Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Some men in the United States seeking relief for erectile dysfunction aren’t getting prescriptions for Viagra. Instead, they’re flocking to health clinics to subject their private parts to low-energy sound waves touted as a painless path to penile healing. The treatment, called shock wave therapy, is controversial. But if it delivers on its promise to improve erections by boosting blood flow in the penis, then it could help the millions of people whose ED is caused by vascular problems. Leading physician groups don’t support shock wave therapy for ED because evidence of long-term benefits is spotty. Though it isn’t approved…

Brazilian state-owned energy giant Petrobras is advancing its push into West Africa’s offshore oil and gas frontier, entering negotiations for exploration contracts covering four blocks in Ghana’s Keta Basin as the Brazilian major seeks to replenish reserves and expand its international exploration portfolio. Illustration; Source: Petrobras Petrobras has submitted an expression of interest in exploration blocks located in offshore areas of the Keta Basin in Ghana, a country on the west coast of Africa. This move is aligned with the firm’s strategy of replenishing its oil and gas reserves. Since the country’s Ministry of Energy and Green Transition has approved…

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief. The highlights this week: Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa visits China, Venezuela’s interim government agrees to a prisoner release amid U.S.-brokered talks with the opposition, and Brazil’s state oil company makes a new oil discovery. Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa is on a weeklong state visit to China, his second trip to the country since the start of his term last year. The right-wing president has embraced a close partnership with the Trump administration, which in word and deed is pushing back against Chinese economic ties in Latin America. But despite that pressure, Noboa…

Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan was transferred back to jail early on Friday, hours after being taken to a hospital for court-ordered medical checks, the government said. The Supreme Court ordered on Tuesday that Khan, Pakistan’s most popular politician, be taken to the private Shifa International Hospital in the capital Islamabad within 48 hours for treatment, after his lawyers petitioned the court over concerns that his health was poor. The ex-cricket captain and his wife Bushra Bibi, who is also his spiritual guide, were both sentenced late last year to 17 years in prison. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar wrote…

The letter prompted swift criticism from within his own party: “I don’t like it. I can say that very clearly,” Saxony-Anhalt CDU Premier Sven Schulze told POLITICO’s Berlin Playbook Podcast on Thursday. “I think his approach is wrong. Definitely,” adding that he did not share Prange’s views “in any way.” As for whether the mayor will remain a Christian Democrat, Schulze was in no rush to make a call: “We’ll deal with the issue after the election,” he said. “Right now, it’s campaign time.” In an interview published earlier on Wednesday, Schulze had dismissed speculation about possible defections after the…

The White House in recent weeks has made public a steady drip of previously classified intelligence about foreign threats to elections and other matters, offering President Trump and his allies ammunition for baseless conspiracy theories about potential vote rigging.But one crucial document has not been among the releases, despite a congressional requirement for it to be: the assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies of foreign meddling efforts during the 2024 election.The document would provide the public with a holistic look at foreign attempts to influence voters and sow division around the presidential contest and other federal races that year. The 2020…

Tesla has discontinued Solar Roof, its solar panels designed to look like regular roofing tiles, Electrek reports. Sources “close to the program” told the publication that Tesla has informed its third-party installer network that Solar Roof is no longer available to order, and that only conventional solar panels will be supplied going forward.While Tesla hasn’t officially announced that it’s sunsetting the product, it’s made several website changes that corroborate the reported discontinuation. The dedicated Solar Roof page (tesla.com/solarroof) that launched almost a decade ago now automatically redirects to Tesla’s solar panel page instead, and the “Solar Roof” option is no…

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ordered U.S. federal agencies to prioritize patching two actively exploited vulnerabilities in the TrueConf Server self-hosted communications platform. TrueConf Server is designed for secure corporate messaging and video conferencing and, unlike cloud-based software like Zoom or Microsoft Teams, it operates inside an organization’s local network (LAN). The most severe is a critical missing authentication security flaw (tracked as CVE-2026-72529) that allows attackers without privileges to remotely execute arbitrary scripts on unpatched servers. “A remote unauthenticated attacker connecting to TrueConf Server over 4307/TCP can invoke an undocumented critical function and execute an arbitrary…

Bitcoin’s price surged further on Thursday, blowing past $72,000 the day after President Trump held a meeting with crypto executives and urged lawmakers to get the long-awaited Clarity Act over the line.  The leading cryptocurrency was trading for $71,758 at 8am in New York, after jumping nearly 12% over a 24-hour period. It touched as high as $72,344 earlier in the day.  Bitcoin was last trading this high at the beginning of June. The coin has spent most of July and August priced under $65,000.  The surge comes after President Trump held a meeting at the White House with crypto…

Scientists have identified a previously unknown natural process in the Arctic that can cause the number of cloud-forming particles in the atmosphere to surge. The discovery could have important implications for cloud cover, how much sunlight is reflected back into space, and how the Arctic responds to future climate change. The findings, published August 5 in Nature Geoscience, come from an international team led by the University of Birmingham with collaborators in China and Spain. The researchers provide the first real-world evidence that a powerful particle-forming process occurs where Arctic sea ice meets open ocean. In this zone, marine life…