Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) has strengthened its hold on a giant oilfield in the Caspian Sea by acquiring Itochu Corporation’s participating interest, increasing its ownership in the oil and gas project off the coast of Azerbaijan as the Japanese trading and investment conglomerate exits the project. ACE platform on ACG field; Source: BP SOCAR has acquired Itochu’s participating interest in the BP-operated Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) project, with the relevant transaction documents regarding the purchase of participating interest signed and the acquisition carried out in compliance with the requirements of the legislation, the firm’s internal regulatory…

Reading Time: 6 minutes Tom Ritter and his son, Cory, had worked together with their families every harvest season for the past 20 years. “My daughter loved to ride in the semi during harvest with my dad,” said Cory. “I remember seeing them leave the field together, and just the time that he took and the importance that he put on spending that quality time with family.” But last year’s harvest was different; instead of Tom and Cory working together, tragedy hit the family on Aug. 20. “Someone drove by and saw the semi was overflowing. The corn was still…

Next weekmarks the fifth anniversary of the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban as US coalition troops were evacuated from the country. That’s five years for the terrorists to have consolidated their grip, so now is a good time to reflect on what the “coalition of the willing” left behind.Through vindictive edict after edict, these five years have brought an ever-escalating repression of Afghan girls and women – with far too little done by any outside authority to speak up or stand up against the most egregious denial of girls’ rights in the world today.Barely reported was the shocking massacre…

On July 30, days after more than 60,000 people crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco, Italy announced it was reintroducing border controls with Spain.Ceuta’s president, Juan Jesus Vivas, told broadcaster Telecinco that between 3,000 and 5,000 migrants remain in the enclave, as the vast majority have returned. At least 72 people died in the crossing.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listBecause Italy and Spain do not share a land border, the measure affects people travelling between the two countries by air and sea.“In Italy, a lot of the media coverage was saying [Italian Prime Minister Giorgia]…

Campaigners have renewed calls for a windfall tax on UK banks that could raise £19bn towards Andy Burnham’s cost of living agenda, after HSBC raked in $10.1bn (£7.5bn) worth of profits in the second quarter of the year.Bosses at HSBC reported on Tuesday that profits rose 60% year on year in the three months to the end of June, helped by fees from wealth management and insurance business, as well as higher interest rates, which allow the bank to charge more for loans and mortgages.The HSBC chief executive, Georges Elhedery, said he would consider increasing banker bonuses on the back…

Advanced Data Protection is an opt-in feature that allows users to turn on a higher level of protection for data stored in iCloud, such as back-ups, Drive storage, photos and voice memos.It is secured using end-to-end encryption – meaning not even Apple would be able to see its contents.The government’s requests for Apple to permit it access to data held under this system were issued under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA).It includes powers allowing the government to issue secret notices – called technical capability notices – which can secretly force companies to provide UK security services with ways to access…

Closing this security gap isn’t just important to mitigate the financial and reputational damage of the worst-case scenario of a data breach. It’s also increasingly important to keep regulators happy. Both NIS2 and DORA, while not AI-focused regulations, certainly make a strong case for looking at AI capabilities through the lens of resilience and security. Not seeing is not knowing One of the most acute challenges with API security is the proliferation of shadow and zombie APIs. Modern cloud and microservices environments are highly distributed, with APIs scattered everywhere – many of which are forgotten or have never even been…

Block’s Bitcoin Engineering and Security team and independent Bitcoin Core developers have traced the recent batch of Coinkite Coldcard wallet losses to a specific firmware defect that exposed a hidden weakness in Bitcoin self-custody before any user touched a seed phrase.The bug diverted the device’s random-number generation from its STM32 hardware source to MicroPython’s deterministic Yasmarang fallback.Mk2 and Mk3 devices running firmware 4.0.1 through 4.1.9 produced seeds whose cryptographic randomness collapsed into a small, searchable set.Mk4, Q, and Mk5 models were less severely affected, producing seeds with about 72 bits of entropy, still well under the 128 bits specified by…

Australia has confirmed the country’s first mass mortality of native seabirds from the deadly strain of avian influenza, H5N1. On Aug. 1, authorities confirmed the positive cases among 49 dead and 35 sick greater crested terns (Thalasseus bergii) at Baudin Rocks, an island roughly 5 kilometers (3 miles) off South Australia’s southeast coast near Cape Jaffa. The H5 strain of avian influenza virus, which has killed millions of wild and domestic birds and mammals across the globe, was first detected on Australia’s shores in late June in two migratory seabirds, a brown skua (Stercorarius antarcticus) and a northern…

Golar LNG, a Bermuda-headquartered owner and operator of liquefied natural gas (LNG) midstream infrastructure, has landed a multimillion-dollar financing to fuel its floating LNG (FLNG) expansion. FLNG MKII design with 3.5 mtpa; Source: Golar LNG Golar LNG has announced the closing of a new $600 million senior secured revolving credit facility (RCF), which further strengthens the firm’s balance sheet flexibility and facilitates further FLNG growth. The facility received strong backing from a consortium of banks, including ABN AMRO, Citibank, Danske Bank, and Standard Chartered Bank. The RCF is secured by the company’s investment in the MKII FLNG currently being converted…