How a Small Library in Vermont Became a Symbol of Resistance for Canada
In the book, a shadowy cabal has hatched a plot to tap Canada's vast resources by making it the 51st state. Penny's beloved Chief Inspector Armand Gamache meets with a U.S. contact at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, trying to foil the plan.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Cambodia-Thailand conflict: Monks, dancers and volunteers offer respite as violence escalates
Thailand Cambodia Coping in a Crisis SURIN, Thailand (AP) — Long-festering tensions over border territory have escalated into armed conflict between Cambodia and Thailand, leading to dozens of deaths on both sides and displacing tens of thousands of people. Neither side is prepared to claim responsibility for the first volley on Thursday, and they each blame the other for the continuing skirmishes. While regional and international allies and organizations have called for a ceasefire, scant attempts at mediation had resulted in no peace talks as of early Sunday. It's a grim situation, but there is some light amid the darkness. On both sides of the border, some people are working around the destruction, intent on creating a safe space or finding normalcy. A Buddhist temple with a homemade bomb shelter A temple in Thailand 's northeastern province of Surin has something most of the country's 27,000 active Buddhist monasteries do not: a concrete bunker to shelter from bombs and shelling. The temple, which asked not to be identified by name because of safety concerns, is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with Cambodia. The temple's abbot, Phut Analayo, said the decision to build a bunker was made shortly after a brief armed clash between Thai and Cambodian soldiers in May inflamed cross-border relations, culminating in the current fighting. Phut Analayo said donations paid for materials and equipment for the bunker, and the temple's monks and nearby villagers built it in four or five days. Construction was speedy because the bunker is made from large precast concrete drainage pipes a little over a meter (yard) in diameter, protected by mounds of earth, metal frames and sheeting. It's divided into two tubular rooms, each about four meters (yards) long, and wired with electricity. There's a kitchen with a kettle, an electric rice cooker and basic cookware. It's a tight fit, but because most of the nearby residents have fled to safer areas, there is enough space for the temple's six monks and the dozen or so villagers who sleep there every night. 'When we need to use the bathroom, we have to wait to make sure if things are quiet. If it's quiet out there, we will go out,' Phut Analayo said. He said his temple has ceased religious activities for now but that the remaining monks stayed out of concern for the monastery and the people it serves. 'If I leave, the people who rely on us will lose their spirit," he said. 'I'm scared too, but I'll just stay here for now, when I can.' Thai monasteries frequently serve as sanctuaries for stray dogs, and the more than 10 living at the temple are seemingly unbothered by the crisis. "If I leave them behind, how will they live? What will they eat? So I have to stay to take care of them. Every life loves their lives all the same,' Phut Analayo said. Ballroom dancers heed the call to help their countrymen Learning ballroom dancing is how some senior citizens in northeastern Thailand usually spend their leisure hours, but the latest border conflict has motivated them to try to help some of the thousands of people displaced by the fighting. About a dozen members of the Ballroom Dance for Health of the Elderly of Surin Province club went Saturday to a shelter housing about 1,000 evacuees, where they handed out clothes, toiletries, blankets and pillows. Retired civil servant Chadaporn Duchanee, the ballroom teacher, initiated the project. On Friday, she gathered with friends at her home to fill small yellow plastic bowls with toiletries and other goods to give to the evacuees. The 62-year-old posted on Facebook about the donation she made on Thursday, and her pupils proved happy to participate, too. 'We want to help, said Chadaporn. 'Everyone left in a hurry, without bringing their belongings, just trying to escape the line of fire, so they fled empty handed,' Prapha Sanpote, a 75-year-old member of Chadaporn's donation team, said she hopes the conflict is resolved quickly. 'Our people couldn't go home. They have to leave home, and it's not just the home they had to leave,' he said. 'It's their belongings, their cattle, or their pet dogs, because they left without anything. How will those animals live? Everything is affected.' A pop-up stall to feed those fleeing fighting and those headed into battle It looks just like your typical roadside stall found commonly all over Southeast Asia, but this one seems exceptionally well-provisioned. Also, it's not selling anything, even though there are boxes of bottled water, plastic bags filled with fruit and vegetables and the occasional packet of instant noodles. It is there to solicit donations of food and other essentials to give to evacuees escaping fighting along the border. It also gives handouts to members of the armed forces headed in the other direction, toward the front lines. This pop-up operation is at the border of Siem Reap, home to Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple complex, and Oddar Meanchey province, which is an active combat zone. It's a one-stop shop on a key road that convoys of police and military vehicles roar along with sirens blaring. Chhar Sin, a 28-year-old self-described youth volunteer, mans the stall, which is located in her home Srey Snam district. 'We're used to seeing people bustling around, we're not surprised by that,' she said, between handing out parcels to eager hands. But even here, 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the border with Thailand, she senses people don't feel safe, as the streets seem emptier than usual. She and other volunteers, are spending the weekend collecting supplies from ordinary Cambodians to dole out to the less fortunate. Families drive by on tractors to donate vegetables, while others swing by on motorbikes carrying bananas, dragon fruit and rambutans. 'For today and tomorrow, we are standing here waiting to give gifts to the people who are displaced from war zones and are seeking safety,' Chhar Sin said Saturday. 'We will provide them with food because they have nothing, and some of them come with only a few clothes and a hat.' When she woke up Saturday morning, Kim Muny, made the decision not to open her convenience store, but instead cook rice for members of the Cambodian military and fleeing civilians. 'Cambodians have a kind heart. When we heard that soldiers and displaced people needed help, we decided to help with an open heart,' said the 45-year-old after donating parcels of rice wrapped in banana leaves at the stall. 'We know our soldiers don't have time to cook, so we will do it for them.' The city empties but its temple's top monk isn't moving Alone in a mostly evacuated pagoda, Tho Thoross began a Buddhist chant to express gratitude for all that is good in life. The 38-year-old Tho Thoross is one of the last monks in the city of Samrong, the provincial capital of Cambodia's Oddar Meanchey province, which is on the front line of the cross-border fighting. Most civilians have fled the town, spooked by the sounds of artillery and what they suspect was a Thai military drone hovering above them. All but seven of the 40 monks at the monastery have left. As chief monk of Wat Prasat Samrong Thom, Tho Thoross ordered more than a dozen of the temple's novices — young monks in training — to evacuate to displacement camps farther from the border with Thailand, which is 40 kilometers (25 miles) away. The temple is the largest in the town of Samrong, as well as the oldest, dating back over a century. Its distance from the border does not keep it protected from artillery and aerial attacks, but it nonetheless is considered a relatively safe place. Most Cambodians and Thais are Buddhists. Nine monks from other temples that felt more insecure are also staying at Wat Prasat Samrong Thom. In the Buddhist tradition, temples are community centers and almost always places of sanctuary, and on Thursday, several displaced villagers stopped by briefly on their way to a government-arranged safety zone. Tho Thoross provided them with food. He said the latest fighting is '10 times bigger' than prolonged clashes over similar issues in 2008 and 2011, when the clashes were confined to certain areas. 'But today, the fighting is happening everywhere along the border.' said Tho Thoross, who has lived in Oddar Meanchey for nearly three decades. 'As a Buddhist monk living in a province bordering Thailand, I would like to call on both sides to work together to find a solution that is a win-win solution for all,' he declared Saturday. _____ Sopheng Cheang and Delgado reported from Samrong, Cambodia; Peck reported from Bangkok. Associated Press video journalist Tian Macleod Ji in Surin, Thailand contributed to this report.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
What the U.S. dairy industry really wants from Canada
U.S. dairy producers insist they're not looking for Canada to dismantle its supply management system, but they do want Canada to follow the letter and spirit of the existing deal that governs the dairy trade between the two countries. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly blasted Canada as "unfair" and "ripping us off" with massive dairy tariffs, in a way that isn't fully accurate. However, senior figures in the U.S. dairy industry are concerned there's also some misrepresentation happening north of the border, creating a false perception of what U.S. producers are actually seeking in terms of access to the Canadian market. Shawna Morris, executive vice-president for trade policy and global affairs with the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council, says it's not true that her industry wants Canada to abandon its system for protecting the dairy sector. "We've never been out to eliminate Canada's supply management," said Morris in an interview from her office in Arlington, Va., just outside Washington. "It's much easier to create a boogeyman and fear-mongering around that being the goal of the Americans, but that's certainly not what our industry has advocated." Becky Rasdall Vargas, senior vice-president of trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Foods Association lobby group, says she recognizes the Trump administration has been "fairly abrasive" in its tone toward Canada. "But at the same time, I think we feel pretty ignored by Canada in terms of our legitimate trade concerns." Two main trade irritants According to Morris and Rasdall Vargas, the U.S. industry has two main irritants with Canada: how the Canadian government allocates the existing quotas for tariff-free imports of dairy products, and how Canadian milk producers dump cheap milk protein into the international market. The import quotas negotiated under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA, which Americans call USMCA) are designed to give U.S. producers tariff-free access worth roughly 3.5 per cent of Canada's domestic demand for dairy products. "Three per cent is pretty limited," said Morris. "It's certainly not a situation where our industry is gonna come in and take over the Canadian dairy market." CUSMA sets import quotas for 14 categories of dairy products. That allows an annual volume of each category to enter Canada tariff-free, and any imports exceeding the quota would get hit with sky-high tariffs of 200 per cent or more. Canada's rationale for this is ensuring the domestic dairy industry thrives by effectively capping how much the U.S. can export each year, preventing cheaper American products from dominating the market. The U.S. government supports its dairy sector with hefty direct subsidies. The U.S. dairy industry says it's not asking for Canada's quotas to be increased or the tariff rates to be decreased. Rather, it wants changes to how Ottawa allocates the quotas: more specifically, who gets them. Big Canadian dairies dominate import quotas Much of the quota volume is allocated to major Canadian-owned dairy processing companies such as Saputo and Agropur. Industry analysts on both sides of the border say such companies have little incentive to import U.S. products that would compete with their own. According to the U.S. producers, this restricts their access to the Canadian market. Their evidence for that claim: Canadian trade statistics showing tariff-free imports from the U.S. have almost never reached the quota limits in any category. WATCH | What Donald Trump gets wrong (and right) about Canada's dairy tariffs: "For five years, Canada's been playing games with these tariff rate quotas," said Morris. "That's a lot of volume that should have been able to reach Canadian consumers." Despite those complaints, Canada's imports of U.S. dairy products have risen significantly since the CUSMA quotas took effect in 2020. Those imports totalled $897 million in 2024, according to Statistics Canada data, more than four times the value of imports in any year before 2020. "Trade certainly should be far higher than it is," said Morris. "That was what USMCA promised to deliver and quite frankly has fallen far short." A key change the U.S. producers would like to see is for Canada to grant retailers and the food-service sector a share of the tariff-free quotas, allowing them to import some U.S. dairy products directly. The U.S. industry also wants Canada to be far stricter in taking away allocations from importers that fail to use their full quota in a given year. While a bill that Parliament passed in June bars Ottawa from agreeing to raise the dairy import quotas or lower the tariffs, it doesn't prevent other changes to the system, leaving Canadian trade negotiators some wiggle room. WATCH | Canada's supply management system, explained: 'An inherent mismatch' The other chief complaint from the U.S. focuses on Canada's cheap exports of milk proteins, also described as milk solids, such as skim milk powder. The Americans argue that because Canada's supply management system keeps domestic prices artificially high, Canada can sell its excess production of milk proteins internationally at artificially low prices, undercutting the competition. "It frankly makes no sense that you could have one of the highest milk prices in the world and yet be exporting dairy protein at some of the lowest prices globally," said Morris. "That's just an inherent mismatch." Canada's pricing of milk solids for the export market is currently the subject of a U.S. International Trade Commission investigation, ordered by the Trump administration, with a hearing scheduled for Monday. Dairy Farmers of Canada declined a request for comment on the case. "During the recent election, all major parties expressed support for supply management and stated that it would be off the table in upcoming trade negotiations," the organization said in a news release in June. The Trump administration is not the first to accuse Canada of breaching CUSMA terms on dairy. Joe Biden's administration twice took legal action over Canada's handling of the dairy quotas, claiming it was unfairly undermining U.S. access to the Canadian market. The U.S. won the first dispute, which it launched in 2021, but failed to win the second, in 2023. Now in 2025, Rasdall Vargas says her industry wants Canada to be willing to hear its true concerns and do something about them. "Ultimately, when we have a trading partner who isn't taking our concerns seriously until they're threatened to do so, it's also not a good feeling from our side," she said. Whatever anyone thinks about Trump's bluster on Canadian dairy, Rasdall Vargas believes it's having an impact. "I think that's the president's way of having our back, probably more abrasively than Canada would like," she said. "I will say I've never seen Canadian dairy interests take U.S. concerns about Canadian dairy policy more seriously than in the past six months."
Wall Street Journal
6 hours ago
- Wall Street Journal
Canada's Aluminum Subsidies Hurt the U.S.
Ed Fast, Canada's former minister for international trade, claims that, 'We don't subsidize vast state-owned industries' ('Canada Is the Best Friend America's Got,' op-ed, July 21). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development disagrees in an independent report, which found that Canada's aluminum industry is supported by more than $850 million in government subsidies.
