Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Norway’s oil and gas company Aker BP and its compatriot state-owned partner, Equinor, have come up dry in their latest North Sea exploration well on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). Scarabeo 8; Source: Saipem Aker BP and Equinor have drilled a dry exploration well, 15/6-17, in the Svarteknippa prospect located in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, 15 kilometers west of the Solveig field and 220 kilometers west of Stavanger. This is the first exploration well drilled in production licence 979, which was awarded through awards in pre-defined areas (APA) in 2018. The well was drilled by Saipem’s Scarabeo 8 semi-submersible rig. While…

Over the last several decades, the Gulf states have used their oil and gas riches to transform their economies into global powerhouses. Many have built gleaming new cities and some of the world’s best airlines—and turned to the United States for security to make sure the party kept going. The Iran conflict has thrown most of those plans into flux. The latest example of this state of uncertainty could be the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, a pact between Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to treat an attack on one of them as an attack on them all—language that is reminiscent…

In signing an executive order about childhood vaccines, President Donald Trump falsely suggested that the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine was unsafe and that splitting up the combination shot would reduce the number of children with autism. There’s no evidence for those claims, and the vaccine has been well-studied for several decades. Together with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he also repeated many other falsehoods we’ve fact-checked before about vaccines. We wrote about those in another article. On Aug. 10, Trump signed the executive order aiming to overhaul childhood vaccination in the U.S. Couched…

Cali, Colombia – A day after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake shook western Colombia, rescue teams are frantically fighting through the rubble of collapsed buildings to find survivors and recover bodies.The powerful quake has caused at least 254 deaths nationwide, most of them concentrated in the cities of Pereira and Cali, according to government figures.“For me, the earthquake felt eternal,” recalled Luis Saenz, a 22-year-old journalism student from Cali.Saenz was at home enjoying his morning coffee when the quake struck at 7:34am (12:34 GMT) on Monday. He remembers his cat darting under the bed, then chaos as his family fled into…

The anniversary of Epstein’s demise is occasion to note two paradoxes that have emerged over those seven years — and most vividly in recent months, as it has become clear Epstein was a more consequential figure, and more emblematic of a sordid age, even than we knew at the time. Both paradoxes come courtesy, however grudgingly or unintentionally, of Epstein’s one-time friend, President Donald Trump.The first is the surprising degree to which the truth did indeed come out, and answers were not left hanging with Epstein in Cell 220 on the ninth floor of the Metropolitan Correctional Center.Yes, there are…

The Iranian threat that prompted President Trump’s secret Air Force One swap last month emerged as he was heading into his last day at the NATO summit in Turkey on July 8.According to two U.S. officials with knowledge of the threat, U.S. intelligence picked up multiple streams of information. They knew that there was a specific threat of a surface-to-air missile against Air Force One, meaning whichever plane was carrying the president, and that someone in the vicinity of the NATO summit had been spotted with a shoulder-fired missile. And the Iranians knew specifically where Mr. Trump was staying in…

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…