Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Your article rightly highlights the strain heatwaves place on farming (Adapting to global heating: which UK public services are struggling in hot weather?, 5 August). But the government’s thinking on climate adaptation has a troubling blind spot down at the farm: animal welfare.The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 requires ministers to consider animals as sentient beings when developing policy, yet current discourse on heatwaves and farming treats animals almost entirely as economic assets: deaths are framed as “reduced productivity”, rather than as sentient individuals enduring terrible suffering.During the June heatwaves, French media reported that between 1 and 3 million birds died in a…

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has survived a vote of confidence before a general election due in November, saying he has the “full support” of his ruling National Party.Luxon had called for an “urgent” meeting with his National Party caucus on Wednesday to address “‌increased speculation about [his] leadership”.”I have the full support of our caucus… Our caucus is united, and it is determined to win this election,” he told reporters after the meeting which lasted more than three hours.This was the second challenge to his leadership in four months. Support for Luxon and his party remained weak amid…

Even under more plausible scenarios envisioned by the researchers, in which external growers get on board to varying degrees, consumer prices would rise and EU agricultural imports decline. Though that would in turn boost domestic production, with exact numbers depending on producers’ willingness to adapt. The findings lay out an unpalatable political choice for Brussels: Keep angry farmers’ tractors off the streets, or hit consumers’ wallets as they fulfill basic needs at the grocery store. The proposed residue ban, which is part of the food and feed safety simplification package, is popular with European farmers seeking a level playing field…

For the 14th time, a Google product has hit 1 billion users. Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted on X that a billion people are using Gemini every month, and that Gemini is Google’s fastest-growing product ever.A billion users is a huge milestone, but Google isn’t the first AI app to hit it. OpenAI’s ChatGPT hit the mark a few weeks ago, though the company buried the announcement that “more than 1 billion people are putting ChatGPT to work” in an otherwise anodyne blog post about how people use AI. External data suggested ChatGPT crossed 1 billion users as early as…

Google says Chrome’s anti-abuse systems reduced unwanted notifications on Android by more than 7 billion per day during the first quarter of 2026. In a new blog post, Google argues that notification abuse has increasingly been used to distribute scams, malware, phishing attempts, and fraudulent payment requests. To reduce the abuse, Google developed a “Swiss cheese” defense model, where several overlapping systems try to stop abuse at different stages. “Our goal is to ensure that if abuse slips through one layer, another is there to catch it,” Google explained. “This approach allows us to halt abuse at the source, preventing…

Strategy said it held 840,447 BTC as of Aug. 9 and has begun treating its Bitcoin reserve as a source of balance-sheet flexibility.Michael Saylor said Strategy sold $108 million in Bitcoin and $653 million in MSTR shares to increase its dollar reserve by $650 million, and repurchased $109 million of STRC, its variable-rate preferred stock.The timing aligns the three moves without proving that each dollar from the Bitcoin sale directly funded the repurchase. Strategy is also willing to convert a small portion of its BTC into liquidity while supporting a capital structure whose dividends and interest are measured in dollars.The…

But when it comes to the weather, fortunes will be mixed. In much of the UK, clear skies should give many a good view of the eclipse. However, across some parts of north Wales, northern England and especially Scotland and Northern Ireland, areas of cloud could move in between 18:00 and 19:00.Across some parts of western Scotland and in towards the north and west of Northern Ireland, cloud could bring outbreaks of rain.For those lucky enough to be in Spain, there will be clear skies for people to see a total eclipse in Bilbao, Valencia and Palma, Mallorca, while both…

As the huge societal ramifications of artificial intelligence have become clear, some of the tech industry’s most senior figures have taken to writing thinkpieces on what comes next. The latest to do so is Mark Zuckerberg, who this week published 6,500 words making the case for a laissez-faire approach to AI development. Worrying too much about regulation, Meta’s CEO unsurprisingly opines, could lead to the United States falling behind in the race to own the future.Mr Zuckerberg’s plea for maximum autonomy is, of course, self-serving. Much of his essay – which airily envisions “invention superpowers” for every entrepreneur and “an…

Claim: U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., voted against or blocked measures mandating employees receive sick leave in 1993, 2015, 2020 and 2022. Rating: Context McConnell voted against a range of sick leave measures in all four years, albeit with a clarification. On March 18, 2020, McConnell voted in favor of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, an emergency response bill passed at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. That legislation, providing temporary relief, mandated employers provide employees with paid sick time through the end of the year. Earlier the same day, he voted against an amendment that purportedly would have…

Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear research facilities in 2025, and this year’s expansive bombing campaign and naval blockade, prompted a new round of Iranian threats against Trump – and a direct warning by the US president in response.In July, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iran had made threats “to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate” him and said 1,000 “missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat”.The president’s message to Iran was blunt. Many of the recent threats against him have…