Trump ‘frustrated’ and needs a ‘time out’ in trade talks with Canada after ‘fake’ Reagan ad

President Donald Trump announced Friday evening he would pull trade talks with Canada after an ad, funded by Ontario’s provincial government, quoted former President Ronald Reagan warning that tariffs “hurt every American.”

In a series of furious posts on Truth Social, the president claimed Canada was “trying to illegally influence the United States Supreme Court in one of the most important rulings in the history of our Country.”

The ad features Reagan negatively speaking about tariffs in a 1987 radio address and warning that they can lead to market collapse and job loss

Despite the quotes being real, though taken somewhat out of context, Trump made the unsubstantiated claim that the ad was “FAKE.”

“Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” Trump railed.

Kevin Hassett, the White House director of the National Economic Council, said Friday the president was “frustrated” with Canada over trade negotiations.

“I think the president probably, more than anything, is frustrated with the progress he’s making with Canada and sometimes when you’re frustrated, a time out is the right call,” Hasset told Fox Business.

Asylum seeker guilty of stabbing hotel worker to death at station

An asylum seeker, who was seen dancing and laughing after stabbing a hotel worker 23 times on a railway station platform, has been found guilty of murder.

Deng Chol Majek, originally from Sudan, was described by prosecutors as “utterly callous” after he launched a frenzied attack on Rhiannon Whyte.

She had finished work at 11pm at the Park Inn hotel in Walsall, West Midlands, where Majek was living, when he “tracked” her on foot to the nearby Bescot Stadium station. He inflicted 19 wounds to her head, including a fatal brain stem injury.

Jurors at Wolverhampton Crown Court deliberated for two hours and five minutes on Friday before unanimously convicting Majek of murder and possessing a screwdriver as an offensive weapon. He showed no emotion in the dock as the verdict was returned.

A two-week trial heard that Majek had been reported to security at the Park Inn hotel after “spookily” staring at three female staff members for prolonged periods on 20 October last year.

CCTV played at Majek’s trial showed he disappeared from view on to a deserted platform for 90 seconds at about 11.18pm to attack Ms Whyte, 27, the mother of a five-year-old son. She died in hospital three days later, after being found injured in a shelter on the platform by the driver and guard of a train which pulled in about five minutes later.

No motive for the killing was given at the trial, but Majek had brushed past Ms Whyte earlier in the evening as he left the hotel to smoke.

He is alleged to have lied to the court about his age, claiming to be 19 despite a date of birth making him 27 being recorded by authorities during a failed asylum claim in Germany.

Majek, who at 6ft 3in was about ten inches taller than Ms Whyte, walked to the Caldmore Green area of Walsall after the attack to buy beer and was recorded on CCTV apparently wiping blood from his trousers.

He returned to the hotel at 12.13am, changed his bloodstained flip-flops for trainers and was seen dancing with other residents in the car park, within sight of emergency vehicles called to the station.

A housing officer based at the hotel told jurors Majek “almost seemed sad” before Ms Whyte was stabbed, and appeared to be “back to himself” after she was taken to hospital.

In her closing speech to the jury, prosecutor Michelle Heeley KC described Majek’s dismissal of DNA evidence and his claims not to be a man caught on clear CCTV wearing a distinctive jacket and flip-flops, as “laughable”, and an insult to relatives of Ms Whyte listening from the public gallery.

Ms Heeley said of Majek’s behaviour after the murder: “He is celebrating, his mood has changed from that prolonged scowl in the cafe before the murder to dancing and joy after the murder.

“It is utterly callous.”

Speaking in a pooled interview, the family of Ms Whyte said the year since her death has been “hell on earth”, but they remain focused on keeping alive the memory of their quirky and caring loved one who “would always put everyone else before herself”.

They have also spoken of the heartache of having to break the news of her death to her young son. Ms Whyte’s sister Alex said of the strength shown by her siblings, mother and wider family members: “This is everything that Rhiannon would have ever wanted.

“The strength that we’ve kept as a family, the positivity that is instilled in our children and in her son. We promised her in the hospital we were going to live the way she wanted us to live.”

Speaking to Sky News, Alex said: “Rhiannon had such a quirky personality. You would hear her before you’d see her.

“No matter what her day had been, she always wanted to make everyone else around her happy. She always prioritised family. That was the most important thing to Rhiannon. Obviously, she has a brother and three sisters. And my mum, who was her best friend.”

Rhiannon was a very caring person, according to her sister Alex, who added: “She would always put everyone else before herself, no matter what the situation was.

“She would give you her last pound in her pocket. She would literally take her shirt off her back to give it to you. She has with me. It was raining. I didn’t have a jacket. She gave me her hoodie and she ended up soaked and I was dry.”

Rhiannon’s mother, Siobhan Whyte, described how she pledged to get justice for her daughter, as she lay critically ill in hospital in the days after being stabbed.

Asked what justice would look like after Majek’s conviction for murder, Rhiannon’s mother said she believed he should serve his sentence in the UK, adding: “Life for a life. None of this deportation.

“I’m not against asylum seekers. But he’s taken my daughter away. He doesn’t deserve to be sent back to his own country …. serve his time here, every day of his life.”

Giving her view, Alex went on: “I don’t think there’ll ever be enough justice in the world to replace Rhiannon. How could you ever put a timeline on how long someone should be in jail?

“Whether they get to remain in this country or any other country, Rhiannon’s life is priceless. There is no amount of time that will ever, ever equate to what we’ve lost.”

How Alan Carr went from sweating bag of nerves to Celebrity Traitors evil mastermind

There’s nothing the world loves more than a villain origin story: The Joker, Cruella de Vil – Alan Carr.

Yes, over the past two weeks one of the UK’s sweetest and funniest men has transformed from a sweating bag of nerves into a cunning mastermind, killing off national treasures one by one on Celebrity Traitors – and loving it.

“I’ve got a taste for it now,” he said after popping his best friend singer Paloma Faith in a coffin and caressing her face to kill her off. “Let’s get murdering,” he declared, gleefully, as he struck again.

All it took was one thrill of the kill and Carr got hungry for more, snatching the quill from his accomplices Cat Burns and Jonathan Ross to sign death sentences for The Midnight Club star Ruth Codd, Olympic swimmer Tom Daley, and singer Charlotte Church.

The definition of a smiling assassin; he, in fact, can’t stop himself from breaking into hysterical laughter as he evades detection. “I started stuffing cheese in my mouth to stop myself grinning,” he admitted with a titter after eliminating Church this week.

Carr’s genius truly emerged, though, when he went after Line of Duty star Mark Bonnar, a superfan of the show, who desperately wanted to catch a Traitor. “I’ve got a theory. It’s about you,” said Carr, deflecting back onto the actor. “I’m going to say it at the round table… and I don’t think you’re going to like it,” he warned Bonnar.

And say it he did, successfully convincing the cohort that the group’s most eager detective was, actually, deeply suspicious for throwing himself, too enthusiastically, into every task.

“I’m just bursting with confidence now as a Traitor,” he reflected, looking almost scarily smug and cunning, on leading the Faithfuls astray to banish yet another of their own. “Can you imagine Alan in the first week?” he asked. “I was perspiring, my glasses were steaming up. And look at me last night around the round table. I wanted to get rid of Mark and I got rid of Mark. Not a single bead of sweat.”

At breakfast Carr doubled down. “I actually thought I was gonna get murdered last night because I thought usually when you’re outspoken the Traitors just get rid of you,” he said as he buttered his toast.

When Calendar Girls star Celia Imrie called him out for being “much cleverer” than he lets on, the comedian clapped back: “You’re saying I play dumb?” to which rugby player Joe Marler quipped, “You don’t play dumb.” Thus falling once more into Carr’s masterful aren’t-I-so-silly trap.

Still, there are some cracks beginning to show as Carr gains confidence. He is, perhaps, getting a little cocky. In an act of true carelessness the comedian forgot he had a shield protecting him from harm and declared at the round table he was “scared” he may be killed next.

When the mess-up was highlighted by Marler later, comic Lucy Beaumont correctly concluded: “It’s not important to him. You don’t forget you’ve got a shield.”

And where was Carr as this post round table debrief occurred? Huddled in a happy corner of the Traitors castle with new “best friend” Celia Imrie drinking rosé and holding hands. “Please, you’re safe with me, I just get the giggles,” he told her as she asked if he was a Traitor for the first time in the competition. “I would die if you are,” she said, as she swigged her wine – and judging by Carr’s merry lack of loyalty, she may well be right.

Lily Allen’s West End Girl is a brutal, tell-all masterpiece

There is one question in my mind as I listen to Lily Allen’s West End Girl for the first time: how many people – lawyers, friends, that tremulous voice of self-preservation at four in the morning – told her to reconsider releasing this divorce album? It’s not just confessional pop, it’s obliterative; an emotional post-mortem carried out in public, a death-by-a-million-cuts account of a thoroughly modern marriage breakdown. According to the album’s press release, it’s part fact, part fiction, and it’s impossible to know where one ends and the other begins. Naturally, listeners will focus entirely on the context – her already public, acrimonious divorce from actor David Harbour – and, given the album’s intense specificity, barely squint for the seams between truth and invention. Whatever happens next is inevitable: the blood feels real, and that’s the point.

Songs about cheating (“I can’t shake the image of her naked/ On top of you and I’m dissociated”), open relationships (“I don’t wanna f*** with anyone else/ Now that’s all you wanna do”) and sex addiction (“hundreds of Trojans, you’re so f***ing broken”) are best experienced raw, on their own terms. Inevitable comparisons to classic heartbreak pop albums written by thirtysomethings will seem wrong. Beyoncé’s Lemonade, after all, is mediated by marital reconciliation; Kacey Musgraves’s Star-Crossed made measured by the lack of betrayal; Adele’s 30 tempered by a few years of reflection. But the bewildered and wounded Allen wrote West End Girl in 10 days. It shows, in the best way.

This musical of deceit and suffering puts her in the starring role, seizing control of her narrative and holding little back. Those distinctive, creamy vocals sound sad and deflated, as if she’s processing in real time. Seven years since her last album, this intense story-driven format lets her sound sharper, smarter, and more clear-eyed than before.

The show opens with the jaunty title track – an unnervingly sunny bit of scene-setting. Allen’s narrator got her happy ever after, moved to New York for him, hesitated, then conceded when he talked her into a house that was too expensive. But all is not well. In real life, Allen starred in 2:22: A Ghost Story, playing a woman who suspects her new home, bought with her husband, is haunted. The irony is acute: art imitating life, or perhaps life catching up with art. Allen misses nothing, which is part of the problem for her narrator’s marriage.

Across the early, easy-breezy songs, a narrative begins to take shape: the husband proposes an open relationship, and she agrees… reluctantly. “I tried to be your modern wife/ But the child in me protests,” could be the finest lyric in pop this year, lamented through Auto-Tune over a mournful dubstep beat. The humour grows darker as he takes liberties with the rules of their arrangement. On “Tennis” Allen repeatedly demands, “Who the f***’s Madeline?” over Stepford Wives–style “dinner’s ready” production. Madeline – the “Becky with the good hair” of West End Girl – doesn’t escape unscathed. The next track, named after the pseudonym under which she’s saved in the husband’s phone, is a flamenco-meets-spaghetti-western showdown: a direct address, an interrogation over text, gunshots echoing behind each plea for truth. A Valley Girl voice cuts in, assuring Allen it’s “only sex” and signing off with a cloying “love and light”.

Sitting squarely at the heart of the album – track seven of 14 – “Pussy Palace” serves as the point of no return. Allen describes throwing her husband out of their marital home in New York, sending him to his separate West Village apartment. When she goes there to drop something off, she’d assumed it was a dojo (one of many eyebrow-raising moments, considering Harbour is trained in jiu-jitsu). Instead, she discovers what she says is his base for frequent sex. “So am I looking at a sex addict (sex addict, sex addict, sex addict)?” she asks, her voice hollow.

The listener has barely recovered when, over the old-Hollywood strings and delicate finger-plucking of the following ballad, “Just Enough”, Allen wonders whether her husband has fathered a child with someone else. Again and again, she pecks at herself in songs where she feels too old, too exhausted to be desirable. She even books a facelift in her late thirties to win his love (“I just want to meet your needs/ And for some reason I revert to people pleasing,” she admits breathily on “Nonmonogamummy”).

Allen has said she drew from personal experience to write songs that feel universal, though that relatability only really lands in the final two tracks – and they’re two of her best. On the quietly triumphant“Let You W-in,” she lays out the album’s aim: “I can walk out with my dignity if I lay my truth out on the table.” What’s eerily universal is how easy it is, in love, to drown in someone else’s shame and mistake it for your own. On the bittersweet closing ballad “Fruityloop”, she serves herself a slice of responsibility: “I’m just a little girl/ Looking for her daddy.”

After two albums that defined mid-2000s British pop, Allen lost her grip on the pop star version of herself that once felt effortless. Sheezus and No Shame had the same attitude but lacked focus. The pain of this real-life breakup has given her something solid to attack with all her might, and West End Girl feels like the clarity she’s been writing toward for years. In 2025, Allen sounds newly alive in the contradictions we loved her for: acid-tongued and soft-hearted, ironic and sincere, broken again but alright, still.

Jackie Kennedy’s grandson slams Trump for paving over her garden

Jackie Kennedy’s grandson has torn into Donald Trump over his decision to bulldoze her Rose Garden at the White House.

Jack Schlossberg said in a fiery post on Instagram that the president had “poured concrete” on the White House’s historic lawn. The political commentator accused Trump of seeing America in “black and white,” unlike the former First Lady.

“My grandmother saw America in full color — Trump sees black and white. Where she planted flowers, he poured concrete,” he wrote. “She brought life to the White House, because our landmarks should inspire and grow with our country.

“Her Rose Garden is gone, but the spirit of the Kennedy White House lives on — in the young at heart, the strong in spirit, and in a new generation answering the call to service.”

He included in the post a picture of John F. Kennedy Jr as a child, dressed in a pale blue suit and marvelling at his mother’s garden. The other picture he included showed the lawn being carved up and resurfaced to create Trump’s “Rose Garden Club.”

Schlossberg’s post comes as the President pushes ahead with plans to remake the White House in his own image.

After bulldozing and paving over Kennedy’s Rose Garden, Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House in an effort to make space for his $300m ballroom. The 90,000 sq ft entertainment space will dwarf the White House, which is 55,000 sq ft, in size.

However, according to Reuters, Trump still needs to submit his plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, the body that approves construction projects at the White House, despite having already blitzed the East Wing.

Now, Schlossberg, who rocketed to fame with his off-the-wall social media posts, is calling on Americans to use their votes to “stop” Trump at the midterms.

“A year from now, we’ll get our last chance to stop Trump,” he wrote. “History is watching. We need leaders with courage, conviction and who actually care.”

Trump has previously expressed concern about his party’s prospects in the midterms, telling One America News Network that “the person that wins the presidency always seems to lose the midterms.”

Although this is often true, the Democrats bucked the trend in 2022, while Joe Biden was in office, by retaining control of the Senate and only narrowly losing the House.

Early polls have put the Democrats slightly ahead for the 2026 midterms, with a major survey by YouGov/The Economist, conducted in August, suggesting that 43.7 percent of voters plan to cast their ballots for the Democratic Party.

Conversely, 38.4 percent of people plan to vote for the Republicans, although that number plunges to 26 percent when independents are included in the poll.

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Key witness removed word ‘enemy’ from evidence over China spy case as spotlight turns on Rishi Sunak

The description of China as an “enemy” was removed from the final draft of a witness statement in relation to a spying case that collapsed in September because it did not reflect government policy at the time.

Drafts of a witness statement provided to deputy national security adviser Matt Collins in late 2023 “included the term ‘enemy’ but he removed this term from the final draft as it did not reflect government policy”, according to a letter to MPs published on Friday.

The Conservatives were in power at the time.

The note to the joint committee on national security strategy – from Mr Collins and national security adviser Jonathan Powell – laid out that a final draft of Collins’ statement was sent to then prime ministerRishi Sunak in December 2023.

Sir Keir Starmer and the Tories have faced questions over the collapse of the case against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, and the UK’s relationship with Beijing.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has also come under pressure to provide an explanation about why the case was abandoned. The body dropped the charges, issued under the Official Secrets Act, against Mr Cash and Mr Berry in September, a month before a trial was due to take place.

The pair have both denied the accusation of spying for China.

Prosecutors have blamed insufficient evidence being provided by the government that Beijing represented a threat to the UK at the time of the alleged offences.

According to the letter released on Friday, “drafts of a statement provided to DNSA included the term ‘enemy’ but he removed this term from the final draft as it did not reflect government policy.”

Two government ministers have been summoned to a hearing on the collapse of the case next week.

The joint committee on national security strategy has asked the prime minister’s chief secretary, Darren Jones, and attorney general, Richard Hermer, to give evidence to their inquiry on 28 October.

Earlier this week, a Home Office minister told the Tories to “stop throwing mud” at the government over the matter, as he insisted the government did not interfere in the case.

Addressing MPs on Monday, security minister Dan Jarvis said: “There is nothing that the prime minister or any other minister could have done at that point, and would have changed what the law and what the policy was under the previous government between 2021 and 2023.

“Ultimately, it was an entirely independent decision by the CPS to discontinue the case and they have confirmed that they came under no outside pressure to do so.”

Nato scrambles fighter jets after Russian planes violate Lithuania’s airspace in ‘blatant breach’

Nato has been forced to scramble jets in response to Russian violations of Lithuania’s airspace.

Two Russian military aircraft, an Su-30 fighter jet and an II-78 refuelling tanker, flew over the Nato member state on Thursday for approximately 18 seconds, prompting a formal reaction from the alliance. They were possibly on a refuelling training mission when they flew 700m (0.43 miles) at 1500 GMT, the military said.

“I strongly condemn the violation of Lithuanian airspace by the fighter jet and transport plane of the Russian Federation from a Kaliningrad region site,” Lithuanian president Gitanas Nauseda said in a statement.

“This is a blatant breach of international law and territorial integrity of Lithuania,” he added on X. “Once again, it confirms the importance of strengthening European air defence readiness.”

Russia’s defence ministry has denied the incident and said none of its Su-30 jets training in the Kaliningrad region violated the territory of any country. The Russian province is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

Nato’s Baltic Air Policing scrambled Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon jets that were patrolling the area in response. It deployed aircraft to the Lithuanian airbase of Siauliai as part of its Operation Eastern Sentry.

A Nato official said that the swift response demonstrated its “readiness to respond to any developments and ability to ensure the safety of the alliance’s airspace”.

Lithuania summoned Russia’s top diplomat to issue a stern protest after the incident. It has informed the alliance, European Union allies and the North Atlantic Council of the episode, the country’s foreign ministry said.

“This incident once again shows that Russia is behaving like a terrorist state, disregarding international law and the security of neighbouring countries,” Lithuanian prime minister Inga Ruginiene said on Facebook.

“Lithuania is safe. Together with our allies, we look after and will defend every centimetre of our country.”

The latest incursion follows a spate of similar events, starting with more than 20 Russian drones entering Poland last month, prompting its foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, to request that a no-fly zone be implemented.

Former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of Nato, General Sir Richard Shirreff, told The Independent that he believes the incursion was a “deliberate attack to probe Nato defences”, adding that if Russia “smells weakness” it will persist in its aggression: “Nato has to respond with real strength.”

Nine days later, Russia’s military jets were accused of violating Estonia’s airspace for 12 minutes on 19 September. Russia denied its planes entered the country and accused Estonia of purposefully inflaming tensions between Russia and Europe.

Violations were also alleged to have taken place in Romania, as training drills got underway in Belarus. Denmark later accused Russia of encroaching on its airspace, which Russia has denied.