Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

In brief A Seoul court sentenced Delio chief executive Jeong Sang-ho to 15 years for fraud and for registering as a virtual asset provider using false documents, according to local media. The court ruled evidence seized from Delio’s server host was unlawfully obtained, voiding the primary charge covering 2,800 victims and 250 billion won. He was convicted instead on fallback charges covering roughly 1,100 victims and 70 billion won, about $49 million. The Seoul Southern District Court has sentenced Delio chief executive Jeong Sang-ho to 15 years in prison over the collapse of the South Korean crypto deposit platform, five…

Where and how did life first emerge on Earth? Those questions are at the heart of research at the Institute of Molecular Evolution at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU). Now, an international team led by biologists in Düsseldorf has reported new findings in Science Advances that shed light on the chemical reaction network used by the earliest cells to produce the basic ingredients of life, as well as the energy sources that powered those reactions. By tracing the origins of enzymes during the earliest split between bacteria and archaea, the researchers found evidence that free-living cells may have originated independently…

 Nadia Nadesan & Digit / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/AI may bode ill for the journalism industry as a whole, but for us data journalists, it opens up a new method for answering important questions in ways readers should trust.LLM classification — and its cousin, extraction — sits in the Venn diagram overlap: an AI tool that helps us do more valuable, credible work, and that we can convince our readers to trust.So often, data journalists deal with big, unwieldy piles of text — or worse, images and video. Maybe you have a spreadsheet full of police report narratives and you want…

Claim: A video authentically shows U.S. President Donald Trump waking himself up with a fart during a maternal healthcare announcement in the Oval Office on May 11, 2026. Rating: In August 2026, people shared a video allegedly showing U.S. President Donald Trump waking himself up with a fart while seated during an Oval Office announcement. For example, on Aug. 8, an X user posted (archived) the clip overlaid with text reading, “Trump wakes himself up after audible fart during White House briefing.” Other users shared the same video on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), TikTok (archived), X (archived) and YouTube (archived).…

Tabitha Chawinga scored twice and sister Temwa Chawinga once as tournament outsiders Malawi beat Algeria 3-1 on Wednesday in Rabat to reach the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations final. Cameroon will face the giant-killers in the deciding game after defeating hosts Morocco 3-1 on penalties following a 0-0 draw after extra time. Read moreWomen’s AFCON 2026: Tournament gets underway after months of delay Malawi are ranked 153rd in the world, 116 places below the pre-WAFCON favourites and record 10-time champions Nigeria, who bowed out in the quarter-finals. Debutants Malawi took advantage of Algeria’s Morgane Belkhiter red card for a foul on the last defender midway…

Yvette Cooper admits Labour has “not done government very well” in the last couple of years, and accused Keir Starmer’s No 10 of sidelining her during the launch of a key immigration policy when she was home secretary.Speaking on the Political Currency podcast with the former Conservative chancellor George Osborne, Cooper highlighted some of the difficulties ministers faced with Starmer’s leadership, which she summarised as “bring me solutions, not problems”.She said she had found a more collegiate style under Andy Burnham, and argued in favour of trying to form a national consensus around social care and reintroducing Sure Start-style children’s…

Polls have opened in Clacton, with thousands of residents in the Essex seat to vote in a ballot featuring Nigel Farage and a range of novelty and fringe candidates led by Count Binface.The Reform UK leader resigned as the MP for Clacton at the start of July and forced a byelection in an attempt to address complaints over a deepening scandal about gifts he received.He is expected to face a formal investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog, which was opened in May after the Guardian revealed he had received a £5m personal gift from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto billionaire,…

13 August 2026Overall, 92% of companies with physical points of sale accept cashCash acceptance rebounds after decline observed during and after pandemicCash widely valued for privacy and reliability, while acceptance of mobile payments rises sharplyAccording to the latest survey on the use of cash by companies in the euro area published today by the European Central Bank, cash acceptance has rebounded slightly.In 2026, 92% of companies selling goods and services in physical locations in the retail trade, restaurants and cafés, hotels, and arts, entertainment and recreation sectors reported that they accept cash. This compares with 90% in 2024, suggesting that…

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is aiming to spend up to $20 million on equipping officers and agents with specialized gloves that deliver painful electric shocks. These plans were outlined in a notice published by the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, with an unspecified quantity of the devices set to be delivered by March 2027.The electrified handwear outlined in the contract is the CTG 5 GLOVE (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter), which manufacturer Compliant Technologies refers to as a CD3 (Conductive Distraction and De-escalation) device. Compliant Technologies describes it as “a great, humane, low-optics, de-escalation solution” that is “usually…

Okta says identity-scoped Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool lists can reduce AI agent token costs.Each model call made by an AI agent can include schemas, names, descriptions and parameters for every tool exposed by a MCP server. Okta calls the resulting prompt overhead the “tool tax”: tokens consumed as a model considers tools, including those it will never call.The company argues that this cost appears before an agent attempts a tool call. A later rejection of an unauthorised request therefore cannot recover prompt tokens already consumed. Okta’s proposed control filters the list of tools before it reaches the model, using…