Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Stored in an open-air warehouse in tropical Darwin, Australia, are dozens of trays containing cylindrical cores of rock. They are from drill holes bored hundreds of metres below the surface by mineral exploration companies decades ago. Some of these cores at the Northern Territory Geological Survey are mudstone – a type of sedimentary rock formed from hardened seafloor mud. The companies that drilled these cores were largely unaware that within these mudstones were fossils of microscopic organisms buried on the seafloor of an ancient inland sea that covered much of northern Australia over 1.5 billion years ago. As our new…

John Harris writes: “Reform is apparently in deep trouble, yet also still in with a serious chance. How come?” (Don’t discount Reform because it’s had a bad year. In our angry, fragile democracy, anything can happen, 20 September). Because it is a cult, just as Maga is a cult. It is sustained by faith, not fact. It offers simple solutions to problems of such complexity that most of us are incapable of understanding them.Reform UK would not exist without Nigel Farage. All his other “parties” only existed because of him. Its self-designation as outside “the establishment” is one of the…

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has resigned to seek the prime minister’s post in a snap parliamentary election on October 25, as a student-led movement mounts the most serious challenge to his rule in more than a decade.Vucic, on the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) ballot, has dominated Serbian politics as president or prime minister since 2014. Barred from seeking a third presidential term, he is now seeking to extend his hold on power through the parliamentary vote.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listParliament Speaker Ana Brnabic, a close ally, will serve as acting president pending a presidential election. Vucic said…

“Enlargement … remains a geopolitical imperative. Accession, however, takes time,” reads a draft version of the pre-enlargement review text seen by POLITICO. “Candidate countries must complete a rigorous, merit-based process and deliver far-reaching and lasting reforms. That time should be put to full strategic use to both prepare the Union for larger membership and deepen gradual integration in areas of mutual interest.” As part of that review, von der Leyen and Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos will propose changes to the bloc’s internal workings to ensure safeguards are in place to prevent new joiners from disrupting key policies or reneging on…

This month, a cross-party parliamentary committee said Thames Water should be placed in temporary state control and that any takeover by its creditors should be halted. The MPs were right. The “special administration” regime keeps the taps running while shareholders are wiped out, creditors take a haircut and the firm’s £19bn of debt is restructured. But it must not then be handed back to private hands. After Thames Water has failed its 16 million customers, polluted rivers, paid out billions to shareholders and repeatedly demanded higher bills, a City-friendly reprieve would only reward the outrageous behaviour that the regulatory system…

Shabana Mahmood will announce a new legal route for refugees that prioritises Afghan women and girls and Palestinians, unfreezing a scheme that will put the most vulnerable refugees on a faster path to permanent status.The change marks a shift in Mahmood’s approach to asylum seekers after the abrupt closure of the Afghan resettlement scheme last year and changes that will keep refugee status under constant review for two decades.The home secretary is to say the changes will show there is fairness in the immigration system to support the most vulnerable refugees and that a balanced system will “unlock the inherent…

A human pancreas typically contains about a billion beta cells, the primary producers of insulin. Among people with diabetes, these cells are either missing or dysfunctional, and thus scientists have been looking for ways to replenish their numbers as a possible long-term treatment or even cure for the condition. A team of researchers recently took a step closer to that reality, genetically altering another type of pancreatic cell to produce and release insulin in response to high blood sugar.The researchers engineered ductal cells, which—as some previous studies had found—occasionally transform into beta cells all on their own. This is an…

A proposed Solana rule would let validators reject a block when transactions inside one entry batch are recorded out of fee-priority order. It would not decide which transactions make the block. The SIMD-0649 pull request closed on Sept. 25 without merging, leaving that narrower trade-off for further discussion rather than putting a new ordering rule into effect.The distinction matters to traders trying to predict where an order will land. Under the draft, a block producer, known as the leader, would still choose which transactions to include and how to divide them into batches. The proposed consensus check would make the…

The prime minister is right to identify that the existing ban on alcohol consumption at football matches is viewed by fans as discriminatory (Andy Burnham signals he may lift ban on alcohol in football stands, 23 September). However, the need for reform of this legislation goes much further.The Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc) Act 1985 was rushed through parliament, despite reservations at the time from the police and football authorities, and the absence of any evidence that it would reduce football-related disorder. Since then, no studies have indicated that the prohibition has reduced drunkenness or disorder at matches, but research has…

Serbia’s populist president, Aleksandar Vučić, has resigned to pursue an attempt to become prime minister in an early parliamentary election that will test his firm rule in the Balkan country after nearly two years of protests.Vučić’s second presidential term would otherwise end in May next year. He is banned by the constitution from seeking a third term and said he was resigning to lead his rightwing Serbian Progressive party (SNS) in the 25 October ballot.The governing populists face a major challenge from a youth-backed movement that led protests triggered by a train station canopy collapse in November 2024 that killed…