UK power plant 'shut down for four days' after major Iran-linked cyber attack The incident took place in July, at the same time as a series of attacks on US water infrastructure which sparked worry in the White House and affected 12 states A power plant in Great Britain was forced to close for four days after a cyber attack by Iran-linked hackers, it has been revealed.

According to reports, the facility was disabled "while staff fought to bring it back online" after the attack last month - the exact location of the site has not been revealed due to security reasons. It is, however, understood that the plant affected was not one of the biggest sites in the country, according to the Telegraph.

Due to the relatively small nature of the plant, the outage had no impact on the UK’s wider power supply or energy generation. This has been confirmed by the Government, which has described the UK's energy system as 'highly resilient. The incident took place in July, at the same time as a series of attacks on US water infrastructure - those attacks affected 12 states and caused concern in the White House.

In response, the Government briefed the chief executives of power companies and wrote to businesses with advice, direction and next steps. A Government source told the Telegraph: “We have thresholds for important generators to legally notify us of cyber activity, and this site is nowhere near.

It’s a very small scale site, less than a rounding error compared to grid capacity.” A Government spokesman said: “The UK has a highly resilient energy system. We work closely with the energy sector to protect infrastructure and ensure the highest security standards.

“This story refers to an incident impacting a small-scale energy generator, and at no point was there a risk to the wider energy system.

Iran condemns US plans to announce new sanctions Warning that nations joining the US ‘economic war’ would be deemed enemies, Iran said the move could impact trading partners including China Iran on Saturday denounced US plans to announce new sanctions that could put further strain on the Islamic Republic’s economy and have an impact on its most important trading partners including China.

Iran on Saturday warned countries against taking part in the United States’ “economic war” against the Islamic Republic, saying they would be considered enemies. “We declare to all countries … do not join the economic war waged by the United States.

Any country participating in the imposition of economic restrictions against us is considered an enemy,” said Mohsen Rezai, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, on state television. After nearly six months of war since the US and Israel launched air strikes against Iran on February 28, the sides are not firing at each other but also showing no sign of pursuing peace talks.

Oil shipments are at a virtual standstill in the Strait of Hormuz, with Tehran threatening to strike any unauthorised oil tankers that try to transit the vital waterway, and Iran’s economy is already under immense pressure from sanctions. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is expected to hold a press conference on Monday after threatening “the toughest sanctions in history” on Iran.

Bessent has also urged cooperation with Washington from China, which buys more than 80 per cent of Iran’s shipped oil, according to 2025 data from analytics firm Kpler. Beijing has urged diplomacy.

CHICAGO (AP) — After trade negotiations crumbled at the eleventh hour, U.S. President Donald Trump's 50% tariffs on scores of Canadian imports kicked in Saturday. The new levies are expected to affect about 5% of Canada's annual exports to the U.

S., roughly $20 billion in goods ranging from hockey sticks to agricultural products. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney quickly promised Saturday that his government would roll out “dollar for dollar” retaliatory measures starting Sept. 8.

No further talks are scheduled. The latest escalation between the two countries — which once held one of the world's most durable trade alliances — plunges them deeper into a trade war that has kept both sides of the border on edge throughout Trump's second term in office.

Experts warn steeper tariffs raise costs for businesses and almost always trickle down to households in the form of higher prices. “Nearly all industries and professions are likely to see downstream effects from this spiraling trade dispute,” said Augustine Lo, of law firm Dorsey & Whitney, whose work includes advising clients on international trade.

Here's what we know. Which goods are affected? Again, the 50% tariffs from the U.S. are set to affect $20 billion of Canadian goods. Canada sends the vast majority of its goods exports to the U.S. (72% last year), and Trump administration says the new taxes will be levied on products ranging from hockey sticks to wine and cement.

The list is long. According to documents published by the White House, other goods subject to the tax include honey, seeds and agricultural products — as well as select makeup, perfumes, clothing, jewelry, furniture, cameras, fabric and more.

The 50% levy also applies to some products that were previously protected under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact from Trump's first term. That marks a shift from past levies — and further underlines questions around the future of the USMCA overall.

How is Trump imposing these tariffs? To impose these 50% tariffs, Trump reached back to a long-dormant Great Depression-era law: Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. When the U.S. and world economies were in collapse nearly a century ago, Congress passed the 1930 law as part of broader “Smoot-Hawley” legislation (named after its congressional sponsors).

The act raised tariffs more generally across the board, and became notorious among economists for limiting world commerce and making the Great Depression worse. But Section 338 — which authorizes the president to slap import taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries that have discriminated against U.

S. businesses — has never been used specifically to raise tariffs until now. No investigation is required to justify the levies. Nor is there any limit on how long they can stay in place. Since there's no precedent, however, the latest tariffs may also see more legal challenges.

When announcing his planned tariffs last month, Trump claimed that Canada was unfairly discriminating against U.S. exports of automobiles, alcohol and dairy products. The president expressed anger over Canada's retaliation against his own tariffs last year — noting Canadian imports of American alcohol and cars started to fall last spring.

Is Canada retaliating? Canada's Carney quickly promised to match the new levies “dollar for dollar” — later announcing retaliation would begin Sept. 8. He noted Canada's tariff increases would target steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics.

The prime minister said Canada was willing to drop remaining retaliatory tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos if the U.S. substantially lowered its own, and to encourage provinces to restore U.S. alcohol sales. But eventually, he said Washington’s final demands went too far.

Carney accused Washington of using “economic integration as a weapon,” and that Canada had been “attacked” by the latest U.S. tariffs. He said his country had the reserves and resilience to respond. Trump’s top trade negotiator, Jamieson Greer, pledged additional measures to respond to Canada's retaliation — without immediately specifying what that would look like.

In a Saturday interview with “Fox & Friends Weekend,” Greer also claimed the administration offered to cut tariffs on steel, autos and lumber, but Canada “didn't want” the deal. What's next? Tariffs are taxes paid by importers, or businesses that buy goods from abroad.

That typically trickles down to consumers through higher prices — and, as seen over the last year, can also create uncertainty for workers across affected sectors. North America now has a “new tariff landscape,” Dave Townsend, a partner at law firm Dorsey & Whitney, said Saturday.

He noted a big question is whether the latest levies prove to be temporary. The 50% tariffs come on top of previously-imposed levies, including a 10% rate Trump slapped on Canada just last month ostensibly for failing to do enough to prevent imports produced by forced labor and separate sectoral levies impacting trading partners globally.

The growing trade sanctions on Canada underscore Trump’s willingness to risk breaking established alliances. And Canada’s reluctance to accept a deal may reflect recent experience. Trump has repeatedly targeted Canada, even after instances where it made concessions following his demands.

Some tolls on the newly opened Gordie Howe Bridge will be shared for 15 years, despite the fact that Canadians paid for the span linking Detroit and Windsor. Canada also withdrew a digital services tax last year. All the while, Trump has threatened more tariffs over everything from a TV ad criticizing his trade policies (later pulled by Ontario's government ) to wildfires that blackened skies across North America.

Steeper tariffs have already contributed to higher inflation — but appeared to level off some in recent months, per researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, notably after the Supreme Court in February struck down some of Trump's most sweeping levies.

Still, Saturday’s taxes against Canada mark the latest instance of Trump turning to other laws to impose tariffs. And more recently, Washington’s war with Iran has driven prices even higher. With the cost of living at the center of many voters' minds in a midterm election year, political ramifications could mount for the Republican president in the coming months.

_____ AP Writers Paul Wiseman in Washington and Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed.

As the war neared six months old, the two sides were not exchanging fire but also not pursuing peace talks. All the while, oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have virtually halted as Tehran clings to its leverage by threatening to strike any unauthorized oil tankers that attempt to transit the narrow waterway.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) on Monday amid promises to reveal "the toughest sanctions in history" on Iran while also urging China to cooperate with Washington. China buys more than 80% of Iran's shipped oil, according to 2025 data from analytics firm Kpler.

Beijing urged diplomacy. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Saturday that the imminent U.S. announcement of new economic sanctions on Iran was an "assertion of extraterritorial sovereignty over every independent member state of the United Nations.

" "Such secondary sanctions find no foundation in international law," he said in a post on X. U.S. President Donald Trump, who has warned of economic consequences against any country that provides "any type of lifeline to Iran," said on Friday that Washington was observing "what happens" in the conflict.

"They would love to make a deal, but they're not ready to make the right deal, in my opinion," Trump said of Iran. HORMUZ TRAFFIC HALTED While the U.S. has effectively blockaded Iranian vessels in their ports, the Strait of Hormuz remained bottled up with thousands of seafarers stranded on hundreds of vessels.

Only four commodity ships sailed along the strait on Thursday, none of them large crude carriers or liquefied natural gas tankers, ship-tracking data showed. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the U.S. military helped move a seven-day average of 8 million barrels a day of oil through the strait.

That's down from more than 20 million per day before the war or about one of every five barrels consumed worldwide. U.S. attacks have severely diminished Iran's economy and devastated its navy and air force, but Tehran maintains enough missile and drone capability to impede oil tanker traffic and attack regional rivals.

Trump, meanwhile, has yet to achieve objectives he set at the start of the war such as dismantling Iran's nuclear programme - the state of which remains uncertain given that U.N. inspectors have been shut out since 2025 - and creating conditions for Iranians to overthrow their clerical rulers.

Thousands have been killed, including 168 Iranian school children on the first day of the war. The U.S. has reported more than 750 military personnel wounded and 18 killed. IRANIAN ECONOMY DAMAGED The chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, Major General Ali Abdollahi, promised on Friday that Iran would respond to enemy threats militarily with "crushing, punishing and devastating responses.

" Still, President Masoud Pezeshkian called for a diplomatic solution. "It would be better to end the war today, when we are powerful and have dignity, and the whole world acknowledges our victory and emphasizes that America, contrary to all regulations, attacked our schools, hospitals, and infrastructure and is hated in the world," Pezeshkian said, according to the ISNA news agency.

Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the country's main negotiator in mediated talks with the U.S., acknowledged the strain on Iran's economy in comments to Iranian and Iraqi businesspeople late on Thursday. "No matter how much military power we have, we won't survive if people are hungry and we don't have financial turnover, economic growth and national production," Qalibaf said, according to official news agency IRNA.