Unless nothing changes, President Donald Trump’s threat of imposing 25 per cent tariffs on Canada will come to fruition on Tuesday. Barring last-minute negotiations between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the two countries are heading for a trade war.
Canada is now in the early phases of what might be called the Seven Stages of Tariff Grief.
A man was arrested at the weekend after allegedly burning a copy of the Koran – no, not in Iran or in Saudi Arabia, but in Manchester, in the UK. Apparently, it can now be a criminal offence in 21st-century Britain to express your distaste for a seventh-century religion.
The arrest followed a livestream on social media that appeared to show a 47-year-old man setting light to the Koran, page by page, on Saturday. This was just two days after Salwan Momika, an Iraqi atheist, was assassinated in Sweden, seemingly as punishment for burning copies of the Muslim holy book in public.
Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet believes that early elections remain the best way to negotiate with the Donald Trump administration, which has just carried out its threat to impose customs tariffs on Canada.
Blanchet said he had not changed his position regarding the possible overthrow of the Liberal government on March 24. According to him, elections “as quickly as possible” will allow for a new Parliament that will be able to negotiate “in a sustainable manner” with the United States.
Someone has to beat this idea into Trudeau’s head.
Update As many as 10 dead say police. No motive at this time.
Sweden school shooting: Five people shot at adult education centre in Orebro
Schoolchildren hiding in class rooms without knowledge of what's going on as a shooter is actively opening firearms at other people.
According to Swedish papers, the shooter has shot himself dead. #Sweden #School #Shooting #Orebro pic.twitter.com/hgJNK4e9mc
— Sani Zen (@ClarityCompass_) February 4, 2025
A Russian drone attack killed a British teenager on his first combat mission after joining the Ukrainian army.
James Wilton, who had recently turned 18 and was from Huddersfield, is the youngest Briton to have died defending Ukraine from Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
While walking across a field with a group of international fighters delivering supplies to the front line on July 23 last year, he was spotted and chased by three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Wow, Baier really did a number on Bob Rae here. pic.twitter.com/rHIZmcXHDl
— Blaise (@boehmerB) February 4, 2025
The SNP has about-turned on a proposed ban on pet cats.
John Swinney, the First Minister, told reporters: “Let me just clear this up today. The Government [is] not going to be banning cats.”
On Sunday, the Scottish Government said it would “fully consider” an official report by the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission (SAWC), which suggested the ban.
Shelia Copps stooped to gutter talk to try to degrade Premier Danielle Smith’s integrity.
Classless. Baseless. A dirty move.
And certainly, far beneath the dignity of a former deputy prime minister of Canada.
Europe is still in denial
If you want to know how to respond to Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, just think back to what happened between the EU and the UK after the Brexit referendum. The EU thought it could pressurise the UK either into reversing Brexit or accepting a bad deal. The EU, as the larger power, believed it had a stronger position — and the media concurred.
But the EU had a big trade surplus against the UK, and so had more to lose from a trade war. And this is how it played out. The single biggest victim of Brexit was not the UK economy, but German industry. Germany’s spectacular decline started in 2018, kicked off by Brexit and followed by a string of supply shocks including the pandemic and then Russia’s war in Ukraine. Trump’s tariffs will be next. The overarching lesson here is that if you are the surplus country, no matter how large you are, you should not engage in trade warfare.
Every entertainment industry awards show can be reduced to ridiculous outfits and woke special pleading acceptance speeches in which millionaires impassionately proclaim their love for drag queens, illegal aliens or Hamas, and in which most of the country (except for their deranged fan bases) look at them like clowns.
It was nearly 2 a.m. on the East Coast in the middle of election night when CNN’s Jake Tapper stood across from professional virtual-map operator John King and asked a simple question: “Are there any places where Kamala Harris overperformed from where Biden did?”
Tapping away from a view of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, King zoomed out to a view of the entire United States and hit a key to show a comparison to the 2020 election. The map instantly turned a solid dark gray, without a single county highlighted.
“Holy smokes,” Tapper gasped. “Literally nothing? Literally not one county?”
England ditched its blasphemy laws back in 2008. No longer would it be an offence to engage in ‘contemptuous, reviling, scurrilous or ludicrous’ speech concerning God. No longer would any poor soul be hauled off to jail, far less to the stocks, for the crime of profanity. So you can imagine my surprise when a man was arrested in Manchester on Saturday after desecrating a copy of the Quran. Was blasphemy snuck back on to the statute books without anyone noticing?
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has spent tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on some shocking expenditures.
USAID was established in 1961 to provide money made by Americans to help countries develop abroad.
However, the agency has been shuttered because Donald Trump and Elon Musk have found that the aid being doled out overseas often does not accomplish core U.S. missions, like expanding education and improving infrastructure.
After years of discrimination the Inuit, the indigenous people of the Arctic who make up most of the population, could break away from Denmark
On a snowy hilltop overlooking a windswept bay in Nuuk, the tiny capital of Greenland, is a statue of the Christian missionary who led an expedition to colonise this vast island for Denmark in 1721. Three centuries on, after years of discrimination by Copenhagen against the local population, many Greenlanders wish that Hans Egede had never set sail.
Among the most vocal critics of Danish policies is Pele Broberg, the leader of Naleraq, an opposition party that is pushing hard for independence. “We have nothing in common with Denmark.
Nothing. We don’t have the same culture. We don’t have the same language. Nothing. What we have is systemic racism,” Broberg, a former foreign minister, said at his office in Greenland’s parliament, a small, two-storey building near Nuuk’s icy harbour.
