Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

In brief Bitcoin traded near $86,559 Tuesday, up 12.2% over the past week, after clearing the resistance band that had capped it since early September. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index sits at 79, deep in “Greed.” The Nasdaq Composite touched a fresh intraday record as chipmakers extended a multi-day winning streak. Bitcoin punched through $86,500 on Tuesday, holding just above the ceiling that had capped its rally through most of September. The move puts total crypto market capitalization above $3 trillion, with the Crypto Fear & Greed Index reading 79—solidly in “greed” territory—and the Altcoin Season Index at 49,…

Snow drought and unusually warm conditions across the Colorado Basin in 2026 sharply reduced water flowing into major reservoirs across the U.S. West. By summer, the effects of the weak 2025-2026 mountain snowpack in the Upper Colorado Basin had reached Lake Powell. With far less snowmelt than usual feeding the Colorado River, inflows dwindled, and the second-largest reservoir in the United States fell to record-low levels in late August and early September. Lake Powell Falls Below Its Previous Record Satellite images captured the dramatic change in Lake Powell near Glen Canyon Dam. The images were collected by the OLI (Operational…

The UK will grow by less than expected next year amid the ongoing US-Israel war in Iran, an international agency has said. It is one of many countries whose economic prospects are facing a hit due to the prolonged conflict, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said. The downgrade to the UK’s economic growth outlook is moderate, according to the OECD, which predicted it will grow by 1% in 2027, against an earlier forecast of 1.1%. The agency also upgraded the UK’s growth outlook for 2026, from an expected 0.9% to 1.1% for the year. The prediction comes…

Shell Offshore, a subsidiary of the UK-headquartered energy giant Shell, has brought to a close the divestment of non-operated working interests in certain oil assets in the Gulf of America (U.S. Gulf of Mexico). Na Kika platform in the Gulf of Mexico; Source: BP Shell has completed the previously announced agreement to sell its 50% non-operated working interest in the Na Kika platform and associated fields in the Gulf of America as well as its 100% owned Coulomb tie-back to a subsidiary of Talos Energy and an affiliate of Ridgewood Energy. As a result, the company received approximately $840 million…

Good morning. Andy Burnham delivered his speech to the United Nations in what felt like the middle of the night in UK time and he announced that he is setting up what he is calling a National Centre for Information Defence.Burnham said this was necessary because “over the last decade we have given too much ground to those who want to run a negative, corrosive narrative about life in Britain, which bears no resemblance to reality”.Over at GB News they seem a bit worried this morning about the prospect of a crackdown on corrosive narratives about Britain which bear no…

Experts warn that slower buses risk driving passengers away: research cited by Transport for London (TfL) suggests a 10% fall in speed leads to a 6% drop in demand.Passenger journeys in London have already fallen by more than 300m a year, or 16%, since 2013, despite the city’s population growing by almost a million people.The city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, does not play down the issue. “We’re really concerned about bus usage. One of the reasons, when you speak to commuters, is a lack of reliability. And why is it they lack reliability? Because of bus speed.”A congested city, with ever…

The UK is reviewing its deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the defence secretary has said.Wes Streeting confirmed the deal was being looked at again after US President Donald Trump called it “terrible” at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.The original agreement would see the UK cede sovereignty of the territory to Mauritius and pay an average of £101m ($136m) per year to lease back a joint UK-US military base there, prized for its strategic location in the Indian Ocean.In April the deal, agreed under Sir Keir Starmer, was paused indefinitely because Trump pulled his support.Streeting said…

Motorola is the first company to announce a phone running Qualcomm’s top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip. The Signature 27 looks set to be Motorola’s most advanced flagship in some years, though we’re still waiting for the full specs, price, and release date.Any prospective buyers will first have to get over the design, which seems guaranteed to earn mixed reception. The aluminum phone has a thin body, available in either black (sorry, “Pantone coal smoke”) or green (“Pantone capulet olive”), with a woven tactical texture on one and a “feather-inspired” finish on the other. Either way, it slopes…

By Farukh Rakhimov, Head of Compliance, Data Protection and Information Security at AdTech HoldingRoughly 7,600 fake GitHub repositories, 6,600 fraudulent profiles and more than 14 million downloads: that is the scale of FakeGit, a malware campaign documented by Island in July 2026. Over 800 repositories impersonated AI skills and MCP servers, distributing SmartLoader and the StealC infostealer.Fake repositories are nothing new. The surprise was who recommended them.Gemini and ChatGPT independently suggested the same malicious walmart-mcp repository. The agents found the attacker’s project and handed users installation instructions.Attackers no longer need to deceive users directly. They can deceive the assistants users…

Swati KhandelwalSep 23, 2026Vulnerability / Web Security A new security vulnerability in Next.js could allow attackers to run code on a server via ImageResponse, the feature that generates Open Graph and other social preview images, Vercel said. The risk applies when an app puts values an attacker controls, such as text read from the request URL, into the image. Vercel, which develops Next.js, fixed the flaw on September 22 in version 16.3.6. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-94545, affects Next.js 16.2.0 through 16.3.5 when ImageResponse runs on the Node.js runtime, which Next.js uses by default. Vercel’s advisory rates it critical, with…