Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

(Doug Rissing via Getty Images) While most election watchers believe Democrats are likely to win control of the House in November, the Senate outlook is less clear. Prognosticators believe the outcome will come down to a handful of races where the candidates will need to spend to win. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report handicaps every congressional race and has identified four Senate races that it considers “toss-ups” – competitive races that both the Democratic and Republican candidates have a good chance of winning. In addition, it has tagged three races as leaning Democratic and two that lean Republican. We are…

Even now it is very difficult to process the scale of tragedy that engulfed Jason Arday and those who loved him. The unbearable sadness at his death; the wretched knowledge that the very public onslaught against him began with the malign machinations of a self-defined “race realist” – who believes that, in an ideal world, black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”. The horror that a rightwing and far-right campaign seeking a victim to fuel its nativist prejudices can now crow that it found one.There is wide and profound grief and of course…

South Korea’s annual joint military drills with the US will be cut short by six days at the request of Washington, its defence ministry has announced.Seoul said that the “period and scale” of the 2026 Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise had been adjusted due to a “proposal of the US side”. The drill will now conclude on 21 August, rather than 27 August as planned. It comes after Donald Trump announced plans to curtail exercises with South Korea, citing his “very good” relationship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told a parliamentary hearing that neither South…

A high-profile Senate race in Alaska is officially set: Mary Peltola, a Democrat and former congresswoman, and Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican, advanced from the state’s top-four nonpartisan primary on Tuesday night local time, according to The Associated Press. They will face off in November in a race that could determine control of the Senate.Ms. Peltola was seen as the only Democrat who could pose a formidable challenge to Mr. Sullivan, a two-term incumbent running in a conservative state known for its independent streak. An Alaska Native, Ms. Peltola is a former commercial fisher and a former state legislator. She…

Whoop’s bracelet-style trackers deliver exhaustive activity tracking and biometric data compared to standard fitness trackers. The Whoop band is also an excellent tool for monitoring sleep and overall health. Our WIRED testers have been reviewing Whoop trackers since the Whoop 3.0, and have watched as the product has evolved into an AI-enabled personalized service.But for most people, the Whoop may feel like an overinvestment, which is why Whoop is particularly popular among elite athletes. The company’s tiered subscription model can also be quite expensive for devices that are not medical instruments. Nonetheless, in the realm of biohacking, the gamification of…

Bitcoin is deep into its bear market, though it’s doing something it doesn’t typically do: sit still.  That’s according to a new report by VanEck, which noted that thirty-day realized volatility has fallen to 27.2% annualized, down from 30.4% the prior month and less than half bitcoin’s long-run average of roughly 80%.  For an asset known for double-digit daily swings, that’s an unusually still market. The calm comes as bitcoin claws back from a June low near $58,500, holding inside a tight $62,265-to-$66,509 band through most of July.  Bitcoin remains about 9% below its 200-day moving average — a narrower…

Photographers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston have documented some of the most defining moments in human spaceflight.  From astronaut training and engineering tests to mission control operations and milestone celebrations, their images preserve the history of exploration while capturing the people and teams behind the missions shaping the next era.   Meet the photographers behind the lens and explore the stories behind the images that have helped tell NASA’s story.  Robert Markowitz NASA Photographer For more than three decades, NASA photographer Robert Markowitz has documented the people and milestones that have shaped NASA’s human spaceflight program. His career has spanned the space shuttle program, 25 years of continuous human presence…

OSHKOSH, Wisc.—Every July, more than 10,000 general aviation aircraft from around the world fly here for the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture, widely recognized as the largest annual aviation gathering and fly-in convention. Many aircraft owners arrived this year with a common concern: The fuel that brought them there and has powered their airplanes for decades will likely be phased out. General aviation is now the largest remaining user of leaded transportation fuel in the United States. Although lead was phased out of automotive gasoline in the 1970s because it poses serious threats to public health, aviation gasoline remained leaded because…

By Joseph Rachman Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief. The highlights this week: U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby travels the region, the Myanmar military junta’s Rohingya repatriation sham, and Indonesia’s naval exercises mess-up. The message that U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby delivered on his Southeast Asia tour last week was fairly simple. “America’s interests are more engaged than ever in the Indo-Pacific,” he said in Manila on Aug. 10. “But it is also coupled with a newfound but common sense expectation of much greater effort and contribution by our allies and partners.” Colby,…

A Chinese food delivery driver rushes from gig to gig, measuring time by the number of jobs he completes instead of by the passing of the seasons. He toils in cities across China to send money back to his family, but has been away for so long that his son calls him “that man” instead of “Dad.”These are scenes from the poems of Wang Jibing, a food delivery driver, one of several Chinese poets and authors who have turned their experiences of repetitive factory labor and insecure gig work into art. This literary genre has ballooned in popularity in recent…