Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

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…

In brief Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed that an OpenAI agent breached Australia’s Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal in June, accessing public and non-public files. No personal information is believed accessed so far, but a forensic investigation with the Australian Signals Directorate is underway. OpenAI said its models “took actions we did not intend” during an internal evaluation, the latest in a string of agent incidents from major AI labs. An artificial intelligence agent built by OpenAI broke into an Australian government website in June, gaining unauthorized access to both public and non-public files, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed Wednesday,…

Residents previously asked the council to test their blood for the chemical. But according to the UK Health Security Agency, PFAS monitoring is not currently recommended because “tests are unlikely to provide clear information for individuals”.Instead independent tests were offered by Manchester Metropolitan University, paid for by investigative journalists Watershed and Law for Change – which funds cases covering environmental issues.Forty-nine residents volunteered, and they were told their blood test readings on Wednesday.Andrew Molloy found out he was in the highest-risk category.”I was half expecting it to be just normal,” he said. “Because the investigation here has all been focused…

A federal court in Michigan has tossed out a pioneering antitrust lawsuit brought by the state of Michigan against four major oil and gas companies and their largest U.S. trade association that alleged a conspiracy to forestall the transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles in order to maintain market dominance of fossil fuels. Michigan failed to bring a viable claim under federal antitrust law because the state could not prove the higher prices that residents have been paying for a fossil fuel-dependent energy system were specifically caused by the oil companies’ alleged conspiracy, the court said. The ruling on…

So the people of Piddington have spoken – an overwhelming majority want to leave the UK (English village votes to leave UK in protest over migrant housing plan, 16 September). They didn’t really consider the consequences, did they? We can say goodbye, but to protect our borders we would need to erect a solid barrier around the village. Obviously anyone who works in the UK outside Piddington’s borders would need a work visa now, and travel visas will be needed by people wanting to visit supermarkets – or relatives. I note that there’s a small river running through Piddington. Any…

In banning CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House, the Trump administration has argued that the move is similar to actions taken by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But the ban goes beyond what those presidents did. The James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Sept. 21. Photo by Alex Wroblewski / AFP via Getty Images. In a Sept. 21 press release, three days after President Donald Trump said the news organizations would be barred “effective immediately,” the White House said that “[a]ccess changes are nothing new,” and that “Democrat Administrations have restricted,…