Bond investors are bracing for an extended pause in the Federal Reserve’s rate-cutting cycle as they edge into slightly riskier trades, driven by a resilient economy and fresh U.S. fiscal stimulus plans that are likely to boost consumer spending this year.
The U.S. central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is widely anticipated to hold its benchmark interest rate steady in the 3.50-3.75-per-cent target range at the end of a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday. The committee cut that rate by a quarter of a percentage point at its meetings in September, October, and December following a nine-month pause.
Whatever signals Fed Chair Jerome Powell gives at his press conference on Wednesday about the speed of rate cuts, investors’ focus will likely shift to who might replace him in May. BlackRock bond chief Rick Rieder has become the odds‑on favorite, with Polymarket giving him a 49-per-cent chance of taking the top job.
Donald Trump’s Greenland tariff threat and U-turn last week may have been a watershed for the world’s “middle powers.” For them, rebooting globalization - with or without Washington - now looks far more realistic than it did during last year’s trade shock.
This year, the U.S. president has shifted from using tariffs mainly to air long-standing trade grievances to wielding them as tools of territorial and military leverage. And for the first time, that strategy has met firm resistance and credible retaliation, forcing a climbdown.
Equally important, Europe, Canada and other economies are ploughing ahead with trade liberalization of their own, even as the U.S. retreats into protectionism and an increasingly aggressive trade posture.

Gold climbed on Tuesday, hovering just shy of the US$5,100 per-ounce level breached for the first time in the previous session, as uncertainty around U.S. President Donald Trump’s policymaking prompted investors to seek safety in bullion.
Spot gold rose 1.6 per cent to US$5,092.09 per ounce, as of 5:12 a.m. ET. It hit an all-time high of US$5,110.50 on Monday.
U.S. gold futures for February delivery gained 0.1 per cent to US$5,089 per ounce.

In 1935, American author Sinclair Lewis published It Can’t Happen Here, a dystopian novel about the rise of a populist demagogue named Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, who becomes the U.S. president after cultivating a cult following for his nationalism, anti-elitism, and quixotic promises. Windrip was fixated on restoring domestic production of material goods and hated the press.
He establishes a paramilitary force called the “Minute Men,” or “M.M.,” who are initially primarily made up of retired military personnel, but grow to include farmers, industrial workers and even former criminals, all of whom to appear to revel in the opportunity to wield control and power over their fellow citizens. M.M. officers spy for the state and violently break up protests, and as Windrip’s presidency metastasizes into authoritarianism, they arrest and execute perceived dissidents with complete impunity. The regime justifies these actions by claiming the M.M. only targets malicious agitators: “The way to stop crime is to stop it!” Windrip declares to great fanfare.


Iran's bloody crackdown on nationwide protests killed at least 6,126 people while many others still are feared dead, activists said Tuesday, as a U.S. aircraft carrier group arrived in the Mideast to lead any American military response to the crisis.
Featured below are companies that have experienced recent insider trading activity in the public market through their direct and indirect ownerships, including accounts they have control or direction over.
The list features insider transaction activity; it does not convey total ownership information as an insider may hold numerous accounts.
Keep in mind, when looking at transaction activities by insiders, purchasing activity may reflect perceived value in a security. Selling activity may or may not be related to a stock’s valuation; perhaps an insider needs to raise money for personal reasons. An insider’s total holdings should be considered because a sale may, in context, be insignificant if this person has a large remaining position in the company. I tend to put great weight on insider transaction activity when I see multiple insiders trading a company’s shares or units.

Hello again Trade Off contestants!
Welcome to week 10 of The Globe and Mail’s stock-picking contest. Can you believe there are only three more weeks to go until we crown our winners?
As a reminder: We’ll have a $5,000 award for first place, $3,000 for second and $2,000 for third. So make sure to give your portfolios a look to ensure you’re ready for the home stretch.
World shares sat around record highs on Tuesday as investors hoped for the best from this week’s barrage of U.S. large-cap earnings, and while President Donald Trump’s latest tariff moves left stocks largely unmoved it did boost gold and silver still further.
Accusing South Korea’s legislature of “not living up” to its trade deal with Washington, Trump late on Monday said he would increase tariffs on imports from Asia’s fourth-largest economy into the U.S. to 25 per cent.
Stocks appeared to take the news in their stride, with Nasdaq futures up 0.5 per cent, as investors geared up for a slew of earnings from the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Tesla starting on Wednesday.
Equities
Asian shares hit a new record as investors hoped for the best from a barrage of U.S. large-cap earnings, though uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s latest tariff moves on South Korea boosted gold and silver.
Accusing South Korea’s legislature of “not living up” to its trade deal with Washington, Trump late on Monday said he would increase tariffs on imports from Asia’s fourth-largest economy into the U.S. to 25 per cent.

The camera pans slowly across the skyline of Uganda’s capital and then pulls back to reveal a man in a hoodie: the country’s most wanted fugitive, opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, who is taunting the authorities from his latest hiding place.
Uganda’s police and military have been scouring the country for Mr. Kyagulanyi ever since he escaped from house arrest on Jan. 17, but he continues to elude them, travelling undercover and issuing defiant video messages to his supporters from a different location every day.


Earlier this month, the U.S. dramatically altered its childhood vaccine schedule, dropping the number of diseases for which vaccines are recommended to 11 from 17.
Apparently, that was only the beginning.

The Canadian Securities Course (CSC), for decades the foundational financial services industry credential, is no longer the entry ticket to a Bay Street career after changes that took effect at the beginning of this year.
As of Jan. 1, the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) moved to an exam-based proficiency regime that doesn’t require candidates to complete courses to become advisors at investment dealers.

In a year that has already seen geopolitical fireworks alongside fears of an artificial intelligence bubble, some investment experts are calling for broader diversification across both public and private markets.
AGF Capital Partners Inc.’s outlook report for private markets and alternatives says AI-driven concentration risk is a threat not only to portfolios tilted to tech stocks but increasingly in private markets as well.

Federal public servants used to be a sure thing for Pat Nicastro’s fine-food shop in Ottawa’s Byward Market.
He used to be able to count on a lot of them who work in nearby offices to come in for lunch, a group that was a sizable part of the customer mix that has sustained La Bottega for about 30 years.

In a flat-bottomed valley 20 kilometres south of Penticton, B.C., Canada’s most ambitious radio telescope is growing.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is closely scrutinizing visa applications from soccer fans planning to attend the World Cup, to prevent people from entering the country with the aim of claiming asylum.
Officials are warning that ticketholders could be refused visas or turned away by border agents if it is feared they may not return home after the international soccer tournament ends this summer.

Re “In service to Canada, and our allies” (Editorial, Jan. 26): I was grateful enough that my Globe was delivered to my door after that dumping of snow in the Toronto area, but truly gratified when I opened it to see the list of those Canadian Armed Forces members “who did not stay back and who never made it back from Afghanistan.”

The cost of importing Chinese cars to Canada is set to drop steeply with a recent cut in tariffs. How will that impact EV sales? Are our EV charging infrastructure and our grid ready for those extra cars? Here's a closer look at the potential impact.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called for credit card interest rates to be capped at 10 per cent — a move that could bring short-term relief to some consumers but is likely to cause a broader credit crisis in the long run, according to experts.

The equipment failure that left thousands of Montrealers without power during this weekend’s bitter cold originated at a substation that Hydro-Québec has been aiming to replace since at least 2018.

Canada’s tax and benefit system is making life harder for low-income seniors who continue working to pay the bills, according to a new report from the Montreal Economic Institute. The think tank is recommending the federal government overhaul how the Guaranteed Income Supplement, a benefit for this group of individuals, is clawed back.
The report, released Tuesday, found the number of seniors receiving the GIS who also had employment income rose 56 per cent between 2014 and 2022. Among seniors aged 65 to 69, the increase was even higher, at 64 per cent.


The national child-care program that promised to reduce fees to about $10 a day by this spring is expected to be approximately 90,000 spaces short of its target, and most of the licensed spots that have opened are in the for-profit sector, according to a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report.
The federal government announced the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program in the 2021 budget. By March, 2022, the provinces and territories had all agreed to create more than 284,000 spaces by March 31, 2026.


Iran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests killed at least 6,126 people while many others still are feared dead, activists said Tuesday, as a U.S. aircraft carrier group arrived in the Mideast to lead any American military response to the crisis.
The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and guided missile destroyers accompanying it provide the U.S. the ability to strike Iran, particularly as Gulf Arab states have signaled they want to stay out of any attack despite hosting American military personnel.




In Toronto’s west end, eager kids carrying toboggans took over the “dog bowl,” a steep pit in Trinity Bellwoods Park usually reserved for four-legged fun seekers.
Nearby, Darryl Spector helped shovel out a Mini Cooper, which had become beached on a snow-covered street. “Once you start driving, don’t stop,” he told the driver as he got the car on its way.

Alberta’s separation drive came to the province’s largest city Monday, with hundreds lining up to add their names to the list of people wanting to vote on the province quitting Canada while the Opposition NDP called on the premier to drop the “word salad” and tell everyone where she stands.
“Freedom!” shouted one man, arms raised, as he left the signing centre at the Big Four Building on Calgary’s Stampede grounds.


Jan. 26, 2026 | Southern Ontario cleans up after a record-breaking snowstorm. Ottawa announces cash to help Canadians with the cost of living. And the invisible cancer-causing gas hiding in millions of homes.
Nearly nine months after being elected federally, Conservative MP Chak Au has submitted his resignation from his other job as a municipal councillor in Richmond, B.C.
His resignation will take effect Feb. 1.

A long-delayed light rail transit line in Toronto could be opening in less than two weeks.
Speaking to reporters at Queen’s Park, Premier Doug Ford said the goal is to have the Eglinton Crosstown LRT up and running on Feb. 8.


A massive winter storm has buried millions under a historic blanket of snow and ice, locking much of North America in a dangerous Arctic air mass. CBC’s Johanna Wagstaffe breaks down the rare atmospheric collision of a polar vortex and an atmospheric river — two extreme weather phenomena that combined to create this record-breaking, high-impact event.
Hello, welcome to Politics Insider. Let’s look at what happened today.
Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled a multibillion-dollar boost to the GST credit today as part of a package of measures aimed at easing the affordability crunch facing families.
Stephanie Levitz and Emily Haws report that Carney told a news conference in Ottawa that, in June, the government will provide those eligible for the credit with a one-time top-up payment and increase the credit by 25 per cent over five years.
Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.
Among the many voices shouting about the second fatal shooting of a Minneapolis civilian by federal law enforcement agents this month, there is a new chorus that might not be expected – at least, historically.
In the rare event that these exceptional circumstances affecting mobile operators' networks were to happen again, some older mobile phones might still encounter the same issue reaching emergency services through an alternate available network.
Software updates are available for the following iPhone and Apple Watch models that might be impacted by this network issue. You are encouraged to update your devices to the latest software version.


Ye, the musician formerly known as Kanye West, on Monday took out a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal to again apologize for his past antisemitic statements.
Canada’s auto parts manufacturers sit inside a tightly integrated North American supply chain, feeding assembly plants in Ontario and the U.S. Midwest with stamped metal, powertrain components, interiors, electronics, and EV and battery-related parts. The sector’s near-term performance is being pulled in opposite directions. What are we seeing for valuations here?

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s boost to the GST credit is the latest in a litany of federal and provincial temporary measures deployed in recent years to combat high living costs.
But compared with other similar efforts, Mr. Carney’s tax rebate is more narrowly targeted, promising to deliver hundreds of dollars more a year to low- and moderate-income individuals and families.
On Friday, OpenAI engineer Michael Bolin published a detailed technical breakdown of how the company's Codex CLI coding agent works internally, offering developers insight into AI coding tools that can write code, run tests, and fix bugs with human supervision. It complements our article in December on how AI agents work by filling in technical details on how OpenAI implements its "agentic loop."
AI coding agents are having something of a "ChatGPT moment," where Claude Code with Opus 4.5 and Codex with GPT-5.2 have reached a new level of usefulness for rapidly coding up prototypes, interfaces, and churning out boilerplate code. The timing of OpenAI's post details the design philosophy behind Codex just as AI agents are becoming more practical tools for everyday work.
These tools aren't perfect and remain controversial for some software developers. While OpenAI has previously told Ars Technica that it uses Codex as a coding tool to help develop the Codex product itself, we also discovered, through hands-on experience, that these tools can be astonishingly fast at simple tasks but remain brittle beyond their training data and require human oversight for production work. The rough framework of a project tends to come fast and feels magical, but filling in the details involves tedious debugging and workarounds for limitations the agent cannot overcome on its own.


Eight players from the Ottawa Charge are going to the 2026 Olympic Games. CBC’s Simon Smith spoke with them about how they’re feeling ahead of the games.

Eleven children were hospitalized following an incident at a local hotel's pool. One child was transferred to Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary in serious but stable condition.

It’s hard to not to draw comparisons: two different eras, two different Americas, two different states, separated by 1,381 kilometres and 69 years but sharing the mobilization of federal forces by Republican presidents and the defiant resistance of Democratic governors.
In 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched the 101st Airborne Division to Arkansas to enforce the desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School against the protests of governor Orval Faubus. This year, Donald Trump sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel to Minnesota to round up and deport undocumented migrants against the objections of Governor Tim Walz.

Ryan Wedding, an alleged drug trafficker and former Canadian Olympic snowboarder who was among the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, pleaded not guilty to charges of murder conspiracy and drug trafficking Monday.
Shackled, handcuffed and wearing khaki prison garb, Mr. Wedding was arraigned in a courtroom in Santa Ana, Calif.

Beer cans, candles and blood-stained clothing littered a soccer field in central Mexico on Monday, a day after gunmen killed 11 people and injured 12 others during a gathering after an amateur match.
While authorities investigate the killings, Guanajuato state Gov. Libia Dennise García said Monday that “security in the region has been reinforced” with state and federal forces. She said on social media that the state “will act decisively to protect families, restore peace to the community and bring those responsible to justice.”

![Former federal minister of sport Kirsty Duncan speaks to CBC News. 'I will continue to push [for a national inquiry into abuse in sport] because I will not be complicit. Former federal minister of sport Kirsty Duncan speaks to CBC News. 'I will continue to push [for a national inquiry into abuse in sport] because I will not be complicit.](https://i.cbc.ca/ais/1.6728978,1674853269000/full/max/0/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C375%2C4032%2C2268%29%3BResize%3D%28620%29)
Former Liberal cabinet minister Kirsty Duncan has died at the age of 59 following a years-long battle with cancer.

Former cabinet minister, scientist and champion for safe sport Kirsty Duncan has died at the age of 59.
Duncan had made public her multiple operations, radiation and chemotherapy to treat her cancer since she was diagnosed in 2023.


Lamis Mahmoud dreams of starting married life with her new husband in Germany. The couple married in August, 2023, but have never lived together because she has been trapped in the Gaza Strip, its borders closed.
Mrs. Mahmoud is among the many Palestinians who are hopeful that Gaza’s lifeline to the outside world, the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, will open any day now, allowing them to travel. The territory’s side of the crossing was seized and closed by Israeli forces in May, 2024.


Heavy snow, extreme cold and gusty winds made for tricky commutes across much of Atlantic Canada on Monday morning, with meteorologists warning the difficult weather would continue for at least another day.
One week after Atlantic Canada was hit with the first major snowstorm of the season, another haul of snow pummelled the region overnight Sunday and through Monday. Environment Canada put all of Nova Scotia under a yellow snowfall warning, saying the snow was expected to continue into Tuesday morning, with up to 35 centimetres possible in parts of the province.

The chair of a federal vaccine advisory panel under anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made his stance clear on vaccines in a podcast last week—and that stance was so alarming that the American Medical Association was compelled to respond with a scathing statement.
Kirk Milhoan, who was named chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in December, appeared on the aptly named podcast "Why Should I Trust You." In the hour-long interview, Milhoan made a wide range of comments that have concerned medical experts and raised eyebrows.
Early into the discussion, Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist, declared, "I don't like established science," and that "science is what I observe." He lambasted the evidence-based methodology that previous ACIP panels used to carefully and transparently craft vaccine policy.


Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Canada’s “principled pragmatism” in foreign policy will be on full display next week in Greenland when she opens Canada’s new consulate in the Danish territory with Inuit representatives attending and a coast guard vessel in the background.
“We will continue to be principled and we will be pragmatic at the same time,” Anand told The Canadian Press during a Monday interview in her ministerial office, where her desk was covered by a circular map of the Arctic.


South Korean submarine maker Hanwha announced Monday it had signed a flurry of partnership agreements with Canadian companies, including Sault Ste. Marie’s tariff-battered Algoma Steel ASTL-T, as it vies for a massive Canadian military procurement contract.
Hanwha Oceans said it signed a memorandum of understanding with Algoma that pledges $275-million in financial support to stand up a new structural steel beam mill.


After Ontario Premier Doug Ford criticized Ottawa's deal to bring thousands of Chinese EVs into Canadian markets last week, he met with Prime Minister Mark Carney Monday for a 'very productive meeting' and a few slices of pizza in Toronto. 'At the end of the day, make no mistake about it. We are one country,' Ford said.
From the Department of Bizarre Anomalies: Microsoft has suppressed an unexplained anomaly on its network that was routing traffic destined to example.com—a domain reserved for testing purposes—to a maker of electronics cables located in Japan.
Under the RFC2606—an official standard maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force—example.com isn't obtainable by any party. Instead it resolves to IP addresses assigned to Internet Assiged Names Authority. The designation is intended to prevent third parties from being bombarded with traffic when developers, penetration testers, and others need a domain for testing or discussing technical issues. Instead of naming an Internet-routable domain, they are to choose example.com or two others, example.net and example.org.
Output from the terminal command cURL shows that devices inside Azure and other Microsoft networks have been routing some traffic to subdomains of sei.co.jp, a domain belonging to Sumitomo Electric. Most of the resulting text is exactly what’s expected. The exception is the JSON-based response. Here’s the JSON output from Friday:


It is not a coincidence that U.S. President Donald Trump's latest tariff threat against Canada came just ahead of negotiations on renewing North America's main free-trade pact, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Monday.
Drew Fagan is a professor at the University of Toronto and visiting professor at Yale University. He is a member of the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations and a former head of policy planning at what is now Global Affairs Canada.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is reputed to have the toughest job in Washington: translating President Donald Trump’s often incoherent views on trade into coherent policy.
Dana Cramer is a PhD candidate at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the founder, president and CEO of the Young Digital Leaders of Canada and co-ordinator of the United Nations-recognized Canada Youth Internet Governance Forum.
My grandfather tried to enlist during the Second World War but was turned away due to his diabetes. Undeterred, he became an army chauffeur. After the war, he and my grandmother took in their Japanese-Canadian relatives who were shuttered from neighbourhoods with well-resourced schools because of lingering prejudice.
Apple is introducing a new version of its AirTag tracking device—simply dubbed "the new AirTag"—and claims it offers substantial improvements thanks to a new Bluetooth chip.
The original AirTag came out five years ago now, and it became popular in a variety of contexts. There were some problems, though—there was real concern about unwanted tracking and stalking with the devices, based on real stories of it being used for that. The company gradually introduced new features and protections against that, getting it to a much better place.
This new version is focused on making the device more effective in general. Thanks to the inclusion of the second-generation Ultra Wideband chip (the same one found in other recently released Apple devices like the iPhone 17), Apple says the new AirTag can work with the Precision Finding feature in the Find My app to direct users to the AirTag (and whatever lost item it's stored with or attached to) from up to 50 percent farther away.


Marineland’s belugas have a received a reprieve from death row after the federal government conditionally approved a plan to export the last remaining captive whales in Canada to the United States.
Fisheries Minister Joanne Thompson met Monday with officials from Marineland, the shuttered theme park in Niagara Falls, Ont., to talk about its proposed plan to move the animals south. The park is in discussions with four U.S. institutions to take its 30 belugas and four dolphins.

The US Department of Transportation apparently thinks it's a good idea to use artificial intelligence to draft rules impacting the safety of airplanes, cars, and pipelines, a ProPublica investigation revealed Monday.
It could be a problem if DOT becomes the first agency to use AI to draft rules, ProPublica pointed out, since AI is known to confidently get things wrong and hallucinate fabricated information. Staffers fear that any failure to catch AI errors could result in flawed laws, leading to lawsuits, injuries, or even deaths in the transportation system.
But the DOT's top lawyer, Gregory Zerzan, isn't worried about that, December meeting notes revealed, because the point isn't for AI to be perfect. It's for AI to help speed up the rulemaking process, so that rules that take weeks or months to draft can instead be written within 30 days. According to Zerzan, DOT's preferred tool, Google Gemini, can draft rules in under 30 minutes.

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Manitoba's premier says he's reached out to his counterpart in Minnesota again following the killing of another American citizen by federal immigration officials, calling on U.S. President Donald Trump to stop the violence.
The best lesson ever on not panicking when stocks plunge can be found in a chart of the S&P/TSX Composite Index over the past 12 months.
In close to three decades writing about personal finance and investing, I have rarely – if ever – seen people as rattled as they were in spring 2025. While U.S. President Donald Trump mused about Canada becoming the 51st state, stocks tanked as the reality of U.S. tariffs set in.

A Charlottetown woman who pleaded guilty to inflicting life-ending injuries on her three-month old daughter last year has been sentenced to one year in jail, a move the judge says is needed to uphold public confidence in the justice system and condemn the woman’s actions.

Debra Thompson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
To say that Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old who worked as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs hospital, was killed by ICE agents this weekend feels like a deflection. It feels like an inadequate way to describe this latest instance of state violence, and why it was so utterly shocking, so horrific – so ominous.


Toronto Pearson Airport recorded 46 centimetres of snow on Sunday — the highest daily snowfall there on record. But it's still not as bad as 1999, the year Toronto called in the military for help.
If you’re reading this on the web or someone forwarded this e-mail newsletter to you, you can sign up for Globe Climate and all Globe newsletters here.
Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
One of the world’s most famous greenhouses needs renovations, but it won’t be easy. How can its tropical tenants move without dying in the process? We’ll dive in today.
In early 2025, Forbes reports, investigators at the FBI served Microsoft with a warrant seeking the BitLocker encryption recovery keys for several laptops it believed held evidence of fraud in Guam's COVID-19 unemployment assistance program. And Microsoft complied with the FBI's request.
BitLocker is the name of the full-disk encryption technology that has been part of Windows for nearly two decades. Though initially only available to owners of the Pro editions of Windows who turned it on manually, during the Windows 8 era Microsoft began using BitLocker to encrypt local disks automatically for all Windows 11 Home and Pro PCs that signed in with a Microsoft account. Using BitLocker in this way also uploads a recovery key for your device to Microsoft's servers—this makes it possible to unlock your disk so you don't lose data if something goes wrong with your system, or if you install a CPU upgrade or some other hardware change that breaks BitLocker. But it also (apparently) makes it possible for Microsoft to unlock your disk, too.
A Microsoft rep said that the company handled "around 20" similar BitLocker recovery key requests from government authorities per year, and that these requests often fail because users haven't stored their recovery keys on Microsoft's servers. Microsoft and other tech companies have generally refused requests to install universal encryption backdoors for law enforcement purposes, and some companies (like Apple) claim to store device encryption keys using another layer of encryption that renders the keys inaccessible to the company.

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Jessica Davis is the president of Insight Threat Intelligence and the author of Illicit Money: Financing Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century. She was consulted by the government of Canada on the development of a new financial crimes agency.
In Budget 2025, the Carney government promised to create a Canadian Financial Crimes Agency, introducing legislation by the spring of 2026, to address a growing range of financial threats facing Canadians.

Universal Pictures and Illumination dropped a new trailer for the upcoming Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and gaming fans will no doubt be delighted at the news that Yoshi, the little green dinosaur, features prominently, along with plenty of other Easter eggs for sharp-eyed fans.
As previously reported, the first attempt at a Super Mario movie adaptation in 1993 was notoriously a dismal failure, although it still has its ’90s-nostalgic fans. But 2023’s Super Mario Bros. Movie won over gaming fans who were skeptical about another adaptation—including Ars Senior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland.
The 2023 film reintroduced Mario and Luigi, two tight-knit but struggling Brooklyn plumbers who got separated when they unexpectedly fell into the fantastical Mushroom Kingdom. Mario sought Princess Peach’s help to rescue his brother from the evil clutches of Bowser, ruler of the Dark Lands, who was keen to marry Peach and threatened to destroy the Mushroom Kingdom with a Super Star if she refused him. So Peach led Mario on a quest to recruit allies and stop Bowser for good. They succeeded, shrinking Bowser and imprisoning him in a jar. Mario and Luigi moved to the Mushroom Kingdom and continued their plumbing work there.


NATO boss Mark Rutte on Monday dismissed calls by some leading European politicians for a separate European army, prompted by doubts over Donald Trump’s commitment to the continent’s security that were heightened by tensions over Greenland.
Rutte told advocates of a European force separate from the U.S.-led NATO alliance to “keep dreaming,” and said Russian President Vladimir Putin would “love” the idea as it would stretch Europe’s armies and make them weaker.


The Canadian government spoke with a key Trump administration official on Sunday to assure Washington that Ottawa is not preparing to sign a comprehensive trade agreement with Beijing, after threats from U.S. President Donald Trump that he would impose 100-per-cent tariffs if a pact were ever struck.
Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade, told reporters Monday he had a “cordial and lengthy conversation” with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in which, he said, they discussed the commitment Ottawa made in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement “not to enter into free trade discussions with countries that do not have a market economy.”

Bond investors are bracing for an extended pause in the Federal Reserve’s rate-cutting cycle as they edge into slightly riskier trades, driven by a resilient economy and fresh U.S. fiscal stimulus plans that are likely to boost consumer spending this year.
The U.S. central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is widely anticipated to hold its benchmark interest rate steady in the 3.50-3.75-per-cent target range at the end of a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday. The committee cut that rate by a quarter of a percentage point at its meetings in September, October, and December following a nine-month pause.
Whatever signals Fed Chair Jerome Powell gives at his press conference on Wednesday about the speed of rate cuts, investors’ focus will likely shift to who might replace him in May.




Record snowfalls, flight cancellations, transit delays, and school closures – this weekend’s major winter storm was one to remember.
Environment Canada says Toronto’s Pearson International Airport saw the highest daily total snowfall on record with 46 centimetres on Sunday – making it the snowiest ever month since records began in 1937. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island saw similar snowfall amounts and wind gusts of up to 70 kilometres an hour.

World champions Jack Crawford, Laurence St-Germain and Marielle Thompson lead Canada's alpine ski team into the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympic Games.
Many U.S. companies have sought to reassure investors that tariffs are “manageable,” but early earnings-season comments suggest profit margins are at risk with consumers balking at higher prices.
Bellwethers including Procter & Gamble, Fastenal and 3M have flagged the challenges.
Andy Jassy, CEO of retail giant Amazon.com, told CNBC on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland the company was seeing prices tick up on its e-commerce platform as sellers have run down inventories they brought in to front-run tariffs.

Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino is expected to leave Minneapolis on Tuesday, according a person familiar with the matter, as the Trump administration reshuffles leadership of its immigration enforcement operation and scales back the federal presence after a second fatal shooting by federal officers.
President Donald Trump said he was placing his border czar, Tom Homan, in charge of the mission, with Homan reporting directly to the White House, after Bovino drew condemnation for claiming the man who was killed, Alex Pretti, had been planning to “massacre” law enforcement officers, a characterization that authorities had not substantiated.
Members of Parliament returned to Ottawa on Monday, where Liberal and Conservative MPs vowed to work together on specific measures related to affordability and bail reform while accusing each other of obstruction on other key files.
The Conservatives said they would support the government’s plan to boost the GST credit, announced earlier Monday, and would allow Bill C-14 on bail reform to progress through a committee study.
BMO Financial Group BMO-T has announced it will replace Air Miles with a new loyalty rewards program called Blue Rewards this summer.
It said the new program will be available for all Canadians through a newly designed Blue Rewards app, and will be integrated into BMO’s existing mobile banking app and website for the bank’s clients.

A 75-year-old cyclist was fatally injured in a crash near downtown Kingston, Ont., on Friday, according to the city's police force.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says a recall of select Pizza Pops products announced before Christmas has been expanded.
Shares of gold miners jumped on Monday, as bullion prices surged to a record high of US$5,100 an ounce, extending a historic rally driven by safe-haven demand amid geopolitical uncertainties and market volatility.
Gold rose about 64 per cent in 2025, its steepest annual increase since 1979, fuelled by U.S. monetary policy easing, robust central bank buying and investor flows into ETFs as a hedge against global policy risks and macro uncertainty.
A low-interest-rate environment and economic uncertainty traditionally favour non-yielding assets such as gold.

The U.S. dollar is coming under fire again in the first few turbulent weeks of 2026 as a growing range of factors -- including Washington’s desire for a weaker dollar -- prompts a rethink of investors’ optimistic assumptions for a period of stability for the currency.
The dollar on Monday was heading for its biggest three-day slide against a basket of major currencies since last April , when U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs unleashed an almost unprecedented selloff in U.S. assets.
In his first year in office, Trump’s erratic approach to trade and international diplomacy, his attacks on the Federal Reserve that undermine its independence, and huge increases in public spending pushed the dollar down 10 per cent.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a federal agency under the Department of Homeland Security responsible for enforcement and removal operations, as well as homeland security investigations.
It was created in 2003 in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as part of a major government restructuring aimed at bolstering national security.

TikTok has been glitching for US users since Sunday, and TikTok's new US owners finally confirmed the cause: a power outage at a US data center.
"Since yesterday we’ve been working to restore our services following a power outage at a US data center impacting TikTok and other apps we operate," the TikTok USDS Joint Venture posted on X on Monday morning. "We're working with our data center partner to stabilize our service. We're sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon."
By Monday evening, the issues had not been resolved, with the TikTok USDS account posting an update warning users to expect "bugs, slower load times, or timed-out requests, including when posting new content." The X post directly confronted creator concerns about receiving "0 views" on new videos and/or missing earnings. The glitch is temporary, TikTok USDS said, "your actual data and engagement are safe."

Over the years, hackers and modders at large have made it their mission to port classic first-person shooter Doom to practically anything with a display. Recently, though, coder Arin Sarkisan has taken the "Can it Run Doom?" idea in an unlikely direction: wireless earbuds that aren't designed to output graphics at all.
To be clear, this hack doesn't apply to any generic set of earbuds. The "Doombuds" project is designed specifically for the PineBuds Pro, which are unique in featuring completely open source firmware and a community-maintained SDK.
That means Sarkisan was able to code up a JavaScript interface that uses the earbuds' UART contact pads to send a heavily compressed MJPEG video stream to a web server (via a serial server). The 2.4 MB/s data stream from the UART connection can put out about 22 to 27 frames per second in this format, which is more than enough for a CPU that can only run the game at a maximum of 18 fps anyway.


President Donald Trump said on social media on Monday that he is sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, two days after a second U.S. citizen was shot and killed by officers working for the federal government in its immigration operations in the state.

Swimmer Ilya Kharun, one of Canada’s most promising athletes in the pool, has decided to compete for the United States.
This edition of Market Factors first covers some interesting undervalued peripheral plays in the tech space and moves on to detail some surprising, and somewhat unwelcome, valuation facts. The diversion describes one of my favourite pods and there’s quick hits as always.
A weekend snowstorm continued to disrupt air travel on Monday, as airports in Canada and the United States posted long lists of cancellations and delays.
More than 80 morning flights were cancelled by 9 a.m. at Toronto Pearson International Airport and most other departures were delayed, some by several hours, according to the airport’s website. The cancellations include domestic, vacation and U.S. destinations.
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A woman was killed in a head-on crash Monday morning on route 105 in Egan-Sud, according to the Sûreté du Québec.

Gold charged past $5,000 US an ounce for the first time on Monday — while silver jumped to $110 an ounce — as an array of geopolitical tensions pounded the U.S. dollar.

Adam, an associate portfolio manager based in Montreal, is a very high earner.
That income allowed him and his fiancée, who works in communications and marketing, to buy a three-bedroom townhouse just outside the city for $710,000. They took possession a year ago.

Daniel Supernault had a series of posts over the weekend promoting Loops, his TikTok-inspired app focused on short-form video, but open source and connecting to the fediverse. This one sentence stood out to me:
If it’s not open source, you’re not the user, you’re the product being sold.
I don’t agree with this. It’s like an extreme version of the classic “you’re the product” line about ad-based platforms.
I’ve noticed a trend in the fediverse of thinking there’s nothing except open source and VC-backed companies. But there is so much in between. I love small, bootstrapped companies that just charge a fair price to users without outside funding or ads.
Some of my favorite apps and services are like that. Acorn, MarsEdit, Nova, Feedbin, Day One. You can prefer open source, but there’s no way that I’m “the product being sold” by using Acorn.
Open source is great. All of the Micro.blog apps are open source. But for platforms, open APIs have always been more important to me than open source. Mastodon is open source yet has no way to import posts, so it’s not well suited as a place where you can own your content in the way a blog enables.
Bluesky’s approach with AT Protocol also enables new options for social web portability. It’s a fascinating paradox because while VC-funded, it is the most open large platform ever built, with an almost IndieWeb-inspired view of usernames and ownership.
The fediverse has been a great step forward for the web. It doesn’t need to be the final destination, in its current form. We can do more with identity and content ownership. Maybe one day we’ll see a blending of the technologies currently powering the social web.
Open source gives power to developers. An open platform gives power to everyone. The web needs business models that can sustain both.

Israel has retrieved the remains of the final hostage held in Gaza, the military said on Monday, fulfilling a key condition of the initial phase of U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to end the Gaza war.
Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled a multibillion-dollar boost to the GST credit Monday as part of a package of measures aimed at easing the affordability crunch facing families.
The government will provide those eligible for the credit with a one-time, top-up payment and will also increase the credit by 25 per cent. This boost will remain in effect for five years, Mr. Carney said.
Dave Rupert is swearing off APIs, frustrated with building on someone else’s platform:
That’s a hard stance, but I need a backstop at the idea phase to prevent me from wasting limited life force. If I don’t have the data, or can’t generate the data, or it’s not an open protocol… it’s not worth building or even thinking about.
I think some platforms are safe to build on. They should be permission-less and ad-free. (One of his abandoned apps is a historical marker app, which I’ve wanted to build for a long time too.)
I was tinkering around with Clawdbot but it’s a little overwhelming. What do you use an app for when it can do everything? Started to get worried that I was opening up a huge security risk, so decided to scrap it. Will watch how these tools evolve.
The EU has launched a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s xAI following a public outcry over how its Grok chatbot spread sexualized images of women and children.
The billionaire entrepreneur has come under scrutiny from regulators around the world this month after people began using Grok to generate deepfakes of people without consent. The images were posted on the X social network as well as the separate Grok app, both of which are run by xAI.
The probe, announced on Monday under the EU’s Digital Services Act, will assess if xAI tried to mitigate the risks of deploying Grok’s tools on X and the proliferation of content that “may amount to child sexual abuse material.”

The battle for Federal Reserve independence has already gone up several gears this year, yet the central bank is showing little sign of capitulation - and now it has support from the Supreme Court and senior politicians.
Whether that has emboldened the Fed to push back hard on pressure for faster rate cuts will be the key test this week.
Clearly angered by this month’s threat of a criminal case against him over Fed building renovations, outgoing Fed Chair Jerome Powell has sharpened his tone on Fed independence, calling the Trump administration’s attack on him a mere “pretext” to pressure the Fed into deeper interest rate cuts.

Israel said Monday it had recovered the remains of the last hostage in Gaza, closing a painful chapter for the country and clearing the way for the next and more challenging phase of its ceasefire with Hamas.
The next step is likely to be the reopening of Gaza’s border with Egypt, enabling Palestinians to move in both directions and more aid to enter the territory devastated by two years of war. The ceasefire’s second phase also calls for deploying an international security force, disarming Hamas, pulling back Israeli soldiers and rebuilding Gaza.

The rumblings of a productivity boom are reverberating through the U.S. economy – and they may be going global.
Technological leaps have long been the hallmark of U.S. economic efficiency, flexibility and dynamism – trends that artificial intelligence is expected to accelerate – but there are nascent signs that the benefits of AI may be spreading.
Purchasing managers’ index (PMI) figures on Friday showed that British business activity has started this year on a strong footing, with robust demand at home and abroad spurring the fastest output growth since April 2024.
Aligned with this theme, Apple is proud to support organizations that inspire connection and promote creativity through impactful programs in under-resourced communities around the world. This includes grants to Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Urban Arts in New York City, Youth Music in London, Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, and Enactus México in Mexico City. These new grants build upon Apple's long-standing commitment to advancing economic, educational, and creative opportunities in communities globally.
This band, along with previously released Black Unity bands, was designed by Black creatives and allies at Apple.
Nvidia NVDA-Q has invested US$2-billion in CoreWeave CRWV-Q at a purchase price of US$87.20 per share, the companies said on Monday, as they expand their partnership to boost CoreWeave’s data-centre build out ambitions.
Shares of CoreWeave jumped nearly 10 per cent in premarket trading.
Negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are yielding apparent signs of progress, but major challenges remain on the path to a final settlement, a senior Kremlin official said Monday.
Talks between envoys from Ukraine, Russia and the United States in recent days in Abu Dhabi were constructive and another round is planned for next week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
British Columbia Premier David Eby will address about 7,000 representatives of the mineral-exploration industry on Monday and although this isn’t usually an NDP-friendly crowd, he can expect a warm welcome at this year’s conference.
The mining sector is proving to be one of his government’s most important allies.
Franco-Nevada Corp. FNV-T says it is raising its quarterly dividend by about 16 per cent.
The gold royalty and streaming company says it will now pay a quarterly dividend of 44 US cents, up from 38 US cents.
Daily roundup of research and analysis from The Globe and Mail’s market strategist Scott Barlow
RBC Capital Markets analyst Bart Dziarski published his top picks list for diversified financials, favouring Brookfield (BN-T),

Prime Minister Mark Carney will likely visit India the first week of March and sign deals on uranium, energy, minerals and artificial intelligence, Dinesh Patnaik, India’s High Commissioner to Canada said in an interview.
Carney is making all-out efforts to diversify Canada’s alliances beyond the U.S., its top trade partner. In Davos last week, he earned a rare standing ovation for saying the old rules-based order is over and called on middle powers like Canada to build coalitions to shape a fairer, more resilient world.
