Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Party officials had warned that an outcome below 5% for the CDU in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania would unleash a storm of criticism and renew calls for a change in leadership, or Kanzlertausch. But Merz is clinging to power — for now. Unless he steps aside voluntarily, forcing a leadership change risks triggering a snap election at a time when polls show the far right to be the country’s most popular party — making such a move unlikely for the time being. That could quickly change if party members begin speaking out against him. That’s why Merz has vowed to chart a…

Nigel Farage dismissed the loss of Reform UK’s leader in Wales last week as a “bump in the road”, as the party unveiled a replacement.Helen Jenner becomes Reform UK’s new leader in Wales after Dan Thomas stood down last Tuesday after he was arrested on suspicion of assault and controlling or coercive behaviours.Jenner, who was previously Reform’s deputy leader in Wales, joined Farage on the steps of the Senedd, where he said the party would “carry on as if nothing has happened”.Thomas announced last week that he was standing down after his arrest on suspicion of assault and controlling or…

It’s been a while since Jackson Wagner left his job as a product lead at Scale AI in July 2022. Now, he’s building in a new space altogether: The new effort is an AI health benefits brokerage called Corridor that focuses on small businesses, which it says traditional brokerages often overlook because small accounts generate lower commissions even though they take the same amount of time as larger accounts.  Corridor is betting an AI solution may help on that front. On its platform, customers work with human advisors while AI agents do administrative tasks in the background. The company says its…

“AI transformation is exciting. Identity hygiene is not,” said Roy Katmor, co-founder and CEO of Orchid Security. “Boards are no longer asking whether AI will be adopted—they are asking why it is not moving faster, and security cannot answer with a blanket ‘no.’ Enterprises need to observe how agents act, understand when they drift, and govern them immediately, including terminating the authority through which they operate.” The problem was never how agents behave. It is what they inherit. Exceeding an intended scope requires no circumvention of controls — agents simply locate the identity debt that has piled up over years:…

Bitcoin’s post-retarget relief for miners was real, but narrow.Using a BTC price of $84,751, the completed difficulty increase and the latest gross hashprice is about $40.31 per petahash per second per day. That is roughly 2.65% above the prior modeled baseline.However, the next difficulty estimate is pointing 2.48% lower. The estimate came after only 14.43% of the new epoch, making it an early signal from slower blocks rather than a result or proof that miners were switching off.The two readings are compatible. Price had restored a modest amount of gross revenue per unit of computing power after the Sept. 19…

An international team of astronomers co-led by an IAS scholar has identified what appears to be a universal rule governing one of the most dramatic behaviors of black holes: the production of powerful jets. The researchers found that black holes can launch jets at the same critical stage of their feeding cycle, regardless of their size. That includes “stellar-mass” black holes about ten times the mass of our sun as well as supermassive black holes that are millions of times heavier. The work was carried out by Andrew Mummery, Martin A. and Helen Chooljian Member (2025-30) in the School of…

The long-running financial standoff between Mexico’s offshore services company Cotemar and ABSG Consulting, a subsidiary of American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), has intensified, with the Mexican firm now turning to the New York State Supreme Court to restrict the U.S. government contractor’s access to nearly $60 million in assets. Olympus semi-submersible accommodation platform; Courtesy of Cotemar A new development in Cotemar’s legal action to recover $59.4 million from ABSG Consulting for unpaid work saw the firm submit a new filing, asking a New York court to suspend nearly $60 million in assets belonging to ABS’ subsidiary due to the Mexican…

The United Nations reported recently that global warming will soon exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius, the goal nations agreed to strive toward in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The best plausible outcome now is a peak near 1.8 degrees Celsius. Most projections are far worse. Scientists have concluded that even 1.5 degrees of sustained warming brings severe consequences (including extreme storms, fires, and heat), and that above it, the risk of unmanageable, irreversible damage rises sharply. Overshooting means much larger investments will be required to prepare for now-inevitable climate disasters. Yet this failure creates an opening. It clarifies that in the decades…

Brown, Bridget. “Live Updates: Trump Goes After Supreme Court for Rejecting His Push to Restrict Mail Ballots.” AP News, 15 Sept. 2026, https://apnews.com/live/supreme-court-mail-ballots-trump-news-updates-09-15-2026. Accessed 18 Sept. 2026.”President Trump Adds His Own Name to the Kennedy Center.” NPR, 18 Dec. 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/12/18/nx-s1-5648519/kennedy-center-name-change-trump. Accessed 18 Sept. 2026.Semones, Evan. “Kennedy Center Closes Amid Financial Crisis and Trump Name Dispute.” Al Jazeera, 15 Sept. 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/15/kennedy-center-closes-amid-financial-crisis-and-trump-name-dispute. Accessed 18 Sept. 2026.Sloan, Steven, and Ashraf Khalil. “Kennedy Center Board Votes to Close Over Finances and Trump Dispute.” AP News, 15 Sept. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/kennedy-center-closure-board-trump-ruling-1dfbfaac695f6817719477101b971a54. Accessed 18 Sept. 2026.”The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts -…

CNN, MS NOW and Politico to sue over White House banMS NOW, CNN and Politico said they were suing the Trump administration ⁠to protect their First Amendment ​rights after ‌president Donald Trump’s ‌announcement that he would ban ‌them from the White House’s building grounds.The three news outlets said they had notified the government that they were ‌filing their lawsuit in the US District Court for ​the District of Columbia and could see emergency hearings in the case as soon ⁠as this week, according to ​CNN.All three news outlets had hinted at legal action, saying they would vigorously defend their First…