The Canadian-built drones, valued at over $95 million, will be sourced from Teledyne in Waterloo, Ont,, and be sent to Ukraine as early as this spring. [Global]

The Canadian Armed Forces has received more than 21,000 applications from permanent residents eager to join the chronically understaffed military full time — but CBC News has learned that less than 100 of them have made it into the regular force in the year since they were allowed to sign up. [CBC]

A welcoming ceremony was held Monday for Justice Mary Moreau, who was sworn in as a Supreme Court of Canada judge in November 2023. [Global]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office says his Italian counterpart, Giorgia Meloni, will visit Canada next month. Meloni is set to visit Toronto on March 2 in her first visit. [Global]

The change to planned rules was an election-year concession to labor unions and auto executives, according to people familiar with the plan. [NYT]

From his punishing cell, the Russian political prisoner wrote to the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky. Here is their historic correspondence. [The Free Press]

European farmers have protested higher costs, lower profits and climate change regulations for months. Could Canadian producers also blockade ports? [Global]

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan had a good run in 2023. Bucking the trend of the past decade, the region did not experience major conflicts, attempts at regime change or largescale violence. The ongoing energy crisis, exacerbated by a dry and hot summer, was perhaps the only blot on the landscape. But all five countries improvised solutions, edging towards increasing the share of renewable sources of power generation. [East Asia Forum]

Every year, local television news stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting conduct short surveys among viewers to help guide the year’s coverage. A key question in each poll, according to David Smith, the company’s executive chairman: “What are you most afraid of?” The answers are evident in Sinclair’s programming. [WaPo]

The environmentally friendly LignoSat probe – set to orbit this summer – has been created to combat harmful aluminium particles. [The Guardian]

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, the biggest planetary probe ever will look for evidence of an environment that could support life on Jupiter’s Europa moon. [MIT Technology Review]