Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Several top US law firms have explored selling stakes in their businesses to private equity groups without triggering rules that bar ownership by non-lawyers.Paul Weiss, Quinn Emanuel and Proskauer are among firms to have had conversations with private equity groups or bankers to consider taking outside capital, according to people with knowledge of the matter.US ethics rules prevent law firms from being owned by non-lawyers, which has left them as one of the few areas of the economy untouched by buyout groups. But some investors are stepping up their attempts to break into the legal industry using a structure known…

Once, I had some questions about why SpaceX, Elon Musk’s healthiest company, acquired xAI, his sickliest one. Now I have some questions about why we’re calling the whole thing SpaceX.Look, what we have here, by revenue, is primarily a telecom company and a company that rents compute, according to SpaceX’s first quarterly earnings statement as a public company. The space sector of the business didn’t break a billion dollars this quarter and contributed only a touch over 10 percent of the company’s revenue. SpaceX remains its own biggest customer. There just aren’t enough other people who want its rockets. And,…

Two security flaws in Paperclip could let attackers execute commands on a network server or a developer’s computer. Paperclip is an open-source control plane for teams of artificial intelligence (AI) agents, and both paths rely on importing a malicious agent and starting it. A third flaw could expose sensitive data and control-plane details through application programming interface (API) routes that did not enforce the expected access checks. The more severe server-side path, tracked as CVE-2026-41679 (CVSS score: 10.0), requires no pre-existing account or victim interaction against network-accessible deployments using authenticated mode with the default registration configuration. The second path, tracked…

Canadian digital asset manager 3iQ Corp. will work to manage some of the Bitcoin reserves of Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness City project.  3iQ, Canada’s biggest and oldest digital asset fund manager, will not only manage the 10,000 Bitcoins pledged to build the new region, but also invest in local talent and establish a long-term physical presence in Gelephu as the region positions itself as Bhutan’s new offshore digital financial hub, according to a statement.  Bhutan last year said it would use 10,000 Bitcoins to fund a special administrative region called the Gelephu Mindfulness City. First announced in 2023, the GMC will…

Andre Lavoie joined SpaceX in 2009 as an engineer, designing the pressure tanks that help power its rocket. He was paid partly in stock – a common trade-off at start-ups as a hiring incentive.Some 17 years on, those 200,000 shares he was given are worth about $23m (£17m) – and the 63-year-old says he’s ready to start cashing them as soon as he can.”Every chance I get going forward, I’ll sell a little bit more,” he tells the BBC. “The shares have been going up so radically it keeps messing up my life plans – you really can’t know the…

Matthew Kincanon spent Saturday drinking coffee from his favorite mug and planning an afternoon with friends, until the Old Trails Fire exploded across the Spokane River, a few miles from his home.  Although the fire was small by most standards—a few hundred acres—it was poised to move from the hiking trails and open spaces at Spokane’s western edge into the town’s suburban sprawl. “ I knew I had to leave when I saw billowing smoke,” said Kincanon, a local journalist who has spent his whole life in Spokane. He grabbed a few essentials—clothes, his laptop, a few childhood mementos—and evacuated his…

On Aug. 1, in response to the storming of the Spanish exclave of Ceuta by more than 70,000 migrants crossing from Morocco, 22 European leaders signed a letter criticizing Spain. The unwillingness of the vast majority of the European Union’s member states to provide support to the country whose borders were breached by unarmed foreigners is an ill omen for what the continent’s reaction to an armed attack would actually look like. In their joint letter, the leaders laid blame for the border crisis at Spain’s decision to provide a path toward regularization for irregular migrants as well as a…

Home Middle East Live Issued on: 06/08/2026 – 05:48Modified: 06/08/2026 – 07:23 Smoke rises from a hill following Israeli air strikes, after the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning to the village of Mansouri, Lebanon, August 5, 2026 in this screengrab obtained from social media. © Reuters ⁠Two Israeli reserve soldiers were killed during combat in southern Lebanon, the military said Thursday, where Israel has been fighting Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Iran said an agreement with Oman over the Strait of Hormuz is in its final stages, while US President Donald Trump suggested a deal could be announced within days. Follow…

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed narrowly won the Democratic primary race for Senate in Michigan, according to The Associated Press, giving progressives a victory that signaled liberal voters’ anti-establishment mood and shifting sentiment against Israel.Dr. El-Sayed, 41, a former public health official, narrowly defeated Representative Haley Stevens, a four-term moderate, on Wednesday in a hostile race that was dominated by the politics of Israel and the role of big money in American elections.He fiercely criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza and promised to pull back American military support, while she vowed to continue sending U.S. military aid to Israel without conditions.While most Michigan…

There are obvious similarities between Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who won a close victory on Wednesday in the Democratic Senate primary in the battleground state of Michigan.Both are young, progressive politicians who are also Muslim. They focused their campaigns on lifting the working class. Super PACs marshaled tens of millions of dollars to oppose their candidacies. And both have overcome that resistance as they have helped fuel the Democratic Party’s ascendant left wing.But is it fair to call Dr. El-Sayed Michigan’s “mini-Mamdani,” as some people have begun to do? According to Mr. Mamdani,…