Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Andy Burnham said his government would be “grounded in fiscal responsibility” as his first Prime Minister’s Questions took place against a backdrop of rising UK borrowing costs.Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called on Burnham to say where spending would be cut and how he would deal with the UK’s increasing debt, after the cost of borrowing for the UK reached a new 18-year high on Wednesday.He blamed the previous Tory government, saying the “turbulence on global markets are because of that exposure that they left behind”.Burnham took over from Sir Keir Starmer in July before Parliament’s summer recess, meaning Wednesday was…

OpenAI’s new Astra model will use a reasoning technique called “recurrent depth” that allows it to operate outside of the sequential thinking that characterizes most reasoning models, The Information reported on Tuesday. This technique, also called “opaque recurrence,” will likely make the model’s chain of thought more difficult to monitor — and that has AI safety experts rattled. While Astra’s use of the technique is reportedly limited, its emergence has still raised significant concerns among AI safety experts. “I am extremely concerned by the reporting that Astra uses opaque recurrence,” wrote Redwood CEO Buck Shlegeris in a post after the…

Google on Wednesday announced Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, which it described as its most capable cybersecurity model, and has made it available to a set of trusted defenders via a new initiative called the Fairwind Program. “The Fairwind Program gives high-priority defenders (like governments, healthcare providers, and telecommunications services) early access to advanced models that help them build better defenses, before new threats arrive,” Google said. “So defenders have an early advantage, to help them protect vital infrastructure – which in turn protects people who rely on those systems.” The tech giant said it’s currently working with over 650 partners…

Solana says it processed a record 5.2 billion non-vote transactions in August, a total it described as 19% above July.The milestone arrived with a sharply different measure: 21Shares calculated that gross network revenue, including fees and tips generated by network use, fell to $141 million in the first half of 2026 from $1.09 billion a year earlier.The figures cover different periods. The transaction count captures the month ended Aug. 31, while the revenue comparison covers the six months through June. Together, they show activity accelerating after a half-year in which Solana generated far less fee and tip revenue than during the…

Persistent financial hardship may speed up age-related cognitive decline, according to new research led by University College London (UCL). Published in Innovation in Aging, the study analyzed information from 2,759 people in the UK who completed questionnaires across much of their lives through the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (also known as the 1946 British cohort study). Researchers found that people who faced ongoing financial difficulties or persistently low income during early and middle adulthood tended to perform worse on cognitive tests by the age of 53. Among a subgroup who later underwent brain scans, persistent low income…

Available for over a yearA record one in seven people in England were prescribed antidepressants in the last year, according to NHS figures. More than nine million patients now take the drugs, and while they may be essential in many cases, the prevalence of mental ill-health – stress, anxiety, burnout – is a moral issue as well as a medical one. Why are more people, including under-18s, presenting to their GP with these conditions, and what should we do about it? Many clinicians believe anti-depressants serve an important function, including in milder cases, particularly where access to talking therapies is…

So much for a new way of doing politics. Even before parliament had convened under his premiership, Andy Burnham had already stumbled at the first hurdle (Burnham drops support for political funding cap aimed at curbing mega-donors, 26 August).Despite widespread support for hard caps to political donations, and despite years of affirming support for such measures, a whisper of opposition from the union lobby has produced a screeching U-turn.It is no use promising to return power to the people via devolution, employee ownership and so on, and then refusing to address the power of the big beasts of the politics…

Claim: In August 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump posted an image showing a six-fingered U.S. Navy sailor eating a burger with the caption, “OUR MILITARY EATS THE BEST! Nobody feeds our brave troops better than me. The food is AMAZING–the best military food EVER! Other countries wish they could feed their soldiers this well. TOTAL WIN!” Rating: A rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump posted an image of a U.S. Navy soldier with a six-fingered right hand eating a burger with the caption, “OUR MILITARY EATS THE BEST! Nobody feeds our brave troops better than me,” spread online in August 2026.  For…

French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday at a celebratory event for an exhibition of the famed Bayeux Tapestry in Britain that their two countries can “forge a bond as close as the threads of this thousand-year-old embroidery”. Speaking at the British Museum, accompanied by King Charles III and UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Macron said he hoped the allies would be remembered centuries later as having chosen to forge that bond. King Charles III referred to the historic loan to Britain as “a precious symbol of trust”. French President Emmanuel Macron had joined King Charles III and new British Prime Minister…

Andy Burnham moved to calm volatile bond markets on Wednesday as surging borrowing costs threatened to wreck plans for his government’s crucial first budget next month.After a days-long sell-off of government bonds – and with the chancellor, John Healey, facing the prospect of sharply reduced spending power, Burnham used his first appearance at prime minister’s questions to promise decisions would be “grounded in fiscal responsibility”.That was widely seen as an attempt to soothe investors after his statement to parliament on Tuesday, in which he made bold promises of more public control of utilities, further interventions on the cost of living…