Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Claims spread on social media suggesting that the CEO of Taylor Farms, the producer whose iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico has been linked to the summer 2026 cyclosporiasis outbreak, donated to U.S. President Donald Trump to prevent the company’s lettuce from being inspected. There are several versions of the claim, each of which provides different amounts of evidence. We’ve left this story unrated as some claims were not independently verifiable, while others varied in their level of truthfulness. We contacted Taylor Farms, the Food and Drug Administration and the White House for this story. Both the White House and…

Myanmar’s detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has met a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the aid organisation has confirmed.The meeting on Monday ⁠followed years of questions over the wellbeing of the 81-year-old, whose whereabouts and health condition have been largely unknown since the elected civilian government she led was ousted by a military coup in February 2021.Little has been seen or heard of Aung San Suu Kyi since late 2022. Myanmar’s military-backed administrations have repeatedly claimed she is in “good health”, even as international pressure has grown on the country’s ​government to allow…

Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice is being investigated by the parliamentary standards watchdog over an allegation he failed to declare an interest. The investigation was opened on Tuesday 28 July and was published on the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner website on Monday.Tice said the complaint related to a Commons debate about Israeli influence and whether he should have referenced his register of interests. Reform said Tice did not mention in his 22 June speech that he had been on a trip to Israel last September, funded by a pro-Israel lobbying group.The trip has been listed in Tice’s Declaration of Members’…

Chinese tech giant Alibaba released what it says is its largest and “most capable AI model to date,” claiming performance rivalling the best systems from US frontier labs Anthropic and OpenAI, as well as domestic rivals like Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3. Alibaba said it was making the model, Qwen3.8-Max, widely available to users in a blog post published on Monday. The release had been expected after the company previewed the model last month, when it claimed it was “second only to Fable 5,” Anthropic’s flagship.The open release of another highly capable Chinese AI model adds to sky-high tensions along multiple…

GSK has entered into a research collaboration with British biotechnology company Relation Therapeutics worth up to $110 million, expanding the companies’ existing work in AI-assisted drug discovery.Under the agreement, Relation will generate large-scale datasets measuring how human cells respond to genetic changes and drug interventions. The data will be used to train AI models designed to identify potential drug targets, including models within Relation’s MORGAN platform.The agreement places biological data generation alongside AI model development. Relation’s research approach links computational analysis with experiments that generate new information on human cells.The collaboration builds on earlier agreements between GSK and Relation focused…

Ravie LakshmananAug 03, 2026Mobile Security / Vulnerability An unknown Chinese-threat actor has been observed running a campaign targeting Apple iOS devices by leveraging a publicly leaked version of the DarkSword exploit kit. Attack surface management platform Censys said it identified the threat actor running more than 100 web properties, most of which are fake Amazon Web Services (AWS) sign-in pages on a domain that also hosts the exploit toolkit. “The hosting concentrates in Hong Kong but reaches into Japan, the United States, and Europe,” Censys researcher Aidan Holland said in an analysis published on July 31, 2026. DarkSword, discovered and…

PowerCompute, a Bitcoin miner expanding into high-performance computing, disclosed that its US Digital subsidiary borrowed about $18.07 million from Arch Lending under two bridge notes signed July 27.The notes had a listed July 31 maturity, four days after signing, and permitted payment until 5 p.m. ET on Aug. 1. The proceeds were intended to fund repayment in full of Galaxy Digital and Liebel debt while PowerCompute finalized an anticipated Bitcoin-secured term facility. Related ReadingHut 8 AI landlord data center strategy turns Bitcoin collateral into bridge capitalHut 8’s $16.8 billion AI data center lease base shows how power access, project debt,…

Two government watchdog groups have demanded investigations into whether Federal Communications Commission members violated ethics requirements by accepting luxury gala tickets from Paramount as the company sought government approval for its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The complaints filed by Democracy Defenders Fund and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington cite a recent ProPublica investigation that detailed how CBS or its parent company, now Paramount, have for years given FCC commissioners tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala, which the television network sponsors. The commissioners accepted the gifts even as the FCC was reviewing or about to…

Claim: An image circulating in July 2026 authentically showed surveillance footage of a gorilla named Julius screaming for help after his human caretaker collapsed. Rating: In July 2026, an image circulated online that supposedly showed security footage of a gorilla named Julius screaming for help after his “favorite caretaker” collapsed.  The image — which appeared to be a collage of two surveillance footage stills, one before and one after the caretaker collapsed — and associated story spread on Facebook (screenshotted) and Instagram. Snopes readers contacted us to ask whether it was an authentic image of a gorilla and his caretaker or a…

Just eight months ago, Juan Orlando Hernández was beginning a 45-year prison sentence in a West Virginia federal penitentiary for sweeping drug trafficking and weapons charges.Now, Mr. Hernández is back on home soil to face justice in his country.A former president of Honduras, he was extradited to the United States in 2022 following charges of operating his country as a “narco-state” and saying that he would “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos” by flooding the United States with cocaine. Two years ago, he was found guilty in a U.S. federal court. But after his family and…