In March 2008, revelations surfaced of past anti-American and antisemitic rhetoric by Barack Obama’s longtime pastor and friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright, including Wright’s accusation that the U.S.’s own terrorism helped motivate al-Qaida's 9/11 attack. Knowing his political credibility depended on it, Obama abruptly severed ties with Wright. Post-inauguration, Wright blamed “them Jews” for Obama’s continuing frostiness. Read More

Our respective national days were a bit more complicated this year, with Canadians who usually extend good wishes to our American friends at their barbecues being a bit more reticent to do so. South of the border they began the countdown to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Read More

It’s not always the unexpected that gets governments in trouble — often enough it’s their own bad judgement, poor timing or general clumsiness that gets in the way. But the unanticipated does happen a lot. Read More

Re: Mark Carney has a winking habit. Could it grow as stale as Justin Trudeau's novelty socks? — Joseph Brean, July 2 Read More

Thousands of local tourists poured into China's first-ever Legoland as it opened its gates in Shanghai on Saturday, the latest theme park hoping to capitalise on a domestic tourism boom. Read More

VANCOUVER — British Columbia infrastructure minister says in her eight years as a member of the legislature, she can recall receiving about half a dozen death threats, and considers herself “pretty fortunate” as a provincial politician. Read More

KERRVILLE, Texas — A Texas sheriff says the deaths from flash flooding in central Texas has risen to 27 people, including 9 children. Read More

Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is on a mission to bring race socialism to New York City. That is not speculation, it’s in his public campaign platform. Read More

DHARAMSHALA, India — Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said that he hopes to live until he is over 130 years old, days after he laid out a succession plan by saying he plans to reincarnate after his death. Read More

Syria’s new governing authority on Friday claimed a willingness to work with the United States to reimplement the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel, which created a U.N.-monitored buffer zone separating the two countries. Read More

Drinking among Gen Zers is on the rise in many major markets throughout the world, including Canada, according to IWSR, a British-based firm that analyzes drinking patterns. Read More

It has become something of a cliché to assert as an evident fact accepted resignedly, that the West is in decline. But it isn't. The West is essentially the Americas, Central and Western Europe, Israel, Australasia, and Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, arguably the Philippines and beleaguered elements in South Africa. Obviously, some of these places are in better condition than others. A degenerating society is one that has lost the will to defend itself from both external and internal enemies and where belief in the value of the society or civilization and loyalty and pride in the country have eroded to the point where there is legitimate doubt that they can be sustained under any pressure. No part of the Western world has achieved such a condition. Read More

Money talks, and when the sum being discussed is $175 million it starts speaking the language of common sense. Read More

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been focused on improving traffic flow and reducing congestion on provincial roads and highways for several years. His gaze has now turned to an electronic device that can disrupt traffic and frustrate drivers: speed cameras. Read More

U.S. President Donald Trump signed his US$3.4 trillion budget bill into law Friday, enshrining an extension of tax cuts, temporary new breaks for tipped workers and funding to crack down on illegal immigration. Read More

Germany will carry out emergency repairs on its autobahn this weekend after extreme heat in recent days blew up large chunks of concrete along key stretches of the highway. Read More

OTTAWA — Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson did not commit to scrapping Trudeau-era climate policies that Alberta and Ontario want to see gone but said that the newly adopted major projects bill could pave the way to doing so “over time.” Read More

LOS ANGELES — Michael Madsen, the actor best known for his coolly menacing, steely-eyed, often sadistic characters in the films of Quentin Tarantino including Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill: Vol. 2, has died. Read More

OTTAWA — The Carney government is poised to post a massive deficit of more than $92 billion during this fiscal year, a new report from a well-respected financial think tank projects, almost double what was forecast just a few months ago by a non-partisan arm of the government.  Read More

A British Columbia man whose Tesla was once found to contain more than $47,000 in cash and two kilograms of cocaine while he himself was carrying a bag containing 15.6 kilograms of fentanyl has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for trafficking. Read More

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