Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Sir Ed Davey is calling on the government to immediately cut fuel duty by 10p a litre until Christmas as part of a package of policies aimed at cutting the cost of living.The Liberal Democrat leader is also urging the government to scrap a permanent increase in fuel duty which is set to take effect in January.Fuel duty was frozen under the Conservatives in March 2022 and Sir Keir Starmer’s government continued the freeze, deciding in May to push back a planned 3p increase in September until the end of this year.The Lib Dems claim cutting 10p from fuel duty…

Our current ticket pricing window for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ends next Friday, Sept. 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. After that, prices increase. Save up to $200 when you register before the deadline. Why Disrupt? From October 13-15 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, 10,000+ founders, investors, operators, and tech leaders will walk into TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 looking for companies to invest in, products to use, partners to work with, and technologies worth paying attention to. At Disrupt, you can: Learn what’s next from leaders across AI, fintech, robotics, infrastructure, and more. Meet the right people through 1:1 meetings, AI-powered matchmaking, and dedicated networking opportunities. Find…

 Anthropic said it has chosen Accenture as its first embedded evaluator to help slow the pace of AI development as proposed last week by CEO Dario Amodei.Amodei published a three-step proposal on Sept. 12 to slow the development of AI and allow safeguards to be put in place amid warnings of a potential for catastrophic harm in the wake of swift, unchecked development.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded positively to Amodei’s proposal, although Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang did not, arguing that such regulation was not necessary.Still, Amodei wrote in his proposal that “AI has been advancing…

A growing outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo is drawing attention to a broader problem in global health: how to prepare for dangerous diseases that appear only rarely but can still cause deadly outbreaks. In a review article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Boston University professor Nancy Sullivan argues that outbreak preparedness needs to extend beyond the infectious diseases that receive the most attention. A Rare Relative of Ebola Bundibugyo belongs to the filovirus family, the same group of viruses that includes the much better-known Ebola virus. Despite its potential severity,…

Read this article in Chinese 阅读本文中文版. China’s electric grid has a dirty secret: Despite leading the world in renewable energy expansion, it is also the largest emitter of the planet’s most potent greenhouse gas. Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a synthetic chemical that plays a critical role as an electrical insulator in high-voltage equipment. The gas is odorless, invisible, non-toxic and non-flammable. But it is also a climate killer, 24,300 times more effective at warming the planet than carbon dioxide on a pound-for-pound basis. Once released, sulfur hexafluoride remains in the atmosphere for 1,000 years. Emissions come primarily from the electric power…

It’s the grand final for gunzels. But despite having one of the largest tram networks in the world, Melbourne’s Tramaroos finished second last at this year’s European TramDriver Championship, just ahead of London.The event, held in Warsaw on Saturday, saw 26 teams compete across a series of demanding tasks, inspired – to varying degrees – by tram drivers’ day-to-day work.In smooth stop and go, drivers travelled with a bowl of water attached to the front of the tram – with points deducted for every drop spilled. Other precision tasks involved speed control at 25 km/h, target braking, tram bowling, lateral…

Then came the next bombshell as it emerged that Reform MS for Pen-y-bont Bro Morgannwg Sarah Cooper-Lesadd was defecting to Plaid Cymru.Reform only found out about it after BBC Wales asked the party for a response to the story.Moments earlier she had been sitting on the Reform benches and had been due to speak for the party in the chamber.Most of Plaid Cymru’s MSs – including some government ministers – were only told about the defection plan at their group meeting earlier in the day.The defection needed the group’s approval and some Plaid MSs wanted assurances that Cooper-Lesadd fully understood…

Victims of intrusive police surveillance have accused the government of seeking to cut short the spycops public inquiry that has been examining widespread misconduct committed by undercover officers.The independent judge-led inquiry is scrutinising how officers, who spied on tens of thousands of political activists over more than four decades, carried out abuses such as deceiving women into sexual relationships and fathering children.The inquiry has been running for more than a decade, and is expected to last another two years.The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said she is concerned about the length and cost of the process. It was set up…

B&H Photo is one of our favorite places to shop for camera gear. If you’re ever in New York, head to the store to see the giant overhead conveyor belt system that brings your purchase from the upper floors to the registers downstairs (yes, seriously, here’s a video). Fortunately, B&H Photo’s website is here for the rest of us, with some good deals on photo gear we love.Save on the Latest Gear at B&H PhotoB&H Photo has plenty of great deals, including Nikon’s brand-new Z6III full-frame mirrorless camera for $2,196.95 ($300 off). The Z6III (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a major update to…

Qwen has released Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate, its next-generation real-time simultaneous interpretation model. It listens to live speech, with optional video frames, and returns translated text and speech while the speaker is still talking. The core change is a new Interleave architecture. Qwen reports gains in faithfulness, fluency, and conciseness, with average lagging (LAAL) dropping from 2.8 seconds to 2.3 seconds. The release also adds real-time speaker diarization, synchronized bilingual display, and long-context disambiguation. Deployable? Yes, as a hosted API. It is live on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and QwenCloud as qwen3.8-livetranslate-flash-realtime over WebSocket. What Changed Under the Hood Simultaneous interpretation is a…