Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

One of the lessons of the war in Ukraine is that military technology evolves very rapidly, with the world’s first-ever drone war making it harder for conventional armies to make gains on the battlefield. But they may also herald a new dystopian future, where ordinary civilians become targets of flying objects manned by faraway operators.   Entrepreneurs in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have taken note. The Baltic region is already home to several companies that are well known internationally, such as Bolt, Skype and Vinted. Since Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, the startup scene has focused on developing…

Hungary’s parliament has elected András Baka, 73, a respected judge and former head of the Supreme Court, as head of state. The Hungarian president is a largely figurehead role, but Baka’s rule promises to be tempestuous. His task will be to monitor Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s efforts to dismantle the interlocking economic and political powerhouse established by former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He will also oversee the writing of a new constitution, to replace Orbán’s constitution of 2011.”We cannot build the new Hungary on revenge,” András Baka told Parliament, after he was elected by 140 votes to 6. “The majority…

How much gambling do you want in your high street? Are you happy with all the betting shops, the problems they cause, the effect on your environment?It’s worth asking because for years, local councils have been expected to say yes to new gambling venues, even when communities made clear they did not want them. Now, under new rules announced on Monday, that’s about to change. And about time.Speaking to local residents I hear a clear message time and again: people are fed up with seeing so much gambling where they live, while having little say over whether new venues open.I…

It was last year that Martin Lewis, the money-saving guru, advised the government to find “100 small things that piss people off” and set about sorting them out.That approach has been adopted almost immediately by Andy Burnham since entering office, as he began his programme of “everyday fixes” to tackle problems that can be dealt with through minor policy tweaks.Labour strategists say the philosophy behind this is to show that Burnham notices the frustrations of people’s lives, and that he will be decisive about improving these issues.This started with scrapping VAT on electricity bills and capping bus fares. His latest…

AI generated / ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET’s key takeawaysAI can make decent flyers, but most still aren’t great. Clear prompts and limits can produce much better AI flyers. A designer is best, but these tips work when that’s not an option.AI flyers are interesting. I personally don’t love them, and I can instantly spot one. Too much text. Clashing fonts. Imagery that’s meant to look realistic but is somehow off. When one pops up on Facebook, where I see them most often, I usually send it to my husband so we can mourn another…

Video production is shifting as social clips, ad creative and film pre-visualization move from cloud to local GPUs. LTX today released LTX-2.5, an open weights world model for video generation, real-time applications, and physical AI, built for exactly that shift. LTX optimized the model for local inference on NVIDIA RTX GPUs and NVIDIA DGX Spark, cutting VRAM requirements so a frontier world model runs on hardware creators already own. The release anchors NVIDIA’s month-long local AI series, launched the same day as its open Nemotron 3.5 Lightning agent model. The signal from both: open models, accelerated locally, are becoming default…

Delta Air Lines is investigating an unauthorized Wi-Fi network that appeared aboard a flight from Las Vegas to Atlanta carrying passengers who had attended the DEF CON hacker convention. ​The company told BleepingComputer that the incident occurred yesterday on Flight 591 and did not affect the safety of the passengers or aircraft operating systems. “We will partner with federal law enforcement and aviation regulators to ensure the incident is thoroughly investigated,” a company spokesperson said. “One initial finding is an unauthorized WiFi network, which was not provided, operated, or supplied by Delta, was present onboard the aircraft for a short…

Brazil’s biggest bank is taking another step into tokenized assets, adding to a growing list of the country’s financial heavyweights experimenting with putting traditional investments on blockchain rails.Itaú Unibanco has started working with digital-asset infrastructure provider OpenAssets on a tokenization pilot run by Brazilian Financial and Capital Markets Association ANBIMA, the companies said Tuesday.The project will test how fixed-income securities and investment funds can be issued, traded and settled using distributed-ledger technology, the firms said in a press release. The work will also examine the rules and technical standards needed for banks and asset managers to use such systems.Itaú’s involvement…

We are flush with toilet paper options. I’m looking to minimize the environmental impact of every wipe, and it’s overwhelming. I’ve been barraged with ads touting bamboo toilet paper’s environmental superiority to wood pulp counterparts. But my interest gave way to skepticism when I learned that all the bamboo used for toilet paper is grown in Asia. No bamboo toilet paper is “Made in the U.S.A.” from shoot to sheet. I wondered whether growing bamboo in the United States would be environmentally better. After all, citrus growers have been venturing into bamboo farming after invasive pests and diseases decimated crops. Sign…

In Kenya, a network of Indigenous women’s groups is restoring degraded areas of the Mau Forest while also providing the women with incomes and decision-making power.The Paran Women Group includes Maasai, Ogiek and other Indigenous community members learning to manage enterprises such as tree nurseries, kitchen gardens, savings groups, beekeeping and landscape restoration.Research shows that restoration programs designed to transform unequal gender roles give women more prominence in the household and improve conservation outcomes.Paran members say they previously relied on their husbands for everything, but they now have income of their own as well as a larger say in…