(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good morning, We start today with, you guessed it, the government shutdown, a pledge from Microsoft to address the housing crisis in the Seattle area, and the N.F.L.’s obesity scourge. Lawmakers press President Trump to end the shutdown Two bipartisan groups of lawmakers urged the […]

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – European bank regulators do not think Germany’s two largest banks, Deutsche (DBKGn.DE) and Commerzbank (CBKG.DE), should merge, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said. Commerzbank is too small to make a difference for Deutsche Bank, and both need to focus on increasing profitability and stabilizing their businesses, the source told […]

In August 1990, George H.W. Bush met Margaret Thatcher in Aspen right after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The pair resolved not to allow Iraq’s “naked aggression” to stand, and it did not. This was how the West was supposed to work — and how, sometimes, it did. Today the U.S. and Great Britain scarcely […]

Half a world away, crowds of heroic protesters are in the streets. They shout “Peaceful, Peaceful” even as security forces target them with live ammunition. They are risking their lives to try to topple a genocidal ruler. But President Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other world leaders are largely ignoring these brave protesters, […]

Throughout her two-and-a-half-year reign, Theresa May has built her brand around her supposed unsinkability. Yet the unprecedented defeat by 230 votes, unheard of for a British prime minister, should have been the moment she acknowledged her stewardship of Brexit is fatally flawed and tendered her resignation. The fact that she took straight to the despatch […]

It would be a tragedy, and an ironic one at that, if the Government’s primary goal, backed by its European partners, of ensuring that there was no hard Border in Ireland – the so-called Brexit backstop – resulted in exactly that. But such was the scale of Theresa May’s Commons defeat that the prospect of […]

On Wednesday and Thursday, the lobby of the Stollery Children’s Hospital will be buzzing with activity as the 20th annual Corus Radiothon takes place. Starting in 1999, the annual fundraiser has brought in nearly $23 million for the hospital. “We wouldn’t be doing it,” Kathy Reid, a Stollery nurse practitioner, said of radiothon’s impact. “We […]

JERUSALEM — If you are reading this, you’ve likely seen much about “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” in the pages of this newspaper and of every other important newspaper in the West. That phrase contains a few important assumptions. That the conflict is between two actors, Israelis and Palestinians. That it could be resolved by those two […]

It’s a route Darcie King and her husband Tom have taken for years with their snowmobiles — across the Miramichi River and under the Morrissy Bridge to get to off-road trails. But after setting out to meet with some friends and go to dinner Friday evening, the couple didn’t realize they’d soon be fighting for their lives. […]

‘12 RULES for Life: An Antidote to Chaos’, Jordan Peterson’s book published by Penguin Random House, is as relevant to political conflicts like Brexit as it is to the individual to whom it is addressed. In Rule Seven, “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)”, Peterson describes his own search for meaning: “I was […]