Here’s a quick rundown of the project and why it’s important:
What is the Sunrise Expansion Project?

The #Westcoast Energy Limited Partnership, an affiliate of Enbridge, runs the Westcoast natural gas pipeline system, which connects gas fields in northeastern B.C. and northwestern Alberta to the Canada-U.S. border. It currently has peak capacity to ship 3.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

The Sunrise expansion would add 300 million cubic feet per day of transportation capacity.

The project involves adding almost 140 kilometres of new pipe by constructing 11 looping segments parallel to the existing line. While the gas that would flow through the expanded line is not bound for any particular destination, “some of the capacity will no doubt go offshore,” said Matthew Akman, who leads Enbridge’s gas transmission and midstream business, in a call with reporters Friday.
What are the geopolitical issues at play?

In the context of the current global energy crisis, fuelled in large part by the war in Iran and its disruption of oil and gas supply chains, this pipeline is a big deal, according to experts who spoke with The Canadian Press.

“It’s another step toward diversifying our asset base in a world hungry for this,” said Jay Khosla, the executive director of economic and energy policy with the Public Policy Forum and a former assistant deputy minister in the Privy Council Office.

“The South Koreans in particular are out there begging for any source of supply of gas at this moment in time. The Nepalese and the Bangladeshis and the Pakistanis are running out of cooking fuel, which is gas-based, (and) are moving to 4-day work weeks because the Qatari supply has been taken off the market,” he said.

“This is all an effort to address that.”
How does this play into Canada-U.S. relations?

While the expanded pipeline will help Canada meet the broader goal of reducing its reliance on the United States as a customer, it also helps position Canada as a necessary supplier to the United States.

“For a long time, the shale revolution in the United States was flooded with natural gas, and now we’re starting to pick up again where the United States is importing more from Canada and wants more from Canada,” said Heather Exner-Pirot, a senior fellow and director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

“They need more AI. They need more data centres. And they are exporting more LNG than they’ve ever exported, and we’re talking about non-renewable resources.

“So I feel in my heart in the next 10 or 15 years, Canadian natural gas is going to be very important to the American natural gas story.”

Khosla added that expanding Canada’s export capacity could put it in a better position as it prepares to formally begin negotiations on the mandatory review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, better known as CUSMA.

“It really allows us to catalyze something that we’ve been trying to do for a long time, which is market diversification, leverage with the U.S., and for sure I do think that it could help with CUSMA,” Khosla said.

“I know for a fact, and we’ve heard that, the president (Donald Trump) is not really thrilled that we’re supplying Chinese markets with our oil right now because he knows he needs all of that.

“Like we give them pretty much 25 per cent of their source supply. All of these moves are very, very helpful to give us some leverage — and we don’t have a lot, let’s be honest.”
What is the Carney government’s political play here?

Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised to build big and build fast as he tries to shore up Canada’s economy in the face of U.S. protectionism and tariffs. But approving a new pipeline is a complicated process fraught with political landmines and opposition from environment groups and many Indigenous communities.

While Exner-Pirot said the expansion itself isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things — she described Enbridge’s $4 billion investment as “table stakes” — she sees this as an easy win for the Carney government because it’s natural gas, and British Columbia isn’t opposed to it.

“It’s good that we’ll have construction. That’s going to be very helpful for the B.C. economy, so it’s absolutely not nothing,” Exner-Pirot said.

“And there was Indigenous support. So a very easy thing for them to do and to say, ‘We are building and we are being an energy superpower.”

Khosla agreed that having both Indigenous support and ownership behind the project was key to pushing it through. He noted it was done without the need to refer it to the major projects office.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2026

With files from Lauren Krugel in Calgary.

Nick Murray, The Canadian Press

How disruptions within Strait of Hormuz could reshape how much we pay for food. With Brent crude oil prices climbing above US$100 per barrel, the cost of diesel – essential for transportation – has surged. Brown notes that this is already driving up logistics costs.

“With diesel prices way higher than they’ve been in years, you’re seeing trucking going up in price. Plastics are going to start to go up in price …aluminum has hit really record highs, especially in the U.S.,” she said. “All of this is contributing to higher food prices, and it will take months to kind of ripple through these supply chain.”

The Middle East supplies roughly a quarter of the raw materials used in plastics manufacturing, including those critical for food packaging. As a result consumers may soon feel the impact not just at farms but on grocery store shelves, Brown explained.
Fertilizer shock hits global markets

Fertilizer markets have already seen dramatic shifts. Urea futures – a key nitrogen-based fertilizer – have surged more than 70 per cent since last year, surpassing US$700 per tonne.

According to the UN, about 16 million tonnes of fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz per year – representing about one third of global seaborne fertilizer trade

“About a third of global fertilizer… come through the Strait and the entire world is going to feel the shock because these are global markets,” Brown said.

While the price hikes will be global, some regions are more vulnerable than others.

“Especially in South Asia, we’ve seen some countries having to shutter their own fertilizer production plants because they can’t get enough fuel … we’ve seen countries cutting down on energy use,” she said.

In March, China instructed exporters to suspend shipments of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and other nutrients due to global market volatility exacerbating global shortages due to the Iran war.

Urea production in India and Bangladesh have been shut down or reduced at multiple plants.

As planting seasons shift between hemispheres, Brown said demand pressures are expected to intensify.

“As the northern hemisphere growing season, you know, comes into the southern hemisphere growing season, we’ll see a desperate impact there, because then those farmers will start to buy fertilizer, pushing up prices,” she said.
Food packing and shortages loom

Beyond farming inputs, packaging shortages could soon emerge as a concern – particularly in developing regions.

She added that the effects will not be immediate but inevitable.

“That’s going to take months,” she noted. “Even if the Strait were to open permanently tomorrow, it’s not going to return to normal overnight.

Governments are beginning to respond but options remain limited in the near term.

According to Brown, some countries have relaxed diesel emissions regulations to ease transportation costs. But she emphasized that structural solutions will take time.

“There aren’t a lot of things that countries can do in the short term to address these issues,” she said. “In the longer term, countries can build out fertilizer production … that can take years to come online.”

#Ottawa earmarks $8.6M to support Black communities' access to legal services

#Trump will return to a dinner celebrating the press corps he often attacks. In the same way that U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term is unlike any other, this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner will be unlike any other.

Trump will be attending the gala for the first time as president and speaking before thousands of journalists and politicos — leaving attendees to wonder what he’ll say and how the room will react.

Will the president use a dinner dedicated to the First Amendment to attack journalists and air his well-worn grievances? Or will he deliver the barbs with a lighter touch, perhaps in the joking, back-slapping manner he sometimes adopts around reporters?

A wide range of critics say the soirée risks normalizing Trump’s anti-democratic assaults on the press. Trump’s presence at the event is “a profound contradiction of its purpose,” a petition signed by 250-plus veteran journalists and several media advocacy groups said earlier this week.

But the journalists who invited him, the board of the White House Correspondents’ Association, say they are glad Trump is ending a years-long boycott of the dinner and embracing a tradition that dates back one hundred years. The association has been inviting the sitting president to the dinner ever since former U.S. president Calvin Coolidge attended in 1924.

#Toronto team signs Yasiel Puig, despite potential prison sentence looming

#GlobalNews: U.S. special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400,000 on #Maduro raid.

According to an indictment unsealed Thursday, Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke opened an account in late December on Polymarket, one of the best-known prediction markets. He wagered about $32,000 that Maduro would be “out” by January. The bet was a long-shot.

But Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve, prosecutors allege, and had access to classified information before he placed the bet. His winnings, though anonymous, caught the attention of law enforcement almost immediately.

Van Dyke, an active duty solider stationed at Fort Bragg, faces five criminal charges for stealing and misusing confidential government information, theft and fraud. He will make his first court appearance in North Carolina. No attorney has been listed for him on the court docket.

He allegedly made 13 bets from December 27 to January 2, the last being hours before the overnight capture. Prosecutors said Van Dyke sent his more than $400,000 in profits to a foreign cryptocurrency vault before he deposited them in an online brokerage account.

A master sergeant in the Army is a senior noncommissioned officer, considered a key tactical leader and technical expert and serving as the principal NCO typically at the Army battalion level. Senior NCOs are often looked to for setting and upholding the standard for more junior soldiers in the unit.

“Those entrusted to safeguard our nation’s secrets have a duty to protect them and our armed service members, and not to use that information for personal financial gain,” said Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Van Dyke was photographed just after the operation – and from when he placed his final bet – on “what appears to be the deck of a ship at sea, at sunrise wearing U.S. military fatigues, and carrying a rifle, standing alongside three other individuals wearing U.S. military fatigues,” court documents say.

Van Dyke profited more than $400,000, prosecutors say. He then allegedly moved those winnings to a foreign cryptocurrency vault before he deposited them in an online brokerage account in what prosecutors called an attempt to conceal their origin.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a related complaint against Van Dyke on Thursday, seeking restitution, disgorgement and civil monetary penalties.

CNN reported last month that federal prosecutors were investigating the Maduro trade, according to a person familiar with the matter. The chiefs of the securities and commodity fraud unit at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan met with representatives at Polymarket last month.

After the bets were placed, the U.S. military launched a covert operation that extradited Maduro from the presidential palace in Caracas in an overnight capture while coming under heavy fire. Maduro was transported to New York to face federal drug-trafficking related charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Polymarket in a post on X said, “When we identified a user trading on classified government information, we referred the matter to the DOJ & cooperated with their investigation. Insider trading has no place on Polymarket. Today’s arrest is proof the system works.”

ABC News first reported Thursday’s arrest.
Prediction markets face criticism

Trading on prediction markets has exploded the past year, with users now spending a few billion dollars each week on such sites.

Lawmakers in Congress have introduced more than a dozen new bills this year to further regulate prediction markets. Some of the bills, which gained bipartisan support, would stiffen penalties against government officials who engage in insider trading.

Trump told reporters Thursday he is concerned about the growing trend of betting on geopolitical events. Asked about the charges against the U.S. soldier, the president said he was not familiar with the specifics of the incident but compared it to baseball’s all-time hit leader Pete Rose.

“That’s like Pete Rose betting on his own team,” Trump said, referring to the late baseball player who was banned from baseball for gambling.

Pressed on whether he is concerned about betting tied to the war with Iran, Trump said it’s a global issue.

“Well I think that the whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,” Trump said, adding that such betting is happening “all over the world, and every place they’re doing these betting things.”

“Now, I think that I’m not happy with it,” he concluded.

The Trump administration approved Polymarket last year to start offering trades for American customers, but its U.S.-facing site isn’t fully operational yet. The Maduro-related trades occurred on Polymarket’s highly popular international site.

That site operates out of the reach of U.S. regulations – which is how it’s able to offer markets related to war, which is illegal under federal law. But experts say Americans can easily access the offshore site with a virtual private network, or VPN.

There is a debate in the prediction market industry over the role of insiders in prediction markets. Some experts see these markets as a vehicle for information to flow more freely from insiders to the general public.

Asked about insider trading risks, Polymarket’s CEO told Axios in November it was “super cool” that his platform “creates this financial incentive for people to go and divulge the information to the market,” including insiders.

Polymarket rolled out new rules in March, to “clarify three core categories of prohibited insider trading conduct.”

They banned #trades based on information that users were legally required to keep confidential, and trades based on tips from someone with the same obligation. They also said people in “a position of authority or influence” to affect the outcome of an event cannot participate in any related markets.

Hannah Rabinowitz, Kara Scannell, CNN

CNN’s Marshall Cohen, Haley Britzky and Alejandria Jaramillo contributed to this report.

#News : Tourist’s ‘pre-wedding challenge’ damages historic Florence statue, A tourist has caused thousands of dollars in damage to a 16th-century monument in Florence, Italy, after climbing on it during a bachelorette party, according to authorities.

The 28-year-old woman, whose name and nationality have not been publicly disclosed, climbed the Fountain of Neptune in the #Piazza della Signoria on Saturday, the city of Florence said in a statement this week.

The Fountain of Neptune was commissioned in 1559 by Cosimo I de Medici, Duke of Florence, to mark the marriage of his son Francesco and the Grand Duchess Joanna of Austria.

The fountain features a statue of the Roman sea god Neptune atop a shell-shaped carriage pulled by horses.

The woman was immediately spotted by police, who told her to get out of the fountain, officials said in the statement Tuesday.

The woman allegedly told officers that she had entered the fountain by climbing over a railing and the edge of the basin, then onto the legs of the figure of a horse to avoid stepping into the water.

“Her intention was to ‘touch’ the private parts of the statue for a sort of pre-wedding challenge,” reads the statement.

Investigators later found that the woman had “caused small but significant damage” to the legs of the horses she’d walked on, as well as “to a frieze she had grabbed onto to avoid slipping,” which will cost 5,000 euros (US$5,845) to repair, according to the statement.

“The young woman was reported to the Judicial Authority for defacing an artistic and architectural asset,” it adds.

Officials added that the woman is “to be presumed innocent until a final judgment by the Judicial Authority.”

This is not the first time that badly behaved tourists have been linked to damaged to the fountain.

In 2023, a 22-year-old German man was accused of damaging the statue after climbing on it as two friends took photos of him.

The statue was previously damaged in 2005, when someone climbed on it and broke Neptune’s hand. This prompted the authorities to install security cameras.

By Jack Guy, CNN

Three Iranian tankers intercepted as US adds pressure in Strait of Hormuz

Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil killed in #Israeli strike on a house where she took cover, paper says.

#BEIRUT — A #Lebanese journalist was killed Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike on a house in southern Lebanon where she had taken cover while reporting on the Israel-Hezbollah war. Her body was only retrieved from the rubble hours later, rescue workers said.

The daily Al-Akhbar newspaper says its reporter Amal Khalil was killed in the southern village of al-Tiri.

Khalil had been covering the conflict in Lebanon between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group that resumed in early March, in the shadow of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. She took cover in the house in al-Tiri after an earlier Israeli airstrike hit near the car she was traveling in with another colleague.

The Lebanese health ministry said the first strike killed two people. A second Israeli strike then hit the house in al-Tiri where Khalil and her colleague Zeinab Faraj had taken cover.

At first, rescue workers were able to get to Faraj, who was seriously wounded, and retrieve the bodies of two killed in the first airstrike. But they were fired on by Israeli forces so they were forced to halt attempts to reach Khalil, the ministry said.

Khalil remained under the rubble for hours before the Lebanese army, civil defense and the Lebanese Red Cross were able to get to the scene hours later. Khalil’s body was retrieved shortly before midnight, at least six hours after the strike.

Israel’s military said individuals in the village had violated the ceasefire, endangering its troops. Israel denied that it targets #journalists or that it prevented rescue teams from reaching the area. It said the incident was under review.

“Killing of journalists is a crime and a flagrant violation of international and humanitarian law,” said Lebanon’s Information Minister Paul Morcos.

Khalil’s death comes on the eve of the second round of direct talks between Israeli and Lebanese officials in Washington on extending the ceasefire that went into effect last Friday.

Khalil, who was from southern Lebanon, had been covering the area since 2006 for al-Akhbar. Her latest reporting was about Israeli demolitions of Lebanese homes in villages where Israeli troops are now positioned inside Lebanon.

Her death brings to nine the number of #journalists killed in Lebanon so far this year. At least 2,300 people have been killed in Israeli strikes and more than 1 million displaced since the latest #Israel-#Hezbollah war erupted on March 2.

Earlier on Wednesday, Reporters Without Borders called for international pressure on the Israeli army to allow Khalil’s rescue. Committee to Protect Journalists expressed its “outrage” at the apparent targeting of the two journalists and warned the obstruction of rescue efforts “may amount to a war crime.”

Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun asked the Lebanese Red Cross to coordinate with the Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers “to carry out the rescue operation” as quickly as possible.

In late March, an Israeli airstrike on southern Lebanon killed three journalists covering the war. Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV said its longtime correspondent Ali Shoeib was killed. Israel’s military said it had targeted Shoeib, accusing him of being a Hezbollah intelligence operative, without providing evidence.

Also killed in the same strike was reporter Fatima Ftouni, who worked for the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV along with her brother Mohammed Ftouni, a video journalist.

Days earlier, an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in central Beirut killed Mohammed Sherri, the head of political programs at Hezbollah’s at Al-Manar TV, along with his wife.

Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.

Bassem Mroue And Sarah El Deeb, The Associated Press

U.K. to ban cigarettes sales for those born after 2008. Could Canada do the same?

The proposed U.K. law, dubbed the “Tobacco and Vapes Bill,” aims to stop anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009, now aged 17, from taking up smoking. It has been approved by both houses of Britain’s Parliament but still requires royal assent.

“It’s a step in the right direction and we’re really encouraged to see this,” said Dr. Lesley James, the director of health policy and systems in Ontario for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. “We’re hoping officials in Canada will see this and see what can be done here within our borders, to see what can be done to address smoking.”