Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen say they carried out drone and missile attacks on the Saudi capital Riyadh and energy sites on the country’s Red Sea coast. A column of black smoke was seen rising from what appeared to be fuel tanks near the Saudi capital’s international airport on Saturday, hours after air raid alerts were issued.It was the first time residents had been given an alert and urged to stay indoors since a recent escalation in the conflict with the Houthis.There has been no official comment from Saudi authorities.In a statement posted online, Houthi military spokesman Yahya al-Sarea said…

Justin Fanelli, the Department of Navy’s chief technology officer, has spent the last three and a half years trying to make the U.S. Navy easier to do business with. When we first talked to him last year, he described a shift away from what he called “your granddaddy’s government” — a “spaghetti chart” of entry points for startups — into something closer to a funnel, where companies that show strong results get pulled into the Navy’s technology base as enterprise services. This week, we caught up with him again on a video call, and this time, he wasn’t just looking…

A joint law enforcement advisory warns that the North Korean hacking group WaterPlum compromised at least 30,000 devices worldwide from December 2025 through July 2026 and transferred more than $10.7 million in stolen cryptocurrency to North Korea. The figures came from a joint advisory by Japanese, US, Australian, and German authorities that collectively traced the threat group’s activity. WaterPlum is linked to a multi-year campaign known as “Contagious Interview,” which has previously targeted job seekers with malicious npm packages hat infect their devices with malware. The attackers impersonate legitimate AI, cryptocurrency, and NFT companies or use recruiting and freelance platforms…

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday sent a proposal to the White House to regulate crypto transactions and markets.  It isn’t clear what the regulations will look like from the post on the Office of Management and Budget’s website. The proposal is titled “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets.” The CFTC’s move comes after lawmakers blocked the long-awaited crypto legislation Clarity Act on Tuesday. Despite the law not advancing, both the CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission have said they would go ahead with crypto rulemaking anyway.  CFTC Chair Mike Selig said on Wednesday that while…

The “Hands Around the Kennedy Center” rally drew thousands after Trump-backed board votes to close the iconic arts venue.Published On 19 Sep 202619 Sep 2026Thousands of protesters formed a human chain around the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC to contest its closure, amid fears that United States President Donald Trump could make good on his threat to demolish the venerated landmark.The crowd filled streets in the Foggy Bottom neighbourhood of the capital on Friday evening, bringing traffic to a standstill as demonstrators made their way to the “Hands Around the Kennedy Center” protest. Many carried signs…

British politics is increasingly being funded by individual billionaires with a wave of mega-donations having flooded into UK political parties over the past two parliaments.A total £179m has been donated by wealthy individuals since 2019, research reveals.The figures from the IPPR thinktank show how big money is playing an ever more influential role in Westminster, with a particular rise in mega-donations of more than £1m.The research found that contributions from individual donors has accelerated since the Brexit party got £10m from the Thailand-based billionaire Christopher Harborne and the Liberal Democrats were given £8m by David Sainsbury, the supermarket tycoon, who…

You may be familiar with the various memes detailing the fact that once you reach middle age, you’re automatically sorted, Harry Potter hat-style, into one of a handful of hobbies, such as sourdough bread making, gardening, or bird-watching. I can’t contradict this, since I’m a middle-aged person who got sorted into bird-watching. But I do know that enjoying birds and their various activities is fun for all ages. Birds are beautiful, interesting, and unpredictable, and it’s fascinating to keep a running life list of all the birds you’ve seen and hope to see in your lifetime.Whether someone you know is…

Security researcher Gal Weizman of Forever Security has disclosed a new attack technique that can hijack the AI assistants built into popular browsers using a single malicious browser extension. Dubbed BragJack, the proof-of-concept was demonstrated against five Chromium-based browsers or browser assistants: Google Chrome’s Gemini Live, Perplexity Comet, Microsoft Edge, Opera Neon, and Anthropic’s Claude in Chrome. The research earned more than $20,000 in bug bounties from the five vendors, ranging from $600 to $7,000, and produced two CVEs. The attack requires the malicious extension to already be installed in the victim’s browser. Once it is, the researcher shows the abuse…

In brief Over five days in August, Bitcoin rose 24.6% while coin-denominated open interest fell 12.6%, meaning the rally ran on unwinding short positions rather than fresh bullish bets. The options market flipped after 361 straight days of puts pricing richer than calls, and the front of the futures curve repriced while the long end held—signs of a one-off event, not a regime change. The data comes from a joint Glassnode-Bybit with numbers through August 23, covering four crypto-native venues, excluding CME. Bitcoin’s most violent rally of its two-year drawdown wasn’t powered by fresh bullish bets. It was powered by…

Millions in Cuba were left without power on Friday as the country was plunged into yet another major blackout.The country’s entire electricity grid suffered “total disconnection” that triggered a nationwide outage, Cuba’s energy ministry said.Power was restored to some priority areas by late evening, including those near hospitals and water pumping stations in the capital Havana, grid operator UNE said.It is at least the sixth partial or total blackout to hit Cuba this year, where ageing electricity infrastructure and chronic fuel shortages have been placed under further strain by a US blockade on oil shipments to the communist-run nation.UNE said…