Canada Is ‘at War’ With U.S. Over Tariffs, and U.S.P.S. Publishes Plan to Restrict Ballots

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Monday, August 24th. Here's what we're covering. We cannot accept what they've offered, and we will not give what they've asked. In a forceful speech this weekend, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his country was now, quote, at war with the U.S. after trade talks fell apart and the White House put in place new 50 percent tariffs on billions of dollars in Canadian goods. We've been under no illusions. We recognized from the start that America has changed. We recognize that sometimes its signature was written in pencil. All of last week, U.S. and Canadian negotiators had been working to hash out a new trade agreement following President Trump's latest tariffs. And Trump even extended his deadline a few days, saying a deal was close. But Carney said that in addition to disagreements about the tariffs themselves, U.S. negotiators made other last-minute demands that he found unacceptable, including trying to force Canada to roll back its efforts to promote French, which is an official language in the country. The new tariffs affect a relatively small proportion of U.S.-Canada trade, but they will hit a wide range of goods, everything from dairy products, to plywood, which could drive up U.S. construction costs. In Canada, according to one estimate, some 90,000 jobs could be lost because of the levies. And Carney vowed to retaliate dollar for dollar on American goods starting next month. Now, two more quick updates on the administration. The Defense Department has fired the publisher and editor-in-chief of the government-funded military news outlet Stars and Stripes, along with one of its members, one of its Middle East correspondents. The firings came less than two weeks after Stars and Stripes reported on the hardships that sailors have been facing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier that's been deployed for months longer than anticipated. According to the editor-in-chief, his termination notice cited insubordination as well as an unauthorized media appearance. He and the Middle East correspondent had recently gone on TV to talk about accusations that the outlet's editorial independence has been undermined by the Trump administration. For decades, federal regulations and Pentagon policy had emphasized that there should be no censorship at Stars and Stripes. But earlier this year, the Pentagon rescinded that regulation, fired the outlet's internal editorial watchdog, and the DOD's chief spokesman said the publication needed to, quote, refocus its content away from woke distractions that siphon morale. And last, the U.S. Postal Service has finalized its plans to restrict mail-in ballots, in line with an earlier executive order from President Trump cracking down on that voting method. The Postal Service says that under the new rule, it would review every envelope with a ballot and would not deliver any in states that do not share voter data with the federal government. The key thing to know is that the Postal Service says this plan will only go into place if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the president, whose voting restrictions have, for the most part, been blocked by lower courts. The justices could rule on this at any time. Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that voting by mail, which historically Democrats have done more than Republicans, is cheating. And he said explicitly that limiting mail-in voting would, quote, guarantee the midterms for his party. In the Western U.S., federal officials have stepped into a long-running dispute over how to distribute water from the Colorado River, a critical water source which is running dangerously low. The river supplies drinking water to over 40 million people and is used to irrigate millions of acres of farmland across seven states and parts of Mexico. But years of drought and overuse have pushed reservoirs along the river to record lows, straining a system that was designed long before cities like Phoenix, where some of the federal government was in power, the fastest-growing in the country. The situation has pitted states against each other and set off years of negotiations about who can use how much water. According to the administration's new plan, the three states in the lower section of the river, Arizona, California, and Nevada, have agreed to sharp cuts over the next two years. Arizona will be hit the hardest, losing about a third of its allocation from the river. In all, the states will need to rely more on groundwater, boost water efficiency, and limit some users. The agricultural industry in particular is likely to feel the pressure. Nearly half of the Colorado River's water goes towards growing crops to feed livestock. For the moment, the other states in the river basin, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming, have refused to accept any mandatory cuts. One of the negotiators involved in trying to design a long-term strategy for the region called this round of restrictions, quote, bridge, not a permanent solution. He said that all seven states that rely on the river will need to take action in the coming years to avoid a water crisis. In Ukraine, The Times is covering the emergence of an experimental new weapon on the battlefield, fully autonomous drones guided by artificial intelligence. Both Russia and Ukraine have been using AI and drones to some extent before. With those older models, the drone charts its own way to a target that a human has picked. Now, the latest generation of AI-powered drones pick their own targets. Experts say that the weapon systems can be trained on thousands of images to recognize categories like military truck or person and then use cameras to home in and strike them. A former Ukrainian defense minister told The Times that over the past few months, the Ukrainian military, has been testing entirely autonomous AI systems on Russian targets. And recently, the wreckage from a Russian drone attack showed evidence that the Kremlin is using them too. Analysis of debris from a strike in Zaporizhia found that a Russian drone had NVIDIA mini computers on board. Ukrainian officials said it appeared to be targeting a gas station before it crashed into the wall of an apartment building, killing three people. More broadly, when it comes to the technology in general, those in support of the attack say it has the potential to be more accurate than, say, dropping bombs from a plane or relying on a human drone pilot. Some actually think all weapons should be required to have AI systems in the future. But opponents of these weapons, including human rights groups and the International Red Cross, say they may be more prone to mistakes or violations of international law, like failing to distinguish between soldiers and civilians. The Ukrainian air defense commander in the town where the Russian drone exploded warned the U.S. military that we may be entering an entirely new era of warfare, saying, quote, in a few years, we will be living in a Terminator movie. It's no joke. Machines are making decisions to strike. And finally, in California, engineers at the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park spent years trying to pull off the impossible. They wanted to build a new roller coaster that would loop and spin and hurl people around at 72 miles per hour and barely make a sound. That way, the rumbling and roaring of the coaster wouldn't disrupt filming at Universal's own movie studios, which are right next door. And it would spare the residential neighborhoods that are right near the park from all the noise. By the time they started doing riderless test runs last month, it seemed like they'd pulled it off. Some neighbors called it whisper quiet. But, once the riders got on, the screaming started. Now, nearby residents say that every 30 seconds or so, for 10 hours straight, the air is filled with shrieks of people in blood-curdling terror, and it reaches all the way to their homes. One woman told the Times she could hear the screams even after taking out her hearing aids. Universal, says it did take screaming into account. The ride has noise-blocking scream screens built in. And the coaster's cars are programmed to spin riders so they're facing away from nearby homes at, quote, key scream moments. But the complaints have been flooding in, even as Universal has started expanding a sound wall and agreed to limit the ride's hours. The controversy is hanging over the coaster, which the park had been hoping would help revive attendance and keep it competitive with Disneyland. At this point, it's unclear what could actually fix the situation. Universal might have to take a page out of a Japanese theme park's playbook, which, as a safety precaution when it reopened during the pandemic, urged people not to open their mouths, but to, quote, please scream inside your heart. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman on what we know about the pandemic know about Trump's closest aide, Natalie Harp. She's an assistant to the president. She makes $150,000 a year on the taxpayer salary. But her role is amorphous in terms of an actual job title. What she does is she will provide him with articles from very fringe websites that can affirm some of what he wants to see. And she provides him with video. She provides him with pieces of paper. She provides him with whatever he needs. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you are not a Times subscriber yet, you can get a full month of free access to everything we publish when you download the Times app now. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.