Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

A threat actor compromised the upstream infrastructure of BdThemes, a developer of premium WordPress web-design tools, and modified a remote JSON feed delivered to administrators’ browsers to create rogue admin accounts. Starting Saturday, the affected BdThemes products were no longer available for download after the WordPress Plugins team closed all of them pending a full review. BdThemes provides premium WordPress plugins, including Element Pack, Prime Slider, Ultimate Post Kit, Pixel Gallery, and Ultimate Store Kit. Its flagship free Element Pack plugin alone currently shows more than 100,000 active installations on WordPress.org, while the developer advertises a portfolio with over 350,000 active…

In brief AUSTRAC suspended Cryptolink’s VASP registration for three months from August 9, shutting its 96 crypto ATMs. The trigger was missed “basic reporting obligations,” especially threshold transaction reports, plus ignored information requests. It follows an October 2025 enforceable undertaking and a $56,340 fine the company already paid. Australia’s financial-crime regulator AUSTRAC has pulled the plug on the country’s largest Bitcoin and crypto ATM network.The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre said on Monday it suspended Cryptolink Pty Ltd’s registration as a Virtual Asset Service Provider, or VASP, for three months, effective August 9, after the company failed to keep…

As of June 2026, El Niño has officially arrived. This naturally recurring phenomenon is characterized by warmer-than-normal water temperatures in parts of the equatorial Pacific along with changes to atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. Its regional effects range from desert floods to delayed monsoons to shifts in where tropical cyclones are more likely to form. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center expects the current El Niño to continue to strengthen through the end of 2026, with a 97 percent chance of lasting through early Northern Hemisphere spring 2027. Even during El Niño’s early stages, satellites have observed characteristic changes along the equatorial Pacific,…

New Providence Gas (NPG), a joint venture between Shell Bahamas Power Company (Shell) and Sun Oil, a subsidiary of FOCOL Holdings, has chosen PX Group, a portfolio company of Ara Partners, to handle operations and maintenance at a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import and regasification terminal under construction in The Bahamas. La Santa Maria platform in operation during a previous LNG discharge test in Norway; Source: ECOnnect PX has been appointed by New Providence Gas as the operations and maintenance partner for the LNG terminal under development at Clifton Pier in New Providence, The Bahamas. This multi-year agreement covers commissioning, operational readiness and long-term…

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at scrapped deals in the Middle East, Ukraine’s deadliest attack on Russia since the beginning of the war, and natural disasters in Colombia and China. Middle East Mayhem Continues Another weekend passed without any agreements to resolve the multiple conflicts in the Middle East. Deals were rejected, stalemates continued, oil prices rose, and missiles and drones flew. Israel formally rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s 15-point peace plan for Gaza on Sunday. In a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Israeli military would not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas undergoes…

Claim: Dr. Anthony Fauci co-authored a paper that found masks caused most deaths during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Rating: In late July and early August 2026, social media users recirculated a rumor that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stated in a scientific paper that face masks caused most deaths during the Spanish flu pandemic in the early 20th century. For example, on July 30, one Facebook user shared an image (archived) featuring text that claimed Fauci co-authored a paper in 2008 that found “most of the victims of the…

The pro-Kremlin nationalist party Rodina accused Yabloko of receiving undeclared campaign support, notably from Western sources – an allegation Yabloko denied.Published On 10 Aug 202610 Aug 2026Russia‘s Supreme Court has barred the only officially registered party opposing Moscow’s war in Ukraine from running in next month’s parliamentary elections.The court upheld a suit on Monday brought by the small pro-Kremlin nationalist party Rodina to annul the registration of Yabloko, stripping voters of the chance to express their discontent with the four-and-a-half-year conflict at the ballot box.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listLast month, the Central Election Commission had initially allowed…

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont called on the nation’s top artificial intelligence companies to pause development of the technology, saying the corporations have already lost control of models that could cause “potentially cataclysmic results” for millions of people.In a letter to the chief executives of OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta on Monday, Mr. Sanders cited statements by the companies saying they would halt or delay new models if the technology became too risky to safely manage. He argued that threshold had recently been passed.“It is not too late to avoid disaster,” wrote Mr. Sanders. “Stop building machines that humans cannot control.”A…

It’s that time of year: On Wednesday, Google is set to host its annual Made by Google hardware launch event for Pixel gadgets. Google itself has already teased new slab-style and foldable Pixel smartphones, but leaks also indicate that the company could announce updated watches, a new color for familiar earbuds, and perhaps a brand new AirTag-like item tracker.However, unusually, Google’s event is taking place in the evening: It kicks off on Wednesday at 6PM ET / 3PM PT instead of in the early afternoon or mid-morning, like many other tech events. And this time it has a celebrity host…

With a green deerstalker cap, a blue and green plaid shawl covering her shoulders and a pipe resting in her right hand right below her mouth, it was almost impossible to tell the difference between Sherlock Holmes and Elizabeth Rasnick. But that was the point— social engineering is all about deception.Holmes was the original social engineer, argued Resnick, assistant professor at the University of West Florida’s Center for Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence (AI). During DEF CON 34, she drew parallels between current social engineering techniques and Holmes’s own playbook as described in the detective tales. Her session highlighted how important…