Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Growing up in Grafton, West Virginia, engrossed in Star Wars and all things science fiction, Fletcher Newell had an early interest in space exploration. That interest only grew when, in 2013, his fourth-grade class took a field trip to a nearby NASA facility he had not yet heard of – NASA’s Katherine Johnson Independent Verification & Validation Facility, located in nearby. Thirteen years later, Newell and 48 of his colleagues at the facility were sworn in as NASA civil servants during a ceremony on Aug. 10. “I had always admired NASA from afar,” said Newell, who started working at IV&V…

Prolonged heatwaves pushed death tolls to new levels this year in Maryland, which recorded its highest number of heat-related deaths with more than a month left of summer.  At least 70 deaths across the U.S. were linked to the heat domes that covered much of the country in July, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. July was the hottest month across the United States since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began keeping records 132 years ago.  An August 2024 study that analyzed deaths occurring between 1999 and 2023 using data from the Centers for Disease Control and…

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Israel’s crackdown on settlers in the West Bank; more details on the defense agreement among Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan; and the spread of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Have tips or feedback? Hit reply with your thoughts. Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Israel’s crackdown on settlers in the West Bank; more details on the defense agreement among Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan; and the spread of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Have tips or feedback? Hit reply with your thoughts.…

Snopes is still investigating the claim that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt remained on the Air Force One flight from Ankara, Turkey, from which U.S. President Donald Trump had been secretly removed due to a credible threat from Iran, per The New York Times.  The rumor followed the announcement that Leavitt was resigning from her post. This announcement happened two days after the New York Times report.  A spokesperson for the White House and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who reported the story, both said Leavitt was not on the plane. However, we could not identify anyone who…

Albanese says he had ‘productive’, ‘substantial’ call with Trump and Aukus still ‘full steam ahead’Anthony Albanese is speaking in Canberra after he held a “productive” and “substantial” call with Donald Trump. He said the pair spoke about a “number of global and regional issues”, including the conflict in the Middle East and recent developments in the Pacific.Albanese said the pair spoke about the Aukus submarine deal, which “remains full steam ahead”. double quotation markWe agreed it was a project that is and will continue to deliver benefits for the United States, for Australia, and for the United Kingdom. He said…

Broken engine fragments smashed a cabin window of a Ryanair plane last month causing a man’s head and right shoulder to be sucked into the hole, US investigators have said.In a preliminary report, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said this happened after an engine fan blade broke shortly after takeoff on the 10 July flight from Greece to Germany.Serbian national Ljubisa Karović’s head and right shoulder were sucked out of the plane’s window, leaving him “seriously injured and in shock”.His wife Svetlana Grković Maksimović later told BBC Serbia that she and two other passengers held on to his legs…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The president of Guggenheim Investments had her phone seized by the FBI last year as part of an investigation by federal prosecutors into entities controlled by billionaire Mark Walter, including the $260bn asset management giant.Dina DiLorenzo, a more than 20-year veteran of Guggenheim who helped set up the firm’s private investments business, had her phone taken in September, the same day Walter’s phone and laptop were also seized, according to people familiar with the probe.The US prosecutors’ scrutiny of Guggenheim Investments focused…

Samantha De Leon/ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.I recently got to go hands-on with the all-new Samsung R95H at the ZDNET testing lab in Louisville, and I was impressed with the bold, bright colors and deep, inky blacks it produced. With a picture quality that has the potential to rival, or even surpass, OLED models, the R95H is a worthy upgrade to any home theater or living room. And right now at Best Buy, you can save up to $1,000 on one, with the 85-inch version offering the highest discount.Also: Samsung OLED vs. QLED vs. Micro RGBThe new…

Threat actors have started exploiting a recently patched critical-severity vulnerability in VMware vCenter, rapid incident response company Quirso reports. The bug was disclosed on July 29, when Broadcom patched it alongside four other security defects in multiple VMware products. Tracked as CVE-2026-59310 (CVSS score of 9.8), the flaw is described as a directory traversal issue in the Syslog server that leads to remote code execution. “A malicious actor with network access to vCenter may exploit this issue to execute arbitrary code,” Broadcom’s advisory reads. According to Quirso, an advanced persistent threat (APT) actor has been exploiting web-accessible VMware vCenter servers…

Security flaws across major x402 payment facilitators could expose facilitator-held assets and leave merchants without receiving payment for services provided, according to new research presented at the 35th USENIX Security Symposium.Researchers tested 15 major x402 facilitators, including Coinbase, Thirdweb, PayAI and Mogami, and found that every platform violated at least one security rule.They mapped 49 rule violations to 31 distinct vulnerabilities across systems that accounted for 99% of observed x402 transactions and 98% of payment volume during the study.The researchers identified four broad attack classes, including free shopping, asset theft, service disruption, and gas abuse.They directly validated six attack paths…