JERUSALEM — Life in Israel has returned to normal following the ceasefire with Iran. Yet, amid this abrupt peace, many Israelis are now demanding that their government go a step further and end the war in Gaza, too, so that the hostages held by Hamas can be brought home safely. Read More

Canada’s finance minister said the country can negotiate a better trade deal with the Trump administration than other nations have received, pushing back on the idea that it may have to settle for a new baseline tariff on all exports to the U.S. Read More

On Monday, as the Prime Minister pulled the plug on the controversial Digital Services Tax one day before the deadline for the first payment, he proudly declared that this was a matter of providing desirable regulatory certainty for the dozen or so U.S.-based mega-businesses (Amazon, Uber, Meta, Google, et al.) targeted by the tax. Which raises a question: are pitiless algorithmic corporate giants capable of laughter, and, if so, can they laugh bitterly?  Read More

A cellist's quick trip from Baltimore to Montreal turned into a two-day odyssey after Air Canada refused to let him bring his instrument on the plane. This despite the fact that he had paid full fare for a second seat specifically for the instrument, crafted in 1695 and worth over a million dollars, to fly with him. Read More

A B.C. woman was brought back from the dead, so to speak, after she had been reportedly declared deceased by the Canada Revenue Agency. Read More

The number of people leaving the country has been slowly increasing in recent years, according to recent data from Statistics Canada. Meanwhile, immigration levels are down in the wake of federal reductions. Both these trends are contributing to a larger picture of significantly slowing population growth, according to StatCan analysis. Read More

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he's thinking of staging a UFC match on the White House grounds with upwards 20,000 spectators to celebrate 250 years of American independence. Read More

Waves of drone and missile attacks targeted Kyiv overnight into Friday in the largest aerial assault since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began more than three years ago, officials said, amid a renewed Russian push to capture more of its neighbor's land. 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 Breakfast, Lunch, Tea with Children by Rose Carrarini, co-founder of Paris's Rose Bakery, with her daughter, nutritional therapist Marissa-Catherine Carrarini. Read More

Traffic congestion is reaching crisis levels across Canada’s largest urban regions, threatening the economy and eroding quality of life for millions. From Toronto’s notorious Highway 401 bottleneck — costing commuters over three million hours of delay each year — to traffic jams in Montreal and Vancouver, the country’s major corridors are consistently among the worst in North America. Read More

Canada is at a crossroads. In the face of growing hatred and escalating threats toward the Jewish community, we must confront a difficult truth: antisemitic violence is no longer a fringe concern — it is now a coordinated and dangerous threat to public safety and national values. Read More

Ignorance of Soviet Russia’s violently repressive imperialist history and the uncritical adoption of language that echoes modern Kremlin disinformation has landed the University of Toronto’s education faculty in hot water. Read More

American politics often seem to balance themselves out in the worst possible way. Even as the GOP sheds its last vestiges of affection for limited government and free markets, the opposition Democrats openly embrace bigotry and crazy economic nostrums. Case in point: the rise in New York City of Zohran Mamdani, an avowed socialist who flirts with antisemitism, to represent the Democratic Party in this year’s mayoral election. Read More

OTTAWA — Federally appointed judges say their $415,000 salary needs a $60,000 bump to keep the job attractive to top legal applicants. The government says: not in this economy. Read More

OTTAWA — Decades before they were patrolling the corridors of power in downtown Ottawa, Michael Sabia and Peter Harder were marching through the same hallway for violin lessons in St. Catharines, Ont. Read More

SALABERRY-DE-VALLEYFIELD -- The Montreal mother who allegedly abandoned her daughter in a field in Ontario last month has been charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm. Read More

In a matter of days, an isolated training airport in the Everglades where endangered Florida panthers roam became a sprawling immigration detention center christened “Alligator Alcatraz,” modelled after the state’s frequent responses to hurricanes and built in part by companies whose owners have donated generously to Republicans. Read More

TOKYO -- Japan will starting January attempt to extract rare earth minerals from the ocean floor in the deepest trial of its kind, the director of a government innovation programme said Thursday. Read More

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans propelled President Donald Trump's big trillion-dollar tax breaks and spending cuts bill to final passage Thursday in Congress, overcoming multiple setbacks to approve his signature second-term policy package before a Fourth of July deadline. Read More

An Ontario Hockey League (OHL) team has drafted a seven-foot-tall defenceman. The Brantford Bulldogs selected Alexander Karmanov during the 2025 Canadian Hockey League (CHL) Import Draft and referred to him as “the largest hockey player on the planet” in a social media post announcing him as the 172nd overall selection. Here’s what we know about the 273-pound hockey player. Read More

OTTAWA — As pressure builds on the federal government to make changes to its electric vehicle sales mandate, a spokeswoman for Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin says they will be engaging with provinces and industry to ensure that measures "reflect" current circumstances.  Read More

Toronto police have arrested a suspect in an alleged sexual assault of a 62-year-old woman last month in a west-end park. Read More

MONTREAL — Quebec's language watchdog has changed its tune on whether it's acceptable to use the word "go" to cheer on sports teams. Read More

Mounties say a wildfire that has triggered evacuations near Lytton, B.C. was caused when a wheel fell off an RCMP trailer in a "tremendously unfortunate" incident. Read More

Brest, France — An 80-year-old U.S. novelist and her husband are among several people facing a possible trial in France over the illegal sale of gold bars plundered from an 18th-century shipwreck, after French prosecutors requested the case go to court. Read More

There is little question that Diddy — the mono-monikered rapper and producer whose trial for sex crimes concluded in New York yesterday — is a violent and despicable man. One look, which is all any decent person can stomach, at the 2016 video of him assaulting his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura and Diddy’s innate odiousness becomes impossible to deny. Read More

Our solar system is playing host to a rare visitor. A comet from interstellar space is hurtling toward the sun at about 68 kilometres per second, or about 245,000 kilometres an hour. And like many a socially savvy out-of-town visitor, it will be visible on a livestream, beginning at 6 p.m. ET, July 3. Read More

The decision by the United States to pause some weapons shipments to Ukraine has come at a tough time for Kyiv: Russia's bigger army is making a concerted push on parts of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line and is intensifying long-range drone and missile attacks that increasingly hammer civilians in Ukrainian cities. Read More

A Canadian musician who returned to Toronto from his birthplace of Ghana with millions of dollars' worth of heroin hidden inside false walls of his suitcases has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for what a court-appointed social worker called "an aberration of an otherwise 'simple life.'" Read More

A British singer was arrested in the United States after being denied entry into Canada. Read More

OTTAWA — The environment ministers of two of Canada's biggest provinces are calling on the Liberal government to scrap a host of Trudeau-era environmental and climate policies, saying the policies are holding the country back from meeting its economic potential. Read More

Inspector Drew Milne of the British Columbia Conservation Officer Service likened it to finding a needle in a haystack -- the haystack being a 137-hectare park on Vancouver Island, and the needle being a 1.5-metre-long boa constrictor. Read More

German police say a man attacked and slightly injured four people with an axe on a long-distance train in Bavaria on Thursday before he was detained by police. Read More

One funny thing about the “elbows up!” slogan of the New Canadian Nationalism is that in real life it’s pretty hard to hit yourself with your own elbow. But in the actual policy sphere, most of what we might do to put our elbows up against the United States involves self-harm or, at a minimum, self-denial. Read More

Airports are returning to normal operations after Canada’s air traffic control service said some received bomb threats early Thursday morning. Read More

The recent riots in Los Angeles, sparked by President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, could be a harbinger to a new era of ethnic conflict not only in the U.S. but throughout the West, including Canada. Read More

A criminal justice student who avoided a potential death sentence by pleading guilty Wednesday to the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students carefully planned the attack for months and took multiple steps to cover his tracks, the lead prosecutor said. 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