Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Residents and rescue workers in flood-ravaged valleys of Nepal faced the threat of a new wave of inundation Friday, as scientists warned that debris had blocked rivers upstream, forming fragile dams ready to burst.  In the narrow upper valleys, Wednesday’s flood wave crested over the tops of buildings and homes. It destroyed everything in its path—hydropower plants, farms, solar energy facilities, roads, forests.  As of Friday afternoon, Nepal time, rescuers had recovered 538 bodies and nearly 1,000 people were missing, according to government reports. The debris flow and flooding traveled downstream more than 60 miles into Nepal’s Rasuwa district, eventually…

France’s engineering player Technip Energies has been hired to provide detailed engineering services for a major offshore gas project being developed by ADNOC Offshore, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), adding to the French player’s growing role in the region’s complex energy developments. Illustration; Source: Technip Energies Technip Energies has been awarded a significant contract, representing between €50 million and €250 million of revenue, by Larsen & Toubro Energy Hydrocarbon (LTEH) to provide detailed engineering services for an undisclosed project, which the firm describes as ADNOC Offshore’s major project in the UAE. The…

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at an upcoming referendum in Iceland, more potential flooding in Nepal and Tibet, and looming trilateral defensive drills against North Korean threats. Will Iceland Start Fishing in a Larger Pond? Icelanders will head to the polls on Saturday to vote on whether to restart talks to join the European Union. As U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to seize neighboring Greenland loom over Reykjavik, the tiny Nordic nation is considering discarding its genial global reputation to seek European protection from the White House’s imperial-esque ambitions. Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re…

Claim: Country singer Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library donated books to children in Israel. Rating: Context The organization PJ Library, which provides free books for Jewish children — including children in Israel – was inspired by Parton’s Imagination Library but did not have a formal relationship with it. The Imagination Library operated in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ireland and Australia. Parton expressed support for PJ Library’s efforts in an 2023 interview. Amid news of singer Dolly Parton’s death at age 80 in August 2026, many people looked back at her charitable work through the Imagination Library, an organization she founded that has…

DRC’s is the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak ever recorded, with 5,794 confirmed cases and 2,786 deaths.Published On 28 Aug 202628 Aug 2026The fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak in history has reached two new health zones in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with a total of 60 areas now affected, according to the latest government figures.The two new zones affected are Biena and Manguredjipa in DRC’s North Kivu province, where the fatality rate is much higher than the overall rate of 48 percent, partly due to delayed response efforts, according to data by the Ministry of Health released on Friday.Recommended Stories list…

During Friday’s discussion with the cabinet chiefs, Seibert linked the expected focus on climate to the damage caused by floods and wildfires over the summer, according to the two officials, who were briefed on the gathering. They were granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks. The climate focus comes as von der Leyen’s Commission tries to defend its 2040 emissions-cutting target while responding to mounting pressure from industry and national capitals to limit the economic cost of the green transition. The discussion also touched on how to present AI’s impact on jobs. Von der Leyen’s team has asked the Commission’s…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Chinese actors and online influencers have a new rival: cost-effective advanced AI video generation programmes that are threatening millions of jobs in a once-vibrant area of China’s gig economy.The release of powerful new AI-powered video software, such as tech group ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 model, has allowed digital actors to replace humans, enabling the production of higher-quality original videos more quickly.The digital takeover intensified after this year’s release of Seedance 2.0, said Greg Wollner, a short-drama actor and producer in Beijing. Before its…

Modders are trying out an unofficial version of Nvidia’s DLSS 5 on Skyrim, Cyberpunk 2077, GTA V, and a bunch of other games after code for the AI upscaling tech appeared in an early-access build of NBA 2K27. Members of the RenoDX modding channel on Discord reportedly found a way to extract the DLSS “Neural Rendering” file and apply it to Control before it expanded to other games, as reported earlier by Notebook Check and VideoCardz.In one video, a person shows how Control protagonist Jesse Faden’s facial features become more and less defined as they tweak various DLSS 5 settings…

Ravie LakshmananAug 28, 2026Cellular Security / Encryption Google on Thursday announced new network security protections in Android 17 to bolster connection privacy, address cellular vulnerabilities, and safeguard the privacy of users’ home networks. Topping the list is support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), a privacy standard that prevents networks from eavesdropping on which websites a user is visiting. “This new privacy standard works in tandem with private DNS to obscure the domain names you visit, hiding metadata that can be used to profile you,” Google’s Bram Bonné and Shuaibo Huang said. “By encrypting the destination website name from the very…

In brief Bitcoin dropped as low as $76,877 on Friday after Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s hawkish Jackson Hole keynote, confirming the resistance zone flagged earlier this week. September rate-hike odds jumped to roughly 56% from about 35% a day earlier after Warsh said the Fed still has “work to do” on inflation. Myriad traders are still pricing Bitcoin’s next major move at 77% for $84,000 versus 23% for $55,000, largely unmoved by Friday’s selloff. Bitcoin fell as low as $76,877 on Friday, giving up most of a double-digit weekly gain after Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s first Jackson Hole keynote warned…