- Donald Trump's pretext for deploying the National Guard in the District of Columbia was to deal with rampant crime. In actual fact, though, the troops have mostly been deployed in tourist areas and metro stations, not high crime neighbourhoods. There have, however, been a number of what locals believe to be police from out of town sent to those places, often making a big show of arresting people for petty offenses such as smoking pot or fare evasion.
- The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has identified 12 instances in which large supermarket chains have mislabeled foreign produce as Canadian. The CFIA has the power to levy fines of $15,000 per offense, however so far they have elected to simply say "please do not do this again".
- Yves Veggie Cuisine, a popular Canadian-founded brand of meat substitutes, is being shut down by its American owner, Hain Celestial Group. Hain claims that the sector has been declining for several years; it's possible that they want to take Linda McCartney Foods (which they also own) across the Atlantic and don't want Yves to compete with it. It also has to be admitted that while their veggie dogs are excellent, many of their other products such as veggie burgers are mediocre at best, especially when compared with things like Beyond Meat.
- The hamlet of Fort Providence, Northwest Territories is the latest to be evacuated as a result of wildfires, after a fire came within a kilometre of the community. Evacuees are being sent to the town of Hay River.
- Postal services of 25 countries have suspended outbound postal service to the US in response to tariffs.
- US Customs and Border Patrol searched almost 15,000 cellphones at the Canadian border between April and June. In many cases the data from the phones was downloaded and archived for reasons unknown. One cybersecurity expert suggests that while you can always take a "burner phone", the very absence of data on the phone could itself be seen as a red flag. I guess the best choice would be a flip phone that you couldn't put apps on at all; maybe don't try that if you're young, though. Actually better still - don't visit the US at all.
- Two years ago, Taco Bell introduced AI-driven drive-thrus at over 500 US locations. They're now rethinking things after it failed to reduce errors or speed up service. Many report that their requests have confused the system; one guy managed to crash the entire system by ordering 18,000 cups of water.
- A teacher in Idaho has been forced to resign after refusing to remove a poster from her classroom. The poster had the slogan "Everyone is welcome" with outlines of hands of different skin tone; she was explicitly told that while the slogan itself would have been tolerable, showing the hands was not. Talk about saying the quiet part out loud...
- Residents of a trailer park on the outskirts of Winnipeg have been targeted with graffiti and with an anonymous letter sent to the trailer park's office warning residents of the park to stay out of the adjacent suburban neighbourhood.
