Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Greater amounts of REM and deep sleep were associated with lower risks of dozens of diseases, and less than 5 hours of total sleep was associated with high risks of disease, according to a new study published September 17th in the open access journal PLOS Medicine by Shengzhi Sun of Capital Medical University, China, and colleagues. Sleep quantity and quality is a priority of China’s National Health Commission and a focus in China more broadly. The most recent 2026 China Sleep Health White Paper finds that while the average surveyed Chinese person sleeps 6.97 hours per night, 23 percent sleep…

The Philippines is a key location for the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative, a global pact to establish a semiconductor and AI supply chain not reliant on China.Pax Silica, and a related national initiative called the Luzon Economic Corridor, have been met with opposition from civil society and Indigenous groups.Land for the planned Pax Silica hub overlaps with land thousands of Indigenous Aeta claim as their ancestral domain.Protesters also cite concerns about water, energy use, and waste management plans for the planned hub.See All Key Ideas MANILA — Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. arrived at the Grand Hyatt Manila…

As the scandal over Susan Collins’ relationship with Hawaii defense contractor Navatek became the central issue in her hotly contested senate campaign, she and her top aides mustered a defense with a series of incorrect and misleading claims. On Tuesday, ProPublica published an investigation into the senior senator from Maine’s relationship with Martin Kao, the former Navatek CEO and a major donor who told law enforcement he exchanged campaign cash for government contracts. His confession came after his guilty plea for campaign finance and loan fraud. The ProPublica story revealed that the FBI had been circling the senator, her top…

US President Donald Trump treated Chinese President Xi Jinping to a rare personal airport welcome Wednesday, kicking off a pomp-filled state visit aimed at smoothing superpower tensions on everything from AI and trade to Iran. The summit is expected to be more about spectacle than substance — but there was an early breakthrough when Washington announced a two-month extension of a trade truce with Beijing that was due to expire in November. After officials literally rolled out the red carpet, Trump and First Lady Melania shook hands with Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan once the Chinese president descended from…

Wenn die mächtigsten Männer der Welt aufeinandertreffen, steht die globale Ordnung im Mittelpunkt. In Washington sprechen Donald Trump und Xi Jinping über Zölle, Taiwan und die Vorherrschaft bei Künstlicher Intelligenz. POLITICO-Reporter Hans von der Burchard analysiert, ob bei den verhärteten Fronten diplomatische Lösungen möglich sind und wo Stillstand droht. Auf der UN-Bühne in New York hat SPD-Umweltminister Carsten Schneider den deutschen Ausstieg aus fossilen Energien bis 2045 präsentiert. Doch wie viel Substanz steckt wirklich in der neuen Roadmap? Energie-Expertin Johanna Sahlberg von POLITICO PRO „Energie & Klima am Morgen“ hat das Papier exklusiv ausgewertet und ordnet ein, wie der Plan…

The UK is losing out on annual exports to the EU that could be worth as much as £6.5bn without a deal with Brussels that allows manufacturers to jettison duplicate product testing.In the latest attempt to calculate the loss of trade with the EU after Brexit, the IPPR thinktank said many companies have given up selling goods to the EU or set up subsidiaries inside the trade bloc after successive governments failed to secure a mutual recognition agreement that would avoid the extra administration costs.The thinktank estimated that the absence of such a deal may have cost UK exporters between…

Meta announced a slate of new wearables during its annual Meta Connect showcase on Wednesday. The star of the event was the new Meta VR Glasses, which pack virtual reality tech into a lightweight smart glasses-style frame with a tethered puck. Meta also announced new pairs of screen-free smart glasses, along with some new AI features and style and frame options.You can catch up on all the highlights from this year’s Meta Connect below.Photo by Brett Putman / The VergeMeta’s latest wearable offers full virtual reality in a smart glasses-style form factor. Unlike a typical VR headset, the VR Glasses…

Autonomous security agents are getting good at finding bugs. Nobody has a good way to measure how good. Point one at a realistic target and what comes back is a report the agent wrote about itself: confident prose, a list of findings, and no way to tell which of them happened. Someone with a security background then sits down and checks every claim against the target. Which findings are real, which are duplicates, which are inventions, and, the question nobody has time for, what did the agent never try? That is a day of expert work for one run. Multiply…

Bitcoin’s price slid on Wednesday, just as U.S. Treasuries surged, with the 10-year yield climbing above 5% and reaching — its highest level since 2007.  The price of the leading cryptocurrency was down 2% over a 24-hour period Wednesday afternoon in New York, and was trading hands for $84,357.  Bitcoin’s price had surged earlier in the week as investors piled into exchange-traded funds. At one point, it soared as high as nearly $87,330.  But its rally has since cooled. It dropped further on Wednesday afternoon around the time the U.S. Treasury said it will purchase up to $6 billion of…

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief. The highlights this week: Thousands of Yemeni refugees flee to Djibouti amid growing Houthi attacks, Morocco holds its first parliamentary elections since major youth-led protests, and fighting resurges in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. The United Nations is warning of a rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis in Djibouti, as more than 3,000 Yemeni refugees have fled by boat to the Horn of Africa country in recent weeks following offensives by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels along the Red Sea. The U.N. refugee agency has said that continued fighting could cause this figure to spike to 10,000 people in…