Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Colombia’s earthquake rescue efforts entered what officials called the “final phase” on Wednesday, as rescuers searched for signs of life beneath collapsed buildings before the critical first 72 hours came to an end. The magnitude 7.4 quake, the strongest to hit Colombia this century, has killed 265 people, injured more than 3,500 and left almost 500 missing, according to local authorities. In the city of Pereira, crews focused on a collapsed bakery where they believe a street vendor trapped since Monday’s earthquake may still be alive beneath the rubble. Using equipment that detects vibrations, rescuers said they had picked up…

One Meta ad suggests he is the only candidate to have visited forgotten areas of the constituency. A further clip shows a local resident giving Farage a positive review of his work — and is presented as proof that opposition complaints he has neglected the patch since his 2024 general election victory in the seat are “cobblers.” With over 7 million followers across the leading social media platforms — making him by far the most-followed U.K. party leader — Farage has also been churning out election content across TikTok, Instagram and X. Even with that reach, the Reform UK leader…

A former senior official at the Southern Poverty Law Center was charged on Wednesday with fraud and conspiracy as part of a revised indictment accusing the storied civil rights group of cheating its donors by using their money to pay informants inside right-wing extremist organizations.The former official, Heidi Beirich, once ran the center’s informant program, which recruited what amounted to spies within far-right groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Prosecutors say that while Ms. Beirich was overseeing payments to the informants, she was in a romantic relationship with one of them and the two shared a house and bank accounts.Most…

However, critics argue that at each of these businesses only a tiny proportion of staff are actually using the AI, and that those who do so are only using it to a very limited extent.Prof Yasushi Ogasawara, an expert on Japan’s social system and technology at Meiji University, says there aren’t enough tech-savvy people in the workforce.”Although the Japanese like playing with gadgets such as smartphones, digital literacy is low here,” he says.This is highlighted by one report earlier this year which said Japan faced a shortfall , externalof almost 800,000 IT professionals by 2030.Many companies are also said to…

Shipping and logistics giant Ceva Logistics has had its European operations disrupted after hackers compromised its systems. The disruption occurred on July 29, and the company is still scrambling to restore the impacted services. Eight warehouses across Europe have been affected. On August 1, the company notified the affected customers of the cyberattack, informing them that goods stored in the disrupted warehouses are not shipping. Multiple organizations have reportedly confirmed impact from the incident, including Dutch retailers Bol and De Bijenkorf, ING, Ace & Tate, Amsterdam football club Ajax, and video game provider Valve. In addition to notifying customers of…

In brief DeepSeek quietly swapped deepseek-v4-pro to the 0813 build, the general-availability release of a model that had been running as a preview since April. Across nine agent benchmarks where both models are scored, DeepSeek’s table puts Claude Fable 5 ahead by an average of 5.3%. On two of them, DeepSeek wins. Fable 5 costs $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output. V4 Pro costs $0.435 and $0.87. DeepSeek shipped the finished version of its flagship on Wednesday with no blog post and no announcement. The tell was a table cell: the model version listed for “deepseek-v4-pro”…

A new study led by a Charles Sturt University researcher and international colleagues is challenging a long-accepted idea about how scientists identify ancient disease. Evidence from the skeletal remains of children who lived in prehistoric Vietnam suggests that treponemal diseases could have been passed from mother to child thousands of years ago. Congenital transmission has historically been viewed as a strong indicator of venereal syphilis, but the new findings suggest that other forms of treponemal disease may also have spread this way. The international team from Australia and Vietnam was led by Dr. Melandri Vlok (pictured top, at left), Lecturer…

Nigeria has become a major hub for the illegal trade of vultures, conservationists say, partly because of its biodiversity and porous borders.”We are doing everything possible to make sure that the smuggling of items, including vultures, including donkeys, and other species outside the country is suppressed to the barest minimum,” insists Abdullahi Maiwada, a spokesman for the Nigerian Customs Service.He says customs officials have carried out seizures of protected wildlife and supported prosecutions linked to illegal trafficking.It is an example of how Nigeria is trying to live up its commitments as a member of the Convention on International Trade in…

Telstra CEO receives $700k pay rise even after 20% bonus cut over nationwide outageLuca IttimaniTelstra has paid its chief executive, Vicki Brady, $6.8m for the year ending in June, after docking 20% of her bonus in response to the network’s nationwide outage last month.The company reported financial results today and said its board decided to cut Brady’s bonus by $607,000 when it met on Monday. Brady took home $6.1m the year before, so she still got a $700,000 pay rise.The company has faced heavy political criticism for its handling of the outage, which it has blamed on the lack of…

The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to scale back scrutiny of the shadowy shell companies that criminals use to launder money and traffic drugs.The initiative follows a yearslong campaign by lobbying groups, which contended that new financial reporting requirements were too onerous for businesses.The Treasury Department said late on Tuesday that it was permanently halting the collection of data about the ownership of private American companies that was required as part of the 2021 Corporate Transparency Act. The law, which passed with bipartisan support, was intended to prevent the illicit use of shell companies by giving law…