Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Burnham says days of criminal gangs making money from dumping waste are ‘over’Hello and welcome to the UK politics live blog.The days of criminal gangs making easy money from dumping waste are “over”, the prime minister will say on a visit to a waste site in Yorkshire later today.Illegal dumps in West Yorkshire, Surrey and Kent will be cleared up using taxpayer money, Andy Burnham has announced, as he promised a new drive to tackle toxic waste.Ministers have identified dumps in Bradford, Runnymede and the Isle of Sheppey, which collectively contain about 22,000 tonnes of illegal waste, to be cleared…

Taylor Clemons/ZDNETComputer monitors can come with some pretty steep price tags, especially if you’re in the market for a specialized screen for PC gaming or creative work like animation or video editing. This is doubly true if you want a high-end OLED display, a 4K monitor, or a super-sized screen. Also: How I turned my old Android phone into a streaming stick for freeThere’s a way around this, however. If you’re looking for a cheap solution, you can easily connect your TV to a laptop or PC to use as your main screen, a part of your current multi-monitor setup, or as…

CERT Polska, the Polish Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), warned that attackers have begun exploiting a critical vulnerability in Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS). ZCS is a popular email and collaboration software suite used by hundreds of millions of people and organizations worldwide, including thousands of businesses and hundreds of government agencies. The Zimbra security team released version 10.1.20 on July 20 to patch the vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2026-73570), which allows unauthenticated attackers to gain remote code execution by exploiting a command injection weakness in the SNMP monitoring component when SNMP notifications are enabled. “Due to improper sanitization of untrusted input…

In brief OCC head Jonathan Gould said Wednesday the agency will finalize its GENIUS Act stablecoin rules by November, racing to meet a Jan. 18 statutory deadline before the law takes effect in January 2027 after blowing past an earlier July target. The 376-page proposal, released in February and open for comment through May, covers the full life cycle of a payment stablecoin—reserves, redemption at par, liquidity, risk management, audits, custody and wind-downs. Gould said the OCC expects to begin processing issuer applications in 2027 and reported an eightfold jump in digital-asset chartering activity versus the Biden administration. The top…

DNA consists of long molecular chains that carry the genetic instructions needed for life. In genetic engineering, researchers cut DNA at carefully chosen locations and connect those pieces with other DNA sequences. This process supports a wide range of applications, including improved crop breeding, treatments for genetic diseases, and the creation of animal models used in drug development. To efficiently connect short pieces of DNA, scientists rely on overhanging sequences called sticky ends. These exposed sections help DNA fragments bind to one another. Producing the right sticky ends, however, requires highly precise cutting at specific locations, something existing technologies do…

Wildfires in Europe could burn across about 39 percent more land by the end of the century, even if greenhouse gas emissions decline rapidly over the next few decades, new research shows. With continued high emissions, the burned area could increase as much as 192 percent. Emissions reductions are the key to reducing wildfire impacts, the study, published Thursday in Global Change Biology, concluded. Improvements in fire prevention, early detection and firefighting could help limit the damage, but ultimately, Europe can’t fight its way out of a worsening climate, the authors warned. “Our results indicate there could be widespread increases…

Dolphin Drilling, an Oslo-listed, Aberdeen-headquartered owner and operator of a fleet of harsh-environment mid-water and deepwater semi-submersible drilling rigs, has secured an extension of a drilling job, which one of its units is carrying out off the coast of India for Oil India Limited (OIL), an exploration and production company. Blackford Dolphin rig; Source: Dolphin Drilling Dolphin Drilling has disclosed that the Blackford Dolphin deepwater-capable semi-submersible rig will continue its drilling contract with Oil India up to October 15, 2026. This contract extension will enable completion of drilling, testing, and abandonment work at locations East of India, under the same…

As a reporter for The Washington Post and now ProPublica, I’ve investigated how youth sports organizations have failed to protect kids from sexual predators. I’ve spoken to dozens of parents. Some had children who were victimized by coaches. Others wanted to know how to keep their children safe.Nearly every parent I’ve met said they didn’t have the information they needed to understand the system set up to protect their kids. Here’s what you need to know (and how to get in touch with tips): Table of Contents How is the system supposed to work? The system revolves around one organization:…

Next time the weather gives the UK 61 days without rain and we wonder idly if this is the end, there is a term we may whistle up to soothe us. Like murmuring the rosary, or putting our fingers in our ears and humming, this phrase is to be mumbled on repeat – “the Kardashev scale, the Kardashev scale” – a buzzy concept in tech, much favoured by Elon Musk, and precisely the thing we’ve been waiting for. The Kardashev scale is the answer both to our impending doom and our anxiety around it – and if we decide to…

Flying across the world? You’re now more likely to stop in Asia than you would have been before war broke out in the Middle East.Major Persian Gulf airlines like Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad dominated intercontinental travel before the war, accounting for roughly a third of the traffic between Europe and Asia and about one in two travelers between Europe and Australia.But transfer traffic in the Middle East on routes connecting Asia to Europe has nearly halved since the war started in late February, according to one estimate.And for now at least, travelers between Asia, Australia and Europe who once…