Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Norwegian TGS has kicked off a large-scale 2D seismic reimaging project covering 34,000 kilometers across offshore Egypt, in partnership with Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS).Source: TGS The EGY-2DRE2026 project will integrate input from the GeoStreamer 2016, 2018 and 2023 surveys, together with other available conventional 2D data, to build a single, consistent regional framework across the offshore basins. According to TGS, the reimaged dataset is designed to give operators a sharper, basin-wide structural framework to support prospect identification and maturation, helping customers direct exploration budgets toward the areas of highest potential in the anticipated future licensing round, and support activity in the offshore Nile Delta, Herodotus Basin, and wider Eastern Mediterranean Basin.  “EGY-2DRE2026 will give our…

When Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) announced last year she would not seek re-election in 2026, she opened the door to a competitive Democratic primary and a potential pickup opportunity for Republicans.  A GOP candidate hasn’t won a Senate race in Minnesota in 20 years, but recent polling has a generic Republican candidate within single digits of a generic Democratic candidate. The parties will give names to those nominees on Aug. 11, when voters head to the polls for the primaries. The Democratic ballot includes two names: Rep. Angie Craig and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan. Craig had raised $12.7 million, nearly…

Watchdog training is coming to students in the Midwest and Puerto Rico this fall.As higher learning institutions work to hinder, pressure or punish student newspapers over reporting controversial stories, IRE, in partnership with Open Campus, is proud to bring watchdog training to two universities in September.Student publications often do a better job covering their school than local news outlets — sometimes they’re the only ones on the story! — but they also face additional challenges because they’re students. These day-long workshops will help students learn how to cover their institutions with more depth and provide them with the skills and…

I’ve been to two weddings where the bride and groom refused to play the Killers’ pop-rock hit Mr Brightside, and both ended in divorce. Well, not yet or anything – but I’m sure it’s coming. How happy can a couple really be if they’re not willing to play the biggest banger to ever bang moments after their hearts have been bound together as one? There are some things that should never be missing from a wedding unless you outright detest your guests. Canapes, yes. Cake, sure. And the opportunity to scream, “Comin’ out of my cage and I’ve been doin’…

Nato is working to get Ukraine the air defences it “urgently needs”, its secretary general has said, after Kyiv failed to shoot down a single Russian missile in an attack on Wednesday, and as Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Moscow was seeking to significantly boost missile ⁠production ahead of winter.Speaking at a National Security and Defense Council meeting on winter resilience, the Ukrainian president did not rule out the idea that stalling missile supplies from western allies were “aimed at making Ukraine, so to speak, more willing to compromise” in peace talks with Russia.After meeting Nato’s Mark Rutte, Zelenskyy said: “It…

The Commission — which has a workforce of some 30,000 — hired a chief confidential counsellor, Lene Naesager, to deal with staff harassment issues, in May 2024. She has a team of 40 counsellors across the Commission and its executive agencies. Since September 2024, the chief counsellor, who reports to Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin, has received 960 reports from “colleagues feeling harassed, alleged harassers, witnesses, managers and HR correspondents,” according to a Commission spokesperson. However, the chief counsellor “has no mandate to investigate and is not entitled legally to qualify the conduct as harassment as defined in the Staff Regulations,” the…

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has told allies that it is considering a major financial campaign to support the Republican Senate nominee in the Michigan general election this fall, after it failed its biggest test of the primary season on Tuesday.AIPAC’s super PAC spent $32 million in an unsuccessful effort to boost Representative Haley Stevens over Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a relentless critic of Israel, during the state’s Democratic primary.After Dr. El-Sayed’s victory, the group is unbowed and now appears willing to put what is expected to be tens of millions of dollars behind Mike Rogers, the Republican, as some…

A federal judge in Texas ruled on Wednesday that a strict permitting process for short-barreled guns and suppressors under the National Firearms Act was unconstitutional because Republicans in Congress had removed a $200 tax for a permit.Without the tax, Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas wrote, Congress had no legal basis to impose permit requirements for the weapons.Gun rights groups and gun manufacturers, many of whom had filed and supported the lawsuit, immediately claimed a major victory, while gun-control lobbyists said the ruling would in effect deregulate dangerous firearms and accessories that had been restricted since…

Google is making some significant AI leadership changes, including a major shift for Google DeepMind leader Demis Hassabis.Hassabis will become the chair of Google DeepMind and the chief scientist at Alphabet, CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Wednesday. Hassabis will continue to lead Alphabet’s Isomorphic Labs, which aims to use AI to develop drugs. Koray Kavukcuoglu, formerly DeepMind’s CTO, is stepping up to become Google’s SVP of DeepMind and will report to Pichai. Kavukcuoglu will remain Google’s chief AI architect as well.“​​As you’ve heard me say many times, I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human…

SkillOpt is a text-space optimizer developed by a team of researchers from Microsoft, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University, and Fudan University. SkillOpt trains a single natural-language skill document while the target model stays frozen. An optimizer model reads scored rollouts and proposes bounded add/delete/replace edits. A held-out selection split accepts an edit only when the score strictly improves. The exported artifact is one file, best_skill.md. The transfer tables report three columns. Baseline is the target’s no-skill score. Direct is SkillOpt trained in-domain on that exact target. Transferred applies a skill trained elsewhere, with no further optimization. The useful comparison…