The Liberal Party has won the federal election in Canada, culminating a process marked by US President Donald Trump's threats of a trade war and of making the country the 51st American state. With this result, the Liberal Party's leader and current prime minister, Mark Carney, will remain in the job, and will form a new government with a new cabinet. Carney's rival, populist Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, was voted out of his seat in Parliament.

The loss of his seat representing his Ottawa district in Monday's election capped a swift decline in fortunes for the firebrand Poilievre, who a few months ago appeared to be a shoo-in to become Canada's next prime minister and shepherd the Conservatives back into power for the first time in a decade. But then Trump launched a trade war with Canada and suggested the country should become the 51st state, outraging voters and upending the election.

An unprecedented blackout brought much of Spain and Portugal to a standstill Monday (Apr. 28), stranding thousands of train passengers and leaving millions of people without phone and internet coverage and access to cash from ATMs across the Iberian Peninsula. The sudden crash of the power grid also left authorities searching for its cause. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez addressed the nation and said that almost 11 hours after the nation ground to a halt, government experts were still trying to determine what happened.

"We have never had a complete collapse of the system," Sánchez said, before detailing that Spain's power grid lost the equivalent of 60% of its national demand in a matter of five seconds. The Portuguese National Cybersecurity Center in a statement said there was no sign the outage was due to a cyber attack. Teresa Ribera, European Commission executive vice president in charge of promoting clean energy, called the power outage "one of the most serious episodes recorded in Europe in recent times."

Iran finally extinguished a fire Monday at a southern port rocked by an explosion as the death toll in the blast rose to at least 70 people killed, authorities said. Satellite images analyzed by The Associated Press also showed the devastation of the explosion that injured more than 1,000 people. The photos from Planet Labs PBC came as local news reports from the site raised more questions about the cause of the blast Saturday (Apr. 26) at the Shahid Rajaei port near Bandar Abbas.

Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni announced the fire had been put out, while provincial emergency health official Mehrdad Hasanzadeh gave the death toll. The port reportedly took in a chemical component needed for solid fuel for ballistic missiles - something denied by authorities though they've not explained the source of the power that caused such destruction. The force of the blast could be seen on satellite photos, with what appeared to be two craters measuring some 50 meters (165 feet) across.

The US economy shrank in the first three months of the year, according to official data, triggering fears of an American recession and a global economic slowdown. Donald Trump, who returned to the White House promising to "make America great again", sought to blame Joe Biden for the figure. However, economists said it was largely driven by an unprecedented surge in imports, as consumers and companies braced for the president to impose his controversial wave of tariffs.

Gross domestic product (GDP), a key measure of the US economy, contracted by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year, down from growth of 2.4% in the last quarter of 2024. The contraction - the first since the start of 2022 - puts the US on the brink of a technical recession, defined by two quarters of negative growth. The drop in activity comes amid a huge fall in consumer sentiment, which in April dropped 32% to its lowest level since the 1990 recession.