Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Swati KhandelwalAug 06, 2026Cybercrime / Law Enforcement Connor Riley Moucka pleaded guilty in Seattle federal court on Wednesday to computer fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and a related conspiracy over the 2024 breaches of Snowflake customer accounts. The intrusions reached at least 165 organizations and exposed records belonging to at least 100 million people. Moucka, 26, of Kitchener, Ontario, personally took at least $495,000 from ransoms and data sales. He is due to be sentenced on October 27 and faces a two-year mandatory minimum on the identity theft count and up to 30 years on the rest. What got…

According to Thielen, traders are missing the key point that BTC’s failure to move lower despite the hawkish Fed is itself a bullish signal. “Traders are underestimating the upside risk from a less hawkish Fed, and overlooking the possibility that the four-year cycle has already bottomed,” he noted.Other market watchers point to erratic demand for ETFs, a preferred vehicle of institutional investors, as the reason for BTC’s underperformance. These U.S.-listed funds registered an outflow of $61.53 million, snapping an equally anemic three-week streak of inflows, according to data source SoSoValue. This week, they have pulled in $626 million in investor…

Air pollution may make rheumatoid arthritis more active and increase the likelihood of painful flare-ups, according to a new study. The strongest connection involved fine particulate matter found in dust, soot, and smoke (PM2.5). Published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (ARD), The EULAR Journal, by Elsevier, the findings suggest that air quality may be an important consideration for both healthcare professionals treating rheumatoid arthritis and policymakers working to protect public health. Environmental Factors in Rheumatoid Arthritis Rheumatoid arthritis, commonly known as RA, is a chronic autoimmune condition that causes inflammation and damage in the joints. It can also…

‘To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me.” That was the breathtaking response of Prof Jason Arday when the Guardian interrogated the details he provided of an alleged racist campaign of intimidation against him, which involved a severed pig’s head, a masked man wielding a knife and bullets in the post. Arday had been unable to provide evidence, and when the Guardian contacted the relevant parties, including a south London butcher and the police, his claims were either refuted or could not be verified.Arday, whose appointment as professor of sociology of education at Cambridge became a widely…

Pakistan has begun a sweeping new crackdown on reporters that rights groups and local journalists say will close off one of the last remaining ways to get independent journalism about the world’s fifth-most-populous country.The government imposed new restrictions that require all journalists working for foreign media outlets to seek permission to travel outside Pakistan’s three major cities. The rules come after a surge of media covering elections in the Pakistan-administered part Kashmir, a disputed region where protesters have been campaigning since early June for more political autonomy.“The requirement that journalists obtain state approval to report from large parts of the…

In an unusual primary upset, President Trump’s favored candidate for a battleground U.S. House district in central Michigan lost to a little-known Republican who had suspended his own campaign, never filed a campaign finance report and had even endorsed someone else.On Wednesday morning, Tom Smith, a small-business owner from Flint, was surprised to learn he had soundly defeated Amir Hassan, a Navy veteran whom Mr. Trump endorsed.Just last week, Mr. Trump had rallied in Milford, Mich., for Republicans, including Mr. Hassan. Republican leaders had also closed ranks behind him, with Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina…

Several top US law firms have explored selling stakes in their businesses to private equity groups without triggering rules that bar ownership by non-lawyers.Paul Weiss, Quinn Emanuel and Proskauer are among firms to have had conversations with private equity groups or bankers to consider taking outside capital, according to people with knowledge of the matter.US ethics rules prevent law firms from being owned by non-lawyers, which has left them as one of the few areas of the economy untouched by buyout groups. But some investors are stepping up their attempts to break into the legal industry using a structure known…

Once, I had some questions about why SpaceX, Elon Musk’s healthiest company, acquired xAI, his sickliest one. Now I have some questions about why we’re calling the whole thing SpaceX.Look, what we have here, by revenue, is primarily a telecom company and a company that rents compute, according to SpaceX’s first quarterly earnings statement as a public company. The space sector of the business didn’t break a billion dollars this quarter and contributed only a touch over 10 percent of the company’s revenue. SpaceX remains its own biggest customer. There just aren’t enough other people who want its rockets. And,…

Two security flaws in Paperclip could let attackers execute commands on a network server or a developer’s computer. Paperclip is an open-source control plane for teams of artificial intelligence (AI) agents, and both paths rely on importing a malicious agent and starting it. A third flaw could expose sensitive data and control-plane details through application programming interface (API) routes that did not enforce the expected access checks. The more severe server-side path, tracked as CVE-2026-41679 (CVSS score: 10.0), requires no pre-existing account or victim interaction against network-accessible deployments using authenticated mode with the default registration configuration. The second path, tracked…

Canadian digital asset manager 3iQ Corp. will work to manage some of the Bitcoin reserves of Bhutan’s Gelephu Mindfulness City project.  3iQ, Canada’s biggest and oldest digital asset fund manager, will not only manage the 10,000 Bitcoins pledged to build the new region, but also invest in local talent and establish a long-term physical presence in Gelephu as the region positions itself as Bhutan’s new offshore digital financial hub, according to a statement.  Bhutan last year said it would use 10,000 Bitcoins to fund a special administrative region called the Gelephu Mindfulness City. First announced in 2023, the GMC will…