The convicted murderer who survived a botched execution attempt in the state of Tennessee last week has been discharged from hospital and returned to prison, her lawyers said Saturday.

Christa Pike, 50, was administered two lethal doses of the drug pentobarbital on September 30 that failed to kill her.

She was transported to hospital in critical condition but later regained consciousness, with her lawyers saying this week that she was walking around but in a “foggy” mental state.

“Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center where she has been housed for more than 30 years,” her lawyers said in a statement Saturday.

Pike was sentenced to death in Tennessee for murdering a classmate, a crime committed when she was a teenager.

“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances,” the statement went on.

Pike “is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery,” the lawyers said.

The attempted execution came after days of last-minute legal wrangling that ultimately reached the Supreme Court.

Pike’s legal team had previously objected to the execution IV protocol, saying it would have caused needless suffering due to her small veins and a blood condition.

Since the botched execution, her lawyers have repeatedly called on Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life in prison.

Lee has suspended executions in Tennessee pending an independent investigation.

Pike’s stunning survival renewed focus on the ethical debate surrounding capital punishment in the United States.

That debate has intensified following the Pentagon’s announcement this week that it intends to livestream an execution by firing squad later this year.

The move has prompted outrage from a broad array of public figures in the United States, including many Republicans supportive of the death penalty.

Pope Leo, the first American pontiff, posted Saturday on X that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

“The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment,” he said.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 U.S. states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.

The federal government instituted a moratorium under president Joe Biden, but President Donald Trump’s administration lifted it when he returned to office in 2025.

• Female death row inmate survives two ‘botched’ lethal injections, taken to hospital
• U.S. Justice Department wants to add firing squads, electrocution and gas as methods for federal executions

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

The convicted murderer who survived a botched execution attempt in the state of Tennessee last week has been discharged from hospital and returned to prison, her lawyers said Saturday.

Christa Pike, 50, was administered two lethal doses of the drug pentobarbital on September 30 that failed to kill her.

She was transported to hospital in critical condition but later regained consciousness, with her lawyers saying this week that she was walking around but in a “foggy” mental state.

“Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center where she has been housed for more than 30 years,” her lawyers said in a statement Saturday.

Pike was sentenced to death in Tennessee for murdering a classmate, a crime committed when she was a teenager.

“She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances,” the statement went on.

Pike “is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery,” the lawyers said.

The attempted execution came after days of last-minute legal wrangling that ultimately reached the Supreme Court.

Pike’s legal team had previously objected to the execution IV protocol, saying it would have caused needless suffering due to her small veins and a blood condition.

Since the botched execution, her lawyers have repeatedly called on Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life in prison.

Lee has suspended executions in Tennessee pending an independent investigation.

Pike’s stunning survival renewed focus on the ethical debate surrounding capital punishment in the United States.

That debate has intensified following the Pentagon’s announcement this week that it intends to livestream an execution by firing squad later this year.

The move has prompted outrage from a broad array of public figures in the United States, including many Republicans supportive of the death penalty.

Pope Leo, the first American pontiff, posted Saturday on X that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

“The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment,” he said.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 U.S. states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.

The federal government instituted a moratorium under president Joe Biden, but President Donald Trump’s administration lifted it when he returned to office in 2025.

• Female death row inmate survives two ‘botched’ lethal injections, taken to hospital
• U.S. Justice Department wants to add firing squads, electrocution and gas as methods for federal executions

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs is calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to hold the Palestinian Authority accountable for breaking its commitment to hold elections in 2026.

On Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced the postponement of legislative elections scheduled for next month until Sept. 11, 2027, Reuters is reporting. Abbas blamed Israel and the security concerns in the Palestinian territories for the delay, says the news agency.

This followed a report on Thursday from the Associated Press that Palestinian factions were discussing postponement. A top official with the Hamas-allied Islamic Jihad group told AP that the factions had reached an agreement to delay the vote.

CIJA has released a statement in response, pointing out that the prime minister recognized Palestinian statehood based on commitments made by the Palestinian Authority, including a promise to hold general elections in 2026, as well as undertake reforms.

Following confirmation that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is breaking its commitment of elections in 2026, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) released the following statement calling on the Government of Canada to take concrete measures to hold the PA accountable:… pic.twitter.com/u0UxnaRue3

— CIJA (@CIJAinfo) October 9, 2026

David Cooper, CIJA’s vice president of government relations, said in a statement emailed to National Post that the “recognition of Palestinian statehood was predicated on several commitments, including holding general elections in 2026 in which Hamas would have no role.”

He said the reports that the Palestinian Authority has postponed elections amid cooperation with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, “raises serious questions whether the Palestinians will hold true to their word.”

Cooper noted that CIJA has raised these concerns directly with the government “including the imbalance between rewards to the Palestinians and punitive measures against Israel. We expect the government to hold the Palestinian Authority accountable for failing to meet its commitments.”

In July 2025, Carney announced his government’s commitment to recognize a Palestinian state in a statement, saying: “Canada intends to recognize the State of Palestine at the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025. This intention is predicated on the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to much-needed reforms, including the commitments by Palestinian Authority President Abbas to fundamentally reform its governance, to hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas can play no part, and to demilitarize the Palestinian state.”

However, CIJA says that if “recognizing Palestinian statehood has not secured even the commitments on which that recognition was predicated, Canadians deserve to know what Canada’s approach is achieving.”

The PA has also failed to enact reforms, notes CIJA, pointing in particular to ending payments to terrorists and the families of those who murdered innocent civilians.

“While Israel faces punitive measures from the Canadian government, the Palestinian Authority has yet to face accountability for failing to deliver on its commitments. This is a dangerous double standard that has implications for both the region and here in Canada where security experts warn that criticism of Israel has been exploited to fuel antisemitism, violence and even acts of terror.”

The Palestinians have not held legislative or presidential elections since 2005-06, states Reuters. After that, Islamist group Hamas seized control of Gaza, ousting Abbas’ loyalists. He has ruled by decree since his presidential mandate expired in 2009.

There was no immediate comment from Israel about Abbas’ announcement, said Reuters.

• Canada promises trade ban on goods from ‘illegal’ Israeli settlements in new joint statement
• Raymond J. de Souza: The growing problem of settler violence in the West Bank

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that Russia was expressing its “thanks” for a diesel deal agreed with the United States by attacking Ukraine, after fresh Russian attacks killed 15 people, according to authorities.

The deal, which U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Friday after a call with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, would see Moscow release large amounts of diesel onto global markets in exchange for sanctions relief.

Zelensky told reporters on Friday that the deal was “unworthy of our partners” and described it as a “weak decision.”

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Saturday that lifting sanctions on Russian diesel would help fuel the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.

“This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won’t,” she wrote online.

Germany also said it would continue to push for new EU sanctions on Russia, despite the agreement.

Moscow has intensified its deadly bombardment of Ukraine in recent months, sending civilian casualties soaring, while US-led efforts to broker an end to the more than four-and-a-half year conflict remain deadlocked.

Early Saturday, Russia targeted residential neighbourhoods in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia with “five guided aerial bombs”, according to Ukraine’s national police service.
At least 15 people were killed, among them three children, Ukraine’s state rescue service said.

“Today, Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Zelensky said in a post on X.
An AFP correspondent at the scene saw people being pulled from the rubble by Ukrainian emergency services.

“We saw people under the rubble — a woman, her husband and a child,” one rescuer, Daniil Pishkin, told AFP.

He added that he saw two people rescued from the wreckage but “unfortunately there was a little girl who died.”

A resident of one of the buildings that was hit, who identified herself as Iryna, 69, said she just had time to seek refuge in the toilets after receiving an air raid warning.
She said her two neighbours were killed.

“They were 75 years old. They were simply thrown out there, onto the street. They didn’t make it to the hospital,” she told AFP.

Ukraine’s capital Kyiv meanwhile suffered “large-scale power outages” on Saturday due to Russian strikes, the country’s largest private energy provider, DTEK, said.

AFP reporters heard booms over the capital earlier Saturday, as the city’s mayor reported that a restaurant had been hit.

Deal ‘needs to be corrected’

The strikes came as Ukraine expressed mounting frustration at Washington’s diesel agreement with Russia.

Prices at U.S. gasoline and diesel pumps have surged since late February, when the United States and Israel launched joint military strikes on Iran.

Announcing the deal on Friday, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform that diesel prices would be “coming down, in record numbers, and fast”, in all caps.
“I want to thank President Putin, to be honest with you,” he later told reporters.

In a post on Facebook on Saturday, Zelensky said the deal needed to be reversed.

“Russia’s choice is war. And they will be ready to end it only when they feel that their ability to drag the war out is diminishing,” Zelensky said.

“Unfortunately, the signals Russia received yesterday were entirely different – signals suggesting that it could simply keep attacking. This needs to be corrected,” he added.

Trump’s talk with Putin

US, Ukrainian and European officials meanwhile met in Miami on Friday in a renewed diplomatic push to end the war.

Trump, who has repeatedly touted his credentials as a peacemaker, has long sought to broker a deal since taking office last January.

US envoy Steve Witkoff posted to X after the meeting that the “constructive discussions” tackled “potential avenues to de-escalate and conclude the war with Russia ahead of winter and advance efforts toward a durable and lasting peace.”

Witkoff said the meeting included “the E3, the European Commission, Ukraine and NATO.”

The Kremlin said Saturday that Trump had conveyed his ideas about how to de-escalate the war to Putin during a phone call on Friday.

Putin received the proposals “with understanding”, the Kremlin said, without elaborating on what the proposals were or the Russian president’s response.

Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, now occupies roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

• U.S., Ukrainians and Europeans meeting to discuss ‘new ideas’ to end Russia-Ukraine war
• Putin tells Iran’s president that Russia will ‘do everything’ to help end war with U.S., Israel

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The Supreme Court of Canada has tried to resolve competing judicial imperatives of addressing Indigenous overincarceration and high rates of violence against Indigenous women in cases when a male offender and a female victim are both Indigenous.

The complexity and importance of this tension was highlighted by 22 groups being granted intervenor status to offer input in the case, including the attorneys general of three provinces, First Nations and Indigenous organizations, law groups, and numerous human rights, civil liberties and constitutional advocacy organizations.

The fact the nine Supreme Court justices were split five to four in their decision, released Friday, reflects divergent views on how best to protect Indigenous victims while ensuring rehabilitation for Indigenous offenders.

In a bid to reconcile what the court called Canada’s “twin crises,” the majority opinion laid out a framework for sentencing judges to follow when confronted by situations like the case of a vicious beating in Halifax.

In 2021, Harry Arthur Cope, a Nova Scotia man, attacked a woman who was his common-law partner on a sidewalk in Halifax. The victim was repeatedly punched and thrown to the ground. When police found her, her face was swollen and covered in blood. Doctors said she suffered severe injuries to her face and upper torso.

It wasn’t the brutality of the intimate partner violence that pushed the case to Canada’s highest court, it was the demographic complications arising in Canada’s courts when the offender is an Indigenous man and the victim is an Indigenous woman.

The personal narratives of the offender and the victim require balancing of two special judicial imperatives.

“Indigenous people find themselves disproportionately and excessively imprisoned, while Indigenous women and girls suffer from unacceptably high levels of violence and abuse,” the Supreme Court says in its decision.

“Both of these pressing issues have been shaped by the experiences of colonization and addressing them together is central to the ongoing process of reconciliation. Parliament has sought to address both concerns through the criminal sentencing process.”

The tension between the issues arose at Cope’s 2023 sentencing after his guilty plea to aggravated assault. At his original trial, court heard that Cope had severe mental health challenges and stopped taking his medications and began consuming illicit drugs a year before the attack. He had a significant criminal record.

For his sentencing, Provincial Court of Nova Scotia Judge Christine Driscoll ordered an Indigenous Background Report. A First Nations’ sentencing circle said community members did not feel more incarceration would help Cope and recommended in-patient treatment.

Driscoll considered Cope’s background, as Canadian courts must do when sentencing an Indigenous offender, known as Gladue factors. She also weighed special factors from the perspective of the victim — that the assault was violence against a vulnerable Indigenous woman.

Driscoll rejected the proposal for a conditional sentence by the sentencing circle and sentenced Cope to five years’ imprisonment. Nova Scotia’s Court of Appeal then reduced his sentence to three years.

It was the Crown’s appeal of that appeal that took Cope’s case to the Supreme Court, where its contentiousness remained over two days of hearings last December, after which the justices reserved their decision.

A slim majority of Supreme Court judges — Andromache Karakatsanis, Nicholas Kasirer, Michelle O’Bonsawin, Mary T. Moreau, and the now-retired Sheilah Martin — upheld the appeal decision of a reduced sentence for Cope. Dissenting justices Chief Justice Richard Wagner, Suzanne Côté, Malcolm Rowe and Mahmud Jamal would have restored the trial judge’s five-year sentence.

In the Supreme Court, majority rules.

The majority presented a workflow for judges to keep paying special attention to Indigenous offenders in the Gladue process while incorporating newer provisions to account for vulnerable victims and Indigenous females that followed recommendations by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry.

“In cases where an Indigenous offender commits an offence against his intimate partner who is an Indigenous woman, a sentencing judge must apply the principles related to both Indigenous offenders and victims of crime, and do so harmoniously to arrive at a just and proportionate sentence,” the majority opinion says.

The court found the sentencing judge should have more keenly linked mental-health factors to the offender’s moral blameworthiness and more meaningfully engaged with the sentencing circle’s input.

“The lessons of the sentencing circle are more than just a source of factual information relevant to a fit sentence, but are key to understanding the Indigenous perspective on sentencing…. What is required is that a sentencing judge reasonably engage with the perspectives expressed in the sentencing circle in crafting a fit and appropriate sentence.”

The majority opinion said the sentencing circle process “will be relevant both to understand the availability of alternative sentencing options that may exist in the community, as well as the community perspective on the sentence that will best achieve the relevant sentencing objectives.”

The minority of justices said the original five-year sentence should be restored, writing that the sentencing judge appropriately considered the nature of the crime and the victim’s particular vulnerabilities. She also properly considered the circumstances of the offender, the Gladue factors, and his mental illness.

“The majority’s proposed sentencing framework fails to reflect Parliament’s direction to sentencing judges… to prioritize denunciation and deterrence, and to generally impose harsher sentences for the abuse of vulnerable victims, including Indigenous women and girls,” the minority opinion says.

Philippe Boucher, a PhD student in Legal Studies at Carleton University and criminology lecturer at Université de Montréal, has been studying the Cope case and said the division on the court shows an evolution in opinion.

When the court ruled on the original Gladue process in 1999, the decision was unanimous, he said.

“We can see how the issues at stake were more sensitive and controversial this time. Especially, 10 years after the launch of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the court understands the importance of protecting victims, but there is disagreement on the best ways to achieve protection.”

After watching the hearings on the case, he said he was not surprised by how tight the split was.

“This shows how complex it is for judges to establish a sentence when both the accused and the victim are Indigenous,” Boucher said.

• Why Indigenous offenders get shorter sentences
• Who is Glenn Joyal, Canada’s most recent appointee to the Supreme Court?

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A third Toronto soldier is facing charges in a July kidnapping where police discovered the alleged kidnappers had six different types of Canadian Armed Forces ammunition in their possession.

Jack David Miley of Etobicoke is a 24-year-old master bombardier in the 7th Toronto Regiment, a reserve artillery unit based at Moss Park Armoury in Toronto.

He is one of seven people facing charges for the July 25 kidnapping of Seyedkasra Hosseini “to hold him for ransom,” according to court documents. He is also accused of using a handgun during the kidnapping and pointing it at Hosseini.

“We can confirm that Jack Miley is a current member of the 7th Toronto Regiment,” the Defence Department’s Kened Sadiku said Friday in a written statement.

Miley, whose rank is equivalent to master corporal, has been a reservist since enrolling in the Canadian Army in August 2018, Sadiku said, noting he deployed last year on Operation Reassurance, the ongoing NATO mission in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Baltics in response to Russian aggression.

After his arrest on Sept. 24, Miley was removed from duty and his access to the Forces’ equipment, facilities and bases was restricted, Sadiku said.

He remains in the CAF pending the outcome of an administrative review, Sadiku said.

Two other soldiers from the same regiment, Sachintha Fernando of North York and James Moreau of Markham, are also facing multiple charges in the kidnapping case. They have also been removed from their military duties and blocked from using their base or army equipment since they were arrested in August.

Fernando, 22, and Moreau, 29, have both been charged with kidnapping for ransom, forcible confinement and the use of a firearm during the commission of an indictable offence, according to a Toronto police spokesperson.

Fernando is also charged with multiple other counts of firearms-related offences, including unauthorized possession of a prohibited device, possession of property obtained by crime and careless storage of ammunition.

Fernando has been charged with storing five types of ammunition in a careless manner on Aug. 11, the day he was arrested. Those include .223 caliber ammunition, .223 caliber blanks, 9 mm bullets, .270 caliber ammunition and 12-gauge shotgun shells. All were property of the Canadian Armed Forces, according to court documents.

Miley was also in possession of one round of the military’s 25mm Bushmaster ammunition when he was arrested last month, according to court documents.

Police charged Fernando with possessing a nine millimetre handgun and a Churchill 12-gauge shotgun without a licence for either, as well as prohibited over-capacity magazines.

Police also seized a Beretta handgun, ammunition for the weapon, and at least one firearm silencer during their investigation.

All three soldiers were military instructors within the Greater Toronto Area, one source said Friday.

Another source who has served with the three soldiers said learning of the charges has hurt morale within the regiment.

“The Canadian Armed Forces is supposed to be a respectable organization, many have fought and died for the same colours we wear today,” said the source.

“The unit needs a major rework; there’s too much incompetence allowing these fraudulent and troublesome individuals to flourish.”

Four other men who are not in the military — Saiefeddine Aden, Raheem Bishop-Jackson, Christian Darbandi and Suhaib Alekozai — have also been charged with conspiring to kidnap Hosseini.

The commanding officer of the 7th Toronto Regiment sent a note to his subordinates recently telling them not to talk to reporters about the case.

“A reminder that this is an active investigation by TPS (primarily), the MPs, and we have our own related admin investigation,” Lt.-Col. Curtis Roach said in his email obtained by the National Post

“As such, we should not be providing comment or opinion on this incident.”

• Toronto soldiers arrested on kidnapping, weapons theft and organized crime charges
• Canadian soldiers charged in alleged anti-government terror plot

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Prince Harry has revealed that he “slipped into depression” for about two weeks after relocating to Canada from the U.K. in 2019.

The Prince opened up about his mental health during an episode on the online educational platform, MasterClass. It’s part of a course designed to help people coping with grief.

Harry and his wife, Meghan, welcomed their son Archie in May 2019, spending the end of that year in Canada. They eventually moved to California, with Harry and Meghan giving up their royal duties. However, they announced last month they were returning to the UK with their children Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, after six years in the U.S., reports the BBC.

Harry described being in Canada, away from the stress of his life in Britain, when he experienced an adrenaline crash. “I actually slipped into depression for about two weeks. I felt like I couldn’t function without the adrenaline,” he revealed.

Harry also said that he felt “emotionally numb” after the death of his mother, Princess Diana, because he felt “disloyal and guilty for the possibility of being happy and joyful without her.”

During the MasterClass session, Harry said he struggled to process his grief in the years after the death of his mother when he was 12. He recounted that after crying at Diana’s funeral, he did not cry for nearly two decades, adding that a therapist suggested he spray Diana’s perfume to “unlock everything.”

The MasterClass also featured Mary-Frances O’Connor, a neuroscientist and University of Arizona professor who told Harry: “Your brain doesn’t register your loved one as gone. It registers them as lost. And it will keep searching until you teach it otherwise. We still expect that they’re going to walk through the door.”

MasterClass approached Harry about appearing in the program last year, reports reports People Magazinec . It was filmed in California over the summer.

The course is titled ‘Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss,’ It explores the effects of grief on the brain and body through Harry’s experience of losing his mother.

“Grief is physiological as well as emotional, and what we know from research is that there are very common responses to the loss of someone important in our life,” O’Connor says in the episode.

After returning from his second tour in Afghanistan in 2013, Harry said he began to see that his military experiences triggered earlier trauma.

“The things that I saw, the things I experienced, appeared to be a trigger for other traumas that had stored themselves within me,” he says. “I started to realize that I probably had become seriously depleted when just putting a simple dress shirt on — the tightening of the collar — literally felt like I was suffocating, and I would be experiencing panic attacks just in the car on the way to work,” he recalled. “And that’s when I realized, ‘Okay, there’s something bigger, there’s something else that you need to look into here.’”

O’Connor speaks in the session about how prolonged stress can affect the body. She compared the nervous system to parts of a car, and cortisol to its fuel injection system.

Harry also said he eventually came to the realization that his mother “just wanted me to be happy. And that was a huge mental shift for me. It freed me, and it gave me a whole different outlook on life.”

He said his charitable work gives him a meaningful way to carry Diana’s legacy.

It has been released ahead of World Mental Health Day on Oct. 10, and will benefit two bereavement charities, Comfort Zone Camp and Scotty’s Little Soldiers, a charity for which Harry is a global ambassador.

The Daily Mail reported Friday that Harry was paid US$100,000 for participating in the MasterClass.

• Prince Harry is set to resume public outings in Britain, though royal status is unclear
• Harry and Meghan will remain ‘private citizens’ in U.K., King Charles says

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South African lawyer Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, despite a last-minute pitch from U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I don’t know what their decision is going to be. They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday when asked about the accolade. “I settled eight wars … I did things that nobody else has ever done. I’m not bragging, I’m just telling you the facts,” he added, claiming to have saved “millions of lives.”

It’s not the first time the U.S. president has touted his role in settling eight wars. In fact, he’s mentioned the figure several times before. But what are those wars? Did they really end? And, if they did, is it thanks to Trump? Here are the facts.

Armenia and Azerbaijan

The two former Soviet republics and Trump signed a provisional peace agreement at the White House on Aug. 8, 2025. But movements towards implementing the deal have been halting.

On the anniversary of the signing of the joint declaration, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a press statement reaffirming Washington’s commitment to realizing the deal. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, wrote an open letter to Trump praising the U.S. president’s role in bringing about “a turning point in the pursuit of lasting peace” in the region.

But, in July this year, Azerbaijan said it will not sign a final deal unless Armenia changes its constitution, specifically its reference to a Soviet-era document calling for the reunification of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, a region Azerbaijan took control of in 2023.

Cambodia and Thailand

Cambodia and Thailand agreed to a ceasefire in July 2025, following a five-day military conflict, after efforts by Malaysia, the U.S. and China to bring both sides to the table. Trump said he would not conclude trade deals with them until the conflict ended.

A few months later, in October, the leaders of Thailand and Cambodia signed an enhanced ceasefire deal in the presence of Trump. Then, in December, a new ceasefire deal that Trump wasn’t involved in was reached after widespread fighting resumed earlier that month.

Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda

Trump announced a peace agreement between the two African nations in June 2025, which was signed by the countries’ foreign ministers in Washington and required Rwandan troops to withdraw from eastern Congo within 90 days.

In December, the leaders of the DRC and Rwanda gathered in Washington to affirm commitments to the Trump-backed deal, but the deal hasn’t been implemented and the fighting has continued.

Since then, representatives of the U.S., the DRC and Rwanda have met in Washington in March and in Geneva, Switzerland, in July in attempts to further implement and reaffirm commitment to the peace agreement. But the conflict is far from over, with M23 rebels continuing to hold territory in Congo.

Egypt and Ethiopia

This conflict is one the Trump administration dealt with in his first term, though it’s not technically a war, just a period of heightened tensions.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile has caused friction between the two countries because of Egypt’s worries about its water supply, for which it relies on the Nile. Sudan is also affected.

The U.S. president facilitated talks between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan in Washington in 2019 and 2020, but negotiations stalled and no agreement was signed — though Trump has claimed on several occasions that his intervention helped stabilize the situation.

Kosovo and Serbia

Tensions have persisted between these two countries since Kosovo declared independence in 2008 until this day, and no official peace deal has been signed.

In his first term as president, Trump negotiated a wide-ranging deal in 2020 between the countries, but much of what was agreed on was never carried out.

Plus, it was never technically a war, so it also wasn’t technically a peace deal. Though Kosovo’s former president Vjosa Osmani did previously say that Donald Trump helped prevent further escalation in the Serbia-Kosovo region, the then Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, denied that any escalation had been looming.

Pakistan and India

Trump has claimed that a ceasefire brokered between India and Pakistan in May 2025 was down to the U.S., after several days of cross-border strikes marked the worst regional fighting between the two nuclear-armed nations in decades.

But while Pakistan’s government thanked Trump for his involvement, India downplayed the U.S. president’s claims, saying the two countries came to the agreement without external help.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for the second year in a row on Friday, writing in a social media post: “(Trump’s) timely intervention helped bring Pakistan and India back from the brink and secure a ceasefire, that is holding till today.”

President Donald Trump played a historic role in advancing peace in South Asia. His timely intervention helped bring Pakistan and India back from the brink and secure a ceasefire, that is holding till today.

In recognition of his outstanding contribution, Pakistan had nominated…

— Shehbaz Sharif (@CMShehbaz) October 9, 2026

Israel and Iran

On June 23, 2025, Trump announced a peace deal between Iran and Israel following 12 days of military conflict. Though shaky, the ceasefire ultimately held until a new war broke out following a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran in February.

In June, Washington and Iran signed a ceasefire agreement that quickly broke down over control of the Strait of Hormuz, and in September Trump rejected Iran’s seven-day ceasefire proposal.

More recently, the U.S. president said in a Truth Social post that his administration will not launch an attack on Iran before November’s mid-term elections.

At the White House on Wednesday, Trump claimed: “I’ve stopped maybe the total obliteration of the world because Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

Israel and Hamas

The U.S. administration did help to broker a ceasefire that came into effect in October last year, but while it ended large-scale hostilities, violence in the region has continued.

Elsewhere, Trump has made it clear that he hopes to play a part in ending the Russia-Ukraine war. While speaking to press at the White House in July, he said an end to the conflict is “getting ‌closer than people realize.”

He said he had held a “good call” with Putin ​on the Fourth of July holiday, “And President Zelenskiy actually wants it to end now. And we’re going to be going to NATO, and we’re going to be talking about it, and I think we’re going to ​get it,” he added. “I think we’re going to get it ended. It’s been a terrible situation.”

• Trump may be gearing up to blame Canada for GOP midterm losses
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A report is mapping out the nearly 200,000 new voters that Toronto has gained since 2023, when Mayor Olivia Chow was elected.

It found that Spadina-Fort York had the largest increase out of the 25 wards.

As Toronto’s mayoral race nears its end — with Chow and Councillor Brad Bradford as the top candidates battling it out in the polls — there have been 194,442 electors added to the voters’ list since the previous election, according to Liaison Strategies , a national public opinion research firm.

“I was definitely surprised by how concentrated voter growth is, and just how concentrated it is in three wards,” said David Valentin, who authored the report. “This creates new challenges for candidates because they have little to no data on these voters.”

The wards that saw the most amount of growth from 2023 until August 2026 were Spadina-Fort York, with an increase of 23 per cent, Toronto Centre (20 per cent) and Willowdale (18 per cent).

“If these voters are from new developments particularly, there is no previous voting history so you wouldn’t know what to expect regarding support or turnout,” said Valentin. “For Council incumbents, their power comes from name recognition. If they have been targeting new developments as they came online they might still have an advantage with these voters, but if they haven’t been doing the work, these new electors are wildcards and up for grabs.”

Meanwhile, North York (comprised of York Centre, Eglinton—Lawrence, Don Valley West, Don Valley East, Don Valley North and Willowdale) had grown the fastest, adding 64,564 electors — an increase of just over 11 per cent.

The downtown area also added slightly more people to the list, at 67,509 electors — an increase of nearly 10 per cent. Scarborough added 39,817 electors, up 9.6 per cent, and Etobicoke added 22,552, up 8.4 per cent, according to the report.

The report also says that an increase in voters means a spending increase for campaign finances.

“The calculation uses electors, not the city’s total population,” it says. Using the general spending-limit formula for mayor ($7,500 plus 85 cents per eligible elector), it calculated $1,662,655.70 for the 2023 list and $1,827,931.40 for the August 2026 list. It found a difference of $165,275.70.

“For a campaign able to raise the money, that could mean more advertising, more literature or more paid organizing. But a higher limit does nothing for a candidate who was already struggling to fund the campaign. They still have to raise it,” says the report.

The report clarifies that the numbers refer to voters’ list figures, not to be confused with population growth.

“People move, become eligible and get added to the list; records also get corrected. We cannot identify how much of the increase comes from each of those things. What we can see is where the list has changed most,” it says.

The report uses data from 2023 provided by the City of Toronto’s final eligible-elector counts for the mayoral by-election. Toronto Elections provided the 2026 ward counts.

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