Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

When the Emmy Awards were handed out Monday night, “Widow’s Bay” took home a record 14 trophies, accounting for half of Apple TV’s 28 wins. That was the most for any company, beating out Warner Bros. Discovery’s 21 awards. But we were curious to see how all the winning corporations stack up when it comes to trying to influence policy in Washington, D.C., so we totaled up their lobbying spending for the first half of this year. We fully admit there isn’t any correlation between K Street spending and Emmy wins, but it’s still fun to examine the numbers. Apple…

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Canada’s future with the European Union, a war crimes conviction against former Kosovar President Hashim Thaci, and alleged Houthi targeting of the holy city of Mecca. The EU Looks Across the Pond Could the European Union expand beyond Europe? Some experts argue that being part of the continent is an integral component of membership. But that is the proposal European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen floated on Wednesday, when she suggested making Canada the bloc’s first associate member. Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Canada’s future with…

Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday, imploring North Carolina voters to “pretend I’m on the ticket” and “crush the communists” in the November elections at a rally in support of the Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley.Despite Trump’s deep unpopularity, Republicans hope to once again turn the president’s loyal following into a political force as the party confronts an unforgiving midterm landscape.“I’m not bragging, but when I’m on the ticket Republicans have always done really well,” Trump told supporters. “I just want you to go out and pretend I’m on the ticket, because essentially I am.”The rally, Trump’s…

For Natalie Fratto, putting on her dark green jumper from US microchip giant Nvidia is like wearing the kit from a favourite sports team.On the front of the $178 (£132) woollen garment is a cartoonish image of the tech company’s boss Jensen Huang.Fratto doesn’t work for Nvidia. Instead, she’s a fan of the company.”I have a New Zealand All Blacks rugby jersey, and I think of my Jensen sweater in kind of the same way,” says New York-based Fratto, who runs a tech start-up.She explains that it’s a representation of a team and ethos “that I am impressed by and…

Discovering that an attacker has gained access to Google Workspace is only the beginning of an incident. What security teams do next can determine how much damage the attacker is able to cause. On September 23, 2026, BleepingComputer will host a live webinar titled “Breach autopsy: How fast-growing companies are breached through Google Workspace” with Material Security. The webinar will feature Rajan Kapoor, Vice President of Security at Material Security, and Rick Fitzgerald, President of Fireside Consulting LLC, examining real, publicly documented Google Workspace breaches and the decisions organizations made during the critical first hours of an incident. In two…

Circle has scheduled the public launch of Arc for Sept. 16, giving USDC a network where the same dollar balance can fund both payments and transaction fees. That could remove a common obstacle to using stablecoins, giving Circle a possible way to attract additional USDC demand as it competes with Tether.The public-mainnet rollout follows a private network that Circle said had more than 100 ecosystem and institutional builders in August.Arc’s public testnet opened on Oct. 28, 2025. Today’s scheduled milestone is the move to a public production network, where its design can face a broader commercial test.One balance for payments…

Scientists have puzzled for years over why Venus, despite being similar to Earth in size, mass, and overall structure, has no moon. New research from UC Riverside suggests a striking possibility: Venus may once have had a moon, only to eventually pull it back into the planet. Previous explanations generally focused on two possibilities. One suggested that Venus once had a moon that was later destroyed by a massive impact. Another proposed that Venus simply never experienced the kind of collision that could have created a moon in the first place. A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal offers…

The unfinished expansion of Gross Reservoir near Denver can proceed after three judges ruled Tuesday in favor of the federal government and a water utility’s challenge to a lower court opinion halting construction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Denver Water defended the dam expansion before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals against a challenge from the environmental group Save The Colorado. The organization sued the agency in part on the grounds that the Corps did not fully account for the dam’s impacts on the Colorado River system that is already stressed by climate change.  “It’s nonsensical to be…

Re the Thirlwall report on the Lucy Letby case (Thirlwall report: what did it say about Lucy Letby case and what does it recommend?, 15 September), babies in neonatal intensive care units are saved by having consultant neonatologists (ie paediatricians who have undergone subspecialist training in neonatal medicine) doing rounds twice daily (in addition to being immediately available), trained neonatal nurses and appropriately resourced units – not by installing cameras on cots and insulin fridges.Dr Chris FitzpatrickRetired consultant obstetrician; former CEO of Coombe hospital, Dublin, Ireland Following the introduction of a competitive element in the nominative determinism debate (Letters, 15 September),…

The claim that six images circulating online showed Iranian damage to U.S. military bases in the Middle East is still under investigation. According to CBS News, the outlet that first shared the images, they came from active service members who shared them on condition of anonymity “because of rigid media restrictions within the military.” Snopes does not rely on anonymous sources. We could not independently verify the authenticity of the photographs because we could not speak to the people who took them and verify their metadata (information about where and when a photo is taken). As such, we leave claims…