Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Major frontier AI vendors — including Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI — need to rein in the harnesses they wrap around their large language modules, to limit security weaknesses created by software components that are too trusting of each other.That’s the word from researchers at AI penetration testing firm Novee Security, who were able to use Google’s AI agent to execute a supply chain attack and write to its own repository on GitHub, says Elad Meged, a founding team and security researcher at the company. The team also found issues in Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s AI agents by exploiting misalignments in the…

Legendary investor Ray Dalio still only holds 1% of his portfolio in Bitcoin — and prefers gold instead.  Speaking on a Thursday episode of the Diary of a CEO podcast, the Bridgewater Associates founder explained that while there are different types of money, and Bitcoin was one of them, gold was a better investment.   Dalio has gone from saying he wouldn’t invest in Bitcoin over the years to finally admitting it was in his portfolio.  “[Bitcoin] is a type of money that can’t be printed, but there are technologies that can hurt it — in other words, if there’s quantum…

A naturally occurring compound found in rice bran may influence how strongly the intestines contract, according to new research from Toho University. The study, led by Dr. Keisuke Obara, Dr. Kento Yoshioka, and Professor Yoshio Tanaka of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, found that ferulic acid (FA) can reduce intestinal smooth muscle contractions by blocking voltage-dependent calcium channels. The discovery could eventually support new dietary approaches for intestinal motility disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). A Common Compound in Whole Grains Ferulic acid is a polyphenol found in many plant-based foods, especially whole grains…

Last Thursday, as weeks of mass protests against the leak of a medical school entrance exam paper continued to rock India’s capital, Prime Minister Narendra Modi uploaded his first-ever selfie video to Instagram. “Friends,” he began in English, before switching to Hindi and pledging to take action against those responsible for the leak through “fast-track courts.” In another selfie video the following day, he thanked the “youngsters” who responded to his first video “late at night.” Both videos were instantly lampooned by their intended audience. Instagram creators made fun of Modi’s long pauses and his chosen camera angle that made…

The father of a teenage boy who shot and killed four people at a high school in the US state of Georgia has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for murder, manslaughter and other charges. Colin Gray, 55, was found guilty in March on a slate of charges stemming from the 2024 attack that left two teachers and two students dead in Winder, Georgia.His son, 16-year-old Colt Gray, pleaded guilty to the murders last week, and investigators said that the rifle he used was a gift from his father.Colin Gray was “the one person who could have prevented” the…

Todd Blanche’s nomination to become attorney general suffered a severe blow on Thursday when President Trump threatened to withdraw Mr. Blanche’s name rather than scale back a tax immunity deal that would benefit himself and his family, as demanded by two Republican senators.Mr. Trump’s threat, posted on social media, followed 24 hours of frenetic and fruitless negotiations among Mr. Blanche, the White House and the two senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who are not returning to Congress next year.“I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right…

Andy Burnham has said he will take a “pragmatic” approach to oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, saying the government could not ignore the potential energy resources it holds.The prime minister’s comments came in response to a question about his conversation with Donald Trump on his first day in No 10. Trump had said Burnham told him he would “open up” North Sea oil, something the UK summary of the call made no mention of.Questioned by reporters during a defence-related visit to Cumbria about what he had said to the US president, Burnham replied: “I indicated in the…

Vehicles purpose-built to drive without human help received the first-ever approval in the US to pick up paid customers, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced on Thursday.The company, Amazon subsidiary Zoox, says it will soon begin to charge for rides in Las Vegas, where it’s been carrying passengers for free since last year. The company is also currently picking up a limited set of passengers in Austin, Miami, and San Francisco, all for free.The approval is a milestone for the autonomous vehicle industry. Waymo, the nation’s leading robotaxi provider, uses vehicles that still meet government design standards—with steering…

Broadcom has released security updates to fix five vulnerabilities in VMware vCenter, ESX, Workstation, and Fusion, including three critical flaws that allow attackers to bypass authentication, execute arbitrary code, or escape from a virtual machine to the host. The vulnerabilities also affect products containing vCenter or ESX, including VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware vSphere Foundation, VMware Telco Cloud Platform, and VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure. Broadcom says organizations running versions released before those listed as fixed in its advisory should assume they are vulnerable and take immediate action. The five vulnerabilities are summarized below: CVE-2026-59309: A critical authentication bypass vulnerability in the…

Some of the world’s biggest banks have completed real cross-border payments using tokenized money in a test led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), another sign that tokenization is moving into the plumbing of global finance.Project Agorá, which brings together five central banks and 28 commercial lenders including JPMorgan, Citi, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered, processed roughly $1 million (CHF 800,000) in real-value transactions across six currencies — the U.S. dollar, euro, British pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc and South Korean won.The pilot used tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits to settle corporate, interbank payments perand…