Dean Penney has filed a handwritten notice of appeal with the Court of Appeal of Newfoundland and Labrador, arguing all evidence gained from a covert RCMP operation should have been excluded from his trial.

Penney was convicted of killing his estranged wife, Jennifer Hillier-Penney, by a jury in May.

Hillier-Penney went missing in November of 2016 and her body has never been found. The Crown’s case was built around a pair of confessions Penney provided to an undercover RCMP officer posing as a crime boss.

Those confessions followed a four-year operation that saw Penney participate in what he believed to be a criminal organization, completing a wide range of tasks and improving his standing within the fake gang before being interviewed for a job by the officer posing as the kingpin. The tactic is known as a Mr. Big sting.

“The judge erred in his application of the law as it applies to the Mr. Big sting operation,” Penney wrote. “The evidence obtained should not have been provided to the jury.”

Mr. Big stings are inadmissible by default, unless the Crown can show the police stayed within a set of boundaries established by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Those boundaries include the length of the operation, the number of interactions, the nature of the relationship that developed, financial inducements offered by the police, and the personal characteristics of the accused.

In Penney’s case, Justice Vikas Khaladkar ruled the RCMP stayed within the limits set out by the country’s highest court.

Before the trial started, the defence had argued the evidence should be inadmissible.

They said Penney was in dire financial straits when the prospect of a full-time job within the organization was presented to him. He’d lost the family business and suffered a devastating fishing season in which he didn’t earn enough to qualify for employment insurance.

“He’s not destitute but he’s having hardship at the exact time they offer him this job as the captain of a yacht,” defence lawyer Mark Gruchy argued at the end of the pretrial hearing in March. “He keeps saying he needs the money, saying he’s down and out and that he’s screwed.”

Khaladkar pointed out that Penney was only paid about $27,000 over the course of the operation.

“In my view, the money paid over time was not particularly significant,” he said, after noting Penney was not destitute and had property he could have sold. “Certainly, it was not sufficient to be coercive or overwhelming.”

The defence also argued Penney was heavily influenced by the close-knit relationship he formed with the RCMP primary operator — a man who went by the pseudonym Vic. The two became best friends throughout the four-year operation, with Vic testifying at trial that it reached a point where he hoped they would uncover evidence to prove Penney was innocent.

Gruchy said this relationship blossomed at a time when Penney’s wife had disappeared, his oldest daughter blamed him for it, and his mother had died.

“He’s a mess,” Gruchy said. “He’s in a bad place … and it’s in that bad place that he becomes friends with Vic.”

Their relationship grew closer over those four years, as they participated in missions together — ranging from transporting laptops Penney believed were stolen from the RCMP, to removing firearms from an armed forces base, and a fake heist of a fuel tanker near the American border in Alberta.

However, Khaladkar pointed out in his decision that Penney still had the support of his youngest daughter, his father and his girlfriend at various points throughout the operation.

“Although some of his other relationships in the community had become strained after the disappearance of his wife, I am not satisfied that the bond he formed with UC-Vic displaced his ordinary social world in a manner that raises a serious concern about the reliability of the confession,” Khaladkar said in his decision.

The defence also argued Penney was an easy mark given his Grade 8 education. The Crown countered — and Khaladkar agreed — that Penney was more sophisticated than his education suggested.

In the pretrial hearing, and again at trial, Gruchy argued Penney was intimidated by the organization after everything he’d seen.

When it came time to sit down with the boss on a yacht in Vancouver, Gruchy argued Penney was ready to say whatever it took to get out of there safely, and with a source of income guaranteed.

“Dean Penney had every reason to lie or tell a tale,” Gruchy told the court in March.

Ultimately, the jury decided otherwise. They heard both of Penney’s recorded confessions, in which he first described pushing Hillier-Penney over the stairs in their garage, with her striking her head off the corner of his gun safe. In the second conversation, Penney said he then bludgeoned her with a mallet as she lay bleeding on the floor.

The jury requested to watch those videos again during deliberations.

They returned with a guilty verdict after being sequestered for parts of five days.

At his sentencing earlier this month, Penney proclaimed his innocence to the court.

“I maintain my innocence and I hope to be vindicated soon,” he said.

Penney has an automatic right to appeal because he is appealing a question of law. That means the province’s appeal court will have to hear his case.

He is currently unrepresented, hence the handwritten appeal sent from the West Coast Correctional Centre in Stephenville. He was represented by lawyers from Legal Aid at trial. His appeal will be forwarded to Legal Aid to determine whether or not they continue representing him on his appeal.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington on Wednesday, where he was met with a rare planeside greeting from U.S. President Donald Trump after their top officials agreed to extend a trade truce until January.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the extension of the truce — under which the countries agreed to scale back tariffs and refrain from imposing new trade restrictions — during a Fox News Channel interview as Trump welcomed Xi at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington.

“I don’t know whether a bigger deal can be done. I don’t know whether we will just roll the current deal,” Bessent said, noting the extension to Jan. 10 could give the leaders more time to talk about the issues at upcoming meetings in China in November and Florida in December.

Trade has been one of the biggest flashpoints between the two superpowers, along with artificial intelligence, Trump’s war with Iran and China’s designs on Taiwan. But much of Xi’s three-day visit is expected to be far more about pomp than substance, starting with Trump’s decision to greet Xi as he landed, rather than waiting for him to drive up to the White House.

Red carpet rolled out

A 30-metre-long red carpet was unfurled at the bottom of the staircase placed at the door of Xi’s plane. A 21-person honour guard was arrayed on the sides of the carpet and Trump and his wife Melania Trump stood near a staircase on the side of the plane, where they greeted Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan with handshakes.

The welcome ceremony also included a flyover by two B-1 bombers, platoons from each military service, and a presentation of the flags and anthems of both countries.

Trump and his wife spoke to their counterparts, but their words could not be heard. Trump, who wore gloves and an overcoat though it was a relatively warm 17 C outside, removed one of his gloves to shake hands with Xi. At one point, he slapped Xi on the back and said something to him that was inaudible.

“I think they appreciate it, tremendous people,” Trump said to reporters after he returned to the White House on Wednesday evening.

In a statement marking his arrival in the U.S., China’s leader wrote that his country and the U.S. “should be partners, not rivals. Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand and the two countries can contribute to each other’s success, thereby benefiting the wider world.”

Senator criticizes ‘lavish welcome’

Beyond using the visit to try to keep “strategic stability” between the two countries, Trump seems to be pulling out all the diplomatic stops to show off for Xi. Trump has lavished praise on Xi as a “great leader” and described a warm relationship with the man he has called a friend, all while giving him a pass on many issues.

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate armed services committee, criticized the “lavish welcome.” Wicker said during a speech Tuesday in the Senate that Trump should not have invited the Chinese leader “based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. and China must interact at the highest levels because the countries are “the two largest economies in the world” and “probably the two most powerful militaries in the world.”

Danny Russel, a former U.S. diplomat under President Barack Obama’s administration, said the airport pomp delivered a propaganda win for Beijing.

“Such extreme deference is valuable evidence that China’s leader is now held in extraordinarily high esteem by the President of the United States. Beijing uses this at home and internationally to show China’s-and Xi’s-growing stature,” said Russel, now at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

China had wanted a longer extension of the trade truce, which had been set to expire on Nov. 10.

“It underscores that the United States is still concerned about China’s full implementation of its commitments under the truce, particularly with respect to critical mineral exports and agricultural purchases,” said Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator and now senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

The tight timeframe gives the U.S. a chance to test whether China will deliver on unmet promises to buy U.S. farm goods, said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“This is less about buying two months of calm than making China earn the next extension,” he said.

Trump has not yet commented on the extension. The two leaders are expected to talk about issues of substance more on Thursday, after an arrival ceremony at the White House and a review of troops. Later, they will exchange toasts at a black-tie dinner, which will feature tech industry leaders like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and SpaceX’s Elon Musk.

Match of pageantry for Trump

Trump has made it clear he wants to wow Xi, telling reporters in recent weeks that he was delighted his new “work-of-art” helicopter landing pad would be ready for the visit while bemoaning that his massive White House ballroom would not.

“I wish we had it for tomorrow night,” Trump said again Wednesday. “We have a packed house tomorrow night for President Xi.”

Trump on Wednesday was looking to match the pageantry he was met with in China earlier this year. While Xi was not at the airport to meet Trump, a red carpet was rolled out to meet Air Force One in Beijing.

A military honour guard, a military band and about 300 Chinese youths waving Chinese and American flags and chanting, “Welcome, welcome! Warm welcome!” also were present.

Melania Trump said earlier Wednesday that her husband decided to personally greet Xi when he arrived in the Washington region because “they have a great relationship.”

“He’s coming on our soil, and we need to welcome them with the most respect,” she said of Xi and his wife during an interview on Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends.

The long red carpet recalled a similar extra-long one the U.S. laid out for Russian President Vladimir Putin when he touched down at a U.S. air force base in Alaska last summer for a summit aimed at trying to find an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

On Friday, Xi and Peng will be back at the White House for a private tea with the Trumps before joining them on a tour of the National Archives in Washington. The White House has said they will view historic documents underscoring the relationship between the two countries.

Canada’s Competition Bureau has reached an agreement with Sobey’s parent company to have the grocery giant strictly limit or stop using property controls after the agency found the practice to be anti-competitive. 

Property controls are clauses written into the land title that can prevent rival grocery stores from opening new stores nearby (exclusivity clauses), or can ban food products from being sold at nearby pet stores, dollar stores, gyms or other retailers and restrict what future leaseholders can sell on the land (restrictive covenants). 

Empire Company Limited — which owns Sobeys, Farm Boy, Safeway, Freshco, IGA and others — has been under pressure from the consumer watchdog for months to get rid of their property controls after it found the practice to be anti-competitive. 

“This all started with an investigation that we started in 2024 about the use of property controls by Loblaw and Sobeys and their impact in the grocery sector,” said Anthony Durocher, acting senior deputy commissioner of the Competition Bureau. 

“Loblaw has made commitments to curb its use,” he told CBC News. “Now we have an agreement with Sobey’s as well.”

Win for consumers, economist says

The investigation into the Canadian grocery giants’ use of property controls came off the back of federal committee hearings held in 2023 that were meant to get to the bottom of rising grocery prices.

“Sobeys, in a way, has been the hardest nut to crack,” said economist Jim Stanford, who testified at those hearings. “They denied that these things were wrong and initially pledged to continue doing it.”

The new deal is a win for the bureau — and for consumers, he said.

“I think this is a recognition that these practices are wrong — economically wrong and morally wrong — and the Competition Bureau is taking them seriously.”

Land title documents obtained by the CBC’s Marketplace earlier this year found stores within a radius of up to five kilometres from a grocery giant were restricted from selling perishable food items, like “fresh or frozen food, including meats, fruits, vegetables, fish, poultry, bakery, pre-packaged bread, delicatessen, bulk food or dairy products.”

Some restrictions also prevented nearby retailers, such as dollar stores, from offering steep discounts on big national brands like Kraft, Coca-Cola and Evian. 

A spokesperson for Sobey’s parent company, Empire, told CBC News in a statement that the company is “pleased to have resolved the matter of property controls with the Competition Bureau,” adding that they continue to invest in their network of stores across Canada.

Empire Company Limited is the second-largest grocery network in Canada after George Weston Limited, which owns Loblaws, No Frills, Superstore, Zehrs, Dominion, Fortinos, Freshmart and others.

Loblaws committed to cease enforcing its own restrictive covenants and to limit its exclusivity clauses in 2025, after the Competition Bureau’s initial probe. The watchdog says it continues to monitor that commitment. 

‘Exclusivity clauses’ still permitted

While the new agreement legally requires Empire to refrain from using new or existing restrictive covenants, it does allow “limited” use of exclusivity clauses.

This means that while the company can no longer restrict what other businesses can sell, they can still prevent direct competitors from opening locations on a shared development.

“There are some cases where it’s justified in specific circumstances,” said Durocher, pointing to Competition Bureau’s public guidance for retailers. 

The guidance says a “limited” exclusivity clause can be pro-competitive in a scenario where “no retailer would otherwise make the necessary investments to become a key tenant in a new shopping plaza.” It further states that in such a case, no retailers of a particular type would risk opening up in the shopping plaza without the exclusivity clause, “and so the clause increased competition.”

The bureau is prepared to make case-by-case judgements in these instances, Durocher said, having identified 19 such scenarios on land occupied by Empire-owned grocery stores in the course of their investigation. 

The federal government granted the Competition Bureau increased authority to enforce their property control rules earlier this year.

Ultimately, Durocher said, this makes it easier for grocers, butchers and bakeries to open up and to compete. “More competition means lower prices, more choice, more innovation,” he said.

Durocher said he intends to pursue similar, legally binding deals with other grocers, while simultaneously moving forward with the consumer watchdog’s formal examination of the industry’s barriers to competition launched in June.

This includes investigations into production and processing, transportation and distribution, and retail pricing across Canada’s food supply chain. 

As the examination continues, the Competition Bureau might be somewhat “hamstrung” by their limited powers, said Stanford, adding he would like to see more done to “stop these companies from getting so big in the first place.”

“I’m encouraged by this, but I don’t know if it means a whole new era of cracking down on food oligopolies or not,” he said. “That remains to be seen.”

A delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians called on Canada’s federal and provincial governments on Wednesday to help fund electrical transformers as Russia steps up attacks on the Eastern European country’s energy grid.

“We are getting ready for the potentially extremely harsh winter,” said Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, chair of Ukraine’s committee on integration into the European Union.

She said Russia is weaponizing the coming cold weather by focusing attacks on energy infrastructure, water supplies and sewage systems.

“We could have humanitarian disasters of the magnitude that nobody has seen,” Klympush-Tsintsadze said.

Throughout the summer Russia has drastically escalated aerial assaults on Ukraine, pounding cities day and night.

Over 800 civilians were killed in July and August, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Moscow has deployed massive, relentless waves of advanced jet-powered drones, ballistic missiles and guided glide bombs to overwhelm air defences.

Klympush-Tsintsadze said Russia’s aim is to depopulate the cities and make them unlivable.

She and fellow Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleksandr Merezhko were in Ottawa meeting with Canadian politicians and senior officials and took part in a roundtable discussion with journalists and other Baltic politicians at the Estonian Embassy.

Aside from an urgent, renewed pitch to Canada to sell high-end electronic warfare equipment to combat drones and to help purchase more air-to-air missiles, Klympush-Tsintsadze said they’re asking the federal government and provinces to buy into funding packages managed by the Energy Community, an agency of the European Union.

Electrical transformers made in North America are not compatible with the ones built in Europe and contributing to the transformer construction ahead of winter would be helpful.

One Canadian province, which Klympush-Tsintsadze declined to name, has already stepped forward and there’s a plan to raise the idea with the Ontario government in a meeting on Thursday.

“That’s something very specific that can be done,” she said. 

Merezhko said the war — now four-and-a-half years since the full-scale invasion — is evolving into a more dangerous phase where Ukraine is fighting a “whole coalition” of countries.

“It’s not only Russia, which is weak in itself, but it’s also Iran, because it provides thousands and thousands of drones. It’s also North Korea, which has been providing munitions, continuous, and even armed force, you know, manpower.”

His remarks echoed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who delivered a 26-minute address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. 

Zelenskyy highlighted how Russia is actively globalizing the conflict by drawing in external personnel. He revealed that citizens from 47 countries are being enlisted by Russia to fight. He pleaded with the leaders of those nations to intercede and stop their citizens from being dragged into Moscow’s war.

Speaking in English, he also defended Ukraine’s strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure.

“Oil itself is not Ukraine’s target,” Zelenskyy told world leaders. “Our target is Russia’s ability to finance this war to drag it out … Russia’s finances and Russia’s production are what must be stopped if Putin is to be stopped.”

He called on the international community to escalate economic sanctions and permanently drain Moscow’s war revenues.

In Ottawa, Klympush-Tsintsadze said her view is that the further west she travels from Ukraine, the less the war and the threat from Russia is understood.

She said the Baltic nations — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — understand, as do Poland, Romania and Moldova.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants to destroy your way of living, your way of functioning, and insert their own chaotic rules into your reality,” she said.

Despite the massive increase in defence spending among NATO nations, including Canada, there’s no sense of political urgency and frightening lack of resolve in the face of increasing grey zone attacks in Europe.

“Everyone sees the reporting of a lot of the media: this resolve and resilience of the Ukrainian people,” she said. “I think that this is also pretty misleading because it serves the purpose of understanding that somehow this conflict, this war, is taken care of and those Ukrainians are carrying on.”

North American media, she said, seems to have lost interest in the fate of Ukraine. 

“I think everybody is getting used to this war. I don’t know what has to happen for us to make it to the front pages. We are dying every single day in the middle of Europe,” Klympush-Tsintsadze said.

“We are very, very exhausted.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN General Assembly on Thursday, delivering pre-recorded remarks from his office in Ramallah after the United States denied him and other top Palestinian officials visas to attend the gathering for the second year in a row.

“The Palestinian people face one of the most dangerous times in its history,” Abbas said, citing long-term military occupation in the West Bank and the war in Gaza. Israel, he said, “has targeted all of the basic necessities of life.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak in person early in the afternoon. As Abbas spoke, the Israeli delegations’ seats in the General Assembly hall sat vacant.

In his speech, Abbas once again implored the international community to take more vigorous action and speak out more loudly against Israel.

“How much longer will some states continue to remain silent against Israel or supply it with the weapons it uses against our people? The world has witnessed the tremendous cost in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” Abbas said. “What is the international community waiting for in order to protect the Palestinian people?”

Though negotiations have not taken place for years, Abbas urged the international community to push for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu has said no Palestinian state will be established while he is Israel’s leader and has argued that the Palestinian Authority is not a partner for peace.

The international community has backed U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for a group of apolitical administrators to govern Gaza under the Board of Peace. But Abbas said the territory could not remain politically separate from the West Bank and East Jerusalem for the long term.

He said the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank needed to be governed by “one state, one government, one law and one legitimate entity authorized to bear arms.”

Abbas recorded the video on Wednesday.

Since 2005, the now-90-year-old Abbas has led the Palestinian Authority, which is the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people. But his support among Palestinians has withered during years of corruption and the sometimes-violent advance of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Under Abbas, Palestine has been recognized as a country by a majority of UN member states. But on the ground in the West Bank, the mostly symbolic moves have not affected Israel’s decades-long military occupation. Throughout the war in Gaza, Abbas and the authority have been largely sidelined from negotiations over its future in favour of a transition process shepherded by the U.S.-backed Board of Peace.

The Palestinian Authority was created under a series of peace agreements with Israel in the 1990s and administers semi-autonomous areas of the West Bank, while relying heavily on foreign aid.

It was ousted from Gaza after Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 and violently seized control. Abbas was elected to what was supposed to be a four-year term in 2005. The authority has not held presidential or legislative elections since 2006.

Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, and the Palestinians want both as part of their future state. The Palestinians and much of the international community view the settlements as illegal and as an obstacle to creating a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.

U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for Xi Jinping this week, heralding the Chinese president as a “great leader” while looking to expand or extend a deal both countries reached last year to stave off some tariffs and carve out something of a trade truce.

Trump has previously said he’s made “fantastic trade deals” with Beijing and, recently, even mused about inviting Chinese auto manufacturers to set up factories in the U.S. 

“If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I’d be OK with that,” he said on the Fox News program The Ingraham Angle. Trump also reportedly got that extension with China late on Wednesday.

And yet, Trump and many in his administration have repeatedly scolded Prime Minister Mark Carney for reaching a vastly smaller trade deal — agreeing in January to let in 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles with a tariff rate of 6.1 per cent (down from 100 per cent), while China lowered tariffs on Canadian products including canola, peas, lobsters and crabs.

“They’ll look back at this decision and surely regret it,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said of the EVs at the time.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took a more bellicose approach, accusing Canada of turning its back on the U.S.

“We are a $30 trillion economy, we are the consumer of the world. Carney has a problem with us, he gets on a  plane and goes to China? Does he think the Chinese economy is going to buy his stuff?” he said to Bloomberg.

Jia Wang, senior fellow with the China Institute at the University of Alberta, says this highlights the way the U.S. demands one thing of its trading partners, while doing another itself.

“The hypocrisy in the way the U.S. treats its trading partners is palpable,” she said.

Canada’s trade with China did pick up steam in 2025 as businesses sought to diversify in the face of U.S. tariffs. At the same time, American importers purchased fewer products made in China.

But Canada would have to increase its China trade by more than 380 per cent to catch up to the amount of imports the U.S. still brings in every year.

The U.S. imported more than $434 billion worth of Chinese goods in 2025. By contrast, Canada imported just $90 billion from China.

And yet Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican and Trump loyalist, highlighted what he saw as Canada’s risk in increasing trade with China, in a lengthy essay posted on X.

“Choosing Communist China as a trading partner over the U.S. isn’t just a bad idea — it’s a trap,” he wrote in early September.

As many commenters pointed out, Florida buys more goods from China than from Canada. In fact, it is one of four U.S. states that list China as their top source of imports. (California, South Carolina, Tennessee are the others.)

But Wang says that sort of nuance is lost in Trump’s zero-sum world where everything is about power.

Trump “is more than happy to receive Chinese investment, to do more with China economically, to further strengthen the relationship with Xi, while being very critical and very harsh on Canada,” she said.

Mark Manger, a professor with the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto agrees there is an element of hypocrisy in an American policy that tries to strike deals with China while discouraging countries like Canada from doing the same thing. 

“But we also have to take everything the U.S. president says with a grain of salt. What great deals is he striking with China? I don’t see anything there,” he said in an interview.

Manger says China remains the world’s biggest exporter, and is closing in on the American lead on artificial intelligence.

And more to the point, he says, China knows it can outlast Trump.

“The Chinese are playing a longer game,” said Manger.

And both Manger and Wang say Canada needs to play the long game as well.

“We have to deal with both economies. We can’t wish them away,” said Wang.

And, she says, dealing with both economies will require leadership, strategic thinking and deft decision making as smaller countries like Canada navigate the two biggest economies in the world.

The Professional Women’s Hockey League is set to showcase its talent during its fourth season by holding its first all-star event in Toronto on March 7.

The day-long event will feature four teams competing in a 3-on-3 tournament at Scotiabank Arena, the NHL Maple Leafs home, the league announced in a news conference held at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto on Thursday.

The addition of an all-star event comes four years after the PWHL was established as a six-team league, with this season set to open in late November/early December. And it follows a spring in which the league grew to 12 teams by adding expansion franchises in Detroit, Las Vegas, San Jose, California, and Hamilton, Ontario.

“The PWHL was built to feature the best players in the world, and now fans will see the highest level of skill in women’s hockey showcased in a new and unique way,” said Jayna Hefford, the league’s executive vice-president of hockey operations.

TSN will provide English-language coverage of the all-star game and CBC/Radio-Canada French-language coverage in Canada.

By selecting Toronto, the PWHL returns to its modest beginning. The league’s first game had Toronto hosting New York on Jan. 1, 2024, at the 2,500-seat Mattamy Athletic Centre. A month later, PWHL players took part in a 3-on-3 competition in Toronto as part of the NHL’s all-star weekend.

“Bringing the best players in the world together … speaks to how far this league has come in three years,” executive VP of business operations Amy Scheer said. “We can’t wait to return to Toronto, where our story began, and mark another important milestone in the evolution of the PWHL.

The all-star teams will feature 10-player rosters (six forwards, three defenders and a goalie). And they’ll split up by nationality — American, Canadian and international — and experience, rounded out by an all-rookie squad. The teams will compete in a round-robin format, with the second- and third-place teams playing in the semifinal round before facing the first-place finisher in the final.

Teams will be selected through a combination of fan, player, and media voting, with the PWHL choosing reserve players.

Scripps’ Sports, the PWHL’s new U.S. national broadcast partner, will air the games on Ion across the U.S.

A federal judge temporarily blocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to ban three news outlets from the White House grounds, saying early on Thursday that CNN, MS NOW and Politico must have their access restored.

Despite the ruling, reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico said Thursday morning that they were once again denied entry to the White House compound.

The news organizations have asked for a videoconference or teleconference with the judge as soon as possible to address what they say is a violation of the court’s order. According to both CNN and MS NOW, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly has asked the administration to respond to that request by 12:30 p.m. ET.

It’s not clear why the White House has not reinstated the reporters from those media outlets, but the Trump administration has previously been accused of defying court orders, particularly in immigration and deportation cases.

It’s the latest development in an escalating showdown between Trump and media outlets whose coverage he dislikes. Trump announced he was banning the outlets last week, assailing what he called “fake news,” and later arguing that their reporting was a risk to national security. The outlets argued they were singled out because of the content of their coverage, calling the ban a blatant First Amendment violation.

It comes as the news organizations who are plaintiffs are seeking to cover the state visit of Xi Jinping of China, where press freedoms have been curtailed on the mainland and in Hong Kong.

In an order early Thursday, Kelly said the media outlets had met the legal thresholds to obtain a temporary restraining order, in effect for 14 days. He said they were likely to succeed in showing that their White House press passes were revoked without due process.

“This is a high bar, but plaintiffs have met it,” he wrote.

Kelly said the government must have clear standards for conduct that would lead to revoking a press pass. He called the standard of objectionable reporting outlined in letters that the White House sent the outlets days after banning their reporters “so vague it hardly does the trick.”

Kelly — whom Trump nominated in 2017 and who ordered a CNN journalist’s access restored in a similar case in 2018 — heard arguments on Wednesday from the opposing sides.

Temporary restraining orders are typically designed to preserve the status quo pending a closer review of the case by the court.

White House argues access ‘a privilege, not a right’

Kelly rejected the White House’s claim that revoking the press passes was necessary for national security, saying officials did little to back up that notion. “Nothing in the record… suggests that the revocation of plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns,” he wrote.

“The court is skeptical … that defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation of plaintiffs’ hard passes.”

Boutrous argued in the hearing that there was an urgent need for renewed access, saying that the ban caused irreparable harm to the outlets at a time of momentous news events. “We’re at war. We have world leaders coming to Washington.”

Justice Department attorney Michael Velchik, in his argument, had reiterated the administration’s point that the president had the right to choose who gets into the White House.

“Access to the White House is a privilege, not a right,” Velchik said.

In arguing that Trump was not engaging in viewpoint discrimination, Velchik said the U.S. president had criticized other news organizations even more harshly — such as calling ABC “the worst” — but hadn’t banned them.

“The president should be able to take immediate action to protect national security,” Velchik told the court.

In response, Boutrous said, “Suddenly it’s a national security case,” arguing that the president brought up that point only after the lawsuit was filed.

Trump “keeps proving our point,” Boutrous said, describing how the president has consistently used negative coverage of him as justification for the ban.

Trump also loses Iowa case

Trump, who as a private businessman earned a reputation for being litigious, has sued a number of news outlets since becoming a political figure, making various claims of harm to his reputation.

On Wednesday, an Iowa judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit accusing the Des Moines Register and its former pollster of misrepresenting the state of the 2024 presidential race, rejecting the president’s claim that the newspaper’s poll coverage violated Iowa’s consumer fraud law.

Calling the case extraordinary, Iowa District Judge Scott J. Beattie said that allowing the lawsuit and its “faulty” claims to proceed could have a chilling effect that “can discourage others from reporting on and debating public affairs.”

The White House said it would appeal the ruling to the Iowa Supreme Court.

Among the other press-related cases winding through the courts are a multibillion-dollar defamation suit Trump has filed against the BBC concerning a 2024 documentary, and a suit against the Wall Street Journal regarding an article connecting Trump to a 2003 birthday for his one-time friend Jeffrey Epstein, who was later indicted for child sex trafficking offences.

After the hearing on Wednesday, the networks continued their ban on Trump coverage. When the president formally welcomed Xi, journalists from Fox News, CBS and NBC were present but not shooting video.

Other television outlets whose crews were present, according to signs on their tripods and cameras, were NewsNation, Newsmax, Right Side Broadcasting Network, One America News and LindellTV.