Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

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…

A prolific criminal hacking group said Tuesday that it had stolen a large tranche of sensitive personnel information belonging to thousands of F.B.I. officials in what would amount to a stunning breach of private data for the nation’s top law enforcement agency.The hackers, who call themselves ShinyHunters, said the records were stolen from an online jobs portal for the bureau and included names of current and former agents as well as applicants and corresponding home addresses, phone numbers, names of spouses, certain medical information and other data. The group does not appear to have yet leaked any of the data…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.I was 10 minutes into my first trip in a driverless car when I realised my vehicle was potentially obstructing the president of the United States. Late for a press conference on the sidelines of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, I called one of the autonomous Waymos that I had seen gliding past my hotel. At first, the climate-controlled Jaguar purred serenely through the downtown traffic. Then, in the midst of a fast-flowing six-lane avenue, it came to an abrupt halt. The…

Ofcom has launched an investigation into Pornhub owner, Aylo, over whether the site’s new age checks are effectively stopping children from accessing adult content.The regulator said in May that Pornhub started using a new age verification process for some users, which relied on a third party, Apple.It said it had concerns that Aylo “may not have conducted sufficient due diligence and testing” before implementing this new process, and so it “may not be highly effective” at preventing children from seeing pornography.In a lengthy statement given to the BBC, Aylo strongly defended its system for age verification while stressing it would…

Two MikroTik RouterOS SSH vulnerabilities chained together let attackers take full administrative control of Internet-exposed routers without a password, SSH key, or completed authentication. The chain, which CERT Polska calls MikroTrick, combines an SSH state-machine flaw (CVE-2026-67279) with an argument-injection bug in the RouterOS login process (CVE-2026-86060). Attack logs date to at least September 2, one day before MikroTik shipped patches in RouterOS 6.49.21, 7.23.4, and 7.24.2. As previously reported, CERT Polska warned on September 5 that attackers were using RouterOS flaws to take control of devices whose SSH service was reachable from public networks. That warning confirmed the exploitation…