Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Kalshi is ending a trader-volume incentive program nearly a year early as scrutiny of activity in its crypto markets intensifies.The prediction-market operator told the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that its Volume Incentive Program will terminate no earlier than Oct. 13, according to a Sept. 28 filing. The program had previously been scheduled to run until Oct. 1, 2027, making the change a significant acceleration of its planned end date.The decision comes as Kalshi faces questions over trading patterns in its perpetual futures markets. The CFTC has reportedly examined activity after researchers identified repetitive trades around fixed dollar amounts, including…

Anyone who has ever heated a pot of water knows that temperature depends on more than how hot something gets. Time matters too. Yet marine heatwaves (MHWs) have traditionally been studied as distinct events with clearly defined beginnings and endings. New research led by William & Mary’s VIMS & Batten School suggests that approach may overlook a major part of the heat marine ecosystems actually experience. The researchers developed a framework for measuring cumulative exposure not only during MHWs, but also during the extended periods of unusually warm water that can occur before and after them. Marine heatwaves are part…

Decades of consolidation have pushed thousands of dairy farms out of business, as rising costs for feed, fertilizer, labor and other inputs have made it increasingly difficult for smaller operations to survive. As of 2022, industrial-scale farms with at least 2,500 cows account for about 45% of all U.S. milk sales.But consolidation is not limited to farms. The dairy cooperatives that represent farmers have also grown larger, increasingly operating more like corporations than the small, farmer-focused organizations they once were. Most dairy farmers sell their milk through cooperatives. But the number of dairy co-ops has fallen from more than 1,900…

Passenger Yaniv Hayun, who was later greeted and described as a hero by Netanyahu, said in a video released by the prime minister’s office that he and others were trying to open the cockpit door, but the stabbed pilot was very close to it. Before the pilot collapsed, the injured man managed to open the door, Hayun said. He said that inside, the attacker was “trying to destroy the instruments in order to disable the plane”.Hayun then described putting the attacker in a chokehold and pulling him outside of the cockpit before other passengers helped to pin him down.He added…

Senior Downing Street officials have been reaching out to thinktanks and pollsters as they look to test public support for the UK rejoining the EU.Aides to Andy Burnham have been talking to EU experts in a range of organisations about how the public would view a promise to rejoin, as momentum builds behind including such a pledge in the next Labour manifesto.Some in No 10 are keen to promise that Labour would at least negotiate over re-entry to the bloc, something Burnham has previously said he wants to see happen “in his lifetime”. Others are nervous, however, that making such…

The Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Bryant, has said an end to the Drumcree parade dispute is “tantalisingly close”, as the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition signalled it would accept a document setting out a resolution if the Orange Order did so.Breandán Mac Cionnaith, the leader of the nationalist group, said on Wednesday afternoon he had been through the document drawn up by Bryant and his team.“Obviously, I can’t divulge what is in it,” he said after a meeting with Bryant. “But if it’s accepted by the Orange Order, it will be accepted by us.”Earlier in the day, Bryant urged parties to…

The Governor of the Bank of England has said regulating artificial intelligence (AI) “is not the right place to start” but instead called first for “rigorous” testing to find vulnerabilities and create safeguards to contain risk.Writing his first-ever article for Substack, Andrew Bailey said the risks around AI were “real and increasingly significant”.He said AI development should not be halted or prohibited – “on the contrary, the benefits are immense” – but added there must be a system for intervention and to establish boundaries in which AI operates.The debate about the potential risks surrounding the rapid development of AI and…

WatchGuard on Tuesday announced fixes for 15 vulnerabilities in Fireware OS, including a critical-severity remote code execution (RCE) bug. Tracked as CVE-2026-86131 (CVSS score of 9.2), the flaw is described as a code injection issue in how the operating system handles BOVPN over TLS client configurations. Successful exploitation could allow a remote attacker who controls the remote VPN server to execute commands with root privileges on the connecting Firebox appliance. The security weakness was resolved in Fireware OS versions 2026.3.2, 2026.2.3, 12.12.3, and 12.5.21. The security updates also resolve 13 high-severity vulnerabilities that could lead to RCE, authorization bypass, denial-of-service…

The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Bitget reported a gradual return to normal operations following a security breach that resulted in the loss of $388 million of user funds.In a Wednesday X post, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said withdrawals for all tokens would resume on Friday, and the exchange has already restored access to users’ Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and USDt (USDT). As part of recovery efforts, Bitget’s ‘Protection Fund’ also reached $309 million.The fund, initially set up by Bitget in January 2022 with 5,500 BTC, was intended to reimburse users’ potential losses that were “not a result of any misconduct…

Sunday’s election in Brazil could hardly be a clearer-cut choice – nor a closer call. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, is neck and neck in the polls with Flávio Bolsonaro, the son and champion of the jailed far-right former president Jair. Mr Bolsonaro senior is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup to “annihilate” democracy after losing the last election.Brazil is Latin America’s largest democracy, but military dictatorship is in its recent past. Mr Bolsonaro wants to free his father and those who rioted in his support in 2023. The senator has campaigned as a…