Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

I loved Ioan Marc Jones’s article because it’s an honest reflection of the struggle of getting into running when you need exercise but don’t necessarily want it (Nipple tape, pickle juice and dinosaurs: how I learned to love running, the unorthodox way, 12 August). For me, the gamechanger was joining a running club. I’m not a naturally social person and I felt so nervous on my first session, but it’s such a warm, nonjudgmental community. I run with people of all ages and it’s really improved my pace and enjoyment of running.I think that’s true of a lot of the…

After restructuring Zambia’s debt in his first term, Hakainde Hichilema says there is more work to be done in his second and wants to double the size of the economy, create more jobs and expand opportunities for households. The 64-year-old won a second term on Tuesday with roughly 60% of the vote, defeating his main challenger Brian Mundubile after campaigning on a promise to build on Zambia’s economic recovery. Since taking office in 2021, Hichilema has steered Zambia through a major debt restructuring and restored relations with international lenders. But while supporters credit him with reviving the economy, critics say…

An unprecedented number of Apple customers have reported receiving a recent threat notification alerting them to suspected spyware attacks targeting their devices, according to experts who investigate these types of incidents.  Several people publicly and privately reported receiving Apple’s spyware alerts over the weekend, after Apple sent out a new wave of notifications on Friday alerting customers in 110 countries that they had been targeted with powerful spyware.  From time to time, the technology giant sends these types of alerts in batches to customers that it believes have been either targeted or compromised with malware normally used by governments, which…

Nous Research has shipped Bot Mode for Hermes Agent, its MIT-licensed open source agent. Bot Mode replaces the single-agent session list with a roster of named bots. Each bot is a real Hermes profile, with its own chat, memory, skills, and pinned model. Bots message each other through a persistent Agent Inbox and hand work off by @mention. The feature launched as a one-day public beta plugin from co-founder Teknium. It now ships bundled and default-on inside Hermes Desktop, in Hermes Agent v0.20.3. Is it deployable? Yes — today, on a desktop, at no license cost. Bot Mode shipped first…

Cybersecurity researchers have traced the continued evolution of the Cavern (aka Cav3rn) command-and-control (C2) framework used by Iranian nation-state hackers in attacks targeting entities in Israel. Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said its ongoing monitoring of the threat activity cluster since December 2025 has led to the discovery of previously unreported components that expand the toolkit’s communication capabilities. “The main finding is a complex C2 module that uses DNS A-record responses to choose between direct HTTPS and a Google Apps Script relay for each transaction,” Kaspersky said in an analysis. “The same DNS infrastructure can validate and replace the relay deployment…

In brief Minnesota is fighting xAI’s attempt to block the state’s first-of-its-kind law targeting AI-generated sexual images. xAI says the law violates the First Amendment, while Minnesota argues Grok Imagine is a technological tool, not protected speech. The state accused xAI of creating an “unparalleled marketplace for digital sexual violence” as a federal judge prepares to hear the case Wednesday. Minnesota is fighting Elon Musk’s xAI over the company’s attempt to block HF-1606, a first-of-its-kind state law targeting AI tools that generate realistic sexual images of identifiable people.In a Friday court filing, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison argued that xAI…

About 12 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy known as LKH collided with a young Milky Way and merged with it. This artist’s concept portrays that collision. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope uncovered definitive evidence of this collision by studying globular star clusters.Illustration: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, grew to its current size in part by consuming smaller galaxies. Now, new data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way galaxy in the earliest phases of its evolution. This finding extends our knowledge of our…

The water level at Lake Powell, the United States’ second-largest reservoir, has fallen to a record low, heightening concerns about the ongoing crisis in the Colorado River system. The alarming milestone at Lake Powell, reached Saturday, comes about a week after the river’s other major reservoir, Lake Mead, also hit a historic low. Plummeting water levels pose a major threat to the Colorado River Basin, which is a key resource for wildlife, hydropower and more than 40 million people in seven U.S. states. The historic lows come as the federal government and states that rely on the river —…

Illinois collected $9.06 million from pesticide registration fees in fiscal year 2025 to support enforcement and education programs related to oversight of pesticide applicators. But state spending records indicate that much of that money, which is supposed to fund educational programs and enforcement, may not be directly funding what it was intended to. In fiscal year 2025, the Illinois Department of Agriculture spent $4.7 million — nearly three-quarters of spending from the Pesticide Control fund — on personnel costs such as salaries, retirement and employee benefits rather than the enforcement or education activities defined in the Illinois Pesticide Act. With concerns growing over…

Daisy Christodoulou suggests that teachers identifying children at risk of ending up not in education, employment or training (Neets) is like dentists helping children to learn to read (Could you predict which children will be Neets? No – and it’s unfair to ask that of teachers, 11 August). But dentists often help children learn to read by stopping the toothache that can derail education. Alan Milburn is not asking teachers to fix teeth. He wants the whole system to act when teachers identify barriers to learning.We conducted the research at the centre of this debate. Our study showed that children…