US special representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow on September 5, 2026, for meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of efforts to revive peace negotiations over the war in Ukraine. Russian state media and officials confirmed the envoys’ arrival and subsequent meeting with Putin at the Kremlin. Witkoff, President Donald…
For most goods bought online in Canada, the GST/HST rate is the rate of the province or territory where the goods are delivered or made available. A seller in Manitoba who ships a laptop to Halifax charges Nova Scotia’s 14% HST, not Manitoba’s 5% GST plus 7% retail sales tax. If the buyer picks the…
In the early hours of Friday, September 4, 2026, cheers erupted near Nepal’s Upper Trishuli 3A hydropower station as rescuers hauled two mud-caked men into daylight. Sanjay Sah, a 30-year-old mechanical foreman, and Kabir Maharjan, a 45-year-old mechanical supervisor, had spent nine days trapped deep inside a tunnel after a glacial collapse unleashed a deadly…
On August 1, 2023, news links disappeared from Facebook and Instagram for people in Canada. No court issued a publication ban. No minister ordered a takedown. Parliament passed a law that would have forced Meta to pay Canadian publishers for making news available. Meta’s answer was to stop making news available. That distinction matters. Most…
How much income you need to buy a house in Canada depends on the province. A typical home in New Brunswick and a typical home in British Columbia are not the same purchase, and the mortgage stress test treats them that way. This page uses July 2026 typical-home (benchmark) prices, then estimates the gross household…
The Black Death was the first and deadliest wave of the second plague pandemic. In the late 1340s and early 1350s it spread from central Eurasia through the Black Sea and the Mediterranean into large parts of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. It was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. That is no…
New York City will bar student use of generative artificial intelligence from 2-K through eighth grade for the 2026–27 school year, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels announced on September 2. City officials said the one-year moratorium affects nearly 600,000 public school students, about two-thirds of enrollment. Reuters and CNN described it as…
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday that trade talks with the United States can resume only when Washington “starts being serious” and stops posting memes and insults. Speaking to reporters in Ottawa after Monday’s federal byelections, Carney said there is still room for a deal that is “mutually beneficial” and “respects Canadian sovereignty.” “When the…
Things in Canada still cost more than they did a few years ago. They are just not going up as fast. In July 2026, the average price of everyday stuff was 3.0 percent higher than in July 2025. In June, it was 2.8 percent higher. That comes from Statistics Canada. That 3 percent is the…
A Canadian referred to a specialist in 2025 faced a median wait time of 28.6 weeks from that first family-doctor note to actual treatment. That is the Fraser Institute’s physician survey figure, published in December 2025. It was down from 30.0 weeks in 2024. It was still the second-longest result in that survey’s history, and…