Trudeau to announce temporary GST relief on select items heading into holidays
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will announce a two-month GST relief on select items heading into holidays to address affordability issues, sources confirm to CTV News.
North Korea on Tuesday fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern sea, the South Korean military said, as the country continued its weapons demonstrations hours before the U.S. presidential election.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles flew about 400 kilometres (250 miles) but didn’t specify how many were fired. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said they landed in waters outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone and there were no immediate reports of damage.
The launches came days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a flight test of the country’s newest intercontinental ballistic missile designed to reach the U.S. mainland. In response to that launch, the United States flew a long-range B-1B bomber in a trilateral drill with South Korea and Japan on Sunday in a show of force. That drew condemnation from Kim’s powerful sister, who on Tuesday accused North Korea’s rivals of raising tensions with “aggressive and adventuristic military threats.”
South Korean officials have said that North Korea was likely to dial up its military displays around the U.S. presidential election to command the attention of Washington. South Korea’s military intelligence agency said last week that North Korea has also likely completed preparations for its seventh nuclear test.
Outside officials and analysts say North Korea eventually hopes to use an expanded nuclear arsenal as leverage to win concessions such as sanctions relief after a new U.S. president is elected.
There are widespread views that Kim Jong Un would prefer a win by Republican candidate Donald Trump, with whom he engaged in high-stakes nuclear diplomacy in 2018-19, seeing him as a more likely counterpart to give him what he wants than Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. During campaigning, Harris said she won’t “cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong Un who are rooting for Trump.”
North Korea claimed last week that the Hwasong-19 it tested on Oct. 31 was “the world’s strongest” ICBM, but experts say the solid-fuel missile was too big to be useful in war. Experts say North Korea has yet to acquire some critical technologies to build a functioning ICBM, such as ensuring that the warhead survives the harsh conditions of atmospheric re-entry.
A soldier stands at a North Korean military guard post flying a national flag, seen from Paju, South Korea, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Tensions between the Koreas are at their highest point in years as Kim has repeatedly flaunted his expanding nuclear weapon and missile programs, while reportedly providing Russia with munitions and troops to support President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
On Monday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that as many as 10,000 North Korean soldiers were in Russia’s Kursk region near Ukraine’s border and were preparing to join Moscow’s fight against Ukraine in the coming days. If they engage in combat, it would be North Korea’s first participation in a large-scale conflict since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
After a meeting in Seoul on Monday, senior South Korean and European Union officials expressed concerns about Russia’s possible transfer of technology to North Korea to enhance its nuclear program in exchange for its troops. Such transfers would “jeopardize the international non-proliferation efforts and threaten peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and across the globe,” they said.
In response to North Korea’s growing nuclear threat, South Korea, the United States and Japan have been expanding their combined military exercises and updating their nuclear deterrence plans built around U.S. strategic assets.
Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks to journalists following North Korea's latest missile launches, at his office in Tokyo Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)
North Korea has portrayed the joint military drills by its rivals as rehearsals for an invasion and used them to justify its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and missiles.
At a UN Security Council meeting Monday, North Korea’s ambassador, Kim Song, defended the North's nuclear and ICBM programs as essential for the country’s self-defence and a necessary response to what it perceives as nuclear threats from the United States. He stressed that North Korea would accelerate the build-up of “our nuclear force that can counter any threat presented by hostile nuclear weapon states.”
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood warned that the U.S. cannot stand back from North Korea’s expanding nuclear program and the growing threat to U.S. security “without a response.”
Wood also repeated last week’s call for Russia to say whether there are North Korean troops on the ground in Russia. “We’re not in a court here,” Russian Deputy Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva replied, “and the questions of the United States, in the spirit of an interrogation, is not something I intend to answer.”
__
Associated Press writers Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will announce a two-month GST relief on select items heading into holidays to address affordability issues, sources confirm to CTV News.
A Saint-Sauveur couple was back in court on Wednesday, accused of attacking a teenager over a prank.
Canada's border agency says it has detained about 50 shipments of cargo over suspicions they were products of forced labour under rules introduced in 2020 — but only one was eventually determined to be in breach of the ban.
A 24-year-old woman is learning how to walk again after being shot while lying in her bed in Repentigny, Que.
Judges at the International Criminal Court have issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
A group of researchers say they have more evidence to suggest the COVID-19 pandemic started in a Chinese seafood market where it spread from infected animals to humans. The evidence is laid out in a recent study published in Cell, a scientific journal, nearly five years after the first known COVID-19 outbreak.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has nominated former diplomat and U.S. congressman Pete Hoekstra to be the American ambassador to Canada.
CTV film critic Richard Crouse says the follow-up to Best Picture Oscar winner 'Gladiator' is long on spectacle, but short on soul.
An Alabama prisoner convicted of the 1994 murder of a female hitchhiker is slated Thursday to become the third person executed by nitrogen gas.
After driving near the water that winter day, Brian Lavery thought he saw a dog splashing in the waves – then realized it was way too cold for that.
Toronto radio and podcast host Jax Irwin has recently gone viral for videos of her cute -- and at times confusing -- phone conversations.
Two young women from New Brunswick have won one of the most prestigious and sought-after academic honours in the world.
Stretching 3,000 kilometres from the tip of New Zealand to its southernmost point, with just a bicycle for transport and a tent to call home, bikepacking event Tour Aotearoa is not for the faint of heart.
When he first moved to his urban neighbourhood, Barry Devonald was surprised to be welcomed by a whole flock of new neighbours.
When George Arcioni began renovating his kitchen last summer, he didn’t expect to find a stack of letters hidden in the wall behind his oven.
A Nova Scotia couple fulfilled their wildest dreams Thursday night when they got engaged at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in Toronto.
Some Calgary residents caught what appeared to be a meteor streaking across the sky early on Wednesday morning.
Four years ago, Phill Hebb started up 'Phil’s Unique Birdhouses' and since then, they’ve made their way all across Canada and into the United States.