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Breakdown shows Washington now prioritises its own interests over any semblance of shared economic ground‘No more!!!’: Trump lashes out after US-Canada talks devolve into trade warThe calamitous collapse of trade negotiations between Canada and the United States is a warning to nations worldwide that pursuing any kind of dialogue with the current US administration is doomed at the outset, according to observers who say this recent episode indicates seeking a fair deal is futile.Andrea Lawlor, an associate professor of political science at McMaster University in Ontario, said: “No matter the closeness of the historical relationship, the American administration has signalled that it now prioritises its interests above those of some sort of global economic coordination or harmony. Continue reading...

Mexico’s Sinaloa governor has reversed his return to office after one day, bowing to party opposition over U.S. drug trafficking charges

Onlookers were left stunned Sunday as new details emerged regarding the now-collapsed U.S.-Canada trade negotiations, details that include a series of extraordinary demands from the Trump administration.Trade talks between Washington and Ottawa fell through Friday, leading both nations to vow to impose tariffs on each other. President Donald Trump imposed a 50% tariff on a number of Canadian goods, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney vowed to match those tariffs “dollar for dollar.”As to why the talks fell through, a number of news outlets, along with Carney himself, have since revealed a series of “last-minute” demands proposed by the Trump administration that critics argued "encroached on Canadian sovereignty.”Carney claimed that Trump demanded “Canada change its French language.” Carney also claimed that the Trump administration “introduced language in the final hours of negotiations that would have restricted Canada’s ability to make trade deals with other countries,” the Associated Press reported Sunday.Accepting such terms, Carney said, would have reduced Canada to “the economic equivalent of the 51st state.”Luis Moreno, the former U.S. ambassador to Jamaica, called the Trump administration’s demands “utter and total insanity.” Arnaud Bertrand, a notable entrepreneur, described the Trump administration’s demands as “insane,” and called them “de-facto annexation.”Canadian physician and health commentator Kashif Pirzada also expressed shock, calling the Trump administration’s demands “basically colonization through the back door,” and author and military researcher Chris Owen argued there was no scenario in which Canada would even entertain such demands.“The US wanted Canada to automatically mirror US tariffs and break its own existing trade deals with its partners – in effect running Ottawa's trade policy from Washington,” Owen wrote Sunday in a social media post on X. “No country could have accepted that.”Utter and total insanity. WOW. https://t.co/NctaFqiEFV— Luis Moreno (@LuisMorenolg) August 23, 2026

Incident marks apparent escalation by Tehran in its in retaliation against UK over allowing US to use British basesHackers 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, which said that at no point was there a risk to the wider energy system. Continue reading...

Agreement is among largest third-country deportations driven by Trump administration’s immigration crackdown Twenty deportees from the United States arrived in Liberia on Thursday, as part of a new agreement that will see the west African country receive as many as 1,200 people under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.The group arrived at the Roberts international airport outside the capital, Monrovia. The Liberia-US agreement is one of the largest third-country deportation arrangements pursued by the administration since Trump returned to office last year. Continue reading...

A vape distributor accused of illegally peddling nicotine products to kids has found a champion in Washington, D.C., a former ally of President Donald Trump's who is raking in millions as a lobbyist.His name is Roger Stone. Mother Jones reported Thursday that Stone has earned more than $4 million as a lobbyist for firms such as vape-distributor Ecto World under the new administration."Trump’s return to the White House has been a tremendous boon to Stone, who not long ago was claiming he had been nearly bankrupted by legal fees," Mother Jones reported. The report describes him as a "conspiracy theorist and political provocateur who was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering in the Trump–Russia investigation, sentenced to 40 months in prison, and subsequently pardoned by Trump."Stone’s lobbying firm Drake Ventures has signed up a slew of clients that include the cryptocurrency investor “Bitcoin Jesus,” indicted last year on federal fraud charges, and the military junta in Myanmar, reportedly paying Stone $50,000 a month.Crimes against humanity have spiked in the Junta since the military takeover in 2021, the report notes. As for Ecto World, it stands accused in New York of trying to get people hooked on nicotine. "New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued Ecto World and other vape companies for illegally distributing, marketing, and selling addictive candy- and fruit-flavored disposable nicotine products," the report states, "many produced in China, targeting sales to children and fueling the youth vaping epidemic."

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was presented a real head-scratcher on Thursday, he admitted at a press conference. "We've got a spike in oil prices today that I don't really understand," Bessent said during a White House address.Bessent made this bold claim as the international price benchmark for oil rose 2.4 percent to reach $93.78 per barrel just before noon, Thursday, according to CNBC. Oil prices reached their highest level in more than three weeks earlier this week after Iran pledged the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed, Reuters reported on Tuesday. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to threaten that he would announce the “MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY!”When Politico's Dasha Burns requested comment on the threat from a source inside the White House, she was told that Trump has decided to move away from military escalation and toward economic pressure."That means Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is more involved in the war than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at this point," Burns explained. Yet, despite his position of power as both a war advisor and the leader of the department that balances (or tries to) the budget of the U.S. government, Bessent admitted he couldn't understand how continuing hostilities against a country that controls the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's primary waterway passages for the oil trade, would cause oil prices remain high.This left viewers scratching their heads, too. "Feels like it’s his job to know," replied political commentator Chris Robinson, "but I understand Bessent is just a humble soybean farmer who’s estimated worth is half a billion dollars,."Another political commentator, Jim Stewartson argued that it was a question of intelligence."In addition to being an amoral greedmonster, " he wrote, "Scott Bessent is unbearably dumb."But HFI Research, whose substack on energy policy reaches roughly 19,000 readers, argued it was a question of honesty, writing, "If you are going to lie, at least try."

Donald Trump's ballroom ambitions are running into trouble on two continents — and in Ireland, the obstacle is a snail.According to The Washington Post, Trump and his family have promised to build "the nicest ballroom in Ireland" at the Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg, a 12,000-square-foot hall seating 320 guests.However, unlike the fight in Washington, the roughly 300 residents of Doonbeg largely support the project. But the endangered Vertigo angustior snail, which lives in the resort's dunes, has long complicated development there. In February, planners approved the ballroom on the condition the Trumps submit a snail restoration plan.Days later, Liam Madden — a self-described "serial objector" known for derailing developments across Ireland, and who once helped kill a Trump seawall proposal at the same resort in 2020 — stepped into the breach and filed an appeal alongside Friends of the Irish Environment, which has disrupted the massive build-out."If there is a God in heaven," Madden said in July, "I will win the planning appeals and capitalize on it for notoriety." According to the Post, "He returned to the snail — this time focused on helicopters. The Trump Organization, a promotional video indicated, allows guests to be ferried in and out by helicopter. In materials published online, an aviation company, Executive Helicopters, said it has two 'heli landings' at the resort, one by the hotel and one on the golf course. To Madden, this was a 'fatal error': The Trump Organization neither mentioned the helicopters nor sought to measure their ecological impact. The ballroom proposal thus was 'tainted at law and beyond remedy,' he wrote."Geraint Ellis, an Irish planning law expert who reviewed Madden's appeal for the Post, agreed and said the activist "seems to have found some issues that are worthy of further scrutiny."Ireland's national appellate board is expected to rule by year's end, the Post is reporting.Meanwhile in Washington, the $900 million White House ballroom — complete with gold-colored presidential seals — is already under construction despite a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling this month calling the project "utterly lawless" for bypassing legally required reviews.