- As expected, both Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney have announced their candidacy for the federal Liberal leadership. Health Minister Mark Holland and Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Diane Lebouthillier have endorsed Freeland, while Holland has the support of several backbenchers but no ministers so far. Globe and Mail columnist Robyn Urback notes that Carney might benefit from having a greater distance from Trudeau's policies and personality; while nothing is likely to keep the Liberals in government, the party's time in the political wilderness might be shorter under Carney than Freeland.
- The pundits are still trying to work out what's behind Donald Trump's obsession with Greenland. One hypothesis is that this centres around security concerns. Greenland has deepwater harbours that might be seen as necessary to maintain a military presence in the area; while the US already has full access to this, there are concerns in some circles that an independent Greenland might not continue with Denmark's tolerance of this. Perhaps more significant, though, is the prospect for harvesting resources left behind as the ice cap melts; in addition to such things as rare-earth metals, there is the debris left behind by the glaciers themselves, known as "rock flour", which has proven to be useful for improving the productivity of agricultural soils - something that will no doubt be crucial in the coming decades, and which the Americans most definitely want a part of.
- An oil embargo might be the strongest response Canada can make to the tariffs Trump is vowing to impose on imports, as the costs of retooling refineries to use oil from other sources would be high. Of course, this would cost the Canadian oil industry dearly, since there are few other places to export the oil to; of course this is the reason Danielle Smith is so intransigent on the matter. There's also the scenario envisioned by Richard Rohmer in his 1973 novel Ultimatum, but you'd hope it wouldn't come to that...
- The US Supreme Court has upheld the bipartisan legislation that bans TikTok from being downloaded in that country as of today. In fact, even existing American users are finding that the app is not working for them; perhaps the company is hoping that this will strengthen opposition to the ban. Some critics think that notwithstanding the concerns raised about espionage, the real motivation may be to do the bidding of Silicon Valley; however, the fact that Trump isn't so sure about upholding the ban suggests otherwise, given that Silicon Valley has their own representative pulling many of Trump's strings.
- The Gaza ceasefire has taken effect. Whether it will last long enough for anything more than for the two sides to reload remains to be seen.
- Apparently it's become trendy for people in the US to give their sons weapon-related names such as Wesson, Caliber, and even Gunner (not to be confused with Gunnar, which is a legitimate name in Scandinavian culture). One hypothesis is that this is a hope on the parents' part to nip any less-than-masculine tendencies in the bud.
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