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A social-media sleuth known as Student Geng has released a series of videos highlighting cases of alleged research misconduct.Credit: Tom Houghton/NatureChina’s national funding agency has reprimanded and penalized four senior academics and their colleagues after a sleuth flagged data anomalies in their published papers. The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) found violations ranging from data fabrication to data tampering in four papers, according to an announcement from the agency on 28 August.The academics and their colleagues were banned from applying for funding from the NSFC, either as individuals or members of teams, for between three and seven years.…

Months after many communities in Katsina State entered local peace arrangements with armed groups, renewed attacks, abductions and displacement are testing those arrangements and the security measures meant to protect rural residents. Across southern Katsina and neighbouring Sokoto State, many people have been killed, kidnapped or forced from their homes in recent weeks. Farmers in some areas are afraid to go to their fields, and livestock have been stolen. Security agencies have responded with extra deployments, rescue operations and raids on suspected bandit hideouts. Results vary by location. Some communities report improvements after local negotiations and security operations. Troops have…

Taylor says idea to use super to help with housing purchases ‘not our policy’Angus Taylor said shadow housing minister Andrew Bragg’s idea to use superannuation as collateral for housing purchases is “not our policy”.Taylor was asked about Bragg’s idea earlier today. The opposition leader had this to say: double quotation markSuperannuation is Australians’ money. It’s Australians’ money. They should have choice in it, that’s why we strongly support self-managed super funds. But the proposal you’re talking about there is not our policy. As we reported earlier, Bragg said the “general idea” behind the proposal “is we want to have a…

In the world’s first clash of the drone boats, a Ukrainian naval drone destroyed a Russian explosive drone boat using a remote-controlled machine gun turret. This comes as the war in Ukraine has already seen widespread deployment of such uncrewed surface vessels in combat, along with swarms of flying attack drones and ground robots. The lopsided battle took place on September 12 when members of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence detected the Russian uncrewed surface vessel (USV) in the Black Sea and directed a Ukrainian Navy drone boat to intercept. The Russian vessel was “positively identified” as an Orcan surface drone with…

The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has dismissed claims by supporters of Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, that their principal won Rivers State, describing the assertion as a product of “imagination.” Wike spoke on Monday during an interview on TVC’s Journalists’ Hangout, where he was asked whether the support he enjoys in Rivers is organic, given the narrative by Obi’s supporters, popularly called Obidients, that their candidate won the state in the 2023 presidential election. “They won by their own imagination,” he said. “Who did INEC declare to have won?” The former Rivers State…

The problemDear Nature,I’m a graduate student in biochemistry at a prestigious institution in the United States, and I’ve concluded that I’m in the wrong laboratory. I’m constantly exhausted and my project isn’t one I’m truly passionate about. Our principal investigator (PI), who is also my adviser, is something of a star in their field, so they’re rarely around to provide me with in-depth mentoring. I’ve had to lean heavily on staff scientists and postdocs in the lab for help, but my experiments aren’t working, I feel my progress has stalled and I fear I’m not getting the support I need…

The 2026 Youths’ Assembly of the God’s Kingdom Society (GKS), the Church of the Living God, climaxed with a Special Thanksgiving Service at the Apapa Service Hall, Lagos recently, where prizes were presented to participating branches and individuals in the Lagos Zone. The prizes covered sporting activities held earlier at the Egbe premises of the Church, as well as the Bible Quiz competition held at the Apapa Service Hall, Lagos. The Lagos Chapter of the League of Freedomites, a philanthropic organisation in the Church, also awarded bursaries to three youths. According to the Chairman of the League, Professor Chris Osegenwune,…

Airlines have criticised the UK’s air traffic control system after a second technical problem in two weeks caused major disruption to UK flights.EasyJet said Monday’s incident “once again calls into question the resilience” of the service, while Wizz Air said there was a “national confidence crisis” in National Air Traffic Services (Nats), which runs the UK’s air traffic.Nats said a “connectivity issue” at Prestwick was behind the disruption across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England – and had “nothing to do” with a separate software defect at Swanwick earlier this month.Prime Minister Andy Burnham said further issues today “cause even…

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has gone to great lengths to hype the security of its new AI assistant Muse, claiming it is “built from the ground up for privacy and security.” A zero-day vulnerability that gives locally run apps and terminal commands complete control of the agent raises serious doubts. Further raising questions, Amazon on Sunday began blocking Muse from its site. Meta introduced Muse a few weeks ago. The assistant “books appointments, fills out forms and handles customer service,” “proactively takes tasks off your plate,” and can “make purchases, generate images, create documents, and connect with your…

The Liberal Democrats have rejected official guidance by the equalities watchdog on how organisations should implement the supreme court ruling on transgender people, calling it “discriminatory and unworkable”.The motion, passed overwhelmingly at the party’s annual conference in Brighton, makes the Lib Dems the first of the big three parties in parliament to call for a new approach to implementing last year’s ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex only. The Greens have previously done so.Formal guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), put out in May, is intended to tell service providers…