Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldThe US military fired on a Panama-flagged container ship on Tuesday as it attempted to transit the Gulf of Oman to an Iranian port in violation of a US naval blockade on Iran.A US Navy helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles into the engine room of the Vela Nova, disabling the vessel’s rudder, after its civilian crew “ignored repeated warnings” from US forces, according to a statement from Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East.“US forces operating in…

Did a prototype Microsoft gamepad fall off the back of a truck? We can’t say, but a Redditor has legit-looking photos of a prototype Xbox controller that’s almost certainly the Xbox Elite Series 3. Incredibly, they claim they bought the pad for $200 on OfferUp.In May, a Brazilian regulator’s leaked images revealed that Xbox Elite 3 would have new two new scroll wheels on the bottom edge, a second wireless mode to connect directly to Xbox Cloud Gaming servers, and a new “Pair Button” that can also switch between those servers and your console.Where might that pair button live? Today,…

The DeadLock ransomware operation is using a decentralized infrastructure that relies on blockchain-backed services to protect its communication with victims and data-leak activity. The threat actor emerged in mid-2025 and uses double-extortion tactics (data theft/leak and file encryption) to pressure victims into paying a ransom. By July this year, DeadLock’s data leak site listed 80 organizations, mostly from Europe. Victims include companies in the IT, mining,  transportation, manufacturing, hospitality, and consumer goods sectors. Microsoft researchers observed the malware being deployed by multiple groups, including an affiliate previously linked to the Lynx and INC ransomware ecosystems. The DeadLock ransomware operators adopted a new…

Itaú, Latin America’s largest private sector bank, has partnered with digital asset infrastructure provider OpenAssets to participate in an industry-led pilot testing the tokenization of fixed-income securities and investment funds in Brazil.The initiative is led by the Brazilian Financial and Capital Markets Association (ANBIMA), which is testing the issuance, trading and settlement of capital markets instruments using distributed ledger technology (DLT).According to Tuesday’s announcement, the companies will develop technical proofs of concept and assess the operational, compliance and technology requirements for tokenized assets, with debentures and investment funds among the use cases being explored.OpenAssets will provide its tokenization infrastructure, while…

NASA has declared “wrenches down” on the first completed payload designed for Artemis astronauts to deploy on the Moon’s surface. Engineers working on NASA’s Lunar Environment Monitoring Station, or LEMS, have completed hardware development and testing and the payload is ready for its permanent home near the lunar South Pole. With the hardware complete, LEMS is ready to support one of the Artemis program’s core goals: enabling sustained lunar science and exploration. The LEMS instrument package contains two highly sensitive seismometers that will monitor ground vibrations from moonquakes and meteorite impacts, providing scientists with insights into the Moon’s interior and…

UPPER MAKEFIELD TOWNSHIP, Pa.— As their children ran in circles at the street corner on a clear morning, parents of Mount Eyre Manor kept watch, especially mindful of the white pickup trucks that begin to roll into the neighborhood before the school bus. Only after their 6-year-old daughter boarded the bus did Ryan Harper and Veronica Casina-Harper talk about the nightmare of the past year and a half. From their front yard, they pointed to work crews finishing four new holes in their street, the latest of 44 wells drilled in Mount Eyre Manor. The driller is one of the…

U.S.-headquartered geotechnical and offshore survey research and service company TDI-Brooks has been hired to undertake a geophysical and geotechnical survey assignment for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project off the coast of Louisiana, United States. Brooks McCall; Source: TDI-Brooks Delfin LNG has awarded the offshore geophysical and geotechnical survey services for the Delfin deepwater port project offshore Louisiana to TDI-Brooks, enabling the firm to serve as the prime contractor, executing the full scope of work, including geophysical survey activities, and managing the geotechnical investigation in partnership with its subcontractor, Tolunay-Wong Engineers (TWE). The geophysical data acquisition is scheduled to begin…

Megan Wells spent nearly every summer of her 31 years boating on the Rock River that runs through Ogle County, Illinois. She cherished those evenings when the glassy water slid away and crickets pulsed from the green banks. In June 2016, she and her uncle and two friends were idling in a pontoon boat in a placid expanse of the river, watching the sunset. Suddenly, a low-slung, camouflage-tinted fishing boat sped toward them. Behind the wheel was a local pharmacy executive, Marc Mongan. Wells’ boatmates leapt from their seats, waving their arms and yelling at Mongan to slow down. Wells’…

In his landmark speech at the World Economic Forum in January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called on “middle powers” to jointly invigorate the international system. Such nations, he ventured, “have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the various states.” Champions of international order cheered his vision of a unified bloc able to offset great-power competition and counter the bellicose, norm-wrecking U.S. President Donald Trump. In the ensuing eight months, Carney’s vision for middle powers—countries with notable economic and military strengths…

During the signing of an executive order on vaccines, President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a deluge of false and misleading claims about the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule. The executive order establishes “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations” and directs federal agencies and states to advance them. The new recommendations attempt to repeat prior administration changes to the routine vaccine schedule through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reducing it from targeting 17 to 11 diseases. At the time, we explained that HHS had justified this decision with a variety of incorrect…