Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

The US has pledged $1bn (£740m) to Colombia hours after the country’s new right-wing populist president was sworn in.Abelardo de la Espriella, an admirer of Donald Trump who echoed many of the US president’s policies on the campaign trail, used his maiden speech to promise an “all-out war” on drug cartels.The US state department said the “security package” would help him achieve “our shared goals”, which include fighting organised crime and illegal immigration. Trump repeatedly criticised de la Espriella’s left-wing predecessor over his approach to both.The inauguration is the latest in a wider trend of Latin American nations shifting rightwards…

After testing the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft for two months, I found that it was made for a very specific kind of note-taker and reader. While the device is pretty and lightweight, it’s not something the everyday person needs due to its hefty price tag and size.  However, for those who have been waiting for a color Kindle that doubles as a digital notebook, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is worth considering.  The device starts at a steep $630 and is available in two colors: Black and Fig, a pretty purple shade. It weighs just 400 grams and features an 11-inch display…

That testing has implications beyond speculative trading. As stablecoins move further into mainstream finance, networks will need to handle everything from multi-million-dollar transfers to everyday consumer payments.”It needs to be cost-effective to send $100 million in stablecoins,” Macellari said. “But it also needs to be cost-effective to send $3.”The fund’s active approach also reflects T. Rowe Price’s broader investment philosophy. Unlike many ETF issuers that simply track market-cap-weighted indexes, the firm believes crypto requires active security selection.”We think good judgment and good decision making and active management probably matters more in crypto than any other asset class,” Macellari said.Rather than…

Dogs trained to detect scat are helping conservationists detect and research hard-to-study species in South Africa’s Karoo region.From the black-footed cat and Temminck’s pangolin to riverine rabbits, the scat samples contain ‘nuggets of genetic data’, according to scientists.The research and fieldwork has also helped uncover evidence of wildlife crimes and identify habitats in need of protection from development.See All Key Ideas In the grassy dwarf shrublands of South Africa’s Karoo, Michelle Marie Schroeder is looking for a very specific kind of poo. Black-footed cats spend most of the day hidden in burrows and emerge mainly under the cover…

Gulf and Arab governments condemn Iran over missile strike on Emirati tanker.By Reuters and The Associated PressPublished On 8 Aug 20268 Aug 2026The United Arab Emirates has accused Iran of striking a tanker owned by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) with a missile as it crossed the Strait of Hormuz, drawing swift condemnation from Gulf and Arab governments.The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday that the vessel was hit in the early hours of the morning while transiting the strategic waterway, a chokepoint for a large share of the world’s seaborne oil.Recommended Stories list of 3…

But a provision in the bill that would grant the White House authority to issue 100 percent tariffs on top buyers of Russian oil, and countries facilitating sanctions evasion, nearly derailed the measure’s passage in the upper chamber before lawmakers left town for August recess.An amendment pushed by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that would have stripped the tariff language from the bill entirely failed in a 64 to 32 floor vote Friday.Still, nearly one-third of the upper chamber voted in favor of striking the tariff language, highlighting Democrats’ worries about handing more tariff powers to a…

Brian Poindexter, until recently a little-known Democratic candidate in a solidly Republican House district, lit a Marlboro cigarette and jammed a screwdriver into the latch of a shed door he had built. He ignored his phone, which had been blowing up in recent days because of a political scandal rocking Ohio.“It’s crazy to have him running for Congress,” said the candidate’s father, Bob Poindexter, 68, who had made bolts for a living until he retired last year. He was watching his son work. “What would be really crazy is if he won.”That prospect is rapidly becoming less crazy, as the…

Nicola Surgeon has said she will not visit her estranged husband, Peter Murrell, in prison, has stopped speaking to him and views herself as a “mug” for worrying about his wellbeing and mental health earlier this year.During a podcast recording at the Edinburgh festival fringe, Scotland’s former first minister said Murrell had lied to her until the day he pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the Scottish National party.He was imprisoned for five years in June, and Sturgeon revealed she had not spoken to him since then. Speaking to broadcaster Iain Dale, she said she had only discovered…

For more than a decade, the cybersecurity industry has been assigning names to different hacking groups. Some of them, like Fancy Bear, have crossed over into the mainstream because of their prominent hacks and memorable names. Others are only known within the cybersecurity industry.  Oftentimes, even industry insiders can’t keep track. In part, that’s because every company names hacking groups differently. That’s why there are resources like this one, which attempt to be a one-stop shop where cybersecurity professionals, government officials, policymakers, journalists, and the wider public can make sense of who is who.  Last month, Google became the latest…

The Head Mare hacktivist group has been exploiting vulnerabilities in unpatched TrueConf video conferencing servers to replace client installers with malicious versions that deliver backdoors. The exploited vulnerabilities allowed the attacker to execute arbitrary code with the highest level of privileges and deploy the PhantomCore and PhantomGraph backdoors. TrueConf is a video conferencing tool widely used in Russia, especially in the enterprise and government sectors, as a secure, on-premise alternative to Western tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Researchers at cybersecurity company Kaspersky discovered the attack in July. They found that Head Mare hackers used TCP port 4307, which is…