Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, carrying out his threat to rename the easternmost Great Lake as part of an escalating trade war with Canada. During remarks in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said that the order, which directs the Interior Department to update the government’s geographic name information systems to reflect the name change, was effective immediately. After signing the order, Mr. Trump reiterated his criticism that Canada had been taking advantage of the United States, and that the country “treats us very badly.” He added that…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldThe US has rebuked European allies whose military capability gaps have been described as “a sea of red” in Nato’s colour-coded assessments, as the Trump administration weighs how quickly to withdraw American weapons and troops from the continent.Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, met Nato ambassadors in Brussels on Thursday to discuss European defence investments in the context of a review of US military deployments in Europe due to conclude in December. He told some European allies to move faster…

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, says a cyberattack on one of its systems has been declared a “major incident,” a formal, legally defined classification that prompts a formal notification to lawmakers in Congress. ATF said in a statement that it’s responding to the cyberattack on a standalone system that’s separate from the bureau’s network. An ATF spokesperson told reporters that the targeted computer system contained information such as the “targets of ATF investigations.” TechCrunch has seen a claim of responsibility by the Qilin ransomware gang on its leak site, but it did not provide…

Every agent that writes code needs somewhere to run it. That “somewhere” is now a product category with at least a dozen vendors, four incompatible billing models, and marketing pages that quote cold starts measured under conditions nobody publishes. This comparison fixes the units. It covers the five platforms most teams shortlist — E2B, Daytona, Modal Sandboxes, Cloudflare Sandbox SDK, and Vercel Sandbox — along with Runloop, Fly.io Sprites, and Northflank where they change the answer. The four questions that actually decide this Feature matrices for this category are mostly noise. Four properties change architecture, and everything else is a…

Credit: Hacktron Vercel has released security patches for two critical-severity vulnerabilities in the Next.js web framework, both of which allow unauthenticated remote code execution, one exploitable via specially crafted AVIF image files and the other through a path traversal flaw affecting servers that use a Windows filesystem. The Windows path traversal, tracked as CVE-2026-75604 (CVSS score: 9.0), affects Next.js applications that use both the Pages Router and App Router without Cache Components when the server uses a Windows filesystem. Linux and macOS deployments are not affected. “There is no known workaround for affected windows-hosted applications. You should upgrade immediately if…

US Solana exchange-traded funds (ETFs) attracted about $9.1 million in net inflows on Aug. 26, led by Morgan Stanley’s MSOL.SoSoValue data showed MSOL drew roughly $5.5 million, accounting for about 60% of Wednesday’s total. Bitwise’s BSOL added $2.6 million, while VanEck’s VSOL took in about $1 million.The latest intake extended a strong run for Solana-focused funds, even as the daily pace cooled from two much larger sessions. The products attracted more than $65 million across Aug. 24 and 25, including $33.5 million, their largest single-day inflow of the year.The surge in subscriptions has also been accompanied by heavier trading activity.On…

As the global population grows and climate change places increasing pressure on food systems, researchers and policymakers are looking more closely at alternative sources of nutrition. Insects are one possible option. A total of 1,611 insect species are classified as edible, and organizations including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have highlighted insects as a potentially sustainable food source. Even so, many Western societies remain strongly resistant to entomophagy, or eating insects, despite the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world already include insects in their diets. Culture may help explain that reluctance,…

Singapore-based offshore and marine engineering company Seatrium is poised to achieve what it describes as an industry first with the dual sailaway of two giant floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) units, which are slated to depart its Singapore yard within weeks of each other and embark on a journey to Brazil, where they will work for the country’s state-owned energy giant Petrobras. Christening ceremony for Petrobras’ P-80 and P-82 FPSOs; Source: Seatrium Seatrium has announced the impending sailaway of the FPSOs Petrobras 80 (P-80) and P-82, marking another significant milestone in its longstanding partnership with Brazil’s national oil company…

U.S. President Donald Trump has been pushing for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by the end of the year, but the rogue state has thrown cold water on his overtures so far. Trump in mid-August abruptly ordered the Pentagon to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea (and has since canceled another joint exercise), criticizing the drills as “hostile” toward Pyongyang while citing his “very good relationship” with Kim. Though North Korea has decried such drills as rehearsals for war, Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, effectively dismissed Trump’s conciliatory move as meaningless despite characterizing…

Voting from homeCalifornia’s mail-in voting system has also become a particular target for Trump.Voting by mail surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, California passed a law to automatically mail a ballot to every registered voter.More than 80 percent of the state’s voters cast a mail-in ballot in 2024 alone.Moreles, the Santa Clara registrar, said his county has an even higher rate. More than 90 percent of voters in his jurisdiction use mail-in ballots to vote.His county processed more mail-in ballots in the last general election than the entire state of Texas did. While Texas accepted roughly 342,000 mail-in votes,…