Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Dutch public broadcaster Avrotros has pulled out of next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, saying that the competition can no longer be considered neutral while a participating country remains involved in a large-scale military conflict.In a statement, external released on Monday, the broadcaster said the decision was due to a lack of clarity from organisers – the Eurovision Broadcasting Union (EBU) – over assessing which countries could compete.Avrotros added: “The severe humanitarian suffering in Gaza and the ongoing restrictions on press freedom have contributed to increasing divisions surrounding the Eurovision Song Contest in recent years.”Earlier this month, the EBU updated its…

President Trump threatened on Monday to increase tariffs on all cars, trucks, car parts and steel from Canada to 50 percent, starting Jan. 1, as the relationship with America’s closest traditional ally edges toward a full-blown trade war.Writing on Truth Social, the president said that Canada was “among the worst Nations in the World to deal with” and that it “will be treated like a State no longer.”“They feel entitled, and yet, WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” he wrote.Trade tensions between the United States and Canada have spiraled over the past few days, after the two sides failed…

In a suburb west of Toronto, Martin Richards, who runs Imperial Productions, is on the frontline of an intensifying US trade war just by exporting concrete columns and wood railings.Over the weekend, sending some of his 10,000 architectural products to the US became dramatically more expensive.“Tariffs mean higher prices and fewer buyers,” he said. “The unknown is how much will I lose?”On Saturday, President Donald Trump imposed an additional 50 per cent tariff on $20bn worth of exports “to offset Canadian discrimination” after Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended trade talks with the US late on Friday night. Carney said he…

Today on Decoder, I’m talking with Tim Cadogan, the CEO of GoFundMe. You know GoFundMe — it’s a major fundraising platform where you can donate to help people with everything from medical expenses to little league uniforms to starting a new business.Tim took over as CEO in March 2020 — a fascinating and chaotic moment in the United States, and the moment, you’ll hear me argue, I think GoFundMe became a load-bearing part of American culture.Verge subscribers, don’t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. Head here. Not a subscriber? You can sign up…

Cybersecurity company ReliaQuest has confirmed that one of its employees was targeted in a social engineering attack after hackers impersonated a member of the security team. In a statement over the weekend, ReliaQuest said that an attacker called multiple employees and tried to trick them into accessing “a fake ReliaQuest single sign-on (SSO) page behind a content delivery network.” Last week, ReliaQuest’s Threat Research team shared in a now-deleted post, that the ShinyHunters extortion gang was registering .claims domains to impersonate company’s help desks and IT teams. “ReliaQuest is tracking a widespread ShinyHunters campaign using domains that follow the company[.]claims…

In brief Tom Lee’s Bitmine bought another 32,447 ETH, worth roughly $81 million, last week. Bitmine says its 5.85 million ETH represents about 4.8% of the supply. The price of Ethereum is up more than 30% in the last week. Bitmine Immersion Technologies is another step closer to its goal of owning 5% of Ethereum’s supply after buying another 32,447 ETH, worth roughly $81 million, last week.The company said Monday that it held 5,847,611 ETH, worth around $15 billion as of August 23.Myriad: Ethereum next price move? Click to make your prediction.With Ethereum’s supply at approximately 120.7 million tokens, the…

Bad news for frogs getting sauna therapy: The heat treatment for their fatal fungal infection may come at a cost. Exposing infected green and golden bell frogs (Ranoidea aurea) to thermal therapy — a commonly used treatment technique — can compromise their sperm levels. While the frogs became disease free, their sperm concentrations substantially dropped and remained that way months later, researchers report August 4 in the Journal of Experimental Biology. “We’ve looked at the survival of frogs after these treatments… but it’s less common that we’ve taken into account effects on reproduction,” says Cori Richards-Zawacki, an amphibian biologist at…

Daniel Janzen’s scientific work helped reshape ecologists’ understanding of tropical forests, especially the relationships among plants, insects, pathogens, predators, and seeds.With Winnie Hallwachs and Costa Rican partners, he helped turn degraded ranchlands in Guanacaste into a protected, working landscape that now connects ecosystems from the Pacific coast to cloud forest and Caribbean rain forest.ACG’s parataxonomists, educators, field staff, directors, and neighboring communities have made the project durable through their day-to-day work, linking conservation to local employment, education, and scientific expertise.Janzen and Hallwachs’s more recent work on DNA barcoding and bioliteracy aims to help Costa Rica identify, study, and value…

Attacks on Palestinian communities by illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank – often supported by Israeli forces – have gathered pace over the past month, since settlers from the illegal Havat Gilad settlement attacked Palestinians’ homes on the eastern edge of Tal, southwest of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.Since then, the Israeli military have raided multiple towns, villages, and refugee camps across the occupied territory over Sunday and Monday, with reports of arrests, home searches, and settler attacks continuing to mount.A 15-day siege on three families comprising 15 people, including two children, in the village of Qusra, which is…

Available for over a yearKate Adie presents stories from Russia, with authorities defiant as the war impact is felt; a grim Ebola milestone in the DRC; Brazil’s presidential campaign and the small Bulgarian city chosen to host Eurovision. Moscow has issued a warning to the UK of ‘consequences’ following confirmation that British-made drones were used in recent Ukrainian strikes . The authorities – and some citizens – are increasingly blaming the West for Russia’s problems as Steve Rosenberg discovered on the streets of Moscow. The Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo has become the deadliest in its country’s…