Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago has spent the past year investigating a Democratic fund-raising firm once co-owned by the daughter of the judge in President Trump’s hush-money trial in New York, according to court filings and people familiar with the inquiry.Last August, the U.S. attorney, Andrew S. Boutros of the Northern District of Illinois, directed Authentic Campaigns Inc. to turn over a broad range of internal communications with clients. They included former Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and the Democratic National Committee,…

Lance Whitney/ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET’s key takeawaysChatGPT’s Computer History creates a timeline from your app and website activities.From the timeline, you can incorporate your work into your conversations.The option is only in the Mac app and only for certain types of accounts.ChatGPT now has a new feature that sounds like a productivity boost but may trigger concerns among privacy-minded users.On Thursday, OpenAI introduced its new Computer History feature. Now hitting the ChatGPT Mac app, but only for Pro, Business, and Enterprise accounts, Computer History is an opt-in skill that can capture your activities across…

In July 2025, House Republicans staged a coordinated three-bill blitz they called ‘Crypto Week;, advancing the GENIUS, CLARITY, and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act in the same five day stretch. The GENIUS Act was signed into law within 24 hours, creating a regulatory framework for dollar-backed stablecoins. However, the other two bills weren’t so lucky. The Anti-CBDC Surveillance State passed the House by an extremely narrow margin, and got stuck in Senate purgatory without a floor vote in place for over a year. Following the House’s bipartisan passage of the CLARITY Act, the bill landed in the Senate Banking Committee…

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey V has taken a major step toward mapping the sky on a truly global scale with Data Release 20. Known as DR20, the release includes the first optical (BOSS) SDSS-V spectra collected from the Southern Hemisphere, greatly expanding the survey beyond the groundwork established in earlier releases. By combining these new southern observations with data gathered in the north, SDSS-V is bringing panoptic spectroscopy across both hemispheres. The result gives astronomers a broader view of stars, interstellar gas, and distant galaxies throughout the cosmos. DR20 contains part of the much larger panoptic spectroscopic map that…

SANTA FE, N.M.—Is climate change enough justification to stop the expansion of a reservoir that will take more water from the dwindling Colorado River? That’s the central question in a lawsuit pitting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Colorado’s largest water utility against a consortium of environmental nonprofits. The environmentalists say the Colorado River has no more water to give, while Denver Water, the utility whose Gross Reservoir would nearly triple in capacity, argues it is ensuring its customers can withstand droughts. The Corps contends it is not required to consider climate change or the downstream effects of its…

Recently, while traipsing from showroom to showroom in search of a used car for my growing clan, the iconic line from Christopher Nolan’s seminal Batman movie The Dark Knight came to mind: “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” And by villain, of course, I mean an SUV driver.Because, if you haven’t shopped for a secondhand family car recently, I’ll save you the shock: wherever you look, it’s SUVs.It’s no surprise when these giant cars now make up 30% of all cars on the road and were 50% of all new car…

Home Middle East Live Issued on: 15/08/2026 – 07:12Modified: 15/08/2026 – 10:11 A man reacts on the rubble of a destroyed home that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Ansar village, southern Lebanon. © Mohammed Zaatari, AP Seven people were killed and at least three injured in an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon on Saturday, Lebanon’s state news ‌agency said. It is the worst toll since deals in June saw a lull in hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. Follow our live blog for the latest updates. 15/08/2026 – 09:51Israeli military says it struck hezbollah infrastructure in southern lebanon in…

I didn’t want to work in social media. If you’d asked 15-year-old me my dream job, I might have said foreign correspondent, or maybe travel writer. So you can imagine my surprise to now find myself giving these very colleagues advice on how to get the best selfie angle or write the sharpest TikTok ‘hook’.But taking a job as the Guardian’s deputy editor of social platforms, may prove to be one of my smartest career moves if the current job market is to be believed.You don’t need to be a digital native to have noticed the way that celebrities, brands…

A lot of automakers talk about wanting to minimize or eliminate driver distractions so as to make the experience of driving more rewarding and safer overall. Lamborghini has a different strategy; it wants the driver to become one with their vehicle. This helps explain the storied super car maker’s tagline for the new Revuelto SV: the quantum of driving.“For us, quantum of driving is the moment when you get into the car, you start driving the car, and the car and you become one piece,” said Alessandro Farmeschi, product line director for the Revuelto, the Italian brand’s top V12 powered…

US investment banking giant Morgan Stanley reported larger crypto fund positions in the second quarter, led by an increase of more than 3 million shares in BlackRock’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).Morgan Stanley’s reported holdings in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) increased by 23% to around 16.5 million shares from 13.4 million, according to its Q2 13F filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.Morgan Stanley also reported 2.57 million shares of its own Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT), worth about $43.3 million. The product began trading in April.The filing showed increases across several direct crypto fund positions…