Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Two people have been killed in a “domestic violence incident” at a school in the town of Gosen-Neu Zittau near the German capital Berlin, local police have said.Brandenburg state police said they arrested a 19-year-old German man, who is “considered a prime suspect”. They said it was not a “mass shooting”, without specifying what weapon was used.It is not yet known if the suspect was a student at the private Docemus school.One of the dead was an 18-year-old secondary school female student and the other victim was a 30-year-old man who died when he tried to intervene, local media reported.The…

To hear federal appeals courts tell it, sealed filings should be exceptionally rare — and for good reason.“Legal arguments, and the documents underlying them, belong in the public domain,” Judge Don Willett wrote for the Fifth Circuit in 2021. “American courts are not private tribunals summoned to resolve disputes confidentially at taxpayer expense.”Countless appeals courts have agreed, insisting that judicial records are presumptively open and that sealing them requires a very good reason. Trial judges must carefully review materials that parties want to file under seal, those rulings have said, and give a detailed explanation if they decide to withhold…

Fuelled by the consequences of Donald Trump’s disastrous war on Iran, household energy debt in Britain is continuing to soar, rising to a record £6bn by the end of June. That figure is set to hit £7bn by the end of the year, as the government’s cap on gas and electricity prices goes up to a three-year high in October. The human cost among the less well off will be more people regularly choosing whether to skip meals, ignore other bills or stay cold this winter.Such is life at the sharp end of the cost of living crisis, which Andy…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Humanoid robots can do astonishing things. As demonstrated at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing this week, they can run, box, play football, take on obstacle courses and perform synchronised cheerleading routines. One robot even beat Usain Bolt’s record for the 100-metre sprint (although it couldn’t slow down in time to avoid smashing into a padded wall afterwards).Such feats helped Unitree Robotics, a leading Chinese humanoid robot developer, pull off a heavily oversubscribed listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange this month.…

HP/ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.Whether you’re looking for a solid laptop for streaming and office or school work, or a first laptop for older kids and teens, the HP OmniBook 3 — HP’s MacBook Neo competitor — is a great choice. With a 16-inch 2K touchscreen display, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD, you’ll have plenty of power and performance for everyday use. And right now at Best Buy, you can save almost 50%, bringing the price down to just $680 — plus a $99 43-inch Toshiba TV for a dorm-ready tech bundle.Also: The best Labor Day 2026…

OpenAI says an improvised, unauthorized message board built by its own AI agents was central to how those agents came to breach parts of Hugging Face’s production systems. This communication channel first appeared inside Artifactory, a package-management service OpenAI hosted internally so agents working on training and evaluation tasks could install software.  Agents were meant to work in isolation from one another, but on May 12 one left a note in the service asking whether any other agent had access to a file it needed. Other agents came across the note, began leaving their own, and the requests accumulated into…

Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has said that Bitcoin will hit $1 million dollars per coin sooner than we think — and eventually surpass gold’s market value.  Speaking at this year’s Bitcoin Asia on Thursday, the crypto entrepreneur also said that Bitcoin is “dangerous” for countries that don’t use it.  Bitcoin Asia kicked off on Thursday in Hong Kong, bringing the biggest names in the space to Hong Kong to talk about everything from treasury companies to building apps from scratch.  JUST IN: Former Binance CEO CZ says “I think for Bitcoin to hit $1,000,000 would be a good thing.…

In August 2026, back-to-back winter storms left parts of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile covered in a rare blanket of snow. The typically arid region has seen snowfall before, notably in 2025 and before that in 2011. But one of the 2026 events was unusually widespread, stretching from the Andes to near the Pacific coast. The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on the NASA-USGS Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 satellites captured these images (above) on August 6 and August 14, before and after a period of severe weather, respectively. They show a detailed view of the Chajnantor plateau within the Altiplano-Puna volcanic complex, home…

A group of environmental organizations announced their intent to sue the United States National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) for failing to consider protections for Eastern Pacific gray whales under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) are experiencing a potentially catastrophic population decline, a sharp reversal from what had been considered a conservation success.  In 2019, there were roughly 20,500 gray whales; by 2023, the population had declined to just 14,526 individuals, “nearly 30% of the entire population” gone in four years, according to nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Like many whale species, gray…

Norway-based Omega Subsea, which provides remotely operated vehicle (ROV), survey, and subsea services to the offshore industry, has struck a deal with Bergen’s Hilleren Navy Supply Park, a subsea-focused maritime and defence cluster near Haakonsvern, to establish a new operational base at the site, broadening its operations in Western Norway. Illustration; Source: Hilleren_HNSP As Omega Subsea has entered into a long-term agreement to establish operations at Hilleren Navy Supply Park in Mathopen, adjacent to Haakonsvern, the company will become a strategic subsea partner and a key tenant at the site, where it will develop a new operational base comprising workshop,…