Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Kairos Power has picked engineering firm Samsung C&T to help build its 50-megawatt demonstration reactor for Google, which the nuclear startup is aiming to have completed by 2030. As part of the deal, Samsung C&T will make an equity investment in Kairos and provide “in-kind” engineering services, the combination of which is worth up to $100 million, Kairos Power said Monday. The equity investment will make up $70 million of the total, a Kairos spokesperson told TechCrunch. Samsung C&T has built or helped build about a dozen nuclear reactors around the globe. Kairos is part of a wave of nuclear…

Toyota Motor estimates that expanding automation across its factories, group companies, and major suppliers could require around 400,000 robots and annual spending of about 1 trillion yen ($6.4 billion) from 2028.The potential investment was discussed with investors earlier in September, according to Reuters. Toyota has not said whether the full investment will proceed or how many years spending at that level would continue.The 400,000 figure includes replacements for existing machines and new robot installations, covering humanoid and non-humanoid systems. The potential investment spans industrial robots, automated logistics, and future human-robot collaboration on factory floors.Toyota already uses and tests robotics across…

In April, I wrote about what I called the Cyber AI Parity Window. This is the rare period in which defenders and adversaries gained access to the same transformative technology at roughly the same moment. For most of cybersecurity history, advanced offensive capability reached attackers years before defenders could respond with comparable technology. AI changed that pattern. At the time, my argument was simple. Parity creates an opportunity, and its value depends on what defenders do with it. I also warned that the window would narrow. Five months later, we have a better sense of how quickly. OpenAI recently described…

The cryptocurrency market cap briefly climbed back above $3 trillion earlier on Tuesday as Bitcoin and the biggest altcoins extended a broad rally, while increasing leverage pointed to growing speculative activity. Bitcoin (BTC) traded around $86,000, up about 4.5% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Ether (ETH) gained about 2.3% to $2,745, while XRP rose 5.7% to $1.53 and Solana (SOL) advanced 3.6% to $117. BNB gained 1.6%, while Dogecoin (DOGE) was among the stronger large-cap performers, rising about 11%.The total crypto market cap stood just below $3 trillion at the time of writing, up about 4.3% over the…

The most dramatic and tragic natural phenomenon Spain has seen in recent years were flash floods that killed 237 people in the east of the country in October 2024, centred on the Valencia region.Spanish meteorological research group Climatoc-Lab described it as “a manifestation of how global warming alters the hydrological cycle”.The Valencia Chamber of Commerce estimated that the floods caused €4.5bn in direct damage. Thousands of businesses were affected, some literally washed away by the floodwater, while others were able to resume operations after a lengthy recovery.”It was a disaster, both in terms of the lives lost and the impact…

Almost nobody wants a data center for a neighbor. Residents fear noise and air pollution, excessive energy and water use and the loss of open land. In Pennsylvania, a hot spot for new data centers, researchers see an opportunity to solve some of these issues by taking advantage of a much older environmental hazard: abandoned coal mines. Pennsylvania has the most abandoned coal mines in the country, totaling around 5,586 sites across the state. The state reports it would take roughly $5 billion to reclaim these polluted and sometimes dangerous areas, which have contaminated thousands of miles of waterways and…

Chinese open-weight models—artificial intelligence systems whose underlying weights are publicly released—are having a moment. Alibaba’s Qwen, for example, boasts 151,448 derivatives on Hugging Face. These are customized adaptations, where programmers fine-tuned the Qwen architecture for their specific needs. That gives Qwen a repository footprint 4.7 times that of Meta’s Llama and almost double that of Google’s Gemma. It also draws 39.6 million monthly downloads of GGUF, a lightweight format optimized for local hardware, far ahead of Llama’s 7.5 million. These numbers should not be dismissed. Many of the top U.S. AI firms’ business models, especially at OpenAI and Anthropic, still…

Under a global cloud of wars and bitter divisions, world leaders meet at the United Nations this week facing new fears that runaway artificial intelligence could threaten humanity even as climate shocks and escalating prices are already making life much tougher for hundreds of millions of people. The annual high-level gathering at the UN General Assembly will also be consumed with major wars in Iran , Gaza , Ukraine, Sudan , Congo and Myanmar and a persisting question: Can the leaders do anything to end them? And what can they do about the relentless rise of global warming threatening the…

The UK government borrowed a higher-than-expected £18.3bn last month, increasing the pressure on John Healey as he attempts to calm jittery bond markets before next month’s budget.Official figures released by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday said public sector net borrowing – the difference between government spending and income – was £2.9bn higher last month than in August 2025.It meant that borrowing was £3.5bn higher than expected by the government’s independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), taking the deficit over the financial year so far to £77.3bn – £8.1bn above forecast.The £18.3bn borrowed in August was also…

Andy Burnham has opened the door to fighting the next election on the UK rejoining the EU, but said his immediate priority was continuing to rebuild bridges with European allies.The prime minister, who will hold his first meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on Tuesday, did not rule out including reversing Brexit in Labour’s next manifesto – but suggested the country should focus on securing closer trading ties first.Ministers have expressed fears privately that the EU reset has lost significant momentum since Burnham became prime minister, and a summit on the issue is likely to be…