Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The water quality of a Berkshire chalk stream – named by Thames Water as part of a “flagship chalk stream restoration project” – has been classed as “poor” by the Environment Agency.In the figures released on Thursday, the River Pang also failed a test for hazardous substances.In 2022, Thames Water began the Pang Flagship Chalk Stream Partnership, which it said would “deliver restoration plans from 2025 to 2035”.Thames Water said it had invested £875,000 in the partnership, adding river water quality was influenced by a range of factors, “including farming, industry, road runoff and increasingly extreme weather” and “addressing these…

A campaign to shoot crows has resumed in Singapore in response to a surge in public complaints about attacks, with authorities saying “pest” birds pose a public health risk and outcompete native species.Ecologists argue Singapore’s crow problem is human-made, with poor waste management and illegal feeding fueling a population boom.They criticize culling as ineffective over the long term and say it risks normalizing lethal wildlife control while undermining Singapore’s “City in Nature” vision.Nature groups say ongoing and planned forest clearance for public housing could lead to further increases in urban bird populations, as more favorable habitats are created, leading…

At a time when U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are warning about the threat of “communism,” the Trump administration itself has taken over much of the means of production. If Trump’s foray into state capitalism last year seemed alarming—and it did—it has only gotten worse.  At a time when U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are warning about the threat of “communism,” the Trump administration itself has taken over much of the means of production. If Trump’s foray into state capitalism last year seemed alarming—and it did—it has only gotten worse.  The U.S. government now…

A striking video apparently showing the moment part of a SpaceX rocket collided with the moon has been going viral on social media.But experts have told Full Fact that the video is fake, it is inconsistent with the moon’s real topography and the location of the rocket’s impact, and it was probably generated with AI. And SpaceX founder Elon Musk has also said that it is not real, after sharing the clip on X.The clip, which has gained millions of views on X, appears to show a section of one side of the moon, with an object travelling directly towards…

Desperate searches for survivors of a deadly Colombian earthquake continued throughout the night Monday and into Tuesday, with firefighters and other emergency workers using pickaxes and other tools to hack through the rubble in affected cities.The death toll had risen to at least 181 people by Tuesday morning, according to Asocapitales, an association of Colombian cities. At least 1,310 people were injured and 153 buildings have collapsed.The governor of Chocó, the region in western Colombia that was the epicenter of the quake, said Tuesday morning on national radio that the full extent of the devastation was not yet known, in…

Ukraine and Russia have continued striking each other overnight, with President Volodymyr Zelensky accusing Moscow of using North Korean missiles.Ukraine said strikes on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia – which killed seven people and injured at least 24 – involved ballistic missiles from Russia’s ally.In Voronezh, western Russia, warehouses of the biggest online retailer Wildberries were hit by Ukraine. The company, known as Russia’s Amazon, has been repeatedly targeted in recent weeks.The attacks come a day after at least 13 people were killed, including one child, in Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian republic of Tatarstan, more than 1,100 km…

Cloudflare / ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET key takeaways The Linux desktop continues to grow in popularity.Cloudflare numbers show Linux at work is making gainsAI is a big reason why more people are turning to Linux.Web traffic analysis site StatCounter recently showed that desktop Linux had reached an all-time high of 10.65% in the North American desktop market. Many people, even many Linux fans, dismissed this proportion as fake news. However, the last time I looked at the numbers in 2025, Statcounter only showed a high of just over 5%. As I mentioned in my recent…

Virgin Atlantic is using ChatGPT Work to help its teams understand the airline’s complex customer journey and deliver better experiences faster. From competitive research to product planning and analytics, ChatGPT Work gives employees new ways to bring information together and move from insight to action.For an airline, the customer journey extends beyond just booking a flight. It includes browsing, purchasing, checking in, traveling, the onboard experience, and sharing feedback afterward. Each stage produces valuable information, often held across different systems and reporting tools. Virgin Atlantic is using ChatGPT to connect those signals and help teams decide where to focus.Turning weeks…

OpenAI on Monday unveiled a new cybersecurity-focused model called GPT‑5.6‑Cyber that it said is focused on vulnerability research, penetration testing, and incident response. “Built on GPT‑5.6 Sol, it is trained to improve capabilities on several specialized cybersecurity tasks (e.g., finding zero-day vulnerabilities and developing exploit chains) and to reduce refusals for certain higher-risk, dual-use cyber tasks,” OpenAI said. The artificial intelligence (AI) company said it’s making GPT 5.6 Cyber available through Daybreak Red, a new tier that provides access to its purpose-trained cybersecurity models to other firms for authorized vulnerability research, exploit validation, and security testing. GPT-5.6-Cyber, a more cyber-permissive…

Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms has signed a 191-megawatt data center lease with an unnamed frontier AI lab that it expects to generate about $9.1 billion of gross contract revenue over a 20-year base term.Construction cash must arrive much sooner: the first 96 MW is expected to become available in December 2027, when initial rent is expected to commence, and the remaining 95 MW is due in June 2028. The plan still treats Bitcoin sales as a source of construction equity before rent begins.Riot projects $2.1 billion to $2.3 billion of capital spending for the build and assumes that 80% to…