Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The humorous tale of Morris the staffie (The pet I’ll never forget, 27 July) reminded me of when I returned from work one evening wondering why my husband hadn’t roasted the joint of beef I’d taken out from the freezer that morning for the evening meal. There was no trace of it anywhere, nor the plate it was on. Next day, evidence of the butcher’s string tied round the meat appeared during our dog walk, but we never found the plate.Jeanette HamiltonBuxton, Derbyshire Dr Terry Scragg (Letters, 27 July) would like to know what the “short illness” is that features…

A powerful earthquake struck Japan’s Kumamoto prefecture on the southwestern island of Kyushu on Tuesday, causing widespread damage, collapsing buildings and starting fires.The quake was followed by aftershocks as emergency crews continued rescue operations and assessed the scale of the destruction.Recommended Stories list of 1 itemend of listHere is what we know so far:What happened in Japan?The magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the Kumamoto prefecture on Kyushu island at 4:30pm (07:30 GMT) on Tuesday.It was initially reported as magnitude 7.1, but the US Geological Survey (USGS) later revised its estimate to 6.8.A tsunami advisory was issued immediately after the earthquake but…

Longtime allies remain frustrated by the Trump administration’s refusal to give a heads-up before the American-Israeli airstrikes on Iran began in February, according to two European officials. And they are wary of jumping into a risky new mission when they have not been treated as partners by the White House.There was “no consultation with Congress, no consultation with allies, just boom,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said in an interview. Trump is “deeply frustrated that Congress isn’t supporting it, the American people aren’t supporting it, our core allies aren’t supporting it,” he added.“ You can’t be surprised when you throw a…

Former President Barack Obama will hold a fund-raiser in late August for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a fresh sign that Democrats intend to continue their aggressive push to gerrymander congressional districts ahead of the 2028 election.The fund-raiser will take place on Martha’s Vineyard and will be hosted by Eric Holder, the former attorney general under Mr. Obama and the chairman of the committee, which is the main Democratic group focused on redistricting.While Democrats appear to have exhausted all of their options for new maps before the midterm elections this year, their focus on the 2028 election still requires investment…

Are you there, Senator McConnell? It’s me, Governor Beshear.More than six weeks after Senator Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader from Kentucky, entered the hospital and vanished from public life, the state’s ambitious Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, sent him a letter.“I am addressing this letter to Senator McConnell under the assumption that he is capable of reading and responding verbally, and not incapacitated by means of consciousness or cognition,” the governor began. He went on to call on Mr. McConnell to “directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.”With his…

NurPhoto / Contributor via Getty ImagesFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.AI labs are shipping new models nonstop. Besides being better and faster than their predecessors, every new model isn’t guaranteed to be a major step change, despite how the company’s PR may wax poetic about them. Model strengths really emerge in context: Where are competitor models lacking or excelling? Which models have outstanding specialties, and which are just catching up to industry standards?  Also: How we test AI at ZDNETOur Model Release Tracker helps you make sense of where models stand relative to each other, and whether they’re worth…

Some 24,000 Internet-exposed server management controllers are vulnerable to a more than 20-year-old flaw that gives attackers a way to crack authentication credentials and gain privileged access to the underlying servers.The issue can evade conventional security tools because these management controllers operate independently of the server’s operating system, kernel, containers, and workloads, and are therefore nearly invisible at those layers.Researchers at Lava discovered the flaw when researching Internet-exposed Baseboard Management Controllers (BMCs) for vulnerabilities and said it found evidence of attackers having exploited the issue in the wild.A Highly Privileged InterfaceA BMC is a small, dedicated processor built into a…

Blockchain security company AmericanFortress has unveiled a cryptographic scheme that it says could protect existing cryptocurrency wallets from future quantum attacks without requiring users to move funds, rotate keys or change wallet addresses.Unlike most proposed post-quantum approaches, AmericanFortress said its scheme allows existing wallet addresses to remain unchanged while adding post-quantum protection.The company published the proposal in a technical paper on the Cryptography ePrint Archive, describing the scheme as compatible with seed-based hierarchical deterministic wallets used across Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL) and other blockchain networks that rely on elliptic curve cryptography. The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed.According…

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a semiconductor device that uses laser light to direct the movement of electrons without requiring an applied electric field or electrical power source. The device was primarily designed to investigate fundamental physics and demonstrate a behavior that had never previously been observed. However, the discovery could eventually support technologies that combine optics and electronics, including advanced sensing, imaging, and telecommunications. It may also lead to better ways of transmitting signals between devices and encoding more information within them. “This electrical device that we manufactured at the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility has the potential…

George Monbiot is wrong in his belief that chicken farms harm rivers (Besieged by lobbyists, will UK ministers protect our ecosystems? No, they’ll chicken out, 23 July). Our farms have no direct contact with the soil and operate under permits issued and regulated by the Environment Agency, giving transparency on how manure is managed on site and where it goes when it leaves.The chicken manure produced in the UK is used either for energy generation or as a fertiliser by other farming sectors. Each destination has full traceability, and manure will often be transported across the country to be used where it is most…