Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Reform diverted In the weeks before the election, polls put Craig firmly in the lead. Reform UK had initially been expected to pose a strong challenge, but some of its resources were diverted South as Nigel Farage called a separate by-election in his constituency of Clacton in a bid to shut down scrutiny of his finances. The Greens set about targeting areas in which they knew they already had support. While out door-knocking in Longsight, an area in the constituency of Gorton and Denton, candidate Geraldine Coggins said they were “going for the hat-trick,” after winning a councilor and an…

Sharge, the company that makes delightful retro Mac-shaped chargers and see-inside batteries, is finally impressing me with a portable SSD. I couldn’t recommend the Sharge Disk, Disk Plus, or even the Disk Pro, but I’d be happy to own the new Disk Pro 2 Ultra.This isn’t just a drive. It’s a 4K HDMI dock and a USB-C hub too. It’s a veritable USB-C Swiss Army Knife for all your main gadgets: laptop, tablet, phone, Steam Deck, even the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.And this USB multitool has built-in MagSafe pattern magnets to stick it to your iPhone, Pixel, or anything…

Bitsight says some cheap Android TV boxes have shipped with apps that rewrite their hardware identity to mimic Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, or Vivo phones, then click ads on websites run by the same operators. Researchers named the operation Fuyao and attributed it to Zhejiang Fengwo IoT Technology Co., Ltd., a mainland China company founded in 2019. The same apps have a second job. When a box detects an HDMI signal, it usually switches to relaying other people’s traffic through the owner’s broadband line as a SOCKS5 exit node. With HDMI off, it goes back to waiting for ad-fraud tasks. Bitsight…

Key points: Bond yields have been going up since the beginning of the Iran war, widely attributed to inflation expectations due to energy pricesHowever, the five-year inflation expectation priced into Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities is 2.2% and trending down since MayThe driver appears to be rising real yields with bearish implications for yield-free assets like Bitcoin Continuation of Q2 bond sellingAfter yields reached local lows in early March, US government debt has been undergoing a multi-month sell-off. This week, after the most recent meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), 30-year Treasury yields made headlines by reaching the highest level since 2007. In…

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of a very British book seeking to make sense of what seemed at the time a very British problem. Half a century later, however, it turns out it was about Pete Hegseth all along. On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, by British psychologist Norman F. Dixon, has long been considered a must-read, even within U.S. military circles that relentlessly cull their own reading lists. Dixon sought to answer a question that had long bedeviled the British military, most especially in the wake of World War I: Why are lions always seemingly…

Peru’s constitutional court has overturned a 15-year jail sentence handed to the country’s former president after he was found guilty of corruption.Ollanta Humala, who led the country from 2011 to 2016, was convicted in 2025 of accepting illegal funds from the Venezuelan president and Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to fund his election campaigns in 2006 and 2011. The former president had said he would appeal against the verdict, and now Peru’s constitutional court has declared the entire criminal proceedings against him null and void. Humala was released from Barbadillo Prison in the capital Lima on Friday night, with a crowd…

In the first round, Craig secured 47% of the vote, compared with Astley’s 21%.This meant the ballot papers from voters who did not select either of them as their first choice were brought back into play.They were checked to see if the second-preference votes were for either the Labour or Reform candidate.They were then added to the first-preference votes.Craig expanded her already significant lead.More than two million people across Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs were eligible to vote in the contest but turnout was just under 25%.Analysis of the votes showed that Craig came top of the poll in the first…

For Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, 19, there is no middle ground. Either he builds a company as valuable as Google, he says, or he fails and ends up on the streets. He started coding at 15 in his native Kazakhstan, completed a couple of summer programs in San Francisco, and cold-DM’ed every Y Combinator founder he could find on LinkedIn until one gave him an angel check for his first company at age 17.   That company, now the YC-backed Nozomio, is an API index for AI agents — a tool that helps AI agents find and use software services — and has…

Online advertising firm Adform suffered a supply-chain attack that delivered cryptocurrency-stealing scripts to websites using its ad platform, replacing wallet addresses copied to visitors’ clipboards with ones controlled by an attacker. Adform is one of Europe’s largest adtech firms, providing a full-stack platform that includes Demand-Side Platform (DSP), Supply-Side Platform (SSP), ad servers, and management tools. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont discovered the malicious activity, saying that it stemmed from ‘trackpoint-async.js,’ Adform’s JavaScript tracking script served from ‘s2.adform.net’ and embedded in every website using the advertising platform. According to the researcher, the trojanized JavaScript continuously monitors the clipboard of users visiting websites…

In brief The FCC added foreign-made advanced robots and connected power inverters to its banned list. The agency’s definition of “advanced robotic devices” is so broad it covers vacuum cleaners like Roombas and other common devices. The restrictions apply only to new models seeking FCC approval. Existing products already approved or purchased are not affected. The U.S. government earlier this week announced an import ban on “advanced robotic devices” from foreign countries, with its sights set specifically on China. But it’s not just humanoids the government wants to stop from entering the United States—the ban extends to robot vacuum cleaners…