Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Andy Burnham’s Labour conference speech gave a little more detail on how he intends to take forward what he said at the start of his premiership would be his signature social policy ambition: an overhaul of adult social care.What will Labour’s social care overhaul look like?Burnham was clear about the ambitious scale of his care vision – this was not simply change, it was about creating a whole new service: a “landmark policy, as significant as the creation of the NHS itself”. It would be a national care service, operating on NHS principles: free at the point of use and…

Andy Burnham’s first speech as prime minister to a Labour conference was a serious attempt to argue that rebuilding the public realm will be better for the country than shrinking the state. He is right about this. Mr Burnham’s belief in the power of government is welcome, as is his instinct that by spending now on public services he will save money later. Admitting that Brexit “has done more harm than good” before setting out options for a closer relationship with the EU could be the speech’s most consequential sentence. Offering voters a bargain at the next election – give…

OpenAI has been a close partner of Microsoft from the jump, but the AI lab is increasingly going after the company’s bread and butter, workplace software, with new features that closely resemble an office software suite like Microsoft’s. At its Dev Day developer conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, OpenAI announced several new ChatGPT features designed for office workers. Most notably, OpenAI launched a feature called Space, a shared workspace inside ChatGPT where coworkers can collaborate with the chatbot and with their own Dots, OpenAI’s newly launched AI agent personas (that can carry out tasks on a user’s behalf), on…

Once a physical AI product is in the field, the compute problem changes shape. Fleet data starts arriving faster than a team can label it, every retraining cycle has to be validated before it ships to hardware, and the sim-to-real loop stops being a research exercise and becomes a release process. That is the stage the 2026 Nebius Physical AI Awards is built for: startups with a demonstrable product, meaningful traction, and a plan to scale. Nebius (NASDAQ: NBIS) runs the program with NVIDIA. Applications are open now and close October 25, 2026. Finalists and winners are announced in mid-November…

Two former members of the United States Air Force were sentenced to a combined 189 months in federal prison for their roles in a multi-year series of business email compromise (BEC) scams and phishing campaigns. According to court documents, 25-year-old Chijioke Timothy Odimegwu and 26-year-old Harafat Mogaji carried out these attacks while stationed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. They stole victims’ employee email credentials in spamming and phishing campaigns. The defendants then used “spoofed” email addresses that mimicked business partners’ emails, along with the credentials, to redirect payments to accounts controlled by accomplices in the United States and…

“Onchain transactions between two individuals shouldn’t mean publishing your financial history to the world,” Joe Andrews, CEO of Aztec Labs, said in a statement.Andrews added that Aztec Labs chose DAI because it considers it “the most decentralized of the mass-market stablecoins used today on Ethereum.” He said the wallet could support other assets later.Aztec’s zk.money hides payments once money is inside. (Shaurya Malwa/CoinDesk)Ethereum already has apps that hide payments, though transfers from an ordinary wallet remain public. Its developers are weighing changes for the planned 2027 Hegotá upgrade that could let privacy apps handle transaction approvals and fees with less…

A look one thousand years into the past is revealing clues about how to develop the bacteria-fighting drugs of the future.A concoction from a 10th century medical manuscript damaged cell membranes, altered the expression of disease-promoting genes and interfered with interbacterial communication when added to bacterial cultures, researchers report September 3 in mSphere. What’s more, three kinds of harmful bacteria developed resistance to the medicinal mixture much more slowly compared with conventional single-molecule antibiotics. “The difference is remarkable,” says Omar El-Halfawy, a microbiologist at the University of Regina in Canada who was not involved in the research.This impaired ability to…

Before turning to the pension triple lock changes, Burnham accepted he may “pay a political price” by trying to make the reforms but argued “someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off”.The triple lock was introduced in 2010 by the coalition government and designed to ensure the value of the state pension was not overtaken by the increase in the cost of living or the incomes of working people.It means the state pension rates rise every April by either inflation, earnings growth or 2.5% – whichever is the highest.Burnham said this will stay in place…

Using satellite data and water samples taken by ships over the last 40 years, researchers employed machine learning to untangle the history of marine heat waves hitting simultaneously with acidification events.They found that these compound events happen more frequently than would be expected by chance, attributing them to ocean physics that allow marine heat waves to become unusually acidic in some regions.The resulting database captured some “double-hit” heat-acidity events that have been largely ignored in the scientific literature, such as a massive 2016 event in the Southern Pacific Ocean that lasted eight months.Experts say more research is urgently needed…

Pierre Bechelany, Fluor’s Business Group President of Energy Solutions, underlined: “Reaching FID is an important milestone for LNG Canada and Fluor. Our long-standing relationship and successful delivery of Phase 1 provides a strong foundation for the work ahead. As construction progresses, our focus will remain on safety, quality and collaboration with our partners, First Nations and local communities.”The joint venture delivered Phase 1, including engineering, procurement, fabrication management, construction, and commissioning of two processing trains and associated infrastructure. The facility began producing LNG in June 2025, with the handover of the facility completed in October 2025.In August 2025, JGC and…