Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The AI race has grown so frenzied that, by 2035, U.S. data centers are projected to consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined. Over the next decade, data centers are expected to be the second-strongest driver of natural gas demand growth after LNG exports. The facilities could consume about 18 billion cubic feet per day, according to a new report from BloombergNEF, nearly double the amount the organization predicted just nine months ago.  The new forecast takes into account that not all announced data center projects will be completed. Data centers that produce power onsite have grabbed headlines…

Oracle on Tuesday announced the release of 673 new security patches as part of its September 2026 Critical Security Patch Update (CSPU). The security updates appear to resolve more than 800 vulnerabilities: there are 672 unique CVEs in the 17 risk matrices included in the September 2026 CSPU advisory, but Oracle also notes that more than 130 additional CVEs have been resolved with the patches for other flaws. More than 100 of the newly addressed security defects are critical-severity flaws, and over 240 are remotely exploitable without authentication. Oracle E-Business Suite received 159 security patches, the largest batch of the…

A crypto ETF can arrive with substantial assets before public trading reveals much about outside investor demand. That makes a rising launch benchmark important for ETF sponsors and easy to misread as a market verdict.Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said on Sept. 15 that average day-one ETF assets had roughly doubled over five years. He also said he was hearing from white-label issuers that $100 million had become the new bar, an observation he attributed to Athanasios Psarofagis.The cited post shows the benchmark is circulating among ETF professionals, but it doesn’t include the underlying comparison.A fund’s opening assets can include…

A remarkably preserved fossil from northeastern Spain is giving scientists a rare look at the skin, soft tissues, and possible coloration of an ancient crocodile relative that lived about 125 million years ago. The new study, published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, provides the first detailed description of soft tissues preserved in Montsecosuchus depereti, a Lower Cretaceous crocodylomorph discovered at the Pedrera de Meià site in the province of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). By examining the fossil under ultraviolet light, researchers uncovered new evidence about its skin, sensory structures, respiratory anatomy, and possible color pattern. The work was…

Prosecutors have requested a 45-year jail sentence for Thaci and three wartime commanders accused of war crimes.Published On 16 Sep 202616 Sep 2026The Kosovo war crimes tribunal will on Wednesday deliver its verdicts in the case of former President Hashim Thaci and several wartime commanders accused of murder and torture during the self-declared republic’s break from Serbia.Thaci, 58, is facing several counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, torture and persecution, along with three former commanders from the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a separatist militia that fought Serbian troops.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of…

Turkish police have arrested dozens of people as part of the government’s recent crackdown on LGBTQ+ activists and venues.The protesters were detained as they gathered on Tuesday outside Istanbul’s main courthouse. They were calling for the release of another group of LGBTQ+ activists, who were arrested over the weekend in a series of raids on gay bars and at the homes of activists. The Turkish government has detained members of the LGBTQ+ community and activists as part of a campaign dubbed “My Family is Safe”, which the government says has been designed to protect family values.At Tuesday’s protest, people chanted…

Residents of an Oxfordshire village have voted to become independent from the UK in a symbolic referendum held in protest at plans to house more than 1,000 migrants at a former military base.Villagers in Piddington, near Bicester, voted on Tuesday over Home Office proposals to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers at nearby MoD Bicester.The 350 residents were invited to cast their ballot in a small box outside the village hall, the community hub of Piddington.The referendum was organised by the local parish council and out of 312 votes cast, 285 voted to leave, there were 26 no votes,…

Alongside news of its new AI-focused subscription plans, Meta announced on Tuesday that it will now allow AI agents of your choosing to set up and manage WhatsApp Business messaging, the service that allows companies to connect with customers through WhatsApp conversations. As Meta explains, this process was previously a bit more cumbersome, as it required developers to move between different tools and services, including the Developer Console, Meta’s Business Manager, the API reference, and their editor. Now, they can instead ask their preferred AI agent to set up WhatsApp Business messaging by chatting with it and describing what needs…

Prior Labs has released TabPFN-3.5, the newest version of its tabular foundation model. It predicts on a table in a forward pass, with no per-dataset training or tuning. Prior Labs reports first place across 7 tabular benchmarks. A separate demonstration shows it beating the winning solution of a famous 2015 Kaggle competition. Deployable? Yes, with a license. Open weights run locally for research, evaluation and Kaggle, but production use needs Prior Labs’ API or a commercial license. The Otto Result The Otto Group Product Classification Challenge ran on Kaggle in 2015. It drew 3,505 teams competing for $10,000. Entrants sorted…

Texas utility CenterPoint Energy confirmed on Monday that a threat actor has obtained customers’ personal information. The disclosure comes just days after a hacker claimed to have stolen millions of records. CenterPoint Energy is a Houston-based public utility that delivers electricity and natural gas to roughly 7 million customers across Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, and Texas. The company told the SEC that it has launched an investigation after becoming aware of someone claiming to have obtained customer information. “While the investigation remains ongoing, the Company has determined that an unauthorized third party obtained personal information relating to a portion of the…