AFP USA

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday discussed bolstering cooperation on security and migration in violence-swept Ecuador, as he champions a shoot-first crackdown on the region’s criminal groups.Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa, an emerging ally of US President Donald Trump, has deployed troops to combat violence that has transformed the country from one of Latin America’s safest to one of its most dangerous.Rubio was escorted into the tightly guarded, centuries-old palace in Quito’s old city as a pianist played “America the Beautiful.””We value your effort and also your interest in our country and everything we’re doing here, actually, to eliminate any terrorist threat,” Noboa told Rubio as they met.The efforts will help advance “the protection of the United States and our way of life,” Noboa said.The visit comes two days after US forces said they blew up an alleged drug-running boat from a gang tied to Venezuela’s leftist government, in an operation President Donald Trump said killed 11 people.In Noboa, a businessman who has consolidated power since his surprise 2023 victory, Rubio could find a new ally in his campaign to strengthen security-minded right-wing leaders across Latin America.The 37-year-old president was also born in Miami — the hometown of Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous critic of Latin America’s leftists.The Trump administration has sounded out Ecuador, which has stepped up cooperation to curb migration, as a new destination to ship people from other countries — part of a mass deportation drive.Noboa could follow in the steps of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, another young US-educated president, whose iron-fisted clampdown on crime has drawn complaints from rights groups but made him popular at home and a darling of the Trump administration.Rubio, speaking Wednesday in Mexico on the first stop of his two-country tour, vowed no mercy against criminal groups.He warned of more US attacks like the one in the Caribbean, a dramatic escalation by the United States after decades of routine policing work to seize drugs.Rubio said that such interdictions did not work as they were not costly enough to gangs.The United States “blew it up and it’ll happen again,” Rubio told a news conference Wednesday.AFP has not been able to verify independently the details of the attack presented by the United States.Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello accused the United States of committing extrajudicial killings, saying “they murdered 11 people without due process.”- Ecuador eyes agreements -Ecuador’s Interior Minister John Reimberg said Wednesday he expected “many more agreements” with the United States on combatting violence.Located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest producers of cocaine, Ecuador is the departure point for 70 percent of the world’s supply of the drug, nearly half of which goes to the United States, according to official data.  For years, the United States operated a military base at the Pacific port of Manta, and the Drug Enforcement Administration had a sizeable footprint in the country. The base was closed in 2009, after leftist then-president Rafael Correa refused to renew the lease. Noboa has moved to allow US forces to return, although a US official downplayed the possibility of any imminent return of a military presence.The official said that Rubio will also present Ecuador as a cautionary tale after it amassed billions of dollars in debt to China.The United States sees China as its top global adversary and has moved aggressively to combat its influence, but Beijing has made headway as the United States under Trump retreats from global aid.

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy said Thursday that firing the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was “absolutely necessary” to restore high standards, as he faced blistering criticism from Democrats urging him to resign.”We need bold, competent and creative new leadership at CDC, people able and willing to chart a new course,” he told a Senate hearing marked by sharp exchanges that at times erupted into shouting matches.His remarks came days after the ouster of Sue Monarez, which, along with several high-level resignations, has plunged the nation’s top public health agency into turmoil.Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee leading the hearing, opened by demanding Kennedy be sworn in under oath, accusing him of lying in previous written testimony.”It is in the country’s best interest that Robert Kennedy step down, and if he doesn’t, Donald Trump should fire him before more people are hurt,” Wyden thundered.The request was rejected by the Republican chairman, Senator Mike Crapo, who praised Kennedy for his focus on chronic disease, including the obesity crisis.

The US trade deficit expanded more than expected in July to its widest in four months, government data showed Thursday, on a surge in imports before a fresh wave of President Donald Trump’s tariffs kicked in.The overall US trade deficit jumped 32.5 percent to $78.3 billion in July, the Department of Commerce said.This came on the back of a 5.9-percent rise in imports to $358.8 billion, while exports edged up just 0.3 percent to $280.5 billion.”While imports bounced back in July, more than half of the increase was due to gold as trade policy and safe-haven demand brought about a resurgence in trade,” said Matthew Martin, senior economist at Oxford Economics, in a statement.”Excluding gold, imports rose by a more modest 3.3 percent, while exports fell 0.1 percent,” Martin added.Analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics expected a growing trade gap in connection with “another wave of pre-tariff stockpiling,” they said in a recent report.Trump slapped a 10-percent tariff on almost all US trading partners in April, but twice postponed a plan for these duties to rise to varying higher levels for dozens of economies.The steeper levels, hitting key partners like the European Union, Japan and India, finally took effect in early August.Even so, analysts believe businesses that boosted imports to get ahead of tariff hikes are running down on existing inventory, meaning that they will likely have to make new purchases at higher business costs.For now, the impact of Trump’s tariffs on US inflation appears limited.A Briefing.com consensus forecast had expected a smaller deficit figure of $64.2 billion. Demand for capital goods linked to artificial intelligence and data centers is boosting imports, Martin said in a note.Among sectors, imports of industrial supplies and consumer goods both jumped, the Commerce Department report said. The US goods deficit with China widened $5.3 billion to $14.7 billion in July, the report added.”Unsurprisingly, given the level of tariffs, China has been the hardest hit of all trading partners,” Martin said.Goods from the world’s second biggest economy face an additional 30-percent tariff this year, with several other Asian economies seeing lower levels.Trump’s tariffs have roiled supply chains this year, with imports already surging in March ahead of the US leader’s wide-ranging global duties in April.Apart from varied tariff rates on different economies, Trump has  slapped separate sector-specific levies on steel, aluminum and autos — while promising more to come.

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.