Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

There is an interesting story about a French dog on the banks of the Seine river that helps us understand misbehaving AI agents. The dog is trained to save children from drowning. He succeeds and is rewarded, becoming an overnight sensation. He saves another child a week later. Not long after, someone witnesses the dog actually push a child into the river, jumping in to “save” him. The dog did not understand that it was being rewarded for keeping children safe, not for pulling them out of water. AI agent failures also live in this gap, where the focus is…

Bitcoin O.G. Peter Todd has joined the MARA Foundation as lead maintainer of Slipstream, the miner’s private Bitcoin mempool service.  Announced by the foundation on Thursday, the new role will see Todd responsible for developing and running the service. Slipstream lets users send bitcoin transactions straight to MARA Pool, the company’s mining pool, without going through Bitcoin’s public peer-to-peer network. It was useful after hackers exploited Coldcard hardware wallets in July, stealing over $115 million in user funds.  Because transactions sent through Slipstream stay private until they’re confirmed in a block, the service helps to keep key information hidden before…

See Saturn at opposition, catch the Orionid meteor shower, and watch the Moon pass close to the Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters. Oct. 4: Saturn reaches opposition, making the ringed planet visible for much of the night Oct. 6: A thin crescent Moon appears close to bright Jupiter before sunrise Oct. 21–22: The Orionid meteor shower peaks; moonlight may interfere, so look before dawn after moonset Oct. 27–28: The Moon passes near the Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters Saturn takes center stage, a meteor shower lights up the sky, and the Moon visits the…

A new initiative between the U.S. and Argentina is meant to bolster investment opportunities and strengthen supply chains for critical minerals that could be used in the clean energy transition, such as copper and lithium. The Andes-Atlantic Corridor, announced Sept. 23, will make it easier to funnel U.S. investment into Argentina’s mining sector and to export critical minerals. At the same time, the initiative will help continue to develop the Vaca Muerta region, home to Argentina’s largest oil and gas reserves. “Working together, the United States and Argentina seek to continue to build on our robust relationship through…

Reading Time: 3 minutes Requesting public records in Wisconsin can sometimes mean waiting weeks, months and even longer for government officials and agencies to respond. What could help speed things along? At the state Department of Justice, which has recently come under scrutiny for its own delays in releasing records, Attorney General Josh Kaul says the agency he leads needs more money. “Additional resources could help the DOJ reduce response times to public records requests,” Kaul told the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, in advance of the Nov. 3 election for attorney general. The council sent questionnaires about government transparency…

At the start of the year, Thailand’s Department of Health held a press conference under the ominous title, “Every Birth Matters… When the Silent Countdown Begins.” Officials said that in 2025, deaths in the country had exceeded births by nearly 140,000, and that if current trends held, the population could halve in the next 50 years. A director-general from the department warned that the decline could affect Thailand’s economy, tax base, and even government stability. In a statement in July, the National Savings Fund, which handles public pensions, echoed this alarm. It described declining births as a “warning sign,” as a…

Tennessee’s governor on Thursday said it was “deeply disturbing” that his state botched the execution of a death row prisoner who remained alive and snoring 40 minutes after receiving a double dose of the lethal drug that should have quickly killed her.Bill Lee, a Republican, has suspended all executions in the state until at least the end of the year and ordered an independent inquiry after Wednesday night’s failed attempt to put to death Christa Pike, who was convicted of murder, at the execution chamber in Nashville.Speaking to reporters on Thursday morning, Lee said he had spoken with Frank Strada,…

An exiled Russian opposition figure living in the US says he was warned by American and Lithuanian security services that his life was in danger.Former chess world champion Garry Kasparov said he was one of two dissidents told to take precautions, which he had done.His comments come after the US Justice Department unsealed an indictment earlier this month charging five people who allegedly work for a network linked to the Kremlin with plotting attacks and murders in countries including the US, focusing on Russian dissidents and defectors.Kasparov wrote in his publication The Next Move that he had not been told…

Sarah Brown called Gordon her hero, Samantha Cameron insisted David was “incredibly funny”, while Akshata Murty said Rishi was her best friend. When Marie-France van Heel spoke about her husband, Andy Burnham, in a rare public interview a decade ago, she joked that she had noticed his “good looks … and monobrow”.The spousal humanising of a party leader is a well-worn political tool, but van Heel is likely to be a very different type of prime ministerial partner. The former senior marketing executive is poised to play a more significant role in promoting Britain than any other spouse in the…

Welcome address by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB and Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board, at the tenth annual conference of the ESRBFrankfurt am Main, 1 October 2026It is a pleasure to welcome you to the tenth annual conference of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), as we mark 15 years since its creation. The ESRB was born of a hard lesson laid bare by the global financial crisis and reinforced by Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. Risks had been building across institutions and markets, while the view of any one authority remained incomplete. Europe needed a way to…