Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

In June, a bird flu outbreak at Kathmandu’s Central Zoo killed at least 65 animals from more than 20 species, exposing flaws in Nepal’s disease surveillance.The outbreak has raised concerns that similar outbreaks could go undetected in national parks, where wildlife is not routinely monitored.Experts warn that shared feeding sites, including Nepal’s renowned “vulture restaurants”, and the reliance of wild carnivores on domestic poultry could create pathways for influenza viruses to spread between birds and mammals.Despite the outbreak and recommendations from the zoo’s own investigation committee for contingency plans, stronger biosecurity and rapid reporting, Nepal’s wildlife and livestock authorities…

Reading Time: < 1 minute Since Wisconsin Watch’s 2026 voter guide went live about a month ago, we’ve heard from readers how valuable it is.  A librarian in northeast Wisconsin emailed me to offer thanks: “As a public librarian it is sometimes hard to find unbiased, nonpartisan information on elections and candidates that we can share with our patrons. I am glad that we will have your guide this year!” While I wasn’t directly involved with creating the voter guide, I couldn’t be more proud of how it turned out — it’s a user-friendly, helpful tool. And one I’ll use to…

When a serving Italian general published a far-right tract in 2023 entitled The World Turned Upside Down, a disciplinary inquiry swiftly followed. Roberto Vannacci’s text was a sustained exercise in bile and bigotry, attacking among other things the “normalisation” of homosexuality, and questioning whether a high-profile black volleyball star could really be considered Italian. The controversy sent the book into the bestseller charts, and its author was suspended for bringing the army into disrepute.A year out from Italy’s next general election, Mr Vannacci is a problem not for the military but for the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. Now a…

Claim: School officials in Bridgehaven, Pennsylvania, fired Denise Whitmarsh, a 61-year-old school cook, after they found out she packed extra meals on Fridays for hungry kids to eat over the weekend. Rating: A rumor claiming school officials in Bridgehaven, Pennsylvania, fired Denise Whitmarsh, a 61-year-old school cook, after they found out she packed extra meals on Fridays for hungry kids to eat over the weekend spread online in early August 2026. For example, a Facebook user wrote (archived): A school cafeteria worker is at the center of a debate after reportedly losing her job over acts of kindness. According to reports, Denise Whitmarsh, 61,…

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis killed dozens of Saudi-supported government troops in missile and drone attacks Thursday, medical sources said, as the country’s conflict becomes the latest front in the US-Iran war. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the rebels attacked government positions with ballistic missiles and drones in response to an alleged military buildup backed by neighbouring Saudi Arabia. Read moreYemen says ready to escalate against Houthi rebels as they target Saudi Arabia The attacks killed at least 38 government troops and injured 29, two medical sources told AFP. A military official described them as the deadliest between the two sides…

The White House’s push to delay a ban on intoxicating hemp products that President Trump signed into law last year has snarled an otherwise straightforward effort to pass legislation that would lock in government funding through the fall before senators leave Washington on a summer recess.In an unusual display of defiance, a group of Republicans led by Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina was vowing to kill the hemp proposal that Senate leaders had tucked into the spending bill at the request of Mr. Trump.The measure would postpone the date the ban will go into effect, from November to Dec.…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldAn Argentine grid operator has accused US officials of inappropriately pressuring it to cancel an infrastructure project with Huawei, as Donald Trump widens efforts to limit Beijing’s influence in Latin America.CALF, a regional electric grid co-operative, said on Wednesday that a US embassy official in July asked one of its executives “if there was a possibility of cancelling the project” with the Chinese technology group, citing a “US government policy restricting or revoking visas” for directors of Huawei-linked projects.A spokesperson…

It is unlikely Meta will be the last to emerge with findings of models showing they have, as Prof Woodward puts it, “gone to school” – and learnt our own ways of finding and exploiting gaps in systems.For some, these episodes point to clear security failures on the part of AI companies leading the charge on this game-changing, era-defining tech.For others, they are merely another vehicle for tech firms to hype up their powerful models and compete with rivals. For me, both theories hold some grain of truth.But in rearing their head one after another, these events have nonetheless spurred…

Cloudflare has released Kitesurf, a stateless web browser built specifically for AI agents. It runs entirely in V8 isolates on Cloudflare Workers, with no Chromium underneath. Browser engines like Chromium were built for humans, and their memory and compute overhead makes one-browser-per-agent prohibitively expensive. Agents do not need tabs, extensions, or pixel-perfect 60-fps rendering. They need machine-readable content, low token overhead, scalability, and isolation against threats like prompt injection. Kitesurf drops the human-facing parts and keeps what models use. It already passes 215,000+ Web Platform Tests and is available now, free while in beta, through Browser Run. Is It Deployable…

Most security teams don’t suffer from a lack of data. They suffer from a lack of certainty. Vulnerability scanners, annual penetration tests, and compliance assessments can generate thousands of findings. Yet they often fail to answer a simple question: Which risks actually matter? For a global investment firm operating across 18 locations, that question became increasingly important. A small security engineering team was responsible for securing a growing environment while balancing infrastructure projects, identity management, user support, and the countless responsibilities that come with protecting a modern enterprise. The team wasn’t struggling to generate findings. They were struggling to understand…