The spectacular collapse of the Silicon Valley bank demonstrated a fatal flaw in the American deposit insurance system: the $250,000 FDIC coverage limit seems insufficient to prevent a bank run. But raising or eliminating this limit, some commentators have suggested, would create incredible moral hazard. Instead, the FDIC should mitigate risk, as an insurer would, by pricing and apportioning it.

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AMSTERDAM — Throw another mammoth on a barbie?

An Australian company on Tuesday removed the glass cap from a meatball made from lab-grown, cultured meat using the genetic sequence of a long-extinct pachyderm, saying it was meant to spark public debate about the high-tech delicacy.

The launch at the Amsterdam Science Museum took place just a few days before April 1st, so there was an elephant in the room: is that true?

“This is not an April Fool’s joke,” said Tim Noakesmith, founder of Australian startup Vow, “this is real innovation.”

Cultured meat, also called cultured or cell meat, is made from animal cells. Its production does not require the slaughter of livestock, which advocates say is better not only for the animals but also for the environment.

Vow used the mammoth’s publicly available genetic information, filled in the missing pieces with the genetic data of its closest living relative, the African elephant, and placed them in a sheep’s cage, Noaksmith said. Under the right conditions in the lab, the cells multiplied until there were enough of them to roll into meatballs.

More than 100 companies around the world are working on cultured meat products, many of them start-ups like Vow.

Experts say that if the technology is widely adopted, it could significantly reduce the environmental impact of global meat production in the future. Currently, billions of acres of land are used for agriculture around the world.

But don’t expect it to be on plates all over the world anytime soon. At the moment, tiny Singapore is the only country that has allowed the consumption of cell-based meat. Vow hopes to sell its first product there, farmed Japanese quail meat, later this year.

The mammoth meatball is a one-of-a-kind item that has not even been tried by its creators and is not planned to be commercially produced. Instead, it was presented as a source of protein that would make people talk about the future of meat.

“We wanted people to be excited that the future of food will be different from what we had before. That there are things that are unique and better than the meat we definitely eat now, and we thought the mammoth would be a conversation starter and get people excited about this new future,” Noakesmith told The Associated Press.

“But also the woolly mammoth has traditionally been a symbol of loss. We now know that he died from climate change. And so we wanted to see if we could create something that would symbolize a more exciting future that would be better not only for us, but for the planet,” he added.

Seren Kell, manager of science and technology at the Good Food Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes plant-based and cellular alternatives to animal products, said he hopes the project will “open up new conversations about the extraordinary potential of cultured meat to produce more sustainable food.” reducing the climate impact of our current food system and freeing up land for less intensive agriculture.”

He said the giant project, with its unconventional source of genes, was an exception in the new meat farming sector, which usually focuses on traditional livestock production of cattle, pigs and poultry.

“By growing beef, pork, chicken and seafood, we can make the biggest impact in terms of reducing emissions from traditional livestock production and meeting the growing global demand for meat while meeting our climate goals,” he said.

The giant meatball on display in Amsterdam, somewhere between a softball and a volleyball, was for display purposes only and was frosted to ensure it wouldn’t get damaged on the way from Sydney.

But when it was cooked – first slowly baked, and then processed on the outside with a blowtorch – it smelled nice.

“People who were there said that the scent was something like another prototype we had made before, which was a crocodile,” said Noaksmith. gave it a completely unique and new flavor that we as a population haven’t felt in a very long time.”

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Associated Press reporter Laura Ungar provided the information from Louisville, Kentucky.

The Nothing (2) phone has been spotted on the government website of the Bureau of Indian Standards. 91 mobile, a telephone blog dedicated to the local market. This means that production may be completed and a launch may be imminent.

This is good news for anyone interested in Nothing Phone, not just Indian fans, as Nothing CEO Carl Pei has promised to bring the upcoming Nothing Phone (2) to more markets, making the US a real priority this time, not just a latecomer. . round beta testing area.

We recently heard from chatty Qualcomm executives that Nothing Phone (2) will likely use the company’s late 2022 flagship mobile platform, the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1. Gen 2, but the latest chipset is powerful enough to power phones like Galaxy Z Fold 4 portable tablet. This makes it a major upgrade for Nothing.

The 91Mobiles leaks also suggest that the phone could get 12GB of RAM as standard. Combined with a fast chipset, this would make Nothing Phone (2) a serious performer. If Nothing can deliver the phone at the bargain price of the original, that will make it an interesting contender.