Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Claim: U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering two deals that would give pieces of Georgia’s Cumberland Island National Seashore land to private owners. Rating: Context The proposed deals were voluntary land exchanges, meaning they would require the new owners to hand over separate, environmentally sensitive parcels to the National Park Service in return for the land in question. As of this writing, the deals were in the public comment stage of the process and were not finalized. Rumors that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was planning to hand over parcels of land from Georgia’s federally protected Cumberland Island National…

A rare catch-and-kill order has been issued for a great white shark off the coast of Western Australia after 63-year-old swimmer Greg O’Neill was killed at a popular beach on Friday. His body has still not been found.Authorities have said that beaches along the state’s coast, including in the capital Perth, will remain closed until at least Sunday as the search for the shark continues.It is the second shark attack in Western Australia (WA) this week, and the third fatal attack in the state this year.The incident, at Sorrento Beach in Perth’s north, has reignited debate about how to keep…

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Kernel Panic! A weekly newsletter by Lily Hay Newman and Matt Burgess from inside the new world of privacy and digital security. To receive this newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up here.AI doomers have recently traded one worst-case scenario for another, putting aside a potential software vulnerability apocalypse to focus on the possibility of rogue AI causing mass human death in the next decade. As AI leaders consider a cooperative slowdown on frontier model development, though, one aspect of the cybersecurity sea change has already arrived thanks to existing, broadly available capabilities…

Last night, in a clip viewed more than eight million times, AI actress Tilly Norwood glitched mid-interview and unexpectedly began speaking Chinese on the Piers Morgan Uncensored show. Norwood has been the subject of much controversy and mainstream commentary for starring in an upcoming AI-generated film, Misaligned. Her creators run a “Talking Tilly” service that lets anyone video-call the AI character behind the viral moment, so today I tried it for myself, and read the fine print most callers won’t. A face scan before you can say hello Before your first call connects, you must pass an automated age check. A video selfie…

Treasury desks at major institutions are juggling three systems for the same job, said Jerald David, CEO of Lynq Network. A JPMorgan tokenized deposit for one client, a regulated stablecoin for another, a conventional correspondent account for a third. They move money on for the same reasons, but on different infrastructure.”What clients can’t afford are separate pools of liquidity locked up on every network they access, because idle liquidity fragmented across five networks is five times the capital inefficiency of idle liquidity sitting in one place,” he said.Unlike a stablecoin, a tokenized deposit remains a claim on the bank that…

A powerful eruption at Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau sent ash high into the atmosphere, disrupting thousands of flights and worsening air quality across parts of the country. Anak Krakatau is a small but highly active volcano located between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra. Its eruptions are often relatively modest, but the volcano is also capable of producing much more hazardous activity. In early September 2026, Anak Krakatau entered a prolonged explosive phase that lasted for more than 24 hours, sending large amounts of gas and ash into the sky. The eruption disrupted air travel and contributed to poor air…

Disabled people are being barred from leaving the country. This isn’t the first line of a dystopian novel but a scandal quietly happening across swathes of England. For the past six months, myself and my colleague Patrick Butler have spoken to disabled people who have effectively been blocked from going abroad on a holiday or to a work event by their local care provider.There’s 38-year-old Lucy from Oxfordshire who needs to travel internationally as the president of the European Spinal Cord Injury Federation. And Chelsea from Lancashire, a 25-year-old with cerebral palsy who dreams of swimming in Spain again. Then…

AI’s existential threat to humanity is dominating headlines across the globe. But with so much attention on the fear of a future AI apocalypse, is the media ignoring the damage AI is already causing?And as AI CEOs join forces to call for regulations, is their motivation about public safety or to secure their grip on the technology’s future?Contributors: Leo Schwartz – Reporter, The InformationSarah Myers West – Co-executive director, AI NowAaron Mak – Technology reporter, PoliticoCori Crider – Executive director, Future of Tech InstituteOn our radarNAZA, a documentary that lifts the lid on Israel’s calculated killing of Palestinians, has sparked outrage…

Germany will lower tax on petrol and diesel by 17 cents per liter in a relief package worth €2.5 billion, the German government announced Friday. “Those who rely on their cars every day are reaching their financial limits. … The relief package of €2.5 billion is no small sum in times of strained budgets,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. The tax discount is to be implemented next month. The measure, brokered between Germany’s federal and state governments, is part of the package promised by Merz as fuel prices continue to climb in response to the war in Iran and the…

Anthropic has a wet biology lab in the Bay Area where it can use its AI models to run physical experiments, it has confirmed to TechCrunch. AI leaders have been promising that AI is the key to curing human disease. Dario Amodei opined just last week: “I believe that AI could cure most major diseases in the next 5–10 years.” To do that, an LLM would have to have methods to test its theories in real life. “We believe that to do biology, the final test is still, and will be for a while, in real lab work,” Anthropic’s head…