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Iran-linked hackers blamed for cyber-attack that shut down UK power plant

Hackers linked to Iran have been blamed for a cyber-attack that caused a British power plant to be temporarily shut down. The incident involved a small-scale energy generator, according to the UK government and at no point was there there risk to the wider energy system. However, it marks an apparent escalation in the threat posed by Iran after the UK said it had given permission for the US to launch “defensive” operations against Tehran from British bases. The power plant was shut down for four days as a result of the attack last month, according to the Sunday Telegraph, which first reported it. A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “This story refers to an incident impacting a small-scale energy generator, and at no point was there a risk to the wider energy system. The UK has a highly resilient energy system. We work closely with the energy sector to protect infrastructure and ensure the highest security standards.” The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which deals with attacks on critical infrastructure, is understood not to have received any reported outages from regulated operators of power stations. Hostile states such as Russia, China and Iran are increasingly targeting systems behind the UK’s key services, according to a warning this year from Richard Horne, the NCSC’s chief executive. The government said last month the UK was “ready to defend itself” after Iran’s military warned any bases being used by the US were “legitimate targets”. The UK has allowed the US to launch so-called defensive operations from British bases hosting American planes since the start of its war on Iran but has refused to help in offensive operations. That policy has not been altered by the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, who was notified last week that a decision had been made to extend the agreement with the US. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said last month that “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces”. Iran has been accused for years of carrying out cyber-attacks on various countries, including in relation to a massive power outage in Turkey in 2015 and several possible breaches of Israeli government websites in 2022. US government security agencies issued a warning earlier this year of cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure by hackers linked to the IRGC. The US has alleged that an Iran-affiliated group known as “CyberAv3ngers” carried out a campaign against it in 2023 that compromised at least 75 devices in multiple infrastructure sectors.

Anger over slow pace of reconstruction in Italian town devastated by earthquake in 2016

As people gather in Amatrice on Monday for a mass to mark the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that struck the hilltop town and several neighbouring communities, killing 303 and leaving thousands homeless, politicians and other public figures will pay tribute. But for many, their words will offer little comfort: 10 years on, much of Amatrice, whose historic centre was wiped out by the 6.0 magnitude quake, is still being rebuilt and more than half of its roughly 2,100 residents continue to live in temporary housing. “They will make a good show of it, bow their heads and say: ‘We did a lot,’” said Sonia Santarelli, the president of Comitato Civico 3e36, a grassroots initiative established soon after the disaster. “But nobody will put their neck on the line. They will say the reconstruction is going well … but how can that be when so many are in homes that are uninhabitable?” A report published last week by ActionAid Italy highlighted severe delays in rebuilding Amatrice and other areas damaged by the earthquake. According to the findings, as of April 2026, construction on roughly two-thirds of the planned public projects had yet to begin, rising to seven in 10 in the hardest-hit areas. Some €4.85bn (£4.15bn) has been earmarked for the works, the report said. The earthquake struck in the early hours on 24 August 2016, its tremors felt as far as Rome. Santarelli, who owns an agriturismo, or farm stay, in the hamlet of Torrita close to Amatrice, recalled being woken by a loud blast and the sound of buildings collapsing. There was virtually nothing left of the hamlet, she said, but fortunately nobody there died. Santarelli counts her blessings that she was not made homeless either. Comitato Civico 3e36, whose name references the precise time – 3.36am – the earthquake hit, was founded to defend the communities affected and to ensure citizens have a voice in the reconstruction process. Prefabricated housing villages were set up in 41 sites across the affected areas. The wooden homes are cramped and especially stifling in the heat. “The heat and humidity squelch you,” said Santarelli. Furthermore, they are undignified places in which to die, she claimed, owing to limited space restricting the easy movement of coffins. Residents have also complained that the rooms are too small for traditional wakes. Some of those displaced are still paying mortgages on homes that don’t exist any more. “You cannot make people live in these conditions for so long,” said Santarelli. “So much work still needs to be done.” Projects that have been completed in Amatrice include a school and a handful of buildings in the historic centre. Construction of a new hospital is nearing completion and could open in 2027, provided it is fully equipped and staffed. There are many explanations for the sluggish reconstruction. Matteo Renzi, the prime minister at the time of the quake, had pledged to rebuild the towns as they were. Renzi resigned at the end of 2016 after a referendum defeat and since then Italy has had five different governments, each appointing commissioners for the rebuild. As with previous major earthquakes, such as the one that hit L’Aquila in 2009, reconstruction has been mired by bureaucracy, legal disputes and the general complexity of rebuilding historic centres in mountainous areas. Much of the pressure falls on the mayor. Elected in 2021, Giorgio Cortellesi said reconstruction efforts were hampered by the Covid pandemic and then by a government eco-renovation scheme, which was intended to revive the post-pandemic economy but instead pushed up the cost of building materials and lured construction workers away to more profitable jobs in other parts of Italy. Cortellesi, an engineer who was determined to contribute to Amatrice’s revival after miraculously finding his two sons alive during a desperate search through the rubble in the dark, said the reconstruction has gathered pace over the past couple of years. However, there is “a significant housing emergency”, he acknowledged, exacerbated by construction firms renting out homes for their staff, in turn driving up rents for people who live there. He said the council is working to reclaim some of those properties. As for the prefabricated villages, which are nearing the end of their 10-year warranty, they will need to be dismantled and their residents moved into their rebuilt homes. “They will return to their homes, which will be the safest in Italy and the most energy efficient,” Cortellesi said, but without offering a timeline for completion. Amatrice’s population has declined over the past decade, with many choosing to move elsewhere for better prospects. But there is also a resilience among those who have stayed. Sergio Pirozzi, who was mayor at the time of the calamity, is one of them. Within minutes of the earthquake striking, he captured the devastation in a few stark words: “Half of the town is gone.” A football coach, Pirozzi had been at a dinner marking the 50th anniversary of the local team a few hours before. “Of those who I was with that night, 36 died and there were others who lost their wives and children. It is not something I will ever overcome,” he said. And yet, despite also having to live with the delays and frustrations of rebuilding, Pirozzi’s attachment to Amatrice is undiminished: “For me, even today, this is the most beautiful place in the world.”

The ‘ordinary’ woman accused of assassinating a Russian commander in Crimea

It was just after dawn in Sevastopol when a powerful explosion tore through a quiet square in a residential district of the Russian-occupied Crimean port city. Hidden inside a rubbish bin, a bomb containing the equivalent of about 500g of TNT detonated on 13 August as Robert Shageev, the deputy commander of a Russian Black Sea fleet submarine brigade, walked past in naval uniform. He was killed on the spot. Within hours, investigators had a suspect. Police detained Margarita Reutt, a 32-year-old resident of Sochi, the Russian resort city about 300 miles across the Black Sea from Sevastopol. During a search, investigators said they had found a remote control they believed was used to detonate the bomb that killed Shageev, a former commander of Ukraine’s only submarine who switched allegiance to Russia in 2014 when Moscow annexed Crimea. According to the security service, she confessed to the attack and said that a handler linked to Ukrainian intelligence had promised her a large payment in cryptocurrency and documents that would allow her to leave Russia afterwards. The FSB also said Reutt showed no remorse. Those assertions could not be independently verified, and Russian security agencies have previously publicised purported confessions from detainees before their cases have reached court. But several people previously accused by Russia of carrying out similar attacks against military figures were later found by reporters to have been involved in the operations Moscow had accused them of conducting. What exactly drove Reutt to allegedly embark on such an audacious mission remains unclear. As with other cases involving accused Ukrainian intelligence operations, her trial is likely to take place behind closed doors, offering little opportunity for her to give her own account publicly. But interviews with a dozen friends and acquaintances, combined with an examination of years of her social media activity, offer a portrait of a determined and adventurous woman whose attitude towards her country appears to have hardened gradually, with signs of a more striking change emerging in the months leading up to the attack. “Rita believed that the country was going in the wrong direction,” said a longtime friend, using the diminutive form of her name. “But I am still shocked she went so far,” the friend added. Russia quickly accused Reutt of carrying out the attack on the orders of Ukrainian intelligence. Kyiv has not commented on the bombing or Reutt’s alleged role in it. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s intelligence agencies have been linked to a string of assassinations and attempted killings of senior Russian military officers whom Kyiv has accused of involvement in the invasion. Ukrainian officials have occasionally acknowledged involvement in such operations, but more often have remained silent. The attacks have involved an array of methods and recruits, from committed anti-Kremlin saboteurs to Russians promised large sums of money. In other cases, unsuspecting couriers and delivery workers have effectively been used as mules. Usually, little is known about those accused of carrying out such attacks or how they prepared for them. Some have managed to escape, or were never publicly identified by Russian authorities, while others were killed carrying out their operations. The swift capture and naming of Reutt, however, offers a rare opportunity to examine the journey of a Russian citizen accused of turning against her own country. Reutt, born Margarita Yakovleva, grew up in Yaroslavl, a city north-east of Moscow, where she took the surname of the grandmother who largely raised her after her parents divorced. Friends recalled a largely unremarkable childhood, remembering her as warm and sociable, but also unusually drawn to adventure and risk. “Margarita was fearless. She would climb trees, jump off cars, do things most boys were scared of,” recalled one friend from her childhood. That streak followed her to Novosibirsk, thousands of miles to the east, where she studied management and threw herself into university life. Reutt became a regular at a local parachuting club, with photographs showing her jumping from Soviet-era aircraft, often the only woman among groups of men in camouflage gear. She also won prizes in amateur go-karting competitions and took up water polo, becoming goalkeeper for the university team and quickly distinguishing herself despite being new to the sport. “Margarita was so talented and never afraid of the ball,” recalled her water polo coach at the time. There was little then to suggest hostility towards the Kremlin. In Novosibirsk, Reutt became a well-liked member of a patriotic volunteer group that searched for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during the second world war, part of a nationwide movement dedicated to recovering and reburying the war dead. After graduating, Reutt moved south to Sochi, the Black Sea resort that became her home. She briefly tried her hand at running a travel agency before joining Vitauct in the early 2020s, an alternative medicine company specialising in longevity. “She was the most ordinary person,” said Gennadiy Garbuzov, the company’s founder, who struggled to reconcile the woman he knew with the allegations now facing her. “There was nothing to indicate she would do this. She must have fallen under someone’s influence.” On the surface, her online life was similarly unremarkable. She posted frequently about health and animal rights and took to Telegram forums to discuss alternative medicine. Reutt also travelled widely. Leaked records from travel databases seen by the Guardian and photographs posted online show frequent trips abroad, including to Turkey, Thailand and Sri Lanka, where she often shared photographs of herself in bikinis at beach resorts. “Margarita just seemed to be living her life and had lots of plans for the future,” said another colleague at Vitauct. “She was good-looking and popular,” the colleague added. In October 2025, Reutt travelled to Minsk for her sister’s wedding. Photographs from the celebration show her smiling among relatives and catching the bridal bouquet. To one friend she painted an idyllic picture of her life in Sochi, traversing mountains, waterfalls and canyons. “You can explore endlessly here, everything is lush and green,” she wrote to the friend. But beneath that outwardly happy life, another side of Reutt was becoming visible. She increasingly expressed concerns about environmental problems plaguing Sochi, and started to become involved in local volunteer initiatives, friends said. After a large oil spill in the Black Sea in December 2024, when two Russian tankers were wrecked in a storm, Reutt travelled to Anapa to join volunteers cleaning mazut, a heavy fuel oil, from contaminated beaches. Exactly when dissatisfaction with her surroundings hardened into something more political is difficult to establish. Friends described a growing estrangement from Russia that deepened after the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “The war came as a shock,” said one friend, who recalled Reutt becoming increasingly outspoken in public about the fighting in Ukraine. “I told her once to keep quiet, otherwise she would get us both into trouble,” the friend said. By July 2025, her anti-war feelings had spilt into public view. While travelling on a Samara-Adler train, Reutt was fined under Russia’s sweeping law against “discrediting” the armed forces after reportedly shouting “Serves you right, Russians!” when news broke of a Ukrainian drone strike on a railway station in the Rostov region. The following February, Reutt posted the results of a genetic test showing she was 98% Russian, adding a hashtag declaring that she was “ashamed to be Russian”. Yet to friends and acquaintances, Reutt appeared to carry on much as before. She picked up occasional jobs, appeared in video clips made by friends and continued to travel. As recently as March, photographs from a trip to Cuba showed her drinking from a coconut. It was only in late spring, several people who knew her said, that her behaviour began to change in ways they struggled to understand at the time. “She became more withdrawn,” recalled one friend. Around the same time, a group of friends began planning a trip together for the autumn. Reutt declined to join them without much explanation – an unusual response from someone friends said could be counted on to say yes to a new adventure. Another friend remembered Reutt suddenly acquiring a second phone. “She bought this second phone in the spring. She explained that she needed it for work, but it didn’t really make sense to me at the time.” “Margarita was hiding something,” the friend added. “I thought maybe she had a new boyfriend.” By the summer, Reutt had begun spending more time in Crimea, the place where she would eventually be arrested. One acquaintance said she explained the trips to Crimea by saying she was scouting possible locations for video shoots, having recently begun appearing more frequently in music clips. What she was actually doing in Crimea – and when, if at all, she came into contact with Ukrainian intelligence – remains unknown. If Russia’s allegations that she was recruited by Ukraine are true, Reutt would join a growing group of Russian citizens accused of being enlisted by Ukrainian intelligence to carry out sabotage and assassinations deep behind the frontlines. Such recruits offer obvious advantages: they can move around Russia more freely, and attract less scrutiny than Ukrainian operatives, and they can reach targets far from the frontline without putting trained agents at risk. Women have featured prominently in several of the most high-profile operations, potentially attracting even less suspicion. For those close to Reutt, there is no easy explanation for how the woman they remember ended up accused of carrying out an assassination. But a friend of two decades recalled a stubborn determination to follow through on whatever she decided to do. “If she had a plan in mind, she would do it,” the friend said. “Even if it was something like this.”

Ukraine war briefing: Macron focuses on delivery of missile interceptors as Russian attacks intensify

French president Emmanuel Macron has promised to strengthen support for Ukraine with the delivery of interceptor missiles after a call with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which they discussed Kyiv’s shortage of air defences. The move comes amid a surge in Russian strikes that have pushed civilian deaths in the war to their highest since the first months of Moscow’s invasion. Macron said they would continue to work with the Anti-Missile Coalition launched at a meeting in Paris on July. The coalition consists of 10 European countries that are developing an anti-ballistic missile system as a cheaper alternative ⁠to the US Patriots. At that time, Macron said France would advance the deployment of the new SAMP/T system to Ukraine and license Kyiv to manufacture the interceptor missiles, as well as the SCALP long-range cruise missile and other munitions. Speaking on the Telegram app, Zelenskyy said: “We agreed to accelerate the delivery of the latest French equipment and missiles,” without providing further details. “Thank you for confirming the readiness to provide licences for missile production.” President Macron wrote on X: “It is crucial to provide Ukraine with all the necessary means to defend its skies and thwart this aggression.” The Patriot air defence system is the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of downing high-speed ballistic missiles used by Russia in its war in Ukraine. Russia has pounded Ukraine – the capital Kyiv especially – with ballistic missile attacks in recent months. The hard-to-intercept super-fast weapons reach their target within minutes, making it virtually impossible for people to reach underground shelters in time. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Ukraine’s strikes, which Kyiv says seek to choke off financing for Moscow’s war effort, had opened a “Pandora’s box” ‌of Russian retaliation. But Ukraine’s allies in the Coalition of the Willing – an initiative led by France and Britain – will meet on Monday to look at how to ramp up pressure on Moscow to halt its invasion. Diplomacy has stalled with the US, which had brokered several rounds of direct talks between Kyiv and Moscow, but is now focused on its war with Iran. Macron expressed his “horror and emotion” to Zelenskyy over the attack on a shopping centre in the city of Kryvyi Rih, that killed 16 people as rescuers sifted through the rubble of the site in the president’s home town. Russia fired a ballistic missile towards Kyiv in the middle of the day – while the German foreign minister Johann Wadephul was visiting on Saturday for talks with Zelenskyy. Two were killed and several wounded in the Boryspil district, on the eastern outskirts of the city. Russia’s defence ministry said it had struck at trucks outfitted for transporting long-range drones near Kyiv, as well as targets linked to the Ukrainian army in the Odesa region on the Black Sea. The Odesa region’s governor Oleg Kiper said three people had been wounded, including a 16-year-old girl, in a “prolonged and combined strike” that hit a house and grain silos. At least four were killed in a series of strikes on the frontline region of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian officials said. Ukrainian drones killed at least 10 people in attacks against targets across Russia and Russian-occupied ⁠areas of Ukraine, including ⁠a warehouse owned by online retailer Ozon and an industrial facility, Russian officials said on Saturday. Ozon, Russia’s second-largest online retailer, said in a statement on Telegram that the attack had caused injuries. The attack is the first on Ozon after weeks of drone strikes on its larger rival Wildberries, which Ukraine has cast as part of a wider campaign against economic infrastructure underpinning the Russian war in Ukraine. On the Crimean peninsula, at least two people were killed and 10 injured when a Ukrainian drone struck a city bus, said the Moscow-backed governor of Sevastopol, ‌Mikhail Razvozhayev. The peninsula was seized from Ukraine by Russia in 2014. In Luhansk region, an eastern Ukrainian province almost all of which is controlled by Russia, Moscow-installed governor Leonid Pasechnik said that two civilians, including a 16-year-old boy, had been killed and nine more were wounded.

Fur seal’s death marks first Australian mainland mammal fatality from spreading H5 bird flu strain

A long-nosed fur seal has died from H5 bird flu in South Australia, marking the first confirmed case in a mammal on the Australian mainland. The seal was found dead at Beachport on Wednesday on the state’s Limestone Coast. It marks a fresh escalation in the spread of the virus days after the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, announced three mass mortality events on offshore islands involving more than 1,000 greater crested terns. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The federal agriculture minister, Julie Collins, said the seal death was “not unexpected” as the virus begins to spread through the country. Speaking in Hobart on Sunday, Collins said the “distressing” news of the first confirmed case of a mammal on the mainland was anticipated and that it was “not possible to avoid significant losses”. “An infection of this individual animal is likely to have occurred due to exposure to infected wild birds or the environment that they share,” she said. “We can’t stop it spreading in terms of, particularly, in wild birds, and where we see more dead wild birds, we do expect to see increased reports of marine mammals.” Collins said there had been 298 events across the country, with 183 in South Australia, 86 in Victoria, 11 in New South Wales, 10 in Western Australia, seven in Tasmania and one in Queensland. The risk of human transmission remains low, but people are being urged to avoid sick or dead birds and report them to birdflu.gov.au. The long-nosed fur seal was found dead with no signs of injury and reported to an official hotline by a member of the public on Wednesday Testing of samples from the seal later confirmed the H5 bird flu detection. The highly pathogenic strain of bird flu has killed millions of birds globally and crossed over into mammal species, including elephant seals. Long-nosed fur seals and the endangered Australian sea lion are among the mammal species the federal government has assessed as facing very high risk from the virus. Jack Gough, the chief executive of the Invasive Species Council, said the virus spreading to Australia’s sea lion population could be an “extinction level event”. “We are still just at the early stages of this devastating virus, and the bad news is going to keep coming for our wildlife as it spreads around the continent and between species,” he said. The SA government has also confirmed a little penguin found at Kangaroo Island this week tested positive for H5 bird flu. The SA’s environment minister, Emily Bourke, said the state would work with the federal government to assess whether an experimental vaccine from the United States could be used for mammals in Australia. “It is not an off-the-shelf vaccine that’s been approved, and we have to be taking into consideration the risk [of undertaking] the vaccination program in our mammals,” she said. Australian Marine Conservation Society campaign director, Alexia Wellbelove, urged the federal government to create a $200m wildlife resilience fund for threatened species at risk of mass mortalities or local extinctions. “Government preparedness funding got us this far, but it was never designed to manage active spread across multiple species and states,” Wellbelove said. Elsewhere, the Tasmanian government said 51 little penguins found on the state’s King Island were “assumed to” have died from H5 bird flu, but the deaths would not be declared a mass mortality event. The state’s natural resources and environment department said a sample taken from one penguin found at the Port of Grassy tested positive for H5 bird flu, while a sample from a second penguin was inconclusive. Wes Ford, the state’s incident controller for its bird flu response, said both samples had been sent to the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness for further testing. “The little penguin mortality event is not considered a mass mortality event, and the condition of the remaining deceased birds meant they were unsuitable for testing,” he said. “As a result, the cause of death could not be confirmed, although it may be assumed to have been from bird flu. “Our teams continue to monitor reports of sick and dead birds closely, with results from surveillance informing our response.”

Seventeen-year-old girl killed in sword attack at school in Sweden

A 17-year-old girl has been killed after a teenager brandishing a sword attacked students at a school in Sweden, police have confirmed. Three other people were wounded in the incident during classes in the central town of Fagersta on Friday afternoon, including two boys aged 12 and 17 who sustained minor injuries. The third person, who was also under 18, was also left with minor injuries and has been discharged from hospital, Swedish news agency TT reported. The parents of the 17-year-old girl told local newspaper Fagersta-Posten their daughter was killed in the attack. An 18-year-old man has been arrested over the incident at Brinell high school. Swedish police are investigating whether the suspect was involved in online communities promoting school violence, a police source said. Detectives are investigating whether a TikTok account that posted a picture of a sword 20 minutes before the attack belonged to the person responsible, the source told Reuters. The image appeared to have been taken in a restroom at the school, according to the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. Before the image was taken down on Friday, the month-old account contained videos that referred to two episodes of mass violence in Sweden and to the far-right mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011. One of the videos referenced a 2015 attack in which a masked swordsman killed a teaching assistant and two boys at a school in Trollhättan, western Sweden, before being shot dead by police. “The investigators are looking into various online communities that may have egged on the suspect to carry out the attack,” the police source said. Several party leaders cancelled planned speeches on Saturday, pausing campaigning ahead of Sweden’s 13 September general election. The prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, and opposition leader Magdalena Andersson travelled to Fagersta to offer condolences to the bereaved family and visit the injured. Kristersson told reporters: “What should never happen has happened again. Our thoughts go first and foremost to the families who have been incredibly hard hit by this.” Sweden’s worst mass shooting occurred in February 2025 at a school in the south-central city of Örebro, when a gunman killed 10 people before turning the weapon on himself. On Saturday, the police clarified that the suspect in the Fagersta attack had not been shot, contrary to what they had said on Friday. “Service weapons were used but the perpetrator has not been injured in connection with the arrest, and has not been in need of medical attention,” a police spokesperson told the Aftonbladet daily. Prosecutors ordered the man’s detention on suspicion of murder and several counts of attempted murder.

Canada vows ‘dollar for dollar’ response as US puts 50% tariffs on some goods

The US has imposed 50% tariffs on some goods from Canada, and Mark Carney, the country’s prime minister, has vowed to match them “dollar for dollar” after the collapse of trade talks. The tariffs came into force on roughly $20bn (£14.6bn) of goods – ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors – at 04.00GMT. Trade experts said the tariffs could result in some job losses, but the largest impact is expected to be political, driving a further wedge between the traditional allies. The trade row is the biggest rupture in recent relations between Washington and one of its closest allies and trading partners as Donald Trump’s bellicose foreign policy angered officials in Ottawa. The two sides appeared close to a deal on Friday to lower tariffs on steel, aluminium and cars, but the deal was scuttled at the last minute. The two sides blamed each other for the collapse. Canadian officials had worked hard in good faith but “last-minute changes in the US proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal”, Carney said in a statement. Carney recalled his negotiators as Canada vowed to match Washington’s tough approach. No further talks are planned. US officials accused Canada of collapsing the deal by seeking additional concessions at the last minute. The US tariffs will affect about $20bn worth of Canadian products, and the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said the breakdown represented a “missed opportunity for Canada”. Recriminations continued on Saturday with Carney accusing the Trump administration of using “economic integration as a weapon” – and saying that his country had been “attacked” by the new US tariffs. Carney accused the Trump administration of adding last-minute terms that would have reduced tariff relief for Canadian-made vehicles, restricted Canada’s ability to strike trade deals with other countries and weakened protections for language, culture and sovereignty. He called the demands “unacceptable”. Carney said the Trump administration’s final demands went too far: “They asked too much and offered too little.” Greer said the US was compelled to act after a year of retaliatory measures by Canada. “We’ve said enough, and so we’ve taken countermeasures,” he told Fox & Friends Weekend. “Our interest is in protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains.” Greer said the US was offering to cut tariffs on steel, autos and lumber, “things that are sensitive for them”. “And they’ve always had the best deal, and they still would have an even better deal, but they didn’t want that,” Greer said. Therefore, he said, “We’re moving forward with measures that respond to Canadian retaliation.” “Tonight, Canada declined to finalise the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week,” he said in the statement shortly before midnight on Friday. “Despite the US offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk-backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days.” Greer said the US offer was forward-looking and included “a historic economic and national security partnership”. The retaliation escalates the two countries’ trade conflict and calls into question the future of a North American trade pact between the US, Canada and Mexico that is crucial to industry in all three countries. Trade experts have said the tariffs could subject some already-vulnerable sectors to economic strain, potentially leading to job losses and stores closing. Trump’s import taxes will apply to about 5% of what Canada ships to the US every year. The inventory is broken down into categories and, in its minutiae, provides a fascinating insight into cross-border commerce and market demands contained within an international trade dispute. Under dairy, it includes milk and cream, whey and milk protein concentrates, bones and horn-cones, lactose, glucose, fructose and blended syrups, sugars, cane molasses, non-alcoholic beer and essential oils of peppermint. The alcohol order includes beer, wine, liquor, cider and other fermented beverages. Other products include essential oils of grapefruit, densified wood blocks, plates, strips, skewers and ice cream sticks, as well as bamboo products, basketwork, grease-proof paper and ice hockey and field hockey equipment. Another category includes natural honey, down feathers, tortoise shell, whalebone, horns, antlers as well as tulips and other dormant flower buds, live orchids, mushroom spawn, tubers, mosses and lichen and vegetable, tree and shrub seeds. The list goes on to include cements, candles, plastic furniture fittings, dog leashes and saddles, T-shirts, sweaters, trousers, dresses, wigs, false beards, eyebrows of synthetic material, floating docks, vessels and rafts, chandeliers, Christmas and other festival decorations, ice skates, swimming and wading pools, and fishing rods. Canada sought concessions on steel, aluminium, vehicles and lumber that the US was unwilling to provide, a senior Trump administration official told reporters. The political impact of the breakdown is likely to be even bigger than the economic fallout. The countries sold each other $880bn worth of goods and services last year, and many Canadians and Americans work in the other country. Carney, whose willingness to stand up to Trump has made him popular in Canada, has said that “America has changed,” and that the two countries would not return to their old relationship. The Canadian public has also been incensed by US policy towards their country, particularly Trump’s comments about turning Canada into the 51st US state. A petition to expel the US ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, has collected about 248,000 signatures, accusing him of normalising the notion of the US annexing Canada. The tariffs were initially supposed to kick in at 12.01am on Wednesday but Trump extended the deadline for three days to allow talks to continue. Carney said his government would announce additional support for Canadian workers and businesses in the coming days, and that Canada’s goal throughout the negotiations had been to secure the best possible agreement, “never a deal at any price or on any deadline”. The move was supported by Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, who said on X: “Team Canada needs to stand together more united than ever before. The prime minister has my full support for a strong response – tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar. As we fight to protect Canadian sovereignty and economic security, everything needs to be on the table. Ontario is ready to do its part.” The head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Candace Laing, called the tariffs “a body blow to North American competitiveness”. She said they would raise costs for Americans while threatening Canadian customers, investment and small businesses. The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed reporting

Man leaves young son on Mount Fuji before ascending Japan’s highest peak

A man who abandoned his seven-year-old son on Mount Fuji in Japan after the boy complained of feeling tired while on a family hike has been reprimanded by local police. A worker on Japan’s highest mountain discovered the child sitting alone on a bench near the sixth station of the Fujinomiya trail at an altitude of more than 2,000 metres (6,500 feet) on Thursday. After inviting the boy to take shelter at the station, the worker called the police, who took the child into protective custody. It emerged that he had told his father he was too tired to continue while they were hiking up the trail in the early hours of the morning. The man, who was from Japan’s fourth-largest city, Nagoya, gave his son some snacks and a soft drink. He then told him to wait for him before continuing his five-hour ascent to the summit with the child’s older brother, who had already gone on ahead. It would have taken him about eight hours to return, according to local reports. By the time police officers managed to contact the boy’s father, he had ascended to the eighth station, a three-hour hike from where he had left his son. They told him to turn back, and after reuniting him with his son reprimanded him for leaving the child alone on an active volcano. “Even if it means having to give up on climbing the mountain together, leaving a child behind is unacceptable,” officers said, according to Japan Today. Weather on the mountain, which has its own microclimate, is unpredictable and can change rapidly. Hypothermia poses a serious risk for hikers even in the summer. The father is said to have apologised to the police, saying: “I made a rash decision, and I deeply regret it.” Local police are urging hikers to consider the abilities and stamina of everyone in their group when planning an ascent on Mount Fuji, and to adjust their pace accordingly.