Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

When I first started visiting Marseille more than 20 years ago, few could have predicted that France’s then beleaguered second city would become one of the most popular destinations in the most-visited country in the world. Tarnished by stereotypes and home to some of Europe’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, the port city seemed down on its luck, unloved and, in the eyes of many, somewhere to avoid. Tourists stopping at the city’s Saint-Charles station would clutch their bags while waiting for their connecting train to rural Provence, or the beaches of the Côte d’Azur.Two decades on, poverty and drug gang violence…

The tourists come by the busload, disgorging from motorized behemoths that seem improbable for many Irish roads. With cellphones at the ready, they head for the photogenic Dunguaire Castle, a majestic 16th-century bastion rising beside a swan-favored corner of Galway Bay.Overlooking the sea-scented village of Kinvara, Dunguaire (pronounced doon-GWEER-ah) could well be Ireland’s most photographed castle, its image in countless brochures and promotions. But a sign on the entrance gate suggests that Ireland, known as the land of 100,000 welcomes, might have to reduce that number by at least one: “CASTLE & GROUNDS CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC.”There to say hello…

Norway’s King Harald V has died at 89 on Friday, ending a 35-year reign and putting Crown Prince Haakon on the throne at a turbulent moment for the country’s royal family. Harald “passed away peacefully” at 6:35 a.m., local time, the Norwegian royal household announced. Harald’s health deteriorated sharply in his final days. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre on Thursday canceled a trip to Germany, including a planned working dinner with Chancellor Friedrich Merz, to visit the king. Harald had reigned since 1991 and resisted calls to abdicate despite mounting health problems, repeatedly insisting that the oath he took as…

The case centres on questions over clothing expenses claimed by Audrey Wales, 80, who was mayor between 2016 and 2017.The Ballymena councillor spent more than £2,300, but the council did not disclose the full cost when asked for details in an FoI request.Instead its response in 2019 said Wales had spent just £190.The entire bill was only revealed in a second FoI in 2022.In a statement in 2022, Wales said she had sent a cheque in 2019 reimbursing the council for most of the spending to stop “electorally motivated questions”.The cheque was received by Donaghy, but was never cashed.Wales, who…

Meta is updating its AI-powered smart glasses to close a loophole that allowed wearers to keep recording after covering the front-facing LED. Alex Himel, Meta’s vice president of augmented reality, writes in a post on Threads that “the camera will now stop working if the light is covered during a recording.”The company’s line of smart glasses already disables their built-in cameras if someone covers the LED capture light, which blinks to alert others that you’re recording or taking a picture. However, some wearers found that they can bypass these restrictions by covering the LED light after they started recording. This…

Ravie LakshmananAug 28, 2026Vulnerability / Enterprise Security PaperCut has alerted customers that bad actors are actively exploiting a vulnerability impacting all versions of its PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF print management software in zero-day attacks. The company has released an emergency patch for v25 and v26 to address the issue. It said it’s “aware of confirmed customer incidents and is treating this matter with the highest priority.” An investigation into the incident is ongoing. The following indicators of compromise have been shared so far – Alerts from intrusion-detection, endpoint-security, or network-monitoring tools involving the PaperCut Application Server, particularly suspicious post-exploitation…

In brief Sparrow Wallet released version 2.5.4 following an AI-assisted code review. Developer Craig Raw said the review produced most of the update’s fixes. He found no signs of exploitation but recommends updating. Privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet developer Sparrow Wallet released version 2.5.4 on Thursday after an AI-assisted code review that yielded most of the update’s fixes, developer Craig Raw told Decrypt.Raw said the review was prompted primarily by the release of unrestricted Chinese AI models and the new ability to search large codebases for potential exploits. He did not identify the models used to review Sparrow.Myriad: When will OpenAI release…

Nearly 90 years ago, Werner Heisenberg predicted a strange quantum effect known as vacuum birefringence, in which seemingly empty space can change the way light behaves. According to the idea, even a perfect vacuum is not truly empty. Instead, it should contain “virtual particles” that briefly appear and disappear. Despite major advances in nuclear physics since the 1930s and decades of work with particle accelerators, scientists have not been able to conclusively confirm the effect. Now, observations of one of the most extreme objects in the Universe may provide the evidence researchers have been seeking. A team of scientists studied…

A massive genetic analysis of wild tulips has confirmed that Central Asia is the birthplace of tulips, but no single country can rightfully claim the flower originated within its borders.The researchers of the study also traced the closest ancestors of the popular garden tulips down to two possible candidates, Tulipa suaveolens and T. scardica.Brett Wilson, the study’s lead author and co-founder of the IUCN SSC Wild Tulip Specialist Group, told Mongabay that “urgent action is needed … if we are not going to lose a great many of these species.”More than half of all wild tulips assessed on the…

Dolphin Drilling, an Oslo-listed, Aberdeen-headquartered owner and operator of a fleet of harsh-environment mid-water and deepwater semi-submersible drilling rigs, has received a proposal from Lagos-based General Hydrocarbons Limited (GHL) to resolve their long-running arbitration dispute through a combination of cash and potential deployment of its rig in Nigeria. Blackford Dolphin rig; Source: Dolphin Drilling The rigmarole saga, which was set in motion by Dolphin Drilling’s termination of the Blackford Dolphin rig’s contract with the Lagos-based firm and the request for arbitration to pursue the recovery of sums remaining due by GHL, brought an outcome that saw Nigeria’s Federal High Court of Lagos issue an order on July…