Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The biggest drag is expected to come from people struggling to work in extreme heat. Triodos estimates lost labor productivity alone could shave around 0.6 percent off EU GDP, while agricultural output could fall by between 3 and 7 percent. “At first sight this might seem modest, but it is exactly the expected economic growth for the EU this year,” said the bank of the overall €180 billion blow. And the summer is not over. France and Britain are bracing for their fifth heat wave of the season this week, with temperatures nearing 40 degrees Celsius in southeastern France and…

Andy Burnham is said to be exploring “every option” to block the early release from prison of the killers of PC Andrew Harper under plans to alleviate the prison overcrowding crisis, amid public concern that they could be back on the streets next year. As he faces what is being seen as his first big test since becoming prime minister, what are his options?Why will Andrew Harper’s killers be eligible for release? Under the government’s plans to tackle prison overcrowding, via the Sentencing Act, prisoners serving sentences of four years or more for some serious violent or sexual offences will…

In the long run, these so-called “everyday fixes” may not make as much difference to your wealth as increasing mandatory contributions on pensions or capping rents, but they will get rid of some day-to-day frustrations. Here are six other things he could fix while he is in the mood:Ban booking fees on ticketsBuying a ticket for an event such as a gig or show doesn’t come with as many hidden costs as previously, thanks to consumer protection laws introduced last year. But the fact the fees are clearer does not make them all more palatable.In the days when you could…

From Hong Kong’s rural northern reaches, the towers of tech hub Shenzhen loom on the horizon, marking the border with mainland China.Soon, an ambitious project will bring the two sides much closer together.A huge infrastructure initiative aims to transform a swath of Hong Kong’s New Territories — a ramble of fish farms, towns and brownfield sites — into an industrial and technology belt that will revive the Asian financial hub.Authorities hope the project, termed the Northern Metropolis, will breathe new life into Hong Kong’s economy, which was dented by anti-government protests in 2019 and Covid restrictions that led to an…

Eugene Mymrin/ Moment via Getty ImagesFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET’s key takeawaysManagers were the prime targets in a single ransomware campaign.Managers often have special privileges, making them tempting targets.Training and network security are key to preventing such attacks.Ransomware attacks don’t just target specific organizations but also specific employees. Those employees are often the ones with special privileges or higher levels of access that attackers can exploit to reach confidential resources. That’s why managers often end up being in the crosshairs of such attacks.In new research, “Ransomware Moves up the Org Chart: Managers Are Prime Targets,”…

Meta has released Muse Glimmer, a 30-billion-parameter multimodal model distilled from Muse Spark. It is tuned for always-on local agent workflows, and ships under Apache 2.0. A 30B model normally needs over 55 GB of memory at full precision. Meta compresses it to roughly 4-bit, then adds block-level speculative decoding so it answers fast enough to sit inside a real agent loop. The result runs on one consumer GPU or a Mac, with no network call. Is it deployable? Yes, the weights are open under Apache 2.0. The Hugging Face collection carries BF16 weights, GGUF k-quants, ExecuTorch builds, and the…

OpenAI has flagged its upcoming AI model, Astra, for potentially reaching a ‘critical’ cybersecurity risk threshold, prompting the company to suspend internal development activities that lack newly mandated security controls. Recent internal evaluations of Astra revealed massive leaps in its agentic coding and cybersecurity abilities.  Under OpenAI’s Preparedness Framework, a model hits the ‘critical’ tier if it can autonomously build zero-day exploits against hardened, real-world systems. It also qualifies if the AI can independently design and execute end-to-end cyberattacks based on nothing but a high-level goal. The AI giant’s assessment pushes Astra past previous frontier models like GPT-5.6-Sol, which peaked…

The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-110 appeared to stall at the weekend, when the nodes that support the proposal broke away from the main network and produced the chain split people had been warning about — a tiny, stalled one. The split came Saturday at block 961,632, when the proposal entered its mandatory signaling window. Nodes running BIP-110 software began rejecting any block that failed to signal support through version bit 4. When the first block at that height arrived without the signal, those nodes rejected it and peeled away onto a separate chain. And it has gone almost nowhere since. …

A new school year brings fresh opportunities to get involved with NASA. Whether you’re curious about space or eager to build real STEM skills, NASA offers a world of experiences putting you close to the action. As we enter a new golden age of exploration, there’s no better time to jump in, try something bold, and see where your curiosity takes you. NASA opens the door to authentic mission experiences through internships and student challenges. As members of the NASA team, interns work on genuine agency projects and gain industry-ready skills, all with the guidance of NASA mentors. Visit NASA’s…

A daily weight-loss pill made by the drug firm behind the Mounjaro jab has been approved for use in the UK – the first country in Europe to do so.Foundayo, made by Eli Lilly, is for treating obesity and type 2 diabetes.But while people will be able to buy it privately with a prescription, the approval by the Medicines and Healthcare productors Regulatory Agency does not automatically mean it will be made available on the NHS.Foundayo is a form of GLP-1 medication that blunts appetite, and comes after the MHRA approved a pill version of a similar weight-loss drug, Wegovy,…