Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, two companies developing self-driving trucks, have received permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test their autonomous vehicle technology on public roads. And Kodiak has already started. Kodiak said it is starting with a handful of test trucks in California, primarily around its Mountain View office. Both companies applied for testing permits this spring under updated rules approved by the California DMV, the agency that regulates autonomous vehicles in the state. Those rules, approved April 28, lifted a ban on driverless vehicles weighing over 10,000 pounds from testing on public roads and provided…

By Rajan Kapoor, VP Security, Material Security Over the past two months, I’ve written about the Vercel breach and the Composio breach separately. Both offer lessons to learn on their own. But reading them together, I keep coming back to the same observation: these aren’t isolated incidents They’re the same attack, run twice, against different targets, where email was not the entry point into the workspace. And once you see the pattern clearly, it changes what you think you need to defend. It also raises an uncomfortable question that I’ve been sitting with. The pattern I’m describing, where an OAuth…

Edelman Financial Engines has disclosed a $34 million position in spot Bitcoin ETFs — a stake that now exceeds some of the firm’s other holdings in major tech companies.  While the position is still tiny in the investment advisor’s portfolio, it is still larger than its $25 million position in Amazon.  The position — held in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust and Grayscale’s flagship product — tracks closely with the public views of its founder, Ric Edelman.  Edelman has been advocating for Bitcoin ETFs since 2019, years before the SEC approved spot products in January 2024. He also founded the Digital…

NASA is asking U.S.-based collegiate teams to submit bold, original concepts to the 2027 edition of a student challenge focused on aerospace innovation that could help the agency envision a future on the Moon shaped by new technology.  The latest NASA Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition invites student teams to explore new operations paradigms and advance the technologies needed to support sustained operations in the lunar South Pole region.  “This competition showcases the technical excellence and creativity of the next generation of explorers and innovators,” said Chris Jones, chief technologist, Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate, NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “The concepts students develop through RASC-AL demonstrate exceptional talent and…

Recovery projects for 100 critically endangered and extinct-in-the-wild species across the world are set to receive new funding under a conservation initiative announced Aug. 4. Re:wild and the Bezos Earth Fund, both U.S.-based environmental organizations, created the Phoenix Species Project and committed $100 million each, for a total of $200 million, to the project. The project’s steering committee said each species will likely receive between $500,000 and $1 million for the duration of the five-year project. Among the 100 species are Mexico’s Charco Azul pupfish (Cyprinodon veronicae), which went extinct in the wild in 1997 after its habitat…

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States’ new national security directives, a drone incursion into Latvian airspace, and a controversial delay in Zambia’s election.  Policy Action In Washington U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a slate of national security directives this week, including aggressive tariffs on drones, measures that free U.S. companies to hack on behalf of the government, and changes to Navy policy. Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States’ new national security directives, a drone incursion into Latvian airspace, and a controversial delay in Zambia’s election.  Policy Action In…

US President Donald Trump on Friday downplayed the toll on American sailors enduring a record-setting deployment of nearly nine months on the USS Abraham Lincoln as concerns escalated about mental health and supply issues aboard the aircraft carrier supporting US operations against Iran. In a brief exchange with reporters before flying to New York for an event to highlight falling violent crime rates across the US, Trump refuted that family members have raised concerns about the deployment’s length and even said that the more than 260-day deployment is “not nearly long enough.”  “That ship is moving right now, or very…

Dawn had long broken in the Essex town of Clacton-on-Sea when the results for the byelection came in. After a gruelling count, an atmosphere of deep exhaustion had settled over the room. Even the man with a dustbin on his head looked weary.As it was declared that Nigel Farage had won, as expected, there was no cheering in the room, which had been boycotted by the Reform UK leader and his supporters; instead there was only an overwhelming sense of futility.Farage forced the byelection at the start of July in an attempt take control of a narrative tide that had…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Jason Arday, who resigned as a professor at the University of Cambridge last week amid allegations of plagiarism, has been found dead.The Metropolitan Police on Friday evening said officers had been called by the ambulance service to an address in Battersea, south London, earlier in the day “following a report that a man had been found unresponsive”.“Sadly, a 41-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene,” the force added in a statement. “At this time his death is being treated as unexpected…

I’m at the research and development centre of the world’s biggest publicly listed ice-cream maker, Magnum. Near Bedford in the UK, it’s where the company’s researchers dream up new recipes and develop their production processes.What really catches my eye is a pale yellow glow in the corner of the room. The light emanates from a glow-in-the-dark ice lolly.Launched in the clubbing capital of Ibiza, it’s targeted toward clubbers and festival-goers, and one of its ingredients, vitamin B2, is naturally luminescent and glows under UV club lights.While a luminescent product may seem a bit of a gimmick, ice cream is a…