BlockBeats reported on July 18, citing the Kuwait News Agency, that Kuwait Petroleum said key oil facilities had been attacked by Iran. According to the brief report, the attack caused multiple injuries and led to serious damage. The item was published as a 7x24 flash update, and no further operational details, timeline beyond the July 18 report date, or site-specific information were disclosed in the source text provided. The report attributes the information to Kuwait Petroleum through the Kuwait News Agency and does not include additional comments, casualty figures, or a breakdown of the losses.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded cumulative net inflows of $75.5 million this week, according to data tracked by Farside and cited by BlockBeats on July 18. Over the same period, spot Ethereum ETFs saw cumulative net inflows of $105.5 million. The figures reflect weekly fund flow totals for the two crypto ETF segments in the US market. No additional breakdown by issuer or trading day was provided in the source note. BlockBeats attributed the data to Farside monitoring.

Ford spent the past three years bringing back 350 veteran engineers after discovering that AI-driven assumptions in design and quality control left gaps the company still needed humans to fix. Charles Poon, vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, said Ford wrongly believed that feeding design requirements into AI would be enough to produce high-quality products. The issue, he said, was not that AI was useless, but that crucial engineering knowledge had never been documented in a way the systems could learn from. The case lines up with broader survey data cited in the report. An international study commissioned by Orgvue and conducted by Vitreous World, based on responses from 1,163 C-suite leaders and senior decision-makers, found that 39% had cut staff because of AI adoption. Of that group, 55% later said the decision was a mistake. Another 23% said layoffs were based on broad assumptions about AI capabilities rather than a detailed review of what affected employees actually did. The report also points to IBM and Commonwealth Bank of Australia as examples of companies that pulled work into AI systems, then ran into limits around judgment, edge cases or operating realities. Additional survey data from Careerminds, Robert Half and forecasts from Forrester suggest that a meaningful share of AI-linked layoffs may be reversed, with rehiring costs in some cases exceeding the savings from cuts.

Kaspersky security researchers have identified a new malware strain called OkoBot that is designed to steal cryptocurrency wallet seed phrases and credentials, according to Bits.media. The malware reportedly uses roughly 20 modules and relies on ClickFix social engineering to trick users into running malicious commands on their own devices. Researchers said the campaign is also being distributed through GitHub repositories disguised as legitimate tools, including SQL Server Management Studio. Several modules were highlighted in the report. SeedHunter targets hardware wallets such as Trezor and Ledger by injecting itself into the recovery process and showing a fake interface when users enter seed phrases. MC Keylogger records keyboard input and clipboard activity, while OkoSpyware tracks wallet passwords and captures window video. Kaspersky said that once attackers obtain a victim’s seed phrase, they can take full control of the related crypto assets, leaving little chance of fund recovery. The company added that OkoBot has been active for more than a year. Most victims were located in Brazil, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, and Turkey. The attackers also geofenced IP addresses from Russia and CIS countries.

BitGo said it will provide custody and over-the-counter settlement services for USDM1, a native on-chain sovereign bond issued by the Marshall Islands. The instrument is backed 1:1 by short-term U.S. Treasuries and is available across Stellar, Ethereum and Solana, with T+0 settlement running around the clock. According to the report cited by Techub, the Marshall Islands government plans to use the bond in its nationwide universal basic income program to distribute government funds to citizens. The update points to a government-linked use case for tokenized sovereign debt, with BitGo handling custody and OTC settlement infrastructure for the product.

Stock exchange-traded funds have drawn more than RMB 320 billion in net inflows since the start of July, according to a July 17 market update cited by Odaily and sourced to Shanghai Securities News. On the day, the market traded in a volatile and corrective pattern, while several broad-based ETFs posted a notable increase in turnover. Capital flow data showed that stock ETFs recorded more than RMB 75 billion in net inflows on July 17 alone. Over the five trading days from July 13 to July 17, cumulative net inflows exceeded RMB 200 billion. The figures point to sustained fund allocations into equity ETF products over the course of the month, even as the broader market saw short-term fluctuations. No additional breakdown by individual fund product was provided in the brief.

Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds recorded a net inflow of $132 million on July 17, extending their streak to four straight days, while BlackRock’s IBIT alone brought in $136 million. On the market outlook side, CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost said the crypto market has entered the final stage of the bear market, citing a fresh crossover between the cost bases of short-term and long-term Bitcoin holders that still requires a three-day confirmation window. On-chain activity also stayed active. A whale that bought more than $290 million worth of BTC through Galaxy Digital last year added another 1,001 BTC, valued at roughly $64 million. Elsewhere, Abraxas Capital withdrew more ETH from centralized exchanges, and another whale sold 30,000 ETH through Galaxy Digital in an OTC trade before depositing about 55 million USDC to Coinbase. Beyond price and flows, the day’s developments also covered Nigeria’s new virtual asset executive order, FTX’s fifth round of distributions, Cardano’s shift of core development work to external teams, and Robinhood Chain’s struggle to move beyond meme-driven volume into a larger RWA and on-chain finance business.

A male model in Taiwan has accused apparel brand Life8 of using AI-generated product images that closely copied his facial features and appearance without consent, pushing a dispute over portrait rights into the spotlight. The model, identified in the report as surnamed Lin and using the social account iamgalin, said he recognized himself in the images through details including his pre-surgery single eyelid, a tattoo on the right side of his neck, and his usual pose and head angle. He said the images were posted on Life8’s official website to sell clothing and argued that clients could mistakenly think he had changed his appearance, affecting future work. Life8 first said the images were generated by AI based on prompts and were not created with any specific person as the subject. The company later said it had privately contacted the model to discuss portrait-rights handling and follow-up authorization, a shift that triggered criticism online because the two statements appeared inconsistent. The report says the case has since expanded beyond one brand, with other models sharing similar experiences. It also lays out the legal questions likely to matter in Taiwan, including portrait rights under the Civil Code, the limits of copyright claims by models, the role of photographers and commissioning brands in training-image disputes, and whether purely AI-generated product images can qualify for copyright protection at all.