The federal government will look at capping the number of international students admitted to Canada in the coming months, Immigration Minister Marc Miller told reporters, saying the system “has gotten out of control.” 

Why it matters: The number of people coming to study in Canada from abroad has surged, climbing to around 900,000 last year, and worsening a housing shortage that’s driven rents up by 22% over the past two years.

 On this week’s episode of Free Lunch by The Peak, we sat down with Daniel Foch, co-host of the Canadian Real Estate Investor podcast, to talk about the future of the housing market. 

As Jakarta becomes the world’s fastest-sinking megacity, Indonesian officials are reviving a decade-old plan to save the capital by building a giant seawall. 

Driving the news: Floods are a common occurrence in the world’s largest island country, but the effects of rising sea levels are getting worse alongside more frequent extreme weather events.

Today’s presidential election in Taiwan is shaping up to be a turning point for the tiny, but increasingly important, island nation.

Driving the news: As of writing, polls are showing no definite front-runner in the race to replace current Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, who has reached her two-term limit. 

Wait, there’s a new Wi-Fi?

Kind of! Wi-Fi 7 is a new technical standard for wireless internet, promising faster speeds and more stable connections. The technology has been around for a year or so, but now the Wi-FI Alliance has made sure it works properly and doesn’t interfere with other transmissions.

Carta, the most popular platform for startups to manage equity and ownership info, has spent the week defending how it handles that data.

If you’ve been frustrated by your connected devices not working together, so have the companies that make them, and their solution is beginning to pick up steam.

What happened: A common theme among the smart home products announced at CES 2024 was compatibility with Matter, an open-source standard that lets devices from different manufacturers connect to each other and be controlled from a single app of the user’s choice.

A little over a year after Canada’s big “crackdown” on Chinese investment in mining, companies are still lining up to pour money into the sector. 

What happened: Chinese mining giant, Zijin, plans to invest $130 million for a 15% stake in Vancouver-based critical minerals company Solaris Resources, the latest in a string of proposed investments by China-based firms into Canada’s critical minerals industry. 

Amazon has rightfully earned the title of “the everything store.” Unfortunately, everything happens to include illegal weapons.

Driving the news: An illegal switchblade sold on Amazon as a “camping knife" achieved “#1 Best Seller” status on the platform before the listing was taken down last week, a CBC investigation found. 

It’s time for our quarterly check-in on the long-running soap opera The Legal Adventures of Donald J. Trump. 

What happened: The New York civil fraud trial against Donald Trump has come to a close.

Hold on to your Super Puffs Aritzia fans, the clothier is in a weird place these days.  

Driving the news: Canadian clothing retailer Aritzia dropped its quarterly earnings report, posting a net revenue increase of 5%. But the company also saw net income drop a whopping 39% due to more markdowns as it tried to get its inventory in check — rarely a great sign for a popular brand.

You can work from home, take classes at home, and exercise at home. And soon, in B.C., you can even do your routine medical tests from home.  

Driving the news: Later this month, B.C. will become the first Canadian province to offer at-home screening tests for HPV, human papillomavirus, a common infection that is also the leading cause of cervical cancer.  

Rebel attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea have been mucking up global trade for weeks, and Western powers have officially had enough.

What happened: U.S. and British jets and warships shot down one of the largest attacks of drones and missiles yet from Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi rebels on a ship passing through the Red Sea. 

Bacteria can naturally develop antibiotic resistance, but it’s thought that a spike in these strains is caused by overuse of antibiotics, as well as misuse by patients. But a team of researchers was able to show that a new class of antibiotics was able to break through that protection.

Whether the first ten days of 2024 should fill you with optimism or dread for the tech biz really depends on who you ask.

It can be tough to keep up to speed with every announcement from CES — and why they are a big deal — so let us try to break the big announcements down for you.

It’s not just the big tech heavyweights showing up at the world’s biggest tech conference this week. Some unexpected names and their new gadgets are also joining the party. 

Driving the news: Companies you may not expect to see at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) have entered the fold with inventions that automate things like gardening and barbecuing, a sign that more mainstream consumers are warming up to “smart” products. 

China is now the world’s top car dealer… no checkered sport coat or wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubemen required.

Driving the news: China is officially the world’s top car exporter, shipping out a record ~5.26 million China-made automobiles last year and beating runner-up Japan by ~1 million cars. 

Add ‘corporations labelling any and all initiatives as ESG’ to the list of trends that were hot a few years ago but are officially out in 2024.

Driving the news: Companies are looking to distance themselves from the term ESG — short for environmental, social, and governance — as it’s become a political flashpoint for those who feel companies are doing too much or not enough to meet sustainability goals.