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Canada and Mexico keep swinging baby punches at the obstinate Trump:

Canada and Mexico on Monday pushed back against President Donald Trump’s suggestion that steel and aluminum tariffs could be waived if they signed a new and“fair” NAFTA deal, setting the stage for a tense end to the latest talks to update the trade pact.  

The two U.S. trading partners have threatened retaliation unless they are exempted from the planned tariffs, which have rattled financial markets. Both Canada and Mexico send more than 75 percent of their goods exports to the United States. 

“Mexico shouldn’t be included in steel & aluminum tariffs. It’s the wrong way to incentivize the creation of a new & modern NAFTA,” Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said on Twitter.

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau, speaking north of Toronto, said Ottawa is now negotiating NAFTA with a partner that has“changed the terms of the discussion,” referring to the United States. 

Canada floods the American market with inferior Chinese steel and Mexico allowed a Chinese company to flood aluminum stores into to run around American and global trade regulations.

Strangely enough, China will not be hardest hit by these tariffs so, way to stick it to the cheaters, Don.

If anything, Trump's threats should force both Canada and Mexico to fix their own economies, producing their own steel and fixing their own agricultural favouritism, for example.

It should but will it?

Oh, dear:

New video footage, uncovered by the Sun, casts doubt on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s explanation about what happened on his disastrous trip to India.

Just hours before news broke that a convicted Khalistani terrorist was part of Trudeau’s entourage in India, Liberal MP Randeep Sarai was interviewed on India Today and can be seen touting the Canada-India security relationship.

Sarai has since been thrown under the bus and blamed for inviting Jaspal Atwal — a B.C. Sikh convicted of the attempted murder of an Indian cabinet minister in B.C. in 1986 — to an official state dinner reception with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in India.

But last Wednesday, the rookie member of parliament was proudly discussing Canada’s approach to counter-terrorism and defending the federal government’s record in working with India.

“On national security matters, we always cooperate between the two countries,” said Sarai, talking about Canada and India. “I’ve been assured by our intelligence agencies and our law enforcement that they are in regular contact with India.”

“Any time any threats are ever (coming) from any side, we expect to share those whether India knows of anything in Canada, or Canada know of anything that may be happening in India,” said Sarai, in response to a question on Sikh separatism.

“They are always cooperating and there is zero tolerance for any extremist elements of anyone,” said Sarai. 

Give it time and this waste of oxygen will get a $10.5 million cheque and be the poster-child for Justin's re-integration fairy tale:

In the letter filed to a New York court on Friday, Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy of Mississauga, Ont., outlined his personal history with addiction and mental illness, and explained that he felt American airstrikes against the Middle East drove him to jihadism. ...

“There are many issues in this world but I don’t want to lose my life or freedom to try fixing them, and I definitely do not want to resort to violence or harm to fix them. I sincerely apologize for my (behaviour) and I only ask for a second chance.”

Also:

The Islamic State just released a video that allegedly shows three U.S. soldiers being attacked in Niger.

The video, which has been circulating for months among journalists, reportedly shows three soldiers on the run from militants. The men have few resources to fend off dozens of militants armed with machine guns and grenades.

How does one "re-integrate" such people?




According to this report, the police retreated and let thugs smash one kilometre worth of stores and other buildings before letting them escape.

Instead of shooting these @$$holes in the kneecaps or letting property-owners arm themselves, the worthless powers that be just let people have a serious case of the "sadz":

A band of masked vandals describing themselves as “ungovernables” roamed through a stretch of an Ontario city hurling rocks at small businesses and causing up to $100,000 in damage, local police said Sunday.

Cafes, stores and vehicles along a roughly one-kilometre stretch of road in Hamilton took the brunt of the damage as between 20 and 30 people marched along the route on Saturday night.

City police Insp. Paul Hamilton said the group, clad in black, sporting masks and carrying a banner saying “we are the ungovernables,” mobilized at a local park before taking to the streets shortly before 10:00 p.m.

Police were called to the park after reports that people were spray-painting messages in the area, he said, adding some officers witnessed as the situation quickly escalated.

“As they went along the street, they damaged some vehicles that were parked on the street, threw some rocks at some homes, set off some fireworks,” he said in a telephone interview. “Then they got onto Locke Street … which is heavily populated by restaurants and cafes, and threw rocks through windows of a number of the businesses there.” ...

Encouragement came from the political realm too, as NDP leader Andrea Horwath, who represents the riding where the vandalism took place, tried to urge residents to get back out and patronize the damaged shops.

“Let’s come together to greet each other as neighbours, shop local on Locke, and show these vandals that this attack will only make us stronger,” she tweeted.

Vanderkwaak said his shop doors are open to all, including the alleged perpetrators, adding that understanding the mob’s motives for their destructive march could be helpful in preventing similar events in the future.

“Violent actions don’t communicate very well,” he said. “I wanted an opportunity for people to come together and actually communicate in a peaceful way and … try to bring some reconciliation to whatever issues are at hand.”

Bullies and thugs don't care about your resolve or "reconciliation" and, apparently, neither do the cops.

This is why you are a victim and always will be.




How the hell do you loan and then lose a luxury jet?

Oh, yeah. Canada:

If you spot a sleek Bombardier Global 6000 business jet sporting tail number ZS-OAK, the federal government would love to hear from you.

The jet belonged to South Africa’s notorious Gupta family, whose alleged corruption helped trigger the scandals that recently forced President Jacob Zuma out of office. But the Guptas bought the plane with help from a $41-million loan from Export Development Canada, or EDC.

EDC was helping Bombardier Inc., the Montreal aerospace firm, land the jet sale. But that turns out to have been a poor bet: EDC now says the family defaulted on the loan in October and still owes the bank $27 million.

And with an arrest warrant outstanding for Ajay Gupta, one of three brothers in the family, there are other worries, too. “There is a very real concern that the aircraft may be used to escape justice or for some unlawful means,” wrote EDC in a recent application to a South African court seeking permission to ground the jet.

This sounds familiar:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held talks with top aides to South Korea’s Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang on Monday, the president’s office said, in the first meeting between the leader of the isolated nation and officials from Seoul since he took power in 2011.

Of course:

North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il has welcomed South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to Pyongyang for a historic summit.

Live television footage showed the two men shaking hands ahead of three days of talks in the North Korean capital.

The summit between the two leaders is only the second such meeting in more than 50 years since the Korean war.

 
How did that work out?


I wonder if Mr. Moon will bring up the three Americans and six South Koreans North Korea is holding hostage.



Also:

No use of force is risk-free, of course, but if this administration is desperate for military options, boarding North Korean ships on the high seas — like a mid-flight intercept of a North Korean missile — carries much lower risks than a direct attack on North Korean soil. On the high seas, our Coast Guard and our Navy would have many advantages over a North Korean merchant ship. There would be no nearby cities held hostage to Kim Jong-un’s immediate response. We could initially exclude the Yellow Sea from this campaign. That’s where the vast majority of North Korean shipping goes, but on short hauls to and from China. If North Korea continues to smuggle via containers that pass through Chinese ports, we have legal tools we can use against those ports.

 

And:

Korea has a dismal future in terms of the population of babies as it is expected to see fewer and fewer babies born amid its persistently low birthrate. 

It already saw the number of newborn babies fall below 400,00 for the first time last year. The total fertility rate -- the average number of children born to a woman aged between 15 and 49 over her lifetime -- also fell to a record low of 1.05. 

The prospect for this year is if anything worse. There were 30,862 new birth registrations nationwide in January, down 247 or 0.8 percent on-year.

Cited as major factors are plunging marriages amid recession and tight job market. And these are not improving. Others think changes in young people's attitudes to marriage are to blame.

 

(Kamsahamnida)