Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

I do so agree with Polly Hudson’s piece about how the bereaved are addressed (My mum has died – and there is one kind of response I can’t stand, 26 August). After my teenage daughter was killed in a road traffic accident and I returned to work people would keep asking: “How are you?”. To which the only response could have been: “If you really want to know have you an hour or two to spare?”The idea that walking down a corridor en route to the office kettle was the venue for any rational response was plainly idiotic. A more…

The top prosecutor in NSW says she discussed a list of barristers to lead an independent review into controversial findings against her office with the state’s attorney general, before he appointed someone she had known “professionally and socially” for nearly 30 years.Last month, a state parliamentary committee voted 4-3 to find that the New South Wales director of public prosecutions (DPP), Sally Dowling SC, had given false evidence about the pitching of a story about an Indigenous child performing an acknowledgement of country at a sentencing hearing to radio station 2GB.Dowling admitted her office had pitched the story, but denied…

In its lawsuit against OpenAI, Apple filed what it calls “shocking evidence” to bolster its allegations that former employees stole trade secrets for OpenAI’s benefit. These new details emerged after the legal counsel for former Apple employee Chang Liu — who now works at OpenAI — handed over Liu’s old Apple work laptop for investigation earlier this month. Apple now alleges that Liu used a confidential Apple circuit schematic in his work at OpenAI, as well as a tool that shares a name with an internal Apple engineering application. The company claims that OpenAI was “well-aware” of Liu’s access to…

Bitmine Immersion Technologies extended its Ether buying streak to 65 consecutive weeks, adding 53,501 ETH last week as a broader crypto market recovery lifted the value of its burgeoning digital asset portfolio despite sizable unrealized losses.The latest purchase brought Bitmine’s holdings to more than 5.9 million ETH, valued at roughly $14.8 billion based on an Ether price of $2,511 as of Sunday. The company now owns 4.9% of Ethereum’s 120.7 million circulating supply, putting it within striking distance of its stated goal of owning 5%.Bitmine’s chairman, Tom Lee, said Ether, Bitcoin (BTC) and Solana (SOL) have been the three best-performing…

Daniela Quintero is a Colombian journalist and sociologist who develops and edits cross-border investigations as investigations editor at Mongabay Latam.Her work combines field reporting with official records, environmental databases, satellite imagery, scientific literature, and legal documents.Quintero has reported on glass-eel fishing in the Dominican Republic and the smuggling and laundering of illegally mined Amazonian gold through Venezuela.Quintero spoke with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler in the Colombian Amazon in July 2026 about her career, investigative methods, and interest in environmental journalism.See All Key Ideas High gold prices have fueled illegal mining across the Amazon. As Brazil…

The claim that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency cut funding for a U.S. Agency for International Development and NASA program in early 2025 that provided early warning for floods in Nepal is still under investigation. The rumor stems from X posts by Jeremy Konyndyk, a former Biden- and Obama-era USAID official, about the SERVIR program, which he wrote carried out “flood prediction, early warning, disaster readiness, glacier inventories, and mapping dangerous glacial lakes” in Nepal. According to the SERVIR program’s website in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, which includes Nepal, the program had “concluded” in January 2025. Snopes…

“I still have a 50% hope that he is alive because there is an oxygen system inside,” Sita Pandey, whose husband was working in the plant when the floods hit, told Nepalese daily Kantipur.Nepal relies heavily on hydropower and has spent years developing the projects along its mountainous river systems. At least 11 projects either completed or under construction were damaged in the floods, authorities said.Rescuers began pumping air into a tunnel over the weekend, but the families of those trapped say that should have been done earlier.A team was able to get into a tunnel leading to one hydropower…

The Conservatives and Reform UK, however, are preparing to attack his policies, questioning how they will be funded and whether there will be new tax rises.Kemi Badenoch reshuffled her shadow cabinet team on Monday in preparation for this moment. To sharpen her party’s attacks on Labour over its handling of tax and the economy she promoted Andrew Griffith to be her new shadow chancellor.The Conservatives are making much of his past jobs in business. Before entering politics he was chief financial officer and chief operating officer at Sky, and chair of Just Eat.He is promising a Conservative government that would…

As the U.S. government faced shortcomings in the country’s weapons manufacturing, the Pentagon set up a new office that would make investments to help boost defense industrial production.That effort, which began in 2022 during the Biden administration, is now taking a sharp turn with the Pentagon’s involvement in an oil production deal between the United States and Venezuela that President Trump announced on Friday.The Pentagon’s little-known Office of Strategic Capital, which reports to the deputy defense secretary, is the leading U.S. government entity in forming a partnership with a private oil producer whose founder, Alejandro Betancourt López, is a powerful…

Prominent solo investor Lachy Groom has backed a Bengaluru startup attempting an ambitious feat: keeping an aircraft in the sky for more than a year by harvesting energy from ocean winds. Alteon, founded by 20-year-old Samay Sanghvi, announced Tuesday that it raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Groom, with participation from Together Fund, to develop autonomous aircraft inspired by dynamic soaring, a technique albatrosses use to extract energy from the wind. Groom decided he wanted to invest within the first 30 minutes of their first meeting, Sanghvi told TechCrunch. Conventional aircraft need to carry the fuel or…