Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Gaza City – Early on Saturday morning, Rana Totah held her two sons’ hands as she walked them to school in al-Katiba, Gaza City, watching them return to a routine they had almost forgotten.For Totah, 30, the morning was more than the first day of a new school year. It was a return to family life interrupted by nearly three years of war and displacement after Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listDisplaced from Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood to al-Katiba in western Gaza City, Totah spent the previous night preparing her…

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper has warned the UK’s economic growth is being held back by a “computer says no” approach.She unveiled a 30-page growth plan aimed at removing barriers to business as part of her speech to the Lib Dem conference in Brighton.Cooper, who is also the party’s Treasury spokesperson, said too many ideas, start-ups and research started in Britain but ended up being taken overseas. She also outlined a new Growth and Defence Partnership with the EU to reverse the economic damage of Brexit, that she claimed is currently costing the UK £90bn a year in lost…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The price of biodiesel for shipping has fallen to an all-time low this week and is cheaper than most conventional marine fuels, as the conflict in the Middle East drives up diesel costs.The cost of the alternative fuel at the port of Rotterdam, home to the world’s largest cluster of biofuel production, fell as low as $985 a tonne on Monday, according to pricing agency Argus, the lowest on record and down from as much as $1,388 in July, as producers cut…

The TV world has been a pot of controversy thanks to a two-hour-and-15-minute video from Gamers Nexus claiming LG TVs are nefariously spying on everything you do. They can record and store audio even when they seem to be off, track everything you watch, and could even be hacked remotely and turned into covert surveillance devices. LG TV owners, and tech enthusiasts in general, are furious, and a hurried response from LG has done little to calm the situation.Some of the claims in the video may be based on speculation and assumptions, but many of the core concerns are real…

In brief SpaceX’s AI unit held informal internal talks about buying customer and operational data from failed startups to train Grok. The approach echoes Google’s $10 million bankruptcy-auction win for Spirit Airlines’ business records. SpaceXAI told staff in August it would train Grok on the entirety of SpaceX’s own internal records, with Musk telling employees the model would effectively absorb who they are. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been talking, internally, about buying the leftover customer files of startups that already went under. Not licensing data from companies that are still operating and can say no. Buying the digital estate of…

Mars’ innermost moon, Phobos, has puzzled planetary scientists for decades. One of the biggest unanswered questions is where it came from. Some researchers think Phobos is an asteroid that was captured by Mars, while others argue that it formed from debris thrown into orbit after a massive object slammed into the planet. Solving that mystery may depend on something scientists still know surprisingly little about: what Phobos looks like on the inside. Researchers are now trying to narrow down the possibilities by studying subtle characteristics of the moon, including its gravity and motion. At the recent European Geosciences Union general…

20/09/2026 – 11:53Mass drone barrage on Moscow kills two Hundreds of drones targeting Moscow and its surrounding region killed at least two people and damaged a major refinery on the final day of Russia’s parliamentary elections, the authorities said. The capital’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that more than 1,600 drones had been intercepted and shot down, 450 of which were aimed at Moscow. 20/09/2026 – 11:45 Putin says Europe is ‘preparing for war’ 20/09/2026 – 11:33Mass drone barrage on Moscow kills two, hit oil refinery Flame and smoke is seen rising from Moscow’s oil refinery in the south east of the…

Benchmarking has become the industry norm for how AI companies validate their models’ capabilities and, when the metrics swing in their favor, stand out from competitors and advertise their superiority. In other words, good benchmarks pretty much always mean good PR. Unfortunately, companies have also figured out how to outwit legacy benchmarking systems — many of which are older, and not built to measure the capabilities of modern models. Vals, a startup formed in 2024, says that it is on a mission to fix this very imperfect system. In the span of less than two years, the company has established…

Grayscale’s Zcash ETF (ZCSH) plans a 3-for-1 forward share split, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.At the close of trading on Sept. 28, shareholders will receive two extra shares for each one they hold, according to the filing.The forward split is expected to decrease the price per share of the fund, according to a Grayscale press release, with a proportionate increase in the number of shares outstanding.Hypothetically, this means that if you owned 10 shares valued at $300 each for a total $3,000 before the split, afterward you will own 30 shares valued at $100…

Drywood termites are remarkably good at disappearing into the very material they destroy. Instead of building obvious nests, they can spend nearly their entire lives hidden inside beams, framing, furniture, and other dry wood, slowly carving out galleries as a colony grows. That hidden existence makes them difficult to find and difficult to eliminate. But researchers at the University of California, Riverside identified a biological weakness that termites cannot hide from: they have to molt. A study published in 2025 in the Journal of Economic Entomology showed that bistrifluron, an insect growth regulator that interferes with the formation of a…