A savvy negotiating tactic? A wild fantasy? A greed for natural resources?US President Donald Trump’s fixation with annexing Canada is so singular as to defy any easy explanation.”I think it’s one of those things where Trump thinks it would be nice to pull it off, but he understands that it is less than a remote possibility,” said Todd Belt, a political science professor at George Washington University.”His rhetoric is mostly to take a tough and unpredictable bargaining stance.”On Tuesday, the 78-year-old Republican who in recent weeks all but launched a global trade war made his expansionist desire known, once again, on his Truth Social network.”The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” Trump wrote, painting a bright future of lower taxes, no tariffs and security for Canadians.- 33 percent support -Citizens of Canada are appalled by Trump’s annexation talk.”What he wants to see is a total collapse of the Canadian economy,” outgoing prime minister Justin Trudeau said last week shortly before leaving office, after Washington announced 25 percent tariffs on all products from Canada, before backtracking.Trump’s statements have fueled strong anti-US hostility north of the border, where the American anthem now gets regularly booed at sports competitions.According to an opinion poll conducted by the Leger Institute this month, only 33 percent of Canadians have a positive opinion of the United States, compared to 52 percent in June 2024.In the same poll, 77 percent of respondents said they have a positive view of the European Union.In his Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump called the US-Canada border an “artificial line of separation drawn many years ago.”Addressing Canadians, he said that when the border disappears, “we will have the safest and most beautiful Nation anywhere in the World — And your brilliant anthem, ‘O Canada,’ will continue to play, but now representing a GREAT and POWERFUL STATE within the greatest Nation that the World has ever seen!”Trump seems to have a fondness for cartography, as manifested by his order, issued shortly after his inauguration, that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America. He has also publicly threatened to lay claim to Greenland and said he wants to take back control of the Panama Canal.”A lot of this territorial aggrandizement (Greenland, Panama, Canada) came after the election, and I think someone put it in his head that great presidents acquire territory as a legacy,” said Belt, the political scientist.In his speech last week, Trudeau vowed that Canada would not be annexed.”That is never going to happen,” he said. “We will never be the 51st state.”- Water ways -According to a New York Times report, Trump used the opportunity of talks with Trudeau last month to question the validity of a 1908 treaty that established the border between the two countries.The US president, who is known to take a keen interest in water resources, also reportedly criticized the agreements regulating access to water between the two countries.To the east, the US-Canada border runs through the Great Lakes. Westward toward the Pacific coast, the border crosses the Columbia River, whose waters are regulated by a detailed international treaty.A trade war between the United States and Canada, which are closely linked economically, would represent “an existential threat” to Canadians, Ian Lee, an economics professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, told AFP.”But no matter how much we scream or yell or express our anger, it doesn’t change the reality,” said Lee. “We are the mouse and they are the five-ton elephant. We must develop a compromise and deal with the demands of the United States.”Canada’s Prime Minister-designate Mark Carney does not share that fatalism.”Let the Americans make no mistake: in trade, as in hockey, Canada will win,” he said Sunday.Ottawa on Wednesday announced new tariffs on certain American products, in response to what it called “unjustified and unreasonable” taxes on steel and aluminum imposed by Trump.

Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) models have been vying for the lead – with the US and China hotbeds for the technology.GenAI tools are able to create images, videos, or written works as well as answer questions or tend to online tasks based on simple prompts.These AI assistants stand out for their popularity and sophistication.- Hot ChatGPT -AI existed before ChatGPT, but it was first to make GenAI freely available for people to use as a dedicated application.San Francisco-based OpenAI has made ChatGPT more powerful and capable with each update, the most recent being GPT 4.5.One version of ChatGPT released late last year, called o1, was touted as a new-generation that takes time to ponder answers, providing comprehensive results and less inclined to err.Instead of instantly cranking out results, the model shares its “chain of thought”.OpenAI has imbued ChatGPT with the ability to act as a digital “agent” capable of browsing the internet, compiling information and using computers the way people do when working on tasks.- Google Gemini -Google has long put AI to work behind the scenes at its platform but cranked out Bard to take on ChatGPT in March of 2023.Bard was gradually replaced by a more advanced Gemini model built into Pixel phones and more.The Internet giant integrated Gemini into its famous search engine to display results summaries called “AI Overviews” along with links in response to queries.Google also put AI to work letting people search using pictures, video, or sound instead of just typed words.Such “multimodal” input capability has become common in GenAI tools.A Gemini 2.0 model capable of “step-by-step” reasoning made its debut in February of this year.- Cautious Claude -Founded by former OpenAI engineers, Anthropic launched Claude in March 2023.The San Francisco-based startup stresses responsible development of AI, moving more cautiously than competitors as it innovates.Anthropic unveiled Claude 3.7 Sonnet in February, its first model combining instant responses and thoughtful reasoning.Claude was previously enhanced with a “computer use” feature that let the AI independently perform computer tasks as a person might.- Mighty Meta -Meta has integrated custom AI into Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, Messenger and its Ray-Ban connected glasses with the aim of making it the most widely used digital assistant in the world.Meta’s chatbot is based on the tech firm’s open-source Llama model, considered one of the most powerful in the world.Recent press reports tell of plans by the Silicon Valley titan to release MetaAI as a stand-alone application in a direct challenge to OpenAI and Google.- Grok Snark -A co-founder of OpenAI, Elon Musk cut ties with the startup in 2018. Since ChatGPT took the lead in the GenAI race, Musk has sued OpenAI, offered to buy it, and launched a rival named xAI.Musk’s chatbot Grok has the advantage of being able to use the trove of posts at X, formerly Twitter, for training the AI model.The Tesla tycoon bought Twitter in late 2022.Musk made up for lost time by spending billions of dollars on high-end Nvidia chips for powering AI datacenters.He promotes Grok as a chatbot with personality, humor and fewer constraints on what it produces.- Upstart DeepSeek -DeepSeek was founded in 2023 by Chinese investment fund High-Flyer. In January 2025, the Hangzhou-based start-up turned the world of generative AI upside down with its R1 model.DeepSeek claims the AI tool was built using less sophisticated chips than its competitors, slashing the cost.The application was downloaded tens of millions of times in just a few weeks.- Mounting mix -Chinese tech behemoths Tencent (Yuanbao), Baidu (Ernie) and ByteDance (Doubao) are also vying for position in the AI market. In early March, Alibaba released its QwQ-32B model, which it claims matches the performance of DeepSeek-R1.France-based Mistral early last year released Le Chat, AI software particularly advanced in document and image analysis.

One of Guatemala’s most wanted drug fugitives was captured in Mexico and handed over to his country to face likely extradition to the United States, authorities said Wednesday.Aler Baldomero Samayoa is accused of leading a group called Los Huistas, which allegedly trafficked US-bound cocaine from South America to Mexican cartels, Guatemalan Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez said.His arrest comes as Mexico and its neighbors come under mounting pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration to curb illegal drug flows.The suspect, alias “Chicharra” (Cicada), was captured in Mexican territory as a result of joint efforts between Guatemala, the United States and Mexico, Jimenez said.He was transferred to a jail in the Guatemala City courthouse pending extradition proceedings, according to the public prosecutor’s office.In a social media post, the US embassy in Guatemala welcomed Samayoa’s arrest as a “great advance in the fight against drug trafficking” and said procedures were under way to ensure his “swift extradition to the United States.”Samayoa told reporters from his cell that he would accept the charges against him.”That would be the best way to expedite the process,” added the 58-year-old, who said that he was captured in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, bordering Guatemala.

Stargazers in North and South America will be able to view a red-colored “Blood Moon” starting Thursday night in the first total lunar eclipse visible on the continents since 2022.The celestial event, observable with the naked eye, will have more than an hour of totality and can additionally be seen in parts of western Europe and Africa, as well as New Zealand.A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth goes between the Moon and the Sun, casting the Earth’s shadow on the Moon.A rare total lunar eclipse involves the Earth’s umbra, the darkest part of the planet’s shadow, covering the Moon.According to NASA, this type of eclipse can also be called a “Blood Moon” due to the reddish-orange color the Moon can become during totality.The coloration occurs due to sunlight scattering through the Earth’s atmosphere before reaching the Moon’s surface — shorter wavelengths like blue and violet fail to reach the Moon, leaving only longer wavelengths such as red and orange to illuminate it.As a result, the more items there are in the Earth’s atmosphere — such as clouds or dust — the redder the Moon will appear during the eclipse.”Keep a close eye on the weather forecast leading up to the eclipse,” said NASA Chief Scientist Renee Weber in a statement. “That totality will last for close to an hour, so even if it’s cloudy you may still be able to glimpse it if the clouds are scattered.”The timing of totality occurs simultaneously across time zones, and is expected to begin at 2:26 am Friday for those in Eastern Daylight Time and 11:26 pm Thursday in Pacific Daylight Time.For about an hour both before and after totality, the moon will also be obscured in a partial eclipse.

President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday announced a wave of environmental rollbacks targeting Biden-era green policies, including carbon limits on power plants, tailpipe emissions standards and protections for waterways.The 31 actions are part of what Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin called “the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in US history,” as he promised to “unleash American energy” and “revitalize the American auto industry.”Among the most significant of them is revisiting a 2024 rule that requires coal-fired plants to eliminate nearly all their carbon emissions or commit to shutting down altogether, a cornerstone of former Democratic president Joe Biden’s climate agenda.Hailed by environmental groups as a “gamechanger,” the regulations were set to take effect from 2032 and would have also required new, high capacity gas-fired plants to slash their carbon dioxide output by the same amount — 90 percent — achievable only through carbon capture technology.The Biden administration estimated the rule would prevent 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon entering the atmosphere through the year 2047, equivalent to nearly one year of total greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector in 2022.- ‘Polluters are celebrating’ -“Corporate polluters are celebrating today because Trump’s EPA just handed them a free pass to spew unlimited climate pollution, consequences be damned,” said Charles Harper, of the nonprofit Evergreen Action.President Trump has long dismissed climate change as a “scam” and his second administration has begun enacting sweeping staff cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), vital to the nation’s climate research efforts. The new deregulation package also targets stricter vehicle emissions standards set to come into force by 2027, which Trump has derided as an “electric vehicle mandate.” Another major move involves redefining what constitutes “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. Zeldin’s EPA argues that the Biden administration had failed to align with a 2023 Supreme Court ruling, which held that only “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water,” such as streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans — should be covered.- Mass layoffs expected -Environmental group Earthjustice warned that it excluded tens of millions of acres of wetlands, vital ecosystems that filter water and provide flood protection, as well as millions of miles of small streams that provide drinking water and help generate tourism. The EPA is also set to eliminate the nation’s environmental justice offices that address pollution in low-income and minority communities across the United States, including Louisiana’s infamous “Cancer Alley,” which accounts for around a quarter of US petrochemical production.”President Trump wants us to help usher in a golden age in America that is for all Americans, regardless of race, gender, background,” Zeldin told reporters.But Matthew Tejada of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council said “Trump’s EPA is taking us back to a time of unfettered pollution across the nation, leaving every American exposed to toxic chemicals, dirty air and contaminated water.”Grants that EPA has moved to cancel were “helping rural Virginia coal communities prepare for extreme flooding, installing sewage systems on rural Alabama homes, and turning an abandoned, polluted site in Tampa, Florida into a campus for healthcare, job training, and a small business development,” added Tejada, who led EPA’s environmental justice office under Biden.Zeldin’s EPA budget is expected to be reduced by 65 percent and the agency is preparing for mass layoffs.