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Canadians “weren’t impressed” by the decision of the UK government to offer Donald Trump an unprecedented second state visit to the UK, the country’s prime minister has told Sky News.

Sir Keir Starmer handed the invitation to the US president during a visit to the Oval Office.

The newly elected Liberal leader Mark Carney said that the invitation “cut across clear messages” that the Canadian government was trying to send to the White House in response to their threats against Canada’s sovereignty.

“I think, to be frank, they [Canadians] weren’t impressed by that gesture… given the circumstance. It was at a time when we were being quite clear about the issues around sovereignty.”

Explained: Who is Mark Carney?

It comes as the Canadian prime minister has invited the King, who is Canada’s head of state, to open its parliament later this month in a “clear message of sovereignty”.

It is the first time the sovereign has carried out this function in nearly 50 years and Mr Carney says it’s “not coincidental”.

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“All issues around Canada’s sovereignty have been accentuated by the president. So no, it’s not coincidental, but it is also a reaffirming moment for Canadians.”

The former Bank of England governor was re-elected after a campaign fought on the promise of standing up to American threats to Canadian statehood. He had refused to speak to Mr Trump until Canadian sovereignty was respected.

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Trump and Carney’s ‘awkward meeting’ analysed

It followed Mr Trump threatening to make Canada the 51st state of the US.

Mr Carney justified making his first foreign trip as prime minister to the White House by stating Mr Trump had changed his intentions to annex Canada from an “expectation to a desire”.

“He was expressing a desire. He’d shifted from the expectation to a desire. He was also coming from a place where he recognised that that wasn’t going to happen.

“Does he still muse about it? Perhaps. Is it ever going to happen? No. Never.”

The high-stakes meeting in the Oval Office was not confrontational, with Mr Carney praising the president’s approach as “very on top of the essence of a wide range of issues” and “able to identify the points of maximum leverage, both in a specific situation but also in a geopolitical situation”.

A King’s tension between allies


Photo of Samantha Washington

Samantha Washington

Fractured geopolitical relations have produced an interesting phenomenon: two Commonwealth nations both deploying their head of state, King Charles, to manage the vagaries of Donald Trump.

For Canada, and its new prime minister, Mark Carney, the King is being unveiled at the opening of Parliament in Ottawa later this month as an unequivocal spectacle and symbol of sovereignty.

For the UK, Sir Keir Starmer is positioning the monarch as a bridge and has proffered a personal invitation from King Charles to the president for an unprecedented second state visit in order to facilitate negotiations over trade and tariffs.

This instrumentalisation of the crown, which ordinarily transcends politics, has created tension between the historically close allies.

Canadians view the UK’s red carpet treatment of a leader who is openly threatening their sovereignty as a violation of Commonwealth solidarity, while the British seem to have no compunction in engaging in high-level realpolitik.

The episode is emblematic of how pervasive disruptive American influence is and how extreme measures taken to combat it can aggravate even the most enduring alliances.

Since the meeting, tensions between the two countries have abated.

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‘President Trump is trying to break us’

Further negotiations on trade and security are expected soon.

Given the deep economic integration of the two nations, neither side expects a deal imminently, but both sides concur that constructive talks have led to progress on an agreement.

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With greater goodwill between the two North American neighbours, Mr Carney also expressed optimism about Mr Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia.

The prime minister confirmed his view that the president was an “honest broker” and that his counterpart had been “helpful” in bringing momentum to a 30-day ceasefire between the warring nations.

Despite a reset in relations between the United States and Canada, Mr Carney remained circumspect.

His motto is: “Always plan for the worst.”

Read more from Sky News:
Trump signs deals in Saudi Arabia – with murder long forgotten
Menendez brothers’ murder sentences reduced

And to that end, nothing is being taken for granted: “We do plan for having no deal, we do plan for trouble in the security relationship. We do plan for the global trading system not being reassembled: that’s the way to approach this president.”

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.

Two men and two women from the Paris region were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.

They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.

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Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded

The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.

Some of the French Crown Jewels, worth an estimated £76m, were stolen in the audacious October raid.

The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.

The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.

On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.

They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.

Read more:
Louvre director offers to resign
Gallery closed as structure in ‘dire state’

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Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist

The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.

Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.

“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.

“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump’s peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump's peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.

It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.

He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”

He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.

Ukraine latest: ‘Delicate’ deal details must be sorted, White House says

By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.

The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.

More on Donald Trump

In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.

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Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know

“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.

Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.

He set a deadline of Thursday – Thanksgiving – for some sort of agreement on his plan.

We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.

Read more:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan

In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal

My sense is that Zelenskyy will try to get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as he can. Before Thursday would be a push but would meet Trump’s deadline.

It will then be left for the Russians to state their position on the revised document.

All indications are that they will reject it. But maybe the secret Abu Dhabi talks will yield something.

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid distribution group, has said it will permanently cease operations.

Set up as an alternative to United Nations aid programmes in May, GHF’s executive director John Acree said on Monday that it “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans”.

The foundation had already closed down aid distribution sites after US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan was agreed by Hamas and Israel in October.

The GHF which began operations in Gaza after an Israeli blockade of food deliveries, lasting nearly three months, was criticised by Palestinians, aid workers and health officials who said it forced people to risk their lives to reach the sites.

File pic: Reuters
Image:
File pic: Reuters

According to witnesses and videos posted to social media, Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire at the sites, killing hundreds. The IDF denied this, saying it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.

In July, analysis from Sky News’ Data and Forensics team found that aid distributions by GHF were associated with a significant increase in deaths.

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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open

MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said in a report in August that the GHF sites “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty,” and described scenes there as “orchestrated killing”.

More on Gaza

‘We are proud,’ says GHF director

Mr Acree said in a statement through the GHF’s website that “from the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need” and to hand over a successful aid operation to “the broader international community”.

The GHF would hand over its work to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.

“We are winding down our operations as we have succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” Mr Acree said.

File pic: Reuters
Image:
File pic: Reuters

The GHF director added: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion.

“From our very first day of operations, our mission was singular: feed civilians in desperate need. We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.”

According to the GHF website, the group distributed more than three million food boxes, totalling 187 million meals, and supplied 1.1 million packs of Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) for malnourished children.

Read more:
Sky’s Adam Parsons sees Gaza destruction
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Israel strikes Beirut for first time in months

Hamas welcomes GHF closure

In a statement, Hamas welcomed the closure of GHF and accused it of being a project that “engineered starvation” in partnership with Israel.

A Hamas spokesperson said: “Since its entry into the Gaza Strip, this foundation was part of the occupation’s security system, which adopted distribution mechanisms entirely disconnected from humanitarian principles, and created dangerous and degrading conditions for the dignity of the starving Palestinian people during their attempts to obtain a piece of bread, resulting in the killing and injury of thousands, through sniper operations and deliberate killing.”

They also called on international legal bodies to hold “this foundation and its officers accountable for their crimes against our people”.

US state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot also said on X that the aid group “shared valuable lessons learned with us and our partners”.

“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” he added.

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