Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

“I am firmly convinced that Friedrich Merz will remain chancellor,” Markus Söder, the powerful state premier of Bavaria and CSU leader, said in an interview with public broadcaster ARD over the weekend.  “It would throw the conservatives into complete disarray,” Söder said of a potential swap. “Moreover, it could even lead to new elections. And anyone who wants new elections now — in a situation like this, after such a lead-up — is only promoting one thing: bringing radicals to power. That is why my urgent advice is to focus on the work at hand and spend less time speculating behind the…

Something is afoot. The bookies can feel it. “Badenoch overtakes Farage as favourite to be next prime minister,” was the word from betting website William Hill this week.Let me tell you what is happening. This is a challenging political time. Even today, there is controversy for Kemi Badenoch to deal with. But as a Conservative it seems to me that in the past few tumultuous weeks, she has shown many of the qualities necessary in a party leader: to appear easy-going and humorous; to craft a style that teases her opponents rather than being snide or unkind; and to do…

Two of the world’s most powerful AI tools created fake human profiles to try and trick people in attempted cyber-attacks, the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) has revealed.In the most serious case, Anthropic’s Mythos AI tried to gain access to a service by sending private messages, having set up fake accounts mimicking real people – then hid the evidence. It comes shortly after the two companies involved in the AISI testing – Anthropic and OpenAI – separately revealed in recent weeks instances of their tech hacking into other companies.The firms said, in this latest case, the AISI’s test had reduced…

Vulnerability management isn’t failing because security teams lack visibility. Most organizations already have more findings than they can reasonably address. Yet despite all those findings, many CISOs still struggle to answer a deceptively simple question: Are we actually becoming harder to attack? That question sits at the center of a growing problem. Security programs have become very good at finding issues, but finding issues and reducing risk are not the same thing. In many organizations, those two concepts have become interchangeable, which is exactly why traditional vulnerability management is beginning to break down. The underlying assumption behind vulnerability management is…

In brief Japan’s government has repeatedly urged the U.S. to stop using anime and game characters in official posts, with the latest appeals lodged through the U.S. embassy in June. The Pokémon Company confirmed it never granted permission for a Department of Homeland Security clip that mashed Ash Ketchum with ICE footage. A Japanese fan’s “Protect Japanese Manga” petition and an AI Trump-as-Naruto video pushed the issue up the diplomatic ladder. Japanese officials have repeatedly asked the U.S. government to stop its meme posting involving Mario, Pokémon, and Naruto. Since March, the foreign ministry has called out Washington over the…

As millions of people were coming down from the excitement of the FIFA World Cup Final recently, a different kind of excitement was building within the mathematical community. Levent Alpöge, a mathematician working at the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, made a very casual announcement on X that he had found a counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture, a very old and well-known problem in a field of mathematics called algebraic geometry. He had done this using Anthropic’s large language model Claude Fable 5, released to the general public only a few weeks ago. This is just the latest of many…

As biodiversity on Earth faces rapid decline, scientists are advocating for a new conservation approach: Save habitat for primates and protect countless other species along with them. For long, conservation efforts and funding have prioritized umbrella species such as tigers and giant pandas on the basis that protecting the vast areas they depend on can help protect other wildlife that live in the same ecosystems. A 2025 study found that monkeys, apes and other charismatic primates are potential “umbrella species” as well. They, too, often require large tracts of healthy habitat to survive. And by safeguarding the vast…

The population of Firminy, south-east France, has been dwindling for decades. Its recent history is one of factory closures in a region built by steel, and locals tell me that many people leave for better opportunities in neighbouring Saint-Étienne, or to live in the Haute-Loire’s countryside.On the top of a hill, however, stands Firminy’s pride: l’Unité d’Habitation, an imposing tower of concrete designed by Le Corbusier. The architect’s final project is an oddity – a building for people, where two-thirds of the apartments are dedicated to habitations à loyer modéré (or HLM – social housing); but also a piece of…

He looked like one of the many digital nomads appearing in Vietnam these days as he plopped his bag on a table near the back of a stylish cafe and ordered a coffee.Then he ripped off his shirt and ordered everyone to leave.Security footage captured the man, Shaymus Lilly, 34, an Australian brand strategist, clearing counters and shattering windows at Gé Cafe in the coastal city of Da Nang. He smashed a stranger’s phone and choked a young Vietnamese man before police officers hauled him away.Witnesses wondered if he was mentally ill and followed him to the station. The only…

The agency’s two Republicans, Chair Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty, voted to end the ownership cap, which restricts broadcast owners from holding stations that reach a combined more than 39 percent of US TV households, while Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez dissented. It formalizes a policy Carr has long criticized, and which he announced last month that he would seek to end at Thursday’s open FCC meeting. In place of a set limit, the FCC says, there will now be “granular, case-by-case review” to determine if broadcast consolidation is in the public interest. That will let the agency avoid having…