Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Rescuers raced against time ⁠in Colombia ​on Friday to free a man found alive beneath a collapsed hotel, a rare sign of ​hope nearly four days after one of the strongest earthquakes to hit the Andean nation in decades reduced neighbourhoods to rubble and left hundreds dead or missing. The operation in the coffee-region city of ​Pereira had become ‌the main focus of a disaster response increasingly shifting from the ⁠search for survivors to the grim work of clearing debris and accounting for the missing. “Possibly there are (still) people alive, we ‌believe so,” rescuer John Bedoya told Caracol Television…

John Carro, a prominent New York jurist who as a young probation officer in the Bronx tried to help a 13-year-old chronic truant named Lee Harvey Oswald a decade before Mr. Oswald was accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy, died on July 26 at his home in Suffern, N.Y. He was 98.His son John S. Carro confirmed the death.Justice Carro spent 25 years on the bench in New York, after working as a police officer, social worker and mayoral aide. Most notably, he was the first Puerto Rican named to the First Department of the State Supreme Court’s Appellate…

It’s the depths of summer. It’s still stultifyingly, dangerously hot. Going outside is a fool’s game unless you have 500 SPF sunblock and a personal AC unit. Be sensible: Stay inside and enjoy some of the best movies currently streaming instead.August’s offerings include the return of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Paramount+, with a brand new adventure returning to the cast of the fan-favorite animated series as adults and struggling with newfound responsibilities. The same theme carries over to Heartstopper Forever on Netflix, where teen romance is dashed against the rocks of looming adulthood.Elsewhere, there’s a double helping of liminal…

The ShinyHunters extortion group stole personal information from 1.6 million RingCentral accounts after hacking the company in July, according to the data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned. RingCentral is a cloud-based collaboration and communication platform used by over 600,000 businesses for services such as calling, messaging, and voicemail. The company disclosed the incident on July 28, revealing that its systems were compromised following what it described as a “sophisticated social engineering campaign.” “We have not seen any new unauthorized activity since taking these remediation efforts. To date, this incident has affected data for a limited portion of RingCentral…

Bitcoin treasury holder CIMG Inc. said in its Aug. 13 quarterly filing that it needs to raise capital immediately, even though it held 1,145.4 BTC valued at $67.19 million on June 30.CIMG had just $5,397 in cash and $1.87 million in current assets against $9.25 million in current liabilities, leaving a $7.38 million working-capital deficit.CIMG held 1,145.4 BTC worth $67.19 million against $5,397 in cash, with a $7.38 million working-capital deficit at June 30.CIMG said it may monetize its Bitcoin, but warned the asset is volatile and the holdings are not committed or assured financing. Management’s plans to seek more equity…

As humanity looks to the Moon and stars for future exploration, predicting space weather — conditions in space primarily driven by the Sun — is more important than ever.  Now, a team of astrophysicists and data scientists with NASA’s COFFIES (Consequence Of Fields and Flows in the Interior and Exterior of the Sun) has developed a novel machine-learning model capable of predicting the emergence of active regions on the Sun up to 12 hours before they appear.  The Sun is constantly churning. Intense concentrations of localized magnetic fields can suddenly break through the solar surface, forming sunspots. Space weather forecasters then collectively number…

Fires in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province have sent haze across the border into Malaysia, where worsening air pollution has forced six schools in Sarawak state to switch to online classes.Indonesia is entering the peak of its fire season, with West Kalimantan accounting for more than half of the nearly 49,000 hectares (121,000 acres) burned across six priority provinces as of Aug. 9.The fires are also threatening biodiversity, including orangutan habitat and rehabilitation efforts in West Kalimantan, while a separate blaze has forced the closure of Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park on the island of Java.Authorities have deployed tens of…

Recent biographies of Ronald Reagan return to a familiar question: How did conviction come to be mistaken for competence? Max Boot’s Reagan: His Life and Legend and William Inboden’s The Peacemaker approach the 40th president from different moral perspectives, but both describe a leader whose composure steadied a disoriented state. Reagan appears less as a policy innovator than as a custodian of calm, a figure who made reassurance feel like governance. This emotional sensibility became a governing method. In the late 20th century, U.S. bureaucracy learned to mistake repetition for renewal, and procedure for integrity. Rather than fix systems, they…

Bill DeLind thought the Picasso print that was stolen from his Milwaukee gallery in 2018 was gone forever. But then police called last week and asked him to look at an artwork that a local landlord found while cleaning out a vacant apartment.DeLind immediately recognized the stolen Torero print, one of 30 known to exist signed by Picasso.“I was overwhelmed,” DeLind said Friday. “I was at a loss for words. It was an overwhelming moment for me.”The sticker from his DeLind Fine Art Appraisals was still on the back of the framed print, just as it had been placed there…

It is a question prompting at least some debate within the party.”When he goes down this angry route he doesn’t help himself,” the prominent Reform activist Tim Montgomerie told Radio 4’s The World At One.Montgomerie, the founder of the ConservativeHome website, defected to Reform two years ago. He praised Farage’s political ability but added: “It’s very frustrating how he’s behaved today. He needs to get a grip of this problem.”Montgomerie argued Farage and Reform were at their best when they were more positive rather than “inward looking” and focused on “grievances.” The “grievances,” as Montgomerie puts it, are real and…