Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney is likely to call a national election for 28 April, potentially as soon as this Sunday, multiple news outlets report.

With Canada’s businesses reeling from a trade dispute with the US, Carney – a former two-time central banker – is expected to pitch himself as the candidate best equipped to take on Donald Trump.

The 60-year-old political newcomer took over as leader of the Liberal Party after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped down from his nine-year term.

The prime minister’s announcement to call an election and request the dissolution of Parliament will kick off a five-week campaign for Carney and his political opponents.

While the timing of the request to dissolve parliament is clear – the exact election date is not.

The prime minister is leaning towards setting April 28 as the voting date, the Globe and Mail and the Associated Press reported on Thursday, citing sources in the government.

Some suggest a shorter campaign could work in Carney’s favour, since much of the current national discourse revolves around the ongoing trade war between the US and Canada, particularly after President Trump’s threats and actions.

The election is “almost certain to focus on US President Donald Trump’s trade war and his talk of making Canada the 51st state”, The Globe and Mail wrote.

Carney has promised to uphold Canada’s reciprocal tariffs, if Trump maintains 25% universal tariffs on Canadian goods not covered by the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) trade deal.

Trump has vowed to impose a sweeping range of tariffs on 2 April on top of the 25% tariffs already imposed on Canada’s steel and aluminium.

The race will likely come down to a choice between Carney and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

Before the threat of tariffs, Conservatives enjoyed a 20-point lead in some election polls. Now polls are indicating a much closer race.

When Canadians next go to the polls, the Liberals will face not only the Conservatives – who are the official opposition with 120 seats in the House of Commons – but also the Bloc Quebecois, who have 33 seats, and the New Democrats (NDP), who have 24.

Iceland’s minister for children has resigned after admitting she had a child with a teenager more than 30 years ago.

Ásthildur Lóa Thórsdóttir said in a media interview she had first started a relationship when the boy was 15 years old, and she was a 22-year-old counsellor at a religious group which he attended.

She then gave birth to his child when he was 16 years old and she was 23.

“It’s been 36 years, a lot of things change in that time and I would definitely have dealt with these issues differently today,” the 58-year-old told Icelandic media.

Iceland’s prime minister, Kristrún Frostadóttir, told the press this was “a serious matter”, although she said she knew little more than “the average person”.

“This is a very personal matter [and] out of respect for the person concerned, I will not comment on the substance,” she said.

According to Visir newspaper, Frostadóttir said she had only received confirmation of the story on Thursday night.

She immediately summoned the children’s minister to her office, where she resigned.

Icelandic news agency RUV broke the story on Thursday night.

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Thórsdóttir revealed in an interview with them that she had met the father, who RUV name as Eirík Ásmundsson, while she was working at the religious group Trú og líf (Religion and Life), which he had reportedly joined because of a difficult home life.

He was 15 years old and she was 22 at the time of their meeting. Thórsdóttir gave birth to their son when they were both a year older.

RUV report that the relationship was secret, but that Ásmundsson was present at his child’s birth and spent the first year with him.

However, the news agency writes this changed when Thórsdóttir met her current husband.

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They report they have seen documents Ásmundsson submitted to Iceland’s justice ministry requesting access to his son, but that Thórsdóttir denied it, while also requesting – and receiving – child support payments from him over the following 18 years.

A relative of Ásmundsson tried twice to contact the Icelandic prime minister about the relationship last week.

Frostadóttir said last night that when the woman revealed it involved a government minister she asked for more information, which led to the revelation and the resignation.

In her TV interview with RUV last night, Thórsdóttir said she was upset that the woman had contacted the prime minister.

“I understand… what it looks like,” she said, adding that it is “very difficult to get the right story across in the news today”.

While the age of consent in Iceland is 15, it is illegal to have sex with a person under the age of 18 if you are their teacher or mentor, if they are financially dependent on you, or work for you. The maximum sentence for this crime is three years in jail.

Despite resigning from her ministerial job, Thórsdottir said she had no plans to leave parliament.

Israel defence minister has told the military to “seize additional areas in Gaza” and threatened to permanently occupy parts of it, if Hamas does not free all remaining hostages.

Israel Katz said that the military would continue its ground operation in Gaza “with increasing intensity” until all of the hostages “both living and dead” were returned.

It is thought 24 of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza are alive, but their fate remains in the balance after negotiations on the second phase of the ceasefire deal failed to progress.

The fragile ceasefire that had been in place since January ended this week as Israel resumed its ground campaign and bombing of Gaza, killing hundreds of people.

Israel has accused Hamas of rejecting proposals to extend the ceasefire. Hamas has said it is “engaging with the mediators with full responsibility and seriousness”.

However, Katz said in a statement on Friday that “the more Hamas continues its refusal, the more territory it will lose to Israel“.

Katz added that Israel still agreed to a proposal, which was brought by US envoy Steve Witkoff, “to release all the kidnapped, both living and dead, in advance and in two stages with a ceasefire in between”.

“We will intensify the fighting with strikes from the air, sea and land and by expanding the ground manoeuvre until the hostages are released and Hamas is defeated,” Katz wrote.

The defence minister also said Israel would “implement US President Trump’s voluntary transfer plan for Gaza residents”.

Trump said he wants the US to take over and rebuild the Gaza Strip, while permanently removing its population of two million Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas have said Gaza is “not for sale”, while the UN warned that any forced displacement of civilians from occupied territory is strictly prohibited under international law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.

Months of negotiations, led by the US, Qatar and Egypt, saw a ceasefire deal proposed in three stages. Israel and Hamas failed to agree on how to take the truce beyond the first phase.

The plan stalled when the US and Israel proposed to extend stage one. Hamas rejected the change and said it was a “blatant attempt” by Israel “to evade the agreement”.

The ceasefire was broken on Tuesday when Israel launched a heavy wave of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, killing more than 430 people in two days, the Hamas-run health ministry said. On Thursday, Hamas launched three rockets at Tel Aviv.

Blaming Hamas for the resumption of violence, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said the group had “rejected every hostage deal”.

Israel says Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to still be alive.

Hamas has denied it is responsible for stalling the negotiations, and said it “remains deeply involved” and is “engaging with the mediators with full responsibility and seriousness”.

In a statement on Telegram, Hamas wrote it is discussing “the Witkoff proposal and other different ideas put forward, all with the goal of securing a prisoner exchange deal that ensures the release of prisoners, ends the war, and achieves a withdrawal” [of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip].

In his statement, Katz also said that civilians would be evacuated from the areas the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are targeting.

Previous evacuation orders have sent panic through Palestinians families, many of whom have been displaced repeatedly by the war and have few safe options left.

Israel blocked all food, fuel and medical supplies entering Gaza at the beginning of March in order to put pressure on Hamas. It accused Hamas of commandeering the provisions as part of its strategy against Israel, though did not provide evidence for this claim.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

More than 49,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since then, the Hamas-run health ministry says, and there is large-scale destruction to homes and infrastructure in the Strip.

Israel’s Supreme Court has issued an injunction to prevent the head of the nation’s security service from being fired by Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli cabinet formally approved the early dismissal of Ronen Bar on Thursday night, over the failure to anticipate the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas.

Netanyahu, the prime minister, said in a video statement last week that he intended to sack Mr Bar, citing an “ongoing distrust” between the two that had “grown over time”.

On Friday, the Supreme Court froze the dismissal until a hearing could be heard on the matter no later than 8 April, according to documents cited in Israeli media.

Ronen Bar was appointed in October 2021 for a five-year term as the chief of the Shin Bet – Israel’s domestic intelligence agency.

His sacking would be the first time in Israel’s history that a government has fired the Shin Bet’s leader.

Netanyahu’s plan to dismiss him sparked outrage and further inflamed anti-government demonstrations in Jerusalem, which saw thousands of Israelis join forces with protestors opposing Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza.

A letter sent by Netanyahu to members of his government before the meeting on Thursday referenced a “persistent loss of professional and personal trust” between the prime minister and Bar, and proposed his term end on 20 April.

“The loss of professional trust has been consolidated during the war, beyond the operational failure of 7 October [2023], and in particular in recent months,” it said, referring to the Hamas attacks on Israel which sparked the Israel-Gaza war.

The Shin Bet is Israel’s domestic intelligence agency and plays a key role in the war. Its activities and membership are closely-held state secrets.

However, Bar has characterised the decision to remove him as politically motivated.

The Times of Israel said that he did not attend the cabinet vote, but sent a letter saying that firing him was “entirely tainted by conflicts of interest” as the Shin Bet investigates the prime minister’s office over allegations of “Qatar’s involvement in the heart of Israeli decision-making”.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara late last month ordered the police and the Shin Bet to investigate officials within Netanyahu’s office over alleged financial ties to Qatar. A gag order has since been issued on all information relating to the investigation. Netanyahu’s Likud Party denies all allegations.

Baharav-Miara – a vocal critic of Netanyahu who is herself facing dismissal proceedings – argued that Bar could not be fired until the legality of the move had been assessed.

The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, an NGO, said it had launched an appeal against the “illegal decision […] posing a real risk to national security”.

Yesh Atid, the centre-right party led by Yair Lapid, said it had filed an appeal on behalf of several opposition parties and denounced the sacking as a “decision taken due to a blatant conflict of interest by the prime minister”.

Israel launched its war in Gaza after Hamas invaded southern Israel on 7 October, 2023, killed around 1,200 people and took 251 hostage.

More than 48,500 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

Israel ended a months-long ceasefire earlier this week and resumed its attacks on Gaza. More than 400 people were killed in the first night of bombing, according to the health ministry.

Large crowds of Israelis have protested over the resumption of the war and Netanyahu’s moves to sack Bar.

Israel and Hamas failed to agree how to take the ceasefire beyond the first phase, with negotiations expected to have started six weeks ago.

Hamas did not agree to a renegotiation of the ceasefire on Israel’s terms, although it did offer to release a living American hostage (and four bodies), to extend the current arrangement.

Israel blocked all food, fuel and medical supplies entering Gaza at the beginning of March in order to put pressure on Hamas.

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President Donald Trump has accused a federal judge of attempting to usurp White House authority after he dismissed a government court filing on migrant deportation flights as “woefully insufficient”.

Judge James Boasberg, the top federal judge in Washington DC, said the government had “evaded its obligations” to answer his questions about how alleged Venezuelan gang members were flown to an El Salvador mega-prison last weekend.

Trump earlier this week called for Judge Boasberg to be impeached, labelling him a “troublemaker and agitator”, although he did not name him in that social media post.

Those remarks had led to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr issuing a rare rebuke, saying impeachment is “not an appropriate response to disagreement” with a judge.

Judge Boasberg had asked the government last Saturday to halt the deportation flights, but the White House said it was too late.

On Thursday, government attorneys provided a six-paragraph declaration from an immigration official, but the judge said they did not supply the flight information he had requested.

In response, Judge Boasberg gave justice department lawyers a new deadline to submit the requested information. He also accused the Trump administration of continuing to withhold information from the court.

Trump hit back at the judge in a Truth Social post later on Thursday.

“Judge James Boasberg is doing everything in his power to usurp the Power of the Presidency,” he wrote.

“He is a local, unknown Judge, a Grandstander, looking for publicity, and it cannot be for any other reason, because his “Rulings” are so ridiculous, and inept. SAVE AMERICA!”

In another Truth Social post, Trump called for a stop to “nationwide injunctions” against his administration’s policies, calling such court rulings “unlawful”.

He also said “our country is in very serious trouble”, urging Chief Justice Roberts and others on the Supreme Court to “fix this toxic and unprecedented situation immediately”.

In the Venezuelan migrants deportation case, government lawyers submitted a six-paragraph declaration from an immigration official.

They also told the court they needed another day to consider whether to invoke a state secrets clause that allows federal authorities to withhold sensitive national security information in lawsuits.

But Judge Boasberg was not satisfied.

“To begin, the Government cannot proffer a regional ICE official to attest to Cabinet-level discussions of the state-secrets privilege,” he wrote.

The judge initially gave a deadline of Wednesday, before extending it to Thursday. Now he has given the Trump administration until Friday morning to provide a sworn declaration from a cabinet-level official.

Judge Boasberg will also hold a previously scheduled hearing on Friday about Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

The president last weekend cited the 18th Century measure to deport more than 200 Venezuelans, alleging almost all were members of the gang Tren de Aragua.

But an immigration attorney working on behalf of one of the deported men told a court on Thursday that her client was a professional soccer player in Venezuela without a criminal record, CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, reported.

The man, Jerce Reyes Barrios, had applied for asylum to escape political persecution, his attorney argued, saying that he was falsely accused of being connected to Tren de Aragua because of a tattoo on his arm.

The attorney said the tattoo honoured the football team Real Madrid.

The flights – which Mr Barrios and others were aboard – were halted by Judge Boasberg verbally over the weekend. Any flights currently in the air were to be turned back.

But the White House said the planes were already in international airspace, arguing that the judge’s order was therefore invalid.

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US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, fulfilling a campaign pledge and a long-cherished goal of some conservatives.

Accusing the agency of “breath-taking failures”, the Republican president vowed to return the money it controls to individual states.

“We’re going to shut it down as quickly as possible,” Trump said, although the White House acknowledged that closing the agency outright would require an act of Congress.

The move is already facing legal challenges from those seeking to block the agency’s closure as well as sweeping cuts to its staff announced last week.

Most US children attend public schools, which are free and run by local officials.

A common misconception is that the federal education department operates US schools and sets curriculum, but that is primarily done by states and local districts.

A relatively small percentage of funding for primary and secondary schools – about 13% – comes from federal funds. Most of the money comes from state and local taxes.

Established in 1979, the department administers student loans and runs programmes to help low-income students.

But Trump has accused it of indoctrinating young people with racial, sexual, and political material.

Surrounded by children seated at school desks in the White House on Thursday, Trump said “the US spends more money on education by far than any other country”, yet he added that students rank near the bottom of the list.

The Unesco Institute for Statistics said the US spends roughly 5.4% of its GDP on education, which is higher than many countries but not all.

The department’s budget last year was $238bn (£188bn), which is less than 2% of federal spending.

The White House stated that his administration would move to cut parts of the department that remain within legal boundaries.

The executive order is likely to face legal challenges, like many of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal government.

At the signing ceremony, Trump praised Linda McMahon, whom he appointed to lead the department, and expressed his hope she would be the last secretary of education.

He said he would find “something else” for her to do within the administration.

After Trump signed the order, Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy announced plans to bring legislationaimed at closing the department.

But Republicans hold a slim 53-47 majority in the Senate, and closing a federal department would require 60 votes, making such a goal a longshot.

But even if the department is not formally closed, the Trump administration could decimate its funding and staff as it has done with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which subsequently stopped many of its programmes and humanitarian work.

The text of the executive order does not include specifics on what actions the administration will take and which programmes might be axed.

It orders McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of the department and give authority of such matters to state and local governments.

It also directs her to ensure “the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely”.

Soon after she was sworn in, McMahon sent the department’s 4,400 employees a memo titled “Our Department’s Final Mission”, a possible reference to Trump’s aim to close it.

“This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students,” she wrote.

“I hope you will join me in ensuring that when our final mission is complete; we will be able to say that we left American education freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future.”

Earlier reports suggested Trump would look to end some of the department’s programmes and send others to different departments, such as the Treasury, something that still may happen but wasn’t made clear in his executive order.

America’s largest teachers’ union recently decried Trump’s plans, saying he “doesn’t care about opportunity for all kids”.

In its statement, the American Federation of Teachers said: “No-one likes bureaucracy, and everyone’s in favour of more efficiency, so let’s find ways to accomplish that.

“But don’t use a ‘war on woke’ to attack the children living in poverty and the children with disabilities.”

For more than 40 years, conservatives have complained about the department and floated ideas to abolish it.

Just two years after it was established by Democratic President Jimmy Carter, his Republican replacement, Ronald Reagan, led calls to undo it.

It is the smallest agency in the president’s cabinet and takes up less than 2% of the total federal budget.

Some of those staff have already been affected by the Trump administration’s sweeping workforce cuts, led by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

Nearly 2,100 people at the agency are set to be placed on leave from Friday.

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