Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Two mirrors, each small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, are set to change how we understand the cosmos.The launch window for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is about to open. The telescope’s primary instrument is due to inform practically every area of astrophysics, but also tucked inside the telescope is a specialized coronagraph, an experimental apparatus that will attempt to directly capture starlight reflected off a planet’s surface for the first time. It’s an ambitious project that NASA hopes will pave the way for a space telescope that can one day provide a glimpse of…

Polygon has disclosed several previously private security vulnerabilities that could have disrupted its proof-of-stake network, after deploying fixes through two recent hard forks.The vulnerabilities affected Polygon’s Bor and Heimdall clients and included denial-of-service risks, validator resource exhaustion and flaws affecting checkpoint and milestone processing, according to a Thursday disclosure from Polygon Labs’ Validators Support Team. Polygon said the flaws were fixed through the Austin and Kyoto hard forks, which were deployed privately and tested before being activated on mainnet and publicly disclosed. The most severe issue involved Heimdall, where a specially crafted transaction could force validators to perform excessive processing work,…

Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified a molecular mechanism that appears to restrict the ability of injured neurons to regrow damaged axons. The findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that blocking a protein known as the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) could promote nerve regeneration and improve recovery after damage to peripheral nerves or the spinal cord. Axons are long extensions of nerve cells, or neurons, that transmit signals throughout both the central and peripheral nervous systems. These fibers are essential for communication between nerve cells. When axons are damaged or severed, recovery depends…

One Nation has claimed victory in the Secret Harbour state byelection in Western AustraliaWith 74.5% of the vote counted, One Nation’s Luke Herdegen leads Labor’s Georgia Tree 57-42 after preferences.One Nation’s WA leader Rod Caddies claimed victory at 9:30pm local time saying the result showed there were “no safe Labor seats in this state or in this country anymore” and that it would send “shock waves across the entire country”.Voters in the safe Labor seat cast their ballots on Saturday after senior minister Paul Papalia’s mid-term retirement triggered the contest.Luke Herdegen has been buoyed by a sea of orange across…

zf L/ Moment via Getty ImagesFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET’s key takeawaysScaling the AI agents in business is now a focus on accountability and governance.  Half of working hours may be reshaped by the use of AI agents. Business accountability for AI agents will require humans “in the lead’ versus “in the loop.”In 2025, agentic AI was still mostly a promise. Today, it’s a stress test for all companies across all industries.The results of three separate research studies — from Deloitte, KMPG PwC, and Accenture — all point to the same uncomfortable truth: Companies are moving…

Ravie LakshmananAug 29, 2026Vulnerability / Web Security Multiple critical security flaws have been disclosed in WordPress plugins and themes, including WPMU DEV Dashboard, Avada, TranslatePress, Pods, and GiveWP, that could lead to authentication bypass, account takeover, and arbitrary code execution. The vulnerabilities, according to Wordfence and Patchstack, are listed below – CVE-2026-76581 (CVSS score: 9.8) – An authentication bypass flaw in the WPMU DEV Dashboard plugin that could allow an unauthenticated attacker, on sites connected to WPMU DEV with Hub Single-Sign On (SSO) enabled and mapped to an administrator, to obtain administrator access and achieve site takeover. (Affects all versions…

In brief Avon and Somerset Police forfeited 20.21 Bitcoin along with other crypto and bank funds worth $1.4 million (£1.03 million). Investigators traced the assets to darknet marketplaces that operated between 2016 and 2019 and have since been closed by law enforcement. It is the force’s largest crypto seizure since the UK introduced crypto wallet freezing orders in April 2024. Over a million dollars worth of Bitcoin that moved through darknet marketplaces nearly a decade ago has been forfeited to a regional English police force.Avon and Somerset Police said Thursday its financial investigation unit had recovered 20.21 BTC, further cryptoassets…

Could subtle changes during sleep reveal vulnerability to Alzheimer’s disease years before memory problems become noticeable? Researchers at ULiège, supported by the Stop Alzheimer’s Foundation, are investigating whether the sleeping brain may contain early clues. Scientists from the University of Liège (GIGA Neurosciences) examined sleep patterns in more than 500 healthy people. Among participants in middle age, more frequent nighttime micro awakenings were associated with a higher genetic risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. That relationship was not detected among younger adults. The findings, published in the journal Sleep, raise the possibility that sleep measurements could eventually help researchers identify people…

1. Anko everywhereKmart’s home brand, Anko, started out with a strategy of mimicking popular items, like Birkenstocks and Skims, at a fraction of the price.The “dupe” strategy that won over the masses is expanding, and going upmarket.The Wesfarmers-owned Kmart Group, which includes Target, generated $11.7bn in sales last financial year, underpinned by Anko, according to its annual results.Anko has moved into furniture and is pitching itself as a rival to Ikea through its new K home store. Meanwhile, there are now six Anko-branded stores in the Philippines run via a joint venture, and further global expansion on the horizon.The biggest…

It used to be that Vijay Pande was better known in academic circles than investor circles. That changed pretty abruptly a dozen years ago, when Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz — who’d spent their firm’s first five years explicitly avoiding healthcare and life sciences — decided the category was worth betting on after all and handed the keys to Pande. At the time, he was a Stanford chemistry professor who was best known for building Folding@home, the distributed-computing project that turned millions of home PCs into a supercomputer for disease research. Over the next decade-plus, he grew a16z’s bet into…