Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

In month six of what was meant to be a six-week war, the Trump administration is steadily dialing down its war aims. What began as a quest for regime change in Iran became an effort to contain Tehran’s (“obliterated”) nuclear program, then destroy its missile capability, or at least defang the country’s regional proxies, or at the very least reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before U.S. President Donald Trump started the war. Now, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance has a new, even more minimalist war goal: lower energy prices for U.S. consumers, which have spiked due to…

False claims that legislation from 1939 makes it “illegal to cure cancer” are recirculating on Facebook.Several of the posts claim that “under the 1939 Cancer Act, it’s actually a criminal offense for medical practitioners to even advise patients on potential cancer cures”.This is untrue. The Cancer Act 1939 is a genuine British law, but it doesn’t make it a criminal offence for medical practitioners to advise their patients about potential cures or treatments.The act does prohibit “certain advertisements relating to cancer”. This includes any kind of advert offering to treat people for cancer, prescribing any kind of remedy for it,…

From a distance, the reed huts lined up on a beach in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, appear part of an idyllic summer vacation scene. Sounds of laughter occasionally rise above the background swish of the sea and the smoke rising from tents on an August weekend could well be coming from beach barbecues. But upon approach, a completely different scene unfolds. Tattered clothes flap in the sea breeze while their owners, barefoot and exhausted from long journeys, hang around the beach. No one here is on a seaside vacation. They are part of an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 migrants who remain after…

Der Raketenterror gegen Kiew und andere Teile der Ukraine bringt Wladimir Putin militärisch keine Geländegewinne, zielt aber auf die Zermürbung der Zivilbevölkerung. Rixa Fürsen bespricht mit dem Sicherheits- und Verteidigungsexperten Nico Lange die Lage nach der russischen Frühjahrsoffensive 2026. Lange kritisiert die zögerliche europäische Militärhilfe und das Fehlen strategischer Luftverteidigung scharf. Um Angriffe nachhaltig zu stoppen, müsse die Ukraine russische Rüstungsfabriken und Lieferketten mit Waffen wie dem Taurus gezielt ausschalten können. Auch bei Rufen nach Diplomatie warnt er vor Naivität: Erfolgreiche Verhandlungen seien nur durch harten wirtschaftlichen und militärischen Druck möglich. Wirksame Hebel wären etwa ein umfassender Stopp für Schengen-Visa…

These are the doggiest of dog days. Times when hours turn into days and almost nothing happens in between. Days of precious R&R, when only a few politicians venture out, and then only to fend off accusations they are doing next to nothing and prove they are still alive. Much like the rest of us. The silliest days of the silly season. Days that are made for men like Richard Tice.There are some politicians who have the gift of sounding as if they know what they are talking about. There are those who you suspect are bullshitting but still give…

The maker of ChatGPT is rolling out a range of new safety features today for under-18s who use the AI chatbot.Those with new teen accounts will be able to switch off the human voice response, in order to minimise the tech’s ability to appear like a person.OpenAI is also introducing regular reminders for young people to take a break from using the tool, reminding them ChatGPT is AI, and saying “it can wait”.The firm insisted this was not in response to a particular issue with children believing ChatGPT to be alive – but there are growing concerns about people becoming…

google/sam is not Segment Anything. SAM here means Sovereign Agent Mesh, an Apache-2.0 networking project for autonomous AI agents. The problem it targets is concrete. Agents now run across cloud servers, on-prem datacenters, laptops, Raspberry Pis and Android devices. Letting them share tools usually means exposing internal scripts, LLM endpoints or private APIs to the public internet. SAM’s alternative is a zero-config, zero-trust P2P overlay — closer to a private VPN, but scoped to agent-to-agent tool sharing over the Model Context Protocol. Nodes discover each other automatically, survive NAT, and authorize every call cryptographically. Note: The repo carries an explicit…

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a previously undocumented Python implant framework dubbed TWINLOOT. “TWINLOOT is a modular, PyArmor-hardened Python implant designed to operate its entire command-and-control infrastructure inside trusted Microsoft services,” Ontinue said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. “Tasking flows through SharePoint Online file dead-drops via the Microsoft Graph API. Interactive operator access routes through WebRTC DataChannels relayed by Microsoft Teams TURN servers.” Traffic to and from the Graph API is driven by means of a headless instance of the victim’s own Edge browser, thereby making it virtually indistinguishable from legitimate network activity. The implant…

Bitcoin (BTC) hit $65,000 after Tuesday’s Wall Street open as US stocks rebounded in spite of geopolitical pressure.Key points:Bitcoin reaches $65,000 for the first time since Aug. 10 as risk assets navigate fresh US-Iran signals.Analysis warns of surging US 30-year bond yields, which hit 29-year highs of 5.34%.BTC price analysis flags decision time on a head-and-shoulders bottoming structure.Bitcoin diverges from US stocks as Trump says Strait of Hormuz “open”Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD building on the week’s gains as the S&P 500 bounced from 7,696, its lowest level since Aug. 4.BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingViewThis came after US president Donald…

In Paraty, Brazil, a Caiçara family has transformed seaweed cultivation into gastronomy, educational tourism and a source of income. The venture is driven by strong female participation and a deep connection to their territory. Originally introduced in Brazil to supply the carrageenan industry, the macroalgae Kappaphycus alvarezii is also being used as a biofertilizer and increasingly as a food item..Its farming also supports ecological balance. It produces oxygen, absorbs carbon and helps improve water quality by filtering out excess nutrients.Experts say the expansion of seaweed farming in Brazil faces bottlenecks in credit, marketing, technology and regulation. New research networks and…