CHANGSHA, China, Oct. 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — A report from Hunan Today:

Surrounded by greenery, Hunan First Normal University—with red walls and gray tiles—boasts a long history. French visitor Wang Lilian, curious about her Chinese friends’ mentions of “fellow students” and “youth” here, stepped onto campus to uncover its stories.

Guided through the hall, she learned the university nurtured talents like Mao Zedong and Cai Hesen, who studied under teachers such as Yang Huaizhong. They gained knowledge, felt national responsibility, and began their revolutionary journey here.

At the Eighth Classroom, she discovered young Mao attended classes there after 1913 (when his former school merged into First Normal). This room was where he explored national salvation, engaging in passionate discussions with peers.

In 1919, the May 4th Movement spurred many students to study in France—including Cai Hesen, who mastered French quickly and translated Marxist classics. Wang wondered why Mao didn’t go: he believed understanding China’s reality was key for reform, so he stayed to study domestic issues.

They also visited an ancient well. Young Mao took cold baths here daily, even in winter, to “strengthen his physique”—aligning with “a strong youth makes a strong nation.”

By tour’s end, Wang saw “fellow students” and “youth” as symbols of shared dreams. The journey ended at “Just Fellow Students in Youth” Square, echoing the university’s enduring spirit.

Connecting APAC, MEA and LatAm through Decarbonization and Digital Innovation

SINGAPORE, Oct. 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — MVGX Tech Pte Ltd (“MVGX”), a leading AI ESG company focused on carbon digitalization and decarbonization infrastructure, today announced the launch of the International Certified Emission Reduction (ICER) Book & Claim System jointly with the World Free Zones Organization (World FZO).

The partnership establishes a unified, blockchain-powered framework to bridge carbon markets across Asia-Pacific (APAC), the Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America (LatAm). This initiative will streamline processes including carbon credit registration, verification, trading and tracing across over 3,000 free zones and industrial parks worldwide, accelerating cross-border decarbonisation collaboration while creating a robust global marketplace for ICER Credits.

The system’s core significance lies in three key innovations:

1. Building a Unified Marketplace, Activating Collaboration at Scale: By connecting economic hubs across APAC, MEA and LatAm through a single blockchain-anchored system, it creates the world’s largest integrated carbon market for emerging economies. This provides the scale needed to attract global capital while transforming free zones into active carbon market nodes, ensuring economic growth and emission reduction are mutually reinforcing.
2. Embedding Technology-Driven Trust, Establishing a Global Benchmark: The ICER Credit represents a new global quality benchmark. By embedding technology-guaranteed integrity into its core, it transcends individual national standards, delivering unambiguous and verifiable carbon credits to businesses and governments.
3. Innovating with Title Separation, Safeguarding Stakeholder Interests: The system innovatively registers both National Title (for future Nationally Determined Contribution applications) and Commercial Title. This dual-title structure enables secure, transparent transfers through blockchain-based traceability, safeguarding host nations’ climate sovereignty while providing commercial entities with clear carbon credit usage rights.

“Through this partnership with World FZO, we are constructing a trusted digital bridge between emerging and developed markets,” stated Dr. Bo Bai, Chairman of MVGX. “The ICER Book & Claim System will enable industrial ecosystems to participate in global decarbonisation whilst aligning with national and international climate goals.”

“Our collaboration with MVGX underscores the World FZO’s commitment to advancing sustainability within free zones worldwide,” commented Samir Hamrouni, CEO of World FZO. “This initiative empowers our members to drive carbon reduction and green transformation at scale.”

The ICER Book & Claim System marks a significant milestone for global voluntary carbon markets, establishing a unified, transparent and verifiable framework to connect industries and governments across continents on their journey towards net zero.

About MVGX Tech Pte. Ltd (MVGX)
MVGX, headquartered in Singapore, is a pioneer in sustainability compliance solutions across seven key markets in Asia-Pacific, with a growing presence. We offer a comprehensive suite of services, including digital Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV), regulatory compliance reporting, carbon credit advisory and trading, capacity building, and access to green finance. 

Leveraging proprietary AI inference models and the region’s most extensive emissions factor database, MVGX streamlines sustainability compliance, making it simpler, scalable, and seamless. Our plug and play solutions enable businesses to lower the cost of regulatory compliance while unlocking capital —whether by securing green finance or monetising carbon credits.

Discover how MVGX is shaping the future of sustainability compliance at www.mvgx.com.

About World Free Zones Organization
The World Free Zones Organization (World FZO) is a global, non-profit entity representing over 3,000 free zones worldwide. It promotes best practices, innovation, and sustainability to enhance the contribution of free zones to global economic development.

HONG KONG, Oct. 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — A subsidiary of MBV International Limited, Daren Group (“Daren”), announced that it has signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with FLock Technology Holdings (“FLock”). The two parties will collaborate to develop privacy-preserving artificial intelligence (AI) solutions and are considering future strategic expansions, including potentially adding the FLOCK token to Daren’s strategic token reserves.

FLock created the first decentralized AI training platform, FLock.io, combining federated learning and blockchain to revolutionize AI development with its platform native utility token FLOCK. It enables secure, privacy-preserving training without centralizing data, allowing for collaboratively creating, training, and owning AI models. FLock also provides its clients with privacy-preserving, end-to-end AI solutions, including local model deployment, data anonymization, fine-tuning, co-training with federated learning, and application building.

FLock stated: “Partnering with Daren marks a key step in extending FLock’s privacy-preserving AI technology from highly regulated sectors like healthcare and finance to consumer manufacturing and apparel supply chains. Daren possesses strong distribution and manufacturing foundations in the Southeast Asian apparel and gift industries. FLock’s private AI platform can help optimize production forecasting, inventory management, and cross-regional sales analysis intelligently and locally. Through secure data collaboration and edge AI deployment, we aim to jointly drive a value transformation from ‘manufacturing-driven’ to ‘data-driven’. This will not only enhance profit margins and operational efficiency but also set a new benchmark for privacy-intelligent solutions in the Southeast Asian consumer goods industry.”

Daren commented: “We are pleased to partner with FLock, which brings extensive experience in blockchain technology and secure privacy protection. FLock is also a strategic AI partner of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and a new technical partner for its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Blockchain Accelerator project. The privacy-preserving AI models we develop with FLock will combine the liquidity advantages of tokenization with the needs of physical business development, creating significant potential to revolutionize global asset management and trading models.”

Despite the global phase-out of leaded gasoline, lead pollution continues to threaten health and widen inequality, with low- and middle-income countries bearing the brunt

SINGAPORE, Oct. 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Lead poisoning was once thought to largely be a problem of the past, as the globe gradually weaned itself off leaded gasoline in road vehicles in 2021. But has global lead pollution truly been resolved?

A new study led by Dr Chen Mengli, a Research Fellow from the Tropical Marine Science Institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS), in collaboration with researchers from Imperial College London, University of Warwick, University of Oxford, Jadavpur University, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Bristol, showed the answer is not yet: lead exposure remains a pressing public health and economic challenge in the 21^st century. The researchers estimated that ongoing childhood lead exposure costs the world more than US$3.4 trillion in lost economic potential each year, with disproportionate impacts on low- and middle-income countries.

Published in the Communications Earth & Environment on 30 September 2025, the findings suggest that without stronger safeguards, the ever-increasing demand for electrification and poorly regulated recycling of lead-containing products could entrench global inequalities and set back decades of progress in children’s health. To avert this, the researchers proposed a four-pronged strategy that policymakers and industries can act on today.

Lessons from history

Lead has been woven into human society for thousands of years, from the plumbing systems of the Roman Empire to the paints, pipes and industrial alloys still in use today. Its widespread use has left a toxic trail. Some of the earliest mass poisonings were linked to contaminated food and drink in Europe centuries ago. But the most recent incident came with the introduction of tetraethyl lead in gasoline in the 1920s, which for decades spewed millions of tonnes of the metal into the atmosphere.

By the 1970s, children across the world carried dangerously high blood lead levels, and the repercussions were severe, causing neurological damage, impaired development and countless premature deaths. The eventual ban on leaded gasoline, completed worldwide only in 2021, is heralded as one of the great public health victories of the modern era. Importantly, it showed that determined, coordinated global action could reduce exposure and save lives.

However, the team noted that the celebration of a “lead-free” world was premature. While blood lead levels fell in many high-income countries, they plateaued or even rose again in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Legacy contamination from soils and infrastructure, coal combustion, numerous lead-laden products such as leaded paint, and informal recycling of lead-acid batteries and e-wastes have all kept exposure alive.

“The perception that the problem was solved has to change. New sources of exposure continue to emerge and the historical emitted lead keeps redistributing through various natural processes,” added Dr Chen, who is also from the Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS.

Today’s exposure and economic toll

Lead production today exceeds 16 million tonnes a year, with about 85 per cent going into lead–acid batteries that power vehicles, telecommunications and backup energy systems. Annual production now exceeds the total lead emitted during the entire era of leaded gasoline.

Though these items can be recycled, much of the reprocessing occurs under unsafe conditions, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Informal recycling sites, often located near homes and schools, expose workers and surrounding communities to hazardous levels of lead. Coal combustion, contaminated soils and the continued sale of lead-laden paints, toys, and even food products, further compound the risks.

The researchers noted from numerous literatures that health consequences are most severe for children. Even at low levels, lead can damage the developing brain, lowering IQ, impairing learning and contributing to behavioural issues. This burden is often carried across one’s lifetime as the effects are irreversible. In particular, the team estimated that childhood exposure today translates into a global economic loss exceeding US$3.4 trillion annually, equivalent to over 2 per cent of the world’s GDP.

Four-pronged approach to curb a resurgence 

The team highlighted that recognising the continuing risks is the first step towards preventing another global health crisis. The study outlined four urgent areas for action to safeguard public health and reduce inequality:

1. Manage the life cycle of lead-containing products. With demand for batteries and electronics rising, stronger oversight is needed to minimise leakage during production, use and disposal.
2. Eliminate unsafe and illicit sources. Informal recycling and lead-laden goods such as lead paints, glazed ceramics and adulterated spices continue to expose millions to hazardous levels of lead.
3. Strengthen monitoring and community involvement. Early detection of lead leakage is often underfunded. Advances in low-cost sensors and machine-learning-based tools, combined with local knowledge, can help identify and address hotspots more effectively.
4. Capture the full socio-economic cost. Lead exposure disproportionately harms disadvantaged populations. Better models and population-level data are needed to quantify long-term impacts on health, education and productivity, as well as guiding equitable policy responses.

“The world rightly celebrated the phase-out of leaded gasoline as a triumph of international cooperation,” she said. “But the problem of lead exposure has not yet gone away. Unless we remain vigilant about both new sources of exposure and the legacy of lead in the environment, we may risk repeating the same tragedy,” Dr Chen emphasised.

Read more at: https://news.nus.edu.sg/global-lead-exposure-costs-trillions-endangers-children/