Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Bitcoin fell below $85,000 on Sept. 23 after stronger-than-expected US business activity sent Treasury yields higher and flushed leveraged longs.The reversal broke the momentum behind a rebound that had accelerated as Bitcoin pushed through a large concentration of short positions earlier this week.Selling intensified after S&P Global released its September flash purchasing managers’ indexes. Within an hour, $135.8 million of crypto positions were liquidated, according to CoinGlass, with longs accounting for $125.9 million. Bitcoin accounted for $47.4 million of the wipeout, and Ether another $23.9 million.Over the past 24 hours, losses total $510 million across 122,256 traders, with long traders…

More than 451,000 people are projected to die across the globe in the next six months from the additional heat brought by a super El Niño, according to estimates from climate scientists released Wednesday.  The El Niño—the warm phase of the Pacific Ocean’s recurring cycle, when heat from the ocean is released into the atmosphere—began in June. It can intensify and affect storms, fisheries and rainfall patterns far from the Pacific, raising global land temperatures.  In the new estimates, scientists at the University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab project the hotter land conditions brought by El Niño will resemble the…

U.S. tax forms allow filers to designate a $3 dollar contribution to a presidential election fund. Only 3% of people checked that box in 2024. (Photo by MarioGuti/Getty Images) More than 150 million Americans fill out income tax forms every spring. Most scroll past one particular line: a tiny checkbox asking if they want $3 of their taxes to go to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. Once a cornerstone of post-Watergate campaign finance reform, the program it supports has become a relic of a bygone era, one that existed before super PACs and unlimited independent spending on elections. Barely 3%…

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where Day 3 of the U.N. General Assembly high-level week brought more fiery speeches and more technological concerns. Here’s what’s on tap for the day: Two speeches are delivered by leaders whose countries are at war with two different permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the CEOs of leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies address the U.N. Security Council, and World Bank President Ajay Banga talks with FP’s editor in chief. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian made the most of his rare opportunity to criticize the…

Claim: Thirty-five Pennsylvania Republicans voted against a bill that guaranteed daily recess for children in the state. Rating: Context It was unclear whether the Republicans who voted against House Bill 1505 did so specifically because of the recess provision or for other reasons. In September 2026, a claim (archived) circulated online that 35 Pennsylvania Republicans voted against a bill that guaranteed daily recess for children in the state. For example, the pro-Democratic X account @DemzDeliver wrote, “Democrats pass bill guaranteeing recess everyday to Pennsylvania students. 35 Republicans voted no.” The account further spread the claim on Threads and Instagram (archived,…

Trump takes rare step of meeting foreign leader at the airport, underscoring significance of US-China relationship.Published On 23 Sep 202623 Sep 2026United States President Donald Trump has welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping as he arrived in the US for a three-day trip focused on issues such as security, trade and technology.Trump took the rare step of meeting the Chinese leader in person at Joint Base Andrews in the state of Maryland on Wednesday, the first president to do so in recent memory.The US president and First Lady Melania Trump greeted Xi and his wife on the tarmac during a welcoming…

The dramatic eviction of an 87-year-old woman from the home in Madrid where she lived for seven decades has drawn attention to the depth of Spain’s housing crisis.The tenant of the flat in the Retiro area of central Madrid, Maricarmen, was unable to pay the rent set by the investment firm that owns it.Maricarmen’s father first rented the property in 1956 and she continued as the tenant after her parents died, during which time there was a cap on the rent. However, the company that bought the property in 2018, Urbagestión, cited a legal glitch allowing it to raise her…

People claiming universal credit (UC) would have their payments cut by a third if they have not paid enough national insurance, under a Conservative plan condemned by one charity as “a fast track to increased poverty”.Under the proposals, those who receive this “subsistence allowance” would have it paid into a dedicated debit card that would prevent from them buying alcohol or tobacco, based on an Australian system that was scrapped after trials found limited evidence it changed behaviour.While the proposals are billed by the Conservatives as a way to push people into work, the poverty charity Trussell said trimming incomes…

Last week, Anthropic confirmed that it was operating a wet biology lab in the Bay Area where it uses its AI models to run physical experiments. This week, the AI giant announced that this lab has already made what it believes is a big discovery: a new enzyme “system” that has certain “properties reminiscent of CRISPR,” as Anthropic describes it. CRISPR is a natural immune system used by bacteria to fight off viruses that has become a gene-editing technology widely used by researchers. Essentially, what Anthropic says it found is a previously unknown enzyme system hidden in the DNA of…

A Windows malware called CLOSEDQUORUM is built to take orders from a vote of up to four AI models instead of an attacker’s server, Cisco Talos said on September 22. The models can choose to steal Windows credentials, saved browser passwords, and crypto wallet data. Talos has not seen this setup work from start to finish, and the public version of the malware does not work as it is. Talos found the malware with CAIRN, an open-source tool it released the same day to hunt for malware that uses AI services. The malware is at least three months old, because…