Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

During the World Cup soccer final in New Jersey last month, Zach Witkoff, co-founder of President Trump’s cryptocurrency company, took in the action from a luxury suite. Joining him was a man who had made the president, and all the company’s co-founders, much richer.Two years earlier, the man, Guren “Bobby” Zhou, was a failed hardwood flooring retailer in Britain who had come under investigation there for money laundering and presided over the collapse of a small crypto start-up.Then seemingly out of nowhere, he became one of the biggest buyers of tokens from Mr. Trump’s company, World Liberty Financial, dropping a…

What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?   The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details.  The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after,…

An AI financial adviser receives the same client three times, with the finances and tolerance for risk left unchanged. The first prompt asks for a diversified long-term portfolio. The second introduces bank failures and capital controls, while the third imagines an economy in which autonomous software buys services and pays other machines. The client hasn’t moved an inch, yet Bitcoin can travel from the middle of the pack to the front.Leading language models ranked Bitcoin around fifth among eight forms of money when researchers framed the task around ordinary reliability. The asset moved toward the top once the prompt introduced…

People who frequently use cannabis may begin the day with higher levels of cortisol than those who do not use it, according to research from Oregon State University. The finding points to a possible connection between regular cannabis use and changes in the body’s normal daily stress rhythm. The study, conducted by Oregon State University scientists, was published in the journal Cannabis. Stress is one of the main reasons people report using cannabis, and it is also associated with problematic patterns of use. Although cannabis can provide temporary relief from stress, the researchers say frequent use over time could potentially…

When Gerard Mullin decided to train in offshore wind, he didn’t know what to expect. But on his first long-term project in Massachusetts, he immediately relished the consistency of the work, the good pay and the novelty of laboring at sea. “I thought it was the best thing in the world,” he said. In his first eight weeks working offshore, Mullin made more money than he had saved in the previous five years. But the industry was on shaky ground. Mullin had his bags packed for five weeks offshore with Empire Wind in New York when President Donald Trump’s stop-work…

Amid headlines about the UK’s drought, Europe’s wildfires and impossible global temperatures, it was 28C when I arrived in Slough last Monday. I was there to look around Slough Trading Estate, a place that might once have conjured up images of the TV comedy The Office, many of whose laughs came at the expense of this overgrown patch of suburbia, 20-odd miles west of London.But these days, this area of town – an incongruous mixture of old-school businesses such as Mr Clutch and Angling Direct, and vast, metal-clad leviathans that look like something pulled from JG Ballard – has become…

Claim: A video shared online in July 2026 authentically shows a zombie attacking partygoers inside an Atlanta nightclub. Rating: In July 2026, social media users shared a 10-second video purportedly showing a zombie waiting in a doorway before attacking partygoers inside an Atlanta nightclub. For example, on July 13, a TikTok user posted the alleged footage (archived) with the onscreen caption, “Just Happened In a Atlanta Night Club.” Others shared the clip on Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere on TikTok. One person posted the video on their Facebook, Instagram and TikTok accounts, alongside other purported zombie footage. That user specifically mentioned…

Netanyahu rejects US Gaza plan, vows no pullout until Hamas disarmsIsraeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected a Gaza plan hailed by US president Donald Trump, vowing no military pullout of Gaza until Hamas is “genuinely” disarmed.“Israel rejects the 15-point document,” Netanyahu said, referring to a plan endorsed in late July by Hamas.The Israeli military “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and our citizens,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting, Reuters reports.The document, the latest stage in a US-led ceasefire announced in October that has reduced…

Richard Tice has said he and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage are suing the National Crime Agency (NCA) over the alleged leaking of confidential financial information.The Boston and Skegness MP and Reform deputy leader told Talk TV they believed the NCA had committed “multiple criminal offences” and said they would be seeking an apology and damages.He accused them of leaking “individual bank statements, bank transfers, details of conversations with bank managers from different banks”.Last month Tice wrote to the agency to ask if they would investigate whether they were responsible for the leaking of private financial information to the media.It…

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more news about how AI is changing our daily lives, follow Emma Roth. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.Long before ChatGPT became a thing, educators and editors frequently used anti-plagiarism tools to see if writers were being honest about their work. These tools work by comparing a written work against a database filled with content from across the web, scholarly articles, and more to check for matching sentences and phrases. Some, like Turnitin,…