Canadian National Railway on Tuesday offered to buy Kansas City Southern for $33.7 billion, topping a $29 billion bid put forward last month by a rival railroad operator, Canadian Pacific, the New York Times reported. The competing offers underline the riches expected to come from trade flows after the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement was passed into law last year. A merger with either suitor would create a railroad line that stretches from Canada to Mexico.

The Ontario government moved to grant independence to a medical school and a francophone university in Northern Ontario on Thursday, just days after more than 100 faculty positions and nearly 70 programs were eliminated at Laurentian University, the Globe and Mail reported. One of the universities currently involved with the medical school seemed taken by surprise, and said it was not consulted. The Progressive Conservative government introduced legislation to make the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and Hearst University independent, stand-alone, degree-granting universities.

Several U.S. banks have started deploying camera software that can analyze customer preferences, monitor workers and spot people sleeping near ATMs, even as they remain wary about possible backlash over increased surveillance, more than a dozen banking and technology sources told Reuters. Previously unreported trials at City National Bank of Florida and JPMorgan Chase & Co. as well as earlier rollouts at banks such as Wells Fargo & Co. offer a rare view into the potential U.S. financial institutions see in facial recognition and related artificial intelligence systems.

Three-quarters of Canada’s travel agents, ITAs and travel agencies say they could face insolvency if the government doesn’t extend financial aid programs until the end of 2021, or until 90 days after travel restrictions are lifted, according to a new ACTA survey, Travel Week reported. After calling on travel agents, ITAs and travel agencies across Canada to fill out its quick 5-minute survey earlier this month, ACTA has revealed the sobering results. More than 1,000 respondents took part in the survey, including 58% who were Independent Travel Agents, 31% owners and 11% employees.

Canadian lawmakers on Thursday urged the leaders of the United States and Canada to take further steps to resolve a dispute between Enbridge Inc. and the state of Michigan over the cross-border Line 5 oil pipeline, Reuters reported. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has ordered Calgary-based Enbridge to shut down a 4-mile section of the 540,000 barrel-per-day pipeline that runs underneath the Straits of Mackinac in the Great Lakes by May 12, because of concerns it could leak. Enbridge is challenging Whitmer's order in U.S. courts.

Canada is facing industry calls to extend financial aid to smaller airlines, after offering a C$5.9 billion ($4.71 billion)life-line to Air Canada, as new COVID-19 variants loom ahead of the vital summer travel season, Reuters reported. The timing of Monday's deal, which saw the Canadian government take a 6% equity stake in Air Canada, was partly designed to secure "access to air travel when it returns," as the country's vaccine rollout ramps up this summer, a source familiar with the discussions said.

The Biden administration on Thursday announced tough new sanctions on Russia and formally blamed the country’s premier intelligence agency for the sophisticated hacking operation that breached American government agencies and the nation’s largest companies, the New York Times reported. In the broadest effort yet by President Biden to give more teeth to financial sanctions — which in recent years have failed to deter Russian activity — the actions are aimed at choking off lending to the Russian government. In an executive order, Mr.

Avianca Holdings SA plans to raise $1.8 billion to repay debt and provide new financing as the Colombian airline eyes an exit from the bankruptcy reorganization it was forced into last year during the pandemic-driven travel collapse, Bloomberg News reported. The air carrier retained Seabury Securities LLC to help raise the exit financing, likely a combination of debt and equity, the company said in a regulatory filing Wednesday. Avianca said it will repay $1.4 billion in bankruptcy loans and have around $1 billion in liquidity when it emerges from the reorganization at some point this year.

Air Canada, struggling with a collapse in traffic due to the COVID-19 pandemic, reached a deal on Monday on a long-awaited aid package with the federal government that would allow it to access up to C$5.9 billion ($4.69 billion) in funds, Reuters reported. The agreement - the largest individual coronavirus-related loan that Ottawa has arranged with a company - was announced after the airline industry criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government for dawdling. The United States and France acted much more quickly to help major carriers.

Tenured professors at Laurentian University expect to know today whether they will be laid off as part of an extraordinary restructuring aimed at cutting costs at the insolvent and debt-burdened school, the Globe and Mail reported. For many professors, the secretive process, in which negotiations have been held behind closed doors, has been a cruel and uncertain time. Laurentian said a year ago that the pandemic threatened to tip its finances toward a crisis, but in the postwar era no Canadian public university has come through something of this nature.