Friday Focus: Trump cancels trade talks with Canada and targets Russia with sanctions

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. Rudyard and Janice start the show with the big news stories coming out of Gaza this week: the public executions Hamas is conducting in the Gaza strip in order to terrorize and intimidate civilians, and the Israeli government's growing concern that Hamas is breaking the ceasefire deal by not returning all of the dead hostages as agreed upon. How will rival Gaza clans thwart Hamas's attempt to cling to power? Could Gaza be on the verge of a civil war? How fast can you get a rudimentary police force to make Hamas pull back? And perhaps most importantly, who would want to go in there? Janice is optimistic that this time, at least, the Arab world is taking ownership over this problem in a way they never have before. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn to an important phone call that took place this week between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin just ahead of Zelensky's visit today to Washington, where the Ukrainian President intends to make the case for long-range Tomahawk missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia. The transfer of these weapons, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned this week, could lead to nuclear war. Meanwhile, Europeans have never been more scared, interpreting Russia's drone excursions into NATO territory as preparation for a larger war with the continent. Are weak European governments using the bogeyman of Russia to rally their public to distract from domestic problems and rising populism? Everybody is rolling the dice here, and when you do that there is always a chance that someone will miscalculate, and everyone will pay the heavy price. To support the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.

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