Government documents suggest purchasing a fleet of aerial combat drones that could fly alongside fighter jets could cost as much as $16 billion and would require hundreds of staff. [Global]

During a visit to Vancouver, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre explains to Global's Richard Zussman why they Conservatives should keep him on as leader. -DA [Global]

Elected as the first Conservative MP in the riding’s history, Holman says his top priorities reflect what he heard directly from constituents on the campaign trail, rising costs, job insecurity, growing homelessness, and a sense that the federal government has lost touch. [106.9 The X]

The Quebec government imposed limits on the number of students who can be enrolled in English-language college programs as part of a new language law passed in 2022. [Global]

In neighboring Canada and Mexico, as well as in Argentina, Brazil and Kenya, the U.S. is the top response on both the ally and threat questions. Respondents could name anything that came to mind for these questions. We did not ask them to choose from a list. [Pew Research Center]

As if to make up for lost time, second-term Trump, operating with Mob boss impunity, has become the consummate party boss in the tradition of New York’s Tammany Hall, an era when pols bragged about how many judges they had in their pocket. Self-assured and self-obsessed, fearless and fearsome, the interloper of 2015 has become the folk hero of January 6, 2021, and now is widely acknowledged to be the dominant American political figure of the 21st century, as mythically big as Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan were in the 20th. Trump’s success derives from his innate understanding of how to wield bare-knuckle power by creating his own kind of syndicate in the time-tested style of both the political clubhouses and the Mob-adjacent New York real estate business of his youth. He is, without doubt, the capital’s most effective and intimidating executive since LBJ. [Vanity Fair]

What if we just asked students to keep a record of all their interactions with AI? That was the thinking behind the AI diary, a form of assessment that I introduced this year for two key reasons: to increase transparency about the use of AI, and to increase critical thinking. The diary was a replacement for the more formal ‘critical evaluation’ that students typically completed alongside their journalism and, in a nutshell, it worked. Students were more transparent about the use of AI, and showed more critical thinking in their submissions. A fascinating read not just for journalism educators but for in-career journalists. [Online Journalism Blog]