Briefly

UNITED STATES

Court orders Harvard fund freeze reversal

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that US President Donald Trump's administration unlawfully terminated about $2.2 billion in grants awarded to Harvard University and can no longer cut off research funding to the school. The decision by United States District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston marked a major legal victory for Harvard as it seeks to cut a deal that could bring an end to the White House's multifront conflict with the university. While Harvard had tolerated hateful behavior for too long, the Trump administration "used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country's premier universities", Burroughs said.

FRANCE

Cookie law violation costs Google $379m

France's data protection authority fined Google on Wednesday for failing to respect the law on internet cookies. The CNIL watchdog announced in a statement that it was imposing a fine of 325 million euros ($379 million) on the search giant, which failed to secure users' free and informed consent before setting advertising cookies on their browsers. Cookies are small files saved to browsers by websites that can collect data about users' online activity, making them essential to online advertising and the business models of many large platforms. The CNIL added that Google also violated rules by displaying advertisements in Gmail's tabs without obtaining user consent.

AFGHANISTAN

Earthquake death toll jumps to over 2,200

The death toll from the powerful earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan on the weekend rose sharply to more than 2,200 on Thursday, according to a new toll, making it the deadliest in decades to hit the country. The vast majority of those killed in the magnitude-6.0 earthquake that jolted the mountainous region bordering Pakistan on Sunday were in Kunar Province, where 2,205 people died and 3,640 were injured, according to the Taliban government figures. Another 12 people were killed and hundreds injured in the neighboring provinces of Nangarhar and Laghman.

Agencies - Xinhua