Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

He formed The Frames one year before The Commitments, going on to record six studio albums including Dance The Devil, For The Birds and Irish chart topper Burn The Maps.The band had a cult following outside the island but were huge on it, buoyed by radio-friendly singles like Revelate, Pavement Tune and Lay Me Down.In 2005, he released an album with Marketa Irglova as The Swell Season. Over the course of 16 years, they would record and release three albums, but it was their exploits on film that sent them stratospheric.Once, the low-budget musical they co-starred in, directed by former…

While there was no official US confirmation of military assistance to Ukraine, Zelensky said afterwards that Trump had agreed to give Ukraine licences for domestic production of Patriot missiles.”He accepted that he will give us licences,” Ukraine’s leader told Fox News. The BBC asked the White House for comment.On his DC visit, Zelensky also met with leaders from the behemoth US weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.In a statement on X, which was accompanied by photos of himself posing with company executives, he wrote: “We talked about our joint capabilities regarding Patriots and other systems.”Our teams are already working on specific solutions…

Angela Rayner returned to the cabinet as secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, months after settling her tax affairs with HM Revenue and Customs.She quit as Sir Keir Starmer’s deputy PM and housing secretary after the then prime minister’s independent ethics adviser found that she had broken the ministerial code by underpaying stamp duty when she bought a flat in May 2025.As housing secretary, Rayner will be a key figure in delivering Burnham’s plans to devolve power from Westminster and oversee a large-scale expansion of council house building.Born in Stockport, Greater Manchester, in 1980, Rayner grew up…

Spotify has introduced a new Running Mode feature that makes it easier to curate playlists around your workout goals, music tastes, and desired beats per minute (BPM). The aim is to help you “spend less time hunting for the right music and more time moving,” according to Spotify’s announcement, providing customizable running presets and optional coaching features.Running Mode is an AI-powered experience that builds on personalization capabilities that were introduced with Prompted Playlists last year, with Spotify finding that fitness-based prompts have been some of the most popular uses for that feature. It requires a Premium subscription and can be…

Most of us in IT spend our energy trying to keep attackers out. But a recent incident investigated by Huntress tells us a lot about what happens after an attacker gets in (and why it matters just as much). Once an attacker has gained initial access, they don’t rush straight to the smash-and-grab, doing things like stealing data, encrypting files, or dropping ransomware. Instead, they take time to dwell and settle in—creating backdoors, covering their tracks, and disabling the tools meant to catch them. This post breaks down a real incident from June where an attacker did an unusually thorough…

U.S. approval of perpetual futures contracts could expose traders to unexpected tax and regulatory uncertainty if the products are ultimately determined to be swaps rather than futures, an issue that has received little public attention, according to CME Group Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy.”There’s a consequence that nobody’s talking about,” Duffy said in an interview with CoinDesk. “There’s ambiguity right there, from a tax perspective, for all U.S. participants now.”The comments come as CME continues its legal challenge against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over the regulator’s approval of perpetual futures contracts in the U.S. Both sides await a…

High in the forested canopy of Democratic Republic of Congo, an all-black monkey turned its back to a photographer’s camera. The partial image taken in 2008 revealed little more than the monkey’s dark coat and part of its tail. But it was enough to get Junior Amboko, a biological primatologist at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, and other researchers wondering if the photo revealed a species unknown to science. Over the next several years, Amboko and his colleagues returned to the dense, closed-canopy forest, where the mystery monkey shared its range with seven other monkey species and bonobos. From…

Indonesian authorities are wrongfully prosecuting environmental defenders and Indigenous leaders who protest deforestation, pollution and land grabs, says a new report by international nonprofit Human Rights Watch (HRW). In its 70-page report, HRW uses 15 publicly recorded cases from 2015 to 2025 as examples to suggest how police use complaints from companies and politicians to criminalize activists and community leaders demanding customary land rights. According to the report, while most cases were initiated before he took office in 2024, President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has escalated crackdowns on free expression. The government has increasingly deployed the military to expand…

As part of its long-term strategy to build an integrated portfolio of technologies and engineering capabilities for the subsea market, Swiss technology group Rosenxt Group has, through its U.S. business, acquired Houston-based Zupt, a provider of subsea metrology, advanced 3D subsea inspection, offshore survey engineering, and technologies supporting renewable offshore installations.Source: Rosenxt Rosenxt Holding USA’s acquisition of the 2005-founded company is said to complement the group’s existing subsea and offshore capabilities with advanced navigation, positioning and autonomy technologies, as well as expand the operational footprint and customer network in North America. “For nearly twenty years, Zupt has focused on solving…

By the end of 2020, Kentucky’s newly elected Gov. Andy Beshear had one goal above all others: Keep people alive. The state was battling two merciless threats. COVID-19 was killing hundreds of people each month, and deadly drug overdoses were among the highest in the nation. Calling addiction a disease that breeds in isolation, Beshear worried people would stop seeking treatment for fear of contracting COVID-19.  So Beshear set out to make drug treatment easier to access. Kentucky joined more than 40 other states in lifting some restrictions on Medicaid, which served most of the Kentuckians enrolled in substance abuse…