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Global News
a day ago
- Business
- Global News
U.S. and China to talk trade after Trump, Xi call
High-level delegations from the United States and China are meeting in London on Monday to try and shore up a fragile truce in a trade dispute that has roiled the global economy. A Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng was due to hold talks with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at a U.K. government building. The talks, which are expected to last at least a day, follow negotiations in Geneva last month that brought a temporary respite in the trade war. The two countries announced May 12 they had agreed to a 90-day suspension of most of the 100%-plus tariffs they had imposed on each other in an escalating trade war that had sparked fears of recession. Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy The U.S. and China are the world's biggest and second-biggest economies. Chinese trade data shows that exports to the United States fell 35 per cent in May from a year earlier. Story continues below advertisement 21:48 Global National: June 8 Since the Geneva talks, the U.S. and China have exchanged angry words over advanced semiconductors that power artificial intelligence, ' rare earths ' that are vital to carmakers and other industries, and visas for Chinese students at American universities. President Donald Trump spoke at length with Chinese leader Xi Jinping by phone last Thursday in an attempt to put relations back on track. Trump announced on social media the following day that the trade talks would resume in London. The U.K. government says it is providing the venue and logistics but is not involved in the talks, though British Treasury chief Rachel Reeves met with both Bessent and He on Sunday. 'We are a nation that champions free trade and have always been clear that a trade war is in nobody's interests, so we welcome these talks,' the British government said in a statement.
Global News
18-05-2025
- Business
- Global News
Mark Carney meets Pope Leo XIV after inaugural mass at the Vatican
Prime Minister Mark Carney had a brief audience with Pope Leo XIV Sunday afternoon at the Vatican following the pontiff's inaugural mass in St. Peter's Square. Carney was seated in the second row with his wife Diana for the mass, in a section amongst other world leaders and heads of state. The prime minister, who is a devout Catholic, was one of the few world leaders to kneel during the blessing of the Eucharist, and was spotted at two instances taking a picture of the Pope on his phone to mark the occasion — before the mass started and after it had concluded. After the mass, he briefly met the Pope inside St. Peter's Basilica, alongside his wife and their daughter Cleo. 20:24 Global National: May 17 Carney also met other world leaders at the same time, adding to his growing list of official introductions over the weekend. He held spoke with the prime ministers of Australia, Croatia and Ireland, as well as the presidents of Israel and Nigeria. Story continues below advertisement Carney had a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz earlier Sunday before driving to the Vatican. He had similar meetings with leaders of Italy, Ukraine and the European Union Saturday. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Thirteen Canadian MPs also attended the mass, including Jaime Battiste, who was part of a reception with Canadian Catholic Cardinals on Saturday evening in Rome alongside the prime minister. The Nova Scotia MP said he was looking forward to hearing how the Pope 'sets the tone' for how he will lead. 'It's kind of like our version of the speech from the throne as members of Parliament,' Battiste told reporters outside Canada's Official Residence. Pope Leo — the first American to hold the title — called for unity in his homily. 'In this time, we still see too much discord, too many wars caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economy that exploits the Earth's resources,' he said. 0:22 Carney arrives in Rome for Pope Leo XIV's inaugural mass Indigenous leaders have long called on the Vatican to repatriate thousands of Indigenous artifacts taken from communities in Canada. The late Pope Francis had expressed a willingness to return colonial-era artifacts in the Vatican Museum. Story continues below advertisement Battiste said the return of the artifacts came up in his meeting with the Cardinals, and their return is an important step toward reconciliation. 'I've always said that reconciliation is a journey, not a destination, and we all have steps to take on that journey,' Battiste said. 'I was proud to see our prime minister was talking about reconciliation between Indigenous communities and the Catholic church.' Quebec MP Jean-Yves Duclos is also part of the Canadian delegation to the Vatican. He said the church plays an important role in fostering peace between countries. Last week Leo offered to host peace talks at the Vatican between Russia and Ukraine. 'We need more peace in this world, and I think we will be hearing more of that on the part of the Pope,' Duclos told reporters. 'I think (hosting peace talks) is a very important thing that the church can do. The church is not an armed country, it's a small state … with a lot of influence. To try to bring people together, as opposed to divide our humanity, is the right thing to do.'
Global News
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Global News
‘The body is reality': Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg on mortality and making movies
For nearly his entire career, David Cronenberg has been considered a trailblazer of the 'body horror' subgenre — and it's easy to see why. The renowned Canadian filmmaker is behind Scanners, Videodrome and the 1986 remake of The Fly — just some of the highly influential sci-fi and horror classics he's made throughout the decades. Many of the films share a focus on disturbing and graphic violations of the human body. Yet the 82-year-old Torontonian has only reluctantly accepted that title — or allowed others to connect the phrase 'body horror' to his films. 'I've never used that term to describe my own work,' Cronenberg says in an interview with Global National's Eric Sorensen. 'But it has stuck, and I'm stuck with it.' Personal connections For the average moviegoer, Cronenberg's latest work, The Shrouds, won't necessarily help with his defence. The film is all about a tech entrepreneur inventing a machine that monitors corpses as they decompose inside their graves — allowing people to watch their dead and buried loved ones slowly wither away. But it is one of Cronenberg's most personal films yet, having been inspired by the death of his wife in 2017 and the grief that followed. The movie itself makes that no secret. Like Cronenberg, the morbid inventions of the film's protagonist are a product of his longing for his own late spouse. In past interviews, Cronenberg had described an intense urge to join his wife inside her coffin during her burial — a feeling also mentioned in the film. Advertisement 'The death of my wife was the instigator of this movie. I wouldn't have made this movie, I wouldn't have thought to write it, if it hadn't been for that. But I think you could overstress the idea of the personal aspect of it because I think all art is personal in some way,' Cronenberg says. View image in full screen Director David Cronenberg poses on the red carpet for the movie 'The Shrouds' during the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. Nathan Denette / The Canadian Press 'There's always an autobiographic element because it's your life that allows you to understand what your characters are, who they are, how people relate to each other.' For the uninitiated, that raises questions about what else inspires the disturbing visions present in Cronenberg's other movies, such as a man's sexual fetish for deadly car collisions in Crash or the harrowing human mutations driven by technology in Crimes of the Future. [Embed GN story here] But for Cronenberg — long fascinated with the human body — these extremes simply reflect just how intense our anxieties are for our changing bodies and our mortality. 'There comes a time when a child learns that the child will not live forever … That's pretty difficult. That's a major turning point in any human's life,' he says. 'The body is reality. Once you start with that and then you consider death is inevitable — and if you're an atheist like me, you consider that death is oblivion — I mean, it is the end of you. You disappear. We put all that together, then you have my movies.' True to Canada Cronenberg never made it a point to be this subversive when he started making movies more than 50 years ago. Son of a musician and a writer, he was just a creative attracted by the potential of the medium to express his ideas. With short films and no formal training, all he cared about then was being any good at it. 'It wasn't even the idea of the subject matter that was considered. It was my ability to be a filmmaker technically,' he says, while recollecting the challenges of making his first commercial film. 'At first, I thought, 'Oh my God, I don't think I can do this. The faces of the heads are the wrong size in the frame. The angle is not right. The two shots don't really work together.' And I thought maybe I really don't have the sensibility.' Cronenberg also wasn't sure whether his career as a filmmaker would even thrive in Canada. Partly motivated by better financial incentives in the American film industry, he pitched his first feature, Shivers, to Hollywood executives first. He also considered moving permanently to the U.S. since he already had personal ties south of the border through his American father. It was only when he secured funding from the Canadian Film Development Corporation, now Telefilm Canada, that he decided to stay. He preferred that anyway and still does. 'I really felt that my sensibility was Canadian and different from the U.S.,' he says. 'I don't think in the U.S., they imagine that Canadians were different, but I really could feel it when I went to America how different it was.' View image in full screen Canadian film director and screenwriter David Cronenberg is honoured at the Marrakech International Film Festival, in Morocco, on Dec. 2, 2024. Mosa'ab Elshamy / The Associated Press Quintessentially Cronenberg…and Canadian Decades of international acclaim later, the eccentricity of Cronenberg's movies is now considered quintessential Canadian cinema. His impact and influence beyond it is also emblematic of how Canada's filmmakers do their best work when they are not trying to mimic mainstream Hollywood. Advertisement Not that Cronenberg hasn't found success there either, having directed star-studded dramas like A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. He was even initially approached to work on crowd-pleasers like Top Gun, Star Wars and, to his confusion, Flashdance. 'I thought I probably would have destroyed that film (Flashdance) somehow,' Cronenberg admits. '[But] I took it as a positive appraisal of my skills as a director.' It's clear Cronenberg's distinct body of work will continue to fascinate audiences and aspiring filmmakers alike long after he's gone. Even if that also means his name will be forever associated with the 'body horror' genre. But true to his beliefs, he's not all too concerned about legacy. 'I'm not worried about it,' he says. 'Once I'm dead, it's not going to be a problem.'
