Canadian charity says its aid truck in Gaza was bombed in ‘targeted’ attack

A Canadian humanitarian organization says its key water-aid truck was bombed in Gaza this week and is calling on the federal government to mount a full investigation into what it believes was a “targeted” incident. The International Development and Relief Foundation (IDRF), a registered non-profit based in Toronto, told CBC News the incident is believed to … Read more

The Russians are spending big on infrastructure to absorb occupied Ukraine

Armies rarely measure their success by the roads they’ve paved or the rail lines they’ve laid down — but that may be the metric Russia is using in occupied portions of Ukraine, where major infrastructure projects are underway or are being planned. Over the last few months, Moscow-based media have reported on the construction of a new railway line between Rostov-on-Don … Read more

Canadian trapped in Gaza pleads for help as Ottawa announces new immigration measures

A Canadian citizen trapped in Gaza is begging for help as Ottawa announces new measures to help family members of Canadians flee the war zone. Mahmoud Kouta of London, Ont. told CBC News he’s been trapped in Gaza since the current Israel-Hamas war broke out. The air and ground war was launched in response to Hamas’s brutal … Read more

The Boy and the Heron has a beautiful, secret backstory

There’s something Aristotle said in his Poetics about the effective use of metaphor. Boiling it down, he observed that while coming up with metaphors takes genius, overstuffing your story with beautiful — but confusing — symbols doesn’t leave you with a timeless piece of art. Instead, you end up with “nothing but riddles or gibberish.” Apparently, … Read more