Hundreds of thousands of Canadians face power outages due to ice storm

More than 300,000 without power as storm, expected to continue overnight, pummels Ottawa, Quebec and Ontario

More than 300,000 Canadians faced power outages in parts of Ontario on Sunday as an ice storm pummeled the region over the weekend, according to electricity provider Hydro One.

Environment Canada issued winter storm warnings for freezing rain in Ottawa, parts of Quebec and Ontario, with the risk of snow mixed with or transitioning to ice pellets expected to continue until Monday morning in some regions.

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Keir Starmer urged to get tough with Trump as US tariff threat looms

PM told to be as robust as Canada with the US president as the UK stages last-ditch talks to strike trade deal

Keir Starmer should fight back strongly against Donald Trump if he imposes punitive tariffs on British exports, senior UK and EU diplomats said on Saturday night, amid heightened fears that the US president could trigger a global trade war with devastating effects on the UK economy.

British government officials in London and Washington are working frantically this weekend to try to persuade Trump not to slap duties on more key UK industries on what he is calling “liberation day” on Wednesday. The US president has already announced plans for 25% levies on imports of cars, steel and aluminium to the US.

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Skygazers gather across northern hemisphere to glimpse partial solar eclipse

Eclipse peaked in London at about 11am on Saturday and was visible in parts of UK between about 10am and noon

People across the northern hemisphere have gathered to catch a glimpse of the partial solar eclipse.

The eclipse peaked in London at about 11am on Saturday and was visible in parts of the UK between about 10am and noon.

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Partial solar eclipse: moon blocks part of sun for people in northern hemisphere – as it happened

This blog is now closed, you can read our story here

Here’s a view of the sun from Dakar, Senegal:

How visible today’s partial eclipse will be depends, unsurprisingly, on how clear the sky is where you are.

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Trump describes ‘productive’ call with Mark Carney amid US-Canada trade war

US president says he and Canadian prime minister ‘agree on many things’ after first talk since Carney assumed role

Donald Trump described a long-awaited call with the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, as “extremely productive” amid a trade war between the two nations launched by the US president.

The Friday morning call, requested by the White House, marks the first time the two leaders have spoken since Carney became prime minister on 14 March.

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Canadian company in negotiations with Trump to mine seabed

Environmentalists call bid to skirt UN treaty ‘reckless’ amid fears that mining will cause irreversible loss of biodiversity

A Canadian deep-sea mining firm has revealed it has been negotiating with the Trump administration to bypass a UN treaty and potentially gain authorisation from the US to mine in international waters.

The revelation has stunned environmentalists, who condemned the move as “reckless” and a “slap in the face for multilateralism”.

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End of an era for Canada-US ties, says Carney, as allies worldwide decry Trump’s car tariffs

Canadian PM says Donald Trump has permanently altered relations, as countries around the globe insist import taxes are harmful to all, including Washington

Canada’s prime minister has said the era of deep ties with the US “is over”, as governments from Tokyo to Berlin to Paris sharply criticised Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with some threatening retaliatory action.

Mark Carney warned Canadians that Trump had permanently altered relations and that, regardless of any future trade deals, there would be “no turning back”.

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Flight bookings between Canada and US down 70% amid Trump tariff war

Airline capacity between two countries reduced through October 2025 as high-profile incidents of Ice arrests on rise

Airline travel between Canada and the US is “collapsing” amid Donald Trump’s tariff war, with flight bookings between the two countries down by over 70%, newly released data suggests.

According to data from the aviation analytics company OAG, airline capacity between Canada and the US has been reduced through October 2025, with the biggest cuts occurring between the months of July and August, which is considered peak travel season. Passenger bookings on Canada to US routes are currently down by over 70% compared to the same period last year.

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Allegations of Indian interference rock Canada election campaign

Senior officials warn nations including China, Pakistan and Iran could attempt to subvert vote with sophisticated tools

The spectre of interference by India has already rocked the early days of Canada’s federal election, with officials warning that sophisticated efforts from other hostile nations are expected in the coming weeks.

As Canadians prepare to cast ballots on 28 April, senior officials say that India, China, Pakistan and Iran are all expected to make efforts to subvert the national vote through increasingly sophisticated disinformation campaigns.

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Canada’s ex-spy chief says White House response to Signal leak threatens ‘Five Eyes’ security

Former intelligence head said leak and White House response was ‘very worrying’ to allies of the US

Canada’s former spy chief has said the Trump administration’s attempts to downplay the leak of top-secret attack plans is a “very worrying” development, with implications for broader intelligence sharing among US allies.

On Wednesday, the Atlantic magazine published new and detailed messages from a group chat, including plans for US bombings, drone launches and targeting information of the assault, including descriptions of weather conditions. Among the recipients of the messages was a prominent journalist, who was inadvertently added to the group.

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Tuesday briefing: Why every candidate in Canada’s snap election is running against Donald Trump

In today’s newsletter: With elbows up on both sides, two very different political operators – Mark Carney and the Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre – attempt to fend off threats from the south

Good morning. When Justin Trudeau announced he would be resigning as Canada’s prime minister in January, he did so amid surging support for the Conservative opposition and a sense that its Trump-adjacent leader, Pierre Poilievre, might be the right candidate for a new political era. The Liberals’ near-decade in power appeared to be close to an end.

Now, Trudeau’s successor, the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, has called a snap general election against a dramatically different political backdrop. With Donald Trump’s tariff war and musings about Canada’s future as a 51st state the inescapable mood music, many voters who had given up on the Liberals appear ready to give them another hearing – and Poilievre is trying to distance himself from the president whose methods he was once so happy to adopt.

Trump administration | A catastrophic security leak triggered outrage in US politics after senior Trump administration officials accidentally broadcast highly sensitive military plans through a Signal group chat with a journalist reading along. The stunning breach implicates key figures in the Trump administration including the vice-president, JD Vance.

Domestic violence | Domestic abusers are driving their victims to suicide, police have warned, as they admitted to past mistakes and pledged to investigate more “hidden” cases of violence against women. The concession came as deaths by suicide among victims of domestic abuse surpassed the number of people killed by an intimate partner for a second year in a row.

UK economy | Rachel Reeves will put £2bn into affordable housing in a bid to “sweeten the pill” of the spending cuts being announced at this week’s spring statement. The chancellor will set out one of the tightest budget buffers on record, with the Office for Budget Responsibility expected to put the government about £5bn in the red.

Turkey | Turkish authorities have arrested more than 1,100 people including journalists, while bombarding the social media platform X with requests to block hundreds of accounts after tens of thousands took to the streets in the largest anti-government demonstrations in years.

Archaeology | One of the biggest and most important iron age hoards ever found in the UK has been revealed, potentially altering our understanding of life in Britain 2,000 years ago. More than 800 objects were unearthed in a field near the village of Melsonby, North Yorkshire dating back to the first century.

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Mark Carney laments Canada’s lost friendship with US in visit to 9/11 town

Canadian PM makes remarks on visit to Newfoundland town that sheltered US airline passengers after attacks

Mark Carney has lamented Canada’s lost friendship with the United States as he visited the town that sheltered thousands of stranded American airline passengers after the 9/11 attacks.

The Canadian prime minister’s visit to Gander, Newfoundland, on the second day of a national election campaign comes against the backdrop of a trade war and sovereignty threats from Donald Trump.

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Canada to head to polls as Mark Carney calls snap election for 28 April

Prime minister launches contest expected to focus on US relations, as Liberals enjoy lead over Conservatives

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has called a snap election on 28 April, firing the starting gun on a contest that is widely expected to focus on the strained relationship with the US amid threats to Canada’s economic and political future.

“We are facing the most significant crisis of our lifetime because of President [Donald] Trump’s unjustified trade actions and his threats to our sovereignty,” he said. “He wants to break us, so America can own us. We will not let this happen. We’re over the shock the shock of the betrayal, but we can never forget the lessons. We have to look out for ourselves. We have to look out for each other.”

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Trump’s expansionism threatens the rules-based order in place since second world war

UN charter says members ‘shall refrain from the threat or use of force’ against a country’s territory or independence

The post-second world war taboo on acquiring territory through force or by the threat of force is being unravelled by a generation of political leaders, led by expansionist threats from Donald Trump that are unprecedented for a US president.

Experts are warning that a combination of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and Trump’s comments explicitly pushing for the US to acquire Greenland, Canada, the Panama canal and Gaza is fuelling a permissive environment that threatens long-recognised borders and the international rules-based order that has existed since the end of the war.

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Mark Carney to announce Canadian election and will run in Ottawa’s Nepean riding

Recently installed prime minister expected to confirm 28 April ballot as he seeks to keep Liberal party in government

Mark Carney will run for election in the Ottawa riding of Nepean as the new Canadian prime minister seeks to join parliament for the first time, his Liberal party has announced.

Carney on Sunday is predicted to trigger an early general election on 28 April. The Liberals said on Saturday that Carney would run to represent the suburban riding, or district, of Nepean, noting in a social media post that Ottawa is where he raised his family and devoted his career to public service. He previously served as the head of Canada’s central bank and before that as deputy.

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US tourism industry faces drop-off as immigration agenda deters travellers

Westerners increasingly hesitant to travel to US out of fear of arrests and detentions as Trump enforces crackdown

A string of high-profile arrests and detentions of travellers is likely to cause a major downturn in tourism to the US, with latest figures already showing a serious drop-off, tourist experts said.

Several western travellers have recently been rejected at the US border on increasingly flimsy grounds under Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, some of them shackled and held in detention centers in poor conditions for weeks.

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Foreign minister ‘strongly condemns’ China’s executions of four Canadians

Mélanie Joly says Ottawa would ask for leniency for other Canadians facing the same fate

Canada has strongly condemned the execution of four of its citizens who were put to death in China on drug-smuggling charges, amid lingering diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

The minister of foreign affairs, Mélanie Joly, said on Wednesday that all four were dual citizens and were executed earlier this year. She added that Ottawa would ask for leniency for other Canadians facing the same fate.

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Ontario’s police force using ‘growing ecosystem’ of Israeli spyware – report

Findings raise questions about extent and scope of Canadian authorities’ use of cyberweapons

Researchers have uncovered “possible links” between Ontario’s provincial police force and an Israel-based military-grade spyware maker called Paragon Solutions, raising questions about the extent and scope of Canadian authorities’ use of cyberweapons.

The new findings were published by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which tracks and identifies digital threats against civil society, and come three years after a parliamentary committee in Canada called for Ottawa to update the country’s privacy laws in the wake of press reports that the national police force had been using spyware to hack mobile phone devices. No laws were ever passed to address the controversy.

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Canada’s Liberals on course for political resurrection amid trade war, polls show

Mark Carney-led ruling party projected to form majority months after political wipeout seemed inevitable

In January, Canadian pollsters and political pundits struggled to find fresh ways to describe the bleak prospects of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party, musing whether it would be a wipeout of existential proportions, or merely a catastrophic blowout.

But fresh polling released by three companies this week shows a stunning reversal of fortunes for the party: newly minted prime minister Mark Carney’s Liberals are projected to secure a majority government.

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‘Cataclysmic’: environmentalists fear effects of Trump cuts on Great Lakes

Advocates warn firings and funding freezes already risk poisoning drinking water and decimating fish population

Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s attacks on federal agencies and funding freezes will be “cataclysmic” for the environment of the sensitive Great Lakes region if not reversed, industry and environmental advocates in the region warn.

Initial actions taken since Trump returned to the White House in January – and put Musk in charge of slashing the federal government – already risk poisoning drinking water, decimating fish populations, and risking the jobs and health of tens of millions of people who rely on the lake system, they add.

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