Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

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,…

Swati KhandelwalAug 07, 2026Artificial Intelligence / Vulnerability A GitHub issue opened by an account with no repository privileges was enough to execute code on the CI runners behind Anthropic’s and Google’s own coding-agent repositories. On OpenAI’s, it was enough to hijack the next agent run. Novee Security ran the attack against each vendor’s agent in the configuration that the vendor ships by default, and presented the work at Black Hat USA on August 5. Two CVEs came out of it. Both are patched. Gemini CLI carries the worst of the two. CVE-2026-12537 (CVSS 4 score: 10.0) is an OS command…

Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 entered its mandatory-signaling phase at block 961,632 on Saturday, with miners signaling support in just 51 of the preceding 2,016 blocks, or 2.53%, well below the 55% threshold required for early activation, according to the BIP-110 monitor.Starting at block 961,632, nodes enforcing BIP-110 began rejecting blocks that did not set version bit 4, while ordinary Bitcoin nodes continued accepting both signaling and non-signaling blocks. A minority BIP-110 branch subsequently emerged, but quickly fell behind the dominant chain.The low signaling rate makes a sustained rival chain unlikely without substantially greater miner participation. With relatively little mining support,…

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accuses Moscow of harming global food security amid a spate of attacks on Odesa’s port.Published On 9 Aug 20269 Aug 2026An overnight Russian attack on an apartment building has killed two people in Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv as Moscow also keeps up its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.Russian forces hit a high rise in the Saltivskyi district, killing a 50-year-old man and a 66-year-old man, Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram. At least 21 people were wounded.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listPhotos of the scene shared by Syniehubov showed a gaping hole across…