Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

In brief Hugging Face is working with a bank to gauge buyer interest in a sale that could value the AI developer platform at $13 billion or more. No deal has been reached and no buyer has been named. A $13 billion price tag would nearly triple Hugging Face’s $4.5 billion 2023 valuation. Hugging Face is exploring a sale that could value the company at $13 billion or more, Business Insider reported Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. Per the reports, the company has retained a bank to gauge interest from potential buyers, but no deal has been reached,…

This map of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, shows the locations of 10 air sensors that NASA’s Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) mission is using to provide one of the most detailed looks ever at the city’s air pollution. Over the course of three years, these sensors measured particulate matter that is 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, also known as PM2.5. Black carbon, or soot, is an important component of particulate pollution in Addis Ababa, which studies have linked to impacts on low birth weight, brain development, respiratory conditions, and premature mortality. The color bar at right indicates air quality variations from…

Three days was all it took for the Trump administration’s Colorado River plan to see a legal challenge from, somewhat ironically, Nevada.  Of the seven states that rely on the river, Nevada gets the smallest amount by law. Nevada water managers said the long-term impacts from the proposed cuts could be devastating—with Las Vegas bearing some measure of the pain.  Under the federal plan, southern Nevada could—in future years—lose over 70 percent of its already-sparse Colorado River allocation while Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming won’t face any mandatory cuts, Nevada officials said Monday.  The reductions “could have catastrophic impacts…

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a U.S. sanctions campaign against Iran and its allies, Kazakhstan’s landslide election results, and the cancellation of another U.S.-South Korea military exercise. No One Is Safe U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday unveiled Operation Economic Outcast: a campaign to cut off Iran from the global economy by threatening so-called secondary sanctions against any country or entity that continues to do business with Tehran. That reportedly includes sanctions on an unnamed major financial institution, to be announced by the end of this week. “Our objective is to sever every economic pipeline…

The claim that white servers at Texas Roadhouse, Logan’s Roadhouse and potentially other restaurants conspired in a large Facebook group to lick their fingers and touch or spit in the food of Black customers is unfounded. The rumor, which circulated online in August 2026, stemmed from a screenshot of an alleged Facebook post that appeared in one of several groups named White and proud. In that now-unavailable post (possibly deleted), someone using the name Nancy Smith derogatorily addressed “blacks” and told of a different, secret Facebook group with more than 400,000 members made up of white servers discussing contaminating Black…

The 50 percent tariffs that President Trump imposed on Canada this weekend could be devastating for many Canadian companies and their employees. It could price them out of the United States and lead to the loss in tens of thousands of jobs, economists say.“Fifty percent is a huge number for the individual products that are affected,” said Joseph Steinberg, a professor of macroeconomics at the University of Toronto.“For those products, we should see a very large reduction in exports,” he added. “In some cases, exports will stop altogether, and the firms that produce those products will be severely impacted. Some…

The Trump administration on Monday proposed charging a new steep fee for visas granted to skilled foreign workers, in the latest attempt to fundamentally overhaul the H-1B visa program.Under the proposal, the Department of Homeland Security would attach a $103,265 fee to the visa, mirroring a move by the administration last year to impose a $100,000 fee to new H-1B visas. But that effort ran into legal stumbles. A federal judge threw out the fee in June, a decision that the federal government said it would appeal.Critics of the proposed regulation view it as another attempt by the administration to…

A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterm elections.In an emergency opinion, the justices said President Trump could proceed with implementing an executive order he had signed, which directed the U.S. Postal Service to help decide which voters should receive mail-in ballots. Under the executive order, the Department of Homeland Security will also create lists of U.S. citizens that the administration believes could be used to monitor voter rolls for noncitizens.The decision means the administration can move ahead with planning for restricting the use of mail…

Oura, the smart ring maker, with offices in San Francisco and Finland, is reportedly planning to raise up to $3 billion as soon as next month in a U.S. IPO that values the more than 900-person company at [spits out coffee] north of $16 billion, according to Bloomberg. The outlet adds that investors are expected to sell a major chunk of stock in the offering. A $16 billion valuation would mark an enormous jump from the $10.9 billion valuation Oura was assigned last September, when it closed an $875 million Series E round backed by Fidelity, ICONIQ, Whale Rock, and…

Ravie LakshmananAug 24, 2026Malware / SEO Poisoning Cybersecurity researchers have found that several websites are still actively distributing a malware family known as Weedhack to gamers by masquerading as Minecraft clients. McAfee Labs said it detected and blocked more than 6,300 attempts to access malicious sites, adding that it found lookalike gaming websites designed to mimic legitimate projects, including branding, feature lists, FAQs, installation guides, developer credits, and links to genuine GitHub repositories. Notably, one of the sites has been built using Lovable, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered website builder, highlighting how readily available tools can further lower the barrier and…