Good morning. Trade flare-ups persist, forcing Canada to get its elbows ready. More on that below, along with renewed wildfire threats and protests in India.

Ottawa won’t rule out imposing retaliatory tariffs on the United States if the White House moves ahead with a new wave of trade actions. “Everything’s on the table if there’s no agreement,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said. At the close of his first ministers meeting in Charlottetown, he also said avoiding punitive measures is his main goal.

More tariffs: U.S. President Donald Trump will impose duties of between 10 and 12.5 per cent on dozens of countries in his latest effort to maintain a baseline levy on nearly all of America’s trading partners.

The take: Under Trump, Washington is chaotically dismantling what it once built, writes Tony Keller.

British Columbia is expected to face a wildfire season as harsh as some of the worst on record, with spring weather projections appearing to mimic the devastation in 2017, 2018 and 2021.

On the ground: The entire village of Clinton in the southern Interior is under an evacuation alert. Conditions in East Kootenay, near Kimberley, worsened yesterday as warmer temperatures, stronger winds and abundant receptive fuel increased fire behaviour and smoke production.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea on Thursday, potentially widening the Iran war. Tehran and the U.S. have also stepped up their attacks as they vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz. Markets responded, as Brent Crude hit US$100 a barrel for the first time since May.

The context: Since the conflict began in early March, Saudi Arabia has been ramping up its use of alternative shipping routes. More than 93 crude oil tankers were operating in the Red Sea on Tuesday, compared to 50 tankers a day before the war, Kpler, a maritime intelligence firm found.

The politics: Though largely symbolic, the U.S. House passed a resolution to halt military action in Iran.

Explained: Iran and the U.S. are trading blows again. How did we get here?

After being largely out of the public eye since January, immigration crackdown sweeps are attracting renewed attention after ICE killed two immigrants. Andy Pelcher, a lawyer at a non-profit that handles immigration-related litigation, said the roundups are continuing apace, even as they’ve had less visibility than previous surge operations.

The numbers: ICE arrested 39,563 people in June, its highest-ever monthly total, according to figures released this week by the agency. That same month, Republican lawmakers authorized a further US$70-billion for the deportation campaign. In July so far, ICE is approaching an average of 1,500 arrests a day.

Tech-savvy consumers around the world are increasingly relying on AI agents to make digital reservations for anything from restaurants to shuttle services to the airport. The Globe and Mail set out to see if it could design an AI-powered bot that can make campground bookings exactly when reservations open. We did, and it was easy.

The ethics: The bot clicked its way from the log-in portal to the payment page in around 15 seconds. Experts say this sort of bot is much harder for booking websites to detect because it mimics a human consumer’s behaviour. Maybe this trend will give campgrou