Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Healy-Rae had his window rolled down and was talking on the phone to his son Jackie, a Kerry councilman, as a man walked into the road and started punching the politician in the face. While the attacker fled on foot, police helped Healy-Rae reach a nearby hospital to have his facial wounds stitched up. Prime Minister Micheál Martin said the attack on Healy-Rae — who had been a junior minister in his coalition government before his surprise resignation in April — could mark a watershed in how Irish politicians operate in public. “We’ve never had this before in our society,”…

The UK must fully commit to reaching net zero by 2050, Andy Burnham has argued in his strongest comments yet on the issue, saying it is no longer possible for Britons to believe they are not already affected by a changing climate.Writing for the Guardian about new plans for a mass of community-led local green energy projects, the prime minister said the UK must “believe in itself”, and set out his determination to reach net zero targets, which have been rejected by the Conservatives and Reform UK.The tone marks a contrast to the summer, when Burnham faced criticism for a…

Jada Jones/ZDNET ZDNET’s key takeaways Bose announces two clip-on open earbuds. The Sport Open is ideal for exercise, while the Ultra Open (2nd Gen) provides a premium experience. Both will be available beginning Oct. 1. Following the release of the second-gen QuietComfort Headphones, Bose returns with two new open-ear options: the Sport Open Earbuds and the Ultra Open Earbuds (2nd Gen).  Also: Sony vs. Bose isn’t a draw when it comes to open-style earbuds – here’s how they differ Bose’s open-ear clip-on earbuds are among our favorites, and the company is expanding its lineup to accommodate different types of open-ear…

Swati KhandelwalSep 17, 2026Vulnerability / DNS Security Every release of the Unbound DNS resolver before 1.26.1 has a critical heap overflow in its DNSSEC validator, maintainer NLnet Labs said in an advisory on Wednesday. An attacker who controls a malicious zone and queries a vulnerable resolver can trigger it, enabling remote code execution. Unbound 1.26.1, released the same day, fixes the bug, tracked as CVE-2026-81642, along with eight other flaws. One of the eight, CVE-2026-82717, is a heap corruption bug in CNAME synthesis reported by Ben Morris of Anthropic. It could also lead to remote code execution “under certain systems…

The House Financial Services Committee advanced legislation to put a federal Bitcoin reserve into statute on Sept. 16, approving a framework that would require a 20-year holding period and annual independently audited reporting.The panel voted 28–21 to report H.R. 8957 favorably, moving the American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 beyond its introduction stage. The measure still requires further legislative action before its proposed custody and holding rules can become law.The legislative effort builds on an existing executive-policy framework. President Donald Trump’s March 6, 2025 order directed the establishment of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and separate digital asset stockpile, restricted disposal…

This year, AI agents have been escaping their confines to go on hacking sprees. In July, news broke that AI agents had snuck out of what was supposed to be an isolated test environment at OpenAI. The agents communicated on a secret message board as they breached private systems at the company Hugging Face, searching for answers to the test they were taking. One posted that this behavior was “outside intended scope.” Then it wrote, “However task impossible, peers doing it. We should continue.” It’s as if the bots knew they were doing something wrong and did it anyway. Sign…

As tiger populations in India grow and disperse beyond protected areas, encounters with people are increasing, prompting repeated capture and relocation operations by the forest department.High density doesn’t necessarily mean India has too many tigers. Experts caution that a region’s carrying capacity is influenced by available habitat and prey, the human population and other factors.While some landscapes support large tiger populations, potential habitat is relatively empty in other areas. Distribution and landscape management are top challenges, conservationists say.With around 30% of India’s tigers living outside its 58 tiger reserves, a landscape-scale management that maintains and reconnects wildlife corridors is…

The second hybrid power ocean energy construction vessel (OECV) that Norwegian shipbuilder VARD is constructing for compatriot shipping group Island Offshore is on its way to Norway to undergo completion.Source: Screenshot/ VARD via LinkedIn Island Offshore placed an order with VARD for the design and construction of the first hybrid power OECV in May 2024, named Island Evolution, also agreeing on an option for two more vessels. The order for the second vessel, called Island Explorer, came in three months later. The keel laying for Island Evolution took place in May 2025, with the keel laying for the second OECV following in September 2025.…

There’s a widespread consensus in Germany that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is a xenophobic far-right party that threatens the republic’s postwar political order. But there’s no accord on remedies—and, relatedly, no agreement about the sources of the scourge . What seems clear is that the AfD’s variety of national populism is most heavily anchored in eastern Germany and traces back to the country’s Cold War division, the terms of its eventual unification, and East-West relations since 1990. But that surface-level agreement about recent history masks deeper disagreements about what exactly happened during those periods. There’s a widespread consensus…

False claims that a second plane never hit the Twin Towers are being shared online in the aftermath of the 25th anniversary of 9/11.A Facebook post shares a video which appears to show an explosion on the South Tower—the second tower to be attacked—without a plane hitting it. The text on the video reads: “Where is the plane? When amateur footage gets released long after the event…” This is false. There is ample evidence that two planes hit the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers causing them to collapse.The same clip was shared five years ago, and fact checkers explained then…