Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Yes, the recent Jason Arday scandal should be a wake-up call to the left, as Jason Okundaye suggests (The takedown of Jason Arday has overjoyed the right, and must be a wake-up call for the left, 6 August), but it should also be a wake-up call to anyone who cares about university systems and protocols around appointment and promotion.What I have seen at UK universities suggests that Arday was not simply an individual who slipped through the net, but that university systems often fail to detect or challenge exaggerated claims. If anything, those with greater institutional privilege are more likely…

A Texas police officer has been arrested in Mexico after authorities there accused him of killing three people and critically injuring the mother of his child in what investigators say stemmed from a dispute over the custody of the minor.The Coahuila attorney general’s office said 35-year-old Chad Eberle was arrested on Wednesday at the border on a warrant accusing him of femicide and qualified homicide, according to La Razon de Mexico, a newspaper based in Mexico City. Under Mexican law, femicide refers to the intentional killing of a woman or girl because of her gender.According to La Razon, the deadly…

For the third time this election season, Senator Chuck Schumer this week had to approach a newly minted Democratic nominee for Senate who had openly opposed keeping him as party leader and try to make common cause for a tough race ahead.During a phone conversation on Wednesday with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who had just triumphed in Michigan over Mr. Schumer’s preferred candidate after a campaign that cast the Democratic leader as part of the problem with Washington, Mr. Schumer was eager to look past their divide.“I said to him, ‘I don’t need you to like me,’” Mr. Schumer said in…

Framework, a company that makes modular repairable computers, said it has notified all of its customers that hackers stole their names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses, due to an incident at a company that provides business intelligence. On Thursday, several Framework customers said on social media that they had received an email from the company notifying them of the data breach. Framework’s spokesperson Eric Schumacher told TechCrunch that the breach affected “all customers,” but declined to specify a specific number. Framework computers are relatively niche products, but some estimates say the company sold hundreds of thousands of devices. …

MIT researchers and collaborators found that AI explainability tools in the health sector can produce sharply different results depending on who uses them.When applied to skin disease diagnosis, non-experts improved their accuracy with AI assistance, although the improvement largely came from deferring to the model. Primary care providers showed a different pattern: they performed best when they received an AI prediction without an explanation.The study – which appears in Nature Medicine – examined dermatological diagnosis, where AI tools already support some clinicians and increasingly reach patients through AI-powered search products.Marzyeh Ghassemi, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering…

After more than 300,000 production penetration tests (pentests), our company has learned something that may surprise people watching the recent wave of autonomous security announcements. The hardest problem in autonomous security isn’t teaching a machine how to attack. It’s teaching an AI-based system how to operate safely, predictably, and repeatedly inside production environments where mistakes have consequences. Finding an attack path is an engineering problem. Building a platform that organizations trust to operate against healthcare systems, financial institutions, manufacturers, and critical infrastructure is an operational one. The difference only becomes apparent after years of running at scale. As the industry…

New analysis of Bitcoin theft reports reveals that stolen funds overwhelmingly came from long-dormant wallets, with victims reporting a median loss of over one coin. Data posted on X from Galaxy Research’s Alex Thorn looked at 250 victim reports and found the typical stolen coin had sat untouched for 3.5 years, and a striking 88% of pilfered funds were at least a year old.  By address, losses ranged from a median of 0.014 Bitcoin to a mean of 0.212 Bitcoin, while individual victims reported a median loss of 1.022 Bitcoin and an average of 4.04 Bitcoin — with one unlucky…

Liquid iron in Earth’s outer core can behave in surprising ways. Scientists discovered that a large flow of molten material deep beneath the Pacific Ocean changed direction for reasons that remain unclear. Data from ESA satellites helped researchers trace the shift and build a more detailed picture of what is happening near the center of the planet. Earth’s molten outer core lies about 2200 km below the surface. As this electrically conducting liquid iron moves, it helps generate the planet’s geomagnetic field. For many years, scientists studying small variations in that field concluded that much of the outer core was…

“How did you go bankrupt?” a character is asked in Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises. “Gradually, then suddenly” comes the reply. Right now, Fifa’s justly besieged president, Gianni Infantino, is experiencing something similar in relation to the loss  of his own authority.Since taking over the running of world football’s governing body in 2016, Mr Infantino has survived regular criticism of a monetising approach which has often come at a sporting cost. But since egregious plans to sell a stake in the World Cup to the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law were leaked to the media, his credibility has…

The claim that sailors and Marines aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier are facing deteriorating conditions after nearly 260 days at sea is still under investigation. It stemmed from an MS NOW report published on Aug. 5, 2026. MS NOW says the sailors are running out of food and other essential supplies, such as soap and toothpaste. The article also says there are safety concerns and the crew’s morale is low. The news media outlet quoted Cmdr. Joseph Hontz, the spokesperson for the Navy’s 5th Fleet, as saying the crew is “resilient.” In April 2026, U.S. Secretary of Defense…