Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

“Hook, hold, harvest and hide” was how Megan O’Neill, a lawyer for the US state of California, characterised Meta’s business model in the trial that ended last week with an $18bn settlement, to be shared between the states and territories that brought the case. It was a clever way to describe the company’s approach to users’ attention and data. But the sharpness of her words was not matched by the deal. While the strengthening of child safety features is welcome, the tech giant once again batted off efforts to alter its products.Meta’s decision to settle enabled it to avoid any admission…

Claim: As of August 2026, Canadian officials were refusing passage through the Welland Canal to ships that used the name “Lake America” to refer to Lake Ontario in their documentation. Rating: In late August 2026, a rumor spread online that claimed Canadian officials were refusing to grant passage through the Welland Canal — which connects lakes Erie and Ontario — to ships that had “Lake America” listed in their documentation, as opposed to “Lake Ontario.”  The rumor circulated after U.S. President Donald Trump renamed Lake Ontario to “Lake America” in the United States.  Posts on X, Threads, Facebook (screenshott) and…

Rights groups warn that armed groups are increasingly recruiting children to their ranks through social media.Published On 31 Aug 202631 Aug 2026Three minors were among those killed in a Colombian military air strike on cocaine-trafficking rebels last week, authorities said, as President Abelardo de la Espriella intensifies operations against armed groups.The August 27 bombing in the southern Guaviare department was the deadliest military operation since de la Espriella took office earlier this month. The National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences said that 10 people in total were killed in the operation. The Ministry of National Defence reported that…

President Trump on Monday lashed out at communities that are protesting data centers, suggesting that residents who do not go along with the artificial intelligence revolution must prefer to be “backwards and poor.”“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social site. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”Polling shows most Americans oppose the proliferation of data centers in their communities, a signal of…

A well-known, pro-AI super political action committee is behind a new group that plans to blast voters in key battleground states with ads advocating for data centers, several outlets are reporting. That new group, called Build American AI, wants to convince citizens of the virtues of having data centers in their backyards. It says it is affiliated with Leading the Future (LTF), a super PAC heavily funded by VCs Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, along with OpenAI President Greg Brockman. Build American AI told Bloomberg it will focus its ads on Kansas, Ohio, and Wisconsin, where concerns about data centers…

Google Research has released TimesFM-3, a 330 million parameter time series foundation model that forecasts multiple related series in a single forward pass. Every TimesFM checkpoint through 2.5 was univariate: one series, its own history, nothing else. TimesFM-3 is pretrained natively for multivariate forecasting on more than 1 trillion time points, and accepts multiple targets, past covariates, and past-future covariates with no task-specific fine-tuning. It takes the top average rank among pretrained foundation models on GIFT-Eval, fev-bench, and the TIME leaderboard, on both point and probabilistic metrics. Is it deployable? Partial, the TimesFM repository code is Apache-2.0, but the TimesFM…

The Cronos blockchain network has resumed trading activity after a price-manipulation attack on the Tectonic cryptocurrency lending platform allowed an attacker to borrow $74 million. According to current information, the threat actor artificially inflated the price of Tectonic’s TONIC token by 100 times, then used it as collateral to borrow real assets. The price manipulation happened in 20 minutes. Despite the massive amount the exploit generated, the attacker only managed to steal roughly $6 million worth of Ethereum, the rest of the funds being “stuck” on Cronos, says blockchain security and data analytics company PeckShield. Cronos is an Ethereum-like blockchain…

Bitcoin (BTC) gyrated around $78,000 at Monday’s Wall Street open as US bond yields neared 20-year highs again.Key points:Bitcoin reacts as the US Treasury Secretary comments on bond markets in a mainstream media interview.Analysis warns that bonds are “ignoring” policy changes as new 20-year highs loom for the 30-year yield.BTC price analysis sees an emerging hidden bearish RSI divergence contributing to month-end weakness.Bitcoin spikes as Bessent discusses bond yieldsData from TradingView showed BTC/USD trading in a narrow range, up around 1% on the day. BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingViewAfter falling into the start of the US trading session, the pair saw…

Every month, NASA Earth Observatory features a puzzling satellite image. The September 2026 puzzler appears above.  Your ChallengeIdentify the location shown in this satellite image. Share what clues you see, where you think it is, and what makes this place interesting or unique to you. How to AnswerSubmit your response using this form and select “Puzzler Answer” as the topic. Please include your preferred name or alias. You can keep it simple and just guess the location. Want to impress us? Tell us which satellite and instrument captured the image, which spectral bands were used, or point out a subtle detail about the geology or…

Italian energy giant Eni is broadening its offshore footprint in Uruguay by taking operatorship of an exploration block with YPF’s subsidiary, MIWEN, as its partner. Uruguay’s offshore acreage; Source: Santiago Ferro Castelli, Energy Transition Manager at ANCAP, via LinkedIn Eni and YPF’s MIWEN have signed with the Uruguayan National Oil Company (ANCAP) an official agreement for entry into the OFF-5 exploration block offshore Uruguay, following approval by Uruguayan authorities. The Italian firm is now the operator of the block with a 50% interest, alongside its partner, MIWEN, which holds the remaining 50%. The OFF-5 block is currently in its first…