Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report. It’s August, and everyone is in vacation mode, but we’ve still got plenty of national security news for you this week. Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The Iran war continues to reveal U.S. weaknesses, Ukraine once again displays its drone prowess, and hackers target U.S. water supplies. Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report. It’s August, and everyone is in vacation mode, but we’ve still got plenty of national security news for you this week. Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The Iran war continues to reveal U.S.…

What was claimed A video shows a Moroccan migrant filming himself with a selfie stick while swimming into the Spanish territory of Ceuta off the coast of North Africa. Our verdict False. This video was actually taken in a harbour in El Jadida, Morocco, which is over 250 miles away from Ceuta. A video clip of a man filming himself swimming using a selfie stick has been shared online with false claims it shows a “Moroccan migrant” entering the Spanish territory of Ceuta on the North African coast.On 30 July, around 60,000 migrants entered Ceuta from Morocco, with many swimming…

Voting has closed in one of the UK’s more unusual and least tense byelections, with Nigel Farage set for a decisive if arguably empty victory against dozens of independent, fringe, extreme or otherwise oddball opponents.The Reform UK leader sought re-election to his Clacton seat in early July in an attempt to regain the political initiative following weeks of scrutiny over gifts he received and other aspects of his financial affairs.He framed the byelection as a chance for local voters to show their disdain for mainstream politics in a “people versus the establishment” contest, but was caught out after all the…

Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev wrote that the Russian state nuclear company was still on schedule with two new reactors at Paks despite Hungary’s change of government in April, which saw Magyar oust Russia-friendly incumbent Viktor Orbán. Concrete preparation for Unit 5 is more than 80 percent complete, he said, while work on Unit 6 is advancing and reactor components are already being manufactured. “We are ready for dialogue,” Likhachev said, adding that Rosatom had received no questions from Hungary’s new government. Magyar challenged that account hours later. Under the original contract, Paks II should have been operating by 2024, he…

University leaders are warning of financial turmoil in British higher education after new figures suggested a collapse in international student numbers would deprive the sector of vital income and undermine its future.The sector’s leaders called on the government to rethink the levy on international student fees imposed under Keir Starmer, as a former universities minister warned there was a risk of a university “going under” because of the financial crisis.While UK sixth-formers enjoyed improved A-level results, and a record 194,800 English 18-year-olds were accepted by their first choice of university, vice-chancellors who spoke to the Guardian said it would not…

For nearly a year, the American Civil Liberties Union has been waiting for an answer to a legal question arising from one of the earliest pillars of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration agenda. Could President Trump use the sweeping powers of an 18th-century wartime law to summarily deport people accused of belonging to a Venezuelan street gang?In September, a three-judge panel of the conservative federal appeals court in New Orleans provided a response, rejecting Mr. Trump’s use of the law, the Alien Enemies Act, after finding that the American homeland was not under invasion by the gang, Tren de Aragua.On…

J Studios/DigitalVision/Getty ImagesFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET’s key takeawaysOpenAI’s ChatGPT Desktop App for Linux is an Electron-based program.The application is proprietary, not open source.Frankly, it’s not that impressive. I’ll keep using ChatGPT in the browser.OpenAI has released a preview of its ChatGPT desktop application for Linux. With this, OpenAI now has a native client on all major desktop operating systems and is placing its coding agent, Codex, alongside ChatGPT and its Work environment.That’s the good news. The bad news is that, for me at least, ChatGPT continues to be annoyingly inaccurate. While I can cosplay…

Authorities in Ukraine shut down 94 fraudulent call centers across the country that lured people into investment scams or tried to obtain access to bank accounts. The operation occurred this week, and police officers conducted a total of 411 searches following an investigation that involved the National Police, Ukraine’s Security Service, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the German police. According to the Ukrainian police, the fraudsters ran various schemes to obtain money from victims or gain access to their bank accounts. In some cases, they posed as bank officers and called victims under the pretense of suspicious transactions, threatening to…

Bitcoin has fallen from a record high of roughly $126,080 in October to trade recently in the low-$60,000s — a decline of nearly 50% that has rattled sentiment. But it may just be business as usual.  According to a Thursday report from asset manager VanEck, Bitcoin’s current slump tracks the asset’s historical four-year halving cycle, in which mining rewards are periodically cut in half, tightening new supply and often preceding a bear phase. The firm framed this downturn as a recurring feature of Bitcoin’s market structure rather than a break from it. VanEck’s GEO framework — which tracks Global Liquidity,…

New research from the University of East Anglia suggests that a lost papal letter could change how historians understand the events of 1066 and the Norman Conquest. Surviving excerpts of the letter, preserved in the Vatican archives, point to a major political struggle in Rome that may have influenced the fate of England. The evidence suggests King Harold may have weakened his position well before the Battle of Hastings by supporting the wrong faction during a bitter conflict between two competing popes. If that interpretation is correct, the outcome of 1066 may have depended not only on what happened on…