Britain’s competition regulator has launched an investigation into Meta Platforms over proposed commercial terms that could allow the technology company to use publishers’ website content for its own products, including artificial intelligence services. The Competition and Markets Authority announced the investigation on Friday, saying it would examine whether Meta was abusing a dominant market position by imposing unfair conditions on publishers, advertisers and other businesses using its […]
India Blockchain Week 2026 will bring cryptocurrency executives, financial regulators and technology developers to Mumbai on November 1 and 2, with institutional adoption of blockchain and digital assets occupying a prominent place on the conference agenda. The fourth edition, organised by Web3 investment firm Hashed Emergent, will take place at Fairmont Mumbai. It marks the event’s first move to the financial centre after three editions in Bengaluru, […]
By Arun Srivastava Logical Discrepancy category is an algorithmic or “rightist tool”, a central and mischievous mechanism, created by ECI under its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) scheme to disenfranchise huge population of the voters who are opposed to the political hegemony of the rightist forces, to ensure their electoral victory and push India on the […]
The article Decoding The Mystery Behind Logical Discrepancy, The Tool Of CEC Gyanesh Kumar appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
By Dr. Gyan Pathak PM Narendra Modi led Government has been successfully marketing its slogan “Affordable medicine for all” ever since it started implementation of Jan Aushadhi scheme under Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) launched in 2015-16, but on the ground level pharmaceutical companies and hospitals were allowed to charge exorbitant and unaffordable prices, […]
The article Government Marketing Its Slogan “Affordable Medicine For All” appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
By Ashok Nilakantan Ayers WASHINGTON: More than 39 million Americans have already voted. The Democratic candidates are campaigning on the cost of living, and US President Donald Trump is taking his fight into Republican strongholds. The early-voting surge signals intense engagement—but its political meaning remains uncertain. As the United States enters the final stretch of […]
The article US Midterms: Democrats Are Pushing Into Republican Territory appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
The in-vehicle experience plays an important role in making that difference. J.D. Power’s 2026 U.S. Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study, which evaluates the emotional appeal and ownership experience of 78,514 new-vehicle owners during the first 90 days of ownership across 37 attributes, found that electric vehicles outperformed internal combustion engine vehicles in nearly every category. The largest gap was in the powertrain category, where EVs scored 109 points higher on a 1,000-point scale.
A 2018 study conducted by the University of York in the United Kingdom also reported positive changes among drivers who switched from diesel vehicles to electric vehicles, including improved concentration, greater calmness and a stronger sense of happiness.
Together, these findings highlight how a morning commute can become a more positive start to the day – with less stress, greater comfort and a stronger sense of control. Rather than allowing rush-hour traffic to drain their energy, commuters can turn their journey into an opportunity to prepare, recharge and feel ready for the day ahead.
This is the spirit behind “Start Strong. Arrive Ready.”, the message Green SM, a Vietnamese-born all-electric taxi service, has chosen to introduce its experience to the U.S. market. Through every electric ride, Green SM aims to help passengers begin their day feeling more positive, comfortable and energized.
Making Every Moment Before Work Count: How a Smoother Ride Enhances the Passenger Experience
This experience comes to life through the VinFast VF 8, a D-segment electric SUV in Green SM’s fleet in Los Angeles. Its spacious interior, clean cabin and smooth, quiet performance offer passengers a welcome moment of comfort amid the pace of urban life. Whether heading to the office or an important appointment, passengers can use the journey to finish emails, review key talking points for a meeting, or simply relax and recharge before the day begins.
A pleasant journey is shaped not only by the vehicle, but also by the quality of service. Green Driver partners are carefully selected and trained, with an emphasis on professionalism, courtesy and attentive service throughout every ride.
For customers booking through the Green SM app, available features provide information about drivers, vehicles and routes, helping passengers follow their journeys and stay informed along the way. Fares and promotional offers are also displayed clearly, making it easier for customers to compare options and choose a ride that suits their needs.
Whether it is a morning ride before an important meeting, a transfer from a hotel to an event venue, or a series of journeys packed into a business trip, Green SM aims to make urban mobility more comfortable and convenient. After all, the value of a ride lies not only in getting passengers to their destinations, but also in helping them arrive feeling relaxed, in control and ready for whatever comes next.
From Vietnam to Los Angeles: Bringing Green Mobility to More People Through the Five Green Goodness Pillars
In mid-October, Green SM officially launched its all-electric taxi service in Los Angeles, marking the brand’s first entry into North America and expanding its global footprint to nine markets. Customers can book rides through the Green SM app, contact the call center or hail a vehicle on the street, with options to meet a range of mobility needs, from everyday commutes and longer journeys to airport transfers.
Across its markets, Green SM builds its service experience around the 5 Good Promises: Good Cars, Good Drivers, Good Price, Good Experience and Good for the Environment. In Los Angeles, these principles are reflected in an all-electric VinFast fleet, transparent fares and promotional offers, professional drivers, attentive service and rides with zero tailpipe emissions.
To celebrate its launch, Green SM is offering special promotions to customers in Los Angeles. New users can enjoy 50% off their fares, up to $12 per ride, on their first five trips. Customers can also sign up for Green Pass membership free of charge and receive 10 discount codes each month, with each code offering 30% off a fare, up to $10.
Founded in Vietnam in 2023, Green SM has steadily expanded its operations, bringing all-electric mobility services to markets around the world, including Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Kazakhstan, Denmark and the Netherlands. The brand has completed approximately 850 million trips covering nearly 6 billion kilometers, helping reduce more than 800,000 metric tons of CO₂ emissions, equivalent to the amount of carbon absorbed by approximately 36 million trees.
In the U.S., Green SM says it will progressively strengthen its local operations and recruit and train drivers from the local community, creating additional employment opportunities while contributing to the transition toward greener transportation in Los Angeles and the surrounding region. Alongside its expansion, the brand will continue investing in its fleet, technology, people and service quality, with the goal of building a sustainable, long-term presence in the U.S. market.
From Vietnam to Los Angeles, Green SM’s global journey represents more than an expansion of its brand footprint. It is also an opportunity to bring a greener, more comfortable mobility experience to people in major cities around the world.
Because a productive day can begin with a better ride. Start Strong. Arrive Ready.
Sources
Hashtag: #GreenSM
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
SINGAPORE – Media OutReach Newswire – 30 October 2026 – Ridger, an AI infrastructure company, today announced the official delivery of its MUX private AI solution to Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors in Hong Kong. The solution features MIMO, the world’s first AI-native storage system, making Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors the first law firm in Hong Kong Northern Metropolis to deploy it.
Representatives from Ridger, Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors, xFusion, and Fadada’s RicheeAI team attended the delivery ceremony. During the event, Ridger presented the firm with the “Global AI Pioneer Law Firm” certificate in recognition of its forward-looking investment in private AI infrastructure.
The solution brings together AI-native storage and compute infrastructure, a dedicated large language model (LLM) environment, and AI applications tailored to legal workflows. Operating entirely within the firm’s own security perimeter, it marks a significant step toward enabling Hong Kong’s legal profession to harness the productivity of generative AI while safeguarding client data and meeting compliance requirements.
About the Deployment
In space-constrained Hong Kong, Ms. Careen H.Y. Wong, Founding Partner of Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors and Vice President of The Law Society of Hong Kong, set aside room in the Firm’s latest office in the Northern Metropolis for a standard equipment rack, ready for on-premise AI. It is more than a space decision: it reflects her view of the future of legal services—that while harnessing AI to improve efficiency, a firm must retain control of its data and technology boundaries, so that sensitive materials are always properly protected.
Under the engagement, Ridger built a privately owned, independently operable AI foundation for Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors, comprising high-performance storage and data infrastructure optimized for AI workloads, together with a dedicated LLM platform over which the client retains full control of model weights and the inference environment. The platform supports use cases including contract review and risk flagging, legal research and case-law retrieval, large-scale document review in due diligence, drafting and multilingual translation of legal documents, and internal Knowledge Base question answering. It also provides role-based access control, tiered permissions, comprehensive audit trails and content provenance to meet enterprise-grade governance requirements.
Called MUX, the private solution lets the firm begin with no barrier and without capital-intensive build-out or a dedicated server room, scaling on demand; it natively supports Hong Kong’s common law system and integrates seamlessly with existing systems such as email, document management and calendar, embedding AI into lawyers’ daily work. MUX can be ordered directly through Ridger’s website (https://ridger.tech), out of the box.
The delivery reflects the collaboration of legal expertise, AI infrastructure, compute platforms and industry applications: Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors defined the requirements for data confidentiality and on-premise deployment from its actual practice; Ridger provided the end-to-end MUX solution and led its design and integration; xFusion supplied the FusionXpark local AI compute platform and technical support; and Fadada provided the Richee Legal AI Agent Platform, leveraging specialized AI agents and skills to support lawyers in their daily work and improve workflow efficiency. Ridger notes that while an AI model determines capability for a moment, AI infrastructure determines long-term competitiveness.
Why Private AI Matters for the Legal Sector
1. Safeguarding client confidentiality and legal professional privilege
Client materials, transaction documents and dispute information handled by law firms are protected by legal professional privilege (LPP) and strict professional duties of confidentiality. Disclosure to third parties—including public cloud services—may be treated as a waiver of privilege, causing it to be lost and the materials to become disclosable in subsequent proceedings. Private deployment keeps storage, processing and inference entirely within the firm’s own environment, with no disclosure to external providers, preserving privilege and confidentiality at source.
2. Embedding data sovereignty and regulatory compliance
The solution aligns with Hong Kong’s Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) and is designed with reference to the Privacy Commissioner’s “Checklist on Guidelines for the Use of Generative AI by Employees” and the “Model Framework on AI: Personal Data Protection,” as well as The Law Society of Hong Kong’s 2024 position paper on the impact of AI on the legal profession and the Manifesto on “Legal Ethical Code of Conduct Regarding the Deployment of AI.” It embeds the principles of lawfulness, transparency, traceability, interpretability, security and appropriate human oversight into a unified AI governance framework.
For a firm handling cross-border work, the same private environment also addresses the requirements of the major jurisdictions: for Mainland China, it aligns with the Personal Information Protection Law, the Data Security Law and data-export mechanisms such as security assessments and standard contracts; for Europe, it maps to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and standard contractual clauses; for the United States, it meets the confidentiality and competence duties under the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and Formal Opinion 512 on generative AI. Because data always remains within the firm’s own perimeter, the firm can confidently meet local data-confidentiality and regulatory expectations wherever its clients are based.
3. Eliminating the hidden risk of “shadow AI”
Where a firm offers no convenient, approved AI tool, individual lawyers may turn to consumer-grade public chatbots for work, creating “shadow AI” that sits outside IT and compliance visibility—unapproved, unlogged and unaudited, with unknown data flows and no clear accountability. MUX channels that demand into a single, visible, auditable controlled environment, giving lawyers the efficiency they want while bringing every use under the institution’s governance and oversight.
4. Keeping institutional knowledge within the firm
The case law, templates and practical know-how accumulated by a firm are core competitive assets. A private platform continuously refined on the firm’s own corpus keeps these assets within the institution and compounds their value over time, rather than depositing them with an external vendor.
5. Ensuring control and business continuity
Private deployment insulates the firm from external API changes, model versioning, service outages or shifts in vendor strategy, giving it full control over capabilities, upgrade timing, cost and availability — a foundation for durable, long-term AI adoption.
Executive Quotes
“For industries built on trust and confidentiality, such as the law, the value of AI should never come at the price of data sovereignty,” said Ray Hu, General Manager Asia-Pacific Region of Ridger. “Private deployment lets a firm turn generative AI into auditable, governable and sustainable productivity without crossing confidentiality lines. We are proud to set this benchmark with Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors”
Ray Hu, General Manager Asia-Pacific Region, Ridger
“In Hong Kong, office space is scarce and precious, but data sovereignty is worth setting aside a place for. Building our own AI infrastructure lets us embrace AI while always safeguarding our clients’ trust and the boundaries of our profession.”
Careen H.Y. Wong, Founding Partner, Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors, Solicitors
Hashtag: #Ridger #MIMO #MUX #PrivateAI #LegalAI #AIInfrastructure #HongKong
https://ridger.tech
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ridger/
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
Ridger is a technology company focused on data and storage infrastructure for the AI era. The company provides private, high-performance AI infrastructure and solutions that enable enterprises to deploy and run large models and AI applications within their own security perimeter. Through its proprietary storage and data management technologies, Ridger helps clients safeguard data sovereignty, security and compliance while fully realizing the business value of artificial intelligence.
LiveWire Group, the electric motorcycle manufacturer controlled by Harley-Davidson, has warned that it may be unable to continue operating over the next year, citing mounting financial pressures and insufficient liquidity. The company disclosed the warning on Thursday alongside third-quarter results, saying recurring operating losses, negative operating cash flows and anticipated funding requirements raised substantial doubt about its ability to remain a going concern. It is examining financing […]
Paracetamol use during pregnancy has been associated with changes in reproductive development among daughters, including smaller ovaries and uteruses, fewer ovarian follicles and altered hormone levels, according to a Danish study that raises questions about prenatal exposure to the widely used painkiller. The findings, published in Human Reproduction Open, suggest that exposure to acetaminophen, marketed as Tylenol in the United States, may influence reproductive development before birth. […]
Apple has unveiled its first touchscreen MacBook Pro laptops, reversing a longstanding design position associated with co-founder Steve Jobs and bringing direct finger controls to its premium notebook range. The 14-inch and 16-inch models, announced on Wednesday, 28 October, combine touch-enabled OLED displays with M5 Pro and M5 Max processors. Pre-orders opened immediately, with availability scheduled for 6 November. The 14-inch touchscreen model starts at $2,899 in […]
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 29 October 2026 – PhotonPay today announced the closing of a $40 million Series C funding round led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from new investor SBI Group and follow-on investments from existing investors IDG Capital, GL Ventures, and Lightspeed Faction. Blacksheep Technology acted as exclusive financial advisor to PhotonPay on the transaction.
The new capital will support the expansion of PhotonPay’s stablecoin-centric Financial Operating System (Financial OS), with investment focused on enhancing multi-asset wallet capabilities, expanding global card issuing, strengthening local clearing infrastructure in key markets, and developing an agent-ready financial execution layer.
As of August 2026, PhotonPay’s annualized transaction volume reached US$65 billion. The company has secured 34 payment and financial licenses and regulatory authorizations across the Americas, Europe and Asia, and serves over 200,000 business customers across more than 200 countries and territories.
As stablecoins move beyond crypto-native use cases into corporate treasury, settlement and commercial spending, PhotonPay sees the next phase of global finance not as a choice between stablecoins and fiat currencies, but as the convergence of both. Its Financial OS connects on-chain liquidity with the banking, clearing and card networks businesses rely on for everyday operations.
“Moving money across borders in seconds means little if it still takes days to put that capital to work,” said Lewison Chen, Founder and CEO of PhotonPay. “Stablecoins are accelerating global money movement, while local clearing and global card issuing connect that liquidity to local settlement and everyday business spending. Our Financial OS brings these capabilities together, making the underlying infrastructure far less visible to businesses, even as it becomes more essential than ever.”
“At the same time, business software is becoming increasingly autonomous,” Chen added. “AI is shifting financial workflows from people manually operating fragmented tools toward systems that understand business intent and coordinate execution across assets, accounts and financial rails. That creates the foundation for agentic commerce. Stablecoins change how money moves. AI changes how it gets put to work. But commerce is still what money is for.”
Moving Money Across Assets and Markets
PhotonPay’s Financial OS brings together multi-asset wallets, global money movement, foreign exchange, local clearing, and global card issuing through an integrated API-first architecture. This unified system gives businesses access to the financial capabilities they need to manage and deploy funds across markets.
Stablecoins sit at the core of this architecture. PhotonPay’s multi-asset wallet connects stablecoin liquidity with fiat balances, integrating asset conversion, foreign exchange, and local clearing into a single connected workflow. This enables businesses to move funds across supported on-chain and traditional financial networks, turning digital asset liquidity into purchasing power for local payments and everyday corporate spending.
Supporting this dual-rail infrastructure is PhotonPay’s established global financial network. Businesses can open local collection accounts in 17 key markets and receive funds in more than 60 currencies. On the payout side, the network supports over 100 payment routes across local clearing systems, bank transfers, and digital wallets, including payouts to 74 major local e-wallets. Approximately 97% of payout transactions reach recipients within hours or on the same day, with 68% arriving in real time.
Global card issuing extends these capabilities into programmable business spending. Through PhotonPay’s APIs, businesses and platforms can issue virtual and physical cards, configure granular spending controls, and embed card payments directly into their software and automated workflows. Over the past 12 months, PhotonPay issued 4.4 million cards, up 275% YoY.
Beyond its first-party payment solutions, PhotonPay makes its infrastructure available through embedded finance, enabling technology platforms to natively integrate global accounts, payments, and card issuing into their own products. The company now serves more than 100 enterprise and platform partners, extending the reach of its Financial OS into industry-specific workflows.
From Financial Intent to Agentic Commerce
As AI agents assume active operational roles, financial infrastructure must evolve beyond API access to enable programmable, policy-governed execution. It requires systems capable of translating high-level instructions into coordinated financial actions, with deterministic controls governing how those actions are executed.
In May 2026, PhotonPay and Mastercard completed a live agentic payment demonstration using a tokenized PhotonPay card, validating AI-initiated transactions across existing global card networks.
Building on this milestone, PhotonPay is developing standardized financial interfaces designed for developers and AI agents. With planned support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), PhotonPay aims to make account information, balances, card functions, and payments accessible as composable financial primitives, allowing AI agents to securely retrieve context and initiate financial workflows within defined authorization boundaries.
To govern this agent-ready layer, PhotonPay is developing a policy-based execution framework designed to enforce programmable authorization rules, spending limits, and transaction-level controls. The framework is intended to enable AI agents to coordinate financial tasks across supported accounts and assets, while ensuring that execution remains subject to explicit, enforceable policies set by businesses.
PhotonPay is also advancing its AI-assisted risk review capabilities, designed to identify complex cases for human assessment. Together, these initiatives reflect a foundational principle of autonomous finance: AI may interpret intent and coordinate tasks, but financial execution must remain governed by verifiable authorization, deterministic controls, and auditable records.
“Connecting financial networks is only the beginning. The real breakthrough is abstracting that complexity behind a unified, programmable financial layer, so businesses and AI agents can move from intent to execution within clearly defined boundaries,” said Chen.
Simple on the Surface, Deep by Design
The promise of a Financial OS is simplicity: enabling businesses to manage assets, route money, and execute payments through a unified financial operating layer. Yet delivering that simplicity requires deep financial infrastructure beneath the surface.
While stablecoins accelerate borderless value transfer, turning that liquidity into local settlement, supplier payments, and corporate spending still depends on established banking relationships, domestic clearing rails, foreign exchange infrastructure, and global card networks. Each market brings its own regulatory and operational requirements.
For PhotonPay, building a Financial OS means abstracting these fragmented global networks into a programmable, interconnected financial system. The objective is not to eliminate financial complexity, but to manage it within the underlying infrastructure, so businesses can operate without having to navigate these systems themselves.
“AI can simplify how businesses interact with financial services, but it cannot replace the infrastructure required to deliver them,” said JP Pi, Chief Compliance Officer at PhotonPay. “Establishing local financial capabilities takes years of investment, institutional partnerships, and regulatory engagement. Software or AI models alone cannot replicate that depth. The simplicity businesses experience is the result of that heavy lifting, not a substitute for it.”
PhotonPay has engineered a financial foundation spanning both stablecoin and fiat rails, connecting multi-asset conversion with local clearing networks. Institutional partnerships with J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered, and DBS, alongside connections to domestic payment systems such as Brazil’s Pix and Mexico’s SPEI, form the backbone of this network.
The new capital will enable PhotonPay to strengthen its local clearing and compliance infrastructure in existing markets while expanding into new jurisdictions, scaling the reach of its Financial OS across corporate spending, embedded finance, and agentic commerce.
“Businesses want one provider that can handle their payments across currencies and markets, whether they’re using bank transfers, stablecoins or cards. Lewison and his team have spent a decade building the banking relationships, licenses and local payment infrastructure to deliver that. We believe PhotonPay’s ability to bring these capabilities together gives it a strong advantage as businesses adopt stablecoins for everyday payments.” – BCAP，Yuanhan Li，Partner
“As stablecoins become increasingly integrated into global payment systems, bridging digital assets with traditional financial infrastructure will be essential to unlocking their real-world potential. PhotonPay’s established global payment network and its vision for a stablecoin-centric Financial OS align closely with SBI Group’s strategy to advance digital financial infrastructure and expand the practical adoption of digital assets. We look forward to supporting PhotonPay’s continued growth and exploring opportunities for strategic collaboration across the SBI Group ecosystem.” – Eiichiro So, CEO & Managing Director of SBI Ven Capital
Hashtag: #PhotonPay #SeriesC #Stablecoin
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
Founded in Hong Kong in 2015, PhotonPay is a global fintech company building a next-generation, stablecoin-centric Financial Operating System (Financial OS). Its API-first architecture brings together multi-asset wallets supporting stablecoins and fiat currencies, global money movement, foreign exchange, global card issuing, embedded finance, and local clearing infrastructure, connecting digital and traditional financial rails within an integrated financial system.
PhotonPay operates 16 offices worldwide, employs nearly 600 people, and holds 34 payment and financial licenses and regulatory authorizations across the Americas, Europe and Asia. The company serves businesses across more than 200 countries and territories.
For more information, visit www.photonpay.com.
