Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

GCSE results day was marked with the usual front pages filled with pictures of beaming students. What you didn’t see was the invisible third of 16-year-olds in England who failed their maths and English GCSEs, the obstacle to their future.That’s 360,000 failed in a system designed by Michael Gove as education minister to mark out winners from losers. It’s a cast of mind shared by many in his party who still yearn for the 11-plus, which consigned a random number of children to failure before they’d hardly begun. A few councils still do it.Once failed, this one-third must resit English…

Robotaxis are expanding. So is the fight over the rules governing them.In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul withdrew a proposal earlier this year that would have opened the door to driverless robotaxis outside New York City after taxi drivers, unions, and state lawmakers opposed it. Six months later, commercial driverless service remains illegal in the state, and legalization efforts are stalled.In DC, labor unions are fighting legislation that would legalize commercial robotaxis, while lawmakers are weighing a 200-vehicle cap and a 15-cent-per-mile fee that would fund Metro upgrades and aid workers displaced by autonomous vehicles. A July City Council hearing…

Cybersecurity firm ReliaQuest has confirmed being targeted by hackers affiliated with the notorious ShinyHunters group, but claims the impact of the attack was limited. ReliaQuest revealed on August 17 in a post on X that it had been tracking a widespread ShinyHunters phishing campaign involving domains with the ‘company.claims’ URL pattern.  The company also warned that the hacker gang has been expanding its social engineering tactics to include legal team impersonation alongside IT and help desk impersonation.  In response to that now-deleted post, someone shared several screenshots that appeared to show access to a ReliaQuest Okta dashboard. The same screenshots…

NoOnes has entered withdrawal-only mode weeks after telling users that an EU sanctions listing named a separate company and did not affect the platform or its operator.The crypto platform strongly recommended that customers remove their full balances no later than Sunday, Aug. 23. That date was, however, not a stated platform shutdown cutoff. NoOnes said users will continue to be able to sign in, view balances, withdraw funds and contact support while it helps them remove their money.Aug. 23 also has separate legal significance. The EU regulation adds “NoOnecrypto INC.” to Annex XLV Part A from that date under a…

A new analysis of biological aging across the human body suggests that both sleeping too little and sleeping too much are associated with faster aging in the brain, heart, lungs, immune system, and other organs. These sleep patterns were also linked to a broad range of diseases. “Previous studies have found that sleep is largely linked to aging and the pathological burden of the brain. Our study goes further and shows that too little and too much sleep are associated with faster aging in nearly every organ, supporting the idea that sleep is important in maintaining organ health within a…

While emergency responders prioritized human life and property during Australia’s 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires, there were few systems in place to protect wildlife or evacuate and care for domestic animals during and after the fires, exposing a gap in disaster planning.Neighbors, wildlife carers, veterinarians, landholders and volunteers rapidly organized evacuations, rescue efforts, feeding stations and supply networks, demonstrating the power of local knowledge and grassroots coordination.Fire ecology research suggests animals may be more vulnerable to fire than previously understood, and more research is needed to understand wildlife mortality and survival during and post-bushfire.Experts say that community-led efforts could dramatically…

For decades, Hong Kong mourned when the mainland could not. Its huge annual Tiananmen vigil kept alive the memory of the 1989 pro-reform protests in Beijing, and of the massacre that suppressed them. Along with Macau, it was the only place in China where the anniversary could be publicly marked and the truth preserved.But the crackdown on the 2019 uprising in Hong Kong has crushed the freedoms that the region once enjoyed. That year’s vigil was the last. On Friday, two leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance, which organised the commemoration, were convicted of incitement to subversion under the draconian national security…

Claim: Target removed a children’s Halloween costume from its website that social media users criticized as evoking racist minstrel and blackface imagery. Rating: In August 2026, a claim circulated online that the retailer Target removed a children’s Halloween costume from its website that social media users criticized as evoking racist minstrel and blackface imagery. For example, one Facebook user who posted an image of the alleged costume wrote (archived): Target removed a children’s Halloween clown costume from its Target website after facing intense online backlash. Critics pointed out that the costume’s dark face covering and exaggerated wide mouth resembled historical…

The fields are white for harvest, but the way through the Black Sea is shut. Faced with a grinding Russian advance towards the last cities in the Donbas left under Kyiv’s control, Ukraine’s state security services in June launched what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called a “40-day campaign” of mid-to-long-range drone strikes deep into Russian territory. The aim of these strikes, he said, was to put pressure on Moscow by targeting infrastructure vital for the country’s economic life – first and foremost, the oil refineries needed to sustain Russia’s lucrative fossil fuel exports and keep Russian consumers able to fill up at…

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to immediately bring back a Mexican man who was deported this month despite proving to an immigration court that he would likely face torture in Mexico.The man, who is in his late 40s and was referred to in court documents only as John Doe, helped U.S. authorities by testifying against Mexican drug cartels.The man provided information to U.S. law enforcement that put his and his family members’ lives at “significant risk,” according to the order, which was issued by Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland on Friday. The court found that the administration’s revocation…