Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Astronomers now have their strongest evidence yet that Betelgeuse, one of the best-known stars in the night sky, has a stellar companion. A team led by French astronomer Miguel Montargès used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to capture the clearest image so far of what is believed to be Betelgeuse B, a star orbiting the famous red supergiant. “This is the conclusion of a century-long quest,” says Montargès. “We have shown that Betelgeuse is not single, it is accompanied by a faint stellar companion,” says Montargès, astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris — PSL, France, and…

Jan De Nul, a dredging and offshore contractor, is entering the carbon capture and storage (CCS) market, with offshore rock installation works that one of its vessels is carrying out for the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), a joint venture of BP, Equinor and TotalEnergies, in relation to a development described as the UK’s first offshore CCS project. Simon Stevin vessel; Source: Jan De Nul Group Jan De Nul has announced that it is contributing for the first time to a CCS project that will transport CO2 from industrial areas to permanent storage beneath the North Sea, as a subcontractor to…

Much of the debate over the future of foreign aid rests on a core assumption: that Americans have lost their appetite for it. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it plainly last year when he told officials at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala that foreign aid is “the least popular thing government spends money on.” This perception of unpopularity is shaping the debate over foreign aid’s future in Washington. The prevailing assumption is that any successor to the now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) must be smaller, more transactional, and more narrowly tied to U.S. interests to survive…

Claim: Singer Dolly Parton declined receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom three times, twice from U.S. President Donald Trump and once from former President Joe Biden. Rating: Context Parton revealed she had declined the award from Trump and Biden in a 2021 interview. Their administrations have not commented on her decision. On Aug. 25, 2026, Dolly Parton’s family announced the country music star had died at age 80. In the wake of her death, many people online discussed how she had allegedly declined the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — from both U.S. President Donald…

In a statement, the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) party said it was outraged by the “tragic recurrence of domestic femicides” and accused the government of being passive about the issue.The femicide cases, most of which are attributed to domestic violence, have been reported in different parts of the country.In a video published by state media, the minister for Women’s Empowerment and the Family, Marie-Thérèse Abena Ondoa, condemned the “worrying” rise in the number of the killings, and said the government was working to address the problem.She mentioned a bill to protect women against gender-based violence, which she said was…

Meta’s reported removals of scams and fraud on its platforms in the EU “show that scams are not a marginal phenomenon occurring outside the platform’s main operating model,” but rather one of “the largest and most persistent forms of abuse within the Meta ecosystem,” the deputy PM wrote. Polish authorities and cybersecurity teams have notified Meta multiple times, but the company still doesn’t ensure “an effective and adequate response to scam advertisements,” Gawkowski wrote. A cybersecurity team within Poland’s National Research Institute reported 122 advertisements to Meta as fraudulent and only 13 percent were removed, he said. The deputy PM…

Earlier this summer, Destiny Valencia and her fellow baristas at a Starbucks in San Jose, Calif., were learning to make a new line of specialty drinks when they began to feel sick.The drinks, called blended refreshers, were billed as a “smooth, frozen twist” on the neon-hued, fruit-speckled iced drinks that young people posted on TikTok.The new refreshers included an ingredient called “blending powder,” meant to preserve the drink’s slushy integrity. But as soon as Ms. Valencia started handling the powder, there was a problem: It went airborne.“It kind of creates a smoke cloud,” Ms. Valencia said. Among her colleagues, she…

Birmingham city council is seeking an injunction to stop members of an anti-migrant group from erecting flags, including union jack and St George’s flags, on public infrastructure across the city.A nationwide campaign to give prominence to the England flag, which resulted in thousands of St George’s crosses being flown from lamp-posts, roundabouts and other public infrastructure, is believed to have started last summer in Birmingham.The “Raise the Colours” campaign has polarised opinion, with some viewing the flags as a sign of patriotism, while others have criticised it as a display of nationalism aimed at intimidating minority ethnic people. In July,…

Google is making changes to its requirements for Android apps as developers face industry-wide memory chip shortages driven by the AI data center boom. This week, the tech giant announced two new app quality requirements, one of which is focused on reducing apps’ memory usage and optimizing its code. The company explains that the mobile industry is now facing “significant hardware supply constraints that are altering device memory availability,” which can then, in turn, affect the consumer’s experience with their devices. To address this, Google is now establishing new performance thresholds across several areas, like dynamic memory usage and bitmap…

President Trump issued Executive Order 14420 on Wednesday, declaring a national emergency to mitigate vulnerabilities in the United States’ bulk power system arising from foreign-supplied electrical equipment. The order attributes the heightened emergency status to rapid growth across data centers, AI, advanced manufacturing, and defense production.  Officials noted that dependence on grid reliability magnifies the impact of foreign supply chain disruptions or targeted attacks that exploit built-in backdoors for remote access. The order covers critical infrastructure operating bulk-power system transmission lines rated at 69 kilovolts or higher, while explicitly excluding local electricity distribution facilities.  Targeted technologies include transformers, inverters, energy…