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First came orders to scrub references to how climate change disproportionately harms marginalized communities. Then demands to erase mentions of the “Gulf of Mexico.”By early summer, the climate.gov front page no longer existed. The federal portal once billed as a “one-stop shop” for the public to understand global warming had become another casualty of President Donald Trump’s war on science.Now, a group of former employees is working to bring it back to life.Helping coordinate the effort is Rebecca Lindsey, the site’s former managing editor, who was fired in February along with hundreds of others at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”We all began to just brainstorm about how we could keep and protect climate.gov,” she told AFP. The team’s new website, climate.us, went online a few days ago, promising — according to its landing page — to “build an enduring, independent, and scientifically rigorous platform that the world can rely on.”The core group includes a handful of people from the former climate.gov team — which once included science writers, scientists, and data visualizers — plus “half a dozen” other volunteers supporting the effort under cover of anonymity for fear of retaliation. They have two goals.First: to republish the taxpayer-funded trove of material that was taken down — including the legally mandated National Climate Assessments, bedrock scientific studies produced every four years, but paused under Trump’s second term.The second, more ambitious goal — which hinges on securing enough funding — is to rebuild the resources and technical tools that made climate.gov, first launched in 2012 under former president Barack Obama, so indispensable, according to users.These ranged from interactive dashboards tracking sea-level rise, Arctic ice loss and global temperatures, to plain-language explainers on phenomena like the polar vortex, to a blog dedicated to the El Nino Southern Oscillation, the planet’s most influential natural climate driver. In 2024 alone, climate.gov drew some 15 million page views.”We’ve been having meetings through the summer that culminated in us writing a prospectus we hope to shop to major philanthropies and funders,” Lindsey said. A crowdfunding campaign has also begun to drum up support.As of Thursday, their donorbox.org page showed $50,000 raised toward a $500,000 goal. But for Lindsey, what matters more than the sum is the show of interest.If all goes well, she said, the project could become “an anchor for lots of groups at other federal science agencies where they have content or data that have gone silent or been taken down. We definitely hope we could be a lifeboat for them as well.”The team has already been buoyed by an outpouring of goodwill, from scientists to schoolteachers offering their time.”This is a problem we can try to solve,” Lindsey said. “Even if it’s a small thing in the big picture, just knowing that someone is doing something is encouraging to people.”

European leaders on Thursday spoke to US President Donald Trump after holding a summit with President Volodymyr Zelensky on security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a peace accord to end Russia’s three-and-a-half war against Ukraine.The guarantees by the so-called coalition of the willing, which remain under wraps but are expected to include ramped-up training for the Ukrainian army and deployment of troops by some European states, have angered Russia.They form part of a push led by French President Emmanuel Macron to show that Europe can act independently of Washington after Trump upended US foreign policy and launched direct talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin after returning to the White House.The summit, co-chaired by Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, aimed to firm up plans on security guarantees for Ukraine if or when there is a ceasefire, and get a clearer picture of US involvement. The United States was represented at the talks by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, who also met with Zelensky separately.Some of the leaders, such as Zelensky, attended in person while others, including Starmer, remotely. The call with Trump took place by videoconference.During the summit Starmer said it was necessary “to go even further to apply pressure on Putin to secure a cessation of hostilities”, a Downing Street spokeswoman said.”The prime minister said Putin could not be trusted as he continued to delay peace talks and simultaneously carry out egregious attacks on Ukraine,” she added.Russia has heaped scorn on European security guarantee plans, with Putin saying Moscow is willing to “resolve all our tasks militarily” in the absence of a peace deal acceptable to the Kremlin. He has indicated he does not want to see European troops in post-war Ukraine.The coalition of the willing includes around 30 nations backing Ukraine, mainly European but also Canada, Australia and Japan.- ‘Not up to them’ – “Europe is ready, for the first time with this level of commitment and intensity,” Macron said Wednesday as he welcomed Zelensky, adding that preparatory work on the guarantees was complete.But there appears to be no agreement on a course of action, with the nature of the guarantees sketchy and some countries reluctant to commit to sending troops.German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said it is premature to discuss the possible deployment of German peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, while not entirely ruling out the prospect.Germany wants to help strengthen Ukraine’s air defences, offer other weaponry and military training, a government source told AFP.Frustration has been building in the West over what leaders say is Putin’s unwillingness to strike a deal to end the conflict.Zelensky says he has not seen “any signs from Russia that they want to end the war”. Before the Paris talks, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow would not consider the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine “in any format”.”It’s not for them to decide,” NATO chief Mark Rutte shot back Thursday.”I think we really have to stop making Putin too powerful.”- ‘War criminal’ – The gathering took place after Putin’s high-profile trips to China and the United States.Speaking Wednesday in Beijing, where he attended a massive military parade alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping, Putin hailed his forces’ progress in Ukraine, adding that Russian troops were advancing on “all fronts”.In unprecedented scenes, Putin was pictured shaking hands and chatting with Xi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as they walked down a red carpet by Tiananmen Square.Last month Trump rolled out a red carpet for Putin in Alaska but those talks yielded no breakthrough.Trump has indicated the United States could back up any European peacekeeping plan, but would not deploy US soldiers to Ukraine. European leaders have been growing exasperated with Putin, sharpening their criticism and warning that the Ukraine war could last for many more months. “Putin is a war criminal,” Merz said on X on Tuesday. “He is perhaps the most severe war criminal of our time that we see on a large scale.”Macron last month called Putin “an ogre at our gates”, while his Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Russia might continue to wage its war against Ukraine “for as long as it can”.

Chloe Malle will follow Anna Wintour as editor of Vogue, the magazine said Tuesday, resolving an intrigue that has gripped fashion and journalism circles for months.Wintour has sat on the glossy fashion monthly’s throne for more than 40 years, and the announcement in June that she was stepping away from the position sparked speculation about who would take on the top job.An advert was even posted on professional networking site LinkedIn to recruit for a successor, although Wintour will retain her role as Vogue’s global editorial director and publisher Conde Nast’s global chief content officer.Malle, who described herself in an interview with The New York Times as a “proud nepo baby,” is the daughter of actor Candice Bergen and director Louis Malle.In a twist of fate, Bergen played the head of Vogue on the popular sitcom “Sex and the City.”- Wintour ‘down the hall’ -“Chloe Malle is Head of Editorial Content for American Vogue, effective immediately,” Vogue said on its website.”In this new position, Malle, who is currently the editor of Vogue.com and co-host of The Run-Through, Vogue’s weekly fashion and culture podcast, will lead the creative and editorial direction of the title and join Vogue’s 10 existing Heads of Editorial Content around the world, reporting to Anna Wintour.”Malle’s work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Architectural Digest, according to a statement from the magazine.”Fashion and media are both evolving at breakneck speed, and I am so thrilled — and awed — to be part of that,” said Malle. “I also feel incredibly fortunate to still have Anna just down the hall as my mentor.”British-born Wintour came to public renown as the inspiration for “The Devil Wears Prada,” a hit 2003 novel and 2006 movie, for which Meryl Streep earned an Oscar nomination for her role as tyrannical magazine editor Miranda Priestly.A sequel is due out next year.Wintour, who was raised in the United Kingdom by a British father and an American mother, reigned over Vogue in the heyday of glossy magazines.US Vogue was a staid title when she took it over in 1988 and transformed it into a powerhouse that set trends — and could make or break designers, celebrities and brands.She took the title to a global audience, with huge budgets for models, design, photographs and journalism funded by lavish advertisements and high subscription rates.”Chloe has long been one of Vogue’s secret weapons when it comes to tracking fashion. But she is not so buried in the industry that she misses the world,” Wintour said of Malle.

Hollywood stars arrived in Toronto Thursday for a celebratory 50th edition of North America’s biggest film festival, with new movies from Daniel Craig, Sydney Sweeney and Matthew McConaughey among a packed lineup.The Toronto International Film Festival dwarfs more famous rivals like Venice and Cannes for sheer scale, if not glitz and glamour, drawing an estimated 400,000 annual visitors to the Canadian metropolis.Over 11 days of red-carpet galas, the “audience-first” fest showcases splashy crowd-pleasers in front of giant public audiences, while also serving as a key launchpad for Oscars campaigns.This year, Netflix’s popular “Knives Out” whodunit franchise returns, with former 007 actor Craig back investigating the latest murder in “Wake Up Dead Man” in a Saturday night world premiere, alongside Glenn Close, Mila Kunis and Josh O’Connor.Josh Brolin plays an unnerving demagogue with a cult following in a film that “tackles current issues in a fun, locked-room, classical-plot way,” said TIFF director of programming Robyn Citizen.Sweeney aims to pivot from her recent jeans ad controversy to Academy Award contender with Friday’s premiere of “Christy,” a gritty, raw biopic of US female boxing pioneer Christy Martin.In another harrowing true-life tale, launching Friday, McConaughey rescues schoolchildren from California wildfires in the emotionally searing action-thriller “The Lost Bus.”For the festival’s 50th anniversary celebrations, stars Russell Crowe, Paul Mescal, Angelina Jolie and Anya Taylor-Joy will all hit the screenings and soirees.TIFF “started out as festival of festivals, choosing the best work from around the world to show to Toronto audiences,” Citizen said.While it has increasingly prioritized discovering new filmmakers, “certainly our public audience is what distinguishes us as a big festival,” she said.- French invasion -French directors are sure to bring a European flair.Matt Dillon appears in Claire Denis’ drama “The Fence,” about a mysterious death on an African construction site, while Arnaud Desplechin launches love story “Two Pianos” starring Charlotte Rampling.Alice Winocour directs Jolie for Paris fashion drama “Couture.”Romain Gavras’s celebrity climate-change satire “Sacrifice” stars Taylor-Joy and Chris Evans as an eco-terrorist and a waning movie star, respectively.Elsewhere, Crowe gives what organizers describe as a nuanced and eerily charismatic performance as Nazi Hermann Goering on trial in historical drama “Nuremberg,” opposite fellow Oscar-winner Rami Malek.”You don’t expect to be disarmed by this person, who you know has done horrible things,” said Citizen. “And then, through the course of the movie, you are.”Keanu Reeves plays an incompetent angel in Aziz Ansari’s body-swapping farce “Good Fortune,” while Channing Tatum portrays a real-life fugitive who lives clandestinely inside a toy store in “Roofman.” Brendan Fraser plays a lonely actor for hire at funerals and weddings in Tokyo-set “Rental Family.”- The Bard and the King -Toronto follows hot on the heels of the small but influential US-based Telluride festival, and invites a selection of movies to make a bigger, second splash.Among them, Mescal plays a young William Shakespeare in literary adaptation “Hamnet” from Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao — though the focus is squarely on the Bard’s long-suffering wife Agnes, played by a “transcendent” Jessie Buckley, says Citizen.The film earned rave reviews and plenty of Oscar buzz in Telluride.Director Edward Berger, on a hot run after “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Conclave,” will present Colin Farrell as a down-on-his-luck gambler in “Ballad of a Small Player.”And fresh from Venice, director Guillermo del Toro brings his reimagining of “Frankenstein,” while Dwayne Johnson will promote “The Smashing Machine,” which has already drawn gushing predictions of a first Oscar nomination for the former pro wrestler known as “The Rock.”TIFF runs until September 14.

President Donald Trump’s administration asked the US Supreme Court on Wednesday for an expedited ruling preserving the tariffs that have roiled global markets, saying a lower court ruling against it has already damaged trade negotiations.Solicitor General John Sauer urged the court in a filing to “expedite resolution of this case to the maximum extent feasible, given the enormous importance of quickly confirming the full legal standing of the President’s tariffs.”The petition comes after a 7-4 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which found that Trump exceeded his authority in tapping emergency economic powers to impose wide-ranging duties.The judges, however, allowed the levies to stay in place through mid-October, giving Trump time to take the fight to the Supreme Court.Since returning to the presidency, Trump has invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on almost all US trading partners, with a 10-percent baseline level and higher rates for dozens of economies including the European Union and Japan.The US president tapped similar powers to slap separate tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China over what he said was the flow of deadly drugs into the United States.The appeals court ruling also cast doubt over deals Trump has struck with key trading partners like the EU, raising the question of what would happen to the billions of dollars collected by the United States since the tariffs were put in place — if the conservative-majority Supreme Court does not side with him.- ‘Walking away’ from talks -Several legal challenges have been filed against the tariffs. If they are ultimately ruled illegal, companies could potentially seek reimbursements.On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that “if you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third-world country.”In a declaration filed with the petition, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that the appellate court’s decision “gravely undermines the President’s ability to conduct real-world diplomacy and his ability to protect the national security and economy of the United States.” Bessent said that “world leaders are questioning the President’s authority to impose tariffs, walking away from or delaying negotiations,” adding that the ruling had stripped the administration of “substantial negotiating leverage.”He also warned that delaying a final ruling until June 2026 could result in a scenario where “$750 billion-$1 trillion in tariffs have already been collected, and unwinding them could cause significant disruption.”The solicitor general requested oral arguments by early November.

A US judge ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to overturn deep funding cuts to Harvard University that froze more than $2 billion over allegations of antisemitism and bias at the Ivy League institution.The administration, which vowed to appeal, insisted its move was legally justified over Harvard’s alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students amid campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Harvard denied those claims, saying Trump was instead focused on controlling the prestigious school’s hiring, admissions and curriculum.The cuts to Harvard’s funding stream forced it to implement a hiring freeze while pausing ambitious research programs, particularly in the public health and medical spheres — pauses experts warned put American lives at risk.The ruling could shape talks on a settlement reportedly underway between Harvard and the White House under which the university would pay a sum acknowledging Trump’s claims, with federal funding restored in return.Other universities have struck similar deals with the administration.”The Court vacates and sets aside the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters as violative of the First Amendment,” Boston federal judge Allison Burroughs said in her order.”All freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters on or after April 14, 2025 are vacated and set aside.”The ruling also bars the administration from using the same reasoning to cut funding in the future.Albany Law School Professor Ray Brescia told AFP that despite the overwhelming legal victory Wednesday, Harvard may still follow the example of Columbia University and settle with the administration.Trump “could go back to the negotiating table and offer Harvard a better deal than they have been offering. I think that there has been some talk about a $500 million settlement,” he said.”People settle cases all the time for lots of reasons, even if they think they are 100 percent right.”Harvard president Alan Garber said that “even as we acknowledge the important principles affirmed in today’s ruling, we will continue to assess the implications of the opinion.”The ruling “validates our arguments in defense of the University’s academic freedom,” he added.- ‘Smokescreen’ for university ‘assault’ -In her ruling, Burroughs pointed to Harvard’s own admissions in legal filings that there had been an issue of antisemitism on campus — but said the administration’s funding cuts would have no bearing on the situation.”It is clear, even based solely on Harvard’s own admissions, that Harvard has been plagued by antisemitism in recent years and could (and should) have done a better job of dealing with the issue,” she wrote. “That said, there is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism.”The judge, appointed by Democratic former president Barack Obama, said evidence suggests Trump “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said “this activist Obama-appointed judge was always going to rule in Harvard’s favor.””Harvard does not have a constitutional right to taxpayer dollars… We will immediately move to appeal this egregious decision,” she said.Trump had sought to have the case heard in the Court of Federal Claims instead of in the federal court in Boston, just miles away from the heart of the university’s Cambridge campus.The Ivy League institution has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign against top universities after it defied his calls to submit to oversight of its curriculum, staffing, student recruitment and “viewpoint diversity.”Trump and his allies claim that Harvard and other prestigious universities are unaccountable bastions of liberal, anti-conservative bias and antisemitism.

A US federal jury on Wednesday ordered Google to pay about $425 million for gathering information from smartphone app use even when people opted for privacy settings, the company confirmed.”This case is about Google’s illegal interception of consumers’ private activity on consumer mobile applications (apps),” attorneys for the plaintiffs charged in a class action suit filed in July 2020.The jury verdict came at the end of a trial in San Francisco, and a day after a federal judge in Washington, DC, handed the internet giant a victory by rejecting the government’s demand that Google sell its Chrome web browser as part of a major antitrust case.”This decision misunderstands how our products work, and we will appeal it,” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in a statement. “Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalization, we honor that choice.”In the smartphone app privacy suit, plaintiffs argued that Google intercepted, tracked, collected and sold users’ mobile app activity data regardless of what privacy settings they chose.”Google’s privacy promises and assurances are blatant lies,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said in the lawsuit.Google has long been under pressure to balance targeting money-making ads at the heart of its financial success with protecting the privacy of users.The Silicon Valley giant has been striving to replace online activity tracking “cookies” with a mechanism less invasive but equally effective.Cookies are small files saved to browsers by websites that can collect data about users’ online activity, making them essential to online advertising and the business models of many large platforms.France’s data protection authority on Wednesday issued record fines against Google and fast-fashion platform Shein for failing to respect the law on internet cookies.The two groups, each with tens of millions of users in France, received two of the heaviest penalties ever imposed by the CNIL watchdog: 150 million euros ($175 million) for Shein and 325 million euros for Google.Both firms failed to secure users’ free and informed consent before setting advertising cookies on their browsers, the authority found in a decision the companies can still appeal.Google said it would study the decision and that it has complied with earlier CNIL demands.Wednesday’s fine against Google is the third issued by the CNIL over the search giant’s use of cookies, after paying 100 million euros in 2020 and 150 million in 2021.

US President Donald Trump floated the idea Wednesday of deploying troops to the southern tourist hub of New Orleans, as he targets Democratic-run cities in a high-profile crackdown on crime.The Republican leader has touted his campaign against what he describes as high-crime cities flooded with undocumented immigrants, so far sending troops to Los Angeles and the capital Washington over the objections of local officials.Critics say Trump is overstepping his powers in ordering troops to carry out duties, including arrests and search and seizures, typically handled by local police and immigration agents.”So we’re making a determination now, do we go to Chicago or do we go to a place like New Orleans, where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become … quite tough, quite bad,” the US president told reporters at the White House.Trump vowed he could get New Orleans under control “in about two weeks.”Landry, a Trump ally, responded enthusiastically on X, saying, “We will take President @realDonaldTrump’s help from New Orleans to Shreveport!”Though much of Louisiana is staunchly Republican, the state’s largest city of New Orleans is deeply Democratic, with pockets of severe poverty contributing to its crime rate.Like other cities targeted by Trump in his crackdown and in keeping with national trends, New Orleans has recorded sharp declines in murders and other violent crimes this year.”Militarizing the streets of New Orleans is not a solution,” Democratic US congressman Troy Carter, who represents New Orleans and surrounding areas, said on X.”If the President wants to provide federal resources to the City, I’ll work with him to provide funding to recruit and better train police officers, better fund our district attorney, fix the infrastructure at Orleans Parish Prison and fund the very programs he has cut that get at the root cause of crime: systemic poverty.”On Wednesday, Landry also appeared alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and US Attorney General Pam Bondi at a press conference outside of the Angola prison to announce a new facility there to separately house up to 400 immigrants convicted of crimes.”Angola is the largest maximum security prison in the country, with 18,000 acres bordered by the Mississippi River, swamps filled with alligators and forests filled with bears. Nobody really wants to leave the place,” Landry told reporters. “The idea is to consolidate the worst of the worst, criminal illegal aliens, gang members, rapists, drug dealers, human smugglers that have no place in this country.”Trump had been focusing most of his recent military deployment threats on the Democratic stronghold of Chicago, which he described Tuesday as a “hellhole” ravaged by gun crime.JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of the state of Illinois where Chicago is located, responded that Trump is “producing a political drama to cover up for his corruption.”Trump has also proposed putting boots on the ground in New York and Baltimore.