ISLAMABAD — India and Pakistan on Saturday agreed to a ceasefire following U.S.-led talks to end the most serious military confrontation between the nuclear-armed rivals in decades. Read More

GENEVA — The U.S. Treasury Secretary and America’s top trade negotiator began talks with high-ranking Chinese officials in Switzerland Saturday aiming to de-escalate a dispute that threatens to cut off trade between the world’s two biggest economies and damage the global economy. Read More

Leo, the first American pope, told the cardinals who elected him that he was fully committed to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church. He identified AI as one of the main issues facing humanity, saying it poses challenges to defending human dignity, justice and labor. Read More

Amid the general upward trend in Canadian grocery prices, meat shopping in Canada has become more challenging. However, while the price of most beef products has risen, pork prices have dropped, according to the latest Statistics Canada report on monthly average prices for selected food products. Read More

A new poll reveals that more than 80 per cent of Quebec residents say that they're part of the Canadian nation. Read More

OTTAWA — For some politicians, the grief takes time to set in. Read More

I’m not sure, as an Albertan, that the biggest Alberta political news of the week isn’t the official secession of the Alberta New Democratic Party from the national NDP. Last weekend members of the NDP-A voted at a general assembly to allow for separate provincial memberships in the party: no longer will the NDP be one and indivisible. It seems there is widespread agreement that Alberta’s economy and its political culture are so distinctive from Canada’s, and so permanently incompatible with it, that the two entities really needed to… what’s the word I’m looking for? “Separate”? Read More

Mark Carney has returned from Washington and is taking a bow from the highly supportive Canadian political media for a very cordial meeting with U.S. President Trump. He set out to replicate his mighty but unsuccessful effort as governor of the Bank of England to terrorize the British public over the prospect of the United Kingdom departing the European Union, which Britain had never voted to enter, and squeaked into the minority reelection of an otherwise failed Liberal government of Canada as the man who could stand up to Donald Trump. President Trump heaped compliments on his visitor and with some justification took credit for Carney’s election victory, said that he (Trump) was the best thing that ever happened to him (Carney) and slapped him jovially on the knee. Readers will recall that I said at every stage that the hysteria about Trump was a nothingburger and that no more would be heard about Carney’s theory that “Trump is trying to break us” and that “This country's intimacy with the United States is over, a tragedy but the reality.” When asked about this last week President Trump said “He was running for public office,” a gracious explanation of the ludicrous canard that Trump is any kind of a threat to Canada. Read More

By withstanding perhaps the worst case of foreign interference in Canadian electoral history, and managing to grow his party’s share of the House of Commons despite the electorate’s sudden Liberal rush, it’s clear that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre deserves his place at the head of the party. Read More

Bestselling author of eight books, including The War on The West and The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray has just released On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization. Read More

Last Saturday, a large crowd of people rallied for Alberta's independence in front of the legislature in Edmonton. Disappointed that the federal election didn’t deliver their preferred result, many in the group felt a boost when the government of Alberta introduced Bill 54, which will lower the threshold for citizens to trigger a referendum. But that bill has also stirred up anger with another group: Indigenous peoples across the province. Read More

The Royal Canadian Navy returned to Halifax Friday from a deployment to Antarctica with tales of spotting exotic wildlife and samples that could lead to a greater understanding of climate change. Read More

A Toronto judge who suspects a lawyer used artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT to create a legal document full of unreal cases and "hallucinations" has ordered the lawyer to explain why she should not be cited for "contempt in the face of the court." Read More

Last weekend on NBC’s Meet the Press, President Donald Trump kiboshed the notion that he might seek a third term as president. That doesn’t mean he won’t go on CBS’s Face the Nation next weekend and say the opposite, of course, but it’s a reminder that Trump, who’s currently breathing most of the oxygen in Canadian politics, won’t be around forever. And when he’s gone, all the problems that gave credence to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s “Canada is broken” narrative will still be around. Housing. Law and order. The opioid crisis. Foreign interference in our politics. Landlocked natural resources. We are an inefficient and economically dysfunctional federation, to the point where breaking down internal trade barriers is a tall order. Read More

The childhood home of Pope Leo XIV in Dolton, a community just outside the city limits of Chicago, was up for sale last week. Asking price: US$199,000. Though heaven knows that amount might go up now that its former occupant is famous. Read More

TORONTO — Toronto police say they are investigating the death of a female pedestrian who was struck by two vehicles in Scarborough on Thursday night. Read More

On Wednesday, what should have been a timely update from the RCMP on the situation of two children who went missing from their home in Pictou County on May 2 — Lily Sullivan, 6, and Jack Sullivan, 4 — began rather awkwardly. Read More

New data released this week by the Toronto Police Service shows that reported hate crimes in the city rose 19 per cent in 2024 over the previous year. It also found that the Jewish community, while representing less than four per cent of Toronto's population, was the target of 40 per cent of reported incidents. Read More

The ongoing trade war between the U.S. and Canada has cooled Canadian housing markets significantly. Anxiety over tariff uncertainty and a looming threat of recession have led to notable shifts in market activity and home prices across the country, according to a recently released special report on housing from RBC. Read More

Interim NDP leader Don Davies says his party is in "very early" discussions with the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney about being granted official party status in the House of Commons. Read More

Delta Air Lines Inc. and Korean Air Lines Co. will spend $550 million acquiring a stake in Canadian carrier WestJet, adding to the broader consolidation among airlines globally. Read More

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney will unveil his first post-election cabinet on Tuesday, according to the Governor General's office. Read More

Wisconsin prosecutors have charged the father of a teenage girl who killed a teacher and fellow student in a school shooting last year with allowing her access to the semiautomatic pistols she used in the attack. Read More

The air traffic controllers directing planes into the Newark, New Jersey, airport lost their radar Friday morning for the second time in two weeks. Read More

A New York man has been charged with animal cruelty after nearly 100 cats — dozens of which were dead — were found in his home last weekend. Read More

Air Canada lowered its financial forecast for the year as travellers shy away from trips to the United States, pushing the country’s largest airline to boost flight capacity outside America and rein in costs amid bigger quarterly losses. Read More

SRINAGAR, India — Indian and Pakistani soldiers exchanged heavy volleys of shells and gunfire across their frontier in Kashmir overnight, killing at least five civilians in a growing military standoff that erupted following an attack on tourists in the India-controlled portion of the disputed region. Read More

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Leo XIV celebrated his first Mass on Friday, a day after his historic election as the first North American pope in the Catholic Church's 2,000-year history while congratulations poured in from world leaders and statesmen at the start of his papacy. Read More

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here. Read More

Our cookbook of the week is Salad for Days by Alice Zaslavsky, an award-winning Australian author and broadcaster. Read More

The folks at a Florida library and the Toronto library are in the midst of a friendly troll-off, as their hometown teams face each other in an NHL playoff rivalry. Read More

On May 1, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a bombshell 409-page report laying bare the troubling state of paediatric gender medicine. This moment presents yet another opportunity for Canada to reckon with a medical scandal that has long gone unaddressed. Read More

Various Indigenous leaders have complained vocally about Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s roundabout way of engaging with the province’s separatist movement by making it easier for organized citizens to arrange for referendums. Read More

In an interview this week with the BBC, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told the British news service that Canada has been "over reliant on the U.S. for too long," adding: "We are the most European of all non-European countries. That's why we want to be closer to Europe." Read More

Prime Minister Minister Mark Carney cannot be trusted with our Charter-protected right to free expression. Read More

OTTAWA — As Canada looks for ways to see U.S. tariffs lifted, the country's ambassador to Canada suggested the recent trade announcement with the United Kingdom could be a "template." Read More

Construction on the first of four small modular reactors at a nuclear station east of Toronto is set to begin this year with the entire project costing $21 billion. Read More