Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The proposal can also be seen as part of a more ambitious strategy to develop a European safe asset that drags down the liquidity premium that investors are asking for. Separately, Spain has proposed allowing the Commission to issue a portion of member countries’ debt on their behalf, helping to create a deeper common market for European debt. This could generate €25 billion in annual interest savings. With Spain for the first time set to become a net contributor to the next long-term budget, we are more than willing to pay our fair share to help make the EU a global powerhouse that creates opportunities for its citizens. The…

Google and Google DeepMind researchers launched the DeepMind Institute on Wednesday to advance the conversation around artificial general intelligence (AGI). The institute lists DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg, Google executive James Manyika, and Google DeepMind chair Demis Hassabis as directors, with Legg serving as managing editor.  The new institute aims to surface differing views between Google, Google DeepMind, and the broader global research community around AGI. “They will not always agree, and they will likely change their minds, as more data and information comes to light at the fast-moving frontier,” the announcement read. The inaugural collection of four essays covers a…

Alibaba’s Qwen team has released Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash. They called it its first omni-modal model built around agentic capabilities. It accepts text, images, audio, and video, and it returns text. Audio-video understanding, reasoning, and tool use sit inside one model. The stated workflow is simple: understand the content, plan the task, execute with tools, deliver the result. Is it deployable? Yes, as a hosted API today. It is live on QwenCloud, Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, and Qwen Studio. No open weights were announced at launch, so self-hosting is not an option. What is Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash The Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash is built on the Qwen3.8-Flash-Next architecture.…

A critical-severity vulnerability in Orkes Conductor that can be exploited without authentication has been in attackers’ crosshairs for at least a month. Conductor is an open source unified enterprise framework that allows organizations to orchestrate microservices, workflows, and AI agents. Tracked as CVE-2026-58138 (CVSS score of 9.8), the critical bug is described as a remote code execution issue exploitable via inline workflow definitions submitted to the workflow API endpoint. Attackers can include malicious JavaScript or Python expressions in the definitions to invoke arbitrary system commands. The flaw affects how Conductor runs scripts inside a workflow. “An INLINE task (and LAMBDA,…

James Check, founder and lead analyst at Checkonchain, said Bitcoin may have already established its cycle bottom after undergoing two capitulation events, arguing that shifts in holder behavior indicate the market has absorbed much of its selling pressure.Bitcoin (BTC) reached a record of just over $126,000 in October 2025 and traded around $77,400 at the time of writing, nearly 39% below its peak. Some traders expect BTC to establish another low in October 2026 based on its historical four-year cycle. In July, analyst Benjamin Cowen said that cycle-duration data and the US midterm-election calendar pointed toward a fourth-quarter bottoming window.…

For most of modern astronomy, rings were associated only with the Solar System’s giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. That picture changed in 2013, when astronomers discovered two dense rings around Chariklo, a small object only about 250 kilometers across that travels between Saturn and Uranus, nearly 17 times farther from the Sun than Earth. Now, new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) show that those rings are not as stable as scientists once assumed. A study published in Science Advances, led by the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), provides the first evidence that Chariklo’s ring…

The California valley with the most dairy farms in the state will follow stricter water pollution requirements following years of advocacy and a marathon six-hour meeting this week. The State Water Resources Control Board unanimously agreed to adopt the regulations under what several environmental groups call a long overdue dairy order.  Nitrogen from the manure dairies produce turns into excess nitrate in soil, waterways and groundwater, and can eventually contaminate drinking water. Families and children in the Central Valley “are living in crisis,” said Leslie Martinez, of the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability and Defensores del Valle Central para…

Monday must have been a historical first. Never before have three of the four “nations” of the United Kingdom jointly demanded freedom to vote for its dissolution. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have lost confidence in England. They declared in Cardiff that the unionist government at Westminster is “coming to an end”.There was no such Celtic alliance against the Normans, Edward I or Cromwell. Celtic MPs have never formed a voting coalition in parliament. The Victorian Liberal party advanced “home rule for all”, but that was not independence and it got nowhere. Ireland rebelled, but it did so alone. When…

A shooting at a high school in southern Philippines has left at least one person dead and several injured.The incident happened on Friday afternoon at Banga National High School in South Cotabato, in Mindanao province.Local media and officials have reporting conflicting casualty figures. The identities of the shooter and the victims have not been confirmed.The Department of Education said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned by the reported shooting incident”.”Our immediate priority is the safety and well-being of our learners, teachers and school personnel,” the statement said, adding it was coordinating with authorities to verify the incident and…

There was even more excitement when Carney gave his own speech to the European Parliament a day later. Alas, there were fewer EU lawmakers present for Carney than there were for von der Leyen because of that long-standing MEP tradition of pissing off home at the earliest opportunity. Between those Strasbourg meetings, Carney made a whistle-stop trip to the U.K. to watch the biggest football match of the calendar: Everton vs Wolverhampton Wanderers in the third round of the second-most important domestic cup competition (sponsored by an energy drink). Carney went to watch football with Andy Burnham in what sociologists…