Hands On Deck: Exploitation of Migrant Fishing Workers in Ireland
DUBLIN - Recruited to Ireland with the promise of good wages, fishers from the Philippines - often in debt after paying illegal recruitment fees - travel across the world to provide better opportunities for themselves and their families. But a work permission scheme, introduced following exposure of ...
Noise Pollution in Western Balkans: Loud, but Underestimated Issue
BELGRADE / TIRANA – Two articles, one story – noise pollution in Western Balkans. Although constantly underestimated, this pollution is disturbing citizens of the region’s capitals on a daily basis. Unfortunately, noise has become a habit, which is precisely what should not happen.
BRUSSELS – A huge amount of art was stolen during World War II. The Nazis looted art from occupied countries and brought it to Germany, where they established ambitious collections. The story of what happened to Belgian art has yet to be told. How did paintings by Memling, Van der Weyden, Bruegel ...
Increasing the role of media in highlighting environmental issues due to the Russian Invasion
KYIV - Internews Ukraine (IUA) team has completed the implementation of a project aimed to increase the awareness of the public and decision-makers in Ukraine and Europe about ecological issues emerging as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
TEHERAN / ISLAMABAD / - Women face obstacles when entering public spaces: prejudice, traditions, prohibitive laws, violence. All over the world, brave, creative women have found ways to overcome these obstacles. With their specific modes of transport, they challenge gender roles, gain independence ...
GHENT - At 16, Sofie developed symptoms of what later turned out to be anxiety and depressive disorder. On social media, it seems like every young person struggles with it. Wouldn't it be nice to start a club? Based on her own experiences, Sofie Steenhaut talks to club members and experts. Welcome ...
Frog Smugglers in Slovakia: The Illegal Trade With Endangered Animals Worth Millions
BRATISLAVA - A couple from Slovakia imported hundreds of frogs from Central America to the EU, completely legally. However, the woman was later apprehended in Germany, where police seized over 100 frogs from her. Some of them of the kind which was never in history imported to Europe legally. Turns ...
BRUSSELS / THE HAGUE - Did DPG Media, bpost and newspaper distributor PPP play under a hat for bringing in and distributing the hundreds of millions of public support? Where exactly do the millions of euros of public money for investigative journalism end up? A dossier on subsidy flows to the ...
BRUSSELS - Asbestos is more lethal than previously known. New figures, recognised by the EU institutions, show that 70,000-90,000 Europeans die each year of asbestos related cancer.
KINSHASA - Although the Amazon forest is significantly larger, the tropical forests in the Congo Basin, in the heart of Africa, are taking more CO2 out of the air today. This seems like good news, but these forests are also disappearing at a rapid pace.
The Migrant Farm Workers on the Frontline of Europe’s Climate Crisis
CAMPOBELLO DI MAZARA – Migrant farm workers in Italy and Spain are on the frontline of Europe’s climate emergency, bearing the brunt of deadly heatwaves and extreme weather. While the media has focused on the impact of rising temperatures on European citizens, hundreds of thousands of migrant ...
The TuNur solar exportation project: an unjust green energy project
RJIM MAATOUG - Importing the Saharan sun to supply Europe with clean and low-cost energy : this is the dream that European countries have been entertaining with certain players in the private energy sector for decades. Once buried, projects to export solar energy from the North African deserts to ...
MALELA - This investigation documents the company's environmental damage in a Mangrove natural park, foremost among which is its ground-level flaring, a practice that has been banned in the country since 2015, and which is the cause of very high CO2 emissions and very significant nuisance for ...
KYIV - Cereal is the new petroleum, farmland the new reservoirs of oil, and ships loaded with grain are the new pipelines. As the value of crops increases, every country in possession of this resource is in a position of power, and its transport to market is a politically-charged operation.
TIRANA / LONDON – Our team reported from Albania, where they travelled to Tirana, Kukes and Elbasan to meet young people who had recently been forcibly returned from the UK after crossing the English Channel from Calais, France, in small boats.
On the other side of the bars: the broken families of al-Sisi's Egypt
CAIRO - This year, Egypt is hosting the international climate summit COP27. An African first of symbolic importance, but international organisations like Amnesty International point to the serious abuses in Egyptian prisons. They see the Egyptian presidency as an attempt to polish the regime's image ...
Total's EACOP: The Oil Megaproject Threatening East Africa
KIMINA - In 2006, the British company Tullow Oil discovered oil reserves in the Albertine Region of northwestern Uganda, with 6.5 billion recoverable barrels. At the beginning of 2022, the French oil company Total secured an agreement with the governments of Tanzania and Uganda and the Chinese state ...
UGANDA/TANZANIA - In 2006, British company Tullow Oil discovered oil reserves of 6.5 billion recoverable barrels in the Albertine region of north-western Uganda. In early 2022, French oil company Total signed an agreement with the governments of Tanzania and Uganda and Chinese state-owned CNOOC to ...
BRUSSELS - Suddenly Eva finds herself face to face with a portrait of her Congolese great-grandfather François. Retrieved from the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren. In the unfamiliar portrait, Eva recognises traits of herself.
KINSHASA - Kris Berwouts, with the support of the Pascal Decroos Fund, is investigating the strange circumstances in which the transfer of power between Joseph Kabila and Felix Tshisekedi took place, not only between the elections of 30 December 2018 and Tshisekedi's inauguration on 24 January 2019 ...
MINSK - "Belarusian government allocated money from the budget to fund projects of Chyzh and Tomaševskij. Businessmen have been given benefits and exclusive opportunities to increase their income."
The return of wild salmon in Switzerland, an old fish tale?
BASEL - In 1987, a year after the Basel environmental disaster that left 1.5 million fishes dead in the Upper Rhine, nine European countries met and promised to restore the river including reintroducing Atlantic salmon by the year 2000 in its natural reproduction habitat in Switzerland. 35 years ...
ASSAM - Doorheen de heuvelachtige provincie Assam in India stroomt de Brahamaputa. Deze immense rivier ontspringt in het Himalayagebergte en is bezaaid met zandbanken. Op deze zandbanken - ook wel ‘Chars' genoemd - wonen 2 miljoen mensen.
BRUSSELS / LONDON – According to a 1980 international UN law, the Northeastern Atlantic countries must meet regularly to agree on a fishing quota for each country––so that everybody gets a fair share and fish stocks don't get overfished. The multilateral agreements are supposed to ensure that no ...
ALEXANDRIA - The Sinking Cities Project is an ambitious, six city investigation into how coastal area are preparing for the threat of climate change-caused sea level rise. Brought to you by Unbias the News and The Dublin Inquirer, the investigation targeted Alexandria, Egypt; Dhaka, Bangladesh ...
KYIV - This story is about the readiness of Ukrainian iron and steel industry – the second largest generator of foreign exchange earnings and a significant polluter, to implement green production technologies after the end of the war.
Green Veins of Europe: Ecocorridors and the European Green Deal
EUROPE - From red deer traces and half wild horses, to ecoducts and tree plantations, till mountain ranges and free flowing rivers. They have something in common: these are the roads and routes that nature uses.
VILNIUS - Cycling is indispensable in the European Union’s efforts to reduce emissions – this was clear from the European Urban Mobility Framework a year ago. But as policymakers set ambitious targets, transport is emitting more than before, using a third of the EU's energy, and keeping Europe ...
Trapped by debt: Punjabi workers exploited in Italy
LATINA - How, through debt, a network of intermediaries linking India to the Pontine countryside keeps thousands of Indian workers under blackmail, exploited in one of the largest fruit and vegetable districts in Europe.