Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Wednesday, August 26 began as a regular day for Prakash Pyakurel, a 43-year-old shopkeeper in the bustling town of Dhunge Bazaar in the northern belt of Central Nepal. Then sometime around 9:10 a.m. came the muffled crackle of a police loudspeaker. The words were “impossible to hear” over the noise of the town, he says. Pyakurel took a couple of minutes to piece together that the announcement was calling for evacuation. He lost time closing the shop before sprinting home to alert his parents and daughter. In their living room, just a few hundred meters from the Trishuli River, they…

While there is no single prescription for energy security, strengthening “response capacity,” such as by establishing stockpiles, substituting sources, and diversifying suppliers, is essential. The point is not to eliminate vulnerabilities altogether, but to ensure that there are options when disruption arrives. GENEVA/HOUSTON/LISBON—The largest energy-supply shock in modern history has delivered a surprising lesson: the global energy system is remarkably adaptable. When the Iran war disrupted passage through the Strait of Hormuz, roughly one-fifth of global oil supplies and liquefied natural gas was affected. But worst-case scenarios have been broadly avoided, thanks to years of investment in resilience. …

A video being shared widely online wrongly claims it shows “a queue of all Muslim Women waiting to enroll their children for FREE Daycare” in the Netherlands.The social media posts show a sped up clip of a person walking past a long queue of women outdoors, who are mostly wearing hijabs, lining up to enter the doors of a large building. It’s been shared with a caption which says European governments are giving free state welfare to “Africans and Muslims outside the EU”, and suggests the video shows only Muslim parents waiting to sign up for subsidised childcare in a…

News organizations ask court to bar White House enforcement of access ban until case is resolvedThree news outlets that Donald Trump banned from White House have asked a federal court to block the ban until the case is resolved.The media organizations say the administration has “persisted in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing its ban” despite a judge’s restraining order – including selectively barring CNN from White House pool duties, AP reported.“The White House’s words and actions leave little doubt that it will immediately reinstitute a complete ban of CNN, MS Now, and POLITICO if allowed the opportunity,” lawyers for CNN, MS…

But Marra said that while he’d support a U.K. effort to rejoin should Europe find itself in a “different place” in the future, he admitted it may not be a “realistic prospect” for a generation or more. “Politics in Europe, I think, is really unstable at the moment. It’s facing many of the same challenges that we are in the U.K. in terms of the global economic instability, challenges in the Middle East, and migrant crises across parts of Europe have really destabilized politics.” Marra, who took over as leader after Labour suffered a humiliating defeat in May’s Scottish Parliament…

Another week, another chance for Nigel Farage to demonstrate his literally hysterical leadership inabilities. For a guy who supposedly valorises the wartime British spirit, Nigel would genuinely have had to have been interned during that conflict on account of his serial predilection for spreading panic and unverified information at any given chance. The weekend incident near RAF Fairford was simply the latest in a long line of occasions that make you suspect the poster on the wall at Reform HQ reads simply: “Lose Cool and Start Shitposting.”Despite its popularity now, the famous “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster from the…

A year ago Andy Burnham had a tough business reception at Labour’s party conference. The then mayor of Greater Manchester, with clear ambitions to replace Keir Starmer, had rattled the City of London with his comment that Britain should be less “in hock” to bond markets.Returning to the annual gathering in Liverpool a year later as prime minister, the mood is different. Labour is pushing to repair relations with corporate Britain and reassure City bond traders against a jittery backdrop amid the Middle East war.At a private reception on Monday night hosted by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), HSBC…

Defense and venture capital used to rarely overlap, but that’s no longer the case. Defense tech VC dealmaking set a record in Q1 2026, and new VC firms have emerged around the world to invest solely in defense startups. One of these is two-year-old Protego Ventures, which presents itself as the first and largest dedicated defense tech VC in Israel. Led notably by two women, Lital Leshem and Lee Moser, it has just completed the final close of its debut fund with $125 million in capital commitments, TechCrunch learned exclusively. This fund size is enabling Protego to invest between $5…

A Vietnamese national was charged with money laundering for his role in a massive “pig butchering” scam, which defrauded a victim out of $16 million worth of cryptocurrency. 37-year-old Trung Nguyen Van entered the United States through the San Ysidro, California / Mexico pedestrian border entry point on September 22 and was arrested before boarding a flight to Taiwan out of Los Angeles International Airport on September 24. One of Van’s victims transferred about $16 million in cryptocurrency between June and August 2024 in transfers directly traceable to Van’s cryptocurrency wallet, believing they were investing in a crypto investment platform…

Ethereum treasury company BitMine Immersion Technologies said on Sept. 28 that it held 6,001,302 ETH, leaving it 103,698 tokens short of its goal of owning 5% of Ethereum’s supply, based on the company’s latest supply estimate.Buying that remainder at BitMine’s Sept. 27 reference price would cost about $279.8 million. The company reported $672 million in cash and marketable securities on the same date.The estimated purchase cost is roughly 42% of that reported pool. Completing the goal looks affordable on paper, though ETH’s price and supply can change and BitMine has not earmarked the money for that purpose.The closer the company…