Donald Trump’s ban on Canadian whisky and other alcoholic drinks took effect Tuesday, cutting off roughly $800 million in alcohol imports from America’s northern neighbor.

The unprecedented blockade marks the latest escalation in a trade war between the United States and one of its closest allies. The dispute has already triggered steep tariffs and prompted Ontario and other Canadian provinces to remove American liquor from store shelves.

Most US drinkers, however, are unlikely to feel the impact immediately. Distributors built up supplies ahead of Trump’s deadline, while whiskey and liqueurs shipped in containers holding more than four liters are not covered by the ban.

Major brands such as Crown Royal may also avoid significant disruption. According to CNN, the company already ships its spirit in bulk across the border and bottles the products sold to American consumers at US facilities.

“It’s really unfortunate our industry has gotten pulled into this,” Chris Swonger, president and CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, told the outlet.

“We American distillers export around the world. We don’t want tariffs applied to our products and we don’t want tariffs applied to our imports. We like to compete by sip and taste, not tariffs.”

In Niagara Falls, New York, a liquor-store manager less than five miles from the Canadian border said the policy had left him both confused and concerned.

“We have a lot of Canadian customers and a lot of Canadian liquor. This is not good for business,” the manager, who spoke anonymously, told CNN. “People have freedom to drink, right?”

Trump dismissed the concerns hours before the restrictions began, insisting that Canadian officials “call us all the time” and would agree to scrap their tariffs within weeks. Carney, Canada’s prime minister, has not publicly relented to Trump’s demands.

The trade conflict began in March 2025, after several Canadian provinces removed American wine and spirits from their shelves in response to Trump’s threatened tariffs. US spirits exports to Canada subsequently fell by 70 percent.

Amid the worsening dispute, Trump responded on September 8 by signing five proclamations targeting Canadian alcohol, dairy products and motorcycles, with the measures taking effect on September 29.

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The US ban began on the same day that Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on $27.6 billion worth of American goods came into force.

The White House accused Canada of discriminating against American commerce and invoked a Depression-era trade law to justify the action. The ban replaces the 50 percent tariffs previously imposed on the targeted goods.

Trade experts have described the move as a sharp break from established policy. Inu Manak of the Peterson Institute for International Economics called an import ban against a US ally “unprecedented and a major deviation from US trade policy.”

Manak said Carney appeared in no hurry to reach an agreement before the US midterm elections. She also noted that Canada imposed its alcohol restrictions only after Trump first threatened tariffs.

Trump is relying on the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, an infamous law from the Great Depression era, to enforce the restrictions.

Swonger, who leads the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, said the industry had been caught in the broader dispute. “We like to compete by sip and taste, not tariffs,” he warned.

Trump’s booze ban is the latest development as US-Canada relations have taken a toxic turn after the president signed an executive order in late August renaming Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’. 

At the start of his second term nearly two years ago, Trump used the same strategy to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

Carney vowed Canadians would call it Lake Ontario ‘now and always,’ while Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared it would stay Lake Ontario to Canadians and the rest of the world.

The move came after trade talks collapsed, and roughly a week after Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on nearly $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.

Canada struck back with matching levies on roughly $20 billion worth of American dairy and seafood, as well as appliances and clothing. 

Presley Gerber, who died at just 27, was only 16 when he walked his first runway at Moschino’s Los Angeles Resort show.

He had signed with IMG Models the previous year and, alongside his sister Kaia Gerber, had already appeared in the 2015 issue of the prestigious CR Fashion Book. In 2016, he also featured in a Calvin Klein campaign.

Looking back at those photographs now, he seems impossibly young—almost a baby.

Yet the modelling industry is no environment for a child.

During my years as a celebrity publicist, I worked with some of the fashion world’s biggest names, including Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Molly Sims and Petra Nemcova. I spent years backstage at runway shows, accompanying models on photo shoots and attending parties with them. The industry’s glamour can be spellbinding and intoxicating—but it can also be deeply dangerous.

At a fashion party in New York in 2010, I watched a world-famous model snap her fingers before a bowl of cocaine appeared, delivered as casually as sugar for coffee.

The bowl circulated around the room. Some women dipped their fingernails into the powder, while others used straws. Most disturbing of all were the young people present, mixing with powerful agents, photographers and wealthy men. The pressure to participate in destructive behaviour was immense.

There was also a disturbing sense of worldly degradation.

In 2005, I was backstage with Naomi at New York City’s Lexington Avenue Armory. Tyra was preparing for her final runway appearance before taking a lengthy retirement, while models changed clothes and stood around barely dressed. Wealthy businessmen moved in and out of the area with astonishing ease.

I frequently saw Jeffrey Epstein backstage at Victoria’s Secret fashion shows. He had already acquired a reputation for making people uncomfortable, although we had no idea then how extensive his depravity was.

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Bodies were openly displayed. Flesh seemed to be the only currency that counted.

During a magazine-cover shoot at Chelsea Piers, a striking male model was hired to dance around one of my leading female clients. When I stepped outside the studio to answer a phone call, one of the young men followed me.

He could not have been older than 21, yet he offered me sex in exchange for an introduction to Jennifer Lopez. I was devastated. This was a beautiful young man who had come to believe his body could be bartered for opportunity.

Those experiences took place years ago, but a friend who until recently ran one of the world’s leading agencies says little has changed.

“People like to pretend the business cleaned itself up. It hasn’t—they’ve simply become better at concealing it,” my source said. “The drugs, the predators and the pressure to be impossibly thin are all still there. The difference is that everyone now knows what they are expected to say in public.”

I can only imagine the pressure Presley Gerber faced. According to one fashion source, he struggled with comparisons to his mother, Cindy, and to his sister, Kaia.

“Presley never felt good enough,” said the owner of a leading agency. “He was always living in the shadow of his mother and sister. People assumed he received opportunities because of his parents, and that affected him enormously.”

None of this explains Presley’s death nor does it attempt to explain away the decision to indulge in dangerous behaviors. But it does offer some context. The modeling business can be psychologically brutal.

I’ll never forget what supermodel Iman, who was supporting Campbell’s inaugural fashion show during New York Fashion Week in 2005, once told me about the event.

‘They do it in a tent because it’s a circus.’

She wasn’t kidding.

Three men have been convicted over the killing of Giulio Regeni, a Cambridge University student who was brutally tortured inside an Egyptian prison described as the “cemetery of the living” a decade ago.

The Italian-born postgraduate, 28, disappeared in Cairo on January 25, 2016. His body was discovered a week later beside a motorway, bearing a broken neck and extensive signs of torture.

A post-mortem examination in Rome found that Regeni had been beaten, burned, stabbed and flogged over four days.

All of his fingers and toes had been fractured, and he died after his neck was broken.

Egypt has maintained that ordinary criminals were behind his death. Italy, however, has argued that Regeni was targeted by the state because his academic research focused on the politically sensitive issue of trade unions.

Four men were tried in absentia in Rome over the case a decade after Regeni’s death. However, those convicted are unlikely ever to be extradited to Italy to serve their sentences.

In a ruling delivered on Monday, a judge found Major Magdi Sharif of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Cairo police investigations chief Colonel Ather Kamal and police Colonel Hisham Helmy guilty of Regeni’s “aggravated kidnapping”.

Major General Tarek Sabir, the former head of state security, was acquitted of the same charge. The court also rejected an allegation that Sharif had conspired to commit aggravated murder.

None of the four men has publicly addressed the accusations, while Egypt continues to deny that its state institutions played any role in Regeni’s death.

Prosecutors had requested a life sentence for Sharif, along with prison terms of 17 years and six months for each of the other three defendants.

“We achieved this result despite what can be described as less than wholehearted cooperation from the Egyptian authorities,” Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said. He added that he would study the judgment before deciding whether to appeal.

Alessandra Ballerini, a lawyer representing the Regeni family, welcomed the verdict delivered on Monday.

“From today, people around the world can feel safer,” she said. “Impunity can be defeated and democracies can place limits on arbitrary power.”

One of the final people known to have seen Regeni alive gave evidence to the court in 2024.

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The Egyptian man, whose identity was protected by court order, said he was arrested on the same day as Regeni and first encountered him at a Cairo police station.

He said the two men were later blindfolded and put into a car together.

“He kept asking for a lawyer, speaking Italian. I knew the language because I had worked for an Italian company, so I told the people in the car. But they punched me and said: ‘Do you want to be a translator? He speaks Arabic better than you.’”

He continued: “We were taken to a state security office known as the ‘cemetery of the living’. Giulio was taken to the section for foreigners. I never saw him again, but I could hear him being beaten because we were in adjoining rooms. When it comes to torturing people, they do not discriminate.”

‘They tied our hands, beat us, tied us with handcuffs attached to the bed, and then used electroshock therapy.’

Relations between Italy and Egypt deteriorated sharply following the killing, but ties have gradually recovered in ​recent years despite continuing demands by ​Regeni’s family and rights groups for ⁠accountability.

The Rome court said the three men should pay damages to Regeni’s family and the Italian state. Ballerini said the government should demand payment and sever relations with Egypt.

Italian and Egyptian prosecutors initially investigated the case together, but ​the two sides later fell out and came to very different conclusions.

The Egyptians blamed the murder on a gang ​of criminals, who were ⁠subsequently killed in a shootout with police.

But Italian prosecutors argued that Regeni was abducted and tortured by Egyptian security officials because of his academic research into independent unions, a sensitive subject in Cairo.

The trial opened in 2021 but was delayed by legal disputes over whether the defendants had been properly notified of the proceedings.

Italy tried ⁠on around ​30 occasions, through diplomatic and government channels, to obtain the addresses of the suspects, but never ​received any answer, a prosecutor told the trial.

Italy’s top court later ruled that Egypt’s failure to cooperate should not prevent the case from moving forward, saying a foreign state’s refusal to assist ​an investigation could not be allowed to block accountability for torture.

A 21-year-old woman from Byron Bay allegedly struck her friend during a jealous dispute over a man, calling her a “two-faced b****” in the heated exchange.

Eva Harrelson appeared before Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday and acknowledged that she had assaulted her friend.

Harrelson, who shares glamorous, influencer-style images on Instagram, was charged over the incident in Melbourne’s inner south on June 22 this year.

The court heard the argument centred on a “male associate they had both met in the weeks prior”.

Harrelson spent about an hour arguing with the victim and another person inside her bedroom.

During the confrontation, she called the victim a “two-faced b****” and told both people: “I am so close to both f***ing hitting you right now.”

While the victim was sitting on the bed, Harrelson struck her across the face with the “left side of her hand”.

The blow knocked the victim over on the bed, the court was told.

Harrelson continued shouting at the victim after the alleged assault.

Once the yelling stopped, the victim went to the bathroom and used Instagram to tell her brother what had happened.

According to the court, Harrelson told the victim to leave the house as soon as she came out of the bathroom.

The victim later reported the incident to police. Officers contacted Harrelson before summonsing her to a police station for questioning.

Harrelson admitted to police that she had hit the victim.

“Yeah, I pretty much smacked her across the face,” Harrelson said.

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She also told officers that she had been “heated and upset” in her bedroom at the time.

“It was just plain-straight, like, [a] smack across the face. It wasn’t, like, hard. Like, it was like a hit. Like, it wasn’t, like, big. It was, like, you know, a slap,” she said.

Harrelson, who represented herself while wearing a sleek and professional court outfit, accepted the summary of allegations.

However, she alleged that the victim had exaggerated the ferocity of the assault.

‘Yeah, but she did lie about how I did it,’ Harrelson told the court.

‘Um, she said it was a half-closed fist but it was an open-hand slap to the face, yeah.’

While disputing the finer points of the assault, Harrelson told the court that she ‘took full accountability for my actions’.

‘I am genuinely sorry and I have no excuse about raising a hand to another person. I have taken steps [to] see a psychologist for [mental health issues] and my impulse [control],’ she said.

Harrelson, who was charged with the unlawful assault on July 24, also said she had taken up full-time work in the country, working six and ‘sometimes seven days’ a week as a roustabout.

The court heard Harrelson grew up near Byron Bay but had travelled around, living on the Gold Coast for a period of time.

Harrelson explained that she was in Melbourne during the period when the assault occurred for ‘family’ reasons.

Harrelson said she worked alongside her father in construction on the Gold Coast before becoming a dental assistant there and later in Melbourne. She recently took up work as a semi-skilled manual labourer.

The court granted Harrelson diversion after being informed that she wrote the victim a letter of apology shortly after the incident.  

Her matter will be discharged in 12 months if there are no further slip-ups.