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Donald Trump’s return to the White House has accelerated a profound shift in the global order, according to new analysis.

A report from Focal Data, which analyses UN voting records, reveals how Washington’s “America First” agenda has started to redraw the geopolitical map in favour of China.

In 2026, the world is now diplomatically closer to Beijing than it has been in recent memory, with significant shifts in alignments taking place during the start of Trump’s second presidential term.

By measuring how closely each country’s voting record correlates with those of the US or China, researchers have been able to map how the geopolitical centre of gravity is further away from Washington and closer to Beijing than at any other point this century.

Kathy Ruemmler, the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to Barack Obama, has announced her resignation in the wake of emails showing a close relationship between her and Jeffrey Epstein, whom she referred to as “Uncle Jeffrey”.

Ruemmler said in a statement on Thursday that she would “step down as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs as of June 30, 2026”.

Up until her resignation, Ruemmler repeatedly tried to distance herself from the emails and other correspondence and had been defiant that she would not resign from Goldman’s top legal post, which she had held since 2020.

While Ruemmler has called Epstein a “monster” in recent statements, she had a much different relationship with him before he was arrested a second time for sex crimes in 2019 and later killed himself in a Manhattan jail; Ruemmler called Epstein “Uncle Jeffrey” in emails and said she adored him.

In a statement before her resignation, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson said Ruemmler “regrets ever knowing him.”

During her time in private practice after she left the White House in 2014, Ruemmler received several expensive gifts from Epstein, including luxury handbags and a fur coat. The gifts were given after Epstein had already been convicted of sex crimes in 2008 and was registered as a sex offender.

A highly regarded theoretical physicist is stepping away from the Ontario institute he helped found, after his ties to the late American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were revealed in recently released files.

Lee Smolin, an American Canadian professor of physics and philosophy, has "agreed to pause his working relationship" with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont., according to an email on Thursday from Perimeter's executive director, Marcela Carena.

Smolin was a founding faculty member of the independent research centre, which is known around the world for pioneering work in quantum theory and got much of its initial funding from BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis.

Smolin was working at the Perimeter Institute part time and also has academic appointments at the University of Waterloo and University of Toronto.

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More than a year after deadly wildfires swept through Los Angeles communities, California launched an investigation on Thursday, February 12, into claims of delays in issuing warnings to historically Black neighborhoods, which could have increased the death toll.

Flames that tore through the city of Altadena in January 2025 killed 19 people, the majority of them on Altadena's west side – home to a large African-American community. Evacuation orders there were much slower than on the east side, where most residents are white.

"My office will be investigating whether there was race, age, or disability discrimination in the emergency response in West Altadena, which claimed the lives of at least 19 people," California's Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

"We know that evacuation warnings for the historically Black neighborhood of West Altadena came many hours after these same warnings were sent to the rest of Altadena. We must let the facts uncovered by our investigation determine what went wrong here."

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Cadmium in breakfast cereals, aluminum in pastries and sweet biscuits, lead in bread, mercury in fish and acrylamide in fries and sautéed potatoes: French people – children in particular – are exposed to "excessively high" levels of chemical pollutants through their diet. The warning comes from the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES), which highlighted a "health risk" for three metals (cadmium, aluminum and mercury) and a "health concern" – in the absence of a reference toxicological threshold – for lead and acrylamide, an organic compound formed during cooking methods above 120°C (such as frying or roasting).

These conclusions are based on the third major total diet study (EAT3), the previous one having been conducted between 2006 and 2011. The study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of chronic exposure to chemical contaminants in food among the population of France. The first results were published on Thursday, February 12. EAT3 targeted more than 250 substances. Further sections, covering other pollutant families (including pesticide residues, PFAS, bisphenols, phthalates, etc.), will be released gradually in the coming years.

The foods selected for the study (272 in total) represented more than 90% of the average French diet. Over 700 samples were collected between May 2021 and August 2022 from supermarkets and markets in three departments (Hérault on the Mediterranean coast, Loiret south of Paris, and Puy-de-Dôme in the center of France). These were analyzed in laboratories to identify and quantify chemical contaminants. The results were then combined with food consumption data to estimate population exposure and health risks.

There are moments when words are inadequate.

What happened in Tumbler Ridge is a tragedy. Lives were lost. Families were shattered. A small community is now carrying a soul-crushing grief that will live long after the headlines fade. That is where our attention should begin, and where it should remain.

Yet almost immediately, the tragedy was pulled into the public domain and repackaged. Not to support the grieving or help a traumatized community heal, but to advance ideological positions and turn suffering into rage farming.

That is not reflection. It is exploitation! Full stop! The shooter has been identified as a transgender individual with severe mental health challenges. Those facts have been selectively seized upon by some to promote ideological claims that have nothing to do with the lives lost in Tumbler Ridge. It is opportunism.

To be clear, this tragedy is not “about trans people.” Just as acts of violence are not “about” race, religion, or sexuality simply because a perpetrator belongs to a particular group. Violence is not explained by identity labels, and grief is not eased by scapegoating.

Police in Prince Albert, Sask., say they're reviewing a video shared online that shows a security guard slapping a woman during a confrontation at the McDonald’s restaurant inside the Walmart on 15th Street East.

It shows three security guards near the woman, with a man beside her who seems to be trying to restrain her. The woman swears, stumbles and fakes a punch at one guard, then hits his face.

The guard responds by slapping her across the face.

This incident lands at a time when security guard conduct is being scrutinized more closely in Saskatchewan, after other high-profile cases.

In December, the Saskatchewan Health Authority said contracted guards involved in an incident at Prince Albert’s Victoria Hospital were no longer permitted to work at any of its sites after a video showed a First Nations man being wheeled outside in freezing temperatures.

Not too long after, in Saskatoon, the SHA found itself responding to another incident regarding the death of a patient, Trevor Dubois, after an altercation involving security at Royal University Hospital.

Canada's military police watchdog issued a scathing report on Thursday over the handling of an investigation into an air force officer who was charged with sexual assault and later took his own life in early 2022.

In the weeks leading up to his death, Maj. Cristian Hiestand told his family no one would listen to his side of the story after being charged with assaulting a woman with whom he had just ended a relationship.

The chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission (MPCC), Tammy Tremblay, in a report released Thursday, found that Hiestand did have an opportunity to speak to investigators, but declined on the advice of his lawyer.

But Tremblay found military police did not conduct an "impartial and thorough investigation" and overall the investigation suffered from a "rush to judgment and confirmation bias."

The names of the six children and two adults who died on Tuesday were released by RCMP this afternoon.

Victims found inside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School:

• Zoey Benoit, 12, a student. In a statement, her loved ones described her as "resilient, vibrant, smart, caring and the strongest little girl you could meet."
• Ticaria Lampert, 12, a student. Her mother Sarah described her daughter in an interview as a "tiki torch powered by love and happiness."
• Abel Mwansa, 12, a student. His father told CBC News he was a bright, ambitious boy with a smile everybody knew in town.
• Ezekiel Schofield, 13, a student.
• Kylie Smith, 12, a student. In a statement, her family said she was a talented artist who dreamed of one day studying in Toronto.
• Shannda Aviugana-Durand, 39, an educator. Her family declined to comment, but one student said she and other staff at the high school were heroes.

Victims found inside the home on Fellers Avenue:

• Emmett Jacobs, 11, the step-brother of the shooter.
• Jennifer Strang, 39, the mother of the shooter. Police identified her using her legal name, Jennifer Jacobs.

The Trump administration has revoked the bedrock scientific determination that gives the government the ability to regulate climate-heating pollution. The move was described as a gift to “billionaire polluters” at the expense of Americans’ health.

The endangerment finding, which states that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare, has since 2009 allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit heat-trapping pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources.

Donald Trump called the move “the single largest deregulatory action in American history”.

“This is a big one if you’re into environment,” he told reporters on Thursday. “This is about as big as it gets.”

The move comes as part of Trump’s bigger anti-environment push, which has seen him roll back pollution rules and boost oil and gas.

In a sprawling aquarium complex in south-eastern France that once drew half a million visitors a year, only a few dozen people now move between pools that contain the last remaining marine mammals of Marineland Antibes. Weeds grow on walkways, the stands are empty and algae grows in the pools, giving the water a greenish hue.

It is here that Wikie and Keijo, a mother and son pair of orcas, are floating. They were born in these pools, and for decades they performed in shows for crowds. But since the park’s closure in January 2025, they no longer have an audience. When they are alone, they “log”, or float at the water’s surface, according to a court-ordered report released last April.

Marineland has long acknowledged that there is an urgent need to transfer the orcas. In a statement to the Guardian, it reiterates this: “Marineland has been saying for some time that the park cannot wait any longer.

In December 2025 the French minister delegate for ecological transition, Mathieu Lefèvre, announced that Wikie and Keijo would be sent to the Whale Sanctuary Project in Nova Scotia, Canada, calling it the “only ethical, credible, and legally compliant solution”. The 40-hectare (100-acre) outdoor site aims to recreate a seaside environment as close as possible to the natural habitat of whales and dolphins.

Lori Marino, a neuroscientist and founder of the Whale Sanctuary Project, says: “They [the orca pair] will have depth to dive, an interesting and vibrant underwater environment to explore, and conditioning and exercise routines with the trainers.”

On Monday, Marino will present her plan for the orcas at the meeting – but getting it through will not be straightforward. The decision by the French government to opt for the Whale Sanctuary Project has met strong resistance from other animal welfare organisations and Marineland’s owner.

“Nobody is actually working together, that is the problem,” says Marino.

It is easy to describe this moment as the collapse of democratic norms or the result of extreme polarization. But underneath these trends lies a deeper tension—between two dominant and insufficient visions of democracy. On one side stands technocratic governance: policy making by insulated bureaucracies and arm’s-length institutions, which prize stability, expertise, and control. On the other stands populist majoritarianism: the volatile, winner-takes-all politics that claims to speak for “the people” while concentrating power in the hands of those who win. These forces are locked in a mutually reinforcing cycle: technocratic detachment breeds backlash, and populist backlash fuels elite retrenchment. Neither trusts the public. One sees citizens as problems to manage; the other as instruments of its authority.

Both are symptoms of a deeper problem—the steady consolidation of power around market ideas, austerity policies, and top-down management. Over the past few decades, a wave of neoliberal reforms has hollowed out much of the democratic state. Participation hasn’t disappeared—it’s been pushed to the margins. And in many cases, the institutions that remain seem designed less to include people than to keep them out. These systems didn’t evolve by accident. They serve powerful interests—political, corporate, and bureaucratic—that benefit from keeping control concentrated and the public at a distance.

ONE OF THE CENTRAL assumptions of twentieth-century democracy building was that democratic institutions propagate democracy. Whether in post-colonial Africa, post-Soviet Eastern Europe, or post-conflict Iraq and Afghanistan, the prevailing model held that if you replicated the institutional forms of democracy—parliaments, courts, constitutions, electoral commissions, civil society organizations—democratic behaviour would follow. Build the scaffolding, and the spirit would fill it.

But history—and experience—suggest otherwise. Democratic institutions, without an active and capable public, tend to become hollow. Elections can entrench autocracy. Courts can be captured. Political parties can end up serving special interests instead of the public. In country after country, the institutions of democracy were established, while the substance—accountability, deliberation, civic trust—remained elusive. Institutions alone do not produce democracy. People do. And this is as true in established democracies as in fledgling ones.