Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

On Sept. 12-13, NASA’s Johnson Space Center employees brought the excitement and wonder of space exploration to Houston’s Japan Festival at Hermann Park.  For more than 30 years, the festival has immersed guests in traditional Japanese culture through food, dance, martial arts, music, and more, Johnson has supported the festival as an exhibitor for the past four years. Johnson’s booth showcased the upcoming Artemis III mission and its crew, as well as NASA’s plans for the Moon Base. Display included models of NASA’s Orion spacecraft and the International Space Station, along with interactive exhibits featuring space food and a real…

Jan De Nul is further expanding its fleet with the order of a new trenching support vessel, which will be an exact copy of its Isambard Kingdom Brunel, announced in March.Source: Jan De Nul With this latest order, Jan De Nul has five vessels under construction for subsea cable installation and protection, including two XL cable-laying vessels (CLVs), an XL rock installation vessel to protect the cables, and now two vessels for the burial of cables. Isambard K. Brunel, announced in March, is of an Ulstein design and will be built at the China Merchants Heavy Industry (CMHI) shipyard. Both…

Reading Time: < 1 minute Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce Fact Briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims. Yes. Wisconsin’s state tax on gasoline and diesel is 30.9 cents per gallon, which has not increased or decreased since 2006. In 2005, lawmakers repealed annual gas tax increases tied to inflation. That law took effect in April 2006, so the 30.9 rate has stayed the same for the last 20 years. The gas tax, also called the motor vehicle fuel tax, is the largest source of revenue for the state’s transportation…

For generations, significant elements of international policy have turned on a concerted global effort to ignore an obvious truth: that Taiwan’s legal status is ambiguous. Beijing is adamant that it is sovereign over the island. Taipei is adamant that it is not. Domestic political pressures prevent either from allowing any appearance of giving any ground. Neither is able to unilaterally impose its view on the other; even a “successful” invasion of Taiwan would devastate China’s economy and quite possibly break its military, while a Taiwanese declaration of independence would almost certainly prompt Beijing to demolish the entire island despite the…

CNN, Politico and MS NOW have said they will sue the Trump administration after the three US media outlets were barred from the White House.President Donald Trump announced the ban on Friday, accusing the three organisations of writing “fiction or lies” about his government.The companies said their reporters were denied access and had their badges seized when attempting to access the building on Saturday.In a joint statement on Monday, they said they were pursuing legal action to “protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes”.The First Amendment…

The new label is optional for smaller data centers, “but later we are also going to introduce minimum performance standards which, of course, will put more pressure on those who may not voluntarily wish to be as sustainable as we want them to,” he added.  While Australia and Singapore already have schemes rating the energy efficiency of data centers, the Commission’s new label would be the most comprehensive worldwide — asking tech companies to be transparent not only about their power use but also their impact on the local and global environment via information on how much water they consume, how…

Suzanne Morgan will never forget the day her mother died. It was nine months after she had gone into hospital with gallstones, where she received a routine blood transfusion.“She went downhill rapidly,” Morgan recalled. Her mother haemorrhaged in her liver, and the next day she was dead.The family were astonished to be told that she had Hepatitis C, and doubly shocked to learn that they couldn’t see her because her body was sealed due to contagion risk, leading them to suspect she was HIV positive.Morgan, who was pregnant at the time, said: “I went into full-blown miscarriage. I was in…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldCNN, MS Now and Politico have said they are suing the Trump administration after the US president banned the news outlets from the White House.The media groups said on Monday that they were filing the legal action to protect their First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes. “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” they said in a…

Talks have begun between US and Chinese officials to propose a mechanism for the two countries to notify each other of artificial intelligence incidents which could threaten national security.The framework, called the US China AI Dialogue, would also see representatives from both countries meet again to discuss the technology and try to align on common goals and threats, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.“We think that, just like with any cross-border activity, that moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and the number two AI powers in the world is very important,” Bessent told reporters on Sunday.Bessent said…

Bitcoin surged above $85,000 as a wave of short liquidations accelerated the cryptocurrency’s strongest advance since January.Data from CryptoSlate showed BTC gained more than 5% over the past 24 hours to reach $85,193, extending its advance over the past 35 days to about 29%. The asset had eased to $84,545 as of press time after breaking through levels that had constrained its recovery for much of the year.The rally caught bearish traders heavily exposed. CoinGlass data showed about $750.5 million of leveraged crypto positions were liquidated over the past 24 hours, with more than $648 million, or roughly 86%, coming…