Foundation

• NASA has issued Amendment 66 regarding the B.2 Heliophysics Foundational Research (HFR) solicitation, which focuses on advancing the physical understanding of the Sun-Heliosphere-Planetary system. • The update specifically announces the due date for "Step-2" proposals and includes a necessary correction to the previous solicitation guidelines. • This process is critical for selecting scientific investigations that will drive foundational research in heliophysics and space weather.

• Hanoi is implementing a digital transformation strategy to establish a new growth model for the capital city. • The city aims for the digital economy to contribute approximately 40% of its Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) by 2030. • The Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park will serve as the central hub for research and development to drive this economic shift.

Staff ‘raised on multiple occasions’ risks of tech mogul’s philanthropic body associating with disgraced financierA new external review commissioned by the Gates Foundation has found that there were “roughly 30 meetings” between Jeffrey Epstein and foundation leaders and staff – including Bill Gates – between 2011 and 2014, even as foundation staff “raised on multiple occasions the risks of associating with Epstein because of his prior conviction”.The Gates foundation commissioned the review in March, following the justice department’s release earlier this year of millions of documents related to Epstein. The files included numerous references to Gates, several photographs of him, and records showing that he met with Epstein on multiple occasions, which prompted renewed scrutiny of Gates’s past ties to the disgraced financier. Continue reading...

• The July 2026 Linux Foundation newsletter highlights the growing role of open entity graphs as a foundational layer for agentic AI. • These graphs provide verified, canonical data to ground Large Language Models (LLMs), which is critical for reducing AI hallucinations. • Mirko Boehm, LF Europe Senior Director for Community Development, contributed a featured piece exploring these technological developments.

• The Atlantic Council released the 2026 Freedom and Prosperity Indexes, revealing a sharp decline in global adherence to the rule of law since 2020. • The report analyzes thirty years of data across 171 countries to illustrate the critical link between legal foundations and economic success. • This trend is significant because the erosion of legal frameworks stalls economic reforms and weakens democratic institutions, preventing millions from achieving prosperity.

Gates has denied any ties to Epstein’s crimes and has not been accused of any wrongdoingBillionaire Warren Buffett omitted Bill Gates′ foundation from his annual donations this year after disclosures of the Microsoft co-founder’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Buffett will donate about $6bn to four foundations connected to his own family, but did not mention Gates in his announcement Tuesday.Buffett also said in his statement that he wants all of his remaining Berkshire Hathaway stock worth more than $140bn donated to charity by the end of 2034. Previously the plan was for his three children to distribute his remaining fortune within 10 years of the 95-year-old investor’s death. Continue reading...

Errol Musk says far-right activist is ‘a fine young man’ and held meetings with Russian business figuresElon Musk’s family foundation took Tommy Robinson to Russia, according to the billionaire X owner’s father, who was with the British far-right activist in Moscow as he encouraged anti-migration protests in Britain.Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – appeared last month in Moscow, from where he issued calls for supporters to take to the streets after a knife attack in Belfast. He shared video of himself in a luxury Moscow hotel with the older Musk, whose son has been a vocal supporter of Robinson. Continue reading...

• Former OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy warned the AI industry that overemphasizing "agents" over foundation models risks repeating a costly five-year strategic detour. • Karpathy argues that independent developers are currently leading agent capabilities, as major AI labs have not been secretly prioritizing this specific branch of development. • In a separate shift toward AI-for-science (AI4S), Anthropic and OpenAI both launched new tools on June 30, introducing the Claude Science workbench and the GeneBench-Pro benchmark.

• The Opinions Editor argues that while immediate economic troubles have eased, the structural foundations necessary for sustainable, long-term growth remain absent. • Key sectors are struggling: high-skilled IT services are under pressure, manufacturing is failing to gain traction, and the financial sector is not creating enough low-to-medium skilled roles. • Job growth is currently concentrated in low-end services, exemplified by Zepto, which saw its delivery rider workforce surge from 49,278 in 2024 to 2.21 lakh in 2026.

• Afghanistan is facing a severe humanitarian crisis following the Taliban's return to power in 2021 and the subsequent withdrawal of international development assistance. • Essential public services, which had become heavily dependent on external support due to years of conflict and state fragility, have largely collapsed. • Humanitarian organizations are struggling to fill the resulting gap in service delivery while simultaneously facing a decline in their own financial resources.

• The Esports Foundation announced on the 26th that online regional qualifiers for the 'League of Legends' event of the 'Esports Nations Cup 2026' have concluded. • Fourteen regions secured spots, including Hong Kong, Mongolia, Lithuania, Romania, Germany, Belgium, Algeria, Tunisia, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Peru, New Zealand, and the Philippines. • Saudi Arabia will also participate in the main tournament as the designated host region.

• Vice President JD Vance announced on Monday that high-level talks in Switzerland between the U.S. and Iran have established a "good foundation" for a deal to end the war. • As a key outcome of the marathon negotiations, Tehran has agreed to allow United Nations nuclear inspectors to return to the country. • This agreement is significant as it marks a potential breakthrough in monitoring Iran's nuclear activities and reducing geopolitical tensions.

• Rival factions of the Shiv Sena, led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Uddhav Thackeray, celebrated the party's foundation day through separate events. • The split celebrations occur against a backdrop of political tension and speculation surrounding a rumored strategic move termed "Operation Tiger." • This separation highlights the deep ideological and leadership divide within the party following the high-profile split between the two camps.

• China is demonstrating economic resilience supported by a solid foundation and the emergence of new growth drivers. • Recent data indicates a slowdown in certain economic indicators since the second quarter, reflecting domestic structural adjustment pressures. • Many Chinese enterprises are currently facing operational difficulties attributed to an increasingly complex international environment.

• The European Commission has proposed the Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) to establish a structured sovereignty framework for cloud and AI infrastructure. • The act introduces a four-tier classification system, ranging from Level 1 (self-assessment and cybersecurity) to Level 4 (full EU ownership, EU-cleared personnel, and strict data localization). • This initiative matters as it seeks to reduce reliance on non-EU providers by ensuring critical AI inference data remains within the union and is subject to national audits.

• Researchers at Sapient developed a 1B parameter reasoning model, called HRM-Text, by training it from scratch for approximately $1,500. • The model was trained on 40B tokens and achieved performance levels competitive with larger models ranging from 2B to 7B parameters. • This breakthrough demonstrates that foundational pretraining is no longer exclusive to wealthy institutions, allowing smaller organizations to build capable reasoning models affordably.

• The IGIC 2026 summit, organized by Smadja & Smadja Strategic Advisory, convened policymakers, investors, and technologists to determine India's strategic direction in artificial intelligence. • Experts argued that India should prioritize "frugal innovation" and vertical AI—specialized applications for specific industries—rather than attempting to compete with massive general-purpose foundation models. • This strategy leverages India's existing infrastructure, including over 2,200 Global Capability Centres employing 2.5 million professionals and more than US$20 billion in AI commitments.

Shoppers turning to online options also affects BHF, which has carried out review of retail armThe British Heart Foundation is to close about 150 shops and cut jobs, as rising costs and the shift to online shopping makes about a quarter of the charity’s high street locations commercially unsustainable.The charity carried out a review of its retail arm, which employs almost 3,700 staff, after net profit across its 640 UK stores plunged from £18.8m in 2024 to £3.6m in the year to 31 March 2025. Continue reading...

• First Foundation Labs (1FL), a life sciences AI company spun out of Luma Group, announced a collaboration with Microsoft on June 2, 2026. • The partnership aims to integrate 1FL's clinical and translational reasoning platform into Microsoft Discovery, an enterprise AI platform hosted on Azure. • This collaboration addresses the limitations of generic Large Language Models (LLMs), which often struggle to provide reliable reasoning within complex, domain-specific scientific environments.

• OpenAI’s non-profit foundation will allocate $250 million toward research analyzing how artificial intelligence affects the global economy. • This initiative marks the first specific deployment of funds following the organization's March pledge to distribute $1 billion over a 12-month period. • The research is critical for understanding the systemic shifts in labor markets and economic productivity caused by the rapid adoption of AI.

• On April 24, 2026, the White House dismissed all 22 members of the National Science Board, the oversight body for the U.S. National Science Foundation that funds research nationwide. • The NSF supports science and engineering across all 50 states and territories, with the board providing independent guidance on grants totaling billions annually. • The purge raises alarms about politicization of federal science funding, potentially disrupting peer-reviewed research in physics, biology, and engineering that drives U.S. innovation.

Positions ‘terminated, effective immediately’, says email to scientists sent on president’s behalf, in move labelled ‘dangerous attack’ on US innovationThe Trump administration has fired members of an independent board that oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF).Members of the National Science Board received an email on Friday sent from the Presidential Personnel Office “on behalf of President Donald J Trump” stating that their position was “terminated, effective immediately”. Continue reading...

Closure comes weeks after former Australian of the Year and advocate for abuse survivors says she lost speaking engagements because of a ‘smear campaign’ against herFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastChild sexual abuse survivor Grace Tame’s foundation has announced it is closing, citing challenges with long-term funding.The former Australian of the Year set up the foundation in 2021 – the year she carried the national honour for her advocacy for abuse survivors and for law reform. Continue reading...

• Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), and the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation called on the US government to officially designate journalist Shelly Kittleson as a hostage and deploy all resources for her release. • Kittleson, a US freelance reporter covering Yemen, was abducted in Sanaa on March 20, 2026, amid escalating Houthi-US tensions linked to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran. • The groups emphasized that formal hostage status would unlock specialized US diplomatic and intelligence efforts, critical amid reports of her deteriorating health in captivity.