Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

AMD announced today that it’s acquiring World Labs, an AI research lab co-founded by the prominent researcher Dr. Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal worth approximately $8.2 billion. World Labs launched in 2024 and was valued at $1 billion in a matter of months. The startup launched its first commercial product, a world generation model called Marble that lets users make interactive 3D worlds from a prompt, in 2025.The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. Li will become EVP and chief scientist at AMD, reporting to AMD CEO Lisa Su, while the World Labs team…

Hackers have used a malware family called NeedyMantis to maintain long-term access to networks they had already breached, Microsoft said in a technical analysis. The malware has been seen in a small number of targeted intrusions at telecommunications organizations, universities, medical nonprofits, intergovernmental organizations, and government contractors. Its use goes back to at least October 2025. Microsoft found NeedyMantis while following up on indicators from Kaspersky’s investigation into the supply chain attack on DAEMON Tools. In that attack, official, signed installers for the DAEMON Tools Lite disk image program carried malicious code from April 8, 2026. The developer replaced them…

The first crypto banks have opened in Belarus, according to reports, after the European country earlier this year created a legal framework for Bitcoin banks.  While not yet named, the crypto banks will start operations after obtaining accreditation from the National Bank of Belarus, Russian news agency Interfax reported Monday.  Back in January, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko signed Decree No. 19 “On Cryptobanks and Certain Issues of Control in the Field of Digital Tokens,” officially creating a legal framework for bitcoin and crypto banks in the country.  JUST IN: 🇧🇾 The first two “crypto banks” in Belarus have been approved.…

On Sept. 30, 1946, five National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics (NACA) engineers arrived at Muroc Army Airfield in California’s high desert to achieve supersonic flight for the first time. In less than two years, NACA flew the X-1 aircraft faster than the speed of sound, marking an important milestone in aviation history. Fast forward 80 years, and that former NACA outpost is now NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, flying the X-59 supersonic X-plane in the same skies to demonstrate that supersonic flight doesn’t have to come with a boom. Over Armstrong’s 80-year history, the center has supported…

Lulingu, a Grauer’s gorilla (Gorilla beringei), was reintroduced to Virunga National Park, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2024. In May 2026, Lulingu gave birth to a new baby, bringing hope for the species and excitement for the conservationists working there. “The baby and the mother are doing perfectly well. It really makes us happy. We are proud of her, it is also a bit of our success. Imagine, we knew her as a baby, we watched her grow, be rehabilitated and now she is a mother,” Jackson Kabuyaya Mbeke, country director of the DRC Gorilla Rehabilitation and…

In your editorial on the Up series (20 September), your point is well made that exposing seven‑year-olds on television today would expose them to dangers not encountered in the 60s. However, Seven Up! was made in the early part of 1964, not 1963 as you stated, and it was the brainchild of Tim Hewat, the producer of World in Action.As he was leaving the series, the oversight was given to the Canadian director Paul Almond and, for our first jobs after passing through training, Michael Apted and I were given the task of finding the original 20 children (14 of whom were followed in subsequent…

New York state prosecutors say they will reopen a criminal inquiry into the alleged rape of a woman at Cornell University in 2024.The woman filed a civil lawsuit on 16 September alleging she was drugged and raped by multiple people at a fraternity house at the university.”Once we determine the appropriate charges, the case will be prosecuted in the most objective and impartial means possible” through a grand jury, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said Monday.Cornell University said that while it supported the case being brought before a grand jury, “any suggestion that the university did not impose…

In his first speech to Labour party conference as chancellor, John Healey offered prudence with a purpose in a speech stylistically redolent of his former boss Gordon Brown. Mr Healey made fiscal credibility the condition for his goal of turbocharging apprenticeships for young people, funding for unions to reskill workers and spending on defence to create manufacturing jobs. The speech’s imagery was canny: miners, shipyards and submarines give “reindustrialisation” a recognisable Labour history. He also faced the future with a clever line about British workers “harnessing AI, not being outrun by it”. His message was that the “politics of hope” will be earned…

A new firmware update for the $449 Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones Gen 2 adds support for Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast as beta features. The flagship Ultra headphones are the first from Bose to support the audio sharing technology, which the company plans to bring to more devices soon.Only a few major manufacturers include Auracast, and only on select headphones or earbuds — including Sony, JBL headphones, Samsung Galaxy Buds, and Sennheiser, which also released an Auracast transmitter this year. Some smaller companies, like EarFun, have added support. But Bose is one of the most recognizable names in headphones, so…

Ravie LakshmananSep 28, 2026Vulnerability / Endpoint Security Apple has released security updates to address a vulnerability in older versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS that it said may have been exploited in targeted attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-86950, refers to an out-of-bounds write impacting the CoreGraphics component that could lead to arbitrary code execution when processing a maliciously crafted file. The iPhone maker said the issue was addressed with improved bounds checking. It credited Meta Product Security with discovering and reporting the issue. “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely…