A Green For Life truck and workers collect recycling outside homes in Toronto, Tuesday, January 20, 2026.Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.
This week: AI companies continue to make moves that reverberate across tech industries and beyond. Meanwhile, a major company just threw their hat into the space race. Which one? Take our quiz and find out.
b. Mythos is a new AI model that its developer considers too dangerous to be released to the public. The model can find and exploit vulnerabilities in software and has the potential to bust through many computer security systems. To prevent chaos, Mythos’s developer, San Franciso-based Anthropic, is restricting early access to a handful of tech giants so they can shore up their defences. If you’re not feeling entirely confident about how all of this will work out, you are far from alone.
b. Investors balked at the news that GFL is buying Calgary-based Secure Waste Infrastructure Corp. for $5.4-billion. The problem is garbage – or, more precisely what type of garbage Secure specializes in. In contrast to GFL, which has always focused on collecting municipal waste, Secure generates 85 per cent of its revenue from handling industrial waste. Skeptics are skeptical about GFL’s venture into a new area.
c. Amazon is bolstering its fledgling satellite business by acquiring Globalstar N/A in a US$11.57-billion deal. As a result of the acquisition, the online merchant will add Globalstar’s two dozen satellites to its existing network of more than 200. Amazon says it wants to deploy about 3,200 satellites in Earth’s low orbit by 2029. That is an impressive target – but it would still leave Amazon far behind Elon Musk’s Starlink, which already has a network of more than 10,000 satellites.
d. In 2012, the average retirement period – that is, the length of time between when we quit work and when we die – was 22.7 years. By 2025, it had shrunk to 20.5 years. The good news here? You have to save less money to finance a shorter retirement.
a. Donald Trump’s big promises sounded dandy on the campaign trail. In practice, though, they’re not working out so well. U.S. consumer sentiment plunged in April to the lowest level ever recorded in the 74-year history of the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers. The deterioration in sentiment occurred across age groups, income levels and political party affiliations and appeared to reflect deep disappointment with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
d. Gosh, it seems the penalty for mediocre performance isn’t so bad after all. Barrick paid Mr. Bristow more than US$20-million in severance after the South African executive abruptly departed the company following a long period in which the miner underperformed its rivals. Toronto-based Barrick was once the biggest gold company in the world by market value, but it has slipped to third behind Colorado-based Newmont Corp. and Canada’s Agnico Eagle Mines.
c. Sources say Cohere is in talks to merge with German AI player Aleph Alpha GmbH. If the deal goes ahead, it would have large implications for the Canadian AI ecosystem, because Cohere is one of the domestic industry’s brightest hopes. It is still unclear, though, where the merged company would be based or exactly what shape a deal could take.
b. According to a senior Canadian government official, Ottawa is talking to Britain, Japan and Italy about obtaining observer status in the Global Combat Air Programme, their joint initiative to develop a next-generation fighter aircraft. Ottawa’s desire to get involved in the program could be the prelude to one day purchasing the aircraft, the official said. Right now, the federal government is still mulling whether to proceed with its full order of fifth-generation F-35 fighters from U.S. defence contractor Lockheed Martin or scale back its purchase and buy a different aircraft such as Sweden’s Saab fighter.
d. Remind us: What does plutocracy mean again? Mr. Warsh submitted financial disclosures indicating he holds assets worth well over US$100-million, putting him on track to be the wealthiest central bank leader on record if confirmed. Remarkably, though, he is much poorer than his wife, Jane Lauder. She is part of the family that owns the Estee Lauder cosmetics company and has a personal net worth of an estimated US$1.9-billion.
a. BRP says it faces a hit of several hundred million dollars from recent changes the Trump administration has made to United States tariff policy. Shares in the Valcourt, Que.-based company slid by more than a third after it warned that new U.S. tariffs on finished products made with steel, aluminum and copper will result in a 25-per-cent levy on the value of BRP snowmobiles sold into the U.S.
c. Mr. Paxton is investigating Lululemon over the potential use of harmful chemicals in its clothing. But the Vancouver-based activewear company says it stopped using the so-called “forever chemicals” more than two years ago.
a. At least for now, the U.S. President is still on good terms with the British monarch. That may change, though. In recent days, Mr. Trump has rebuked Ms. Meloni and Pope Leo for not supporting his war in the Persian Gulf and threatened to fire Mr. Powell, whom he has lambasted in the past for not cutting interest rates fast enough.