Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

In November 2020, Barack Obama warned of an “epistemological crisis” facing western democracies. Polarisation and radicalisation were corroding trust in established information sources. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work,” the former US president said.That vulnerability has grown since then. Democracy’s enemies have become more determined to exploit it. This is the threat that Andy Burnham highlighted in a speech at the United Nations this week. The prime minister accused Russia of waging an “industrial-scale assault” on the UK’s information environment using bot armies…

Zoox has grounded its autonomous vehicle test fleet in Atlanta after safety drivers were potentially exposed to carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, or hydrogen sulfide gas inside its vehicles last month, TechCrunch has learned. The repeated incidents led one worker to file a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which opened an inquiry and told Zoox to investigate the exposures.  As many as 40 workers were possibly exposed to the gases in the vehicles, according to a letter from OSHA to Zoox that TechCrunch viewed, though the Amazon-owned company says the number is lower.   Zoox put at least one…

Adobe on Tuesday rolled out patches for 36 vulnerabilities across its products, including critical-severity flaws in Connect and Experience Manager (AEM) Forms. The Adobe Connect update resolves nine security defects, including six critical issues that could be exploited for arbitrary code execution and privilege escalation. Tracked as CVE-2026-75682, CVE-2026-75684, CVE-2026-75686, CVE-2026-75689, CVE-2026-75697, and CVE-2026-75698, they are described as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and improper input validation flaws. The update also fixes high-severity path traversal, improper certificate validation, and XSS weaknesses that could lead to arbitrary file system read, security feature bypass, and arbitrary code execution. Adobe patched six vulnerabilities…

Money-market mutual funds absorbed approximately 85% of the US government’s latest Treasury-bill surge, giving traditional cash managers the clearest claim to the marginal demand behind the summer issuance wave.The Treasury Department said net bill supply grew by more than $550 billion in July and August, an increase of about 8% in two months. Money funds took down most of that additional supply, according to remarks delivered Sept. 22 by Deputy Treasury Secretary Francis Brooke.Stablecoin providers remain important holders of short-dated government debt. Treasury puts their holdings at nearly $200 billion. Yet that number measures a stock of Treasury bills and…

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope completed its 200,000th orbit around Earth on Sept. 19, marking another new milestone for an observatory that continues to transform our understanding of the universe. Hubble has traveled more than 5 billion miles around Earth over its 36-year lifetime, exceeding 1.7 million total observations. An observation completed on the day of the 200,000th orbit pertains to one of Hubble’s defining scientific legacies: measuring the expansion rate of the universe, or the Hubble Constant. The image takes advantage of the telescope’s ability to return to the same regions of the sky over time to monitor for the…

Millions of lettuces are set to be wasted as farmers are grappling with a record outbreak of aphids that has devastated the end of their growing season.Growers are facing losses of £10m, as 30 million heads of lettuce will be rendered unusable, according to the British Leafy Salads Association (BLSA). The organisation says that warm and dry weather has produced “ideal conditions” for the bugs, with as much as 30% of the UK crop between now and the end of October set to be wasted.Homegrown lettuce dominates the market in the summer and early autumn weeks before a transition that…

Rotterdam-based CSL OWL Subsea Rock Installation (CSL OWL SRI), a partnership between The CSL Group and Offshore Wind Logistics (OWL), has launched its first of two subsea rock installation (SRI) vessels.Screenshot. Source: CSL OWL SRI via LinkedIn The company announced in November 2024 that it had placed an order for the construction of two SRI vessels that will service the offshore wind sector and will be able to operate on marine gas oil (MGO) and methanol. Construction of the first vessel, named Rock Star, started in September 2025 with the cutting of the first steel plate. The vessel is suitable…

Many people on social media appear to have been fooled by an AI-generated picture that supposedly shows a group of teachers protesting against the removal of pride flags from their classrooms.The image shows a group of four women standing in a classroom holding a sign that reads: “If you make us take the pride flags out of our classrooms we will quit teaching!”The picture isn’t real. It contains an invisible SynthID watermark that shows it was made using Google’s AI tools.Hundreds of people have commented on a Facebook post sharing the photo suggesting they believe it’s genuine, despite a number…

Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, after a jury found him guilty last year of committing a criminal sexual act against a former assistant.In a victim impact statement in court, Miriam Haley said the assault had had a “devastating effect on my life and sense of security that may never go away”.Appearing in court in a wheelchair, Weinstein denied the allegations but apologised to “anyone I may have hurt by my actions”.Weinstein has already spent six years in prison while he has faced three trials in New York over rape and abuse allegations.…

Andy Burnham has said he still believes the UK is far too exposed to global shocks, defending comments last year when he said the UK should be less “in hock” to the bond markets.He said the comments had been deliberately misinterpreted by the former prime minister Keir Starmer and his advisers and said his aim was not more borrowing and spending but a far more resilient economy.Burnham’s comments in an interview with the New Statesmen last year made waves before the Labour conference because of the then Greater Manchester’s clear ambitions to replace Starmer as prime minister.In a fresh interview…