Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

There are five weeks left until the midterm elections, and extremism is on the ballot in much of the US. A WIRED review of candidates running for statewide and federal positions in November, along with exclusive data on candidates running for state-level positions, reveals hundreds of Republican candidates who openly express virulently hateful ideologies, share racist content online, have close ties to white supremacist and antisemitic figures, and are members of far-right groups online. President Donald Trump and his administration have openly embraced, endorsed and defended many of these candidates.At a local level, over 500 candidates running for state legislator…

Swati KhandelwalSep 28, 2026Vulnerability / Cybercrime The attacker who stole about $388 million from the cryptocurrency exchange Bitget gained access through a vulnerability in a third-party security product the exchange used, Bitget said on Monday. The attacker exploited the flaw to obtain high-level internal credentials and then, on September 24, used them to send fraudulent withdrawal commands to Bitget’s wallet system. Exchanges keep most customer funds in offline cold wallets and use hot and warm wallets to process withdrawals. Transfers from those wallets must still be approved before they are signed. The stolen funds came from part of Bitget’s hot…

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said the crypto exchange’s recent $388 million exploit stemmed from a vulnerability in a third-party security product that allowed the attacker to obtain “high-level internal credentials.”In comments to Cointelegraph, Chen said the attacker used those credentials to issue fraudulent withdrawal commands. Bitget’s private keys were not compromised, and its cold wallets were not affected, she said.Bitget said it has since addressed the security flaw and tightened its withdrawal controls, including restricting internal access, adding independent verification for withdrawals and increasing monitoring for unusual activity.The attack occurred on Sept. 24, when Bitget detected unauthorized transfers from several…

A commercial mission to boost NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory concluded without raising the spacecraft’s orbit, but the agency and industry vendor Katalyst Space have gained valuable experience that will benefit future in-space servicing programs. “From the beginning, this was a high-risk, high-reward mission,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Without intervention, Swift was going to re-enter the atmosphere by year’s end. And while we’ll be sad to see Swift’s mission come to a close, we knew this boost effort would be valuable to the agency on multiple levels — advancing U.S. spacecraft servicing technology,…

The Trump administration Monday finalized the rollback of a major fuel economy standard for cars and trucks, a move critics say will cause more climate-warming pollution, human health problems and higher fuel costs for consumers.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a part of the Department of Transportation, published new Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards Monday, greatly reducing the fuel efficiency for new passenger cars and light trucks made between 2022 and 2031. The Department of Transportation estimates that the new standards would correspond to an industry fleetwide average of about 34.9 miles per gallon for new vehicles in model…

Claim: The official poverty rate in the U.S. hit an all-time historical low in 2025. Rating: Context According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2025 official poverty rate was the lowest since records began in 1959. The bureau also publishes a supplemental poverty measure rate. The 2025 supplemental poverty rate was not the lowest since records began in 2009. A claim (archived) circulated online in September 2026 that the poverty rate in the U.S. hit an all-time low in 2025. The claim came from a video that social media users (archived, archived) said showed Trump saying the U.S. had “the…

An appeals court in Iran has confirmed a sentence of 74 lashes handed to a prominent singer who performed without the mandatory hijab, lawyers say.Parastoo Ahmadi sang while wearing a sleeveless dress during a concert livestreamed on her YouTube channel in December 2024, external. Iran’s laws ban public performances by women and require them to wear headscarves and modest clothing.Iran’s judiciary launched proceedings against the 29-year-old after the video went viral, gaining millions of views, saying the performance was “in violation of the country’s legal and cultural regulations”.In June, a criminal court in Qom reportedly found Ahmadi and eight members…

France’s Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has warned that any escalation in the country’s current wave of student protests would be “irresponsible”, following the arrests of 164 people on Monday. The demonstrations, which began in Paris and have seen teenagers blockading their schools for days, stem from issues including overcrowded classes and teacher shortages. Lecornu cited reported incidents at protests in a post on X, saying: “Fireworks, fires, violence near high schools: nothing justifies endangering students, staff, or police officers.”But a French union that defends the interests of high school students said the protests were a “legitimate response” to the conditions…

There may be three reasons why the Labour government has hesitated until now to reheat the Tories’ decade-long help-to-buy scheme. First, the inflationary risks of throwing subsidies at the housing market at a moment when wider inflation, driven by energy prices and the Iran war, is on the march.Second, the political awkwardness of turning to George Osborne’s playbook. Third, the spectre of Jeff Fairburn, the shameless former boss of Persimmon who bagged a £75m bonus in 2018 as help to buy turbo-charged the value of his share-based incentives. The government would look foolish if, in its desperation to meet its…

Nigel Farage has been described as a “master of the conspiracy theory” by the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, after he tried to link events at RAF Fairford to small boat crossings.The Reform UK leader was criticised over his reaction to the arrests of the men on Sunday, when he said he had been warning for months about “Iranian agents” coming into the UK across the Channel in small boats.“We deserve to be told the truth about the Fairford bomb plotters’ identities,” he added in his post on X on Sunday.On Monday he posted a video in which he claimed to…