News roundup, 31 Oct 2025

- Kat Abughazaleh, a journalist turned podcaster who is seeking the Democratic nomination for Illinois' 9th congressional district, has been indicted on charges of conspiring to impede a federal officer following a protest in September in which Abughazaleh and others allegedly slowed the progress of an ICE vehicle towards a facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview.

- Some National Guard members in the US are vowing to defy illegal orders from the Trump regime if ordered to deploy in Chicago. Two of them say they have already received written warnings about this; one, who is also running for the Democrats in Illinois' 13th district, has had his security clearance suspended and an investigation opened against him. The deployment is currently on hold pending a Supreme Court decision, but given Trump's stacking of the court that may not last much longer. Even if the court rules against the regime, they might simply invoke the Insurrection Act in order to get around the ruling.

- Airports in Winnipeg and Kelowna are so short of air traffic controllers that they had to briefly close their control towers on occasion. Perhaps NAV Canada should be trying to poach controllers from the US, where they are currently not being paid as a result of the government shutdown.

- The Times of London has removed an interview in which former New York mayor Bill de Blasio was quoted as criticizing current mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. De Blasio is actually a supporter of Mamdani and says that the quotes were fabricated. The Times was once a highly respected if somewhat conservative paper, but under Rupert Murdoch's ownership it has fallen a long way. For their part, they claim that their reporter was "misled" by someone "falsely claiming" to be the former mayor.

- King Charles is stripping Prince Andrew of all his royal titles and kicking him out of his official residence following revelations linking him to Jeffrey Epstein. The evidence against Andrew must be pretty damning for it to go this far.

- For a long time it has been accepted wisdom that a plot of happiness against age produces a U-shaped curve, with happiness being high in teens and young adults, declining through middle age, and then gradually increasing again in old age. This has been found in numerous cultures, not only of humans but even other great apes - but a recent study now suggests that this once ironclad rule is breaking down. This is not because middle-aged people are getting happier, but because young people are miserable. And this seems to be the case in more than 80 countries, including some of the poorest countries as well as some of the richest. This trend apparently started around 2014; a definitive reason for this dramatic shift has not been found, but one of the researchers mentions the rise of smartphones as a possible cause.

- The City of Winnipeg has released details of a plan to deal with homelessness. Encampments will be sorted into three categories, with the highest priority being encampments that are in "sensitive" locations (defined based on proximity to everything from schools and playgrounds to bus stops, as well as those with active safety hazards such as fires); these will trigger an "urgent" and "coordinated" response. At the other end of the spectrum are small sites in low-risk areas; these will be monitored rather than actively cleared. A major caveat is the fact that the plan does not include any new staff or funding. One encampment resident suggests that the city should provide a designated location for encampments as some other cities have. Meanwhile, south of the border, Utah is building a large internment camp for the homeless, complete with forced labour, in response to federal threats to withhold funding for states and municipalities that fail to crack down on people camping in public places.

News roundup, 30 Oct 2025

- Donald Trump has ordered the Department of War (formerly the Department of Defense) to immediately restart nuclear weapons testing on an "equal basis" with other countries. None of the nuclear powers officially recognized as "legitimate" in the Non-Proliferation Treaty have conducted a nuclear test since 1996 (although India, Pakistan, and the DPRK, who aren't supposed to have such weapons at all, have conducted several tests more recently).

- The BC government plans to run its own set of ads in the US, attacking the tariffs imposed by the Trump regime. Of course, BC can probably get away with running the ads for a lot longer than Ontario can, since they don't have an auto industry and thus have a lot less to lose. Then again, Ontario's auto industry doesn't seem to have a promising future anyway. In another sign of the dim future for the industry, a Stellantis executive being grilled by MPs repeatedly dodged questions about whether subsidy deals with the federal government for their Brampton facility include jobs guarantees as the government claims. My suspicion is that such guarantees were made, but that the company intends to just break their promise and say "what are you going to do about it?" A sufficiently bold government would reply, "seize them and sell them to someone who will actually make stuff there", though that might be a tall order. 

-  Oslo's public transit provider purchased 300 buses made by the Chinese manufacturer Yutong, then discovered a significant security flaw - the buses can, in theory at least, be remotely disabled by the manufacturer or by a hacker. Other buses purchased from the Dutch company VDL did not have this flaw.

- A man in Alexandria, Virginia who made a number of incautious posts on Bluesky wishing for the death of Donald Trump has been acquitted of incitement in a jury trial. Of course, incitement is a crime of intent, and it can be very hard to prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt. If anything this will probably embolden a lot of so-called "stochastic terrorism" by all sides, and especially on the far right.

- Youtuber Kevin McNally (@McNallyOfficial) has a channel where he shows how easy it is to open many locks. One company whose lock he opened easily just tried to sue him for defamation and copyright infringement after 10 million people watched the video (the "copyright infringement" consisted of clips of the company's promos in his own video, something generally covered by fair use provisions). The lawsuit backfired spectacularly, with the manufacturer not only getting some pretty nasty blowback from the public but also having a fairly humiliating first day in court, after which they withdrew their lawsuit and instead requested that the proceedings be sealed. A ruling on whether to seal the proceedings has yet to be made.

- Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is said to be dating pop singer Katy Perry. Whether Perry was inspired to pursue the relationship after seeing the slogans painted on many trucks in Canada is unknown.

News roundup, 29 Oct 2025

- Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica today, packing winds of up to 295 km/h. Three deaths have been reported in the country, in addition to three in Haiti and at least one in the Dominican Republic. The storm has since been downgraded to a Category 4 storm as it advances on Cuba.

- The Netherlands is holding an election today. Far-right leader Geert Wilders is facing a significant decline in support; it is expected that Wilders will be unable to form a government even if he manages to win a plurality of seats. 

- US ambassador Pete Hoekstra cornered Ontario's trade representative, David Paterson, at a Canadian American Business Council event in Ottawa, and went into a tirade full of obscenities about the anti-tariff ad that Ontario ran in the US over the weekend.

- A cruise ship left an elderly passenger behind on a small island off the coast of Queensland. The ship returned several hours later after the crew realized their mistake and a search party was sent out; she was found dead, so the ship returned to its itinerary as if nothing had happened.

- A Toronto woman says that her 12 year old son was interacting with the Grok AI chatbot, asking it questions about soccer, when the chatbot suddenly asked him, "Why don't you send me some nudes?" The chatbot was automatically installed into Tesla cars this fall. When CBC asked xAI, the Musk-owned company that developed the chatbot, about this, the only response they got was a terse "Legacy media lies".

- OpenAI is developing quite a track record for intellectual property violations. Each time, they apologize and say they won't do it again - at least not with the specific piece of intellectual property being complained about. It seems that they figure that there's no point in following the rules until lawyers get involved.

- A landlord in Vancouver used AI to look up information he used to defend himself in bylaw trials and civil proceedings, and presented arguments full of fictitious case law that the AI had generated. The joke may be on him, however, as he may have to pay the costs related to the provincial assessment authority's search for the non-existent cases.

- A Winnipeg Transit driver was taken to hospital after being assaulted by a passenger on Monday afternoon. The suspect remains at large; police are investigating.

News roundup, 28 Oct 2025

- The Alberta government is legislating striking teachers back to work and imposing a collective agreement. The government limited debate on all three readings of the bill, and the notwithstanding clause is being used to ensure that the legislation can resist a court challenge.

- Hurricane Melissa is bearing down on Jamaica. The hurricane is a Category 5 storm, with winds of up to 280 km/h; if it retains that strength when it reaches the country it will be the strongest to hit the island since detailed records began in 1851. Parts of the country could see up to 760 mm of rain.

- Germany's far-right AfD party is being accused of espionage. Georg Maier, the interior minister of the state of Thuringia, alleges that the party is using its parliamentary privileges to gain access to sensitive information about the country's infrastructure and handing the information over to Russia.

- Canada is on the verge of losing its status as a country where measles is not endemic. Of course, there's an obvious reason for it; whether the political will exists to overcome it is another question. It wouldn't be hard to bring back the idea of "vaccine passports" as used at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic - or at least it wouldn't in theory. Of course, enforcement would be challenging, and it might push some of the more extreme antivaxxers to violence - though it's an open question whether that violence would outweigh the harm done by measles itself. And some would feel uncomfortable on bodily autonomy grounds - except that the unvaccinated are potentially interfering with the bodily autonomy of everyone around them, so that argument falls flat even if you consider that principle to be fundamental. Myself, I frame this sort of thing as "what would do the greatest good and/or the least harm to humanity as a whole"; with that as the most fundamental principle, it's a lot simpler to argue for vaccine passports. Unfortunately, as we saw with the clownvoy a couple of years ago, the antivaxxers can get together enough support to make life difficult for a lot of people, and governments are often unwilling to take the necessary measures to contain such a disruptive force.

- Former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik has asked authorities in Switzerland, where he currently lives, to investigate death threats made against him in response to his, um, tone deaf response to the tragic death of US grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky (not to mention his behaviour towards Naroditsky when he was still alive). I can't condone that sort of thing, of course, but Kramnik shouldn't be surprised that some people are taking it badly. A side note - while Kramnik has been accusing just about everyone of cheating, he had a scandal of that sort himself a while back, 

News roundup, 27 Oct 2025

- Donald Trump's threats seem to have worked on the Argentine people; Javier Milei's party has triumphed in midterm elections held yesterday. Trump had warned that the bailout of Argentina was conditional on this outcome.

- The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as "food stamps", is expected to run out of funds at the end of October as a result of the government shutdown. Some 42 million people depend on the program.

- While the Ontario government's ad campaign that used an excerpt from a Ronald Reagan speech about tariffs has incensed Trump, few politicians in this country see the campaign as a mistake, even those who would otherwise have little in common with Doug Ford. Nonetheless, Ford is pulling the ad as of today (though not before it aired on World Series games over the weekend).

- A former Illinois deputy is going on trial for first-degree murder after shooting a woman who had called 911 due to concerns about a possible prowler last year. Parts of the bodycam video may be found here, interspersed with a statement from the victim's father.

- Emma Durand-Wood has won the byelection in Winnipeg's Elmwood-East Kildonan ward handily. Rightwing loudmouth Braydon Mazurkiewich came a distant third; full results here.

- French authorities have arrested two people in the wake of last week's jewel heist at the Louvre. The lost items have not been located, however, and it is feared that they may already have been broken up, with the metal being melted down and the gemstones cut into smaller stones to hide their origins.

News roundup, 24 Oct 2025

- Donald Trump says that he is ending trade talks with Canada over a recent ad campaign launched in the US by the Ontario government. The ad uses a recording of Ronald Reagan speaking about how tariffs are harmful to American interests. Trump has of course declared it to be "FAKE" and accuses Canada of launching the ad specifically to influence the Supreme Court, which is set to decide on the legality of some of his tariffs in the near future. For his part, Mark Carney is vowing to double exports to other trading partners in order to make up for the increasing unreliability of the US in that regard. Will this be enough to convince Carney to lift or reduce tariffs on Chinese cars in order to get China to do the same for our canola? That remains to be seen.

- A bill to formally annex the entire West Bank has passed first reading in Israel's parliament against the wishes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party. Think about that for a moment - there's now a slim majority in the Knesset that's too extreme even for Netanyahu.

- Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder who is running as the Republican candidate for mayor of New York, is being pressured to drop out of the race and endorse centrist candidate Andrew Cuomo in order to keep Zohran Mamdani out of the mayor's office. Sliwa, for his part, says he'd sooner be tortured to death than drop out.

- The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has answered the question of whether it can be ethical to genetically alter wild organisms with a qualified yes. Evidently they figure that genetically altering mosquitoes to reduce their ability to carry diseases, for instance, would do more good than harm (it would mean a lot less pesticide use, for one thing); further down the line, this could include measures to enable organisms to tolerate higher temperatures in anticipation of a warming world. Stuff like that will probably be necessary, but it will definitely have its risks (this is a "Godzilla threshold" sort of thing, not something to be taken lightly) and will raise the question in some people's minds whether it will still be "nature" after it's been tinkered with to such an extent.

- The management committee of the BC Conservative Party is calling on leader John Rustad to resign, citing severe internal divisions in the party. Among other things, five MLAs have either left or been expelled from the party caucus just since the last election. Rustad says he has no plans to resign, having received 70% support in a recent leadership review (albeit with a turnout of only 15% of the party's membership).

- Manitoba is managing to attract badly needed doctors from the US. Several of them are former Manitobans who had accepted positions in the States but now fear the rising hate and political instability in that country.

- Winnipeg Transit is replacing the glass in 30 high use bus shelters with polycarbonate, which is 15% more expensive than safety glass but which is very difficult to break and thus will likely have to be replaced a lot less often. I've thought this to be a good idea for quite some time; the only possible downside I can see is that it could displace aggression onto other potential targets for vandalism.

- A man was arrested in Selkirk, Manitoba after allegedly slashing the tires of 23 vehicles with a knife; the one thing that all the targetted vehicles had in common was that they were red in colour. 

News roundup, 23 Oct 2025

- Earlier coverage of the Trump regime's bailout of Argentina stated that the bailout "doesn’t appear to have any strings attached", but that seems not to be the case. There is one string so large as to be more of a cable - President Javier Milei's La Libertad Avanza party must prevail in that country's upcoming midterm elections in order for the bailout to be considered worthwhile. Now it should be said that this sort of thing is not as Trump-specific as many Americans would like to admit (the US has a long and unsavoury history in Latin America) but this is by far the most blatant example of it. The fact that the bailout includes plans to increase beef imports from Argentina does not sit well with many ranchers who were among Trump's strongest supporters, but given people's general unwillingness to admit that they've been had, this isn't going to have much effect on Trump electorally (assuming that the next election is even free and fair, which is doubtful at this point). And there's reason to believe that part of the motivation for the bailout is to protect the interests of hedge fund billionaire Rob Citrone, who is a friend and onetime colleague of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and who has speculated big time on Milei's economic "reforms".

- Following a meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump has called for Ukraine to accept Russia's terms for an end to the war - meaning handing over the entirety of Donbas to the invaders.

- Kentucky representative Thomas Massie often serves as the lone voice of reason in the Republican caucus. Besides criticizing the aforementioned bailout of Argentina, he opposed Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" this summer and - perhaps most crucially - is one of those calling for the release of the Epstein files. So not surprisingly, Trump is calling for Republicans to remove him in the primaries for next year's midterms. Unfortunately, polling suggests that Trump will get what he wants. 

- A Boeing 747 freighter operated by the Turkish carrier ACT made what seemed to be a normal touchdown at Hong Kong's airport, only to veer off the runway and into the sea during its landing roll. The crew survived, but two airport workers were killed as the aircraft crossed a service road and collided with their vehicle. The cause of the accident is under investigation.

- The people of Chicago have taken to carrying whistles which they blow loudly upon seeing signs of ICE activity. Some organizations are handing them out for free, with help from participating businesses. 

- The world chess governing body, FIDE, says that it is "looking into" reports of bullying by former world champion Vladimir Kramnik against American grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky in the months leading up to Naroditsky's sudden death this week. Kramnik, for his part, is vowing legal action against "all those falsely blaming me".