Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

In 1989, Voyager 2 discovered six previously unknown moons around Neptune. Five of them are tiny satellites that travel just beyond the planet’s main rings. Their small size and distant location have made them extremely difficult to investigate from Earth. Now, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has given scientists a much closer look. A Caltech led team used Webb to study Neptune’s rings along with three of its inner moons, Larissa, Galatea, and Proteus. The observations revealed a chemical makeup unlike anything previously identified among bodies in the outer solar system. The results support the idea that Neptune once…

There are fewer and fewer stories coming out of the land of my birth. Before, I would open Instagram and see my cousins, lip-syncing to trending videos, posing with flowers at a rose garden or at a trendy cafe in their coolest outfits, keeping a record of their lives. I would hear British-Afghan friends talk about their recent trips to the provinces, towns and cities of their foremothers and the buzz of learning about their heritage. I would eagerly await the latest music video from Afghanistan’s many pop stars, all vying to become the hottest track played at weddings, not…

Last December, Trump sued the BBC and subsidiaries BBC Studios Productions and BBC Studios Distribution over the 2024 Panorama episode.Trump’s lawsuit – filed in Florida – accuses the BBC of “intentionally, maliciously and deceptively doctoring” the speech he gave outside the Capitol on 6 January 2021.The BBC has apologised for an editing error that gave “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”.However, the BBC has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the programme did not meet the legal criteria for defamation and was not made available on its US platforms.Last…

Westminster council is making it “impossible” for soup kitchens to operate by complaining about the “crowds of vulnerable people” who turn up to be fed, a charity has said.Steven Stuart, who founded Friends of Essex & London Homeless (FOELH) with his wife, Cheryl, a decade ago, said constant complaints from the council could force the soup kitchen to shut down.The council is also facing a licensing battle with the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, who has objected to its restrictive new draft policy that would ban new bars and pubs from opening in Soho and the West End. The council also…

This past week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word open letter, external entitled “The Future is for Everyone”.To some, it’s an expression of hope in AI’s promise. To others, it’s little more than a verbose public relations exercise.Zuckerberg’s manifesto is the latest example of a tech boss opining on why AI is the next big thing.His vision echoes what AI leaders have expressed in various forms: the product they are building is among the “most important technologies in history.”Marc Andreessen, co-founder of early web titan Netscape, perhaps started this trend in 2023 with a 5,000-word essay he called…

Bitcoiners have been warned after France’s tax administration confirmed that hackers breached its information system, exposing sensitive financial and personal data belonging to hundreds of thousands of taxpayers and businesses. Writing on X on Friday, Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp said the leak was “more bad news for Bitcoiners living in the leading country for wrench attacks.” Lopp has created a tracker counting wrench attacks — when physical violence is used to steal crypto — across the world. A large amount happens in France, where data has been leaked before.  More bad news for Bitcoiners living in the leading country for…

For thousands of years, Mexican howler monkeys have inhabited the lush rainforest canopy of what is now Los Tuxtlas—a 155,000-acre UNESCO biosphere reserve in the eastern state of Veracruz, 325 miles southeast of Mexico City. Every morning at around 4:30 a.m., these dark-haired primates wake up and begin their day the same way. First they howl. Then they poop. A recent study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances analyzed the fecal matter of howler monkeys in Los Tuxtlas. The study found that more than 90 percent of collected samples were contaminated with microplastics, many of which originate from…

Rescuers combed through debris for survivors Saturday after a powerful earthquake struck off Flores island in eastern Indonesia, killing at least 20 people and sending thousands fleeing. As the full scale of the disaster unfolded, rescue official Fathur Rahman told AFP at least 20 people were confirmed dead from four different towns on the island, popular with tourists. “From the reports we have received, 20 people have died, six are injured, and two are still buried,” Fathur said by telephone from a boat on his way to Nagekeo regency, the hardest-hit area. Two people were known to be trapped alive…

If you’re a student looking for an affordable laptop, I have bad news and I have good news. The bad news is that computer prices are out of whack due to the ongoing RAM and storage crunch, making some a little pricier than they used to be and others wildly more expensive.The good news? Despite that, there are still many great options, including the selection we’ve tested and highlighted below.Before you go for the cheapest option you can still find, consider biting the bullet on a more powerful laptop, especially if you’re buying for a college student. Prices are likely…

Threat actors started exploiting an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in GeoServer hours after it was publicly disclosed, attack surface management firm WatchTowr says. The security defect, described as an SQL injection issue that could be exploited to achieve remote code execution (RCE), was disclosed on Wednesday by a security researcher named q1uf3ng. According to the researcher’s post on X, the flaw affects GeoServer’s jsonArrayContains function, a filter expression for querying JSON array fields to check if they contain specific values. It can be used with PostGIS and Oracle JDBC data stores. The SQL injection is likely caused by user-supplied arguments being…