Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

In Sri Lanka, the traditional snake charming culture is fast fading as changing livelihoods, modern entertainment and attitudes toward wildlife reshape the island’s nomadic community, the Ahikuntika tribe.During the act of snake charming, cobras do not respond to the music itself, but to the movement of the charmer and instrument, which they perceive as a potential threat, herpetologists say.Breaking a cobra’s venom fangs, which the snake charmers do, does not necessarily prevent it from developing replacement fangs, while deliberate fang removal can cause injury and raise animal-welfare concerns, conservationists say.Researchers recommend using the existing traditional knowledge of snakes to…

Claim: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, is getting a divorce because of an affair with Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat. Rating: In 2026, a rumor spread that former Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney was getting a divorce because of her supposed affair with Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat.  The story spread on X and Facebook (screenshot). The claims referenced Cheney and Raskin serving together on the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. (X user Larry Dean) Some users seemed to interpret the rumor about the alleged affair as true. Snopes readers contacted us to…

Vietnamese authorities have detained three activists, including an Australian, on what have been described as “fabricated” charges.The Vietnamese government said the three confessed to being members of Viet Tan – a pro-democracy organisation – which it describes as a terrorist organisation.In a statement, Viet Tan said it “strongly condemns the abduction of two of its members in Cambodia and the fabricated charges issued by the Vietnamese communist authorities to cover up an act of transnational repression”.It is not clear if the third person is a Viet Tan member as well.Tran Hiep, a 50-year-old Vietnamese Australian democracy campaigner, was due to…

Housing associations in England will be told they cannot decline to house homeless families without good reason, Angela Rayner will tell the Labour conference, as part of a drive for more public control of housing.Homelessness charities said the new powers were a “gamechanger” and had the potential to make a significant difference to rough sleeping and families in temporary accommodation, the numbers of which have risen sharply. Almost 180,000 children are living in temporary accommodation.The government will also give local councils 60 days to bid to buy social homes when they go on the market, as well as compelling public…

ZDNET’s key takeaways Apple has released its first update to iOS 27. The update fixes a bug that causes the 18 Pro and Pro Max to restart. A bug-fixing update is also available for the iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro. Apple has released its first update to iOS 27 to fix an intermittent but annoying problem that could cause the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max to freeze or restart without warning. Released Monday, iOS 27.0.1 promises to resolve this freeze and restart issue, which typically occurs when Face ID fails to authenticate. As an iPhone 18 Pro owner, I’ve…

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) will focus its coordination of national crypto supervision in 2027 on operational resilience, outsourcing and firms maintaining sufficient operations inside the bloc as implementation deepens under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).ESMA Chair Verena Ross said Monday that the regulator’s focus under MiCA had shifted “from rulemaking towards supervision and convergence.”“We want innovation to flourish within a framework that provides clarity for firms, safeguards for investors and confidence in the markets,” Ross said during a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.ESMA set out the priorities in its 2027…

Located within the constellation Perseus lies a star called Algol, also known as ‘Demon Star’ or ‘The Ghoul’. You can spot this star during the autumn months, along with Cassiopeia and Andromeda in the northeastern sky, beginning after 9 PM. In Greek mythology, this star represents the ‘blinking eye’ of the gorgon Medusa. But how can a star blink? Algol is a triple-star system, with two of the three stars orbiting one another. This eclipsing binary causes the system to go from a bright +2.1 magnitude to a slightly dimmer +3.4 magnitude about every three days. Using data from NASA’s…

Plastic pollution could disrupt the bioluminescent light produced by deep-sea organisms, researchers warn in a letter in the journal Cambridge Prisms: Plastics. When deep-sea organisms ingest plastics, it could disrupt the chemical pathways that create bioluminescence and damage the tissues in their bodies, impairing their ability to find food and a mate, the authors said. In the deep sea, up to 80% of organisms with complex cells are believed to be bioluminescent, the only source of light in the darkest parts of the ocean. The light these organisms create is essential for their survival and reproduction, the letter…

One of the most important outcomes of the recent summit in Washington between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is something we are unlikely to learn soon, if ever. This has nothing to do with the failure of the delegations to release a joint statement, or even the large discrepancies between each side’s readout of their meetings. Rather, it is about the private estimates that Xi must have made at the conclusion of his visit concerning two related questions: Who, deep down, is Trump, and what does his presidency say about the state of the United…

Rumors spread widely in September 2026 about the details of a lawsuit that alleged seven male students at Cornell University drugged and raped a 20-year-old female student in 2024.  In particular, social media users shared a claim that some of the accused students were allowed to write essays in lieu of punishment. Cornell said the essay claim was false, but Snopes was unable to independently verify that, nor what specific punitive measures were or were not given to the male students. Snopes readers also sought information about why no one had faced criminal charges. After the lawsuit was filed, the…