Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Smelling a potential victory in the midterms, House Democrats are starting to think about oversight investigations next year and how to wield the power of the purse to make the Trump administration comply. In short, Trump’s West Wing renovations and DC arch could be on the chopping block, sources tell Inner Loop.The nature of any investigations, and where Democrats will try to wrestle back power from the executive, are still to be determined, in part because taking back the House majority is not a foregone conclusion.But House Democrats have a slew of investigations planned if they do end up controlling…

Motional and MIT researchers have built a system that lets self-driving cars explain their decisions in real-time, tackling the black-box problem in autonomous vehicle AI.The work, published in Nature, comes from a team at Motional that includes CEO Laura Major, working alongside researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Their proposed method, called the Concept-Wrapper Network or CW-Net, aims to translate the internal calculations of a self-driving system’s neural network into concepts a human can actually read.If a current self-driving car brakes hard on a clear road with no obvious hazard in sight, neither the driver nor a…

Organizations are advised to immediately patch a fresh authentication bypass vulnerability affecting the file transfer application Cleo Harmony. Tracked as CVE-2026-84115, the security defect impacts the JWT refresh token logic and allows remote attackers to elevate their privileges via argument bearer manipulation. The flaw was discovered in an unknown function in the file ‘/api/connections’. An attacker could craft a malicious payload that tampers with the arguments in HTTP headers, bypassing access controls and leading to privilege escalation. According to VulnDB, an exploit targeting the bug has been released, which significantly increases the risk of exploitation against all organizations that use…

Federal law enforcement officials, working with cybersecurity technology company CrowdStrike, announced action against entities behind malware that enabled the theft of $150,000 in cryptocurrency.In a Tuesday notice, the US Justice Department said it had disrupted the Sality botnet and malware in an international effort with Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian officials, as well as private sector partners CrowdStrike and the Shadowserver Foundation. US officials said that Sality was responsible for installing malware on compromised devices since 2003, resulting in crypto theft and cyberattacks. CrowdStrike reported that in the previous eight years, the entities behind Sality used EggJagger, a “clipjacking tool that monitors…

Recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope images show the gas giant Saturn and its southern pole, where astronomers have discovered a 10-sided atmospheric wave. Observations show the decagon extends through multiple layers of Saturn’s atmosphere.Image: NASA, ESA, STScI, Agustin Sánchez-Lavega (UPV), Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan Recent observations with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have revealed a giant, evolving, 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn’s south pole. This discovery marks the first time a large, regular-sided jet pattern has been observed in the planet’s southern hemisphere. The feature appears remarkably similar to Saturn’s famous hexagon at its…

On the banks of the Aguarico River in the Ecuadorian Amazon, a group of Indigenous Siekopai women are combining traditional knowledge and modern technology to help a threatened native turtle recover. Their efforts center around charapa turtles  (Podocnemis unifilis), also known as the yellow-spotted Amazon River turtle, Mongabay Latam’s Astrid Arellano reported. The animal’s populations have declined due to hunting adult turtles, harvesting eggs from nests and pollution from garbage, oil and gasoline. “Sometimes we see plastic, garbage bags,” Janeth Piaguaje, a Siekopai community leader of the project, told Mongabay Latam. “We also see dead animals floating down…

In December 2018, as defence minister, I inadvertently misled parliament. Asked whether blood samples had been taken from service personnel for radiological monitoring during the nuclear bomb tests, I relayed the line provided to me by the Ministry of Defence: it was “unable to locate any information” suggesting blood samples had been taken for radiological monitoring at the tests.I now know the reality was very different – these samples were taken across the armed services branches. But those veterans seeking compensation for serious illnesses developed after radiation exposure have been unable to access them. This is among the greatest scandals…

Andy Burnham will begin the process of courting European leaders when he welcomes Emmanuel Macron as the first foreign head of state to visit him in Downing Street.The prime minister will meet the French president at No 10 on Thursday as he looks to make inroads on a number of foreign policy objectives, including curbing irregular migration and sealing a new deal with the EU.The meeting marks one of Burnham’s first forays into foreign policy, having previously promised to remain mostly focused on domestic issues, and comes weeks before a crunch EU summit that could shape much of his future…

A Maltese businessman on trial over the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has been acquitted. Yorgen Fenech, 44, was accused of complicity in her murder and criminal association to commit murder. He denied all the charges.In 2022, brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio were jailed for 40 years over the killing of Caruana Galizia, who was an outspoken critic of the government and had uncovered networks of corruption in Malta and abroad.She was killed by a car bomb in October 2017, with speculation at the time that senior establishment figures may have been involved.Fenech was cleared of both counts…

Zack Polanski moved a step closer in his quest to become an MP on Wednesday, with local Green party members supporting him to become the party’s candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection.The party leader in England and Wales started campaigning alongside his fellow Green, Hannah Spencer, the MP for Gorton and Denton, in the Holborn area on Tuesday, and is seriously considering putting himself forward as the party’s candidate in the seat vacated by Keir Starmer on Monday.Green party sources said local party members would have the final say on the selected candidate, but the Guardian understands local…