Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Claim: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in September 2026 that he had prepared for the chance that U.S. President Donald Trump might order military action against Canada. Rating: Context The New York Times paraphrased Carney, who said he had prepared during the past year for the “extreme tail risk” that Trump might order military action against Canada. Carney also noted that he had been in regular contact with Trump. We have reached out to Carney’s office to learn more. In September 2026, a rumor spread online that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had said Canada was prepared for an invasion…

For more than seven decades, residents of Alberta have shared something in common with Antarctica and the high Arctic: all locations are officially free of rats.But on Thursday the Canadian province’s reputation as a firewall against rodent infestation took a hit when the town of Bowden announced the discovery of a dead rat and called on the province’s “rat patrol” to investigate.“If you’ve noticed rat droppings or any signs of rats, please contact Rat Patrol Alberta so they can follow up,” the town said in a statement. “Please stay alert and report any sightings.”Officials in Bowden did not say where…

School strikes are taking place across Germany to protest against the possible reintroduction of compulsory military service.One of the organisers of the strike, Bela Breitner, from School Strike Against Compulsory Military Service said the federal government was “serious about gradually reintroducing compulsory military service”.At one protest in Hamburg, demonstrators waved flags and held up banners emblazoned with the words “We won’t take part in your wars”.German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made boosting Germany’s military a priority following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.A new law introducing voluntary military service came into force in January, with the aim of recruiting volunteers to increase…

It sparked delight among the diehard Milifans and a begrudging smile from those less keen on the foreign secretary, but a viral video of Ed Miliband has – possibly – confirmed his status as the internet’s awkward dad.About 1.5 million people have viewed an interaction between Miliband and the TikTok personality Feroz Khan on the streets of New York, during which the digital content creator asks Miliband a series of questions including his name, job and his top piece of advice.Following the same formula employed by Khan in every video, Miliband is stopped in a seemingly – though of course…

Muse’s traction is surging, fueled by Meta’s promotion of the AI app at its annual developer conference this week and strong early reviews that praised its polished design and highly capable AI model under the hood. At the start of the week, Muse had surpassed 2.5 million downloads since its September 8 launch. Now, the app has amassed more than 3.4 million downloads, according to the most recent estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The install numbers are only current as of the firm’s Thursday estimates, which can lag behind real-world adoption. That means they don’t even capture the…

Anthropic now allows you to run Claude Code via cloud sessions without signing up for the research preview, and it’s offering up to $250 in free promotional credits. Cloud sessions run Claude Code on Anthropic’s infrastructure instead of your own computer, so you can start a task, leave it running remotely, and return later to review the work. “Cloud sessions run on Anthropic-hosted infrastructure, so the work keeps going even without your computer running,” Anthropic explained. In our tests, we observed that you can start a cloud session from claude.ai/code, the Code section of the Claude mobile app, the desktop…

The line between crypto companies and traditional finance is blurring. Binance is buying a $100 million stake in Circle, Canada’s six largest banks are exploring tokenized deposits and the New York Stock Exchange is working with Blockchain.com to bring US stocks and ETFs onchain.Crypto companies want a bigger role in payments and traditional assets, while banks and exchanges are bringing those markets onchain without giving up their place at the center of the financial system.This week’s Crypto Biz highlights how stablecoins and tokenized assets put crypto companies and traditional finance on increasingly overlapping turf, with both sides vying for control…

Exquisitely preserved feathers, the first ever found in fossilized dinosaur poop, are providing a peek into how some ancient birds lived — and possibly went extinct. Dense bristles suggest some of the feathers could repel water, possibly as well as those of modern pelicans, researchers report September 10 in Current Biology. And their central shafts are filled with air pockets, a trait that in modern birds keeps plumage lightweight yet stiff enough for flight. “That’s something we’re seeing for the first time in the Age of the Dinosaurs,” says vertebrate paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor of the Field Museum of Natural History…

Researchers at gene banks scattered across Southern Africa have spent decades collecting and duplicating specimens of valuable wild fruit trees.Among the species cloned by researchers from the Landscape Alliance is the wild loquat — an evergreen tree that produces large quantities of highly sought-after berries that provide income and nourishment for millions of people.Alice Muchugi and her colleagues are skilled practitioners of “air layering,” which ingeniously spurs a branch to produce roots, hugely reducing the time needed to establish a new, mature, fruit-bearing tree.Planting and preserving prolific indigenous fruit trees protects both the biodiversity of miombo woodlands and an…

Andy Burnham is right that football fans have historically been treated differently from other sports fans. But if we’re going to talk about discrimination in football, the ban on drinking at your seat feels like a strange place to start.The rule may have its roots in a very different era of football, but for many fans today, being able to take a pint to your seat may not be top of their list of changes they’d like to see in the game. Especially at a time when discrimination is very much present elsewhere in football.The legislation, introduced under Margaret Thatcher…