Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Since the fighting erupted, banking services in Tigray have been suspended by the government. Access to the internet has also been cut – though it is not clear who ordered the closure.A separate source in Alamata told the BBC there was a worsening humanitarian crisis in the area, as the town swelled with people fleeing fighting.”All the residents of the surrounding areas entered the town of Alamata by walking on foot for as long as an hour, hoping the town would be safe.”Unfortunately, everything is blocked – no banking service, no money transfer, no power, no internet, no phone. Hence…

For U.S. passport applicants, the days of tracking down photo booths and waiting in endless lines at the post office are almost over.Starting next year, Americans seeking their first passports will be able to apply entirely online, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Tuesday. He was speaking at an event introducing America.gov, a new A.I.-powered website intended to answer Americans’ questions about the federal government.“You’re not going any longer to some drugstore to get your picture taken behind a white screen,” Mr. Rubio said, according to a transcript of his comments provided by the State Department. Applicants will be…

The U.S. government is reportedly alerting millions of current and former U.S. military service members and staff that their personal information was stolen during a months-long breach of the Pentagon’s personnel records, the latest in a spate of thefts involving federal workers’ data in recent months. A data breach notification from the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) shared on Reddit says that several unauthorized users exploited a security vulnerability in an unspecified file-sharing system over several months between October 2025 and mid-July 2026. The breach exposed personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, alongside a person’s name, date of birth,…

Google’s Mandiant and Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) have published details on attacks exploiting the NetScaler zero-days that Citrix patched over the weekend. The vulnerabilities are tracked as CVE-2026-88771 and CVE-2026-88772, and they affect NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway instances. Attackers can exploit these critical flaws for unauthenticated remote code execution.  Before Citrix released patches, government cybersecurity agencies and security firms took the rare step of urging administrators to disconnect affected NetScaler appliances from the internet immediately while zero-day exploitation investigations were ongoing. Mandiant and GTIG, whose report focuses on the exploitation of CVE-2026-88772, spotted attacks in late September. However, their…

Kalshi is ending a trader-volume incentive program nearly a year early as scrutiny of activity in its crypto markets intensifies.The prediction-market operator told the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that its Volume Incentive Program will terminate no earlier than Oct. 13, according to a Sept. 28 filing. The program had previously been scheduled to run until Oct. 1, 2027, making the change a significant acceleration of its planned end date.The decision comes as Kalshi faces questions over trading patterns in its perpetual futures markets. The CFTC has reportedly examined activity after researchers identified repetitive trades around fixed dollar amounts, including…

Anyone who has ever heated a pot of water knows that temperature depends on more than how hot something gets. Time matters too. Yet marine heatwaves (MHWs) have traditionally been studied as distinct events with clearly defined beginnings and endings. New research led by William & Mary’s VIMS & Batten School suggests that approach may overlook a major part of the heat marine ecosystems actually experience. The researchers developed a framework for measuring cumulative exposure not only during MHWs, but also during the extended periods of unusually warm water that can occur before and after them. Marine heatwaves are part…

Decades of consolidation have pushed thousands of dairy farms out of business, as rising costs for feed, fertilizer, labor and other inputs have made it increasingly difficult for smaller operations to survive. As of 2022, industrial-scale farms with at least 2,500 cows account for about 45% of all U.S. milk sales.But consolidation is not limited to farms. The dairy cooperatives that represent farmers have also grown larger, increasingly operating more like corporations than the small, farmer-focused organizations they once were. Most dairy farmers sell their milk through cooperatives. But the number of dairy co-ops has fallen from more than 1,900…

Passenger Yaniv Hayun, who was later greeted and described as a hero by Netanyahu, said in a video released by the prime minister’s office that he and others were trying to open the cockpit door, but the stabbed pilot was very close to it. Before the pilot collapsed, the injured man managed to open the door, Hayun said. He said that inside, the attacker was “trying to destroy the instruments in order to disable the plane”.Hayun then described putting the attacker in a chokehold and pulling him outside of the cockpit before other passengers helped to pin him down.He added…

Senior Downing Street officials have been reaching out to thinktanks and pollsters as they look to test public support for the UK rejoining the EU.Aides to Andy Burnham have been talking to EU experts in a range of organisations about how the public would view a promise to rejoin, as momentum builds behind including such a pledge in the next Labour manifesto.Some in No 10 are keen to promise that Labour would at least negotiate over re-entry to the bloc, something Burnham has previously said he wants to see happen “in his lifetime”. Others are nervous, however, that making such…

The Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Bryant, has said an end to the Drumcree parade dispute is “tantalisingly close”, as the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition signalled it would accept a document setting out a resolution if the Orange Order did so.Breandán Mac Cionnaith, the leader of the nationalist group, said on Wednesday afternoon he had been through the document drawn up by Bryant and his team.“Obviously, I can’t divulge what is in it,” he said after a meeting with Bryant. “But if it’s accepted by the Orange Order, it will be accepted by us.”Earlier in the day, Bryant urged parties to…