In the news today: Thailand school shooting, jet program, job numbers, fish study

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A witness told reporters that students hid inside a classroom while they heard gunshots from another building before police officers knocked on the door and cleared a way for them to leave the building.

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About an hour after the shooting, people stood outside the school comforting one another, and police and first responders walked around inside the school.

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Canada pays no entry fee as observer in next-generation jet fighter program, feds say

National Defence says Canada’s decision to join a new, multinational fighter jet program as an observer doesn’t come with any price tag.

Canada recently became the first country to gain “observer status” in the Global Combat Air Program run by Italy, Japan and the U.K. to develop a sixth-generation fighter aircraft — giving it access to inside information.

But the department admits there would be “resource implications” if Canada eventually decides to sign on to the next-generation jet development program as a full member.

Ottawa committed in the early 2000s to paying hundreds of millions of dollars so it could join the joint strike fighter program that developed the F-35 fighter jet.

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Conservative MP Larry Brock announces he will resign next month

Ontario Conservative MP Larry Brock says he will step down as a member of Parliament next month.

Brock, a former prosecutor and MP for Brantford-Brant South-Six Nations, says on social media he will officially resign his seat on Sept. 18 and will return to the Crown attorney’s office in Brantford, Ont.

Brock was first elected in 2021 and served as his party’s justice critic but was shuffled out of that position by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in June.

Brock is the seventh MP to leave Poilievre’s caucus since the 2025 election, with four of them crossing the floor to the Liberals.

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Statistics Canada to release jobs numbers for July this morning

Statistics Canada is set to release its latest labour force survey for the month of July this morning.

A Reuters poll of economists predicts Canada added 15,000 jobs in the month, and they expect the unemployment rate to remain the same at 6.5 per cent.

Economists have said the labour market appears to be stabilizing after the first quarter of the year brought a mild contraction and employers shed jobs.

StatCan estimates suggest the economy likely fared a lot better in the second quarter, but U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest threats of 50 per cent tariffs on a wide range of Canadian imports are casting fresh uncertainty over employers.

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Researchers tracking whether contagious catfish cancer in Quebec has spread to N.B.

Researchers tracking contagious catfish cancer in Quebec say they are testing to see if it also spread to New Brunswick.

University of Cambridge post-doctoral fellow Zoe Clarke says she took samples of brown bullhead catfish with dark spots in lakes up and down the Saint John River this past spring.

Clarke says she’s expecting lab results within weeks that could prove the catfish have melanoma, the same transmissible cancer found in the same species in a lake straddling Quebec and Vermont.

Clarke says if DNA testing confirms the New Brunswick fish have the same cancer, she’ll return to collect more samples as researchers try to find out where it came from.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 7, 2026.

The Canadian Press