Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday sent a proposal to the White House to regulate crypto transactions and markets.  It isn’t clear what the regulations will look like from the post on the Office of Management and Budget’s website. The proposal is titled “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets.” The CFTC’s move comes after lawmakers blocked the long-awaited crypto legislation Clarity Act on Tuesday. Despite the law not advancing, both the CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission have said they would go ahead with crypto rulemaking anyway.  CFTC Chair Mike Selig said on Wednesday that while…

The “Hands Around the Kennedy Center” rally drew thousands after Trump-backed board votes to close the iconic arts venue.Published On 19 Sep 202619 Sep 2026Thousands of protesters formed a human chain around the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC to contest its closure, amid fears that United States President Donald Trump could make good on his threat to demolish the venerated landmark.The crowd filled streets in the Foggy Bottom neighbourhood of the capital on Friday evening, bringing traffic to a standstill as demonstrators made their way to the “Hands Around the Kennedy Center” protest. Many carried signs…

British politics is increasingly being funded by individual billionaires with a wave of mega-donations having flooded into UK political parties over the past two parliaments.A total £179m has been donated by wealthy individuals since 2019, research reveals.The figures from the IPPR thinktank show how big money is playing an ever more influential role in Westminster, with a particular rise in mega-donations of more than £1m.The research found that contributions from individual donors has accelerated since the Brexit party got £10m from the Thailand-based billionaire Christopher Harborne and the Liberal Democrats were given £8m by David Sainsbury, the supermarket tycoon, who…

You may be familiar with the various memes detailing the fact that once you reach middle age, you’re automatically sorted, Harry Potter hat-style, into one of a handful of hobbies, such as sourdough bread making, gardening, or bird-watching. I can’t contradict this, since I’m a middle-aged person who got sorted into bird-watching. But I do know that enjoying birds and their various activities is fun for all ages. Birds are beautiful, interesting, and unpredictable, and it’s fascinating to keep a running life list of all the birds you’ve seen and hope to see in your lifetime.Whether someone you know is…

Security researcher Gal Weizman of Forever Security has disclosed a new attack technique that can hijack the AI assistants built into popular browsers using a single malicious browser extension. Dubbed BragJack, the proof-of-concept was demonstrated against five Chromium-based browsers or browser assistants: Google Chrome’s Gemini Live, Perplexity Comet, Microsoft Edge, Opera Neon, and Anthropic’s Claude in Chrome. The research earned more than $20,000 in bug bounties from the five vendors, ranging from $600 to $7,000, and produced two CVEs. The attack requires the malicious extension to already be installed in the victim’s browser. Once it is, the researcher shows the abuse…

In brief Over five days in August, Bitcoin rose 24.6% while coin-denominated open interest fell 12.6%, meaning the rally ran on unwinding short positions rather than fresh bullish bets. The options market flipped after 361 straight days of puts pricing richer than calls, and the front of the futures curve repriced while the long end held—signs of a one-off event, not a regime change. The data comes from a joint Glassnode-Bybit with numbers through August 23, covering four crypto-native venues, excluding CME. Bitcoin’s most violent rally of its two-year drawdown wasn’t powered by fresh bullish bets. It was powered by…

Millions in Cuba were left without power on Friday as the country was plunged into yet another major blackout.The country’s entire electricity grid suffered “total disconnection” that triggered a nationwide outage, Cuba’s energy ministry said.Power was restored to some priority areas by late evening, including those near hospitals and water pumping stations in the capital Havana, grid operator UNE said.It is at least the sixth partial or total blackout to hit Cuba this year, where ageing electricity infrastructure and chronic fuel shortages have been placed under further strain by a US blockade on oil shipments to the communist-run nation.UNE said…

But the statement also came after French President Emmanuel Macron chaired a rare crisis meeting Friday at which the country’s political leaders, including Bardella, were briefed on the threats posed by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.Le Pen and Bardella also cited the August drone attack at Leipzig airport, which German authorities attributed to Russia. “No provocation, clandestine operation, or destabilization effort could lead France to facilitate Russia’s achievement of its war aims in Ukraine,” the far-right leaders write. The statement marks a rare show of unity within a party that has been divided over…

Mathematician Tristan Buckmaster believes OpenAI used his work to rush ahead and beat him to solving a legendary math problem with a $1 million bounty.But that’s not been enough for him to stop using the company’s models—and he’s not the only mathematician that feels that way.“Even if you don’t agree with any of this, you’re kind of stuck. With AI being so useful, it’s hard to completely prevent oneself from using it,” Buckmaster tells WIRED. “These companies have a monopoly, and there is not much choice,” he adds.In the week and half since the New York University professor accused OpenAI…

Data loss prevention (DLP) startup MIND has announced raising $72 million in a Series B funding round that brings the total raised by the company to $112 million. The investment round was led by Crosspoint Capital Partners, with additional support from previous investors YL Ventures and Paladin Capital Group. Based in Seattle, MIND emerged from stealth mode in 2024 with an AI-native DLP platform built to protect customer data through smart automations. MIND provides real-time detection and blocks data exfiltration attempts across the entire enterprise environment, including email, endpoint, gen-AI, and SaaS deployments. The platform relies on multi-layer classification to…