Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

At least 72 people are believed to have died late last week, most of them drowned or crushed as they joined tens of thousands of others in attempting to swim from Moroccan waters to the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. Yet the scale of that human tragedy has barely registered, as Donald Trump has decried an “invasion” while European politicians exploit the crisis to serve their own agendas. If further evidence were needed of the way that the radical right increasingly distorts the terms of the migration debate in the EU, the last few days have furnished it.More needs to be understood about the drivers behind…

What was claimed Almost 1% of, or one in 100, people crossing the Channel in small boats are dying. Our verdict Incorrect—the actual figure is much less. Recorded figures suggest there’s been around one death per 1,190 small boat arrivals between 2018 and 2025. Discussing small boat crossings in the English Channel in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf claimed that “almost 1%, one in 100, of people making this journey are dying”.That’s not correct. The data we have suggests the actual proportion is closer to 1 in 1,000.…

  The footage shows at least seven people floundering in the muddy river, trying to keep from being swept away by the current. An eighth person seems to be swimming towards them to help. A few seconds later, the man who is filming the scene and describing what is happening turns the camera to show what caused the chaos below: a wooden bridge has broken in half and both sides have collapsed into the water. Large groups of people are gathered on both banks.  This video filmed by an eyewitness on June 3, 2026 shows a collapsed bridge in the…

Poland on Monday appealed a Brussels court judgment ordering it to take delivery of roughly 64 million unwanted Covid-19 doses and pay Pfizer about €1.3 billion. Warsaw also asked judges to freeze the ruling’s provisional enforcement while the challenge is heard. “The decision of the court of first instance does not take into account all the relevant factual and legal circumstances of the case,” the Health Ministry said in a statement. It added that Poland would use “all legal means of defense,” but declined to disclose its arguments or evidence, citing the need to protect the state’s interests. The ruling…

Nigel Farage has told the BBC he discussed the “potential liabilities” of returning to politics before the 2024 general election.It comes after The Sunday Times, external reported Farage had negotiated a deal in March and April 2024 with then-Reform leader Richard Tice to return to lead the party.Farage confirmed he spoke with Tice in spring 2024 to scope out what would happen to Reform’s finances if he returned but said it “wasn’t a deal, it wasn’t an agreement”, adding that talks came “quite some time after” he received a £5m gift from a billionaire donor.Labour said Farage’s remarks had “blown…

Valar Atomics confirmed the whisperings that it was raising a giant round led by Sequoia on Monday. The startup’s founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor announced that the company has raised $1 billion in equity, with Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire joining its board, and that it also secured a $200 million line of credit from Erebor and other banks. While the nuclear startup did not disclose its valuation, Bloomberg reported that it was $6 billion. Valar is building small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) — essentially miniaturized, factory-built power plants intended to be cheaper and faster to build than traditional reactors. In…

Article 50 of the EU AI Act has entered into force, setting transparency obligations for AI providers and deployers operating across the bloc.Enterprises running generative AI tools now have to comply with Article 50, which requires providers and deployers of certain AI systems to tell people when they’re interacting with a machine, and to mark AI-generated content so it can be flagged as such.Advancements in generative systems have made it harder to tell AI interaction from human conversation. Distinguishing AI-generated images from authentic ones is getting harder too. People are now also being exposed to emotion recognition and biometric categorisation…

N-able is warning customers that hackers are exploiting an authentication bypass vulnerability (CVE-2026-18577) affecting both hosted and on-premises N-central servers. The company on Sunday released hotfix 2026.3.1.7 to address the security issue, which affects all versions of N-central before 2026.3. On August 1st, the vendor disclosed that it detected active exploitation and launched an investigation that uncovered additional security concerns affecting all versions of N-central, its flagship Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) platform. In an update the next day, the company announced the hotfix and strongly recommended all customers to upgrade immediately to the new release. Hosted deployments already received…

In brief A solo miner solved Bitcoin block 960,804 overnight, taking a reward worth close to $200,000. The payout was 3.16 BTC, the 3.125 BTC subsidy plus 0.03 BTC in fees from 4,243 transactions. It was the 317th solo block found through CKPool. A solo Bitcoin miner solved block 960,804 at 02:11 UTC on Monday, netting a reward worth about $200,000.The block paid 3.15689830 BTC, made up of the 3.125 BTC subsidy and 0.032 BTC in fees from the 4,243 transactions it carried. It was the 317th solo block found through CKPool, the pseudonymous developer known as Dr -ck said,…

Imagine a superhero whose power is releasing an odor so strong their enemies stop fighting. For naked mole-rats, such power lies with the queen.  A potent compound allows naked mole-rat queens to control their colonies, researchers report July 15 in Nature. Individuals exposed to the odor will not fight or mate until the queen and her scent are gone.   Naked mole-rats live in cooperative societies where a single female reproduces while others forage and care for offspring. The queen maintains her status by repressing the sexual activity of everyone else. When she dies, high-ranking members become sexually active and will fight viciously to crown a new queen.   Sign up for our…