Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Farmworkers, their loved ones and advocates lined up out the door of a California state legislative hearing room this week to urge elected officials to hold pesticide regulators accountable for failing to protect their communities from life-threatening chemicals.  Women spoke of being sprayed while working next to fields treated by crop dusters and seeing coworkers caught in drifting pesticide clouds. They spoke of suffering from asthma and liver disease and watching family members die of cancer. They spoke of being exposed to pesticides while pregnant, having children born prematurely, with birth defects, autism, ADHD or other neurodevelopmental problems. Children…

“[N]othing ages faster than today’s idea of the future,” wrote architecture critic Witold Rybczynski, which may explain why readers treasure the rare novel that correctly predicts what’s to come. The classics of the prescient genre tend be speculative and dystopian—1984, Parable of the Sower, The Handmaid’s Tale—but can also be realist fiction. Take English author Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, published in the United States in 1956, which predicted the future by describing the present. The Quiet American takes place in 1950s Vietnam, where Ho Chi Minh’s forces are fighting French colonial powers for independence. It’s narrated by Thomas Fowler,…

A video circulating in August 2026 allegedly shows Twitch streamer and left-leaning political commentator Hasan Piker making derogatory remarks about Black people and saying he wishes the U.S. would return to a time of lynchings. The video circulated in light of Piker’s support of, and campaigning for, Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Party’s Senate candidate in Michigan. In sum, the video, which consists of fragmented excerpts from three different streams, genuinely shows Piker speaking, in that it isn’t a deepfake or AI-generated. Yet the video is heavily edited and presents Piker’s spoken words without full context, and in some cases out…

Trump dismisses concerns about conditions on USS Abraham Lincoln, confirms replacement carrierAs he left Washington, Donald Trump dismissed the reports about the mental health crisis and living conditions on board USS Abraham Lincoln.When he was asked by reporters whether family members were worried about the situation, the president said “no, they’re not.”The vessel has now been on a record-breaking deployment for more than 250 days, but Trump said that it had not been at sea for too long. “Not nearly enough,” he said.The president also confirmed that the USS Abraham Lincoln would now be replaced by another aircraft carrier. On…

Farmers must not carry the risks of the climate crisis alone, Andy Burnham has said, as he announced £65m of funding to help them manage the devastating drought.The prime minister is stepping up his response to the immediate climate crisis after facing a backlash from his own MPs and Labour’s grassroots for not addressing the climate crisis despite wildfires tearing through Britain and a drought affecting food producers. Labour MPs argued Burnham had taken too long to talk about the climate crisis and had not made it a priority.Some farmers have had to harvest their crops early, while others are…

PayPal CEO Enrique Lores’ turnaround plan for the fintech company could include a sale — of itself. The prospect first popped in July when Stripe and private equity giant Advent offered to buy PayPal for $60.50 a share in a deal that would have valued it at $53 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. PayPal balked. But apparently, negotiations never stopped and a deal could come together in the coming weeks, according to new reporting by the WSJ, which cited unnamed sources. PayPal declined to comment on the report. A Stripe spokesperson said the company doesn’t “comment…

It could soon become easier to identify AI-generated content, even if it’s not the usual “It’s Not X, it’s Y” type of post you’d come across on LinkedIn and other socials. As you may be aware, the EU now requires AI companies serving its market to mark their AI-generated content so it’s easier to identify. Anthropic and several other major AI providers have agreed to comply with the EU’s Code of Practice, with Anthropic becoming one of the first companies to share details about how it will implement watermarking across Claude. Anthropic has also confirmed that a regular user won’t…

Bitcoin is the most important asset in two of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, according to regulatory filings.  Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company disclosed Friday that it held a $490 million stake in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust — the second-largest single holding across its entire 13F portfolio.  And a Thursday filing from the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, another state-run fund, revealed a $273.6 million position in the popular Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The stake is the biggest position in its portfolio.  JUST IN: 🇦🇪 UAE sovereign wealth funds Mubadala and Abu Dhabi Investment Council report owning a combined $763.7 million of…

New research from the University of East Anglia and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital suggests that something as simple as choosing the stairs could contribute to a longer life. The large study found that people who regularly climbed stairs had a substantially lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Frequent stair climbers were 39% less likely to die from heart-related causes and 24% less likely to die from any cause compared with people who climbed stairs less often. Regular stair climbing was also associated with a lower likelihood of developing serious cardiovascular conditions, including heart attack, stroke, and heart…

Over 95 percent of land within national wildlife refuges across the country will soon be open to hunting and fishing. The announcement Thursday from the U.S. Department of the Interior represents the largest such expansion in the nation’s history, allowing access to more than 92 million acres across 32 states. Sportsmen’s groups welcomed the move, while environmental groups expressed concern the rule would rollback recent strides made that allowed expanded hunting and fishing at refuges without as much environmental harm. The announcement is similar to one implemented in 2020 by the first Trump administration, which was sued by the Center…