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On the first Sunday in March, I was cycling along the Rawlings Trail in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, past numerous strollers and cyclists enjoying the balmy early-spring weather.

Near Second Beach I was keeping an eye out for coyotes. What I saw beside the trail instead was a bright splash of auburn glory.

Only two legs were visible, bright yellow, so clearly not a canine. Two people were standing nearby. I stopped my bike, and together we contemplated the rather surreal presence of a large, apparently healthy, thoroughly placid rooster.

The bird’s guardians introduced themselves as Karl and Olya Schmidt. They were not its owners, they assured me — they had simply come upon the bird as he pecked his contented way around the path.

President Trump broadened his campaign of retaliation against lawyers he dislikes with a new memorandum that threatens to use government power to punish any law firms that, in his view, unfairly challenge his administration.

The memorandum directs the heads of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States” or in matters that come before federal agencies.

Mr. Trump issued the order late Friday night, after a tumultuous week for the American legal community in which one of the country’s premier firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, struck a deal with the White House to spare the company from a punitive decree issued by Mr. Trump the previous week.

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When President Trump announced on Friday that the United States would move ahead with a long-debated project to build a stealthy next-generation fighter jet, the message to China was clear: The United States plans to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next decade, probably far longer, to contain Beijing’s ability to dominate the skies over the Pacific.

But here on earth, the reality has been very different.

As the Department of Government Efficiency roars through agencies across government, its targets have included some of the organizations that Beijing worried about most, or actively sought to subvert. And, as with much that Elon Musk’s DOGE has dismembered, there has been no published study of the costs and benefits of losing those capabilities — and no discussion of how the roles, arguably as important as a manned fighter, might be replaced.

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The US has blocked Canadian access to a library straddling the Canada-US border, drawing criticism from a Quebec town where people have long enjoyed easy entry to the space.

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is located between Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont. It was built deliberately to straddle the frontier between the two countries – a symbol of cooperation and friendship between Canada and the US.

The library’s entrance is on the Vermont side. Previously, Canadian visitors were able to enter using the sidewalk and entrance on the American side but were encouraged to bring documentation, according to the library’s website.

Inside, a line of electrical tape demarcates the international boundary. About 60% of the building, including the books, is located in Canada. Upstairs, in the opera house, the audience sits in the US while the performers are in Canada.

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U.S. immigration agents wearing masks arrested a Georgetown University academic outside his home in Virginia. They detained two German tourists for weeks when they tried to enter the country legally through the southern border. They knocked on doors at Columbia University apartments, searching for pro-Palestinian protesters.

The Trump administration has opened a new phase in its immigration agenda, one that goes well beyond the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

U.S. border officials are using more aggressive tactics, which the administration calls “enhanced vetting,” at ports of entry to the United States, prompting American allies like Germany to update their travel advisories. At the same, the administration is targeting legal immigrants who have expressed views that the government believes threaten national security and undermine foreign policy.

The tactics have unnerved foreign tourists and sent a chill through immigrant communities in the United States, who say they are being targeted for speech — not for breaking any laws.

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Raised in Saskatchewan, Joshua Haldeman was a tech-utopian, politician and apartheid fan

Joshua Haldeman was just one of thousands of Saskatchewan farmers who lost their land in the drought of the Dirty Thirties.

While that trauma shaped the lives of everyone who went through it, the crisis affected Haldeman in an exceptional way — he never stopped raging at what he perceived were the causes of the Great Depression.

. . .

Over his lifetime, Haldeman would lead two Canadian political parties (one of which he founded), campaign against Canadian prime ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King and John Diefenbaker, write a book defending South Africa’s system of apartheid and spend years flying and driving across the African wilderness with his family — hunting for the Lost City of the Kalahari.

In October 2023, three days before Hamas fighters attacked Israel, Columbia University’s new president stood outside Low Library and posed a foundational question.

“What,” she asked, “does the world need from a great university in the 21st century?”

. . .

Seventeen months later, Dr. Shafik is gone and the Trump administration is offering a far different answer. The ideal Dr. Shafik described, much of it historically bankrolled by American taxpayers, is under siege, as President Trump ties public money to his government’s vision for higher education.

That vision is a narrower one. Teach what you must, defend “the American tradition and Western civilization,” prepare people for the work force, and limit protests and research.

. . .

The outcome of this clash over the purpose of higher education stands to shape American culture for a generation or more. If the president realizes his ambitions, many American universities — public and private, in conservative states and liberal ones — could be hollowed out, imperiling the backbone of the nation’s research endeavors.

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President Trump’s angry call on Tuesday for the impeachment of a federal judge who ruled against his administration on deportation flights has set off a string of near-instant social media taunts and threats, including images of judges being marched off in handcuffs.

The call came against an ominous backdrop. Nine days earlier, police officers in Charleston, S.C., had been dispatched to the home of one of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s sisters because of a threat that there was a pipe bomb in her mailbox. “The device’s detonation will be triggered as soon as the mailbox is next opened,” the emailed threat read.

The pipe bomb proved to be a hoax, but the threats and intimidation faced by judges and their families in recent weeks are real, judges say. At a moment when the judiciary is weighing pivotal decisions on the legality of Trump administration policies, the potential for violence against judges seems to be rising.

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Canada is in advanced talks with the European Union to join the bloc’s new project to expand its military industry, a move that would allow Canada to be part of building European fighter jets and other military equipment at its own industrial facilities.

The budding defense cooperation between Canada and the European Union, which is racing to shore up its industry to lower reliance on the United States, would boost Canada’s military manufacturers and offer the country a new market at a time when its relationship with the United States has become frayed.

Shaken by a crisis in the two nations’ longstanding alliance since President Trump’s election, Canada has started moving closer to Europe. The military industry collaboration with the European Union highlights how traditional U.S. allies are deepening their ties without U.S. participation to insulate themselves from Mr. Trump’s unpredictable moves.

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No recent precedent for a major party barring reporters from accompanying campaign

The Conservative national campaign director told media outlets Tuesday their journalists won't be allowed to travel with leader Pierre Poilievre on his campaign plane and bus during the upcoming election, ending a decades-old tradition of reporters embedding with a prospective candidate to lead the country.

There is no recent precedent for a major federal party barring reporters, producers, camera operators and broadcast technicians from travelling with a leader during a national election campaign.

In the most recent federal campaigns in 2019 and 2021, for example, major broadcasters, including CBC/Radio-Canada, CTV and Global, a number of print outlets and the wire service, The Canadian Press, had journalists with past Conservative leaders Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole throughout the campaign.

Will Arnett’s animated comedy Super Team Canada is set to bow May 16 on Canadian streamer Crave, just in time to ride a surge in Canadian nationalism amid an escalating cross-border tariffs war with the United States.

The series about six Canadian superheroes saving the world from giant evil robots has an all-Canadian cast that includes Cobie Smulders voicing the role of Niagara Falls, Kevin McDonald as the Canadian prime minister and Charles Demers as Poutine, a French Canadian crime fighter.

Arnett voices the role of Breakaway, a former minor league hockey player who uses his skates, stick and special pucks to fight crime as the unofficial leader of Super Team Canada. The ensemble voice cast also has Brian Drummond, Ceara Morgana, Veena Sood and guest star Jay Baruchel.

Will Arnett’s animated comedy Super Team Canada is set to bow May 16 on Canadian streamer Crave, just in time to ride a surge in Canadian nationalism amid an escalating cross-border tariffs war with the United States.

The series about six Canadian superheroes saving the world from giant evil robots has an all-Canadian cast that includes Cobie Smulders voicing the role of Niagara Falls, Kevin McDonald as the Canadian prime minister and Charles Demers as Poutine, a French Canadian crime fighter.

Arnett voices the role of Breakaway, a former minor league hockey player who uses his skates, stick and special pucks to fight crime as the unofficial leader of Super Team Canada. The ensemble voice cast also has Brian Drummond, Ceara Morgana, Veena Sood and guest star Jay Baruchel.