Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Pro-crypto Senator Cynthia Lummis on Wednesday slammed Democrats for holding back the Clarity Act.  Speaking on the Senate floor, Senator Lummis, of Wyoming, spoke of the bipartisan work that had gone into the bill — but questioned why it was stalling.  Lawmakers are hoping the Clarity Act gets passed before Congress departs for August recess. While the bill has been drafted bipartisanly, some Democrats are unhappy with the current version.  JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis calls out the Democrats for holding up the Clarity Act:”After nearly 11 months of giving almost everything asked of us, I genuinely don’t…

Iron and oxygen interact in many important processes throughout the human body. The best-known example is hemoglobin, where iron binds dioxygen, meaning two oxygen atoms joined together, so oxygen can be carried through the bloodstream. Iron also forms highly reactive compounds known as iron oxos. These compounds are involved in other biological functions, including reactions carried out by liver enzymes that help break down drugs. Exploring Oxygen Chemistry Beyond Iron Rice University chemist Raúl Hernández Sánchez wanted to know whether oxygen could form similar compounds with a different group of metals found near the bottom of the periodic table. These…

The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N.-associated organization that oversees deep-sea mining activities in international waters, held a council meeting July 13 to 24 in Kingston, Jamaica.During the meeting, the council extended a deep-sea mining exploration contract for a subsidiary of The Metals Company (TMC), despite the company actively pursuing mining exploration and exploitation permits for the same areas through a U.S. government agency.In addition, the council once again failed to finalize the rules needed for commercial seabed mining to commence, with many issues remaining unresolved.See All Key Ideas The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N.-associated regulator of…

Two leading Democrats on the U.S. Senate committee that oversees transportation safety pressed the nation’s regulator of buses on Wednesday to provide proof it can detect troubled private companies that provide services to schools and municipalities.  The letter, from Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, adds weight to concerns voiced by elected officials about federal regulations and Transdev. A WBUR and ProPublica investigation found that dozens of deadly collisions were missing from the safety record of the company, which is one of the nation’s largest operators of public transit. …

Every year has a word that speaks to the political moment. In 2010, amid Europe’s debt crises, it was “austerity.” In 2024, after the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental disasters, and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, it was “resilience.” In 2026, another word has come to dominate the language of national security: “self-reliance.” As war spreads, confidence in the international order erodes, and the United States shuns longtime alliances in favor of a more transactional and militaristic foreign policy under President Donald Trump, leaders around the world are promising to make their countries less dependent on others. Although the paths to…

President Donald Trump has blamed improper forest management for Canadian wildfires whose smoke drifted into the Midwestern and Northeastern U.S. earlier this month. But climate change — and not a lack of “Debris Removal,” as Trump suggested — is the main factor leading to worsening Canadian wildfires and smoke pollution, experts from both sides of the border told us.  Large-scale strategies to manage Canada’s vast boreal forest — part of the belt of high-latitude forests circling the North Pole — would be both infeasible and likely ineffective at solving the problem, they said. Trump claimed in a July 17 Truth…

Jillian Segal to front royal commission hearingsThe special envoy to combat antisemitism will make another appearance in the royal commission’s hot seat today, Australian Associated Press reports.Jillian Segal, who was appointed to the role by the federal government in 2024, will testify to the royal commission today when it examines education and training in handling antisemitism, as well as its effectiveness.In a report released in 2025, the special envoy called for Holocaust and antisemitism education to be put in place in national and state school curriculums.The education plans would be co-ordinated with government, independent and Catholic school systems.ShareKey eventsThree dead…

“People pleaser!” That’s the insult Andy Burnham’s enemies sneer at him. And yes, he will need all his mightiest people-pleasing talents to win over voters to contribute to a new national care service. Choosing this forever failed policy (22 major reviews over three decades) as his first great challenge is a remarkable act of bravery. No mere people pleaser would dare step on this political live rail.It will use up vast amounts of political capital to get a national care service off the ground. He hardly needed Tuesday’s Mail front page (“Burnham’s £18bn ‘death tax’ nightmare”) to remind him. But…

Hugging Face on Monday published a technical timeline that walks readers through how an autonomous AI agent, built on OpenAI models and running inside one of OpenAI’s own cybersecurity evaluations, broke into its systems over more than four days earlier this month. It’s the first security incident about which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman “felt very viscerally,” he has said. Little wonder given it feels, at least, like something has truly been unleashed here. In fact, Hugging Face’s team prefaced its report by offering that “everyone should be prepared as defenders,” before diving into the nitty gritty of what went down…

Specialized application security scanning tools embedded in the development pipeline can do wonders to harden code and bolster software supply chain security. But if engineering teams aren’t careful, these security scanners can also become a gateway for attacks deep in the supply chain.Last spring, the development and security worlds saw that scenario play out with broad supply chain attacks that compromised development environments for two different security open source projects, which served up poisoned versions of Trivy and KICS to unsuspecting software engineering teams. The attacks were part of broader supply chain attacks by TeamPCP to commit widespread credential theft…