Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Reform UK begin their annual conference in Birmingham a bigger party than they were a year ago, their numbers swelled at Westminster, at Holyrood, in the Senedd and in local authorities.But they also gather amid significant political headwinds, much of which revolve around money.There was that whopping £5m gift to Nigel Farage from Christopher Harborne, the Thailand based British billionaire, and the long running row about whether the money should have been declared by Farage once he became an MP.Then there is, among other things, the Metropolitan Police investigation into donations to the party during the last general election campaign.Reform…

The Builders Stage is returning to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, bringing together founders, startup operators, and investors for practical conversations on what it takes to build and scale successful companies. Hear from startup and venture leaders shaping the tech ecosystem, including Grant Lee, CEO and co-founder of Gamma; Leah Solivan, founder and general partner at Precedent.vc; Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google; and more. Through candid conversations and real-world case studies, speakers will share actionable insights on fundraising, hiring, go-to-market strategy, AI, and the operational decisions that fuel startup growth. Join more than 10,000 founders, investors, startup operators, and technology leaders at Moscone Center in San Francisco on October 13-15. Register…

As AI adoption gathers pace, so does the evolution of the infrastructure that supports it. New standards and connectors keep appearing, and the ones that catch on spread through the ecosystem within months rather than years. That speed strengthens what AI can do, but makes it very difficult for security teams to maintain sufficient protections.MCP servers are a prime example. MCP became the preferred standard for connecting AI agents to outside tools and data within 12 months of publication, and by December 2025 were being used by every major coding assistant and most leading LLMs. As a protocol, MCP has…

Google and Mozilla on Tuesday announced patches for dozens of vulnerabilities across Chrome and Firefox, including critical- and high-severity flaws. A fresh Chrome 152 update has been rolled out with fixes for 26 bugs, two of which are critical-severity use-after-free issues in Shared Tab Groups (CVE-2026-84353) and WebGL (CVE-2026-84352). The update also addresses nine high-severity security defects, including use-after-free, incorrect authorization, information leak, improper input validation, uninitialized resource, and buffer overflow weaknesses. The remaining 15 vulnerabilities are medium- and low-severity issues. Per Google’s advisory, only three of the flaws were reported by external researchers, but no bug bounty reward has…

Bitcoin (BTC) sold off into the early European trading hours on Wednesday to hit local lows of $76,400, per data from CoinGecko.Key points: Bitcoin’s apparent demand indicator turns negative again, with BTC price dropping to a local low of $76,400 before reclaiming $77,000.USD/JPY drops sharply to 158.5, sparking speculation that another yen intervention has taken place.Asian equities sell off sharply as South Korea’s KOSPI falls 4.0% to 6,562.72 and Japan’s Nikkei 225 drops 2.9% to 64,325.64.Bitcoin’s apparent demand flips negative againThe move in BTC came after US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded outflows of $236 million the day prior. Data…

● The Aug. 26 flash floods on the Nepal-China border wiped out or badly damaged 281 megawatts of installed capacity and damaged 388 MW under construction in Nepal, with losses estimated to be hundreds of billions of Nepali rupees. With transmission lines on the Trishuli riverbank washed away, another 150 MW of power is cut off from the national grid.Surface-built powerhouses, dams and desanders near the riverbed suffered the worst damage, while underground powerhouses held up well, pointing to project locations, longer access tunnels, and early-warning systems as key resilience factors, though these upgrades could raise project costs by…

The New World screwworm is a flesh-eating fly that preys on livestock and other animals. Now imagine an entire plant producing millions of such insects a week. The larvae feasts on a mixture of cellulose, egg, milk and cow’s blood that mimics flesh.The result is a pungent, sickly sweet odor of rotting tissue — one that invades your nostrils and lingers.“You get used to it,” said Dr. José Luis Quintero, who helps run such a laboratory in Mexico. “It’s part of the job.”Mexican officials have been racing to combat the first major screwworm infestation in the country in decades, one…

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded with one short sentence when asked at a press conference whether Moscow might strike military facilities in the UK in response to British arms supplies to Ukraine.”That’s a secret. A military secret.”Military secret is not a “yes”. And not a “no”. It leaves us hanging.And that, I suspect, is the point.Those two words feel like psychological pressure from the Kremlin: to keep Britain guessing – and stressing – over Moscow’s intentions, as well as to encourage the UK to think twice about its staunch support for Ukraine.It reminds me of a newspaper article I read…

The countdown is on. Two months out from Andy Burnham’s inaugural autumn budget, bank executives are wringing their hands over whether the government will target their bumper profits with fresh taxes.The chancellor, John Healey, is reportedly considering a windfall tax on both banks and oil companies in the late October Westminster setpiece.The UK’s four largest lenders – HSBC, NatWest, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group – have generated £200bn in pre-tax profits over the past five years, largely off the back of rising interest rates.They are now in the crosshairs of campaigners – including the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and campaign group…

If you’ve been shopping for an Amazon Kindle or smart speaker in the past week, you might’ve noticed some brand-new prices. That’s right: Amazon has hiked prices by $20 to $100 on its popular devices like the Echo, Eero, and Fire Stick.It’s not alone in this move. We’ve seen similar increases from other tech companies like Apple and Kobo, both of which raised prices this summer. Amazon declined to comment to WIRED as to why it made these price hikes, but one Amazon spokesperson commented to CNET that it was due to rising prices in memory and storage components.It’s still…