DALLAS, Sept. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — The National Math and Science Initiative has named veteran fundraiser Laure O’Neal as its first chief development officer, charging her and a restructured fundraising team with diversifying the organization’s funding sources.
NMSI was founded in 2007 with generous support from the ExxonMobil Foundation, Texas Instruments Foundation and other corporate and philanthropic organizations. It continues to receive financial support from those and other organizations and is expanding its fundraising to more quickly reach additional students, teachers and school systems across the country.
“Laure brings two decades of experience in connecting corporate, foundation and individual givers with academic institutions and other organizations that support individuals and communities,” said NMSI CEO Bernard A. Harris, Jr. “I’m excited about the energy and expertise Laure brings to secure new support to reach more communities with our programs.”
In a major strategy shift, Sberbank, the most popular Russian lender, wants to build its own ecosystem going far beyond the world of finance and to be known not just as a bank, but also as a tech company.
During its first major online event, which was held on Thursday, Sberbank – now rebranded as Sber – presented a range of services and gadgets signaling it wants to go deeper into the tech sector. For example, the bank presented a family of “emotional” virtual assistants, called ‘Salute’, which will be incorporated into all of Sberbank’s devices and mobile apps.
There are three assistants in the Salute family, called Sber, Joy, and Athena. Unlike Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, the company is betting on the “emotional” features of the virtual assistants, as each has its own “temper,” allowing users to choose the one they find most suitable.
Financial crime as a wider category of cybercrime continues to be one of the most potent of online threats, covering nefarious activities as diverse as fraud, money laundering and funding terrorism. Today, one of the startups that has been building data intelligence solutions to help combat that is announcing a fundraise to continue fueling its growth.
Ripjar, a U.K. company founded by five data scientists who previously worked together in British intelligence at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, the U.K.’s equivalent of the NSA), has raised $36.8 million (£28 million) in a Series B, money that it plans to use to continue expanding the scope of its AI platform — which it calls Labyrinth — and scaling the business.
Labyrinth, as Ripjar describes it, works with both structured and unstructured data, using natural language processing and an API-based platform that lets organizations incorporate any data source they would like to analyse and monitor for activity. It automatically and in real time checks these against other data sources like sanctions lists, politically exposed persons (PEPs) lists and transaction alerts.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has issued its second letter this afternoon allowing U.S. financial institutions to back digital dollar stablecoins under the leadership of Acting Comptroller Brian Brooks. This letter permits U.S. financial institutions to hold deposits as reserves for stablecoins that represent fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar.
The OCC regulates large national banks such as Wells Fargo WFC and J.P. Morgan Chase, so the guidance from this agency only applies to ‘National Associations’ and ‘Federal Savings Banks’. In coordination with the OCC, a statement from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the agency that has for the most part dominated this area of regulation in the U.S., supported the actions as well.
RS: The third world war is at our gate, and it will be about water, if we don’t do something about this crisis. These walks are to raise awareness—this year we covered 17 countries, and in nine of them there were displaced people. So many people in the Middle East and African countries are moving to places like Europe, in part because of water scarcity—after forced migration comes, tension, conflict, and terrorism. Where terrorism is active, there is usually a scarcity of water. Look at Syria—a long time ago, it had very good agriculture, but then Turkey built a dam that changed things. It’s a similar story with Libya. If we want a safe future, we need to start conserving water.
What role can regulation play in conservation? Do you think privatizing water is a good way to promote its efficient use?
RS: If we really think about legal changes, we have to first think about river rights, or the rights of nature, and only then about water rights for humans. This type of thinking doesn’t exist today but we need this kind of legal framework that assures that the land of the river is only for the river, that the flow of the river is kept clean, and that the river has greenery on both banks to prevent erosion and silting. Only with all these factors can we ensure that rivers are healthy and only then that we are healthy.
In recent years we have seen the move away from ‘politics as usual’. Non-traditional figures have entered the political arena to disrupt the typical entrenched narratives. The election and worldwide popularity of Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand Prime Minister just one example of a new kind of leader who prioritises national wellbeing and happiness in the belief that everything else will follow.
Brigadier General (Retired) Dr. Loree Sutton Next Mayor of New York City?
Brigadier General Dr. Loree Sutton, ex-army general, physician, LGBTQ, mental healthcare advocate, is a further example of a leader who attempts to bridge the gap between people and focus on wellbeing. She is a candidate who is bringing a centrist, holistic, “quality-of-life” based approach to rejuvenating and re-inventing one of the world’s major financial, technological, and cultural capitals, New York City. https://loreeformayor.nyc @NYC Mayor’s Office.
From brigadier general to new york city mayor?
Ira Pastor ideaXme life sciences ambassador interviews General Dr. Loree Sutton a retired military officer who served as a Brigadier General in the United States Army for over 20 years (one of only 15 female generals out of the 1.3 million soldiers serving in the Army) as well as a medical psychiatrist (for a period of time the Army’s highest-ranking), who was deployed to various locations including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, ad Egypt in support of the first Gulf War and other missions, and is a current candidate in the 2021 New York City mayoral election.
Ira comments: Over Dr. Sutton’s career she has been awarded Legion of Merit (a military award of the United States Armed Forces that is given for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements), as well as the Bronze Star Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and Order of Military Medical Merit. Dr. Sutton is also the founding director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, and served as a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.
The Lygon blockchain platform, which runs on IBM Public Cloud, has reportedly successfully conducted its pilot since last year with Australian banks ANZ, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Westpac and a group of 20 Australian businesses.
Banks are expected to issue bank guarantees in just one day once they implement Lygon compared to the current paper-based guarantees that can take a month. The three Australian banks and retailers Scentre Group and IBM are planning to expand the Lygon platform for commercial use, according to a report on Sept 1.
A bank guarantee is a type of financial backstop offered by a lending institution. The bank guarantee means that the lender will ensure that the liabilities of a debtor will be met. The financial guarantees are said to be needed as part of retail property leases and from this month. Lygon chairman Nigel Dobson added that:
“The commercialisation of the Lygon platform represents a significant milestone for blockchain technology in Australia and globally. In digitising a bank guarantee, we’ve essentially transformed a three-way contract. We’ve digitised the paperwork, the process and the legality behind it…”
The modern space race is getting closer to making astronauts out of tourists – and a new survey finds that there is already pent-up demand, even as questions linger over the industry.
About 39 per cent of people with a net worth of more than $5 million (Dh18.3m), a total addressable market of about 2.4m, are interested in paying at least $250,000 (the current price) for a Virgin Galactic flight to the edge of space, according to financial services firm Cowen.
These findings come as Virgin Galactic takes another step towards offering commercial space flights, which will one day provide paying customers about six minutes of weightlessness as the spacecraft hurtles through Earth’s atmosphere.
A third of people with a net worth of more than $5m are interested in paying at least $250,000 for six minutes of weightlessness and a chance to take in a view of Earth.
This course is for students wishing to explore blockchain technology’s potential use—by entrepreneurs and incumbents—to change the world of money and finance. The course begins with a review of Bitcoin and an understanding of the commercial, technical, and public policy fundamentals of blockchain technology, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts. The class then continues on to current and potential blockchain applications in the financial sector.
November 2019 is a landmark month in the history of the future. That’s when humanoid robots that are indistinguishable from people start running amok in Los Angeles. Well, at least they do in the seminal sci-fi film “Blade Runner.” Thirty-seven years after its release, we don’t have murderous androids running around. But we do have androids like Hanson Robotics’ Sophia, and they could soon start working in jobs traditionally performed by people.
Russian start-up Promobot recently unveiled what it calls the world’s first autonomous android. It closely resembles a real person and can serve in a business capacity. Robo-C can be made to look like anyone, so it’s like an android clone. It comes with an artificial intelligence system that has more than 100,000 speech modules, according to the company. It can operate at home, acting as a companion robot and reading out the news or managing smart appliances — basically, an anthropomorphic smart speaker. It can also perform workplace tasks such as answering customer questions in places like offices, airports, banks and museums, while accepting payments and performing other functions.
“We analyzed the needs of our customers, and there was a demand,” says Promobot co-founder and development director Oleg Kivokurtsev. “But, of course, we started the development of an anthropomorphic robot a long time ago, since in robotics there is the concept of the ‘Uncanny Valley,’ and the most positive perception of the robot arises when it looks like a person. Now we have more than 10 orders from companies and private clients from around the world.”
