Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

A US Postal Service whistleblower has warned that millions of Americans could be prevented from receiving mail ballots ahead of November’s midterm elections because of a rushed, new system ordered by President Donald Trump and due for launch Tuesday. The anonymous federal official alleges that the agency has continued developing the system despite court orders blocking key parts of Trump’s effort to impose new federal controls on voting by mail. The disclosure, released Tuesday by Democratic US Senator Richard Blumenthal, describes the project as “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed” and warns that insufficient testing could lead to “catastrophic failure.”…

Für den Drohnenanschlag auf den Flughafen Leipzig macht die Bundesregierung Moskau nun auch ganz offiziell verantwortlich. Rixa Fürsen analysiert gemeinsam mit Hans von der Burchard die verkündeten Maßnahmen und sie zeigen auf, warum Kanzler Merz einen eigenen Auftritt für eine weitere Eskalationsstufe aufspart. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview ordnet SPD-Innenpolitiker Sebastian Fiedler die Sabotagegefahr ein. Er fordert konsequentes Handeln gegen hybride Angriffe. Er spricht darüber, wo man bereits an Reformen von Sicherheitsbehörden und Strukturen dran ist, warnt aber auch erneut vor der akuten Bedrohung deutscher Infrastrukturen. Finanzminister Lars Klingbeil gerät derweil aus dem Wirtschaftsministerium heraus wegen seiner Einkommensteuerreform unter Druck. Rasmus Buchsteiner berichtet…

Damn the electorate. They’re so impatient. No sooner do they get a new leader than they want another one. Those ingrates are already starting to grumble about Andy Burnham. Maybe the country is becoming ungovernable. Perhaps it’s social media. Or a consumerist culture, always picking the next shiny thing. Perhaps we’re addicted to drama. As we’re on our sixth prime minister in 10 years, and as similar levels of discontent surface in many other countries, these claims are recited across the media. What’s wrong with us?Yet our disgruntlement is entirely rational. We give up so quickly on our prime ministers…

The weekly ritual that sits at the heart of Westminster’s public image beckons, the half an hour or so of verbal jousting at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs).Prime ministerial memoirs tell the stories of how central a moment it is in the week of any occupant of 10 Downing Street.Sir Tony Blair wrote that “PMQs was the most nerve wracking, discombobulating, nail biting, bowel moving, terror inspiring, courage draining experience in my prime ministerial life, without question”.Now, for the first time, it is Andy Burnham’s turn to feel those nerves. And yet, curiously, the questions at lunchtime may well feel like…

Pyka and Windracers are building aircraft from scratch, arguing this allows autonomy to be designed in from the outset and the aircraft tailored to the job.Others are retrofitting existing larger planes.Backed by Boeing’s investment arm, US-based Reliable Robotics is currently testing its system on the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, a single-pilot cargo plane that can carry about 1360kg of payload over hundreds of kilometers.Retrofitting on certified aircraft lets the company focus exclusively on proving the autonomous system’s safety rather than also having to seek approval for a new aircraft, says Robert Rose, its co-founder and CEO.Merlin Labs, also US-based, has…

Ravie LakshmananSep 01, 2026Vulnerability / Artificial Intelligence Threat actors are exploiting two critical flaws impacting Langflow and Ruby on Rails, according to new findings from VulnCheck. The vulnerabilities in question are listed below – CVE-2026-0768 (CVSS score: 9.8) – A lack of proper validation of a user-supplied input vulnerability that could be exploited to execute arbitrary Python code in the context of the root user. CVE-2026-66066 aka KindaRails2Shell (CVSS score: 9.5) – A vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to read arbitrary files from the server, leak Rails process environment and secrets such as secret_key_base, the Rails master key,…

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust exchange-traded fund has delivered better returns since its 2024 launch than Vanguard’s popular S&P 500 fund.  That’s according to Bloomberg data highlighted by the firm’s senior ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, who said that the BlackRock product’s cumulative percentage return was only slightly ahead of Vanguard’s in the time period.  BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF is up 71% since its January 2024 debut, while Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF up 66% on a total-return basis.   Hard to believe $IBIT is beating $VOO since inception but it’s true..altho it’s close. And to be fair, IBIT’s path to 70% looks like the…

Microglia are the brain’s most abundant immune cells. They help protect the brain from harmful invaders, clear away damaged neurons, and support normal brain development. Researchers at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute have now found for the first time that human microglia, much like human neurons, mature far more slowly than comparable cells in other animals. “This slow development may help human microglia influence the human brain in ways that enable our powerful cognitive abilities,” said Carlos Diaz-Salazar, PhD, the lead author of a new Neuron study on the subject, who carried out the work while in the lab of Franck Polleux,…

Burning biomass fuels like dry wood and rice husk for cooking can produce air pollution and contribute to toxic heavy metals buildup inside rural kitchens in Bangladesh, a new study finds. Md. Badiuzzaman Khan, an environmental science professor at Bangladesh Agricultural University and the study’s lead author, said the research addresses a gap in understanding indoor pollution in rural communities. “Local people use various kinds of fuels like cowdung, or branches of wood or agricultural byproducts like rice straw or jute sticks,” Khan said in an email to Mongabay. “Heavy metals may come to rice straw or jute…

Two events take place in coming days that will affect my relationship with Germany. One, which will be splashed across the media, is dark and forbidding. The other, which will pass unnoticed except by me and my close family, should have brought me joy. Now that feeling is tempered with confusion.On 6 September, voters in the small eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt are expected to give Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) a resounding victory. If the arithmetic falls in a certain way, a German far-right party could assume power for the first time since the Nazis.It is possible the AfD could just…