Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The turquoise blue waters, white sandy beaches and dramatic cliffs on the island of Qeshm until recently drew millions of annual visitors and a devoted community of artists, investors and designers who helped turn the island into Iran’s hottest vacation spot.It is so exquisite that it earned a UNESCO Global GeoPark designation because of its natural wonders, with names that seem out of a fairy tale: the Valley of Stars, the Hara Forest mangroves and the Hawksbill turtles of Shib Deraz.But the war with the United States and Israel, now stretching into its sixth month, has upended life, leaving the…

In late March, several thousand angry demonstrators gathered at a park in Milwaukee for a “No Kings” protest to denounce President Trump’s administration. For the crowded field of Democrats running for governor of Wisconsin, the event was the perfect chance to engage fired-up primary voters.Only one campaign appeared to show up in significant numbers: Francesca Hong’s.In weather so chilly that attendees could see their own breath, a small army of volunteers wearing Hong T-shirts set up a tent and fanned out in the crowd. Clipboards in hand, they gathered support along with the lifeblood of organizing: cellphone numbers and email…

Key eventsGreen leader Zack Polanski accuses government of ‘gross negligence’ over climate crisisWith parts of Britain set to experience their fifth heatwave of the summer this week, Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has accused the government of not recognising the severity of the crisis.In a statement, he said: double quotation markWe are now facing the fifth heatwave in months following the recent deaths of 3,000 people in our country from extreme weather conditions. This is the greatest crisis this country has faced since the second world war and to complacently dismiss the demands for immediate action by saying everything…

Dogechain, a separate Ethereum-compatible network from the Dogecoin blockchain, kept producing blocks after its announced 12:00 UTC shutdown on Aug. 8. Its project-run bridge page also remained online, while a Dogechain-specific QuickSwap route continued sending users to Polygon.Dogechain announced the cutoff in July and warned that assets remaining on the chain might become inaccessible or permanently lost. The split in service availability after noon leaves the recovery path for those assets unresolved. Related ReadingDogecoin team warns Dogechain is ‘another knockoff token’Dogechain will offer DOGE holders access to DeFi, NFTs, and gaming, but Dogecoin warn not to risk your DOGE. Aug…

Only two complete dodo skulls are known anywhere in the world. One is housed at the Natural History Museum Denmark, while the other belongs to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The Copenhagen specimen has remained in the museum’s collections for centuries, and it has now played a key role in an international investigation led by researchers at the University of Lethbridge in Canada. Their goal was to explore a long-standing mystery: how did the dodo perceive and interact with the world around it? Using digital reconstructions of the space that once held the bird’s brain, scientists were able…

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. The best-known wildlife recoveries in the U.S. are often associated with the West. Yet some important gains have occurred east of the Mississippi, among cities, roads, farms, and landscapes altered over several centuries. Andrew Moore’s new book, Beasts of the East: The Fall and Rise of America’s Eastern Wilderness, examines the decline and partial return of animals that once occupied the region in abundance. Before European settlement and large-scale land conversion, eastern habitats supported bison, elk, moose, woodland caribou, cranes, black…

The biggest sales of poetry since records began are expected this year. The reason? The movies, of course. UK print sales of The Odyssey increased by 1,400% in the four weeks to 25 July compared with the same period last year. In the US, year-to-date sales of The Odyssey are up 76% so far. Christopher Nolan is doing miracles for Homer – whatever problems one might have with the movie (and Emily Wilson, who made the most popular recent translation, has a few).Strip out the Odyssey factor, though, and poetry is still doing exceptionally well, driven by writers whose work…

When Mathipa was assigned to the case a month later, he issued a subpoena to special forces to force them to hand over full details of this alleged training exercise and all the personnel involved.When access to these documents was finally promised, three months later, Mathipa had a premonition that he would be murdered – according to Brig Paulina Sekgobela, his commanding officer.”When [Mathipa] left my office he said: ‘Brigadier, you know, these people – they are going to kill me. I’m going to die’,” she told the BBC.On the day Mathipa was killed, he was phoned by a man…

Bill Swearingen has spent the past year running largely the same test, over and over again. The goal was to produce a computer-generated pattern that could block the surveillance cameras lining America’s streets from detecting it. Some 31 million tests later, Swearingen says he can now produce patterns on-demand that, when applied to clothing and objects, prevent some of the most commonly deployed license plate readers and surveillance cameras from detecting whatever the pattern covers, from people to vehicles. His project, which he calls noRecognition, allows people to escape the automatic detection and algorithmic surveillance used across the U.S. and…

OpenAI has announced that it’s pausing some “internal activities” involving its upcoming artificial intelligence (AI) model Astra after an internal evaluation found it had made significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity. In response to the discovery, the AI upstart said it’s implementing security controls for higher-capability models and associated activities, such as isolated testing environments, restricted network and tool access, enhanced model weight protections and encryption, additional monitoring and detection capabilities, and sandboxed execution. “We are pausing internal activities involving Astra that do not yet meet these strengthened security control requirements,” it said in a statement. “We have implemented…