Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Over the past week, there has been a remarkable turnaround in supplies of crude oil making it out of the still-threatened Strait of Hormuz, with oil volumes returning nearly to prewar levels. What is not leaving the strait—or many parts of Russia, or now China—are refined products such as gasoline and diesel. That means that despite the apparent success of the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and the U.S. Navy’s escorting of a steadily rising stream of tankers out of Hormuz, there will be little relief at the pump for consumers in the United States or Europe for months…

Donald Trump deflected responsibility for misleading Americans about the length of the Iran war, dismissed low poll ratings as “fake numbers” and refused to rule out the possibility of declaring a state of emergency before the midterms, in a wide-ranging interview with Time magazine.When confronted with questions about the length of the Iran war, the US president blamed the media for reporting his remarks in which he said the conflict was projected to last “four to five weeks”, in March.“ … I think the press fed it to them,” Trump told Time when asked whether Americans misunderstood him.At the end…

At the event in Münster, Hendrik Wüst — the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia and the conservative politician often held up as a possible replacement for Merz — praised the chancellor’s leadership in what appeared to be an effort to project unity and quell talk of a so-called “chancellor swap.” “Chancellor Friedrich Merz assumed a pivotal role in NATO during a critical phase,” Wüst said ahead of Merz’s speech, commending the chancellor’s “clear commitment” to NATO’s 5% defense spending target. “While others hesitated, the German chancellor stayed the course, thereby providing stability to the alliance,” he went on, adding: “Thanks to…

The question of whether to approve Rosebank, as well as the Jackdaw gas field east of Aberdeen, has become hugely politically significant.Rosebank was approved by the previous Conservative government in 2023, but that decision was successfully challenged in the courts by campaigners including Uplift.The decision now lies with the Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, but will be seen as an important indication of Burnham’s wider thinking on oil and gas.Miliband was widely thought to have been opposed to Rosebank when he served as Sir Keir Starmer’s energy secretary.Burnham has spoken repeatedly of the need for a “flexible” approach to energy and…

Ministers are working up sweeping plans for welfare changes including scrapping a key disability benefit for under-25s and replacing it with a multibillion-pound package of support to get into work, the Guardian has learned.Whitehall sources said the package of changes under debate was much bigger than previously thought, as Andy Burnham’s government hopes to persuade more people on benefits back into work.The move could be fraught with political danger after last year’s dramatic welfare rebellion by Labour MPs. But ministers have spent weeks trying to persuade them the plans are about reform, and feel confident opposition has waned.The plans are…

In July 2016, the Manchester City player Yaya Touré ambled into a small bar near Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium and offered a bemused smile as dozens of Chinese fans rushed towards him.Manchester City had just won their sixth trophy under the big-spending ownership of Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group and the blues were international megastars. They were also magnets for investment.On a trade mission led by Sir Howard Bernstein, the architect of modern Manchester, civic leaders rolled out club legends such as Mike Summerbee and Sun Jihai in a charm offensive to football-mad Chinese businessmen who saw that the club…

The Steam Deck is four and a half years old, and handheld gamers are eagerly awaiting a Steam Deck 2 — but Valve has consistently said it needs a new chip with a “generational leap” in performance and efficiency before building the sequel.There’s some reason to believe that chip has now broken cover: AMD Gainsborough. But I’m a tad skeptical.As leaker Moore’s Law is Dead and IT Home report, the latest AMD drivers have leaked the codename for a previously unknown chip: an “AMD Gainsborough.” The first Steam Deck chip was named “Aerith” after Final Fantasy VII’s heartbreaking love interest,…

Is zero trust still effective in the AI era? A new book from John Kindervag says yes, but that assumes it is correctly implemented. John Kindervag introduced the concept of zero trust in a Forrester Research report titled No More Chewy Centers: Introducing the Zero Trust Model of Information Security published in 2010. Since then, the concept has become a foundational precept within cybersecurity. Fifteen years later, he was asked to write a new book about zero trust in the age of AI. The big question is whether 15 years-old security principles remain valid in the face of new AI-assisted…

That had been a point of disappointment for some participants in past events: While Trump briefly appeared, they didn’t get a chance to meet him.Since his memecoin’s launch in the days before he took office again, investors have lost billions of dollars, and those losses have occupied the spotlight during the recent debates over the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — the crypto market structure bill in the Senate. With Trump’s crypto empire in mind, Democratic lawmakers had insisted that the bill limit the digital asset ties of senior government officials, but that provision could never be worked out, and…

A diet that combines elements of the Mediterranean diet with an eating plan designed to lower blood pressure may help slow some of the structural changes that occur as the brain ages, according to research published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. Greater adherence to the MIND diet was linked to less brain tissue loss over time, particularly in grey matter, which plays an important role in memory, learning, decision making, and information processing. It was also associated with less enlargement of the brain’s ventricles, fluid filled spaces that tend to grow as brain tissue shrinks. What…