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I was then sent an email in which I was told I need to verify as an adult, by clicking on a link. If this method isn’t being exploited by phishing firms already, it will be nothing short of a miracle.

From: Bluesky Made Me Prove I Was An Adult—Here’s How I Did It.

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The Eurosystem’s exploratory work confirmed market demand for, and interest in, the settlement of DLT-based assets in CeBM, with an active ecosystem of incumbents and new entrants identified in Europe. Several market participants now wish to scale up and grow.

From: The Eurosystem’s exploratory work on new technologies for wholesale central bank money settlement.

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Jürgen Schaaf, an economist and advisor to the European Central Bank’s Market Infrastructure and Payments division, has already said that more support should be provided for properly regulated euro-denominated stablecoins to ward off the threat posed by US dollar-backed tokens.

In 2017 a British surgeon, Ian Paterson, was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for wounding with intent and unlawful wounding after carrying out unecessary suregry on multiple patients. The official report on him said that this was “not simply a story about a rogue surgeon” but organisational cultures of “wilful blindness”. One of the key lessons of the report was that whistleblowers are likely to suffer: some medical professionals who had raised concerns were reluctant to talk because they either did not want to draw attention to themselves or preferred not to be involved at all. Encourgaging whistleblowers in this context saves lives, so it is important that we encourage it but simultaenously use the new technologies of digital identity to prtoect those whistleblowers.

 

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In March, President Donald Trump ordered the US federal government to phase out the use of paper cheques and to centralise payment processing in an effort to crack down on fraud.

From: US bank groups call for quick transition as Treasury phases out paper cheques.

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Well, sort of. According to the White House 

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Exceptions will be made for people without banking or electronic payment access, certain emergency payments, certain law enforcement activities, and other special cases qualifying for an exception under the Order or other existing law.

From: Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Modernizes Payments to and from America’s Bank Account – ].

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A2A facilitates communication between a “client” agent and a “remote” agent, providing a standardized way of interaction.
1
Capability Discovery
Agents can advertise their capabilities using an “Agent Card” in JSON format, allowing the client agent to identify the best agent for a task.
2
Task Management
Communication between client and remote agent is task-oriented. The “Task” object is defined by the protocol and has a lifecycle.
3
Collaboration
Agents can send messages to each other to convey context, responses, artifacts, or user instructions.
4
UX Negotiation
Each message includes “parts”, allowing the client and remote agent to negotiate the proper format and user interface capabilities.

From: A2A Protocol – Agent to Agent Communication Framework by Google.

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MCP focuses on how a single agent interfaces with its environment — APIs, tools, file systems, databases, and more. You can think of MCP as a kind of “universal adapter” or USB port: it standardizes how agents “plug into” external resources, allowing them to access the tools they need to think, reason, and act.
A2A, in contrast, is all about agent-to-agent communication. It defines how agents discover each other, negotiate tasks, exchange messages, and collaborate across systems. If MCP equips an agent to be powerful on its own, A2A enables that agent to become part of a networked team.

From: A2A, MCP, and ADK — Clarifying Their Roles in the AI Ecosystem | by #TheGenAIGirl — code, community, and GenAI. | Google Cloud – Community | Medium.

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Minnesota has called in the national guard after the city of St Paul was slammed by what its mayor described as a “deliberate, coordinated, digital attack” carried out by sophisticated hackers.

From: Minnesota calls in national guard after capital city slammed by ‘digital attack’ | US news | The Guardian.

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For organizations and network operators, OID4VP offers:
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A standardized protocol for requesting and presenting verifiable credentials.
Interoperability across wallet types, credential formats and trust frameworks.
Compatibility with existing OpenID Connect (OIDC) and OAuth infrastructure, reducing implementation cost and complexity as demonstrated by the NCCOE mobile Driving License (mDL) project involving MATTR.
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These capabilities are no longer theoretical. Backed by conformance tooling, interoperability tests and growing ecosystem adoption, OID4VP powers EUDI Wallet pilots, cross-border digital ID systems and real-world deployments like the California DMV’s mDL login service.

From: OID4VP 1.0 is here: Unlocking a new era of verifiable credentials.

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We’re partnering with JPMorgan Chase to offer 3 new ways for their 80M+ customers to participate in crypto with Coinbase: the ability to transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to USDC, the ability to use Chase credit cards to fund your Coinbase account, and a new direct bank integration.

From: Coinbase and JPMorgan Chase join forces to make it even easier to access crypto.

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