Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

When Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. President Donald Trump this week for a high-stakes summit, he’ll be armed with a powerful card: rare earths. Rare earths have loomed over the U.S.-China relationship since at least April 2025, after Trump unveiled punishing tariffs against much of the world. China retaliated in part by unleashing its own rare-earth trade restrictions, laying the groundwork for several rounds of negotiations and other trade escalations before both sides agreed to a one-year trade truce that expires in November. When Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. President Donald Trump this week for a…

A lawyer for fugitive property developer Jean Nassif offered a Liberal operative $1,000 if he could get media to write about an unsubstantiated extramarital affair and breach of Covid-19 restrictions by a New South Wales minister, the anti-corruption watchdog has heard.Sharangan Maheswaran told the Independent Commission Against Corruption a message to lobbyist Jeremy Greenwood about placing a story about former Liberal minister David Elliott, was “not a serious offer”. He was shown a message to Greenwood in which he wrote he was “not joking”.In a statement and evidence to the commission, Elliott has strongly rejected the allegation of an extramarital…

Starting Wednesday, Discord, the community messaging platform, will roll out age verification measures to all users. The rollout comes after the company initially delayed its age verification plans in February due to backlash from users concerned that biometric scans and ID checks could jeopardize their privacy. Those concerns weren’t unfounded; last year, a third-party vendor that works with Discord was breached, potentially exposing the data of 70,000 users’ data, including government ID photos and selfies used for identity verification. “Age assurance draws strong opinions and skepticism, especially when it involves sharing biometric information or a form of ID,” Discord CTO…

Most organizations running operational technology (OT) or connected medical devices do not keep those systems on their own dedicated network segments, according to new research from Forescout’s Vedere Labs.  The cybersecurity firm’s researchers examined 47,700 network segments holding more than 2.5 million devices across 209 organizations, sorting each device into one of four categories: IT, OT, IoT, or medical (IoMT). At the surface level, segmentation looks reasonably solid. The researchers found that 62% of segments contained devices from a single category, and the most common setups were IT devices alone (54%) or paired with IoT gear (26%). However, that picture…

The bill itself was a bipartisan product which grew from some 300 pages to over 600, she said, after Democrats asked for provisions addressing issues like bankruptcy protections, among other items.”Every single Democrat voted no, every single one. I see some of the spin post-vote blaming it on Brian Armstrong … or blaming it on the industry for being too aggressive or anybody else they can blame, President [Donald] Trump because he made a bunch of money on a memecoin before he was president,” she said.Trump revealed in a mid-year financial disclosure in 2026 that he made $1.4 billion off…

Australian authorities disrupted an alleged wildlife trafficking ring in Sydney, seizing 36 reptiles and about AU$300,000 (more than $215,000) in cash and gold bullion.The animals included 28 native Australian reptiles, including shingleback lizards, spiny-tailed skinks and lace monitors.This bust was the first major wildlife crime operation conducted by the National Environmental Protection Agency (National EPA), Australia’s new federal environmental regulator.The National EPA alleges native reptiles were supplied to foreign nationals for illegal export.See All Key Ideas In Australia in May 2026, Yang Zeng, a 28-year-old Chinese national who was unlawfully in the country, was sentenced to two and…

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, an expanded U.S. military presence in Greenland, and the European Union’s initial free-trade deal with the Philippines. War Crimes at the U.N.? U.S. President Donald Trump presented a damning choice during his United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) speech on Tuesday: Make a deal with Iran that “lets them rebuild” or “annihilate” the Islamic Republic. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Trump posed, echoing past threats that experts…

Jesse Baird was “petrified” of Beau Lamarre-Condon because he was an armed police officer who could make a false allegation that would ruin his career, a court has heard.Lamarre-Condon has been accused of fatally shooting Sydney couple Jesse Baird, 26, and Luke Davies, 29, with a police service weapon at Baird’s Paddington home on 19 February 2024.The 31-year-old pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.Lamarre-Condon developed an “obsession and infatuation” with Baird, which manifested in compulsive actions during their brief relationship, the prosecution alleged.By the time Baird decided he wanted to…

Before becoming prime minister, Burnham had said relatively little about how AI should be regulated.Since taking power in July, Burnham’s government has stressed the need for international cooperation to combat the risks, as well as harness the potential benefits of the technology, warning that further regulation and legislation may be needed.In his speech, Burnham described the most advanced “Frontier AI” as “one of the most significant challenges and opportunities of our age”.He told world leaders AI would be “key to economic growth” but also a “multiplier of risk”.The prime minister added: “We’ve all heard the warnings – which we must…

Peter O’Brien, head of research for photonics packaging and systems integration at Ireland’s Tyndall Research Institute, said academics and commercial companies alike have been working with photonics for years, but the technology faced multiple manufacturing challenges.Now, O’Brien continues, the technology is ready to make the leap from the lab into widespread application.”What’s happening now with optics and photonics is there’s kind of a reset,” he says.It helps that AI chip giant Nvidia has thrown its weight behind the technology.But shifting to photonics is not a straightforward swap, as it brings together different engineering traditions and different supply chains.”We’ve really gotten…