Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Starting with the original in Camp Miasma in 1980, the horror franchise went on to have a long life. There were multiple sequels, spinoffs in the form of arcade cabinets and board games, and just about every kind of merchandise you can think of, from alarm clocks and lunch boxes to Halloween costumes and action figures. It got so popular there were even knockoff costumes at party stores. For several decades the franchise exerted a powerful, albeit dwindling, impact on the world of horror. But if you haven’t heard of Camp Miasma, that’s okay, because it doesn’t really exist. It’s…

Black Hat — The National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA) says a 2024 safety recall for Bendix’s EC80 heavy-truck brake controller quietly fixed a set of serious vulnerabilities, including a wirelessly reachable remote code execution flaw, alongside the memory corruption issue Bendix publicly disclosed.  The findings were detailed by NMFTA senior cybersecurity research engineer Ben Gardiner on Thursday at the Black Hat USA 2026 conference. The EC80 electronic control unit (ECU) handles anti-lock braking, traction control and stability functions on heavy commercial vehicles. It communicates over J2497, also known as PLC4TRUCKS, a powerline databus that has served since 2001 as…

MARA Holdings sold 2,213 Bitcoin during the second quarter, equal to 91.37% of the 2,422 BTC it mined, before adding $600 million of new borrowing secured by Bitcoin collateral to help finance its planned acquisition of Long Ridge, a power-generation site it aims to develop for AI and high-performance computing.The company’s quarterly filing shows that the new money sits inside $750 million of fully drawn facilities entered into on Aug. 4. Coinbase provided a $450 million facility, including $300 million of new borrowing and the refinancing of an existing $150 million loan. Two Prime provided a separate $300 million loan.…

Linus Pauling was one of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century. He won two Nobel prizes and transformed our understanding of chemical bonds and the structure of proteins. Late in his career, though, he became famous for something very different: a passionate belief that very high doses of vitamin C could help people with cancer. Many doctors scoffed. When Pauling himself later died of cancer aged 93, he was held up as a classic case of the “halo effect”: being a genius in one field doesn’t guarantee wisdom in another. Half a century on, the story looks more…

U.S.-headquartered technology player SLB has signed off on a long-term stimulation assignment on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) with Norway’s state-owned energy giant Equinor. MV Island Captain; Source: SLB SLB and Equinor’s multi-year agreement for advanced reservoir stimulation services across the Norwegian Continental Shelf will result in a major upgrade of the MV Island Captain well stimulation vessel to secure additional capability for tight offshore reservoirs. The ship will be converted into a fully proppant-capable stimulation vessel. This move will not only enable dedicated capacity to support development of tight offshore reservoirs but also help maximize recovery from future wells. The…

Since the first Industrial Revolution, goods and technologies have reached the farthest corners of the world, but the ability to design, build, market, and extract value from them has remained highly concentrated. Unless humanity can break this pattern, a sufficient response to climate change will remain out of reach. BRASÍLIA—Suppose the global economy comprised countries roughly equally equipped with research institutions, technology development labs, and industrial production facilities. They might compete fiercely, build rival alliances, and vie aggressively for raw materials and natural resources. But one can also imagine a more optimistic scenario. Since each country would understand its own…

Claim: In August 2026, 300 military officers and generals resigned from the U.S. Department of Defense. Rating: In August 2026, multiple social media posts claimed 300 military officers and generals had resigned from the U.S. Department of Defense.  The posts circulating on X, Facebook, and Threads claimed this was the “largest wave of resignations in U.S. history” and “could lead to an almost complete change in the American system.”  Snopes readers contacted us to investigate the claim, versions of which had circulated online for more than a year. For example, a February 2025 Reddit post read, “MILITARY REVOLT! 300 Generals…

Iran has turned its ability to restrict commercial passage through the Strait of Hormuz into a potent economic weapon in the war imposed by the United States and Israel.IMF PortWatch shows that in the seven days ending August 2, an average of only about four ships per day passed through the strait, compared with about 90 during the corresponding week of 2025. Estimated transit volume fell from 3.5 million to about 143,000 metric tonnes per day. Both indicators declined by approximately 96 percent.This was not a temporary collapse in traffic but a sustained disruption. Since February 28, both vessel traffic and estimated tonnage…

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Friday, former Det Sup Blaik, who led the Thames Valley Police investigation, pointed to remarks by the judge who sentenced PC Harper’s killers. Mr Justice Edis referred to their case of manslaughter as being “very close to a case of murder in its seriousness”.The former officer called for prisoners who were judged to have had a high level of culpability for a manslaughter offence to be excluded from the scheme.Allowing them to walk free would “undermine” the judicial process and impact police morale, Blaik said, before urging the government to have a “long, hard think”…

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is built around one question: How do you build an enduring company in the AI era? Our programming and speaker lineup reflect that, based on the feedback we’ve gotten from the community and the reality on the ground. Last year at Disrupt, we spoke with founders about their experiences and discovered the results of their attendance firsthand. One founder saw a 3x oversubscription rate after their confirmation for Startup Battlefield and more than 100 investor inbounds helping fuel conversations about a future fundraising round. Another founder had nearly 30 back-to-back conversations with investors who flocked to them…