Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.JPMorgan Chase terminated its banking relationship with Polymarket last year over regulatory concerns, underscoring enduring cautious sentiment towards prediction markets. JPMorgan notified Polymarket that it needed to find a new bank in October, according to people familiar with the matter. Polymarket is now working with a new lender, the name of which could not be learnt. At the time, Polymarket was banned from allowing US customers to use its platform following a 2022 enforcement action by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for operating…

I’ve been trying to become fluent in Spanish for the last decade. After spending most of my adult life surrounded by multilinguals, I often feel like I’m playing an impossible game of catch-up. Like everyone else, I’ve tried to become regimented with practicing on an in-phone app like Duolingo, which attempts to ‘game-ify’ language learning, but mostly ends up with a sad and sick-looking green bird icon guilting me to practice every time I open up my phone.Babbel aims to help people actually learn the language through practical conversation and grammar, using proven pedagogical methods and speech recognition technology. Each…

Cactus Compute has released Needle 2, an open 45M-parameter model for tool calling, device use, and structured extraction. The entire model ships as a single 14MB binary that runs a full session in about 28MB of RAM. Weights are trained and deployed at CQ2-bit using Cactus Quants, and the model is sealed inside the company’s own C++ engine, so there is no runtime to install and no download at inference time. Reported decode throughput is 500 tokens/sec on a Raspberry Pi 5, 400–1,500 tokens/sec on Meta Quest 3S and Apple Vision Pro, and 300–700 tokens/sec on sub-$200 phones. The design…

The Jewelbug hacker group has been carrying out espionage operations targeting governments and militaries while also engaging in cryptocurrency fraud. Although the threat actor has targeted government agencies and organizations in critical sectors, including defense, telecommunications, education, and aviation, its cryptocurrency-related activity suggests that they may also operate as a hack-for-hire group that seeks to profit from cybercrime. In a recent operation, Jewelbug (also known as Earth Alux and REF7707) compromised webmail accounts belonging to 15 government tenants as part of a campaign targeting a country in the Middle East. Researchers at Symantec found that the espionage campaign and the cryptocurrency fraud…

Stablecoin giant Tether has announced that KPMG U.S. completed the first independent audit of its reserves after years of struggling to get a Big Four accounting firm to do so. The San Salvador-based company, which issues the largest stablecoin in existence, USDT, said the audit was “the largest inaugural financial audit in history.” Tether for years was criticized for being coy about its reserves and not having an independent audit of what it holds behind its flagship token. Tether said over the years that it was eager to work with a Big Four firm for an audit.  “For years, some…

Wainwright has been searching for new English colonies since he started working for Butterfly Conservation in 2004.He even visited the Wallington estate that year but found none.But on his most recent visit, Wainwright said they found one “within a few minutes”.”I was hopeful – I’m always hopeful- but I definitely didn’t expect it because I’ve been to so many sites to look for this species over the years, so my heart and head were in two different places,” he said.”It was one of the highlights of my career.”Overwhelmingly it was just a feeling of relief that we weren’t just fighting…

Nigel Farage has seen off Count Binface to win the Clacton byelection in a contest boycotted by every other major political party.The Reform UK leader in July triggered the byelection in an attempt to shake off a deepening scandal over a £5m gift he received from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne.After a campaign in which a record-breaking 34 candidates vied for the coastal seat, Farage held on to Clacton, with 22,239 votes (62.8%) of the vote.His nearest competitor, Count Binface, a parody candidate dressed as an intergalactic rubbish bin, won 9,455 votes (26.7%). The turnout was 44%.Farage had been widely…

An astounding change is happening to life in England and Wales that most people don’t know about, and when they are told they don’t believe it. Most crime, including violence, has fallen by a remarkable 90% over the past 30 years. But only 6% of people believe it, while 61% think crime is going up. This great denial is the background cause of the prison overflow crisis, as politicians (of all parties) stir up voters to demand ever higher sentences as the imaginary cure to their imaginary soaring crime.All western European countries enjoy this same remarkable social improvement, with research…

From the first day Andy Burnham came into office, climate scientists, campaigners and some of the ordinary people surviving through this summer of extreme heat began to wonder when he would start to talk about the climate crisis.Up until this week, many held back from criticism. After all, he had only been in power for a couple weeks; it felt far too early to start to judge and call him out on it.But as we watched the footage of terrified horses galloping over cindering heathland in the New Forest while yet another wildfire took hold, it no longer felt too…

Acer has a wide selection of monitors available, too, whether that’s a massive 49-incher or a more modest 27-inch gaming workhorse. One of my favorite discounts I saw right now was the Acer Nitro XV2, a 27-inch 1440p display with a 300 Hz refresh rate. It’s 44% off at the time of writing, bringing the price down to just $250. Because these discounts are swapped out on a weekly basis, it’s worth checking back to see if the product you’re eyeing has a new discount.15% Off for Students at AcerAcer also offers a number of added discounts at checkout, including…