Mechanical forces drive evolutionary change

A small tissue fold present in fruit fly embryos buffers mechanical stresses and may have evolved in response to mechanical forces.

Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG)

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Gene expression in a Drosophila melanogaster embryo. Nuclei are shown in gray, and the colors represent where the genes slp1 (cyan), btd (magenta), and eve (yellow) are expressed.

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Credit: Bruno C. Vellutini / MPI-CBG / Nature (2025)

To the point:

Small fold – big role: A tissue fold known as the cephalic furrow, an evolutionary novelty that forms between the head and the trunk of fly embryos, plays a mechanical role in stabilizing embryonic tissues during the development of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

Combining theory and experiment: Researchers integrated computer simulations with their experiments and showed that the timing and position of cephalic furrow formation are crucial for its function, preventing mechanical instabilities in the embryonic tissues.

Evolutionary response to mechanical stress: The increased mechanical instability caused by embryonic tissue movements may have contributed to the origin and evolution of the cephalic furrow genetic program. This shows that mechanical forces can shape the evolution of new developmental features.

Mechanical forces shape tissues and organs during the development of an embryo through a process called morphogenesis. These forces cause tissues to push and pull on each other, providing essential information to cells and determining the shape of organs. Despite the importance of these forces, their role in the evolution of development is still not well understood.

Animal embryos undergo tissue flows and folding processes, involving mechanical forces, that transform a single-layered blastula (a hollow sphere of cells) into a complex multi-layered structure known as the gastrula. During early gastrulation, some flies of the order Diptera form a tissue fold at the head-trunk boundary called the cephalic furrow. This fold is a specific feature of a subgroup of Diptera and is therefore an evolutionary novelty of flies.

The research groups of Pavel Tomancak and Carl Modes, both group leaders at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, looked into the function of the cephalic furrow during the development of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and the potential connection with its evolution. The results of their investigation are published in the journal Nature.

A genetically patterned fold with unknown function

The researchers knew that several genes are involved in the formation of the cephalic furrow. The cephalic furrow is especially interesting because it is a prominent embryonic invagination whose formation is controlled by genes, but that has no obvious function during development. The fold does not give rise to specific structures and, later in development, it simply unfolds, leaving no trace. Bruno C. Vellutini, a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Pavel Tomancak, who led the study together with Tomancak, explains, “Our original question was to uncover the genes involved in cephalic furrow formation and the developmental role of the invagination. Later on, we broadened our investigations to other fly species and found that changes in the expression of the gene buttonhead are associated with the evolution of the cephalic furrow.”

With their experiments, the researchers show that the absence of the cephalic furrow leads to an increase in the mechanical instability of embryonic tissues and that the primary sources of mechanical stress are cell divisions and tissue movements typical of gastrulation. They demonstrate that the formation of the cephalic furrow absorbs these compressive stresses. Without a cephalic furrow, these stresses build up, and outward forces caused by cell divisions in the single-layered blastula cause mechanical instability and tissue buckling. This intriguing physical role gave the researchers the idea that the cephalic furrow may have evolved in response to the mechanical challenges of dipteran gastrulation, with mechanical instability acting as a potential selective pressure.

Physical model of folding dynamics

To determine the contribution of individual sources of mechanical stress, the experimentalists in the Tomancak group teamed up with the group of Carl Modes to create a theoretical physical model that behaves like the fly embryos. Carl Modes says, “Our model can simulate the behavior of embryonic tissues in fly embryos with very few free parameters. The model was fed with the data from the experiments. First, we wanted to see how the strength of the fold affects the function of the cephalic furrow. We assumed that a strong pull inside the fold is a good buffer to counteract mechanical forces. However, we discovered that the position and timing are what really matter. The earlier the cephalic furrow forms, the better of a buffer it is, and when it forms around the middle of the embryo, it proved to have the strongest buffering effect.” This physical model provides a theoretical basis that the cephalic furrow can absorb compressive stresses and prevent mechanical instabilities in embryonic tissues during gastrulation.

A related study reveals two cellular mechanisms to prevent stress.

Another study, also focusing on mechanisms of how flies counteract mechanical stresses, is published at the same time in the Nature journal. The team led by Steffen Lemke from the University of Hohenheim, Germany, and Yu-Chiun Wang from the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research in Kobe, Japan, found two different ways how flies deal with compressive stress during embryonic development. Flies either feature a cephalic furrow or, if they lack one, display widespread out-of-plane division, meaning the cells divide downwards to reduce the surface area. Both mechanisms act as mechanical sinks to prevent tissue collision and distortion. The authors of the study worked together with the MPI-CBG researchers during the course of their studies.

Evolution of a small fold

Pavel Tomancak summarizes the results, “Our findings uncover empirical evidence for how mechanical forces can influence the evolution of innovations in early development. The cephalic furrow may have evolved through the genetic changes in response to the mechanical challenges of the dipteran gastrulation. We show that mechanical forces are not just important for the development of the embryo but also for the evolution of its development.”

 

Related Publication:  

Bipasha Dey, Verena Kaul, Girish Kale, Maily Scorcelletti, Michiko Takeda, Yu-Chiun Wang, Steffen Lemke: Divergent evolutionary strategies pre-empt tissue collision in gastrulation. Nature, September 3, 2025, doi : 10.1038/s41586-025-09447-4

Gene expression in the cephalic furrow of a Drosophila melanogaster embryo. Nuclei are shown in gray, and the colors represent where the genes slp1 (cyan), btd (magenta), and eve (yellow) are expressed.

Credit

Bruno C. Vellutini / MPI-CBG / Nature (2025)

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-09480-3 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Patterned invagination prevents mechanical instability during gastrulation

Article Publication Date

3-Sep-2025

 

Chinese scientists reveal hidden extinction crisis in native flora

Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters

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Extinction Risk–Protection Mismatch in China's Flora

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Credit: SHEN Guozhen

A new study has revealed a "hidden extinction crisis" in China's flora, showing that habitat decline over the past four decades has sharply increased extinction risks nationwide. The findings, published in One Earth on September 3, suggest that current conservation efforts are failing to keep pace with biodiversity threats.

Led by Dr. SHEN Guozhen from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with international collaborators, the researchers combined satellite-based land-cover data (1980–2018) with species-composition models to quantify—for the first time at a national scale—how habitat loss is reshaping extinction risk across entire plant communities.

They found that extinction risk among China's vascular plants has increased by 3.9% nationwide, coinciding with a 2.8% decrease in native habitats. Risks are highest in eastern China, home to more than 90% of the country's plant species, where reserves are small, fragmented, and have lost nearly one-fifth of their core zones. Meanwhile, over 70% of protected areas are concentrated in the west, where risks are comparatively low.

Despite apparent greening, unique native communities continue to vanish as ecological functions degrade, creating a "greening illusion" that masks biodiversity loss. This hides biodiversity decline, while global conservation tools such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List remain limited by static, species-focused assessments that overlook emerging risks from recent habitat degradation.

By introducing a dynamic, spatially explicit framework for quantifying extinction risk, the study offers an early-warning paradigm for biodiversity loss, an irreversible environmental change now unfolding worldwide. It underscores that existing conservation measures have not been timely or effective enough to halt the decline and calls for urgent action to integrate wilderness protection and habitat-based assessments into conservation planning.

This work offers a "China solution" for curbing the ongoing global biodiversity decline and achieving the goals of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

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Journal

One Earth

DOI

10.1016/j.oneear.2025.101429 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Revealing Hidden Extinction Risks in China's Flora Through Dynamic Habitat Assessment

Article Publication Date

3-Sep-2025

 

Patient reports aren’t anecdotal—they’re valuable data

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

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Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor shares his mother’s story during a recent public science talk, part of CSHL’s Cocktails & Chromosomes series.

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Credit: CSHL

“My body is all used up, and I have no will left to live.” Those are the first words of a new essay written by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor Tobias Janowitz. They’re the words of his late mother during the final days of her life. “A perceptive woman who survived a childhood shaped by war, malnutrition, and displacement, she was not given to complaint. Her words reflected insight and recognition, not resignation,” Janowitz writes.

In a new essay published in the journal Neuron, Janowitz dives into our current understanding of a condition called cachexia. Known as a wasting syndrome, the condition typically occurs during the late stages of disease. It’s now recognized as a leading cause of death among cancer patients. Recent research from Janowitz and collaborators has revealed that cachexia affects a link between the brain and the immune system, which may reduce motivation. That could help explain why many patients with the disease may start to feel “all used up.”

Janowitz’s essay not only points to new potential therapeutic strategies for cancer cachexia and other diseases. It calls for closer collaboration between cancer researchers and neuroscientists. Moreover, it makes an impassioned plea to all scientists to listen to patients carefully. It challenges them to consider patient-reported symptoms not as anecdotal evidence, but rather as invaluable data points that may help us better understand how diseases like cancer affect the connections between the brain and the body.

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Journal

Neuron

DOI

10.1016/j.neuron.2025.06.019 

Article Title

Of Hope from Fading Will: Interoceptive Signaling and the Behavioral Biology of Cachexia

Article Publication Date

3-Sep-2025

 

Hurricane Sandy linked to lasting heart disease risk in elderly

Weill Cornell Medicine

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Dr. Arnab Ghosh

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Credit: Weill Cornell Medicine

Although the material damage from 2012's Hurricane Sandy may have been repaired, the storm left a lasting impact on cardiovascular health, according to new findings from Weill Cornell Medicine and New York University researchers.

The study, published Sept. 3 in JAMA Network Open, found that older adults living in flood-hit areas in New Jersey faced a 5% higher risk of heart disease for up to five years after Sandy’s landfall. This is one of the first studies to rigorously quantify long-term cardiovascular risks associated with flooding in older adults. Most studies focus on the immediate consequences of severe weather events.

"Climate-amplified hurricanes and hurricane-related floods are expected to increase into the future," said Dr. Arnab Ghosh, assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and an internist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, who led the research. “So, it’s essential to understand the long-term health effects on those most vulnerable."

Natural Controlled Experiment

The researchers analyzed Medicare data from over 120,000 people aged 65 and older living in New Jersey, New York City, and Connecticut in the five years after the storm.

They compared ZIP code areas that were flooded during the hurricane to nearby ZIP code areas that weren’t, matching the communities in terms of age, income, race and health status before the storm. Using advanced statistical models, the team tracked heart-related health events like heart attacks, strokes and heart failure in people who did not relocate after the hurricane.

“Capitalizing on such a large, diverse and stable patient population as Medicare recipients, allowed our team to see broader population trends while controlling for many of the threats to validity, whether socio-economic factors or the prevalence of co-morbidities,” said senior author Dr. David Abramson, clinical professor of social and behavioral sciences in the School of Global Public Health at New York University. The researchers concluded that heart failure rates were higher in flooded areas, especially in New Jersey, and that the risk persisted for four to five years—not just weeks or months—after the storm.

They hypothesize that more people in New Jersey were directly affected by the storm’s physical and emotional stressors. Flooded zip codes in New Jersey had lower median incomes and higher area deprivation index scores, which are indicators of social and economic disadvantage. These factors are linked to worse health outcomes and lower access to care, especially after a disaster. The residents also faced lingering difficult environmental and psychological circumstances and reduced community support.

In a related study published last month in Frontiers in Public Health, Dr. Ghosh and his colleagues found that the rate of death in elderly individuals living in areas flooded after Sandy was 9% higher on average five years later compared to those in less affected neighborhoods. The magnitude of this effect varied by region. While New York City saw an 8% increase in mortality, Connecticut had a 19% increase. However, the rest of coastal New York, including Long Island, and New Jersey seemed to escape this effect.

“The regional differences that we noted may highlight how local environments differ and need further examination,” Dr. Ghosh said. “New York City, for example, is heavily urbanized, while impacted parts of Connecticut and New Jersey are suburban with different infrastructure and more single-family homes.”

Taking a Longer-Term View

The study suggests that disaster preparedness and recovery frameworks should integrate chronic disease management and long-term health monitoring, not just short-term emergency care. The findings are particularly relevant for climate resilience planning, especially in regions with aging populations and increasing hurricane exposure.

“We are starting to appreciate that disasters are happening more frequently. But our policies and support systems for vulnerable groups after severe weather has struck haven't been well developed,” Dr. Ghosh said.

Given the regional variation in health outcomes, localized health system preparedness is essential, added the researchers. This includes resource allocation, training and infrastructure to manage chronic disease burdens in the aftermath of disasters.

“With this work, we lay the groundwork to show that hurricanes can have long-term impacts on health,” said Dr. Ghosh. Building on these results, the researchers are now planning to conduct larger-scale analyses on the health consequences of other events such as wildfires and tornadoes. Another aspect they plan to study involves how increased health risks related to weather affect Medicare, Medicaid and the health care system financially.

This work was supported with funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the National Center for Advancing Clinical Translational Science, both part of the National Institutes of Health, through grant numbers  R03TR004976 and K08HL163329.

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

Click-clack comeback: Toronto shop thriving amid typewriter renaissance

By John Vennavally-Rao
September 01, 2025 

Martin Howard poses with some of his typewriters from the late 1800s.

In an age dominated by social media, emails and text messages, the sharp click-clack of steel keys striking paper may seem like a relic of the past. But at a Toronto shop, typewriters are in demand and business is booming.

“When we first started this, we would sort of be excited and happy to sell maybe one every couple of weeks,” said Chris Edmondson, who launched Toronto Typewriters about a decade ago. “Now, in a given week, we probably sell 5 to maybe 10. It depends on the season.”

Toronto Typewriters is one of the few remaining typewriter stores in the country.

His small shop is packed with machines that may once have been tossed in the trash. Today, some of those typewriters are considered treasures. Prices range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand. Edmondson repairs, restores and even 3D-prints ribbon spools for clients around the world. He also rents out typewriters to film and TV productions, including one that matches the model featured in The Shining.

For many, Edmondson says, the appeal comes down to focus.

“There’s no distraction, like with a computer,” Edmondson said as he showed CTV News around his shop. “It’s just you and the machine, and you’re sort of creating thoughts on paper in a linear way.”


He also says people really love the sound.

“I think the click clack and the bell is a very familiar and enjoyable sound. A lot of people resonate with that sound.”

Even Taylor Swift used a vintage Royal 10 typewriter in the music video for her song “Fortnight."

“When Taylor Swift got a typewriter, they want to have a typewriter,” said Edmondson, adding he has rented out the same Royal model to plenty of younger customers.

Typerwriters like this vintage one from Royal can sell for more than $5,000.

Parents are also buying them for kids as young as five hoping to get them to write without spellcheck.

“Parents kind of see it as a way to disconnect their kids from the tablet world and the YouTube generation sort of approach to learning.”

The resurgence is part of a wider embrace of analog technology, from vinyl records and cassette tapes to film cameras.

Actor Tom Hanks is one of the best-known typewriter fans. He owns hundreds and often speaks of his affection for them.

Toronto collector Martin Howard is also pleased with the renewed attention. In the basement of his home, he displays his collection of vintage machines, the largest in Canada. He began collecting 37 years ago and proudly displays them in a lit-up cabinet.


“They’re all different styles in the 1880s and 1890s, so you get the incredible range of brilliant mechanical objects,” said Howard.

His oldest machine is a Remington Perfected 4 built in 1879. He owns 75 typewriters and enjoys restoring them to working condition.

“I love having them as my personal possessions,” he said adding that he also loves to share his collection with others.

Howard bought his first typewriter at 29. At a junk shop in Aurora, Ont., he found a Caligraph 2 from 1886. The machine had no shift key, instead using separate black keys for uppercase and white keys for lowercase.

This Caligraph 2 typewriter from 1886 had no shift key. Instead it features separate black keys for uppercase characters and white keys for lower case.

He said interest in typewriters started to rise around 2012, and demand surged during the pandemic.

“During COVID, as you can imagine, it was a very popular thing for people. When people were looking for new things to do at home, portable typewriters were really popular.”

As for Taylor Swift’s influence, Howard sees it as a good thing.

“It makes it hip is what it does. Makes it really hip.”



John Vennavally-Rao
Senior Correspondent, 

CTV National News

Trump plans a hefty tax on imported drugs, risking higher prices and shortages

By The Associated Press
 September 01, 2025 

Pharmaceuticals are seen in North Andover, Mass., on June 15, 2018. AP Photo/Elise Amendola, file)

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump has plastered tariffs on products from almost every country on earth. He’s targeted specific imports including autos, steel and aluminum.

But he isn’t done yet.

Trump has promised to impose hefty import taxes on pharmaceuticals, a category of products he’s largely spared in his trade war. For decades, in fact, imported medicine has mostly been allowed to enter the United States duty free.

That’s starting to change. U.S. and European leaders recently detailed a trade deal that includes a 15 per cent tariff rate on some European goods brought into the United States, including pharmaceuticals. Trump is threatening duties of 200 per cent more on drugs made elsewhere.

“Shock and awe’’ is how Maytee Pereira of the tax and consulting firm PwC describes Trump’s plans for drugmakers. “This is an industry that’s going from zero (tariffs) to the potentiality of 200 per cent.’’


Trump has promised Americans he’ll lower their drug costs. But imposing stiff pharmaceutical tariffs risks the opposite and could disrupt complex supply chains, drive cheap foreign-made generic drugs out of the U.S. market and create shortages.

“A tariff would hurt consumers most of all, as they would feel the inflationary effect ... directly when paying for prescriptions at the pharmacy and indirectly through higher insurance premiums,’’ Diederik Stadig, a healthcare economist with the financial services firm ING, wrote in a commentary last month, adding that lower-income households and the elderly would feel the greatest impact.

The threat comes as Trump also pressures drugmakers to lower prices in the United States. He recently sent letters to several companies telling them to develop a plan to start offering so-called most-favored nation pricing here.

But Trump has said he’d delay the tariffs for a year or a year and a half, giving companies a chance to stockpile medicine and shift manufacturing to the United States — something some have already begun to do.

Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger said in a July 29 note that most drugmakers have already increased drug product imports and may carry between six and 18 months of inventory in the U.S.

Jefferies analyst David Windley said in a recent research note that tariffs that don’t kick in until the back half of 2026 may not be felt until 2027 or 2028 due to stockpiling.

Moreover, many analysts suspect Trump will settle for a tariff far lower than 200 per cent. They also are waiting to see whether any tariff policy includes an exemption for certain products like low-margin generic drugs.

Still, Stadig says, even a 25 per cent levy would gradually raise U.S. drug prices by 10 per cent to 14 per cent as the stockpiles dwindle.

In recent decades, drugmakers have moved many operations overseas – to take advantage of lower costs in China and India and tax breaks in Ireland and Switzerland. As a result, the U.S. trade deficit in medicinal and pharmaceutical products is big -- nearly $150 billion last year.

The COVID-19 experience – when countries were desperate to hang onto their own medicine and medical supplies — underscored the dangers of relying on foreign countries in a crisis, especially when a key supplier is America’s geopolitical rival China.

In April, the administration started investigating how importing drugs and pharmaceutical ingredients affects national security. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 permits the president to order tariffs for the sake of national security.


Marta Wosińska, a health policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, says there is a role for tariffs in securing U.S. medical supplies. The Biden administration, she noted, successfully taxed foreign syringes when cheap Chinese imports threatened to drive U.S. producers out of business.

Trump has bigger ideas: He wants to bring pharmaceutical factories back to the United States, noting that U.S.-made drugs won’t face his tariffs.

Drugmakers are already investing in the United States.

The Swiss drugmaker Roche said in April that it will invest US$50 billion in expanding its U.S. operations. Johnson & Johnson will spend $55 billion within the United States in the next four years. CEO Joaquin Duato said recently that the company aims to supply drugs for the U.S. market entirely from sites located there.

But building a pharmaceutical factory in the United States from scratch is expensive and can take several years.

And building in the U.S. wouldn’t necessarily protect a drugmaker from Trump’s tariffs, not if the taxes applied to imported ingredients used in the medicine. Jacob Jensen, trade policy analyst at the right-leaning American Action Forum, notes that “97% of antibiotics, 92% of antivirals and 83% of the most popular generic drugs contain at least one active ingredient that is manufactured abroad.’’

“The only way to truly protect yourself from the tariffs would be to build the supply chain end to end in the United States,’’ Pereira said.

Brand-name drug companies have fat profit margins that provide flexibility to make investments and absorb costs as Trump’s tariffs begin. Generic drug manufacturers do not.

Some may decide to leave the U.S. market rather than pay tariffs. That could prove disruptive: Generics account for 92 per cent of U.S. retail and mail-order pharmacy prescriptions.

A production pause at a factory in India a couple years ago led to a chemotherapy shortage that disrupted cancer care. “Those are not very resilient markets,” Brookings’ Wosińska said. “If there’s a shock, it’s hard for them to recover.”

She argues that tariffs alone are unlikely to persuade generic drug manufacturers to build U.S. factories: They’d probably need government financing.

“In an ideal world, we would be making everything that’s important only in the U.S.,’’ Wosińska said. “But it costs a lot of money ... We have offshored so much of our supply chains because we want to have inexpensive drugs. If we want to reverse this, we would really have to redesign our system ... How much are we willing to spend?’’

Murphy reported from Indianapolis. AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.

Paul Wiseman And Tom Murphy, The Associated Press

Tariffs cause ‘unprecedented’ disruption to global trade rules, WTO chief says

By Reuters
September 02, 2025 

President Donald Trump holds an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Washington. (Pool via AP) (AP)

The share of global trade done on WTO terms has fallen to 72 per cent and could fall further, amid the biggest disruption to the international trading system in the past 80 years, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization said on Tuesday.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump started imposing higher import tariffs this year on most of the United States’ trading partners, the share of global trade conducted under the WTO’s ‘most favored nation’ (MFN) terms is down from about 80 per cent, WTO data shows. The principle requires WTO members to treat others equally.

“We’re experiencing the largest disruption to global trade rules, unprecedented in the past 80 years,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told Reuters in an interview at the start of her second term at the helm of the Geneva-based trade watchdog.

“So it’s not surprising that some would question the global trading system... and predictability,” she said, adding: “As long as the majority of trade is taking place on MFN terms, I think we should celebrate that. We’re a long way from 50 per cent.”

Okonjo-Iweala warned that world trade could experience the effects of tariffs “later down the line” into 2026 as the recent surge in global commerce - driven by frontloading of goods during the first half of the year - begins to subside.

This contributed to the WTO raising its global trade growth forecast from 0.2 per cent to 0.9 per cent in August.

“Possibly down the line, we’ll begin to see some other impacts, as the goods in the warehouses are exhausted, and impacts begin to come in, but we’ll see next year. We still anticipate some growth,” she said.

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin and Emma Farge; Editing by Madeline Chambers and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Trump says he’s looking for swift Supreme Court ruling on most tariffs

By The Associated Press
September 02, 2025 

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event about the relocation of U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump is indicating that he’ll ask the Supreme Court tomorrow to overturn a federal appeals court ruling that found many of his tariffs are illegal.

Trump says he’ll ask the court for an expedited ruling and claims that if the duties are removed, it could be devastating for the United States.

Last Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and his fentanyl-related duties exceeded his powers under the national security statute he used to impose them.

Trump used the International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977 to hit much of the world with duties, even though the statute does not include the word “tariff” or its synonyms.

The appeals court said that the tariffs could stay in place while the Trump administration takes the case to the Supreme Court.


Trump increased tariffs on Canada to 35 per cent at the start of August, citing fentanyl and retaliatory tariffs as justification for the increase.

Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press

Judge orders search shakeup in U.S. Google monopoly case, but keeps hands off Chrome and default deals

By The Associated Press
Updated: September 02, 2025 a

A woman walks by a giant screen with a logo at an event at the Paris Google Lab on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in Paris, on Feb. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus,File)

SAN FRANCISCO - A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday ordered a shake-up of Google’s search engine in an attempt to curb the corrosive power of an illegal monopoly while rebuffing the U.S. government’s attempt to break up the company and impose other restraints.

The 226-page decision made by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., will likely ripple across the technological landscape at a time when the industry is being reshaped by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence -- including conversational “answer engines” as companies like ChatGPT and Perplexity try to upend Google’s long-held position as the internet’s main gateway.

The innovations and competition being unleashed by generative artificial intelligence, or “GenAI,” have reshaped the judge’s approach to remedies in the nearly five-year-old antitrust case brought by the U.S. Justice Department during President Donald Trump’s first administration and carried onward by President Joe Biden.

“Unlike the typical case where the court’s job is to resolve a dispute based on historic facts, here the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future. Not exactly a judge’s forte,” Mehta wrote.

The judge is trying to rein in Google by prohibiting some of the tactics the company deployed to drive traffic to its search engine and other services. The handcuffs will prevent Google from negotiating contracts that give its search engine, Gemini AI app, Play Store for Android and virtual assistant an exclusive position on smartphone, personal computers and other devices.


The handcuffs being slapped on Google will preclude contracts that give its search engine, Gemini AI app, Play Store for Android and virtual assistant an exclusive position on smartphone, personal computers and other devices.

But Mehta stopped short of banning the multi-billion dollar deals that Google has been making for years to lock in its search engine as the default on smartphones, personal computers and other devices. Those deals, involving payments of more than $26 billion annually, were one of the main issues that prompted the judge to conclude Google’s search engine was an illegal monopoly, but he decided banning them in the future would do more harm than good.

The judge also rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s effort to force Google to sell its popular Chrome browser, concluding it was an unwarranted step that “would be incredibly messy and highly risky.”

Partially because he is allowing the default deals to continue, Mehta is ordering Google to give its current and would-be rivals access to some of its search engine’s secret sauce -- the data stockpiled from trillions of queries that it used to help improve the quality of its search results. That is a measure that Google had also fiercely opposed, contending it was unfair and would raise privacy and security risk for the billions of people who have posed questions to its search engine -- sometimes delving into sensitive issues.

The Justice Department’s antitrust chief, Gail Slater, hailed the decision as a “major win for the American people,” even though the agency didn’t get everything it sought. “We are now weighing our options and thinking through whether the ordered relief goes far enough,” Slater wrote in a post.

In its own post, Google framed Mehta’s ruling as a vindication of its long-held position that the case never should have been brought. The decision “recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information,” wrote Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs. “This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want.”

The Mountain View, California, company has already vowed to appeal the judge’s monopoly findings issued 13 months ago that led to Tuesday’s ruling.

“You don’t find someone guilty of robbing a bank and then sentence him to writing a thank you note for the loot,” said Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project.

Investors seemed to interpret the ruling as a relatively light slap on the wrist for Google, as the stock price of its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., surged more than 7% in extended trading. That would translate into a nearly $200 billion increase in Alphabet’s market value, if the shares follow a similar trajectory in Wednesday’s regular trading session.

Allowing the default search deals to continue is more than just a victory for Google. It’s also a win for Apple, which receives more than $20 billion annually from Google, and other recipients of the payments.

In hearings earlier this year, Apple warned the judge that banning the contracts would deprive the company of money that it funnels into its own innovative research. The Cupertino, California, company also cautioned that the ban could have the unintended consequence of making Google even more powerful by pocketing the money it had been spending on deals while most consumers will still end up flocking to Google’s search engine anyway.


Others, such as the owners of the Firefox search engine, asserted that losing the Google contracts would threaten their future survival by depriving them of essential revenue.

Apple’s shares rose 3% in extended trading after the ruling came out.

Mehta refrained from ordering a sale of Chrome because he decided there wasn’t adequate proof the browser served as an essential ingredient in Google’s search monopoly, making a divestiture “a poor fit for this case.”

Chrome would have been a hot commodity had the judge forced Google to put it on the auction block. Perplexity submitted an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer to buy Chrome last month. And during court testimony earlier this year, a ChatGPT executive left no doubt that service’s owner, OpenAI, would be interested in be interested in buying Chrome, too.

But the judge decided forcing Google to open up parts of its search data to rivals such as DuckDuckGo, Bing, and others will offer he best and fairest way to foster more compelling competition. In doing so, Mehta still narrowed the scope of the Justice Department’s request and will limit the access to Google’s search index and query histories.

While the wrangling over Mehta’s ruling continues, Google is facing another potentially debilitating threat in another antitrust case brought by the Justice Department targeting the digital ad empire that was built up around its search engine. After different federal judge in Virginia declared that some of the technology underlying the ad network to be an illegal monopoly earlier this year, the Justice Department plans to make its case for another proposed breakup in a trial scheduled to begin later this month.

By Michael Liedtke.

Quebec ends funding for Northvolt battery factory after losing $270M investment

By The Canadian Press
 September 02, 2025


THE PHOTO IS FRANCOPHONE IRONY

The entrance to Northvolt, the new EV battery plant being built by the Swedish manufacturer in Saint-Basile-le-Grand, east of Montreal, Que.,Thursday, May 16, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi

The Quebec government is pulling the plug on a $7-billion electric-vehicle battery project near Montreal and trying to recoup some of its investment.

Economy Minister Christine Fréchette announced Tuesday that the government is cutting its losses on the planned Northvolt battery factory after spending $510 million on the troubled venture, once touted as the largest private investment in the province’s history.

The Quebec government pledged up to $2.9 billion in financing for the project, while Ottawa committed up to $4.4 billion. But construction of the plant never got underway.



“Since the company did not present a satisfactory plan with respect to Quebec’s interests, we are asserting our rights to recover the maximum amount of our investment,” Fréchette said in a statement. “This adventure has proven unsuccessful, and we are obviously disappointed.”

Plans for the battery plant have been up in the air since Northvolt’s Swedish parent company filed for bankruptcy in March. Last month, American battery startup Lyten announced it was acquiring Northvolt’s assets in Sweden and Germany and hoped to buy the Northvolt Six project in Quebec’s Montérégie region.


Catherine Pelletier, a spokesperson for Fréchette, said government representatives met with Lyten in July and August, but the company wanted more government funding that Quebec was unwilling to offer. She said Lyten made “disproportionate demands,” though she would not provide figures.

Pelletier said the government was concerned about risking more taxpayer money on another relatively new company.

In a statement, Northvolt Batteries North America said it found the decision “regrettable,” and said it had been in contact with potential buyers until this week. “It is important to remember that (the North American subsidiary) is not bankrupt and still had solid financial resources to relaunch the project,” the company said. “It was a great project, and our team still believed in it.”

Keith Norman, Lyten’s chief marketing officer, said the company accepts Quebec’s decision. “We have been clear with our desire to acquire the site to build a North American gigafactory, and if given the opportunity, we would be happy to work with the Quebec government to develop the site,” he said in a statement.

The Northvolt project was unveiled to great fanfare in September 2023, at an event attended by then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, who called it a “historic and transformative” announcement.

Quebec’s pension fund manager, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, had also invested $200 million in the company.

The province’s funding of the Northvolt project included a $270-million investment in the Swedish parent company that was lost when it went bankrupt.

However, Quebec is hoping to recover a $240-million guaranteed loan issued to purchase the land for the plant. Pelletier said the government filed documents in court on Tuesday under creditor protection legislation and said a judge will have to authorize a process for the sale or repossession of the land.

“Given our existing security interests on our debt, we are well positioned to recover the full value of our debt at the end of this process,” she said.

Fréchette said the failure of the project does not spell the end for Quebec’s battery industry.


“On the contrary, our sector is very much alive with several companies active in this ecosystem,” she said. “We remain convinced that it has a bright future.”

Fréchette said nearly 3,000 people are working on the construction of battery factories in Bécancour, Que.

But Quebec Liberal Leader Pablo Rodriguez was quick to accuse the government of mishandling the project. “We’ve put all our eggs in one basket,” he told reporters in Ste-Foy, Que. “It’s a failure both in terms of planning and execution.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 2, 2025.

– With files from Caroline Plante in Quebec City

Canadians begin receiving payments from $78M auto parts class-action settlement

By Daniel Otis

September 02, 2025 

Volkswagen cars for sale are on display on the lot of a VW dealership in Boulder, Colo. 

(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

Canadians have begun receiving payments from a massive $78-million auto parts class-action settlement.

The settlement relates to allegations of illegal price fixing for automotive parts installed in new vehicles that were purchased or leased between 1998 and 2016. Affected automakers include BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Jaguar, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.

The automakers are not accused of wrongdoing and were not defendants in the class actions. As part of the settlement, the parts manufacturers accused of price-fixing were able to avoid admitting to wrongdoing or liability.

The price-fixing allegations have led to criminal investigations and several class actions around the world. The Canadian settlement relates to 23 related class actions in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec that were led by law firms Siskinds, Sotos, Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman (CFM) and Siskinds Desmeules.

“The Class Action Settlements are in response to the Defendants’ alleged conspiracy to fix the price of approximately 45 automotive parts, which allegedly caused Settlement Class Members to pay too much for automotive parts and eligible brand vehicles,” the law firms stated.

Affected parts include hoses, sensors, radiators, spark plugs and windshield wipers.

“Price-fixing conspiracies are prohibited by the Competition Act,” CFM partner David Jones said in a previous news release. “They are harmful to the Canadian marketplace, causing businesses and consumers to pay too much for goods and services. The settlements seek to redress that harm.”

Payments of at least $25 per claim were sent out via e-transfer and cheque starting on Aug. 28. The deadline for filing a claim has passed. More details and contact information are available on the Auto Parts Class Action website.

Daniel Otis
CTVNews.ca Journalist