Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Under President Lula, Amazon deforestation dropped to a 10-year low, but experts warn a victory by Senator Flávio Bolsonaro could reinstate policies favoring agribusiness and mining.Enforcement rollbacks could have tangible effects on deforestation spikes, Indigenous land invasions, new illegal roads in reclaimed forests, and expanded river dredging that spreads mercury contamination.As neighboring right-wing governments reshape regional dynamics, the election will also determine Brazil’s stance in international climate diplomacy and its adherence to global environmental targets.See All Key Ideas As voters in Brazil prepare to head to the polls on Oct. 4, forest guardians and environmental analysts are bracing…

While answering a question in July about the prospects for negotiations with Iran, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a dismissive reference to an ongoing series of AI-generated Lego animation clips produced in Iran that mock U.S. and Israeli officials. Iran will be ready to do a deal soon, Rubio suggested, because “the price they are paying is very high, despite their tough talk and their flowery language and their stupid Lego videos they put out.” Rubio, speaking to reporters at a foreign ministers’ meeting in Manila, hadn’t even been asked about the propaganda campaign. That a sitting U.S.…

Elections in two German states on ⁠Sunday resulted in ​severe losses for the country’s leading Christian Democrats, whose Chancellor Friedrich Merz is facing pressure to keep the far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) party at bay. Here are five takeaways from regional elections in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western ​Pomerania and Germany’s capital Berlin. Merz is down, but not (yet) out The results mark a major setback for Merz and his CDU party, whose voters have flocked to the AfD, increasingly doubtful the 70-year-old can revive Germany’s economy and bring down the cost of living. Facing the lowest approval ratings for…

A new season for Europe’s fashion industry Turning fashion from a linear industry into a circular one is an ongoing, complicated process. For the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a circular economy for fashion is where clothing, shoes and accessories are used more, made to be recycled and created from recycled or renewable inputs. European post-consumer textile waste is currently more likely to be downcycled, landfilled or incinerated rather than recycled in Europe due to a lack of financial incentive and a clear regulatory pathway — meaning the EU is discarding material it could use, while exporting environmental impacts and industrial value…

Given that Britain’s politics are quite a sizeable reason that we do so badly in Eurovision: here’s something that will definitely, absolutely, categorically help us do better in the competition … interference from MPs.Digital, culture, media and sport committee chair Caroline Dinenage has announced that MPs will scrutinise the UK’s reliable failure in the competition to see where we’re going wrong, with a hearing to be held over the coming months. The answers surely don’t take that long to work out.“We want to get to the bottom of who chooses our entrant,” Dinenage said. Currently that’s the BBC, with the…

There is no dearth of different forms of hardware for meeting note-taking, including pendants, pins, and credit-card-styled devices. That hasn’t stopped Vocci from releasing a new device for the same use case in a ring form factor, which is convenient but could create some privacy issues. The ring form factor is one of the easiest for anyone who wants to just press a button and have the device start recording. Pebble’s new Index 01 Ring, which I am testing right now, lets you hold the button and take a note or a reminder. Stream Ring, made by Sandbar, works similarly…

Ravie LakshmananSep 21, 2026Malware / Social Engineering The North Korean threat actor known as Jade Sleet has been attributed to the compromise of an India-based “much smaller organization” in the information technology (IT) services industry, once again highlighting how the adversary continues to target developers to breach target networks. Cybersecurity company SentinelOne, which disclosed details of the activity, said it involved the use of Apple macOS backdoors tracked as FLATROOF (aka Gaslight) and ROOFDECK, both of which were previously observed in the March-April 2026 attack on KelpDAO’s LayerZero bridge. Jade Sleet, also tracked under the monikers PUKCHONG, Slow Pisces, TraderTraitor,…

First, he flagged a crucial mix-up in Beni’s original post, explaining that the Artemis chart cited in the complaint measured prediction-market share rather than perpetual contract volume. He also demystified why Kalshi’s volume numbers look so high, explaining that they use the exact same reporting convention as Polymarket: volume reflects the maximum potential payout, not the upfront cash spent. Because each event contract pays out exactly $1 to the winner, the industry tracks volume by counting the total number of $1 outcomes on the line. For example, if a trader buys 100,000 contracts priced at 30 cents, they spend only…

Coal ash, red mud, and mine tailings are usually treated as major waste problems. Yet these enormous waste streams also contain valuable materials, including silica, rare earth elements, and other critical minerals. A research team led by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has received a $3.3 million award from the National Science Foundation’s Growing Convergence Research program to investigate whether biological strategies used by diatoms, sea sponges, and plants could help recover those resources with less energy and fewer harsh chemicals. The five-year, two-phase effort is being led by Mingjiang Tao, associate professor in the WPI Department of Civil, Environmental, and…

H5N1 avian influenza is spreading rapidly across southeastern Australia owing to infected wild bird species, including little penguins, magpies, crested terns and pelicans. Bird aggregations during breeding seasons will likely accelerate transmission to mammals, said Victoria’s chief biodiversity officer James Todd. In late August, H5N1 jumped to a mammal, a red fox (Vulpes vulpes), in Adelaide, South Australia. Acting chief veterinary officer Cameron Bell said that while wild foxes generally do not spread the virus directly, scavenging pests risk moving infected carcasses across habitats, according to media reports. In September, state authorities confirmed H5N1 in an Australian sea…