Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

A federal judge has struck down New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, ruling that it “conflicts with” federal authority.   The legislation would have required fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of adapting to climate change, but it operates in an area of the law “in which the federal interest is so dominant that it cannot be enforced,” according to the judge’s ruling. Issued Monday, the ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in February 2025 by attorneys general from 22 Republican-led states. Fossil fuel companies and trade groups such as the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of…

I work as a renal physician, including on a transplant ward, so I will have had many of the same experiences as Zubir Ahmed, but I do not share his opinion about assisted dying (As a doctor, I say this: before we even consider assisted dying, fix how we care for the most vulnerable, 26 August).It is universally agreed that patients with capacity should be able to make decisions about their treatment. Their decision is the one that matters if they have the ability to use and understand the relevant information and can communicate any decision they make. The doctor needs to…

Claim: U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said people in hospice care weren’t dying fast enough and were costing taxpayers too much money. Rating: Context Kennedy did not explicitly that hospice patients cost taxpayers too much money because they received treatment for too long. Instead, he was specifically referring to instances of suspected hospice fraud in California. In late August 2026, a claim (archived) circulated online that U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said people in hospice care weren’t dying fast enough and were costing taxpayers too much money.  For example,…

‘Dangerous power grab’: top Democrats decry USPS system that could thwart mail-in votingRepresentative Robert Garcia, ranking member of the committee on oversight and government reform, is speaking out following disclosure of a whistleblower report alleging the US Postal Service is poised to launch a computer system that could derail mail-in voting. Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal disclosed this whistleblower statement, which warned of potential mail-in voting chaos, on Tuesday.“The Oversight Committee has received whistleblower reports that President Trump’s attack on vote-by-mail for the 2026 election is more serious than previously understood,” Garcia said in a statement. “This new secret tracking system…

Violence and hooliganism are not uncommon at European-level football matches, nor are occasional orders that games should take place in neutral venues, behind closed doors or with certain fans banned from attending for safety reasons. The war in Gaza, though, has politicized such decisions as they relate to Israeli clubs, at the same time as exacerbating tensions around the visits of Israeli fans to some parts of Europe. In Amsterdam in November 2024, supporters of Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv were involved in violence across the city before and after a match with Ajax, with dozens of arrests and several…

No good deed goes unpunished. Or any deed for that matter. It was only a few weeks ago that Keir Starmer was insisting he would remain an MP until the next general election. So we should all probably have guessed that he would be off at the earliest opportunity. U-turns were a distinguishing feature of his two years in office.And what former prime minister could resist upstaging the new one hours before his first appearance at the government dispatch box for 16 years? Especially when the new one had been plotting his downfall for at least a year. It’s what…

The chancellor, John Healey, must be prepared to raise taxes for middle earners if he wants to fund significantly higher defence spending, the Resolution Foundation thinktank has said.Healey resigned from Keir Starmer’s government in June, protesting against what he argued was the then prime minister’s failure to adequately fund defence.But in his new post in No 11 Downing Street, Healey has made clear that he will wait until next year’s spending review before presenting a plan to meet Labour’s pledge of devoting 3.5% of GDP to defence by 2035.In a new report, entitled Thin End of the Wedge, economists at…

JioHotstar, the streaming platform controlled by Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, is taking its brand outside India for the first time and will replace Hotstar in the UK, Canada, and Singapore as it begins a wider global push. The streaming service will launch with more than 160,000 hours of entertainment content but without the live sports that have helped drive its massive audience in India, including the Indian Premier League (IPL), Women’s Premier League (WPL), and Indian national cricket matches. JioStar said it is not offering sports at launch because of existing content deals, but did not rule out adding them…

Ravie LakshmananSep 01, 2026Cybercrime / Malware Brazilian financial services, retail, and e-commerce organizations have become the target of a financially motivated threat actor dubbed Breeze Comet (formerly UNC5669) since 2024. Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and Mandiant teams described the threat actor as “specializing in manipulating payment systems and banking software in Brazil to conduct fraudulent transfers.” The adversary is said to have successfully carried out at least one heist of assets worth tens of thousands of U.S. dollars. The activity overlaps with threat activity clusters tracked by CrowdStrike and Trend Micro under the monikers Plump Spider and SHADOW-AETHER-064. According…

Bitcoin is known for its summer slumps. But August was different.  In fact, the leading cryptocurrency had its third best August ever.  As highlighted on Tuesday by Bitwise’s European Head of Research, André Dragosch, bitcoin delivered returns of 25% last month.  “No ‘summer lull’ so far,” Dragosch wrote on X, highlighting that the only better Augusts the coin has had were in 2017 when it gave investors returns of nearly 66%, and 2013, with close to 31%.  OFFICIAL: August 2026 is in the books and it’s been the 3rd best August in bitcoin’s history. 🔥August 2017: +65.6%August 2013: +30.7%August 2026:…