U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”

Sitting nearby a map with the name “Lake America” over the body of water, Trump said Canada has been difficult to deal with and repeated claims the country was ripping off the United States.

“They want to be treated like a state but they are not a state,” Trump said.

When asked why he was targeting American allies with these types of actions instead of American adversaries, Trump said “they haven’t treated us well.”

“The Canadian officials have treated us very badly,” Trump said. “They are nasty people.”

Tensions between the two countries have continued to worsen since trade negotiations fell apart on Friday.

Trump first threatened to rename the body of water during an escalating war of words with Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

The Canadian Press has more. 

As Canada’s trade war with the United States escalates, municipalities are facing higher costs from roads and sewer systems to parks and playground equipment, according to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

FCM President Tim Tierney warned the impact of U.S. tariffs could be “devastating” for municipalities and local businesses, though he said ongoing collaboration with the federal government has helped communities “weather some of the storm.”

Tierney said FCM has already begun working with federal ministers on measures to provide relief to small businesses feeling the effects of the trade dispute.

“[Small businesses] employ people in our communities. They were already struggling, I’ve already seen some small businesses have challenges or shutter, but this government seems pretty committed to rolling out a plan very quickly,” Tierney said in an interview with iPolitics. 

U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest 50 per cent tariffs took effect last Friday, hitting about $27.6 billion worth of Canadian goods. Days after the failed negotiations, Ottawa rolled out about $7.5 billion to support workers and businesses.

Sydney Ko reports. 

He told reporters on Thursday the Carney government was desperately seeking to create division with the Americans to justify walking away from the negotiating table.

“When someone doesn’t want the deal, they make up and say, “Oh, I’ll do the deal with you only if you wear green. And you’re like, ‘But I’m wearing, I’m not wearing green.’ Oh, sorry, it’s not going to work out.”

Both Canada and the U.S. have traded accusations and tariff threats since the dramatic implosion of negotiations last week.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has accused the U.S. of negotiating in bad faith, while the Americans said the Liberal government wanted to score political points by scuttling trade talks.

The Trump White House has aggressively pushed back against claims that it wanted Canada to eliminate French-language protections, saying it was only calling for an end to discoverability rules for U.S. streamers for French-language and Canadian content.

Marco Vigliotti reports. 

In Other Headlines

Internationally

Elsewhere, the international community was scrambling to get aid into flood-stricken parts of Nepal and Tibet on Thursday as authorities warned that a lake ⁠formed at the ⁠site ⁠where the ​deadly torrents occurred ⁠was rising and ⁠at risk ​of ‌bursting.

The catastrophic flash floods that hit Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, thundering down valleys and obliterating entire villages, killed at least 359 people and left more than 1,300 missing.

Efforts to locate those unaccounted for – including hundreds of tourists from India, the US, Britain, Australia and Canada – have been complicated by the destruction of dozens of bridges and 25 miles (40km) of roads in the mountainous region, which is popular with trekkers and pilgrims.

Rescue teams reported finding bodies hundreds of miles downstream from the disaster zone in the Chitwan district of Nepal, near the Tibetan border. Dozens of injured people were transported to Kathmandu for advanced medical care and more than 100 people were rescued by Nepali army personnel in helicopters.

The Guardian has more. 

By fields of cotton and soybeans where his bees forage and pollinate, Foster Hensel pries open the lid of one of his beehives, setting off a rising hum from inside.

“You hear the difference in the sound?” he asks, pumping the bellows of a small smoker to try and settle the bees. “They’re getting a little aggravated.”

What has Hensel concerned is a few miles down the road. In Boyce, a small town in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana, construction is starting on a 300-acre data center site.

The beekeeper worries the new warehouse-like facilities will raise his utility bills or change the local environment. And he asks why there’s not more information.

“Let me quote a good writer, Shakespeare — there’s something rotten in Denmark,” Hensel said. “There’s something wrong with that.”

Read more from NPR. 

In Other International Headlines

The Kicker

And finally… despite Trump’s executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, Prime Minister Mark Carney teaches Canadians a new word: hydronym, the proper name of any body of water.

In a post on X, Carney said Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.

“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always,” he wrote.