Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

by Lance Whitney/ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways Microsoft is merging Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot into one unified app.You’ll be able to sign into Copilot with a personal, work, or school account.This will reduce the clutter and confusion of juggling two separate apps.Microsoft currently offers two different Copilot apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, and even the web. The regular Copilot app is aimed at consumers and individual users. The Microsoft 365 Copilot app is designed for organizations and professional accounts. Copilot’s dual existence is confusing, especially if you bounce between both…

Google Cloud has published an updated roadmap for migrating its infrastructure to post-quantum cryptography (PQC), targeting full readiness by 2029, with some work expected to continue into the next decade. In March, Google announced it was moving up its timeline for transitioning to PQC, setting a 2029 target after faster-than-expected advances in quantum hardware and error correction. The tech giant announced this week that the plan, built around its own Quantum Threat Model, organizes work into three priority areas: mitigating Store Now Decrypt Later (SNDL) risk, strengthening digital signatures against forgery, and building the cryptographic agility needed to adopt new…

Tether says KPMG issued an unqualified opinion on Tether International’s 2025 financial statements, its first full audit from a Big Four accounting firm. The audited numbers show reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion as of Dec. 31, 2025.Quarterly reserve attestations confirm a snapshot of assets against liabilities. A full financial-statement audit examines the balance sheet, transactions, counterparties, and underlying evidence, and Tether says KPMG even physically counted every gold bar in its reserves.Transparency itemReserve attestationFull financial-statement auditGENIUS-style regimePoint-in-time reserve snapshotYesYesYesFull balance sheet reviewLimitedYesExpectedTransactions and counterpartiesLimitedYesExpectedLiability verificationYesYesYesOngoing liquidity-risk managementNoNot the main purposeYesMonthly public reportingNoNoYesWeekly confidential regulator reportingNoNoYesStanding supervisory frameworkNoNoYesTether CEO Paolo…

Reporting Highlights Inflated Claims: HSI deployed its tech platform to find noncitizens on voter rolls, despite warnings from agency insiders that it would lead to an “ungodly” number of false positives. Privacy Concerns: DOJ leaders ignored internal concerns that transferring voter lists to HSI for criminal investigation might not be legal. Scant Results: Despite intense White House pressure, the effort has produced only a few dozen noncitizen voter prosecutions nationwide — and even fewer convictions. These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story. It was late March when Joe Teirab, the second-in-command at Minnesota’s…

Nigel Farage is a rattled, embattled politician. Perhaps he feels buoyed up by securing slightly more votes in a byelection boycotted by all the main parties than he did in the general election two years ago. That was despite 10,000 fewer people turning out to vote. But there was never any question that he was going to win a byelection he called purely to deflect scrutiny of his undeclared £5m personal gift from a Thai-based crypto-billionaire and donations from a convicted fraudster.Farage chose Clacton as his parliamentary launchpad for a reason. It was here that his previous outfit, Ukip, secured…

Claim: While in charge of Detroit’s health department, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed ran a dog slaughterhouse and oversaw the euthanasia of 74% of the shelter dogs. Rating: Context While the allegations were loosely based on actual complaints about conditions at Detroit Animal Control, El-Sayed wasn’t in charge of the shelter when they first surfaced. In August 2026, after Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Party primary election, a rumor spread online questioning his record as the head of Detroit’s health department, which took over supervision of Detroit Animal Control a few months after El-Sayed took office. According…

On a searing summer day, Israeli settlers splashed in a West Bank pool created ​by siphoning off water that had irrigated Palestinian crops, one of many seizures of water resources across the occupied territory. The spring served as a lifeline for the nearby village of Fasayil in the fertile Jordan Valley, where Palestinians have relied on it for generations for food, employment and to supplement irregular Israeli supplies to their domestic taps. “Our water supply remains cut off to this day, depriving us of the water we depend on for our homes, our livelihoods, ​and our agricultural land,” said Saad…

These days, it can seem like everyone thinks their request to the Supreme Court is an emergency.The court has been inundated in recent years with emergency asks from all manner of people and groups who want the justices to short circuit the lower courts and intervene in their cases immediately.But this week might have seen the first such request on behalf of a dog.His name was Bruce, and he was a 120-pound, 3-year-old Anatolian Shepherd dog who had been detained in Ventura County, Calif., and ordered to be euthanized after a state court found he was vicious. His crimes included…

An American missionary who was kidnapped in the West African country of Niger in October has been released and is with U.S. officials, according to his mission organization.The organization, called Serving in Mission, which works in more than 70 countries, said in a statement that Mr. Rideout, a pilot, was free after more than nine months in captivity.“We are grateful to confirm that our good friend and brother in Christ, Kevin Rideout, has been released,” the statement read. The mission said he was in “good health in the care of U.S. officials” and would soon be reunited with his wife,…

Apple has sent out a new batch of notifications to customers who it suspects have been targeted with spyware capable of hacking into their devices. The tech giant sends out these notifications on occasion to alert its customers that their iPhones, iPads, or Macs might have been compromised with spyware typically used by governments. Apple told TechCrunch that it sent out the notifications on Thursday to users targeted in 110 countries. Apple says to date it has notified customers in over 150 countries, giving some context to how far government-used spyware has spread around the world. In a new support…