Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum has presented a draft fiscal budget for 2027, outlining the national government’s plans for the coming year for everything from tax rates and health care to infrastructure and education.When it comes to the budget’s climate policies, Sheinbaum has increased spending for a national energy transition strategy but decreased it for climate change adaptation efforts.Critics also pointed out that the budget for the national energy transition strategy includes billions of pesos for railroad projects and Petróleos Mexicanos , the state-owned oil company.Watchdogs called for lawmakers to redistribute resources toward forest conservation, sustainable water management, protected areas…

Norwegian engineering company CoreMarine has completed the acquisition of Brazil’s BravOcean, a provider of subsea installation support, project management services, and specialist personnel for deepwater subsea umbilicals, risers and flowlines (SURF) projects.Source: CoreMarine “BravOcean has always been committed to helping clients successfully deliver complex offshore projects in Brazil,” said Vinicius Vieira, Commercial Director of BravOcean. “Becoming part of CoreMarine allows us to build on that foundation, combining our strong local presence with international expertise, broader capabilities, and a shared ambition for growth. We look forward to what we can achieve together.” CoreMarine said that the acquisition accelerates its growth in…

U.S. President Donald Trump has upended relations with several traditional allies but none perhaps more so than Canada, the world’s 11th-largest economy and a country with which the United States shares the planet’s longest land border. Trump has repeatedly referred to Canada as the “51st state”—an unsubtle threat to absorb its territory; he has imposed sanctions on Ottawa, harming its companies and consumers; and he has driven Canada to look to Europe and elsewhere for stable trade and defense partnerships. On the sidelines of this week’s U.N. General Assembly, I caught up with Anita Anand, Canada’s foreign minister. What follows…

Claim: Images authentically show a sculpture of Jesus Christ holding two Uzi submachine guns. Rating: In September 2026, images circulated on social media purportedly showing a sculpture of Jesus Christ completely covered in red paint and holding an Uzi submachine gun in each hand. “BLASPHEMY: Statue of Christ crucified holding machine guns triggers uproar from Catholics,” one Facebook post (archived) read. (Facebook page LifeSite) Photographs of the sculpture spread across Facebook, TikTok and Reddit. Snopes readers also searched our website for information about the images. In short, the images were authentic. They showed a real sculpture by French artist James…

United States President Donald Trump launched a round-the-clock YouTube channel run by the White House on Monday.The move follows his banning of CNN, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), and Politico from reporting from the White House on Friday, prompting five major television networks to suspend coverage on Monday morning in protest.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listThe spat has triggered a wave of lawsuits from broadcasters, with the president warning on Saturday that he might ban other outlets for broadcasting what he claims is “fake news”.Alongside his own social media platform, Truth Social, Trump appears to be trying to bypass…

The Liberal Democrats will fight the next general election on a promise to cut taxes for millions of workers, Sir Ed Davey has said in a speech to his party conference.The Lib Dem leader said that if he gained power, he would raise the annual tax-free personal allowance to £15,000.He would also raise the 40p income tax threshold from £50,270 to £56,000, in a £17bn package funded by the economic boost he says would come from the UK rejoining the EU single market and customs union.He claimed the plan would mean a £680 cut for “most taxpayers” but it would…

Xbox is cutting hundreds of jobs and making sweeping changes to the production of its flagship Halo franchise, as its company-wide “reset” continues.Its latest reductions, forming part of a wave of ongoing layoffs, will impact staff at the studio which currently makes Halo – with Call of Duty publisher Activision to take on development of any future games.Jez Corden of Windows Central said the change was a “dramatic move”, while gaming analyst Christopher Dring said it raised questions over whether it could help revive what was once Xbox’s “crown jewel”.It comes as questions also mount over the future of other…

Data security company Cyera has received an additional $400 million in funding, bringing the company’s valuation to more than $12 billion. The new investment came from Goldman Sachs Alternatives as an extension of the Series G funding round announced in June. The company has raised a total of more than $2.7 billion. The latest funding will be used to continue enhancing the Cyera platform’s capabilities and fuel the company’s expansion and growth. Cyera provides an agentless, API-driven data security platform designed to deliver real-time visibility and context-aware governance over sensitive information across hybrid cloud, SaaS, database, and on-premises environments.  The…

While bitcoin is banned for making payments in Russia, the government is keen on one type of digital money: its own central bank digital currency.  The digital ruble has been available for transactions in the country since September 1, according to a Tuesday report from Tass.  Citing a talk given by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the news agency said that it was all part of “developing a convenient, fast, and independent payment infrastructure” in Russia.  JUST IN: 🇷🇺 Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin says:”The circulation of cryptocurrencies has also become legal in the country starting from September 1. The relevant…

AI may be able to reason without putting every step into words. Many of today’s AI systems tackle difficult problems by generating intermediate steps in lengthy, chains of words before arriving at an answer— a technique often called chain-of-thought reasoning. That approach can improve performance on some tasks, but it also means an AI model may generate many words, or tokens, on the way to a relatively short answer. Each token takes computing power to produce, so longer reasoning can make answers slower and more expensive to generate. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week’s scientific breakthroughs every…