9 million: Canada’s consul general in New York is in the hot seat amid an inquiry into the government’s recent purchase of the $9 million dollar Manhattan condo where he lives. Tom Clark, who has served in the post since last February, is one of several witnesses who will be called before parliament in a scandal that could also involve Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly. The pricy three-bedroom apartment is located on the stretch of West 57th Street known as “Billionaire’s Row.”
500 million: Food retail giant Loblaw Cos. Ltd. and its parent company George Weston Ltd. have reportedly agreed to pay $500 million over allegations of bread price fixing. A class-action suit was brought against the two companies and several other retailers, alleging that the firms were part of a 14-year price-fixing conspiracy that artificially hiked bread prices.
8: The global power of the US is clearly in decline … at least when it comes to the country’s passport. The little blue book has slid to eighth place in the annual Henley Passport Index, which counts the visa-free travel destinations open to citizens of every country. A US passport holder can currently show up without a visa in 186 of the world’s 225 countries. In first place is Singapore with 195. It wasn’t always this way: A decade ago, the US shared the top spot with the UK.
0: Despite a deluge of internet memes claiming the contrary, there is zero evidence that Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance ever had sex with a couch. A fake scan of several pages from the Ohio Senator’s 2016 bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir about his Appalachian upbringing, seemed to show he’d confessed to having had the curious congress with his cushions as an adolescent. But the entire thing was fake. That didn’t stop it from being shared hundreds of thousands of times. Whatever your politics, be careful out there on the internet: Hilarious hoaxes abound.
US President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter prior to signing an executive order on AI next to Sriram Krishnan, Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and David Sacks, chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, on December 11, 2025.
Artificial intelligence and Donald Trump's foreign policy are creating huge tail risks for markets.
Last week, Microsoft released a new report offering an in-depth look at AI adoption across the United States, with state- and county-level insights for the first time. While more than 30 percent of working-age Americans now use AI tools, adoption remains uneven across regions, with significantly higher usage in urban areas and communities tied to universities. The findings point to a broader challenge: without stronger access to infrastructure, skills, and education, AI’s benefits risk remaining concentrated rather than broadly shared. Read the full blog here.
The maker of the large-language model Claude became the latest AI giant to file to go public.
Hundreds took to the streets in Kenya after the US announced plans to build an Ebola quarantine center on a Kenyan air base, with protesters warning the facility risks introducing a disease the country has never recorded. President Ruto is defending the project.