in the region, including Tocopilla and Taltal.

Amid a nationwide water crisis, other regions are launching their own desalination projects. In Coquimbo, the government has opened bidding on a $350 million plant that could serve 600,000 people.

That project attracted interest from 43 companies across 12 countries, including firms from China, Europe, Israel, the United States and Chile.

Chile’s Ministry of Public Works projects that by the end of the decade, most major cities in northern Chile will be partially or fully supplied with desalinated seawater.

It was the second time in one day that the FTC pulled out of litigation begun during the Biden administration.

The Republican-controlled Federal Trade Commission is abandoning a Biden-era effort to block Microsoft’s purchase of Call of Duty video game maker Activision Blizzard.

In an order issued Thursday, the FTC said it had determined that “the public interest is best served by dismissing the administrative litigation in this case.”

It was the second time in one day that the FTC pulled out of litigation begun during the administration of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat. Earlier Thursday, the FTC said it was dismissing a lawsuit against PepsiCo that was filed by the Democratic-controlled FTC in January.

Microsoft announced a $69bn acquisition of Activision in January 2022. It was one of the most expensive tech acquisitions in history and was designed to boost sales of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console, which has lagged in sales behind Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo.

In December 2022, the FTC – then led by Democratic Chairwoman Lina Khan – sued to temporarily block the acquisition, saying it would let Microsoft suppress competitors who want access to Xbox and its subscription content.

In July 2023, the United States District Court in Northern California denied the FTC’s request to pause the acquisition, but the FTC appealed. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court also denied the FTC’s request.

In the meantime, Microsoft completed its purchase of Activision in October 2023 after it won approval from the United Kingdom’s competition watchdog, which had also considered blocking the merger.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chairman and president, said Thursday in a statement on X that the decision is a victory for video game players and for “common sense in Washington DC”.

“We are grateful to the FTC for today’s announcement,” Smith said.

Political actions

Khan stepped down from the FTC when President Donald Trump took office in January, and Trump fired Democratic Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya in March. Bedoya and Slaughter have sued the Trump administration, saying their removal was illegal.

Right now, the FTC is made up of three Republican commissioners, and it’s unclear when the two Democrats on the commission will be replaced. A message seeking comment was left with the FTC.

In the PepsiCo case, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said the Biden-era FTC rushed to authorise a case just three days before Trump’s inauguration. He said on Thursday that the case, which alleged that PepsiCo was violating the law by giving unfair price advantages to Walmart, was a “dubious political stunt”.

But the FTC hasn’t stood in the way of some Biden-era policies. Earlier this month, a rule the FTC announced in December requiring ticket sellers, hotels, vacation rental platforms and others to disclose their fees upfront went into effect.

US President Donald Trump announces his latest defence plan: The Golden Dome.

Estimated at a cost of $175bn, it is designed to shoot down advanced missiles headed towards the United States.

Using both ground and space to detect incoming projectiles, it will far surpass a similar system used in Israel known as the Iron Dome.

But critics say it could prove ineffective and upset the balance of world power.

So, might the scheme lead to the militarisation of space and threaten the global order?

And could there be other motives behind Trump’s announcement?

Presenter:

Elizabeth Puranam

Guests:

Michael O’Hanlon, Senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution

Youngshik Bong, Research fellow at the Yonsei University Institute for North Korean Studies

Marina Miron, Post-doctoral researcher at the war studies department at King’s College London

Most of us don’t even know that carbon monoxide (CO) is one of the prominent causes of workplace poisoning and the resulting fatalities globally. Our industries are filled with machinery and processes that emit carbon monoxide, the silent killer. To prevent this silent killer, whose small amount can also be fatal, our industries should employ a Carbon Monoxide (CO) Gas Detector.

What is carbon monoxide? Remember this: it is a highly poisonous, colorless, and odorless byproduct that human beings can’t detect without actually getting poisoned. A carbon monoxide gas detector helps humans identify a potential CO gas leak so we can take necessary preventative actions.

So how does a carbon monoxide gas detector actually “know” when CO is present? Most industrial-grade CO detectors use what’s called an electrochemical sensor. Inside the sensor, there’s a small chamber with two electrodes and an electrolyte. When carbon monoxide gas enters the chamber, it reacts with the chemicals inside and causes a small electric current to flow.

Electrochemical CO sensor cross-section, illustrating electrodes, electrolyte, and gas diffusion layer. Current output is proportional to CO concentration. Image credit: gasdog.com

Here’s the smart part: the strength of that current is directly proportional to the amount of CO in the air. So the more CO you have, the stronger the signal gets. The detector reads this signal in real time, and if it crosses a preset safety threshold, it triggers the alarm. This type of sensor is highly accurate, reliable over time, and doesn’t produce false alarms easily, which makes it ideal for use in busy, high-risk industrial environments.

To know the intensity of the damage this silent killer can cause, know that even a small amount can inflict irreversible brain damage or sudden death. Yes, death! Read on to know why you need to install a CO gas detector in your industry.

Reason 1 – This Threat Is Invisible And Demands Vigilance

Carbon monoxide (CO) gas detectors are necessary in industrial zones because of the basic nature of this gas. Can’t be seen! This hidden peril is dominating the poisonous gas market because it is colorless, odorless, and tasteless, like air. You will think that you are breathing fresh air, but it can be the lethal CO gas that damages your health within seconds.

Human senses are without any doubt incapable of seeing through this looming danger as it goes undetected. Our industry workers are focused on their work in the sounds and smells of various industrial processes. Not a single employee can notice this gas that is invisible in such a busy setting. They won’t get any sensory cues and will be breathing lethal levels of CO.

We are not just saying out of the blue, we have read a report by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that:

“Because it is colorless, odorless, and non-irritating, people can be exposed to CO without warning.”

This invisibility is the main reason it begins to poison you without you even realizing it. Workers inhale it, which gets mixed up with hemoglobin in their red blood cells. This forms carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) in your body. This means oxygen won’t get transported throughout the body.

Initially, a person won’t understand what is happening to their bodies. They will consider the poison symptoms as common ailments. These common symptoms include flu, fatigue, headache, nausea, etc. As the person doesn’t understand, staying in this state for a bit longer worsens symptoms. In the worst-case scenario, the person will suffer severe incapacitating symptoms such as confusion, loss of coordination, chest pain, and even loss of consciousness.

But this works faster than we think, and before you understand, you are about to collapse. Given the lack of detectability, industrial settings must have a Carbon Monoxide (CO) Gas Detector.

Reason 2 – Almost Every Industry Produces CO Risks

Reason 3 – Early Detection To Prevent Severe Health Consequences

For example, it will detect the CO gas levels. Many companies, including Gas Dog, have developed upgraded CO gas detectors designed specifically for industrial environments where early detection can save lives.

These detectors use electrochemical sensors, which are known for their high accuracy and low false alarm rates, making them ideal for noisy, high-interference settings like warehouses or factories. They can detect carbon monoxide concentrations from 0 up to 1000 ppm, with a fine sensitivity of just 1 ppm—so even small leaks won’t go unnoticed. What sets these devices apart isn’t just detection, but smart functionality. Most models come with built-in data logging, which helps safety teams monitor exposure levels over time and analyze trends after an event.

And when danger strikes, they respond fast. With audible alarms, visual warning lights, These devices have pre-determined safety thresholds that, upon breaching, the alarm goes on. And, these thresholds have sensory triggers that turn on the alert mode with loud alarm sounds, loud enough to wake even the sleeping workers in every nook and corner. The alarm makes a sound around 85 decibels that is louder than normal industrial noise levels. Once the alarm is on, the entire setting is evacuated to identify the source of the leak and take necessary steps to make the setting gas-free.

Reason 4 – Legal Responsibility Mandate Action As Per Regulations

Conclusion

May 21 (UPI) — Microsoft, the Department of Justice and others have thwarted the use of the Lumma Stealer malware that globally has infected nearly 400,000 computers.

The tech giant’s Digital Crimes Unit seized and helped take down, suspend and block about 2,300 “malicious domains” that were the backbone of Lumma’s infrastructure, said Steven Masada, assistant general counsel for Microsoft’s DCU.

Microsoft on May 13 filed a federal lawsuit against Lumma Stealer in the U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia, itnews reported.

Microsoft says Lumma Stealer is a “malware as a service” that can steal data from browsers, cryptocurrency wallets and other applications by installing malware.

The tech firm from March 15 through Friday identified more than 394,000 Windows computers around the world that were infected with the Lumma malware.

The Department of Justice on Wednesday unsealed two warrants authorizing the seizure of five Internet domains used by cybercriminals to operate the Lumma malware service, which also is called “LummaC2.”

The Lumma malware “is deployed to steal sensitive information, such as user login credentials from millions of victims in order to facilitate a host of crimes,” said Matthew Galeotti, leader of the DOJ’s Criminal Division, in a news release.

Those crimes include fraudulent bank transfers and cryptocurrency theft, Galeotti said.

“The Justice Department is resolved to use court-ordered disruptions like this one to protect the public from the theft of their personal information and their assets,” he added.

The DOJ’s affidavit seeking the two seizure warrants accuses the administrators of LummaC2 of using the seized websites to distribute the malware to their affiliates and other cyber criminals.

Browser data, autofill info, login credentials for email and banking services, and cryptocurrency seed phrases that open crypto wallets were common targets affected by the malware, according to the DOJ.

FBI investigators also identified at least 1.7 million instances in which the malware enabled cybercriminals to steal such information.

The DOJ on Monday seized two online domains used to distribute the malware, which caused the Lumma operators to direct users to three new domains on Tuesday.

The DOJ seized the three new domains on Wednesday.

Europol’s European Cybercrime Center and Japan’s Cybercrime Control Center enabled the takedown of Lumma infrastructure within their respective jurisdictions, Microsoft officials said.

May 20 (UPI) — The United States and United Arab Emirates are deepening their commercial and defensive ties following President Donald Trump‘s recent diplomatic trip to the Middle East.

Officials with the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit and the UAE’s Tawazun Council signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen defense cooperation between the two nations, the Department of Defense announced Tuesday in a news release.

“We are building a global network by fostering collaboration to stay ahead of emerging threats,” DIU Director Doug Beck said.

“We are accelerating the integration of commercial technologies into the defense markets,” Beck added.

He said the accelerated integration of technologies will occur by working together to develop technologies with the help of national security and private sector experts and non-traditional companies.

The MOU includes using “non-traditional practices” to develop and access “cutting-edge technologies” to improve both nations’ defensive capabilities.

The collaborative effort expands defensive investments and industrial partnerships while building a “strong international community of defense innovation entities, according to the DOD.

The Defense Department “is enhancing best practices for harnessing and sharing the best commercially derived technologies for the warfighter in defense of the free and open international system through mission-driven collaboration among the many nations that rely on that system,” the DOD release said.

Trump on Thursday also announced $200 billion in commercial agreements between the United States and the UAE.

The agreement includes forming an artificial intelligence alliance and launching a 1-gigawatt and jointly run AI technology cluster that will be located in the UAE’s capital of Abu Dhabi.

Other elements of the $200 billion deal include the UAE’s Etihad Airways spending $14.5 billion to buy 28 U.S.-built Boeing 787 and 777X aircraft powered by GE Aerospace engines.

Emirates Global Aluminum will invest another $4 billion to develop an aluminum smelter in Oklahoma and double that nation’s annual aluminum production capability.

UAE entities also will collaborate with U.S.-based oil and natural gas producers to expand production of both inside the United States and to lower energy costs in both nations.

Many other deals were secured during Trump’s visit to the Middle East last week and total $2 trillion in investment agreements, according to White House officials.

Picture a four‑lane highway at 5 p.m. The sun is dipping, brake lights flare, and every driver wonders the same thing—Why can’t this road move faster? Engineers answer that question with highway capacity analysis. By measuring how many vehicles a road can carry while staying safe and comfortable, they guide billion‑dollar investments and everyday signal‑timing tweaks alike.

Whether it’s Transportation engineering services in Florida working to untangle I-95 or a city planner fine-tuning a small-town corridor, the same principle holds: without solid capacity numbers, agencies over- or under-build. Budgets blow up, and the public loses faith. With them, planners can widen lanes only where they earn payback, fine-tune merge zones to shave minutes off commutes, and prioritize bus routes that truly cut congestion. Capacity analysis is the flashlight that shows where every extra dollar or lane will do the most good.

Highway Capacity Analysis Core Ideas—Demystified

Data Collection: The Bedrock of Good Numbers

Analytical Techniques in Plain English

1. Deterministic (HCM‑Style) Methods

2. Microscopic Simulation

3. Mesoscopic and Macroscopic Models

4. Hybrid AI Boosters

From Field to Model—and Back Again

Emerging Trends You Should Track Now

Turning Numbers Into Smoother Journeys

May 19 (UPI) — The National Weather Service in Alabama warned Monday that weather radio broadcasts are offline for routine maintenance as severe storms are forecast to hit the state Tuesday.

The weather service said while all watches and warnings will be released over the next few days, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Radio transmitters will be offline during that time. Severe storms are forecast Tuesday for much of Alabama.

“NWS local offices plan to inform listeners both on-air and on their websites when updates are scheduled,” according to the NOAA Weather Radio website. NOAA Weather Radio is a network of stations that broadcasts warnings and weather information from the National Weather Service. The Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System, or AWIPS, went offline Monday and will remain down through Wednesday.

“Our Weather Radio broadcasts have concluded and will remain unavailable until our system updates are complete,” NWS Birmingham wrote Monday in a post on X. “Weather products will continue to be transmitted via the Internet, weather apps and wireless emergency alerts.”

“During the time of the update, forecast operations will be conducted in conjunction with our service back-up office in Peachtree City in Georgia to minimize any potential interruption to services,” the National Weather Service said Monday. “No impacts to our core services of forecast products and weather watches, warnings and advisories are expected during this period.”

The software updates will impact transmitters across northern and central Alabama. The NWS said its forecast office in Birmingham will remain open and staffed during the maintenance.

Approximately 31 million people from Texas, north to Iowa, could see severe storms starting Monday with forecasts showing strong winds, hail and tornadoes. That risk will shift Tuesday to Louisiana and north into Alabama and Indiana.

The NWS is urging Alabama residents to gather several weather sources — the Internet, weather apps and local emergency management — to ensure they receive all severe weather warnings in order to stay safe over the next few days.

Deadly storms and tornadoes over the weekend hit 10 different states, including Texas, Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky, where at least 28 people were killed.

May 19 (UPI) — U.S. officials announced Monday that Louisiana’s McNeese State University will be site of the federal government’s new national center for liquefied natural gas safety.

The university in Lake Charles was selected by officials to be the site of the “National Center of Excellence for Liquefied Natural Gas Safety” as a subsidiary part of the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

“The sheer volume of product supplied by the state of Louisiana is unparalleled and growing, and there is no better place to locate our Center of Excellence,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

McNeese State, the first U.S. undergraduate institution to offer a certificate program in the business of liquefied natural gas, is already the site of its own LNG Center of Excellence.

It was described as a “game-changer” for the region in terms of workforce development and “groundbreaking research.”

“We are excited to be on the forefront of helping ensure safety and sustainability in the energy sector and look forward to working with PHMSA to develop a world-class facility to house their staff,” Dr. Wade Rousse, president of McNeese State University, said Monday.

2020’s Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act, otherwise known as the PIPE Act, established the center with the aim to “enhance” the United States as the “leader and foremost expert” in LNG operations to facilitate research and development, training, regulatory coordination and to encourage development of LNG safety solutions.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., explained that in 2020 Congress passed the PIPES Act which, he claimed, “improved pipeline safety and infrastructure” in the United States as he also thanked the Trump administration.

The Louisiana Republican, 73, was critical of the Biden administration’s perceived “hostility” toward fossil fuel industry industry.

Last year, the current president solicited $1 billion and got hundreds of millions of dollars from the oil and gas industry in the 2024 campaign while promising to roll back fossil fuel regulations in his effort to stamp out climate change policy.

The U.S. Department of the Interior announced last week it had expedited oil and gas production on public land in vehement opposition to environmental experts and activists.

Meanwhile, the Trump Energy Department in February signed-off on a Biden policy to permit the use of liquified natural gas as marine fuel in order to reduce LNG regulations targeting motor boats.

Kennedy, who reportedly received more than $300,000 in campaign contributions via the fossil fuel industry from 2021-2022, added that as part of the legislation was language that was included to create the “first-ever” National Center of Excellence for LNG Safety in Louisiana under PHMSA, which by 2013 had marked a record number of 116 enforcement orders against American pipeline operators for various safety violations by the federal regulator.

“The Center will advance LNG safety by promoting collaboration among government agencies, industry, academia, and other safety partners,” stated PHMSA’s Acting Administrator Ben Kochman.

“Consolidating such remarkable levels of expertise,” according to Kochman, will “benefit the LNG sector for many generations to come.”

In 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis in Europe, as a record 1.3 million people, mostly Syrians fleeing civil war, sought asylum, Pau Aleikum Garcia was in Athens, helping those arriving in the Greek capital after a perilous sea journey.

The then 25-year-old Spanish volunteer arranged housing for refugees in abandoned facilities like schools and libraries, and set up community kitchens, language classes and art activities.

“It was kind of a massive cascade of people,” Garcia recalls.

“My own memory of that time is oddly patchy,” he admits. Though there was one encounter that stood out.

In one of those schools in Athens’ Exarcheia neighbourhood, where refugees painted the external wall to illustrate their memories of their journeys, Garcia met a Syrian woman in her late 70s.

“I’m not afraid of being a refugee. I have lived all my life. I’m happy with what I have lived,” he recalls her telling him. “I’m afraid that my grandkids will be refugees for all their life.”

When he tried to reassure her that they would find a place to start anew, she protested: “No, no, I’m worried, because when my grandkids grow [up] and they ask themselves, ‘Where do I come from?’ they won’t be able to answer that question.”

The woman told him how, during the family’s journey to Greece, all but one of their photo albums were lost.

Now, she said, all the memories of their lives in Syria existed only in her and her husband’s minds, unrecorded and unrecoverable for the next generation.

Connecting generations

The woman’s story stayed with Garcia after he returned to Barcelona and his work as cofounder of the design studio, Domestic Data Streamers (DDS).

Over the years, the studio has grown into a 30-person team of experts in varied disciplines such as psychology, architecture, cognitive science, journalism and design. The studio has collaborated with diverse institutions such as museums, prisons and churches, as well as the likes of the United Nations, and uses technology to bring “emotions and humanity” to data visualisation.

Then, in around 2019, with the rise of generative artificial intelligence – a model of machine learning that uses algorithms to create new content from data scraped from the internet – the team began to explore image-generating technology, following the release of ChatGPT.

As they did, Garcia thought of the grandmother from Syria and how this technology might help someone like her by constructing images based on memories.

He believes that memories – captured through records like photographs – play an integral role in connecting generations.

“Memories are the architects of who we are. … It’s a big part of how social identities are built,” he says.

He also likes to cite Montserrat Roig, a Catalan author, who wrote that the biggest act of love is to remember something.

But in the past, people had fewer opportunities to document their lives than their mobile phone-wielding contemporaries, he says. Many experiences have been omitted or erased from collective memory due to lack of access, persecution, censorship or marginalisation.

So with this in mind, in 2022, Garcia and his team launched the Synthetic Memories project to use AI to generate photographic representations of memories that were lost, due to missing photos, for instance, or never recorded in the first place.

“I don’t think there was an eureka moment,” Garcia says of the evolution of the idea. “I’ve always been intrigued by how documentaries reconstruct the past … our goal and approach were more focused on the subjective and personal side, trying to capture the emotional layers of memory.”

For Garcia, the chance to recover such memories is an important act in reclaiming one’s past. “The fact that you have an image that tells this happened to me, this is my memory, and this is shown and other people can see it, is also a way to say to you, ‘Yes, this happened’. It’s a way of saying, of having more dignity about the part of your history that has not been depicted.”

Building memories

To create a synthetic memory, DDS uses open-source image-generating AI systems such as DALL-E 2 and Flux, while the team is developing its own tool.

The process starts with an interviewer asking a subject to recall their earliest memory. They explore various narratives as people recount their life stories before picking the one they think can be best encapsulated in an image.

The interviewer works with a prompter – someone trained in the syntax that the AI uses to create visuals – who inputs specific words to build the image from the details described by the interviewee.

Nearly everything, such as hairstyles, clothing, and furniture, is recreated as accurately as possible. However, figures themselves are usually depicted from behind or, if faces are shown, with a degree of blurriness.

This is intentional. “We want to be very clear that this is a synthetic memory and this is not real photography,” says Garcia. This is partly because they want to ensure their generated images don’t add to the proliferation of fake photos on the internet.

The resulting images – usually two or three from each session, which can last up to an hour – can appear dreamlike and undefined.

“As we know, memory is very, very, very fragile and full of imperfections,” Garcia explains. “That was the other reason why we wanted a model that could be full of imperfections and also a bit fragile, so it’s a good demonstration of how our memory works.”

Garcia’s team found that people who took part in the project said they felt a stronger connection to less detailed images, their suggestive nature allowing for their imagination to fill in the blanks. The higher the resolution, the more someone focuses on the details, losing that emotional connection to the image, Airi Dordas, the project’s lead, explains.

The team first trialled this technology with their grandparents. The experience was moving, Garcia says, and one that grew into medical trials to determine whether synthetic memories can be used as an augmentation tool in reminiscence therapy for dementia sufferers.

From there, the team went on to work with Bolivian and Korean communities in Brazil to tell their stories of migration, before partnering with Barcelona’s city council to document local memories. The sessions were open to the public and held last summer at the Design Museum in Barcelona, generating more than 300 memories.

Some wanted to work through traumatic experiences, like one woman who was abused by a relative who avoided jail and wanted to recreate a memory of him in court to share with her family. Others recalled moments from their childhood, like 105-year-old Pepita, who recreated the day she saw a train for the first time. Couples came to relive shared experiences.

There was always a moment, Ainoa Pubill Unzeta, who carried out interviews in Barcelona, says, “when people actually saw a picture that they would relate to, you could feel it … you can see it”. For some, it was just a smile; others cried. For her, this was confirmation that the image was done well.

One of the first memories Garcia recorded during their pilot sessions was that of Carmen, now in her 90s. She remembers going up to a stranger’s balcony as a child, her mother having paid the owners to let them in, because it looked into the courtyard of the jail where her father, a doctor for the Republican front during the Spanish Civil War, was being held. This was the only way the family could see him from his cell window.

By incredible coincidence, Carmen’s son was employed in the same prison as a social worker decades later, but neither son nor mother knew that. When the whole family came to see an installation at the Public Office of Synthetic Memories last year, her son recognised the prison immediately from his mother’s reconstruction. “It was a kind of closing the loop … it was beautiful,” Garcia says.

Clandestine assemblies

The team was particularly interested in telling stories of civic activists who have played a key role in different social movements in the city over the last 50 years, including those concerning LGBTQ and workers’ rights. While initially the focus was not on the dictatorship era, it “naturally brought us to engage with people who, by the historical circumstances, were activists against the regime,” Dordas explains.

One of them was 74-year-old Jose Carles Vallejo Calderon.

Born in Barcelona in 1950 to Republican parents who faced oppression under General Francisco Franco, Vallejo came of age during one of Europe’s longest dictatorships, which lasted from 1939 to 1975. During the civil war of 1936-39, and following the defeat of the Republican forces by Franco’s Nationalists, enforced disappearances, forced labour, torture and extrajudicial killings claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people.

Vallejo became involved in opposition to the fascist regime first at university, where he attempted to organise a democratic student union, and then as a young worker at Barcelona’s SEAT automobile factory.

He recalls an atmosphere of fear, with most people terrified of speaking out against the authoritarian government. “That fear sprang from the terrible defeat in the Spanish Civil War and from the many deaths that occurred during the war, but also from the harsh repression from the post-war period up to the end of the dictatorship,” he explains.

Informants were everywhere, and the circle of trusted individuals was small. “As you can imagine, this is no way to live – this was living in darkness, silence, fear, and repression,” Vallejo says.

“There were few of us – very few – who dared to move from silence to activism, which involved many risks.”

Vallejo was imprisoned in 1970 for attempting to set up a labour union among SEAT employees, spending half a year in jail, including 20 days being tortured by Barcelona’s secret police. After another arrest in late 1971 and the prosecution demanding 20 years for what were then considered crimes of association, organisation and propaganda, Vallejo crossed the border with France in January 1972. He ultimately gained political asylum in Italy, where he lived in exile before returning to Spain following the first limited amnesty of 1976, which granted pardons to political prisoners after Franco’s death in 1975.

Today, Vallejo dedicates his time to human rights activism. He presides over the Catalan Association of Former Political Prisoners of Francoism, created in the final years of the dictatorship.

He learned about synthetic memories through Iridia, a human rights organisation that collaborated with DDS to help visualise memories of police abuse victims during the regime in a central Barcelona police station.

Vallejo was drawn to the project, curious about how the technology might be applied to capturing resistance activities too dangerous to record during Franco’s rule.

In 1970, SEAT workers organised clandestine breakfasts in the woods of Vallvidrera. On Sunday mornings, disguised as hikers, they would make their way through the dense forests surrounding the Catalan capital to discuss the struggle against the dictatorship.

“I think I must have been to more than 10 or 15 of these forest gatherings,” Vallejo recalls. Other times, they met in churches. No records of these exist.

Vallejo’s synthetic memory of these meetings is in black and white. The image is vague, almost like someone has taken an eraser to it to blur the details. But it is still possible to make out the scene: a crowd of people gathered in a forest. Some sit, others stand beneath a canopy of trees.

Looking at the image, Vallejo says he felt transported to the clandestine assemblies in the Barcelona woods, where as many as 50 or 60 people would gather in a tense atmosphere.

“I found myself truly immersed in the image,” he says.

“It was like entering a kind of time tunnel,” he adds.

Vallejo suffered memory loss around the ordeal of his arrests, imprisonment and torture.

The process of creating the image provided “a feeling – not exactly of relief – but rather of reconciling memory with the past and perhaps also of filling that void created by selective amnesia, which results from complicated, traumatic, and above all, distant experiences”. He found the reconstruction a “valuable experience” that helped him process some of these events.

‘We are not reconstructing the past’

Emphasising that memory is subjective, Garcia says, “One of the things that we are kind of drawing a very big red line about is historical reconstruction.”

This is partly due to the drawbacks of AI, which reinforces cultural and other biases in the data it draws from.

David Leslie, director of ethics and responsible innovation research at the Alan Turing Institute, the United Kingdom centre for data science and AI, cautions that using data that was initially biased against marginalised groups could create revisionist histories or false memories for those communities. Nor can “simply generating something from AI” help to remedy or reclaim historical narratives, he insists.

For DDS, “It is never about the bigger story. We are not reconstructing the past,” Garcia explains.

“When we talk about history, we talk about one truth that somehow we are committed to,” he elaborates. But while synthetic memories can depict a part of the human experience that history books cannot, these memories come from the individual, not necessarily what transpired, he underlines.

The team believes synthetic memories could not only help communities whose memories are at risk but also create dialogue between cultures and generations.

They plan to set up “emergency” memory clinics in places where cultural heritage is in danger of being eroded by natural disasters, such as in southern Brazil, which was last year hit by floods. There are also hopes to make their finished tool freely available to nursing homes.

But Garcia wonders what place the project could have in a future where there is an “over-registration” of everything that happens. “I have 10 images of my father when he was a kid,” he says. “I have over 200 when I was a kid. But my friend, of her daughter, [has] 25,000, and she’s five years old!”

“I think the problem of memory image will be another one, which will be that we are … [overwhelmed] and we cannot find the right image to tell us the story,” he muses.

Yet in the present moment, Vallejo believes the project has a role to play in helping younger generations understand past injustices. Forgetting serves no purpose for activists like himself, he believes, while memory is like “a weapon for the future”.

Instead of trying to numb the past, “I think it is more therapeutic – both collectively and individually – to remember rather than to forget.”

May 16 (UPI) — The United States and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to form an Artificial Intelligence alliance.

The U.S. Department of Commerce announced in a statement that the United States will launch a one-gigawatt AI data center, which in turn will be a part of a five-gigawatt “UAE-U.S. artificial intelligence technology cluster” in the UAE capital city of Abu Dhabi.

The cluster will manage the region’s computation needs that will operate under American-level security standards and be open to the distribution of new AI infrastructure that can serve on an international level.

A group will be formed between the countries within 30 days of its announcement and will “work together to make more efficient the process of inward investments into the United States by UAE Investment Funds,” which also involves UAE investment in American digital infrastructure.

“We are proud to announce the US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick posted to X Thursday. “Together we will build the largest AI data center outside the United States, powered by American companies and high tech manufacturing.”

The deal was made public as President Donald Trump continues a trip through the Gulf region and stopped to visit a new AI campus in Abu Dhabi, where American-produced AI chips will computationally power the facility and become the largest project of its type anywhere outside the United States.

The Biden administration had set an “AI Diffusion Rule” in January, under which the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security added exceptions to the facilitation in regard to the export, reexport of transfer of “advanced computing” to ensure the tech ended up with “users in destinations that do not raise national security or foreign policy concerns.”

The Trump administration rescinded that rule Tuesday, a deregulation that now allows the federal government to make deals with other countries to decide how many American chips they would like to purchase.

“The Trump Administration will pursue a bold, inclusive strategy to American AI technology with trusted foreign countries around the world, while keeping the technology out of the hands of our adversaries,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffery Kessler in a Tuesday press release.