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California launched an investigation Wednesday into Elon Musk’s xAI after its Grok chatbot generated sexualized images of women and children, as European officials said they were assessing corrective measures promised by the company.The probe comes after Indonesia and Malaysia blocked access to Grok entirely, while Britain’s media regulator launched its own investigation after users created lewd images using simple text prompts.”The avalanche of reports detailing the non-consensual, sexually explicit material that xAI has produced and posted online in recent weeks is shocking,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.”I urge xAI to take immediate action to ensure this goes no further. We have zero tolerance for the AI-based creation and dissemination of nonconsensual intimate images or of child sexual abuse material.”Bonta said the investigation would determine whether and how xAI violated state law after the explicit imagery was “used to harass people across the internet.”Grok’s so-called “Spicy Mode” feature allowed users to create sexualized deepfakes of women and children using prompts such as “put her in a bikini” or “remove her clothes.”There was no immediate response from xAI about Grok, which is integrated into Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter.But the European Commission, which acts as the EU’s digital watchdog, said it had taken note of “additional measures X is taking to ban Grok from generating sexualised images of women and children.””We will carefully assess these changes to make sure they effectively protect citizens in the EU,” EU Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said in a statement.- ‘Not a solution’ -Regnier did not specify what measures had been promised by the company.When AFP asked the chatbot if xAI had banned the creation of sexualized deepfakes, Grok said: “xAI has imposed restrictions on Grok’s generation of sexualized deepfakes following global backlash and investigations, but no full ban has been announced.””Spicy Mode appears partially functional, though limited in some regions,” it added.Last week, Grok appeared to deflect the criticism with a new monetization policy, announcing on X that image generation and editing were now “limited to paying subscribers.”But that announcement only fueled further outrage, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office condemning the move as an affront to victims and “not a solution” and the EU calling for a complete halt to the generation of such content.Indonesia on Saturday became the first country to block access to Grok entirely, with neighboring Malaysia following on Sunday.India said Sunday that X had removed thousands of posts and hundreds of user accounts in response to its complaints.Britain’s Ofcom media regulator said Monday it was opening a probe into whether X failed to comply with UK law over the sexual images.And France’s commissioner for children Sarah El Hairy said Tuesday she had referred Grok’s generated images to French prosecutors, the Arcom media regulator and the European Union.The European Commission, which acts as the EU’s digital watchdog, has ordered X to retain all internal documents and data related to Grok until the end of 2026 in response to the uproar.Last week, an analysis of more than 20,000 Grok-generated images by Paris non-profit AI Forensics found that more than half depicted “individuals in minimal attire” — most of them women, and two percent appearing to be under-18s.

Four crewmembers aboard the International Space Station were set to depart Wednesday after a medical issue prompted their mission to be cut a month short — a first for the orbiting laboratory.American astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui were set to undock from the ISS at 2205 GMT on Wednesday, after five months in space.NASA has declined to disclose which crewmember has the health problem or give details about the issue, but the US space agency has stressed the return is not an emergency situation, saying the person’s condition was stable.The four are scheduled to splash down off the California coast at around 0840 GMT on Thursday aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule.”First and foremost, we are all OK. Everyone on board is stable, safe, and well cared for,” Fincke, the pilot of SpaceX Crew-11, said in a social media post.”This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists. It’s the right call, even if it’s a bit bittersweet.”James Polk, NASA’s chief health and medical officer, said “lingering risk” and a “lingering question as to what that diagnosis is” led to the decision to bring back the crew earlier than originally scheduled.The four members of Crew-11 arrived at the ISS in early August and had been scheduled to stay onboard the space station until they were rotated out in mid-February with the arrival of the next crew.American astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, who arrived at the station in November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, will remain on the ISS.The Russian Roscosmos space agency operates alongside NASA on the space station, and the two agencies take turns transporting a citizen of the other country to and from the orbiter — one of the few areas of bilateral cooperation that still endure between the United States and Russia.- Ready for the unexpected – Continuously inhabited since 2000, the International Space Station seeks to showcase multinational cooperation, bringing together Europe, Japan, the United States, and Russia.Located some 400 kilometers (248.5 miles) above Earth, the ISS functions as a testbed for research that supports deeper space exploration — including eventual missions to return humans to the Moon and onward to Mars.The four astronauts being evacuated had been trained to handle unexpected medical situations, said Amit Kshatriya, a senior NASA official, praising how they have dealt with the situation.The ISS is set to be decommissioned after 2030, with its orbit gradually lowered until it breaks up in the atmosphere over a remote part of the Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo, a spacecraft graveyard.

Denmark’s top diplomat said Wednesday he failed to change the mind of US President Donald Trump’s administration on his threats to seize Greenland after flying to the White House for talks.The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland, an an autonomous territory of Copenhagen, met with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in what they hoped would clear up “misunderstandings” after Trump’s bellicose language toward the NATO ally.”We didn’t manage to change the American position. It’s clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters after the meeting.”And we made it very, very clear that this is not in the interest of the kingdom.”The minister said a US takeover of Greenland, where Washington has long had a military base, was “absolutely not necessary.”He said the issue was “very emotional” for the people of Greenland and Denmark, a steadfast US ally whose troops died alongside Americans in Afghanistan and, controversially, Iraq.”Ideas that would not respect territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark and the right of self-determination of the Greenlandic people are, of course, totally unacceptable,” Lokke said.”We therefore still have a fundamental disagreement, but we also agree to disagree.”He said the two sides would form a committee that would meet within weeks to see if there was possible headway.Trump insisted hours before the talks that NATO should support the US effort to take control of Greenland, even though major European allies have all lined up to back Denmark.Trump said Greenland was “vital” for his planned Golden Dome air and missile defense system.”Anything less than that is unacceptable,” he wrote on his Truth Social network. “IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!”- Mocking tone -While the talks were underway, the White House posted on X: “Which way, Greenland man?”The post included a drawing of two dogsleds — one heading towards the White House and a huge US flag, and the other towards Chinese and Russian flags over a lightning-bathed Kremlin and Great Wall of China.Neither country has claimed Greenland, and Lokke said no Chinese ship had been spotted there in a decade.Denmark promised ahead of the meeting to ramp up military presence further in the vast, sparsely populated and strategically located island.Trump has derided recent Danish efforts to increase security for Greenland as amounting to “two dogsleds.” Denmark says it has invested almost $14 billion in Arctic security.The row over Greenland has deeply shaken transatlantic relations. Both Denmark and Greenland insist only Greenlanders should decide the autonomous island’s fate.In the quiet streets of the capital Nuuk, red and white Greenlandic flags were flying in shop windows, on apartment balconies, and on cars and buses, in a show of national unity as the talks got underway.”We are standing together in these times when we might feel vulnerable,” the Nuuk municipality wrote on Facebook.Greenland’s leader said Tuesday that the island prefers to remain part of Denmark, prompting Trump to say “that’s going to be a big problem for him.”Vance, who slammed Denmark as a “bad ally” during a visit to Greenland last year, is known for a hard edge, which was on display when he publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last February.The meeting, however, was closed to the press, meaning there was no on-camera confrontation.- Emboldened by Venezuela – Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told AFP earlier Wednesday his country was boosting its military presence in Greenland and was in talks with NATO allies.The Danish defense ministry then announced that it would do so “from today,” hosting a military exercise and sending in “aircraft, vessels and soldiers.”Swedish officers were joining the exercise at Denmark’s request, Stockholm said.Trump has appeared emboldened on Greenland — and on what he views as the US backyard as a whole — since ordering a deadly January 3 attack in Venezuela that removed president Nicolas Maduro.The White House has repeatedly said military action against Greenland remains on the table.

Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez declared Wednesday her country was entering a new era marked by greater tolerance towards political rivals, following the US ouster of her former boss Nicolas Maduro.At her first press conference since Maduro’s dramatic capture by US forces on January 3, Rodriguez cast herself as a unifier.Following 12 years of repressive rule by Maduro, Venezuela is “opening up to a new political era,” Maduro’s former deputy told reporters at the presidential palace.The new Venezuela, she said, “allows for understanding despite differences and through ideological and political diversity.”After toppling Maduro, US President Donald Trump agreed to let Rodriguez take over, provided she toes Washington’s line.- Calls for ‘peace’ -In doing so, Trump sidelined the leader of the anti-Maduro opposition, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado, claiming she did not have enough “respect” in Venezuela.Machado will meet Trump on Thursday at the White House to press her demands for a democratic transition that includes herself and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, her candidate in 2024 elections which the opposition claims were stolen by Maduro.So far, Trump has focused his energies on securing access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.But he claimed that he had also been planning a second attack on Venezuela until the government last week announced the release of “large numbers” of the dissenters languishing in prison, sometimes for years.Rodriguez claimed authorities had released 406 prisoners since December in a process that accelerated since last week, and which she said “has not yet concluded.”The Foro Penal legal rights NGO, which defends many of the detainees, gave a much smaller tally of around 180 freed.AFP’s count, based on data from NGOs and opposition parties, showed 70 people going free since January 8.They include some Americans, a US State Department official confirmed on Tuesday, without saying how many.The trickle of releases continued on Wednesday, with the release of 17 journalists and media workers.Roland Carreno, a journalist and prominent opposition activist, who was detained in August 2024 during post-election protests, was part of the group.According to the National Union of Press Workers he spent “one year, five months, and 12 days” behind bars.A member of the Popular Will party, he  was previously imprisoned between 2020 and 2023 on charges of terrorism — a charge frequently used to lock up opposition members in Venezuela.In a video shared by another freed journalist, he called for “peace and reconciliation.”Political analyst Nicmer Evans, director of the Punto de Corte news outlet was also released. – Balancing act -Rodriguez has been engaged in a delicate balancing act, trying to meet US demands without alienating the Maduro loyalists, who control the security forces and intelligence services.To avoid scenes of jubilant opposition activists punching the air as they walk free from prison, the authorities have been releasing them quietly at other locations, far from the TV cameras and relatives waiting outside detention centers.Carreno was released at a shopping mall.Former presidential candidate Enrique Marquez, one of the first to be released, was driven home in a patrol car.A number of Spanish and Italian citizens have also walked free from Venezuelan prisons in the past week.The United States had already secured freedom for some of its nationals in a deal with Maduro last year.- X access restored -Domestically, Venezuelans regained one freedom on Tuesday — the ability to post on social media platform X, which had been blocked for more than a year by Maduro’s government.Rodriguez updated her profile’s bio to “acting president” — she served as vice president under Maduro — and wrote: “Let us stay united, moving toward economic stability, social justice, and the welfare state we deserve to aspire to.”Maduro’s X account was updated Tuesday with a photo of the deposed leader and his wife, Cilia Flores.”We want you back,” the post reads. burs-cb/des

Don’t say the c-word.Global temperatures soared in 2025, but a NASA statement published Wednesday alongside its latest benchmark annual report makes no reference to climate change, in line with President Donald Trump’s push to deny the reality of planetary heating as a result of human activities.That marks a sharp break from last year’s communications, issued under the administration of Democrat Joe Biden, which stated plainly: “This global warming has been caused by human activities” and has led to intensifying “heat waves, wildfires, intense rainfall and coastal flooding.”Last year’s materials also featured lengthy quotes from the then-NASA chief and a senior scientist and included graphics and a video. By contrast, this year’s release only runs through a few key figures, and amounts to a handful of paragraphs.According to the US space agency, Earth’s global surface temperature in 2025 was slightly warmer than in 2023 — albeit within a margin of error — making it effectively tied as the second-hottest year on record after 2024.Other global agencies, including the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which use different methodologies and modeling, say 2025 ranked as the third-hottest.”The US government is now, like Russia and Saudi Arabia, a petrostate under Trump and Republican rule, and the actions of all of its agencies and departments can be understood in terms of the agenda of the polluters that are running the show,” University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann told AFP.”It is therefore entirely unsurprising that NASA administrators are attempting to bury findings of its own agency that conflict with its climate denial agenda.”NASA, one of the world’s premier science and climate agencies, found that average temperatures for 2025 were 2.14 degrees Fahrenheit (1.19 degrees Celsius) above the 1951–1980 average.The analysis was based on data from more than 25,000 meteorological stations worldwide, ship- and buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperatures, and Antarctic research stations.The data are analyzed to correct for changing distributions of temperature stations and urban heating effects that could skew the results.The agency did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

Venezuela has freed 15 journalists, including a leading opposition figure, as the slow release of political prisoners begun after Nicolas Maduro’s ouster continues, activists said Wednesday.The administration of acting president Delcy Rodriguez has been releasing prisoners at a trickle over the past six days, in what it calls a goodwill gesture following Maduro’s capture by US special forces in Caracas on January 3.So far it has only released a fraction of the more than 800 political prisoners estimated to be languishing in the country’s penitentiaries. They include some Americans, a US State Department official confirmed on Tuesday, without saying how many.Roland Carreno, a journalist and opposition activist, was among a group of at least 15 reporters whose release was announced on Wednesday by a journalist union and a rights group.- Americans released -“We confirm the release of journalist Roland Carrebo. He had been imprisoned since August 2, 2024: 1 year, 5 months, and 12 days,” the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP) wrote on X.Carreno, who was imprisoned between 2020 and 2023 on terrorism charges, was detained again in August 2024 during protests over elections that Maduro was accused of stealing.Caracas said Tuesday it had freed 116 detainees so far, but the Foro Penal rights NGO said it has only been able to confirm about half that number.The US State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, called the release of Americans “an important step in the right direction by the interim authorities.”US President Donald Trump has hailed the releases, saying that he called off a second wave of strikes on Venezuela in light of the gesture.Many of those released were jailed for taking part in protests over the July 2024 elections, in which Maduro was declared the victor despite widespread allegations of vote-rigging.A number of Spanish and Italian citizens have also walked free from Venezuelan prisons in the past week.The United States had already secured freedom for some of its nationals in a deal with Maduro last year.- X access restored -Former deputy president Rodriguez assumed power after Maduro was captured by US forces along with his wife during air raids that left more than 100 dead, according to official figures. The couple were whisked to New York, where they were jailed while awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges.Domestically, Venezuelans regained one freedom on Tuesday — the ability to post on social media platform X, which had been a popular forum for them. It is once again accessible, more than a year after users were blocked by Maduro’s government.Rodriguez updated her profile’s bio — she served as vice president under Maduro — and wrote: “Let us stay united, moving toward economic stability, social justice, and the welfare state we deserve to aspire to.”Access remained spotty to the social media network owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who engaged in heated online exchanges with the ousted Venezuelan leader, until Maduro lashed out in retaliation for criticism of his contested 2024 election and shut X down altogether.Maduro’s X account was updated Tuesday with a photo of the deposed leader and his wife, Cilia Flores. “We want you back,” the post reads. burs-cb/dw

Denmark and Greenland’s top diplomats held high-stakes talks at the White House on Wednesday, with President Donald Trump warning it was “vital” for the United States to take control of the Arctic island.Shortly before the meeting with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Denmark announced it was immediately boosting its military presence in strategic Greenland.Footage from CNN showed Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt arriving at the White House campus, while AFP journalists saw Rubio and Vance heading into the talks.Trump’s escalating threats over Greenland — a vast and sparsely populated autonomous territory belonging to NATO ally Denmark — have deeply shaken transatlantic relations.The 79-year-old Republican insisted ahead of the talks that NATO should support the US effort to take control of Greenland, saying it was crucial for his planned Golden Dome air and missile defense system.”NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES. Anything less than that is unacceptable,” he wrote on his Truth Social network.”IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!” added Trump.Vance, who slammed Denmark as a “bad ally” during a visit to Greenland last year, is known for a hard edge, which was on display when he publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last February.”If the US continues with, ‘We have to have Greenland at all cost,’ it could be a very short meeting,” said Penny Naas, a senior vice president at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington think tank.Trump has derided recent Danish efforts to increase security for Greenland as amounting to “two dogsleds.” Denmark says it has invested almost $14 billion in Arctic security.Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen sought to further ease US concerns on Thursday, telling AFP his country was boosting its military presence in Greenland and was in talks with NATO allies.The Danish defense ministry then announced that it would do so “from today,” hosting a military exercise and sending in “aircraft, vessels and soldiers.”Swedish officers were joining the exercise at Denmark’s request, Stockholm said.- ‘Big problem’ -Denmark’s Rasmussen said ahead of the meeting that he was hoping to “clear up certain misunderstandings.” But it remains to be seen if there is a chance of de-escalating the situation.Greenland’s leader said Tuesday that the island prefers to remain part of Denmark, prompting Trump to say “that’s going to be a big problem for him.”Shortly after the White House talks, a senior delegation from the US Congress — mostly Democrats, but with one Republican — will visit Copenhagen to offer solidarity.Trump has appeared emboldened on Greenland — and on what he views as the US backyard as a whole — since ordering a deadly January 3 attack in Venezuela that removed president Nicolas Maduro.The White House has said that military action against Greenland remains on the table.Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an attack on a NATO ally would end the alliance that has been the bedrock of Western security since World War II.It is a founding member of NATO and its military joined the United States in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter to much criticism. An agreement with Denmark currently allows the United States to station as many soldiers as it wants on Greenland. It also has a “space base” at Pituffik in northern Greenland.Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen meanwhile said ahead of the Washington talks that “Greenland does not want to be part of the United States.”But Trump has been insistent that he wants to acquire Greenland wholesale, repeatedly insisting on what he calls the threat of a takeover by Russia or China. The two rival powers have both stepped up activity in the Arctic, where ice is melting due to climate change, but neither claims Greenland, which is home to 57,000 people.

African manufacturers on Wednesday welcomed US lawmakers’ approval for renewing their duty-free access but called for urgency in finalising the deal.The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) has been a cornerstone of trade relations for 25 years, allowing the United States to buy billions of dollars of duty-free cars, clothes and other items from select African countries each year.But the deal, which operates in 32 African nations, expired last September, putting thousands of jobs at risk and forcing exporters to absorb high tariff duties.On Tuesday, the US Congress passed a bill to revive AGOA for at least three years, but it must still be approved by the Senate.The Congress vote was “a very positive sign”, said Pankaj Bedi, CEO of United Aryan factory in Nairobi, which exports Wrangler and Levi’s jeans under the deal and employs around 10,000 Kenyans.”But we need to keep the pressure up,” he told AFP. “It is our desperate need as the sector continues to slow down and suffer due to cash flows and many other external challenges.”Bedi said his company has been absorbing the increased import duties — which went up by 33 percent for Kenya after AGOA expired — so as not to lose customers, but said this is not “sustainable”.Kenya’s trade minister Lee Kinyanjui welcomed the approval by the US House of Representatives, calling it a “critical milestone” in US-Africa trade relations.”The uncertainty that had previously engulfed the sector will now give way to renewed confidence and expansion,” Kinyanjui said in a statement.The African Union chair also welcomed the approval and appealed to the Senate “to give favourable and timely consideration to the extension, in a spirit that upholds partnership, and shared strategic interests”.- US eyes China, Russia -South Africa, which has been at loggerheads with the US in recent months, also hailed the approval.Its trade minister Parks Tau said the country “values its longstanding trade and investment relationship with the US”.South Africa was the primary beneficiary of the preferential agreement before it expired. The automotive sector accounted for 64 percent of trade under AGOA, totalling $1.6 billion in 2024, and is the sector most affected by US President Donald Trump’s measures.US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in December told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing that if Congress pushes for it, he is open to consider separating South Africa from AGOA.The Republican chairman of the House’s powerful Ways and Means Committee, Jason Smith, also called to urgently finalise the final deal.”An extended lapse in AGOA would create a void that malign actors like China and Russia will seek to fill,” he said.”Africa is home to approximately 30 percent of the world’s critical mineral resources and China has invested $8 to $10 billion in Africa to try to monopolize these essential supply chains.”Trump has criticised free-trade deals, and slapped swingeing tariffs on many countries.Kenya, which has been a close political and military ally, received the lowest rate of 10 percent, but others saw far higher, such as the tiny kingdom of Lesotho, which saw an initial rate of 50 percent before it was lowered to 15 percent in July.As a result, Lesotho’s textile industry witnessed massive job cuts, prompting protests by workers.Fako Hakane, head of the Lesotho Chamber of Commerce and Industry, expressed relief at signs of AGOA being renewed, saying the tariffs were “cruel” for the small, landlocked country of around 2.3 million people.”If it comes back, it is a critical economic lifeline for Lesotho,” Hakane told AFP.

The planet logged its third hottest year on record in 2025, extending a run of unprecedented heat, with no relief expected in 2026, global climate monitors said Wednesday.The last 11 years have now been the warmest ever recorded, with 2024 topping the podium and 2023 in second place, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and Berkeley Earth, a California-based non-profit research organisation.For the first time, global temperatures exceeded 1.5C relative to pre-industrial times on average over the last three years, Copernicus said in its annual report.”The warming spike observed from 2023-2025 has been extreme, and suggests an acceleration in the rate of the Earth’s warming,” Berkeley Earth said in a separate report.The landmark 2015 Paris Agreement commits the world to limiting warming to well below 2C and pursuing efforts to hold it at 1.5C — a long-term target scientists say would help avoid the worst consequences of climate change.UN chief Antonio Guterres warned in October that breaching 1.5C was “inevitable” but the world could limit this period of overshoot by cutting greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.Copernicus said the 1.5C limit “could be reached by the end of this decade -– over a decade earlier than predicted”.But efforts to contain global warming were dealt another setback last week as President Donald Trump said he would pull the United States — the world’s second-biggest polluter after China — out of the bedrock UN climate treaty.Temperatures were 1.47C above pre-industrial times in 2025 — just a fraction cooler than in 2023 — following 1.6C in 2024, according to Copernicus.The World Meteorological Organization, the UN’s weather and climate agency, said two of eight datasets it analysed showed 2025 was the second warmest year, but the other six datasets ranked it third.The WMO put the 2023-2025 average at 1.48C but with a margin of uncertainty of plus-minus 0.13C.Despite the cooling La Nina weather phenomenon, 2025 “was still one of the warmest years on record globally because of the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere”, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement.Some 770 million people experienced record-warm annual conditions where they live, while no record-cold annual average was logged anywhere, according to Berkeley Earth.The Antarctic experienced its warmest year on record while it was the second hottest in the Arctic, Copernicus said.An AFP analysis of Copernicus data last month found that Central Asia, the Sahel region and northern Europe experienced their hottest year on record in 2025.- 2026: Fourth-warmest? -Berkeley and Copernicus both warned that 2026 would not break the trend.If the warming El Nino weather phenomenon appears this year, “this could make 2026 another record-breaking year”, Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, told AFP.”Temperatures are going up. So we are bound to see new records. Whether it will be 2026, 2027, 2028 doesn’t matter too much. The direction of travel is very, very clear,” Buontempo said.Berkeley Earth said it expected this year to be similar to 2025, “with the most likely outcome being approximately the fourth-warmest year since 1850″.- Emissions fight -The reports come as efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions — the main driver of climate change — are stalling in developed countries.Emissions rose in the United States last year, snapping a two-year streak of declines, as bitter winters and the AI boom fuelled demand for energy, the Rhodium Group think tank said Tuesday.The pace of reductions of greenhouse gas emissions slowed in Germany and France.”While greenhouse gas emissions remain the dominant driver of global warming, the magnitude of this recent spike suggests additional factors have amplified recent warming beyond what we would expect from greenhouse gases and natural variability alone,” said Berkeley Earth chief scientist Robert Rohde.The organisation said international rules cutting sulphur in ship fuel since 2020 may have actually added to warming by reducing sulphur dioxide emissions, which form aerosols that reflect sunlight away from Earth.

US President Donald Trump insisted Wednesday the US needs to take control of Greenland, with NATO’s support, just hours before crunch talks about the Arctic island with top Danish, Greenlandic and US officials.Just hours before the meeting with US Vice President JD Vance was due to start, Trump said that US control of Greenland — an autonomous territory belonging to NATO ally Denmark — was “vital” for his planned Golden Dome air and missile defense system.”NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES. Anything less than that is unacceptable,” he wrote on social media.He said NATO “should be leading the way” in building the multi-layer missile defense system.”IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!” Trump wrote.Just prior, Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen had sought to ease US concerns about security in Greenland, telling AFP Denmark was boosting its military presence there and was in talks with allies on “an increased NATO presence in the Arctic.”Trump has repeatedly threatened to take over the vast, strategic and sparsely populated Arctic island, and he has sounded emboldened since ordering a deadly January 3 attack in Venezuela that removed its president.Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart were to hold talks later Wednesday in Washington with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance.Lokke said he was hoping to “clear up certain misunderstandings.” But it remains to be seen if the Trump administration also sees a misunderstanding and if it wants to climb down.Trump, when asked Tuesday about Greenland’s leader saying that the island prefers to remain part of Denmark, said: “Well that’s their problem.””Don’t know anything about him, but that’s going to be a big problem for him,” Trump said.Trump said on Friday that he wanted Greenland “whether they like it or not” and “if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an attack on a NATO ally would end the alliance.While an agreement with Denmark allows the United States to station as many soldiers as it wants on Greenland, Trump has doubled down on US ownership, telling reporters on Sunday that “we’re talking about acquiring not leasing.”The former real estate developer told The New York Times that ownership “is psychologically needed for success” and “gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”Trump maintains the United States needs Greenland due to the threat of a takeover by Russia or China. The two rival powers have both stepped up activity in the Arctic, where ice is melting due to climate change, but neither claims Greenland, which is home to 57,000 people.- ‘Bad ally’? -Vance, who slammed Denmark as a “bad ally” during a visit to Greenland last year, is known for his hard edge, which was on display when he publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a White House meeting in February.It has not been announced if the Greenland meeting will be open to the press.”If the US continues with, ‘We have to have Greenland at all cost,’ it could be a very short meeting,” said Penny Naas, a senior vice president at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington think tank.”If there is a slight nuance to it, it could lead to a different conversation,” she said.Greenland’s government and Denmark have been firmly against Trump’s designs.”One thing must be clear to everyone: Greenland does not want to be owned by the United States. Greenland does not want to be governed by the United States. Greenland does not want to be part of the United States,” Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said ahead of the Washington talks.The Danish prime minister said it had not been easy to stand up to “completely unacceptable pressure from our closest ally.”Copenhagen has rejected US claims that it is not protecting Greenland from Russia and China, pointing out that it has invested almost 90 billion kroner ($14 billion) to beef up its military presence in the Arctic.Denmark is a founding member of NATO and its military joined the United States in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter to much criticism. Shortly after the White House talks, a senior delegation from the US Congress — mostly Democrats, but with one Republican — will visit Copenhagen to offer solidarity.