Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

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…

For internationally acclaimed photographer Federico Borella, documenting Sri Lanka’s human-elephant conflict goes beyond the gory story often depicted globally and instead offers an opportunity to learn about a complex web of experiences and responses, and a window for coexistence.Borella has been documenting human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka for four years and has found intense conflict intertwined with genuine affection for the animals, despite the scale of human suffering.As a professional documentary photographer, Borella insists his role is to document the reality as he encounters it and not to sit in judgement as to whose suffering matters more.He intends to…

While dismissing alternative pipeline routes as economically unviable, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Qatar’s state-owned oil and gas giant QatarEnergy has highlighted that the country’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) player remains fully committed to maritime transit through the Strait of Hormuz, even as facility repairs following recent attacks at Ras Laffan Industrial City face a multi-year timeline. Ras Laffan petrochemicals project in Qatar (aerial view); Source: CPChem Following Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, QatarEnergy halted LNG production and associated products at some of its assets and issued a declaration of force majeure to its LNG buyers. A major plot twist…

There really is no press tour like a Tom Cruise press tour – which is why there have not really been any Tom Cruise press tours for a very long time indeed. We’re now at the stage of this one where even the interviewers have been forced on to the interview circuit to defend their interviews.Anyway: Cruise. The guy has one child with ex-wife Katie Holmes who dropped his surname as soon as she was legally allowed, and two Scientologist children widely reported to be effectively estranged from their mother, Nicole Kidman. The divorces from Kidman and Holmes were clearly…

A false and potentially harmful claim about cancerous tumours has been shared on social media again.A graphic shared on Facebook says “cancer is trying to heal not kill” and includes claims that tumours are “basically a bag the human body creates to collect toxins that are contaminating the bloodstream” and that a biopsy “releases toxic matter back into the body”.As we’ve explained several times before, none of this is true. Tumours are not protective bags of toxins, and they don’t serve any healing purpose.There’s an extremely small chance needle biopsies can cause cancerous cells to spread along the needle’s track,…

Trump touts actions against Iran in address to UN General AssemblyTrump turns now to his war in Iran, framing the war he launched earlier this year the same way he has to his domestic audience — as a necessary conflict to addressing a long-ignored threat.“I do not believe in letting problems fester,” Trump said. “They only become harder to solve. So while others have talked, I have acted while others have spoken of peace, I have made peace. While others have ignored threats, I have confronted them. While others have talked of courage, America has shown it.”The US, Trump said,…

Paris launched a surprise campaign earlier this month calling for sanctions to be dropped on mining and telecommunications billionaire Usmanov and citing a “national security” issue at play. Luxembourg, meanwhile, had long been asking for the de-listing of banking magnate Fridman, who is suing the country for access to assets frozen by the Grand Duchy. “It is done,” said one of the diplomats. “The question is what Baltic countries got in return.”The agreement, reached in a meeting of ambassadors behind closed doors, will take effect if capitals submit their written consent by 6 p.m. Three-year extension A number of other…

Nick Clegg could make approximately $40m (£30m) from the planned float of Nscale as the UK-based datacentre company prepares for a US stock market listing.The former UK deputy prime minister owns more than 917,000 shares in the startup, which is reportedly seeking a valuation of up to $35bn in a flotation. Based on Clegg’s stake of 0.12%, that could yield a valuation of about $42m for the ex-Liberal Democrat party leader.Clegg is a board member at Nscale along with the former Meta executive, Sheryl Sandberg, whose 0.25% stake could be worth $88m if Nscale floats at the $35bn valuation, a…

A biological computing startup that uses neural patterns from rat brain cells to build artificial intelligence just got a major boost from Amazon.Starting Tuesday, select Amazon Web Services customers will gain access to The Biological Computing Company’s “rat brain” AI model as part of a limited preview. The startup’s technology is specifically designed to improve AI for generating videos. Both Amazon and The Biological Computing Company, which goes by the acronym TBC, says they expect the tech to roll out to all AWS enterprise customers soon.“We figured out a way to code information, like images for example, to the biological…