Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

On July 16, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke at a summit bringing together representatives from more than 60 countries to discuss political terrorism. Like the Islamic State and al Qaeda, Rubio said, “Antifa militants and their comrades” now posed a “transnational threat,” and global powers should use the same tools used to fight jihadist groups to stop them. A key part of this strategy, he said, would be keeping these groups from using the global financial system. This is not the first time that the Trump administration has used financial counterterrorism mechanisms for political purposes. More than a…

People aged 70 and over won’t have to retake their driving tests under new government rules, as has been claimed on social media.Posts on Facebook have been making the assertion that new Prime Minister Andy Burnham is proposing to make over-70s pass another driving test to continue driving on UK roads.One post, which has been liked over 1,800 times, says: “What have I and my fellow pensioners done to upset our new Prime Minister… Today he is talking of all drivers over 70 taking a new driving test.”But this is not a genuine policy being brought forward by Mr Burnham.…

Press corps traveling with Trump provide additional flight details following reports that president hid in catering truck to switch planesWe’re also chasing new reports that Donald Trump left Turkey last month on a secret military flight to Britain amid an Iranian assassination threat – despite the White House saying he was aboard the old Air Force One – and that he briefly hid in an airport catering truck to move from one aircraft to another.ABC News reporter Michelle Stoddart, who traveled with the president and senior officials from Ankara in July, noted today that before the press corps departed the…

France has banned unsolicited telemarketing phone calls, in what a consumer group is hailing as a “small revolution” for the sales industry.From Tuesday, unsolicited calls are prohibited for businesses in all sectors – but there are some exceptions.Calls will only be permitted if they relate to a contract a person has already entered into or the company has obtained prior consent to be contacted for marketing. “It cannot be stressed enough that peace and quiet is a right, and it is time to stop exposing consumers to unwanted solicitations,” consumer advocacy group Que Choisir Ensemble, said in a statement.”This observation…

Senator Tommy Tuberville called Dr. Abdul El-Sayed a “terrorist.”Representative Nancy Mace described “every single Muslim holding public office in America” as “a threat to both national security and our republic.”And on Monday, President Trump said that there were “jihadists being elected all over the place.”In the days since Dr. El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, Republican leaders have embraced Islamophobic attacks and falsehoods like those three comments to portray him as an anti-American extremist. The onslaught is being fueled in part by Republican Party officials and has quickly become a central aspect of the strategy to beat Dr. El-Sayed…

In his first few weeks in Downing Street, Andy Burnham could hardly have been clearer that his aim as prime minister is to make people feel better.His supporters inside the Labour Party characterise him as a leader with the political nous to prioritise policies that will make a difference, and the communication ability to sell those messages to the masses.His critics, including Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, have branded him a “people pleaser” who doesn’t want to take difficult decisions.The conundrum over how to manage the early release of prisoners is an acute example of the tricky political decision-making that inevitably…

Earlier this summer, Amazon customers began noticing that emails related to their online orders looked sparse: Order confirmation emails didn’t name specific items anymore, and instead listed only item categories.Complaints about the vague emails appear to have started in July; orders placed as recently as June contain thumbnails and names of the exact item purchased. Some shoppers are complaining to Amazon about the new system, saying the emails with no details make it harder to keep track of purchases (and kind of look like spam or a phishing attempt). Amazon has a long history of tweaking how order emails look…

Mozilla announced today that it updated the GPG key used to sign Firefox and Thunderbird releases after it was accidentally exposed on GitHub. However, in a Monday blog post, it noted that the risk of a supply chain attack in which threat actors could distribute malicious installers signed with the exposed key is low because only a limited number of individuals had access to the GitHub repository. Additionally, Mozilla has yet to find evidence that the previous GPG key was accessed by unauthorized parties while being exposed. After discovering the incident, the organization revoked the key used to sign Linux tarballs,…

In brief Chloé Bakalar, OpenAI’s AI ethics lead, left the company last month without a public announcement, the Financial Times reported. She was OpenAI’s only dedicated ethicist and has not been replaced, according to a person familiar with her role. Her exit follows departures by OpenAI’s head of safety systems and its chief futurist. OpenAI’s head of ethics has left less than a year after joining, and the company has not replaced her, the Financial Times reported on Monday.Chloé Bakalar joined as AI ethics lead last August and departed in July with no public announcement, according to the paper. A…

The blue ribbon for largest known galaxy goes to a behemoth that probably grew by cannibalizing its smaller neighbors. Known as IC 1101, the galaxy’s diameter is estimated to be a whopping 520 kiloparsecs, or nearly 1.7 million light-years, researchers report in a study submitted July 16 to arXiv.org. That’s wider than 17 Milky Ways lined up in a row. Researchers analyzed the deepest images — or those with the longest exposure time — ever taken of IC 1101, captured in 2022 by the Isaac Newton Telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, located on La Palma in the…