Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

MANTRA Chain remained halted on Aug. 21 after the team said an attacker exploited a vulnerability in an upstream dependency. Transactions, transfers, and staking are unavailable while the mainnet is paused.MANTRA identified the vulnerable software only as an upstream dependency. In its official incident record, the team said it was tracing fund movements, working with exchange partners, and continuing to assess the complete scope.The incident record shows MANTRA first froze endpoints and transactions while reviewing the root cause and impact. It later attributed the precautionary halt to an attacker exploiting the upstream dependency, then announced the patched release and testnet…

For as long as people have traveled by sea, ships have needed protection from water, salt, microorganisms, and marine animals such as worms. Yet until the mid-20th century, researchers paid relatively little attention to the non-wood materials used in ancient shipbuilding. Waterproofing materials in particular remain understudied. A new study published in Frontiers in Materials is helping fill that gap. Researchers in France and Croatia analyzed the protective coating on the Roman Republic shipwreck Ilovik-Paržine 1, which sank about 2,200 years ago off the coast of what is now Croatia. “In archaeology, little attention is paid to organic waterproofing materials.…

Art and science can work together to raise public awareness and propel conservation efforts needed to safeguard coral reef ecosystems, a group of coral scientists argues in a new research article published in Science Advances. Coral reefs are among Earth’s most threatened ecosystems amid climate change, coral bleaching and threats from mining. However, most people rarely see or think about corals. The study argues that artists can help shine a light on coral fragility and the resilience of nature. “Artistic interventions can render the largely unseen underwater world into something visible and accessible,” the authors note. “When paired…

There’s a strange paradox in the world today. Citizens in countries around the world seem angrier and are voting more—but they seem unable to effect structural changes. The political scientist Anton Jager calls this “hyperpolitics,” in which political activity increases but membership of unions and political parties is declining. Jager’s new book, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences, has become something of a cult favorite among Europe’s political and intellectual elites. But is hyperpolitics necessarily bad? Does it apply only to certain Western countries—Jager’s focus—or can it capture a broader global trend? On the latest episode of FP Live, I…

⁠TikTok and its Chinese former parent company ByteDance on Friday agreed to a $400m settlement to resolve the US Department of Justice’s allegations that the short-form video app ⁠violated children’s online ⁠privacy.The justice ​department sued TikTok and ByteDance in 2024 for allegedly failing to protect children’s privacy and illegally collecting their information. The defendants were accused ⁠of violating a law requiring online services aimed at children to obtain parental consent to collect personal information from users under age 13.Associate attorney ⁠general Stanley Woodward said the justice department’s priority “is ensuring that children are protected online and that ​companies entrusted with…

MondayThere are some days you never forget. It was about 6.30 in the morning the day after we had done a long drive back from hospital. Anna was five years old, Robbie just two and both were wide awake and had got me out of bed. I took them downstairs to plonk them in front of the TV to try and buy myself some time. I switched the TV on and didn’t turn it off for the rest of the day. Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash. I just stared and stared, not quite taking it in.…

I am so sorry, fellow US gadget fans: the FCC’s drone ban appears to have struck again. The HoverAir Versa — a baby steadycam with snap-on propeller wings that transform it into a drone — has already stopped taking US orders just three days after its Indiegogo debut, and may be forced to abandon shipping plans in the US.HoverAir is now telling backers it’s only shipping its camera to the US, not the piece that turns it into a drone, “due to a few remaining logistics updates with the Flight Kit.” But those “logistics” may actually be a euphemism for…

heading(“4. Creating a custom reference figure”) reference_dir = OUTPUT_ROOT / “01_custom_references” reference_dir.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True) reference_path = reference_dir / “reference_architecture_style.png” W, H = 1333, 750 img = Image.new(“RGB”, (W, H), “white”) draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img) try: title_font = ImageFont.truetype(“DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf”, 36) box_font = ImageFont.truetype(“DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf”, 24) small_font = ImageFont.truetype(“DejaVuSans.ttf”, 18) except Exception: title_font = None box_font = None small_font = None draw.text( (W // 2, 55), “Reference Layout: Modular Scientific Pipeline”, anchor=”mm”, fill=”black”, font=title_font, ) boxes = [ (90, 215, 290, 120, “Input”, “documents”), (365, 215, 290, 120, “Planner”, “route by task”), (640, 215, 290, 120, “Experts”, “summary / table / vision”), (915, 215, 290,…

Microsoft has started rolling out a Classic Outlook theme for users of Outlook on the web and the New Outlook for Windows. This new Outlook theme is rolling out as part of a targeted release beginning mid-August and expected to complete by the end of September. The theme will become generally available worldwide between late September and late October. “When enabled, the setting applies coordinated changes across the Outlook experience, including visual styling, layout, typography, icons, and selected interactions,” Microsoft said in a Microsoft 365 Message Center update. Once rolled out, the feature will not override any existing administrator configurations…

Nicknamed the “Amazon of the Seas,” the Coral Triangle is the world’s most biologically diverse marine ecosystem. Sink below the surface and you’ll encounter the sound of a vibrant symphony of snapping shrimp, crunching crustaceans and feeding fish.  But then the rhythmic music of life will dissolve into eerie silence, punctured only by the plosive boom of detonating bombs. Off the coast of Indonesia’s Spermonde Archipelago, underwater microphones captured over 3,500 explosions in just 3,600 hours of recording, according to researchers from the Zoological Society of London. The source? Blast fishing—a globally banned technique that uses plastic bottles packed with…