Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

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…

Update: Added the FBI’s statement below. The ShinyHunters extortion gang claims it breached FBI systems using a new Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day vulnerability, gaining access to internal services and stealing sensitive data on employees and job applicants. The threat actors told BleepingComputer the vulnerability allows remote code execution and that they used it Monday night to access FBI systems before moving laterally into FBI-managed AWS GovCloud infrastructure. ShinyHunters claims it stole between 2TB and 3TB of data from the agency, including information on current and former FBI employees, job applicants, and other internal records. The group also claims it compromised FBI…

In brief Four long-dormant Bitcoin wallets moved a combined 1,971.03 BTC (~$161 million) over the past two weeks, per Galaxy Research, led by a 1,260.78 BTC stash (~$100.63 million) untouched since 2016. The oldest coins posted staggering gains—one 2011-era wallet was up more than 8.38 million percent—while the most recent, a 600 BTC (~$51.9 million) transfer dormant since 2012, moved early Tuesday. Three of the four carried “Noah Doe” tags tied to a New York abandoned-property lawsuit, extending a 2026 trend of decade-old wallets reactivating. The steady procession of long-dormant Bitcoin wallets springing back to life is showing no sign…

Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, APXS Strategic Planner and Payload Uplink/Downlink Lead, University New Brunswick, NB, Canada Earth planning date: Friday, Sept. 11, 2026 This week we had two planning days (Tuesday and Friday), as Monday was Labor Day in North America, where many of the Curiosity team are based. Labor Day (the first Monday in September) marks the end of summer holidays and thrills, and the return to more typical routines and back to school. The MSL team has marked several important milestones within the past few weeks — marking our 14th “Landiversary” on Aug. 6 and surpassing the 1-kilometer elevation mark…

I have a simple solution to help keep the super-rich happy with their tax bills while keeping their enormous wealth safely stored offshore and allowing them possibly to spend more time in the UK (Manchester United Muslim fans group calls on co-owner Jim Ratcliffe to quit, 19 September). They could insist that any company they earn their wealth from commits to paying all UK staff a decent living wage.For this small compromise from the billionaires (who will still play the money markets and profit from others’ hard labour), the government could offer to reduce employers’ taxation costs by increasing the…

King Charles has referred a landmark slavery reparations petition from Jamaica to a high-level UK appeals court for legal advice, Jamaica’s culture minister announced in parliament on Tuesday.Referring to the move as a “really big deal”, Olivia Grange told Jamaica’s MPs the monarch had confirmed that their legal questions have been passed on to the London-based privy council – the final court of appeal for UK overseas territories and some Commonwealth countries.The petition seeks guidance on three questions: whether the forced transport of Africans to Jamaica was lawful; whether it constituted a crime against humanity; and whether Britain is under…

The US has criticised Australia’s proposal to give users the ability to opt out of social media algorithms, saying it amounts to “censorship of protected speech”.Under Australia’s draft digital duty of care laws, tech firms risk hefty fines if they fail to give users the option to turn off algorithms in a bid to protect them from harmful content.In a rare submission to the proposed laws, the US embassy in Canberra said it had “serious concerns” and allowing the government to “enforce vague definitions of ‘harm'” would lead to “viewpoint-based censorship”.Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the legislation was not…