Important Takeaways:
- Philadelphia-based Republic First Bank (doing business as Republic Bank) was closed today by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect depositors, the FDIC entered into an agreement with Fulton Bank, National Association of Lancaster, Pennsylvania to assume substantially all of the deposits and purchase substantially all of the assets of Republic Bank.
- Republic Bank’s 32 branches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York will reopen as branches of Fulton Bank on Saturday (for branches with normal Saturday hours) or on Monday during normal business hours. This evening and over the weekend, depositors of Republic Bank can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on Republic Bank will continue to be processed and loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.
- As of January 31, 2024, Republic Bank had approximately $6 billion in total assets and $4 billion in total deposits. The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) related to the failure of Republic Bank will be $667 million. The FDIC determined that compared to other alternatives, Fulton Bank’s acquisition of Republic Bank is the least costly resolution for the DIF, an insurance fund created by Congress in 1933 and managed by the FDIC to protect the deposits at the nation’s banks. Republic Bank is the first U.S. bank failure this year; the last failure was Citizens Bank, Sac City, Iowa on November 3, 2023.
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Important Takeaways:
- AI is used to compose music, suggests recipes and make investment decisions, but a company has designed a system that can edit human genes.
- California-based Profluent Bio developed a system capable of creating a range of bespoke cures for disease by developing molecules that have never existed in nature.
- com spoke to Ali Madani, CEO of Profluent Bio, who said the AI-made gene editors have been tested in human cells, which demonstrated high levels of functionality while not editing unintended sites in the DNA.
- The AI was trained on a database of 5.1 million CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins, allowing it to create potential molecules that could be used in gene editing.
- The system then narrowed down the results to four million sequences, allowing it to identify the gene editor the team named OpenCRISPR-1.
- Experiments showed OpenCRISPR-1 performed as well as Cas proteins, but it also reduced the impact on off-target sites by 95 percent.
- AI was at the heart of this achievement. We trained large language models (LLMs) on massive scale evolutionary sequences and biological context,’ Madani said.
- ‘Our vision is to move biology from being constrained by what can be achieved in nature to being able to use AI to design new medicines precisely according to our needs.’
- The company believes that AI can work as an ‘interpreter to decode the language of life.’
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Important Takeaways:
- Tornados leave trail of destruction as 4 injured, hundreds of homes damaged
- There were 83 reports of tornadoes across five states in Friday’s storms.
- The multi-day tornado outbreak continued Saturday, with powerful storms expected from Texas to the Great Lakes.
- There is a chance for strong long-track tornadoes as well as very large hail up to 3 inches in diameter and thunderstorm winds up to 80 mph.
- In Iowa, four people were injured Friday and approximately 120 structures were damaged after severe weather…
- Severe damage was also reported across eastern Nebraska, including Douglas County, where hundreds of homes were damaged in the Omaha area Friday.
- One tornado emergency was issued for Knox City, Texas, where a large and damaging tornado was reported near the town. Baseball-sized hail was also reported with this tornadic storm.
- Damaging winds, huge hail, and long-track tornadoes are all in the cards, especially in Kansas, Oklahoma and northeast Texas. Overall, there is a severe weather threat stretching across the central U.S. from Canada to Mexico.
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Important Takeaways:
- China attack on Taiwan ‘imminent’ as island warned invasion coming ‘before end of 2024’
- China won’t listen to the US’ demands and will stop at nothing to take Taiwan back by force, a defense expert has told Daily Express US.
- …according to Brandon Weichert, a National Security Analyst from The National Interest, who says China is dead set on its goal of retaking Taiwan.
- He said: “China will not listen [to the US], especially because I remain convinced that Beijing is readying to strike Taiwan soon–possibly as early as this fall.
- “They don’t care what the Americans say anymore.”
- According to Mr. Weichert, China refuses to listen as it is obsessed with controlling the region.
- He said: “China under Xi Jinping is deeply committed to reshaping the world system away from the maritime democracies of the US-led Western order and toward the continental autocracies of the China-led Eurasian order.”
- But Beijing Xi appeared to take a friendly tone as he sat down with Blinken amid the surging tensions.
- The Chinese President reportedly called for mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation, describing these as the “three major principles” for US-China relations.
- He reportedly said: “[The two countries] should make achievements for each other, not do harm to each other.”
- But Beijing has not responded well to US’ stance on Taiwan, calling the issue “the first insurmountable red line” in relations between the two powers.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia has warned that Poland will make itself a ‘priority target’ if it hosts NATO nuclear weapons on its territory. In a Thursday statement Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said “Moves in this direction will not provide greater security (for Poland or other nations that host such weapons).” He was further quoted in Russian media as saying:
- Moscow considers any expansion of NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangement as “deeply destabilizing” in nature, “and in fact threatening” Russia, Ryabkov was quoted as saying by TASS on Thursday. This applies to joint missions, where non-nuclear members of the US-led bloc are trained to use American hardware, and even more so to the permanent stationing of such weapons “which hotheads in Warsaw are talking about,” he said.
- In follow-up, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stipulated that “any nuclear weapons deployed to Poland would be legitimate targets in the event of war with the alliance.” Russian media translations said Moscow would see this as a “priority target”.
- While three NATO members are officially nuclear weapons states – the United States, France and the United Kingdom – others are authorized to host nukes (typically ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons). They are Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.
- Apparently, Poland is now throwing its name in the hat for NATO’s nuclear-sharing program, which would expand Western nuke placement right up to Russia’s backyard.
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Important Takeaways:
- US Campuses: Incubating Terrorism
- Some of the signs say “pro-Palestine”, “ceasefire now” and “end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza”. But these benign statements hide a far more malignant agenda, the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the end of America as the world’s leading power and the end of democracy and the free market economy. Even if there were a unilateral ceasefire, accompanied by massive humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, many of these protests would continue, because Gaza is merely an excuse for a much wider agenda: to destroy Israel and destroy America.
- One never sees a sign calling for a two-state solution or for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. These are not the goals. What is demanded is the end of any Jewish presence in the Middle East. “Death to America,” similarly, means the end of America’s influence and Western values.
- Many of the signs call for “revolution.” These are not directed against Israel, but rather against America, American Jews and all other Western democracies.
- As in the 1960s, many of these students are being groomed to be the terrorists of the future — in the manner of Kathy Boudin and Bernardine Dohrn back then – and, in the United States, a fifth column, the aim of which is taking down America.
- That these useful idiots are young does not make them less dangerous. Young students were instrumental in bringing to power tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot and Mao.
- Where are the armed guards escorting Jewish students to class, as there were escorting the threatened Black youths to integrated school in the 1960s in the South?
- Universities are failing not only their Jewish students but all their students by refusing to educate them about what behavior is acceptable and what is not.
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Important Takeaways:
- George Soros is PAYING left-wing activists to head up camp outs at colleges across America – as huge wads of cash they’re getting are shared
- Multiple leaders of the anti-Israel protests at college campuses across the nation have been revealed to be paid fellows of George Soros-connected groups.
- Three of the major figures in the pro-Palestine encampments in universities are fellows at the Soros-funded US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the New York Post reports.
- USCPR ‘community-based’ fellows are paid up to $7,800 for their labor, while ‘campus-based’ fellows are given between $2,880 and $3,660 for spending eight hours a week organizing ‘campaigns led by Palestinian organizations.’
- The organization instructs its fellows to ‘rise up’ and spark ‘revolution,’ while specifically telling them to reject ‘reform.’
- It has received at least $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2017.
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Important Takeaways:
- US reveals it quietly sent Ukraine missile systems that could hit Russia as Pentagon announces $1B aid package
- Minutes after signing a long-delayed $95 billion foreign assistance supplemental bill into law, President Biden promised that aid would begin rolling to Ukraine within “a few hours.”
- Moments later, the Pentagon released an announcement detailing the critical weapons and military equipment it was sending to the besieged country.
- While most of the equipment in the initial package fulfills basic military needs — and includes anti-aircraft missiles, small arms, artillery rounds, and night vision gear — national security adviser Jake Sullivan revealed that the US had quietly sent Ukraine Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) weeks ago, despite the White House saying there was no funding left for such assistance.
- GOP leaders had successfully advocated for ATACMS to be included in future packages if the supplemental passed, senior House Republican staff told The Post last week.
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Important Takeaways:
- Vladimir Putin’s ally makes deadly warning as he vows to target UK weapons
- Kremlin Defense Minister Shoigu has now issued a threat to target Western-supplied weaponry in Ukraine, claiming Russian progress had “dispelled the myth of the superiority of Western weapons,” reports the Express. His words were stark: “We will increase the intensity of attacks on logistics centers and storage bases for Western weapons.
- He further vowed: “In proportion to the threats posed by the United States and its allies, we will continue to improve the composition and structure of the Armed Forces and increase the production of the most popular weapons and military equipment.”
- On Tuesday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak committed to an additional £93 billion in defense spending over the coming six years, preparing the UK arms industry for a “war footing” amid threats from what he calls an “axis of authoritarian states”; namely, Russia and China. Arguing that the world is currently at “the most dangerous it has been since the end of the Cold War”, he vowed the UK would devote 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to defense by 2030.
- Furthermore, Mr. Sunak pledged another £500 million package of military aid to Ukraine.
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Important Takeaways:
- Cyberattack threats to U.S. power grid on the rise, as presidential election looms
- U.S. power grids are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks, with the number of susceptible points in electrical networks increasing by about 60 per day, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) said in a webcast on Thursday.
- The grids’ virtual and physical weak spots, or points in software or hardware that are susceptible to cyber criminals, grew to a range of 23,000 to 24,000 last year from 21,000 to 22,000 by the end of 2022, executives with the energy regulator said.
- Physical assaults on the grid have remained high since rising in 2022, with about 2,800 reports of gunfire, vandalism, and other strikes on electrical networks last year, NERC said. Some 3 percent of those attacks led to outages or other operational problems.
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