Ali Akram

Moving Money Through Mobiles - Digital Financial Services Expert

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: Scientists have used A.I. to create new viruses for the first time, raising hopes for medical advances while also raising the possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens. https://t.co/MJG4mp0TTb

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Barcelona lost Messi in 2021 because they were €1.2 billion in debt and La Liga slashed their wage cap from €347 million to €97 million. The emergency fix was fielding children. Four years later those children won La Liga, and one of them carries a €1 billion release clause.

The cap crisis meant Barcelona couldn't register signings. Academy kids on entry-level wages were the only players they could afford to put on the pitch. So Lamine Yamal debuted at 15 years and 9 months. Pau Cubarsí debuted at 16. Gavi, Pedri, Balde, and Casadó all got minutes a healthy club would never have risked on teenagers.

Then the desperation play turned out to be the best roster strategy in football. Yamal joined at age 7 from CF La Torreta, a local youth club. Transfer fee zero. Barcelona turned down a €250 million bid for him. He made 106 senior appearances before turning 18. Messi made 9.

The cap math makes it even better. Real Madrid operates with a €761 million squad cost limit. Barcelona's is €432 million. They won the league anyway, because half the starting lineup was developed in-house at academy cost.

Messi's final Barcelona contract was worth over €500 million. His replacement cost nothing.

Those 11-year-olds in the video are the next batch. A pipeline that began as a bankruptcy workaround is now the entire plan.

[Dr. Bu Abdullah @Dr_BuAbdullah]

A major milestone for the UAE’s financial infrastructure. 🇦🇪

Financial institutions across the UAE are now ready to issue JAYWAN cards — the UAE’s national card scheme developed by Al Etihad Payments, a subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE.

This is a foundational step for our digital economy.

👉Key details on JAYWAN:
✔️UAE-owned payment network - Processes domestic transactions locally, strengthening financial sovereignty and data security
✔️Cost efficiency - Designed to offer lower transaction fees for merchants and consumers compared to international schemes
✔️Wide acceptance - Will work on all POS terminals and ATMs across the UAE, and be accepted online with UAE merchants
✔️Government & Retail integration - Enables seamless payments for government services, public transport, tolls, and loyalty programs
✔️Innovation-ready - Built to support contactless, digital wallets, e-commerce, and future fintech solutions on a local rail

The Central Bank of the UAE has confirmed that banks are now technically ready to start issuance. Rollout to customers will begin in phases across 2026.

👉Why this matters for the UAE:
A national scheme gives us more control over payment data, reduces reliance on foreign networks for domestic transactions, and creates space for local fintechs to build products specifically for the UAE market.

It directly supports the National Digital Economy Strategy and our goal of becoming a fully cashless society, while improving financial inclusion.

For businesses, it means lower costs. For consumers, it means faster, more secure payments. For the economy, it means a more resilient and competitive financial ecosystem.

This is what building for the future looks like.
Well done to Al Etihad Payments, the Central Bank of the UAE, and all partner banks for bringing JAYWAN to market.

@centralbankuae @DXBMediaOffice

[Kekius Maximus @Kekius_Sage]

Nobel Prize physicist Serge Haroche says we can trap a single photon and read its quantum history.

This proves light is a programmable data packet, allowing us to pause and inspect the universe's memory.

[Department of War 🇺🇸 @DeptofWar]

https://t.co/Aphnt9phiy

[Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 @DefenceHQ]

Released for the first time, images from the Noctis-1 military space telescope. 🔭👀

The UK's extraordinary new Borealis software will use these images and data from multiple sources to give us a faster, clearer picture of everything orbiting Earth.

@SciTechgovuk @spacegovuk

[NASA @NASA]

We're building a Moon Base!

@NASAMoonBase will serve as a habitat where astronauts live and work during long-term science missions.

Join us at 2pm ET on Tuesday, May 26, for a live news event where we’ll share updates on our lunar exploration plans: https://t.co/IJXA7xYwju

[Time Capsule Tales @timecaptales]

When the world first reported on camera phones back in 2001

[Sarahh @Sarahhuniverse]

A street vendor in Istanbul selling simit, a traditional Turkish circular bread, often referred to as a "Turkish bagel". 🇹🇷

🎥© maps_stambul (IG)

[Folkloristan @folkloristan]

Bringing some legends from Pakistan to your timelines on #WorldArtDay

1. Sadequain

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

This is only the second chimpanzee civil war ever documented. The first was Gombe, 1974. Fifty years apart. Genetic data suggests chimp communities split roughly once every 500 years.

Gombe was 9 males breaking off from a group of about 60. The splinter faction was hunted down over four years. Every male killed. Goodall had nightmares about it for decades.

Ngogo is operating at a completely different scale. 200 chimps. The largest studied community on Earth. They functioned as one unit for 20 years, shared territory, ran border patrols together, fought neighboring groups side by side. Then in 2015 something snapped. Five key males died, possibly from disease. Those males were the social bridges between two clusters. Once the connective tissue disappeared, the cliques hardened.

By 2017 they occupied separate territories and patrolled borders against each other. By 2018 the killing started. 28 dead so far, 19 of them infants. The Western faction, despite being smaller, initiated every attack. They ripped infants from mothers. The lead researcher calls himself a war correspondent.

The part that rewrites the textbook: no ethnic divisions, no religion, no ideology, no resource scarcity. Just a social network that lost its bridge nodes. The researchers think the same mechanic explains human civil wars better than cultural theories do. Polarization isn't about beliefs. It's about who stopped talking to whom.

[Space Porn @AstronomyPosts]

Artemis II completed a 7-hour Moon flyby and is now returning to Earth.

[Archaeology Magazine @archaeologymag]

Mohenjo-Daro, the great city of the Indus civilization, is older than previously thought, according to the latest archaeology. The city featured a grid plan, sophisticated water infrastructure, and fortifications—and it was settled as early as 2700 B.C.

https://t.co/QFKKZX43jn

[United Nations Pakistan - اقوام متحدہ پاکستان @UNinPak]

« Pakistan is more diverse than many realize. »

@UNinPak’s RC Mohamed Yahya @Momalindi attends #Easter Mass at Christ Church Rawalpindi as 4 million Christians celebrate.

[UN Cyprus @UN_CYPRUS]

Today #UNFICYP bids farewell to Major Ayesha Khan from #Pakistan 🇵🇰. Major Khan served for over a year in #Cyprus as a Military Public Information Officer and a focal point for uniformed women peacekeepers.

She made significant contributions to the Mission in her role of media engagement and strategic communications on #bufferzone issues. We wish her success in her future endeavors. #A4P #serving4peace #womeninpeacekeeping

[Daily Mail US @Daily_MailUS]

BREAKING: A SECOND Sphinx detected in Egypt as scans hint at 'underground megastructure'

[Suffragent @Suffragent_]

NEW‼️Banksy has FINALLY been unmasked as Robin Gunningham, 51, of Bristol. 🇬🇧

[Darshak Rana ⚡️ @thedarshakrana]

It took me 4 years to understand this; but I will teach in just 2 minutes:

#1. Don't go to a party you aren't invited to.

[VEON @VEONGroup]

VEON has entered into a new partnership with the @GSMAm4d Foundation to help accelerate digital innovation in Pakistan and Bangladesh through the @GSMA Innovation Fund.

The MoU - signed at MWC Barcelona by John Giusti, President of the GSMA Foundation, @aamir_ibrahim01, CEO of JazzWorld, and Johan Buse, CEO of Banglalink - brings together our shared commitment to backing high-potential start-ups to drive positive change. Through this partnership, JazzWorld and Banglalink will co‑fund the start-ups selected in the Fund’s 2026 rounds and support them with ecosystem access, visibility and practical know‑how that can make all the difference for early‑stage innovators.

This collaboration is a continuation of VEON’s commitment to empowering local talent and supporting the development of the digital economies we serve.

https://t.co/B5NTEhx21A

@banglalinkmela @jazzpk @JazzCash

[Md Ismail Šojal 🕷️ @0x0SojalSec]

Cortical CL1: Real human 800,000+ neurons on chip
already beating DQN/PPO baselines in complex tasks
with minimal training time.🤯

Adaptive learning is like a real brain.

Outperforms SOTA RL (DQN, PPO) after 5 min gameplay-style training