Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Christopher Harborne gave Reform £9m in one day – more than double the amount all trade unions combined gave Labour nationally and its MPs directly for the entirety of the last general election. Once such “largesse” in our politics was rare, now it is commonplace. In 2015, just 1% of donations were from individuals and companies giving £1m or more – by 2024, that figure was a third. The chequebooks of the rich and powerful are already circling the next election. The question for Labour is, are we prepared to pay the price if we refuse to stop them?The prime…

This week, the US Army used a high-energy multipurpose laser to shoot down three drones near the US-Mexico border, which official reports claimed were “posing a physical threat to US military personnel and CBP partners,” referring to Customs and Border Patrol.The operation took place between the night of August 25 and the early morning of August 26 in the vicinity of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and was led by the Joint Task Force Southern Border (JTF-SB), which operates under US Northern Command. Authorities confirmed that, during the operation, agents used technology derived from the Army’s High-Energy Multipurpose Laser…

Threat actors have started exploiting a critical-severity remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the AI low-code platform Langflow, vulnerability intelligence firm VulnCheck warns. Tracked as CVE-2026-0768 (CVSS score of 9.8), the security defect exists within the code validator in Langflow’s custom component editor. Because a user-supplied string is not properly validated before it is used for Python code execution, an attacker could exploit the bug to execute arbitrary code as root without authentication. The security flaw was reported through ZDI in July 2025 and was publicly disclosed as a zero-day in January 2026. All Langflow releases up to version 1.4.2…

Russia’s new crypto law took effect Sept. 1, but investors cannot yet access the full market it promises.Federal Law No. 282-FZ gives cryptocurrency a formal place within Russia’s supervised financial system, allowing regulated investment and cross-border use through brokers, exchanges, management companies, digital depositories and organized trading venues.However, the catch is that many of those channels are not ready.The Bank of Russia is still completing rules that will determine which cryptocurrencies ordinary investors can buy, how trading venues calculate prices, and what capital requirements digital depositories must meet. Firms also have until July 1, 2027, to obtain licenses and bring…

Immunotherapies such as CAR T-cell therapy were originally developed mainly to fight cancer. But scientists are now investigating whether these personalized treatments, made from a patient’s own immune cells, could also help treat or even potentially cure autoimmune diseases. Researchers at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now tested CAR T-cell therapy in six people with particularly severe rheumatoid arthritis. The world’s first clinical trial of its kind, reported in Nature Medicine, produced encouraging early results. Disease activity fell substantially in every participant, and by the end of the observation period, three patients no longer needed rheumatoid arthritis medication. Why Rheumatoid…

By its own account, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is doing a fantastic job. In a March report on its performance in the last fiscal year, the agency boasted that it had concluded 2,127 civil enforcement cases, “the highest in nine years.” That number wasn’t wrong, but it was very misleading, an Inside Climate News analysis of EPA data reveals.  For starters, the 2025 fiscal year included the last three-and-a-half months of Joe Biden’s presidency. Comparing years beginning on Jan. 20 casts the current EPA’s record in a much less forgiving light. New lawsuits filed against the most egregious polluters—one…

Canadian oil and gas company Valeura Energy is accelerating the redevelopment of its field in the Gulf of Thailand by bringing the project’s potential first oil forward to the early second quarter of 2027, around two months ahead of its original schedule. Shelf Enterprise, formerly known as Maersk Completer, rig; Source: Maersk Drilling (archive), now part of Noble Valeura Energy has disclosed its intention to accelerate its Wassana field redevelopment project on block G10/48 off the coast of Thailand. The firm has finalized all commercial arrangements and contractual amendments to start installation of the Wassana central processing platform (CPP) in…

For more than a year now, I’ve been investigating how youth sports organizations have failed to protect kids from sexual abuse, and the gaps in the system that have allowed coaches banned for misconduct to keep working with young athletes.  So far, I’ve shown that one major nonprofit sports organization, the Amateur Athletic Union, has become a haven for coaches accused of abuse. I identified eight coaches who are still working with kids under the AAU despite having been banned by SafeSport, a center created by Congress to protect kids from abuse in sports that has a public list anyone…

Following the first strikes in the US-Iran war for a month, this week, United States President Donald Trump appeared to signal a new phase in the war, which marked its first six months on Friday last week.“We’re going to hit them hard … there will be a response,” Trump told reporters on Monday, shortly after Iran launched missile attacks on US military sites in Jordan in response to its strikes on Iran’s Larak Island the previous night.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listUS news outlet Axios reported Washington may be switching to a new “no war, no peace” strategy…

The proposal is dominating the French political news cycle after a lawmaker from Le Pen’s National Rally said Sunday that wearing the hijab in public would become a fineable offense if she took office. Le Pen is currently polling with a double-digit lead ahead of the first round of the spring 2027 French presidential election. Left-wing political leaders and civil liberties advocates in France lambasted Le Pen’s proposal as Islamophobic and discriminatory. The hijab is a headscarf worn by some Muslim women. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leading leftist candidate for next year’s presidential election, according to the most recent polling, accused…