Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Some support is available. Young carers are entitled to assessments from their local council to look at the impact on their health, education and wellbeing.”When young carers get these it can make a real difference,” said Andy McGowan, the lead on young carers at the Carers Trust. “But it takes many years of caring before they are actually identified. And then the support in place to help is patchy, it really depends on where you live.”McGowan, who was a young carer himself to both his parents, says even when help is given to the young in the form of respite…

When cougars are present in a landscape, roads are safer, according to a new study.In area where the cats were highly active, the expected number of deer-vehicle collisions fell by 76% over five years, with the probability of a collision falling by 67%.Researchers found that fear changes deer behavior: Rather than simply reducing deer numbers by eating them, pumas appear to create a “landscape of fear” that pushes deer away from developed areas and shifts their active hours from nighttime into daylight.Large carnivores, including cougars, keep fast-reproducing prey species in check, while also reducing dangerous and costly wildlife collisions…

A sophisticated drone discovered inside a German airport. An aircraft colliding with a mysterious object near the same airport. Interference in upcoming state elections. Foreign agents scoping out a little-known defense CEO. Germany has been the target of a wide range of mysterious activities over the last couple of months—the type that analysts usually label as “gray-zone” (my preferred term) or “hybrid” warfare. Hybrid threats, in Frank Hoffmann’s classic definition, “incorporate a full range of different modes of warfare including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder.” A sophisticated drone discovered…

Claim: A fashion designer is creating shirts made to confuse automated license plate readers, such as Flock cameras, in mid-2026. Rating: What’s True It is true that in 2019, digital security expert and novelty fabric designer Kate Bertash launched a line of shirts and sweaters named Adversarial Fashion. The garments, which displayed many fake license plates, were designed to confuse surveillance camera systems by overloading them with “junk data.” However … What’s False … the sale of these clothes ended in 2023. As of this writing, he website suggested the clothing would be re-released, though it did not indicate when…

Debt shouldn’t become an ‘intergenerational legacy’, says WilsonTim Wilson stopped to talk to journos in the press gallery corridor this morning, slamming the government’s financial credentials as the country soon hits $1tn of gross national debt.Gross debt is the total amount of money a country owes, but we tend to use net debt figures more often which is the total amount of debt minus income including taxes, financial assets, etc.Wilson said: double quotation markWe know that it’s costing about $2,000 per Australian taxpayer to continue to finance this debt, and as a consequence, it could be a $2,000 tax cut…

Doug Jones, a former senator, and Shomari Figures, a current but endangered representative, have been here before in Alabama.Mr. Jones lost his Senate seat in 2020 to Tommy Tuberville, a former college football coach, and now hopes to beat him in November in a contest for governor. Mr. Figures won a House district in 2024 that was redrawn to give Black voters more representation. Now he is confronting new district lines drawn explicitly to give his seat to a Republican.Besides being Democrats, what both men have in common is a need for Alabama’s Black voters to come out in November…

In early 2015, flower crowns started appearing on Ed Miliband’s head. Petals and hearts were photoshopped on to the then-Labour leader by the “Milifandom”, a movement of young, mostly female, voters sharing romanticised images on Twitter to protest against Miliband’s “distorted media portrayal”.It was the brainchild of Abby Tomlinson, a 17-year-old sixth-form student, who came to the defence of the man she called “Milibae”. The hashtag #Milifandom trended. Then Labour lost the 2015 election.This prompted David Cameron, whose Conservatives increased their number of seats, to boast: “Britain and Twitter are not the same thing.” Tomlinson later told me that having…

HoverAir drones always have intriguing gimmicks. This one folds flat to fit in your pocket. This one can land on water. Another can charge inside its carrying case. But the brand’s latest trick might be its riskiest: it’s attempting to sneak a drone past the FCC.In December 2025, the US government banned future foreign drones from reaching our shores, and HoverAir’s floating Aqua drone was one of the first casualties. But this time, brand owner Zero Zero Robotics might have found a loophole: its latest $750 Versa drone isn’t a drone, it claims, but rather a DJI Pocket-style mini steadycam…

ChatGPT is experiencing a major outage, and users are unable to sign in, create accounts, or load chats, including previous conversations. The outage started at approximately 8 PM ET on Wednesday, August 19, and is affecting users worldwide, including those in the US and Europe. If you are affected, ChatGPT will get stuck at loading animations for the sidebar, and you won’t be able to send messages due to “too many concurrent requests” errors. New signups and logins on chatgpt.com are also failing. ChatGPT is unable to load chats Source: BleepingComputer This outage also affects OpenAI’s coding platform, Codex. Thankfully,…

In brief Bitcoin jumped as much as 8.7% Wednesday to an intraday high of $69,749, its steepest one-day move since March 4 and its highest price since June 1. On Myriad, prediction odds flipped from roughly 70-30 favoring a bearish decline to a near coin flip within 24 hours. The rally followed a U.S. Treasury plan to double its long-bond buybacks and more than $1 billion in short liquidations wiped out in a single hour. Bitcoin ripped through $69,000 Wednesday, climbing as much as 8.7% to an intraday high of $69,749. That’s the steepest one-day move since March 4 and…