Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed separate civil lawsuits against Goliath Ventures and founder Christopher Delgado over an alleged crypto Ponzi scheme that raised about $400 million. The SEC said Goliath raised at least $425 million from more than 1,300 investors through an unregistered securities offering. Investors were told their money would be placed in crypto liquidity pools, but the agency alleged none of the funds or crypto assets were invested and Delgado diverted at least $51 million for personal use. In a separate action, the CFTC said approximately 1,600 customers contributed at least…

The International Space Station has been busy throughout 2026, as it continues to be a bustling workspace for astronauts conducting a variety of scientific experiments that lay the groundwork for missions to the Moon and beyond. NASA’s Artemis II mission in April was the first crewed flight around the Moon in more than 50 years, marking a major milestone for humanity’s return to the lunar surface. While the mission validated key systems needed for future deep space human exploration, work aboard the International Space Station continues to support those goals. Astronauts on the orbiting laboratory are testing technologies, studying how…

An emerging narrative is that elephant poaching has declined, yet evidence shows that the illegal trade in ivory persists, and that the involvement of organized crime in it keeps growing.Despite big and news-making seizures of illegal ivory recently, criminal networks continue operating, and southern Africa appears to be back at the illegal global trade’s center.“The current narrative that the situation is under control should not be accepted without question,” a new op-ed for World Elephant Day 2026 argues.This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.See All Key Ideas In…

Norway’s oil and gas company Aker BP and its compatriot state-owned partner, Equinor, have come up dry in their latest North Sea exploration well on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). Scarabeo 8; Source: Saipem Aker BP and Equinor have drilled a dry exploration well, 15/6-17, in the Svarteknippa prospect located in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, 15 kilometers west of the Solveig field and 220 kilometers west of Stavanger. This is the first exploration well drilled in production licence 979, which was awarded through awards in pre-defined areas (APA) in 2018. The well was drilled by Saipem’s Scarabeo 8 semi-submersible rig. While…

Over the last several decades, the Gulf states have used their oil and gas riches to transform their economies into global powerhouses. Many have built gleaming new cities and some of the world’s best airlines—and turned to the United States for security to make sure the party kept going. The Iran conflict has thrown most of those plans into flux. The latest example of this state of uncertainty could be the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, a pact between Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to treat an attack on one of them as an attack on them all—language that is reminiscent…

In signing an executive order about childhood vaccines, President Donald Trump falsely suggested that the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine was unsafe and that splitting up the combination shot would reduce the number of children with autism. There’s no evidence for those claims, and the vaccine has been well-studied for several decades. Together with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he also repeated many other falsehoods we’ve fact-checked before about vaccines. We wrote about those in another article. On Aug. 10, Trump signed the executive order aiming to overhaul childhood vaccination in the U.S. Couched…

Cali, Colombia – A day after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake shook western Colombia, rescue teams are frantically fighting through the rubble of collapsed buildings to find survivors and recover bodies.The powerful quake has caused at least 254 deaths nationwide, most of them concentrated in the cities of Pereira and Cali, according to government figures.“For me, the earthquake felt eternal,” recalled Luis Saenz, a 22-year-old journalism student from Cali.Saenz was at home enjoying his morning coffee when the quake struck at 7:34am (12:34 GMT) on Monday. He remembers his cat darting under the bed, then chaos as his family fled into…

The anniversary of Epstein’s demise is occasion to note two paradoxes that have emerged over those seven years — and most vividly in recent months, as it has become clear Epstein was a more consequential figure, and more emblematic of a sordid age, even than we knew at the time. Both paradoxes come courtesy, however grudgingly or unintentionally, of Epstein’s one-time friend, President Donald Trump.The first is the surprising degree to which the truth did indeed come out, and answers were not left hanging with Epstein in Cell 220 on the ninth floor of the Metropolitan Correctional Center.Yes, there are…

The Iranian threat that prompted President Trump’s secret Air Force One swap last month emerged as he was heading into his last day at the NATO summit in Turkey on July 8.According to two U.S. officials with knowledge of the threat, U.S. intelligence picked up multiple streams of information. They knew that there was a specific threat of a surface-to-air missile against Air Force One, meaning whichever plane was carrying the president, and that someone in the vicinity of the NATO summit had been spotted with a shoulder-fired missile. And the Iranians knew specifically where Mr. Trump was staying in…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldThe US military fired on a Panama-flagged container ship on Tuesday as it attempted to transit the Gulf of Oman to an Iranian port in violation of a US naval blockade on Iran.A US Navy helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles into the engine room of the Vela Nova, disabling the vessel’s rudder, after its civilian crew “ignored repeated warnings” from US forces, according to a statement from Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East.“US forces operating in…