The European Commission is reportedly considering delaying parts of its landmark Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act following heavy lobbying from U.S. tech giants and pressure from Washington, theFinancial Times reported Friday. The proposed pause would affect select provisions of the legislation, which came into force in August 2024 but is being implemented in stages.
Why It Matters:
The AI Act is the world’s first comprehensive framework regulating artificial intelligence, setting strict rules on transparency, safety, and ethical use. Any delay could dilute Europe’s claim to global leadership in AI governance and highlight the growing influence of U.S. tech companies and policymakers in shaping international digital standards. The move also comes as the EU seeks to avoid trade tensions with the Trump administration.
Tech firms like Meta and Alphabet have long argued the law could stifle innovation and competitiveness. The European Commission previously rejected calls for a pause, insisting the rollout would proceed on schedule.
However, an EU spokesperson told the FT that officials are now discussing “targeted implementation delays” while reaffirming support for the act’s core objectives. The Commission and U.S. officials have reportedly been in talks as part of a broader “simplification process” ahead of a November 19 adoption date.
What’s Next:
No final decision has been made, but if adopted, the pause could push back compliance deadlines for some high-risk AI systems. The EU is expected to clarify its position later this month amid growing scrutiny from lawmakers, digital rights advocates, and international partners.
WASHINGTON — The Senate approved a resolution Tuesday evening that would nullify President Trump’s tariffs on Brazil, including oil, coffee and orange juice, as Democrats tested GOP senators’ support for Trump’s trade policy.
The legislation from Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, passed on a 52-48 tally.
It would terminate the national emergencies that Trump has declared to justify 50% tariffs on Brazil, but the legislation is likely doomed because the Republican-controlled House has passed new rules that allow leadership to prevent it from ever coming up for a vote. Trump would almost certainly veto the legislation even if it were to pass Congress.
Still, the vote demonstrated some pushback in GOP ranks against Trump’s tariffs. Five Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — all voted in favor of the resolution along with every Democrat.
Kaine said the votes are a way force a conversation in the Senate about “the economic destruction of tariffs.” He’s planning to call up similar resolutions applying to Trump’s tariffs on Canada and other nations later this week.
“But they are also really about how much will we let a president get away with? Do my colleagues have a gag reflex or not?” Kaine told reporters.
Trump has linked the tariffs on Brazil to the country’s policies and criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro. The U.S. ran a $6.8 billion trade surplus with Brazil last year, according to the Census Bureau.
“Every American who wakes up in the morning to get a cup of java is paying a price for Donald Trump’s reckless, ridiculous, and almost childish tariffs,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
Republicans have also been increasingly uneasy with Trump’s aggressive trade policy, especially at a time of turmoil for the economy. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last month that Trump’s tariff policy is one of several factors that are expected to increase jobless rates and inflation and lower overall growth this year.
In April, four Republicans voted with Democrats to block tariffs on Canada, but the bill was never taken up in the House. Kaine said he hoped the votes this week showed how Republican opposition to Trump’s trade policy is growing.
To bring up the votes, Kaine has invoked a decades-old law that allows Congress to block a president’s emergency powers and members of the minority party to force votes on the resolutions.
However, Vice President JD Vance visited a Republican luncheon on Tuesday in part to emphasize to Republicans that they should allow the president to negotiate trade deals. Vance told reporters afterwards that Trump is using tariffs “to give American workers and American farmers a better deal.”
“To vote against that is to strip that incredible leverage from the president of the United States. I think it’s a huge mistake,” he added.
The Supreme Court will also soon consider a case challenging Trump’s authority to implement sweeping tariffs. Lower courts have found most of his tariffs illegal.
But some Republicans said they would wait until the outcome of that case before voting to cross the president.
“I don’t see a need to do that right now,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, adding that it was “bad timing” to call up the resolutions before the Supreme Court case.
Others said they are ready to show opposition to the president’s tariffs and the emergency declarations he has used to justify them.
“Tariffs make both building and buying in America more expensive, “ said Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime Republican leader, in a statement. ”The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule.”
His fellow Kentuckian, Republican Sen. Rand Paul, told reporters, “Emergencies are like war, famine, tornado. Not liking someone’s tariffs is not an emergency. It’s an abuse of the emergency power. And it’s Congress abdicating their traditional role in taxes.”
In a floor speech, he added, “No taxation without representation is embedded in our Constitution.”
Meanwhile, Kaine is also planning to call up a resolution that would put a check on Trump’s ability to carry out military strikes against Venezuela as the U.S. military steps up its presence and action in the region.
He said that it allows Democrats to get off the defensive while they are in the minority and instead force votes on “points of discomfort” for Republicans.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund the world’s largest, valued at over $2 trillion has unveiled a tougher climate strategy aimed at forcing its 8,500 portfolio companies to align with net-zero emissions by 2050. Built on revenues from oil and gas exports, the fund has long positioned itself as a paradoxical but powerful force in global sustainability, arguing that climate change poses a material financial risk to investors. Its latest move builds on its 2022 net-zero pledge but now widens its focus beyond direct (Scope 1 and 2) emissions to include Scope 3 emissions, those produced throughout companies’ supply chains often the biggest and hardest to cut.
Key Issues
The fund’s updated plan arrives amid a global divergence in climate policy. While much of Europe accelerates green investment and corporate accountability, the Trump administration in the U.S. is rolling back environmental standards, expanding fossil fuel production, and formally withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. The contrast is striking: the Norwegian fund has around half of its value $1 trillion invested in the U.S., meaning its climate demands now directly challenge the regulatory direction of its largest market. By targeting high-emitting firms for “board-level climate engagement,” the fund aims to push corporate leaders to accelerate transition plans, disclose credible pathways, and account for full life-cycle emissions.
Why It Matters
Norway’s initiative underscores how financial pressure is becoming a frontline climate tool as policy action falters elsewhere. With trillions in assets and stakes in nearly every major listed company, the fund wields unparalleled influence a “shareholder superpower” capable of shaping global corporate norms. Its expanded scrutiny of Scope 3 emissions could set a new benchmark for investors, forcing multinationals especially in energy, manufacturing, and transport to reassess their carbon strategies. However, the timing also reveals a deepening transatlantic rift on climate governance: while Europe doubles down on decarbonization, Washington’s pivot toward fossil fuels risks isolating U.S. firms from the evolving standards of global capital markets.
Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), The operator of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, spearheading the climate strategy and engaging directly with company boards. Its decisions ripple across global markets.
Portfolio Companies (≈8,500), From energy giants to tech firms, these are the fund’s primary targets. Those with high Scope 3 emissions such as oil majors, automotive firms, and manufacturers will face intensified scrutiny and board-level engagement.
U.S. Corporations & Regulators, With half the fund’s investments in U.S. assets, American firms and the Trump administration’s deregulatory stance form the main obstacle to the fund’s climate agenda.
European Union & ESG Investors, EU regulators and climate-focused investors stand as Norway’s allies in enforcing global sustainability norms, reinforcing the idea that green standards are both moral and market-driven.
Global Climate Advocacy Groups, NGOs and environmental watchdogs view the fund as a critical lever for corporate accountability, often pushing it to go beyond “dialogue” toward divestment or sanctions for non-compliant firms.
What’s Next
The coming phase will test whether Norway’s financial clout can translate ambition into action. The fund is expected to:
Publish a revised focus list of high-emitting companies for targeted board-level dialogue.
Expand climate disclosures across its portfolio, demanding clearer transition roadmaps and transparent emissions data.
Monitor Scope 3 implementation, a notoriously difficult area, as it involves supply-chain accountability beyond direct corporate control.
Potentially escalate engagement measures from public naming to partial divestment if firms fail to comply.
Meanwhile, resistance may build from U.S. policymakers and fossil-heavy corporations, framing Norway’s ESG push as interference in domestic markets. Yet, as global capital increasingly rewards sustainability, the momentum may shift in Norway’s favor forcing even reluctant players to adapt or risk financial marginalization.
Their situation seemed desperate; their demeanour, portrayed in several videos published by news outlets, was sour.
On a recent weekday in March, men, women, and even children – all with their belongings heaped on their heads or strapped to their bodies – disembarked from the ferry they say they were forcibly hauled onto from the vast northwest African nation of Mauritania to the Senegalese town of Rosso, on the banks of the Senegal River.
Their offence? Being migrants from the region, they told reporters, regardless of whether they had legal residency papers.
“We suffered there,” one woman told France’s TV5 Monde, a baby perched on her hip. “It was really bad.”
The deportees are among hundreds of West Africans who have been rounded up by Mauritanian security forces, detained, and sent over the border to Senegal and Mali in recent months, human rights groups say.
According to one estimate from the Mauritanian Association for Human Rights (AMDH),1,200 people were pushed back in March alone, even though about 700 of them had residence permits.
Those pushed back told reporters about being randomly approached for questioning before being arrested, detained for days in tight prison cells with insufficient food and water, and tortured. Many people remained in prison in Mauritania, they said.
The largely desert country – which has signed expensive deals with the European Union to keep migrants from taking the risky boat journey across the Atlantic Ocean to Western shores – has called the pushbacks necessary to crack down on human smuggling networks.
However, its statements have done little to calm rare anger from its neighbours, Mali and Senegal, whose citizens make up a huge number of those sent back.
A member of the Mauritanian National Guard flies an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on the outskirts of Oualata, on April 6, 2025 [Patrick Meinhardt/AFP]
Mali’s government, in a statement in March, expressed “indignation” at the treatment of its nationals, adding that “the conditions of arrest are in flagrant violation of human rights and the rights of migrants in particular.”
In Senegal, a member of parliament called the pushbacks “xenophobic” and urged the government to launch an investigation.
“We’ve seen these kinds of pushbacks in the past but it is at an intensity we’ve never seen before in terms of the number of people deported and the violence used,” Hassan Ould Moctar, a migration researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, told Al Jazeera.
The blame, the researcher said, was largely to be put on the EU. On one hand, Mauritania was likely under pressure from Brussels, and on the other hand, it was also likely reacting to controversial rumours that migrants deported from Europe would be resettled in the country despite Nouakchott’s denial of such an agreement.
Is Mauritania the EU’s external border?
Mauritania, on the edge of the Atlantic, is one of the closest points from the continent to Spain’s Canary Islands. That makes it a popular departure point for migrants who crowd the coastal capital, Nouakchott, and the commercial northern city of Nouadhibou. Most are trying to reach the Canaries, a Spanish enclave closer to the African continent than to Europe, from where they can seek asylum.
Due to its role as a transit hub, the EU has befriended Nouakchott – as well as the major transit points of Morocco and Senegal – since the 2000s, pumping funds to enable security officials there to prevent irregular migrants from embarking on the crossing.
However, the EU honed in on Mauritania with renewed vigour last year after the number of people travelling from the country shot up to unusual levels, making it the number one departure point.
About 83 percent of the 7,270 people who arrived in the Canaries in January 2024 travelled from Mauritania, migrant advocacy group Caminando Fronteras (CF) noted in a report last year. That number represented a 1,184 percent increase compared with January 2023, when most people were leaving Senegal. Some 3,600 died on the Mauritania-Atlantic route between January and April 2024, CF noted.
Boys work on making shoes at Nouadhibou’s Organization for the Support of Migrants and Refugees, in Mauritania [File: Khaled Moulay/AP]
Analysts, and the EU, link the surge to upheavals wracking the Sahel, from Mali to Niger, including coups and attacks by several armed groups looking to build caliphates. In Mali, attacks on local communities by armed groups and government forces suspicious of locals have forced hundreds over the border into Mauritania in recent weeks.
Ibrahim Drame of the Senegalese Red Cross in the border town of Rosso told Al Jazeera the migrant raids began in January after a new immigration law went into force, requiring a residence permit for any foreigner living on Mauritanian soil. However, he said most people have not had an opportunity to apply for those permits. Before this, nationals of countries like Senegal and Mali enjoyed free movement under bilateral agreements.
“Raids have been organised day and night, in large markets, around bus stations, and on the main streets,” Drame noted, adding that those affected are receiving dwindling shelter and food support from the Red Cross, and included migrants from Togo, Nigeria, Niger, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Benin.
“Hundreds of them were even hunted down in their homes or workplaces, without receiving the slightest explanation … mainly women, children, people with chronic illnesses in a situation of extreme vulnerability and stripped of all their belongings, even their mobile phones,” Drame said.
Last February, European Commission head, Ursula von der Leyen, visited President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani in Nouakchott to sign a 210 million euro ($235m) “migrant partnership agreement”. The EU said the agreement was meant to intensify “border security cooperation” with Frontex, the EU border agency, and dismantle smuggler networks. The bloc has promised an additional 4 million euros ($4.49m) this year to provide food, medical, and psychosocial support to migrants.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was also in Mauritania in August to sign a separate border security agreement.
Fear and pain from a dark past
Black Mauritanians in the country, meanwhile, say the pushback campaign has awakened feelings of exclusion and forced displacement carried by their communities. Some fear the deportations may be directed at them.
Activist Abdoulaye Sow, founder of the US-based Mauritanian Network for Human Rights in the US (MNHRUS), told Al Jazeera that to understand why Black people in the country feel threatened, there’s a need to understand the country’s painful past.
Located at a confluence where the Arab world meets Sub-Saharan Africa, Mauritania has historically been racially segregated, with the Arab-Berber political elite dominating over the Black population, some of whom were previously, or are still, enslaved. It was only in 1981 that Mauritania passed a law abolishing slavery, but the practice still exists, according to rights groups.
Boys sit in a classroom at Nouadhibou’s Organization for the Support of Migrants and Refugees [File: Khaled Moulay/AP]
Dark-skinned Black Mauritanians are composed of Haratines, an Arabic-speaking group descended from formerly enslaved peoples. There are also non-Arabic speaking groups like the Fulani and Wolof, who are predominantly from the Senegal border area in the country’s south.
Black Mauritanians, Sow said, were once similarly deported en masse in trucks from the country to Senegal. It dates back to April 1989, when simmering tensions between Mauritanian herders and Senegalese farmers in border communities erupted and led to the 1989-1991 Border War between the two countries. Both sides deployed their militaries in heavy gunfire battles. In Senegal, mobs attacked Mauritanian traders, and in Mauritania, security forces cracked down on Senegalese nationals.
Because a Black liberation movement was also growing at the time, and the Mauritanian military government was fearful of a coup, it cracked down on Black Mauritanians, too.
By 1991, there were refugees on either side in the thousands. However, after peace came about, the Mauritanian government expelled thousands of Black Mauritanians under the guise of repatriating Senegalese refugees. Some 60,000 people were forced into Senegal. Many lost important citizenship and property documents in the process.
“I was a victim too,” Sow said. “It wasn’t safe for Blacks who don’t speak Arabic. I witnessed armed people going house to house and asking people if they were Mauritanian, beating them, even killing them.”
Sow said it is why the deportation of sub-Saharan migrants is scaring the community. Although he has written open letters to the government warning of how Black people could be affected, he said there has been no response.
“When they started these recent deportations again, I knew where they were going, and we’ve already heard of a Black Mauritanian deported to Mali. We’ve been sounding the alarm for so long, but the government is not responsive.”
The Mauritanian government directed Al Jazeera to an earlier statement it released regarding the deportations, but did not address allegations of possible forced expulsions of Black Mauritanians.
In the statement, the government said it welcomed legal migrants from neighbouring countries, and that it was targeting irregular migrants and smuggling networks.
“Mauritania has made significant efforts to enable West African nationals to regularise their residence status by obtaining resident cards following simplified procedures,” the statement read.
Although Mauritania eventually agreed to take back its nationals between 2007 and 2012, many Afro-Mauritanians still do not have documents proving their citizenship as successive administrations implement fluctuating documentation and census laws. Tens of thousands are presently stateless, Sow said. At least 16,000 refugees chose to stay back in Senegal to avoid persecution in Mauritania.
Sow said the fear of another forced deportation comes on top of other issues, including national laws that require students in all schools to learn in Arabic, irrespective of their culture. Arabic is Mauritania’s lingua franca, but Afro-Mauritanians who speak languages like Wolof or Pula are against what they call “forced Arabisation”. Sow says it is “cultural genocide”.
Despite new residence permit laws in place, Sow added, migrants, as well as the Black Mauritanian population, should be protected.
“Whether they are migrants or not, they have their rights as people, as humans,” he said.
