Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

France will expel two Iranian diplomats after Tehran’s security services detained and interrogated two French Embassy staffers last month, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced Tuesday evening. The row dates back to July 19, when two French Embassy employees in Tehran — one of them the cultural attaché — were questioned for several hours and “beaten,” according to Barrot. Paris accused Iranian security services of carrying out a “premeditated and deliberate” act of intimidation in “flagrant violation” of diplomatic protections, summoning Iran’s chargé d’affaires two days later. “It is precisely because France stands alongside the Iranian people” that the July 19…

Higher energy bills drove UK inflation up to 2.9% in the year to July, the highest level in four months, according to new figures.Gas prices soared at the sharpest pace in almost four years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, leading to an increase in the cap on household energy bills in July. Energy costs surged after US-Israel war with Iran began, which has restricted global oil supplies.July’s reading is the highest since March but some price growth slowed. Food inflation, at 1.3%, is at its lowest rate for close to five years.Experts said the inflation figure is unlikely…

College is a constellation of Venmo requests — your roommate’s cut of the utilities, your half of an Uber ride, the ticket to your friend’s a capella performance that you don’t actually want to go to. On Wednesday, Venmo’s parent company PayPal announced that you will now be able to use its services to pay your tuition. Venmo and PayPal are partnering with the education payment platforms Illumia, Nelnet Campus Commerce, and TouchNet, which collectively serve thousands of colleges and universities, giving students and families another way to pay their tuition. Yes, you can make one of the largest payments…

One of the most effective steps organizations can take to improve their defensive readiness is to move from periodic testing to cultures of constant training. To keep pace with emergent threats, security leaders must move toward continuous validation loops, not one-off exercises, and regularly test detection, response and AI-driven protocols. Organizations that test more frequently achieve measurably higher performance, while those that test less typically plateau. The performance metrics of yesterday are of little use in today’s asymmetrical threat environment. Rather than outdated indicators such as the volume of alerts detected, security leaders should measure outcome-based metrics including detection success,…

On Aug. 18, Ripple deepened its push into traditional finance, securing a South Korean banking deal as its prime brokerage raised $275 million.The crypto payment company revealed that South Korea’s Jeonbuk Bank became the country’s first regional lender to deploy Ripple Payments for cross-border business transfers, replacing SWIFT-based correspondent-bank transfers that can take days to reach recipients.Hours later, Ripple Prime closed an upsized $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes to support its expanding US business.Together, the announcements show Ripple pushing deeper into two parts of financial infrastructure: cross-border payments for banks and the clearing, financing and brokerage services…

The Theban Necropolis, located across the Nile from Luxor, contains more than 400 tombs. In a new study published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, researchers in Spain took a closer look at chamber three inside tomb TT 209 to understand how the burial space changed over time. The tomb was constructed during the Twenty-fifth Dynasty (754-656 BCE) and remained in use until the Ptolemaic period (305-30 BCE), when it was eventually abandoned. By examining the placement of human remains and burial objects, the researchers reconstructed how generations of people repeatedly adapted the chamber for new burials. “We found a total…

UK-based classification society Lloyd’s Register (LR) is supporting the life extension of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier (LNGC) being repurposed into a floating storage unit (FSU), helping lay the groundwork for Gabon’s emerging floating gas infrastructure and a wider push to unlock Africa’s offshore gas potential. LNG Bayelsa being converted to FSU LNG Cap Lopez; Source: Dixstone Lloyd’s Register is delivering classification and technical assurance for the conversion of an LNG carrier into a floating storage unit for Dixstone Lower Gulf FZCO, a Perenco sister company. The former LNG Bayelsa carrier, now under the temporary name FSU LNG Cap Lopez,…

The sums are vast, but the explanations for the spending range from vague to inscrutable. Consider these items in the law that funded the Department of Defense this year: For “Other Procurement, Air Force”: $32.6 billion. For “Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide”: $35.2 billion. And for “supplies and associated support services” related to U.S. Code Title 10 Section 3601 subsection(c)(3)(B) clauses (i) through (iv): a mere $650 million. Determining what, exactly, all this public money is paying for requires cross-referencing thousands of pages of financial tables, accounting records and congressional committee documents that will leave all but the most…

What struck me most about this article (What end-of-life experts know about living well: love your wrinkles, celebrate birthdays and don’t obsess over work, 13 August) is the idea that preparing for the end of life can actually help us live more fully now.As an end-of-life doula, I have seen how a terminal diagnosis can suddenly bring clarity. The things that once felt urgent often fall away, while relationships, memories, unfinished conversations and the question of what we leave behind become profoundly important. But I don’t believe that we should have to wait for a diagnosis to begin that work.We often think…

What does the pledge mean?Rough sleeping is a form of homelessness defined by the UK government as people sleeping, or someone who is about to bed down, in “the open air” such as on the street, in parks, bus shelters, tents, doorways or other places that have not been designed for habitation such as stairwells. It doesn’t include people who are in hostels or shelters, or the hidden homeless.Speaking outside Number 10 on the day he became Prime Minister, Andy Burnham said his first instruction would be “to end rough sleeping in our country.” In a press release issued the…