Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The Philippines’ new critical-minerals policy targets at least 9 million hectares (22 million acres) of prospective mineral areas, more than 11 times the land currently covered by approved mining projects, according to an environmental legal group.Environmental and Indigenous rights advocates warn that expanded mineral development could increase pressure on forests and ancestral domains.Critics say that by rolling out the simultaneous processing of mining permits and clearances, the new policy could undermine meaningful free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) if Indigenous communities are pushed to make decisions without adequate time and information.The mining industry has welcomed faster and more predictable…

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at renewed fighting between U.S. and Iranian forces, Russia’s failed drone attack on German soil, and a damning United Nations report on global warming. ‘Dangerous Consequences’ Tehran accused Washington on Wednesday of committing a war crime after a U.S. missile strike hit a wedding party in southern Iran the day before. According to local media, the attack targeted a private coastal residence, killing at least four people—including a 4-year-old and a 16-year-old—and injuring around 68 others. Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at renewed fighting between U.S. and Iranian forces,…

Police say suspected gunman is also dead and that several people, including three officers, were wounded.Published On 3 Sep 20263 Sep 2026At least two people have been killed and several more wounded, including three police officers, after a gunman opened fire in the United States city of Minneapolis.Garret Parten, a spokesman for the police, told reporters on Wednesday that the suspect has also died.He said police responded to a call about a shooting at a downtown Minneapolis apartment building just after 4:30pm local time (22:30 GMT). Officers found the victims minutes after entering the high-rise.One person died at the scene,…

Meta is formally ending what amounted to a tokenmaxxing incentive program for employees. In an internal announcement this week, the social media giant told workers that their performance evaluations would no longer be dependent upon how much they used AI tools, three employees who received the message tell WIRED. But as Meta workers simultaneously begin testing a new agentic AI tool known as Hatch, they say their token consumption continues to surge.Almost a year ago, Meta had said workers would be graded on their “AI-driven impact,” which in practice meant evaluating the extent to which they used chatbots and agents…

An active malware campaign is using bogus software-download websites to impersonate trusted vendors and distribute malicious installers. “The campaign has targeted users looking to download popular software and has resulted in compromises across multiple organizations and industries, primarily affecting China-based operations of multinational organizations and Chinese-speaking users,” Microsoft said. The installers, once launched, deploy malware that’s capable of setting up persistence, weakening security protections, and communicating with attacker-controlled infrastructure. The activity has resulted in victims spanning healthcare, manufacturing, gaming, technology, logistics, government, and education sectors. The Windows maker has assessed with moderate confidence that the campaign is consistent with a…

Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas is at it again.  This time, the third richest man in Mexico told his followers that “fiat inflation is a hidden tax,” and the way to hedge against it was to buy bitcoin.  Salinas, the former chairman of home appliance and electronics retailer Grupo Elektra and Banco Azteca founder, told his followers to opt out and start protecting their savings.  When you work, you trade your time (your life) for money. But when governments create money at will and dilute its value, they steal the time you sacrificed to earn it.Fiat inflation is a hidden tax.…

Over the “strongest possible” objections from the federal prosecutor handling the case, leaders at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., quashed plans to bring civil rights charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of shooting a Venezuelan immigrant and then lying about it.  The agent, 52-year-old Christian Castro, allegedly shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg in Minneapolis this January during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s immigration blitz that sent thousands of federal agents into the state. The incident was one of three shootings by immigration agents in the city, the other two of which were…

Claim: In the summer of 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the removal of weeping willow trees outside the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Rating: Context Matthew Floca, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of facilities, said in April 2026 sworn testimony that the center felled its weeping willows “because they were falling down.” He also confirmed Trump was not involved in the decision. In late August and early September 2026, a claim (archived) circulated online that U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the removal of weeping willow trees outside the John F. Kennedy Memorial…

If you want to understand the moment we’re in, you have to understand Donald Trump. That’s easier said than done; Trump thrives on drama — ideally in ALL CAPS on Truth Social — and prides himself on being unpredictable (although some would argue it’s all part of a strategy).The flood of missives and missiles, of hyperbolic threats (“a whole civilization will die tonight”) and morphing deadlines coming out of the White House can seem surreal. But two of my colleagues have written a book full of riveting, granular detail that makes it feel, well, very real.In “Regime Change,” Maggie Haberman…

The man leading the charge to make Germany proud again won’t say he wants his fellow Germans to “forget” the Nazi past, but that is where his ideas invariably lead. Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a 48-year-old lawmaker for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, was until recently little known beyond his largely rural constituency. But he may soon be in a position to help realize one of the greatest ambitions of the party’s most extreme faction: remaking his country’s postwar identity and steering Germans toward leaving behind the Nazi past. That history “remains present in…