Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Vanillin, a flavoring chemical commonly used in e-cigarettes, may interfere with normal embryonic development in pregnant women who vape, according to research led by UC Riverside. The findings, published on August 12 in Human Reproduction, offer a possible explanation for previously observed links between vaping, difficulty becoming pregnant, and miscarriage. The study was conducted in the laboratory using human embryonic stem cells — which are similar to cells found in human embryos at about three weeks of development — rather than in pregnant women. The researchers emphasize that their results therefore cannot prove that the same effects occur in women…

Afghan national granted protection in the US is one of dozens of people deported to the war-torn Central African Republic.Published On 30 Aug 202630 Aug 2026The administration of United States President Donald Trump has deported dozens of people to the Central African Republic, including an Afghan whose family members collaborated with the US military, his lawyer and advocacy groups said.The Afghan man, who is in his early 20s, was granted protection against deportation to Afghanistan by a US judge due to fears of persecution by the Taliban, his lawyer, Alma David, said.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listAdvocacy organisations…

What do you want from a flip phone when it’s closed? A simple interface, perhaps notifications and a widget or two, for handling the basics? Or a fully fledged Android experience shrunk down for the Flip form factor? For years, Samsung has insisted on the former, even as some fans — and Razr rival Motorola — have pushed for the latter. With the Galaxy Z Flip 8, Samsung has given in.Although the Z Flip 8’s hardware is almost unchanged year-on-year, Samsung has fundamentally rethought how this phone is meant to be used when shut. The cover screen feels more like…

In brief ChatGPT Work’s browser on web and mobile can now complete tasks on sites that require you to sign in. You enter credentials once; the agent can keep working and the session may stay signed in for later tasks. OpenAI says the model can’t see your username or password, and they aren’t stored or used for training. OpenAI added an agentic browser capability in its August 25 release notes, letting ChatGPT Work take over a task on a login-gated site and keep working while you step away.You ask it to do something on a site that needs a login.…

Walking through the savanna-woodland landscape of Boé National Park, Guinea-Bissau, you might encounter a tree covered in gnarled scars, with an accumulation of rocks surrounding its base. The chimpanzees may have left the area, but you are lucky nonetheless, because you have stumbled upon evidence of a rare — and potentially cultural — chimpanzee behavior: accumulative stone throwing. Video recordings show wild western chimpanzees, usually adult males, throwing rocks at specific trees and repeatedly returning to these trees to perform the behavior. [See video link after end of article.] While throwing, the chimpanzees pant hoot — a loud, long-distance communicative…

Claim: In 2016, a woman used sheep to map the Faroe Islands after Google left the islands off of Google Street View. Rating: In mid-2026, some people on social media celebrated a story from the Faroe Islands, a self-governing archipelago north of Scotland.  Apparently, 2026 marked the 10-year anniversary of the time a Faroese woman allegedly strapped cameras on sheep to map the country when Google wouldn’t, according to a post on X (archived). The opening of the post read: Google would not send a Street View car to the Faroe Islands, so in 2016 a Faroese woman strapped a…

Somali authorities say 14 pirates were killed in the 10-day operation to free a Cameroon-flagged cargo vessel.Published On 30 Aug 202630 Aug 2026Turkish and Somali forces have freed a cargo ship held captive by pirates off the coast of Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland state, according to authorities.In a statement on X on Saturday, the Somali Ministry of Defence said that “14 pirates” died in the operation to free the Cameroon-flagged MV Latuf.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listFour of their boats were also destroyed, it said.The Defence Ministry said that “sustained pressure from the forces ultimately compelled the remaining pirates…

Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed suit against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking damages for “tens of thousands” copyrighted works. The companies are asking for up to $150,000 per work, plus up to $25,000 for each instance when identifiable copyright data was stripped. In total, the damages could amount to several billion dollars if a court finds in Sony and Warner’s favor and awards the maximum amount.In addition to suing Anthropic as an entity, the complaint names Co-Founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as individual defendants. The suit alleges that Mann…

MirroS released Code-as-World: a paradigm that represents physical worlds through executable world representations. The argument is narrow and testable: pixels are evidence of a physical scene, not its ontology. A video model can predict plausible frames without ever representing mass, contact, or gravity. So instead of pixels, latents, or captions, Code-as-World represents a scene as executable code — a scene.json that MuJoCo can run, that an agent can verify against the source video, and that anyone can edit and re-simulate. An agentic loop recovers those programs from real footage in up to five rounds. The…

Deribit will remove its public Proof of Reserves page on Sept. 1, ending a daily check customers could use to verify balance inclusion and compare aggregate liabilities with published wallet holdings. Regulator-required reserve, reconciliation and audit controls will remain, but they do not provide the same daily public visibility.The exchange said the change reflects a wallet infrastructure overhaul during its integration with Coinbase. Deribit said roughly 90% of client assets have moved into Coinbase custody arrangements since Coinbase acquired the derivatives platform in August 2025. Its disclosures name Coinbase at the brand level but do not identify the specific Coinbase…