U.S. and Australian officials said on Monday (July 8) that both countries are committed to improving financial connectivity in the Pacific and strengthening banking services in the region to resist China's growing covetousness. According to Reuters, at the two-day Pacific Banking Forum co-hosted by the United States and Australia, Australian Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said that Canberra hopes to be the partner of choice in the Pacific region, both in banking and defense. "If there are countries acting in this region whose main goal is to promote their own national interests rather than the interests of Pacific island countries, we will be very concerned," Jones said at the first day of the forum in Brisbane. He made this comment when asked about Chinese banks filling the vacuum in the Pacific region. The report said that as some Western banks have interrupted their long-standing business relationships with banks in small Pacific island countries, while others are preparing to close their businesses, these Pacific island countries face many challenges and their ability to obtain US dollar-dominated banking business is limited. The report said that experts said that Western banks are taking de-risking actions to meet financial regulations, which makes it more difficult to do business in Pacific island countries. This in turn weakens the financial resilience of these island nations. At the same time, Washington is also stepping up efforts to support Pacific island nations in limiting China's influence. Brian Nelson, U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for Counterterrorism and Financial Intelligence, said, "We recognize the economic and strategic importance of the Pacific region, and we are committed to deepening engagement and cooperation with our allies and partners to enhance financial connectivity, investment and integration." The report said that neither the United States nor Australia has yet announced detailed plans at the forum, but comments from officials from both countries reflect the growing unease among Western countries that have traditionally had influence in the Pacific region about China's growing influence in the region.

The UAE insurance sector continued to grow in Q4-2023, as reflected by increase in the gross written premiums. As of year-end, the number of licensed insurance companies in the UAE remained at 60, according to the Central Bank of the UAE's (CBUAE) Quarterly Economic Review (Q4-2023). The insurance sector comprised 23 traditional national companies, 10 Takaful national and 27 foreign companies, while the number of insurance related professions remained at 491. The review on insurance sector structure and activity showed that the gross written premium increased by 12.7% Y-o-Y in Q4 2023 to AED 53.2 billion, mostly due to an increase in health insurance premiums by 16.5% Y-o-Y and an increase in property and liability insurance premiums by 18.9% Y-o-Y, while the insurance of persons and fund accumulation premiums decreased by 12.4% Y-o-Y, resulting primarily from decrease in individual life premiums. Gross paid claims of all types of insurance plans increased by 12.8% Y-o-Y to AED 31.1 billion at the end of 2023. This was mainly driven by the increase in claims paid in health insurance by 16.9% Y-o-Y and increase in paid claims in property and liability insurance by 10.9% Y-o-Y, partially offset by the decline in claims paid in insurance of persons and fund accumulation by 2.8% Y-o-Y. The total technical provisions of all types of insurance increased by 8.4% Y-o-Y to AED 74.4 billion in Q4 2023 compared to AED68.6 billion in Q4 2022. The volume of invested assets in the insurance sector amounted to AED 76 billion (60.4% of total assets) in Q4 2023 compared to AED 71.4 billion (59.4% of total assets) in Q4 2022. The retention ratio of written insurance premiums for all types of insurance was 52.9 % (AED 28.1 billion) in Q4 2023, compared to 54.9% (AED 25.9 billion) at the end of 2022. The UAE insurance sector remained well capitalized in terms of early warning ratios and risk assessment. Own funds to minimum capital requirement ratio increased to 335.7% in Q4 2023, compared to 309.3% at the end of 2022, due to an increase in own funds eligible to meet the minimum capital requirements. Also, own funds to solvency capital requirement ratio rose to 221% in Q4 2023 compared to 208.5% in Q4 2022, due to an increase in own funds eligible to meet solvency capital requirements. Finally, own funds to minimum guarantee fund ratio reached to 316.3% at the end of 2023 down from 314.6% a year earlier, due to higher eligible funds to meet minimum guarantee funds. In terms of profitability, the net total profit to net written premiums increased to 6.5% in Q4 2023, compared to 2.9% at the end of 2022. The return on average assets increased to 0.3% in Q4 2023 compared to the 0.1% at the of the previous year.

China is mulling over establishing a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) standardization technical committee under its Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), aiming to guide enterprises to enhance industrial standards and boost domestic innovation. The proposed committee, revealed by the MIIT on Monday, will work on composing a BCI standards roadmap for the entire industry development as well as the standards for the research and development of the key technologies involved, according to the MIIT. China has taken strides in developing the BCI industry over the years, not only providing abundant policy support but also generous financial investment, Li Wenyu, secretary of the Brain-Computer Interface Industrial Alliance, told the Global Times. From last year to 2024, both the central and local governments have successively issued relevant policies to support industrial development. The MIIT in 2023 rolled out a plan selecting and promoting a group of units with strong innovation capabilities to break through landmark technological products and accelerate the application of new technologies and products. The Beijing local government also released an action plan to accelerate the industry in the capital (2024-2030) this year. In 2023, there were no fewer than 20 publicly disclosed financing events for BCI companies in China, with a total disclosed amount exceeding 150 million yuan ($20.6 million), Li said. “The strong support from the government has injected momentum into industrial innovation.” The fact that China's BCI industry started later than Western countries such as the US is a reality, leading to the gap in China regarding technological breakthroughs, industrial synergy, and talent development, according to Li. To further close gaps and solve bottlenecks in BCI industrial development, Li suggested that the industry explore various technological approaches to suit different application scenarios and encourage more medical facilities powered by BCI to initiate clinical trials by optimizing the development of BCI-related ethics. Additionally, he highlighted that standard development is one of the aspects to enhance the overall level and competitiveness of the industry chain, which could, in turn, empower domestic BCI innovation. While China's BCI technology generally lags behind leading countries like the US in terms of system integration and clinical application, this has not hindered the release of Neucyber, which stands as China's first "high-performance invasive BCI." Neucyber, an invasive implanted BCI technology, was independently developed by Chinese scientists from the Chinese Institute for Brain Research in Beijing. Li Yuan, Business Development Director of Beijing Xinzhida Neurotechnology, the company that co-developed this BCI system, told the Global Times that the breakthrough of Neucyber could not have been achieved without the efforts of the institute gathering superior resources from various teams in Beijing. A group of mature talents were gathered within the institute, from specific fields involving electrodes, chips, algorithms, software, and materials, Li Yuan said. Shrugging off the outside world's focus on China’s competition with the US in this regard, Li Yuan said her team doesn’t want to be imaginative and talk too much, but strives to produce a set of products step by step that can be useful in actual applications. In addition, Li Wenyu also attributed the emergence of Neucyber to the independent research atmosphere and the well-established talent nurturing mechanism in the Chinese Institute for Brain Research. He said that to advance China’s BCI industry, it is necessary not only to cultivate domestic talents but also to introduce foreign talents to enhance China's research and innovation capabilities. The proposed plan for establishing the BCI standardization technical committee under the MIIT will solicit public opinions until July 30, 2024.

New York CNN — A record number of passengers are expected to pass through US airports this holiday travel week. You’d think this would be a great time to run an airline. You’d be wrong. Airlines face numerous problems, including higher costs, such as fuel, wages and interest rates. And problems at Boeing mean airlines have too few planes to expand routes to support a record numbers of flyers. Strong bookings can’t entirely offset that financial squeeze. The good news for passengers is they will be spared most of the problems hurting airlines’ bottom lines — at least in the near term. Airfares are driven far more by supply and demand, not their costs. But in the long run, the airlines’ difficulties could mean fewer airline routes, less passenger choice and ultimately a less pleasant flying experience. Profit squeeze Industry analysts expect airlines to report a drop of about $2 billion in profit, or 33%, when they report financial results for the April to June period this year. That would follow losses of nearly $800 million across the industry in the first quarter. Labor costs and jet fuel prices, the airlines’ two largest costs, are both sharply higher this year. Airline pilot unions just landed double-digit pay hikes to make up for years of stagnant wages; flight attendant unions now want comparable raises. Jet fuel prices are climbing because of higher demand in the summer. According to the International Air Transport Association’s jet fuel monitor, prices are up 1.4% in just the last week, and about 4% in the last month. Adding to the airlines’ problems is the crisis at Boeing, as well as the less-well-publicized problems with some of the jet engines on planes from rival Airbus. Since an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max jet lost a door plug on a January 5 flight, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane 10 minutes after takeoff, the Federal Aviation Administration has limited how many jets Boeing can make over concerns about quality and safety. As a result, airlines have dramatically reduced plans to expand their fleets and replace older planes with more fuel efficient models. In some cases, airlines have asked pilots to take time off without pay, and carriers such as Southwest and United have announced pilot hiring freezes. In addition to the problems at Boeing, hundreds of the Airbus A220 and A320 family of jets globally have also been grounded for at least a month or more to deal with engine problems. Just about all the planes with those engines have been out of sevice for at least a few days to undergo examinations. And Airbus has also cut back the number of planes it expects to deliver to airlines this year because of supply chain problems. Problems for flyers For now, competition in the industry remains fierce: There are 6% more seats available this month compared to July of 2023, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. And that’s helped to drive fares down — good news for passengers, but more bad news for airlines’ profits. Southwest announced in April that it would stop serving four airports to trim costs — Bellingham International Airport in Washington state, Cozumel International Airport in Mexico, Syracuse Hancock International Airport in New York and Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Many more cities lost air service during the financial hard times of the pandemic. While upstart airlines are driving prices lower for travelers, those discount carriers might not survive long term. As the major carriers are making less money, many of the upstarts are flat-out losing money.

The Sun is extremely active right now, blasting the Earth with the biggest solar storms in 20 years. This is what it is doing to the rest of the Solar System. If you happened to look skywards on a few nights in May 2024, there was a good chance of seeing something spectacular. For those at relatively low latitudes, there was a rare chance to see the flickering red, pink, green glow of our planet's aurorae. A powerful solar storm had sent bursts of charged particles barrelling towards Earth and, as they bounced around in our planet's atmosphere, they unleashed spectacular displays of the Northern and Southern Lights. The dazzling displays of aurora borealis were visible far further south than they might normally be – and far further north in the case of aurora australis thanks to the power of the geomagnetic storm, the strongest in two decades. Although some people experienced only a faint, eerie glow, others were treated to a myriad of colour as far south as London in the UK and Ohio in the US. Reports even came in from just to the north of San Francisco, California. But while this spike in activity from the Sun left many on Earth transfixed by the light display it produced, it has also had a profound effect elsewhere in the Solar System. As most of us wondered at the colours dancing across the night's sky, astronomers have been peering far beyond to see the strange ways such intense bursts of particles affect other planets and the space between them. "The Sun can fire material outwards in any direction like a garden sprinkler," says Jim Wild, a professor of space physics at Lancaster University in the UK. "The effects are felt throughout the Solar System." Our Sun is currently heading towards, or has already reached, its solar maximum – the point in an 11-year cycle where it is most active. This means the Sun produces more bursts of radiation and particles from solar flares and events known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). If these are sprayed in our direction, they can supercharge the Earth's magnetic field, causing magnificent aurorae but also posing problems for satellites and power grids. "Things really seem to be picking up right now," says Mathew Owens, a space physicist at the University of Reading in the UK. "I think we're about at solar maximum now, so we may see more of these kinds of storms in the next couple of years." Around the Sun, multiple spacecraft are observing this increase in activity up close. One of those, the European Space Agency's (Esa) Solar Orbiter, has been studying the Sun since 2020 on an orbit that takes it within the path of Mercury. Currently the spacecraft is "on the far side of the Sun as seen from Earth", says Daniel Müller, project scientist for the Solar Orbiter mission at Esa in the Netherlands. "So we see everything that Earth doesn't see." The storm that hit Earth in May originated from an active region of solar flares and sunspots, bursts of plasma and twisting magnetic fields on the Sun's surface, known as its photosphere. Solar Orbiter was able to see "several of the flares from this monster active region that rotated out of Earth's view", says Müller, bright flashes of light and darkened regions called sunspots on the Sun's surface. One of the goals of Solar Orbiter is "to connect what's happening on the Sun to what's happening in the heliosphere," says Müller. The heliosphere is a vast bubble of plasma that envelops the Sun and the planets of the Solar System as it travels through interstellar space. What Müller and his colleagues hope to learn more about is where the solar wind – the constant stream of particles spilling out from the Sun across the Solar System – "blows into the interstellar medium", he says. "So we are particularly interested in anything energetic on the Sun that we can find back in the turbulence of the solar wind." This particular cycle, cycle 25, appears to be "significantly more active than what people predicted", says Müller, with the relative sunspot number – an index used to measure the activity across the visible surface of the Sun – eclipsing what was seen as the peak of the previous solar cycle. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in the US had predicted a maximum monthly average of 124 sunspots a day in May, but the actual number was 170 on average, with one day exceeding 240, according to Müller. But the exact cause of the Sun's 11-year-long cycle and its variabilities remains a bit of a mystery. • Alien aurora: The strange displays that light up other worlds • Why Einstein was wrong about black holes • The Moon is slipping away from the Earth – and our days are getting longer The effects of these changes in solar activity, however, extend far across the Solar System. Earth is not the only planet to be hit by solar storms as they billow across interplanetary space. Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, has a much weaker magnetic field than Earth – about 100 times less – and lacks a substantial atmosphere. But solar activity can cause the surface of the planet to glow with X-rays as solar wind rains down. Venus also lacks a substantial magnetic field, but the planet does still create auroras as the solar wind interacts with the planet's ionosphere. At Mars, the effect of solar activity is more obvious. Here, a Nasa spacecraft called Maven (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) has been studying the planet's atmosphere from orbit since 2014. "We were on the declining side of solar cycle 24 [then]," says Shannon Curry, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the US and the lead on the mission. "We are now coming up on the peak of cycle 25, and this latest series of active regions has produced the strongest activity Maven has ever seen." Between 14 and 20 May the spacecraft detected exceptionally powerful solar activity reaching Mars, including an X8.7 – solar flares are ranked B, C, M, and X in order from weakest to strongest. Results from the event have yet to be studied, but Curry noted that a previous X8.2 flare had resulted in "a dozen papers" published in scientific journals. Another flare on 20 May, later estimated to be an even bigger X12, hurled X-rays and gamma rays towards Mars before a subsequent coronal mass ejection launched a barrage of charged particles in the same direction. Images beamed back from Nasa's Curiosity Rover on Mars revealed just now much energy struck the Martian surface. Streaks and dots caused by charged particles hitting the camera's sensors caused the images to "dance with snow", according to a press release from Nasa. Maven, meanwhile, captured glowing aurora as the particles hit the Mars' atmosphere, engulfing the entire planet in an ultraviolet glow. The flares can cause the temperature of the Martian atmosphere to "dramatically increase," says Curry. "It can even double in the upper atmosphere. The atmosphere itself inflates. The entire atmosphere expands dozens of kilometres – exciting for scientists but detrimental for spacecraft, because when the atmosphere expands there's more drag on the spacecraft." The expanding atmosphere can also cause degradation of the solar panels on spacecraft orbiting Mars from the increase in radiation. "The last two flares caused more degradation than what a third of a year would typically do," says Curry. Mars, while it has lost most of its magnetic field, still has "crustal remnant magnetic fields, little bubbles all over the southern hemisphere", says Curry. During a solar event, charged particles can light those up and excite particles. "The entire day side lights up in what we call a diffuse aurora," says Curry. "The entire sky glows. This would most likely be visible to astronauts on the surface." By the time solar storms reach further out into the solar system, they tend to have dissipated but can still have an impact on the planets they encounter. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all have aurorae that are in part driven by charged particles from the Sun interacting with their magnetic fields. But one of the key effects of solar activity on interplanetary space that astronomers are eager to study is something called "slow solar wind", a more sluggish, but denser stream of charged particles and plasma from the Sun. Steph Yardley, a solar astronomer at Northumbria University in the UK, says solar wind is "generally classed about 500km/s (310 miles/s)", but slow wind falls below this. It also has a lower temperature and tends to be more volatile. Recent work by Yardley and her colleagues, using data from Solar Orbiter, suggests that the Sun's atmosphere, its corona, plays a role in the speed of the solar wind. Regions where the magnetic field lines, the direction of the field and charged particles are "open" – stretching out into space without looping back – provide a highway for solar wind to reach high speeds. Closed loops over some active regions – where the magnetic field lines have no beginning and end – can occasionally snap, producing slow solar wind. The variability in the slow solar wind seems to be driven by the unpredictable flow of plasma inside the Sun, which makes the magnetic field particularly chaotic. The X-class flares and coronal mass ejections seen in May transformed the interplanetary medium as they flung out material across the solar system. Solar Orbiter detected a huge spike in ions moving at thousands of kilometres per second immediately after the 20 May flare. Computers on board other spacecraft – the BepiColombo probe, which is currently on a seven-year journey to Mercury, and Mars Express, in orbit around the Red Planet – both saw a dramatic increase in the number of memory errors caused by the high energy solar particles hitting the memory cells. The day after the coronal mass ejection, magnetometers on board the Solar Orbiter also saw large swings in the magnetic field around the spacecraft as a huge bubble of plasma made up of charged particles thrown out from by the event washed past it at 1,400km/s (870 miles/s). Increased solar activity is a boon for scientists. "If you track the number of papers produced by solar physicists, you can almost see an 11-year cycle in there," says Owens. "We are all more scientifically productive when there's a lot of activity to study." As the Sun continues into solar maximum, the Solar System will see more and more activity streaming from its surface. Yet while all the planets witness at least some of the activity, our planet bears the brunt more than most. "Earth is slightly unique in that space weather can have interesting effects on human technologies," says Wild. "There's an extra dimension here on Earth." Perhaps one day those anthropogenic effects might be felt elsewhere, too. "If you're going to fly to Mars and you have a six-month flight through the interplanetary environment, you're going to potentially suck up a lot of space weather events," says Wild. "How you protect your astronauts is an interplanetary issue that we need to get our heads around."