Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Scientists have captured an unusually detailed view of a major tectonic system beneath the Pacific Northwest beginning to come apart. The discovery, reported in Science Advances, shows a subduction zone actively breaking into pieces. Subduction zones form where one tectonic plate is forced beneath another and pushed deep into Earth. They are responsible for some of the planet’s largest earthquakes, powerful volcanic eruptions, and long term changes to continents and ocean basins. Until now, however, scientists have had few opportunities to see clearly how one of these enormous systems reaches the end of its life. How a Subduction Zone Dies…

Scientists have described a species of tiger cat that was previously unknown to science. From Bolivia’s Yungas cloud forests, it is the first discovery of a living novel cat species in more than 100 years. The tilcayo (Leopardus tilcayo) takes its species name from the name locals already had for it. Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, a National Geographic explorer who discovered the species and co-author of the Current Biology paper that describes it, said the name honors traditional knowledge in the region. The tilcayo is smaller than a domestic cat at 1.4 kilograms (3 pounds). It has rounded ears, a…

Japan’s exploration and production (E&P) company Inpex has moved to solidify its foothold in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project off the northwest coast of Western Australia (WA), with its Australian subsidiaries taking steps to obtain an additional participating interest by exercising pre-emptive rights. Ichthys Explorer central processing facility (CPF); Source: Inpex Australia Inpex’s Australian subsidiaries have entered into agreements with subsidiaries of JERA to acquire 0.735% in the Ichthys LNG project, which will increase their interests in this project from 67.82% to 68.555%. The completion of the transaction is subject to the fulfilment of certain conditions, including approval by…

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at violent clashes across Ethiopia, the Vatican courting France, and a seven-day proposal to end the Iran war. Threats to Addis Ababa For nearly four years, Ethiopia has clung to a state of precarious peace, afraid to reignite a civil war that became one of the world’s deadliest conflicts in this century. But the country’s 2022 truce ultimately shattered this week, when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)—a powerful ethno-nationalist political and paramilitary organization that ruled Ethiopia for three decades until 2018—launched what its leaders called a “defensive” war to oust Prime…

The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, Max Wilkinson MP, told his party conference this week: “Before the [Brexit] referendum, not a single small boat crossed the Channel.”This just isn’t true.The government only publishes official data on small boat arrivals from 2018 onwards, and the number did rise substantially in the 2020s, after the UK left the EU. But there is plenty of evidence of crossings taking place before that, and before the referendum in June 2016.A 2020 report from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration says that the Home Office “was aware of isolated cases of migrants arriving…

President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia has widened its attacks to target Ukraine’s data centres and internet providers, seeking to cause maximum disruption for ordinary people.”All this affects people’s ability to stay connected, study, work,” he said.On Friday a Russian drone hit a business centre in the capital Kyiv, killing four people and damaging a data centre. A separate attack killed a 14-year-old boy. Israel’s foreign ministry said he was an Israeli citizen.Russia confirmed it had targeted a data centre site, saying it was being used by Ukrainian military intelligence.About 100,000 households in Kyiv and the region suffered internet outages on…

An overcrowded migrant reception centre, where a man died, raises “very serious questions” for ministers in the former Conservative government, including two home secretaries and former prime ministers, an inquiry has heard.The Manston centre in Kent became overwhelmed in November 2022 at the height of the small boats crisis, with around 4,000 people held there.Home Office officials knew conditions were unlawful and children were at risk of harm, but had no alternative plan for where to accommodate them, the inquiry heard on Friday.Former Home Secretaries Dame Priti Patel and Suella Braverman shared in preliminary evidence that Number 10 was involved…

Glasgow City Council has agreed to pause plans to fire and rehire more than 23,000 members of staff.The decision follows online talks between the council and three trade unions, chaired by Deputy First Minister Jenny Gilruth.Negotiations between the council and the GMB, Unison and Unite unions will resume early next week to try to reach a new deal on pay.Letters which had been due to be sent to staff informing them of the fire and rehire plans will not be issued.The SNP-led council had threatened to sack thousands of members of staff and then rehire them on new contracts after…

After announcing a host of new features for Meta’s Muse AI app at its Connect 2026 developer conference this week, the company is opening up requests for early access. Meta shared on Friday that you can now ask Muse to put you on the list to try out its latest capabilities before anyone else. Meta posted a link to a prompt on X that, when shared with Muse, will log that you’re interested in joining Meta’s early access program. (If you don’t want to click through, you can just copy and paste the prompt: “Can you let the Muse team…

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warns that hackers are exploiting a critical authentication bypass vulnerability (CVE-2026-5430) affecting multiple products from enterprise software provider WSO2. The agency also added CVE-2026-71362, another critical-severity flaw affecting Adobe Commerce, to the list of security issues being leveraged in attacks. Hackers are also exploiting two additional vulnerabilities: a high-severity code injection flaw in Microsoft SharePoint tracked as CVE-2026-65660, and a medium-severity pre-authentication SSH state-machine/workflow bypass in Mikrotik RouterOS identified as CVE-2026-67279. For the two critical issues added to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, federal agencies using the affected products have until  Sunday, September 27, to…