Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Last week, Clint Curtis, the top election official in Shasta County, California, publicly accused members of his own staff of bypassing security, which he later claimed was an attempt “to sabotage a federal election.”Days later, Curtis announced plans to hire a new deputy: Tina Peters, the election denial superstar who was convicted of seven counts related to election interference in 2024 and sentenced to nine years in prison.Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, has yet to publicly comment on the offer, but her lawyer Peter Ticktin tells WIRED she “is giving consideration to helping in the efforts in…

A critical vulnerability in the Elementor Pro WordPress plugin could allow attackers to upload executable files for remote code execution on the server. Identified as CVE-2026-32475, the flaw affects Elementor Pro versions before 4.2.2 and stems from the File Upload module, which uses separate loops for file validation and processing that handle empty filename uploads differently. “The problem is that these two loops disagree about what to do with an empty file entry (an upload part whose filename is blank, which PHP reports as UPLOAD_ERR_NO_FILE),” clarifies a report from Patchstack, a cybersecurity company focused on the WordPress ecosystem. “The validation…

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of DecryptGM!Today’s top news: Crypto majors are up 10-20% after Trump’s crypto meeting; BTC at $72k, ETH at $2,300 Trump says CFTC is working to bring Hyperliquid to US; HYPE and LIT jump 20%+ Over $3 billion in shorts liquidated in past 24 hours, most since tracking began BTC ETFs see $517M in net inflows (most since May), now over $1 billion for week; ETH had $187M Coinbase added Hyperliquid perps to the Base app, launched new…

NASA astronaut L. Gordon Cooper, Jr. took 29 color photographs of the Earth with a 70mm camera as he orbited our planet during the Mercury-Atlas 9 mission in May 1963. Cooper’s view from the window of his Faith 7 spacecraft was spectacular, and he reported that he could see vehicles motoring on dirt roads, smoke-belching trains, and the tops of houses. Researchers and members of the public had their doubts. Could Cooper actually see objects on the Earth’s surface in such fine detail while orbiting 100 miles above the planet? Some vision experts assumed that astronauts with 20/20 vision could not…

The federal government alleged that U.S. Steel could have prevented a catastrophic explosion at Clairton Coke Works near Pittsburgh on Aug. 11, 2025, killing two workers and injuring 11. The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) issued a final report a year after the incident, saying the company had no procedure for how to safely conduct maintenance in which workers were attempting to fully close and then reopen a valve supplying toxic and flammable gas to one of the plant’s coke-oven batteries. In a coke oven, coal is burned at very high temperatures to remove impurities like tar…

Too many animals are regarded as “bugs”. And, if anything is a bug, it is a short step to it becoming a “pest”. Too many of us have a learned fear – it’s not innate – of anything with six legs or antennae.I’m a big fan of the invertebrates and I love the Guardian’s invertebrate of the year competition because it focuses people’s attention on the little things rather than the typical animal superstars – the pandas, tigers and orangutans. In their diversity and varied ecology, the million-plus invertebrates on our planet often lead far more intricate and interesting lives…

In announcing the latest FBI annual report on nationwide crime, President Donald Trump wrongly cast the decline in crime in 2025 as a dramatic turnaround and made misleading claims about the impact of his administration’s policies. Speaking to an audience of law enforcement officers at the Nassau County police academy on Aug. 14, Trump said that his speech was meant to “celebrate the historic progress our administration is making together with law enforcement partners nationwide to restore law and order in America.” The FBI that day released data collected from local law enforcement agencies showing that both violent and property…

Max D Lederer Jr, the longtime publisher of the United States military publication Stars and Stripes, announced his retirement in a memo to staff on Tuesday.In his memo, Lederer suggested that he had clashed with the administration of US President Donald Trump. He confirmed his resignation in an interview with Stars and Stripes.Lederer’s departure from his position comes shortly after Stars and Stripes and other military publications broke the story about the mental health crisis roiling the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf.Why has Lederer retired?Lederer’s memo suggested that the publication editorially clashed with the Trump administration, which sought greater…

Security funding for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex when they return to live in the UK this month is a “private matter”, Andy Burnham has said.News of Harry and Meghan’s planned return to Britain from the US came as a surprise to many on Wednesday night; King Charles was only informed three days earlier.Asked by reporters on a visit to West Yorkshire whether the government would establish and fund the couple’s security, the prime minister said: “Well, this is a private matter.“It’s a matter for Harry and for Meghan, and we wish them well in the moves that they’re…

Racism and sexism have become normalised in Britain, the equalities minister has said, as she warned that young men were being sucked into violent misogyny by the “cesspit” of social media.Bridget Phillipson said she was increasingly worried about how commonplace misogyny and racism had become, fuelled by online interactions and statements by politicians she said would not have been acceptable a few years ago.She accused senior MPs from Reform and the Conservatives of having made racist statements in recent years, and accused the police of not taking violence against women and girls seriously enough.Speaking to the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast,…