Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Uefa is in something of a pickle as it tries to get rid of Infantino.The easiest route to success was the slow turning of the vice throughout this week, hoping to exert enough pressure to force him to quit.Yet the Swiss appears to have no intention of walking away.European football looks like an outlier, struggling to gain enough support to topple him. On Thursday, Lamin Kaba Bajo, the president of the Gambia Football Federation, praised Infantino’s “courage” and for the U-turn, and said he was “willing to give him my support more than ever”.Only Jordan, one of the few countries…

FireTracking’s cameras are currently surveying a million hectares, mainly in France.The cost? In the French département of Indre-et-Loire, the company has installed 11 detection sites.”In all €1.2m [$1.4m; £1m] was spent to cover the whole 6,000 sq km area [2,300 sq miles],” says Chaudier.It is mainly agricultural land. Crop fires are a huge and expensive problem with some 300 a year in this département alone, Chaudier says.AI fire detection is going to get better over the coming years. The French civil protection service has a programme called Condor, for example, which is testing solar-powered drones that carry out continuous patrols…

A Go-based malware delivered in ClickFix attacks targeting macOS users is stealing cryptocurrency assets, browser-stored passwords, Apple Keychain data, and cached credentials. ​The malware can intercept and redirect transactions with various cryptocurrencies. Although it can empty wallets entirely, it can also calculate the total value of a transaction to determine how much to divert to the attacker. Security researchers at Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services company Huntress discovered the payload after responding to a ClickFix incident. The targeted user received an email with a link to a page instructing them to run a command in Terminal. This downloaded a…

Former OpenAI alignment researcher Naomi Bashkansky said she resigned from the AI company on July 23 and joined Conduit the next day as a founding researcher. At Conduit, she will work on models designed to turn non-invasive neural recordings into text that can direct AI agents, a goal her essay calls “telepathy.” Related ReadingOpenAI co-founders quit amid Musk’s legal firestormThe firm’s leadership exits have renewed focus on the firm’s AI safety practices. Aug 6, 2024 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo Bashkansky said she spent about 1.5 years at OpenAI, and described the new role in an Aug. 4 essay. She predicted that…

In 1965, a presidential advisory panel issued a report warning that pervasive chemical and carbon pollution was harming environmental health and changing the climate. Five years later, President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act.  Since that 1970 law and its amendments were passed, combined emissions of a half dozen harmful air pollutants from vehicles and industrial sources have decreased by nearly 80 percent.  But mounting evidence shows that pollution from wildfire smoke is eclipsing those air-quality gains. The unchecked burning of fossil fuels is creating warmer, drier conditions that make wildfires more intense and destructive, and blanket communities in…

There is something deeply incongruous about a penal system centred on incarceration having to release prisoners early because it has run out of room to incarcerate them (PM to tighten early release rules but men jailed over PC Harper’s death can be freed, 4 August).The government’s latest early-release measures may be necessary to prevent our prisons from becoming completely overwhelmed, but they are surely a symptom of a much deeper failure. We appear to be operating a revolving-door policy: tougher sentencing fills the prisons, overcrowding forces early release, public concern produces calls for tougher sentencing, and the cycle begins again.…

A student shot several people at a high school north of Thailand’s capital on Friday, killing three teachers and three students and wounding several others, police said. The shooting happened at the Debsirin Nonthaburi School in Nonthaburi province northwest of Bangkok. The ​gunman shot and ​killed ‌his ⁠grandparents at ‌their home Friday morning before ⁠opening fire at the ​school on ‌Bangkok’s outskirts, police said. He fired 26 rounds and another 34 ​rounds of ​ammunition were ​found at the ​scene, police said in a statement. Royal Thai Police spokesperson Trairong Piwpan said the motive for the attack was still being investigated. He…

Older readers may remember when in 2017 — back when the EU was entirely in black and white — then-European Parliament President Antonio Tajani wrote to Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to point out that the Parliament was taking its summer break, and that no work should be sent over before early September. Tajani’s note was dated July 13. A note from our Irony Department: This column is off next week as I’m on vacation. Although, as Tuscany is out of my price range, I’ll be vacationing at the Schuman roundabout instead. But if major events happening while you’re on a…

Alan Milburn is guiding a metal loop along the serpentine wire of an electrical buzzer game as he explains the challenge of Britain’s youth jobs crisis. “We have got more than a million young people not in education, employment or training (Neet). Crisis is an over-used word – but this is a crisis.”On a fact-finding trip to Dublin, the former UK cabinet minister is being shown around an Irish Rail training facility. He tells the apprentices who rigged up the game that, while things are bad in Britain, Ireland is on the right track.“It’s about half the rate here, it’s…

Primary schools in England should be required to identify children at risk of leaving education at 16 without finding a job, a government review is to recommend.Alan Milburn, who is leading a review into Britain’s crisis in youth worklessness, said he would call for sweeping changes in education policy alongside a shake-up of the benefits system to address the problem.Speaking to the Guardian, he said ministers needed to “make somebody responsible” for identifying and supporting the children who risked becoming Neet (not in employment, education or training) after their GCSE year up to the age of 24.“The warning signs are…