Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Andy Burnham has been warned that the UK economy could barely grow next year if disruption in the Strait of Hormuz continues until the end of 2026.Treasury sources have confirmed that internal modelling presented to the new prime minister and chancellor suggests UK GDP growth could be as low as 0.3% in 2027, as first reported by Bloomberg.Government officials say they routinely plan for all possible scenarios.The UK economy saw a strong start to the year, but growth then faltered with the conflict in the Middle East affecting some businesses. The Iran war has pushed up oil and fuel prices,…

From record-smashing temperatures, wildfires, hosepipe bans and thousands of premature deaths, the climate crisis has left its mark across the summer of 2026.Tackling the root cause – the burning of fossil fuels – and ending the crisis will take years. So will fixing the UK government’s calamitous failure to protect lives and livelihoods against the long-predicted affects of global heating.But the climate emergency is right here, right now, and here are 10 policies that Andy Burnham’s government should consider announcing urgently.1. Reject drilling licences for the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gasfieldsThis would be a vital and confidence-boosting sign that…

Google’s latest flagship phones are finally here: On Wednesday at a Made By Google event in New York City, the company unveiled the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and Pixel 11 Fold. The phones are available for preorder now, and will hit stores on Aug. 20.Also: Every Pixel device announced at Made by Google 2026: 11 Pro Fold, Pixel Watch 5, and moreThe Pixel 11 line features a brighter screen than its predecessor, an updated camera system, and over 30 hours of battery life. It runs on the Google Tensor G6 processor. You can preorder the…

“While investigating an unrelated vulnerability, Trellix Advanced Research Center stumbled across a vulnerability in Python’s tarfile module,” Kasimir Schulz, a vulnerability researcher for Trellix’s Threat Labs, wrote on the firm’s blog. “Initially we thought we had found a new zero-day vulnerability. As we dug into the issue, we realized this was in fact CVE-2007-4559.” According to NIST, CVE-2007-4559 is a directory traversal vulnerability in the extract and extractall functions in the tarfile module in Python that allows user-assisted remote attackers to overwrite arbitrary files via a “..” sequence in filenames in a TAR archive. Bad actors can create exploits with…

If you’ve scanned headlines over the last year, you’ve likely seen the prevailing market narrative: Bitcoin miners are abandoning their operations and pivoting to AI data centers, signaling a retreat from proof-of-work. To casual observers, this looks like a surrender. Proof that Bitcoin was just a temporary placeholder until a “better” compute workload arrived. However, if you look through the lens of power infrastructure and thermodynamics, that story gets the reality completely backwards. The migration isn’t a sign of bitcoin weakness; but a long-overdue, structurally bullish rebalancing of global energy pricing. Here is the underlying reality that the market completely…

The bird flu outbreak at Nepal’s only zoo killed or led to the culling of at least 63 animals, including birds, wild cats, civets, two leopards, a jackal and a bear, an inquiry has found.The inquiry’s report says contaminated feed and water in open bird enclosures, along with failures in animal-food handling, likely helped the virus spread.The zoo remained open for five days after a rapid test indicated bird flu, despite receiving an earlier warning about infections among crows in Kathmandu.Less than two weeks after reopening following the bird flu outbreak, the zoo recorded another disease outbreak that killed…

French-based engineering player Technip Energies has been tasked with front-end engineering design (FEED) work for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project off the coast of Malaysia, enabling it to bring to life Southeast Asia’s next LNG regasification terminal. Yan project in Kedah, northwest Malaysia; Source: Technip Energies Technip Energies has secured a FEED contract for the offshore regasification terminal (RGT) Yan project in Kedah, northwest Malaysia. This project is being jointly developed by Gas Malaysia, Tokyo Gas Asia, and VTTI. The estimated project costs are expected to be RM2 billion–RM3 billion ($490 million-$735 million). “This RGT Yan project will introduce…

Clacton town centre is bustling, the beaches are packed and the pier’s raking in cash. We can credit the weather, but no doubt press coverage and Count Binface’s promotional videos have got us on radars too. The tourists look like they’re having a lovely time.I moved to Clacton in 2022 and the first year was brilliant. It started with beach walks, cheap drinks and decorating a flat with panoramic sea views, and ended fat and happy from chips and ice-cream, a newborn baby in tow. Privileged with my health and stable income, albeit strained by a Truss-era mortgage, it was…

A total solar eclipse will cast a shadow across several European countries on Wednesday. But in Iceland, where eclipse chasers were hoping for one of the best possible views, the unpredictable weather may prove to be a spoiler. So many Icelanders — and some intrepid visitors — plan to make a game-day decision about where to go to watch the spectacle.“It’s the worst country to watch an eclipse,” said Margret Brynjolfsdottir, who lives in Iceland’s remote northwest, part of the narrow band of the globe where the moon will completely block out the sun. As of Tuesday, forecasters were predicting…

During the Second World War, German soldiers’ identification tags were split into two on the event of a soldier’s death. One half would be kept with the soldier, while the other would be sent to German army authorities, which tracked German military casualties and would notify relatives of soldiers’ deaths.The German War Graves Commission said the families of these two soldiers would have “waited in vain” for official notification of their deaths.It said it had begun its investigation to find out the identities of the two soldiers, and that anyone who is still missing a relative can search for their…