Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

China has warned there is a “high risk” that a lake which formed after the recent landslide near the Nepal-Tibet border may burst, causing a second flood downstream.The warning comes after Wednesday’s deadly flash flood in the same area which scientists say was triggered by the collapse of a mountain glacier into a river.As of Friday morning, an estimated 2.5 million cubic metres of water had accumulated at the barrier lake, according to state broadcaster CCTV. A barrier lake is a body of water formed when debris dams up a river.Officials said that three million cubic metres of water is…

Of course, calling a political opponent spineless or likening them to a jellyfish is a classic move. British politicians are particularly keen on this method of attack (a sting operation!). Conservative politician Michael Gove in 2024 likened Keir Starmer to a jellyfish, claiming he is “transparent, spineless and swept along by the tide.” He didn’t say whether Starmer also has only one hole used for both eating and expelling waste. In 2008, David Cameron (who would go on to become the chinos-wearing assassin responsible for Brexit) said he’d seen “more spine in a bunch of jellyfish” than in then-Prime Minister…

On Thursday, a judge ruled that the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic earlier this year was unconstitutional, delivering the AI lab a win in a monthslong rollercoaster of a battle with the Trump administration.The lawsuit, filed in March in a California district court, accused the Trump administration of unlawfully retaliating against Anthropic for setting “red lines,” or unacceptable military use cases of its AI technology.“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Judge Rita F. Lin, a district judge in the northern district of California, wrote in the ruling.She also wrote…

Google has released Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, a speech-to-text model for real-time voice interfaces and recorded audio. It ships as two endpoints, not one. gemini-3.5-transcribe handles pre-recorded files through the Interactions API. gemini-3.5-transcribe-live handles bidirectional streaming through the Live API. Google reports average word error rates of 4.0% streaming and 2.6% non-streaming, as measured by Artificial Analysis. Time to final transcription improves 70% over Chirp 3, the previous model. Automatic detection covers more than 85 languages, including mid-sentence code-switching. The split between the two endpoints is the part worth planning around. They do not share the same feature set, limits, or…

A pro-Russian hacker group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for a cyberattack that has affected multiple Norwegian government digital services over the past three days. The cyberattack has been ongoing since Monday, said Are Kvistad, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Digitalization Agency (Digdir), the state body in charge of making Norway’s public services more digital and user-friendly, told The Associated Press. “It’s the biggest attack against Digdir solutions that we have ever experienced,” Kvistad said. The denial-of-service attacks meant that hackers pushed massive traffic toward the agency in order to block services, including one that enables citizens to use one login…

South Korean financial group Mirae Asset plans to build a 150 trillion won ($109 billion) digital asset business around Digital X, the crypto exchange formerly known as Korbit, according to The Korea Times.The report said Digital X will focus on crypto, stablecoins, real-world assets and security token offerings, with plans to tokenize physical assets including gold, silver and electricity.The expansion plans follow Mirae Asset Consulting’s acquisition of a 97.15% stake in Korbit in July for a cumulative 141.4 billion won. The exchange was subsequently rebranded as Digital X, marking the first time an affiliate of a South Korean financial group acquired…

Among the 63 U.S. national parks, few are as defined by a single river’s floodplain as Congaree National Park in South Carolina. While the features are also prominent in other parks, a full 80 percent of Congaree National Park lies within the Congaree River floodplain. It’s a place home to one of the largest intact tracts of old-growth bottomland hardwood forests in the United States. In this image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9, the river winds through the forested plain, along with curving bands of green that trace old channels, ridges, and swales left behind…

The resumption of a crow-shooting campaign in Singapore has revived intense debate over lethal wildlife management in the highly urbanized city-state. Government officials revived the culling program in response to public complaints about crow attacks on pedestrians and cyclists, reports contributor Robin Hicks for Mongabay. In a public statement in March announcing the resumption of crow shooting, National Development Minister Chee Hong Tat said that alternative measures such as trapping the birds, tree pruning, and removing nearly 9,000 nests in 2025 had proved insufficient. How Choon Beng, director of wildlife management at the National Parks Board, told Hicks…

In July, China underscored its expanding strategic reach across the Pacific by sending a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from the South China Sea into the Pacific Ocean. Likely flying over the Philippines and passing just south of Guam, the missile splashed down within the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone. This aggressive act, which came with little forewarning just hours after Australia signed a treaty with Fiji, drew condemnation across the Pacific, with regional leaders decrying the provocation and accusing Beijing of deliberately escalating tensions. But this was far from an isolated incident. Instead, it underscores a fundamental geopolitical reality: The…

28/08/2026 – 06:48 28/08/2026 – 06:48🎥 ‘Extremely challenging’ conditions hamper Nepal-Tibet flood rescue efforts With more than 1,000 people still missing after the devastating flash flood that hit Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, international rescue teams are working to locate survivors. But, as FRANCE 24’s Navodita Kumari reports, they are facing “extremely challenging” conditions due to the weather, mountainous terrain and lack of infrastructure. 28/08/2026 – 06:44China halts rescue at Tibet disaster epicentre over flood risk China paused a rescue operation due to the high risk of renewed flooding in Tibet where hundreds remain missing after a deadly mudslide hit…