On this week’s episode of Free Lunch by The Peak, we sat down with Joe McReynolds, a co-author of the book Emergent Tokyo, to talk about what Western cities can learn from Japan’s capital — including how the city manages to keep rent super low for residents.  

A history of using Danish schnapps to smooth over land disputes could set the tone for a budding friendship between Greenland and Canada. 

Driving the news: Greenland, a 57,000-person island nation that also happens to be the 12th-largest country in the world, is looking to strengthen political and economic ties with Canada and the U.S. as part of a larger push to become more economically independent. 

Perhaps Canadian NHL teams looking to win the Stanley Cup could learn something from Japan’s stock market about breaking decades-long curses. 

What happened: This week, the Nikkei 225, Japan’s largest stock market index, rose to a record high for the first time in more than 34 years. It’s become the world’s best-performing major index so far in 2024, rising about 17.5% this year, and 42.4% over the past 12 months.

Nearly five months into a war between Israel and Hamas, officials in Israel, Egypt, the U.S., and Qatar are struggling to move towards a solution. 

What happened: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put forward a post-war blueprint for Gaza that calls for an indefinite Israeli security presence in the enclave.

A decade-long effort to take down a so-called ​​"party of thieves and crooks" has left one of Russia’s most prominent opposition leaders dead. 

What happened: ​​A wave of outrage gripped the international community after authorities confirmed that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had died in a Siberian prison. He had been jailed since 2021, and was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges.

Meet Prabowo Subianto. He loves cats. He gets jiggy with it. He was the head of military special forces under a dictatorship. And he’s going to be the next president of Indonesia.  

Driving the news: Indonesia held one of the largest democratic elections in the world this week, with almost 205 million eligible voters. Early results show that Subianto, the defence minister and ex-general, is all but guaranteed to win the race and take office in November.  

While most of us are trying to save up these days, NATO nations are spending on defence like a rich kid who got their hands on their daddy’s credit card.

Driving the news: NATO projects that 18 of its 31 member states will meet the military bloc’s goal of spending at least 2% of annual GDP on defence this year. That’s over 58% of members, compared to 35% just last year and a paltry 14% of members a decade ago.  

The firm behind the company that’s most commonly known as “Russia’s Google” is looking to get out of the whole ‘Russian’ aspect of its business.

Catch-up: Like several non-Western nations, Russia has its own websites that mirror more globally popular ones like Yandex (Russian Google) or VK (Russian Facebook).

In news that will surely upset French soccer parents (or parents de football), it will soon be a lot pricier to drive an SUV in Paris. 

Driving the news: Paris has declared war against SUVs after the city voted to triple parking charges in the city centre on out-of-town gas-powered and hybrid vehicles weighing over 1.6 tonnes. The move aims to cut pollution, free up space, and make life safer for pedestrians.

You might think of farmers as folksy straw-hat wearers who largely keep to themselves and till the land. But, when they have a reason to, those agrarians can cause anarchy.

Driving the news: Earlier this week, European farmers flooded the streets of Brussels with tractors and burning hay bales, interrupting EU talks around a Ukraine funding package to express their dismay about policies and initiatives they feel are hurting their profession.