Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Richard Tice has been accused by Labour’s Bridget Phillipson of mounting a “deeply chilling attempt to silence the free press” after he sent a legal threat to the Guardian over its reporting on his financial affairs.Lawyers for Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, singled out a Guardian correspondent for her journalism about a series of Tice’s financial transactions that were referred to the National Crime Agency.Tice is now suing the NCA, claiming that the information could only have come from an officer within the agency.In a separate letter to the Guardian, Tice’s lawyers made clear they would be seeking…

It’s hard to imagine a home appliance more forgotten — yet more consequential — than the water heater. Most people only think of water heaters when their shower runs cold, but they represent about 18% of a household’s total energy budget and are one of the main causes of residential water damage. To Luke Winston-Almanzar, water heaters are in clear need of an upgrade. “The typical water heater is devoid of intelligence, it’s using a god-awful amount of energy, and my air fryer is smarter than it,” he told TechCrunch. “I was using more energy to heat my water than…

“Teams think in terms of apps, services, pipelines, or bots,” Santos says. Harnesses disappear into code repositories, SaaS products, and vendor configuration screens instead of showing up as discrete assets in security inventories. Even the terminology is inconsistent. “One team may call something an agent, another a copilot, another a workflow assistant, another a plugin-based automation,” Santos says, “even though all of them are effectively harnesses.” His recommendation is to build a live inventory of every production agent, identify its harness, and map every tool and resource it can access. Then reduce those permissions to the minimum required. Organizations shouldn’t…

The Federal Reserve payment system is a walled garden, and rightly so; there are serious risks to opening access to unregulated or underregulated entities. But the walls should be drawn around prudent regulation, not arbitrary criteria. Fed membership should automatically mean access to Fed payment rails. Otherwise, if you build the walls in the wrong place, innovation will go offshore into foreign jurisdictions, beyond the reach of any U.S. regulator.FDIC insurance is one of those arbitrary lines. Some point to its absence as a reason to hesitate, but that confuses two different risks. FDIC insurance protects against the risk created…

Reading Time: 3 minutes Last winter, a vacant lot between West Concordia Avenue and North 12th Street in Milwaukee was buried in snow waiting to become a community garden. Now, hundreds of children from We Got This Milwaukee are spending their summer making each plot flourish and using the garden as a safe haven to look out for each other and build character.  We Got This Milwaukee works with youths ages 10 to 18 to maintain 15 formerly vacant lots in the 53206 ZIP code by planting produce and flowers to give away to residents for free, while also cleaning…

The claim that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice extorted Connecticut Children’s Medical Center to force it into ending gender-affirming care for minors is still under investigation.  The rumor stems from several news reports that said the medical center committed to ending gender-affirming care and to setting aside $500,000 to “provide care for individuals who say they were harmed by gender-affirming care they previously received.” It is true the DOJ applied legal pressure that led the Connecticut hospital to settle, based on a statement on the DOJ website. Whether it constitutes extortion is debatable. The statement says Connecticut Children’s…

Europe braced on Wednesday for a fifth heat wave of a record-breaking summer that has already spurred wildfires of rare ferocity, caused water shortages across the continent and, for many Europeans, sapped the joy from a season they once savored.The heat is expected to sweep from the west, with a high of 109 degrees Fahrenheit, or 43 degrees Celsius, predicted in Spain on Thursday, before hitting more eastern countries like Germany over the weekend.In Britain, the government convened a special ministerial meeting on Wednesday morning to prepare for the fallout, as tourists and residents from Madrid to Rome spoke wistfully…

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “We know how challenging this summer is proving, particularly for firefighters tackling wildfires, farmers working in drought conditions, and NHS staff in busy A&E units. “We will continue to take the action needed to keep communities safe, protect water supplies, support farming communities and safeguard the environment.” Britons are this week bracing for their fifth heatwave of 2026, with some temperatures forecast to exceed 36C. The Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, has warned that this summer is set to be the U.K.’s hottest since records began. More than two-thirds of England is now in…

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he accepts his announcements aimed at tackling the cost of living are not enough on their own and hinted at further support. Burnham told BBC’s Wake up to Money he will deliver an “accumulation of smaller things” that “combine to take the pressure down” on household budgets.He spoke of an overhaul of train fares and “more public control” of energy, water and housing but did not give details on how he would bring this about.Burnham has made a number of announcements to help people with the cost of living since taking office, including the…

Andy Burnham will chair an emergency Cobra meeting in response to the extreme heat, which has caused wildfires and plunged many parts of Britain into drought.The prime minister will meet ministers, officials and agencies as high temperatures continue across the UK, with 33C forecast on Wednesday and up to 38C on Thursday.A No 10 spokesperson said the government understood that firefighters, farmers and NHS staff were all facing challenges connected to the weather.It will be the second Cobra meeting this year on heatwaves, after one took place amid high temperatures in June. It comes as parts of the country face…