[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Ottawa, Montréal, London, Garges-lès-Gonesse, Venice

• The Ottawa Citizen looks at the problems of the Confederation Line in the evening, here.


• CBC Montreal takes a look at a 1930s tourist brochure from Montréal. The city was represented in interesting ways.


• Wired looks at how skyscraper designs in London are being changed for the benefit of cyclists.


• Guardian Cities reports on "Ma cité va briller", the viral challenge from the Paris suburb of Garges-lès-Gonesse that inspired competition to clean up cities across the Francophone world.


• Atlas Obscura looks at how the Venetian Republic took great advantage of its expertise in cryptography in the Renaissance.

[NEWS] Eleven politics links

• The amount of money that has gone into the Doug Ford Ontario News Now propaganda videos--more than one hundred!--is shocking. Global News reports.


• That Maxime Bernier is finding himself challenged, in his home region of the Beauce, by another Maxine Bernier is charming. Le Devoir has it.


• The Times of London interview with David Cameron, three years after the Brexit referendum and with his new biography, is enlightening. (And shocking.)


• There may well be, finally, a popular groundswell among Europeans to make the European Union more of a classical superpower. Bloomberg has it.


• Shannon Gormley at MacLean's looks at how, come 2047, Hong Kong is bound to see radical change.


• At Bloomberg, David Fickling notes how populism plays a huge role in the economic divergence of Argentina from Australia, here.


• India would lose out, it is argued, if it does not sign onto the China-led RCEP economic grouping. Bloomberg has it.


• Did economic nationalism in central Europe make the region more resistant to the slowdown in Germany? Bloomberg considers.


• VICE reports on how Trump supporters in the US Midwest are unhappy with continued globalization, here.


• Global News reports on new interest in Ontario in diffusing immigration beyond the Greater Toronto Area, here.


• Philippe J. Fournier reports at MacLean's about the latest polling, suggesting the Liberals are on the edge of a majority.

[NEWS] Seven space links: Moon and Mercury, black holes and neutron stars, probes

• Universe Today notes that shadowed areas on the Moon and Mercury might have thick deposits of ice, here.


• Science Alert notes a study suggesting that a large number of black holes might be careening throughout the galaxy, here.


• Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy, recently flared for an unknown reason. Science Alert has it.


• Astronomers have found the most massive neutron star yet known, J0740+6620 at 2.17 solar masses 4600 light-years away. Phys.org reports.


• The environment surrounding a supermassive black hole like Sagittarius A* might actually be a good place to live, if you have the needed technology. Scientific American considers.


• Universe Today notes that the Hubble has been looking at the fading 2017 kilonova GRB 170817A, mapping the fading glow.


• A new study suggests that space is not filled with civilizations of self-replicating probes competing with each other. Cosmos Magazine reports.