Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Stavnitser says Russia is almost certainly retaliating for Ukraine’s recent, highly successful attacks on Russian shipping, including sanctioned vessels carrying oil, as well as other ships involved in ferrying supplies to Russian-occupied Crimea.Using its own drones, Ukraine’s Operation MoLoChKa (which roughly translates as “Moscow will fall through Crimea”) has struck around 200 Russian vessels, bringing traffic in the strategic Sea of Azov to a virtual standstill.Ukrainians bristle at the suggestion that Russia and Ukraine are playing the same game. Kyiv is attempting to loosen Moscow’s grip on occupied territory, they point out, while Russia is preventing Ukraine from exporting badly…

It was the cable news equivalent of tweeting through it. Or trying to.Representative Max Miller, the Ohio Republican facing a pileup of allegations that he emotionally and physically abused his ex-wife and his toddler daughter, submitted to a live on-air interrogation from CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday.For Mr. Miller, the 23-minute appearance was a high-stakes attempt to confront the questions surrounding his personal conduct, as he tries to salvage his flailing re-election campaign amid mounting calls for him to drop out of his state’s Republican primary.For Mr. Tapper — who personally booked the interview — it was an opportunity to…

Former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, the Wales Office and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) used misleading figures about how much the country would spend on defence, a watchdog has said.In March Sir Keir told MPs that ministers were increasing defence spending by £270bn. The two other departments later repeated similar claims in June.But the UK Statistics Authority say that is wrong, as the figure is the proposed overall amount the government plans to spend between 2025 and 2029. The Wales Office deleted a post on X that had contained the claim.A UK government spokesperson said: “We have previously acknowledged…

Let’s cut to the chase: Starting today, you can take an additional $100 off of our current $300 discount for your founder, investor, or attendee TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass, which is a nice bonus on top of our current discounted pricing.  This flash sale will run all week, up until Friday, August 7 at 11:59 p.m. PT. This discount will mark your last chance at a bonus deal before our next pricing tier kicks in on August 21.  Register with this link to lock in your extra $100 off. If you need to learn more before locking in your plans, Disrupt takes over Moscone West from October 13–15, bringing more than 10,000 founders, VCs, tech…

For years organizations have strengthened their security posture by investing in specialized tools for applications, identities, endpoints, networks, and cloud infrastructure. Those investments remain essential, but the way attackers operate has changed dramatically. Today’s adversaries move laterally, chaining together weaknesses across multiple technologies until they reach their ultimate target. AI is accelerating the pace of cyberattacks. The window between vulnerability disclosure and exploitation continues to shrink, giving security teams less time to identify, prioritize, and remediate risk. In this environment, an approach that focuses just on isolated technologies is disconnected from how real attacks unfold. Modern attacks often begin with…

BIP-110 is approaching its first consequential activation boundary. The proposal enters mandatory signaling at block 961,632, currently projected around August 9, 2026. It locks in no later than block 963,648, roughly in late August, and activates its new transaction rules at block 965,664, currently projected for early September. BIP-110 uses a 55% signaling threshold and would enforce its restrictions for 52,416 blocks, approximately one year. Bitcoin resolves consensus changes through coordination among miners, users, and nodes (note that anyone can be any combination of these three things). Miners choose which valid chain to extend. Users decide which chain’s coins, deposits,…

The Romanian Navy is blasting out the Danube River bed to maintain the flow of cooling water to a nuclear power plant as a continent-wide drought dries up rivers across Europe.  The first high-powered detonations happened on Monday, according to social media posts by the Romanian Ministry of National Defense, in an effort to divert the course of Europe’s second largest river toward the Cernavodǎ Nuclear Power Plant. The plant’s operator, Nuclearelectrica, shut down Unit 1 due to low water last week, warning in a press release last Wednesday that, without intervention, “Unit 2 will be shut down in a…

Ugandans are mourning the death of one of the country’s best-known footballers after he was beaten to death by suspected robbers near his home in the capital, Kampala.Police said David Owori was fatally assaulted after resisting an attempt to steal his mobile phone and other belongings, prompting an outpouring of grief and renewed public anger over violent crime in Uganda.The 27-year-old captained Sports Club (SC) Villa, the Uganda Premier League record champions, where he played both as a right-back and midfielder. He also represented the country’s Cranes national team.”We have lost more than a player – we have lost a…

With just 12 weeks to go until his first budget, new chancellor John Healey is seeking ways to ramp up public investment, without busting the Treasury’s fiscal rules – and some economists are urging him to be bold.As he settles into No 11 Downing Street, the former defence secretary’s most immediate challenges concern day-to-day government spending.These include the need to pay for Andy Burnham’s VAT cut on energy bills and to fill the £5bn funding gap in the defence investment plan left by his predecessor Rachel Reeves – which helped prompt Healey’s resignation earlier this year.Healey could opt to meet…

Reddit is enlisting AI to help moderate new subreddits — and eventually the rest of site. The company is introducing automated moderation tools that rely on LLMs to help mods manage their communities, and it’s expanding who can use those tools today ahead of a full launch later this year.The company calls the suite of tools “Rules Hub,” and the tools let mods decide what rules should be automatically enforced and what should happen when a rule is triggered. Rules Hub relies on LLMs to evaluate “whether a post or comment matches the intent of a rule,” which “allows Rules…