News roundup, 26 April 2024

- Former premier Heather Stefanson is resigning her seat in the legislature, as many had expected. Worth noting is that Stefanson only held onto that seat by 263 votes, so the byelection is going to be interesting.

- The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a scathing report on the sale of Lions Place, calling it a "targeted dismantling of community for older adults" and saying that it constitutes "organizational elder neglect and abuse". For their part, Lions Club calls the report "slanderous" and claim that they had no choice but to sell the building due to the rising costs of maintaining it.

- US House Speaker Mike Johnson is calling on Joe Biden to send the National Guard to Columbia University after pro-Palestine protesters accosted him when he visited the campus and told him that he sucks. No doubt he's hoping for a repeat of the Kent State shootings of 1970. In any case, some universities aren't waiting; they're calling in the local police to disrupt the protests.

- The Speaker of the Ontario legislature has kicked independent MPP Sarah Jama out of the chamber for the rest of the day, as a result of her refusal to remove a keffiyeh.

- A Chinese exchange student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston has been sentenced to nine months in prison for stalking another Chinese student who had put up pro-democracy fliers on campus and threatening to chop her hands off.

- One of Harvey Weinstein's sex crime convictions has been overturned on appeal. He's not a free man, though, since his conviction in California still stands, and New York is going to retry their own case as well.

- The British Cactus and Succulent Society is in a state of turmoil; the organization's chair has resigned following the reaction to a new policy saying that succulents that had been removed from the wild cannot be exhibited or awarded prizes at the organization's shows.

News roundup, 25 April 2024

- The US Supreme Court is set to hear a case that could shut down all of the criminal proceedings against Donald Trump. The argument is that a former president is immune from prosecution unless they are first successfully impeached and removed from office. Thing is, if he wins the case, couldn't Biden use the same immunity to order the Secret Service to rub him out?

- Russian deputy minister of defense Timur Ivanov has been arrested on bribery charges. Ukraine is claiming that this followed the discovery of this bribery by their own intelligence agencies, which they say embarrassed the Russian authorities into acting. Because it's not bribery that's the major crime, but embarrassing the Russian state.

- Pierre Poilievre met with an extremist group at the NB-NS border yesterday. The group originally formed to protest against public health orders, but since those orders are long gone they had to find something else to justify their continued existence, so they say they're protesting the carbon tax now. Sadly, this probably won't significantly hurt Poilievre electorally; he seems virtually invincible.

- In 2022, Global News filed a freedom of information request in order to get information about staffing shortages at heathcare facilities in Ontario, which was being kept under wraps by the Ford government. The province's privacy agency has just ruled in the government's favour, on the grounds that revealing the data could inform labour negotiations and could thus be "economically damaging".

- The city of Merritt, BC, which is experiencing a severe drought, has imposed severe restrictions on water consumption. Previously, people who used too much water would be fined, but would then continue to do it anyway. Now, though, repeat violators will have their water turned off.

- 875 steel hoops were stolen from a Guelph business on two separate days. The steel is estimated to be worth around $10,000; I guess you could get a lot of meth with that.

- An Ohio-based company is selling a robot dog equipped with a flamethrower. Interestingly, only two American states (California and Maryland) have any legislation specific to flamethrowers, meaning that this robot is entirely legal in the other 48 states.

News roundup, 24 April 2024

- The US aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan has now cleared both houses of Congress. The pill was sweetened a bit by adding a possible ban on TikTok to the package unless the Chinese owner of the app divests. More details on the package may be found here. Republican leaders in both houses now face an uncertain future; House speaker Mike Johnson still faces a possible ouster, while Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has said that he will be stepping down from his leadership role after becoming "increasingly distanced" from his colleagues on Ukraine and other issues.

- Protesters at Columbia University in New York City have been camping out on the university campus, demanding that the institution divest from corporations that benefit from the war on Gaza. The university has ordered that the encampment be cleared by 8:00 AM this morning, lest the university "consider alternative options" for clearing it. Similar conflicts are happening at other campuses across the US.

- Apparently some of the speeches made at a pro-Palestinian rally in Ottawa over the weekend were sufficiently extreme that police are investigating whether they qualify as hate speech, with slogans such as "Long live October 7th".

- The latest federal budget is disliked by half of Canadians, according to a new poll from Leger. I think that what this really reflects, though, is not the actual contents of the budget but who is putting it forward.

- In Ontario, the Ford government's cancellation of the basic income pilot that had been introduced by the previous government is leading to a class action on behalf of the recipients.

- Winnipeg is signing on to the 529 Garage system as a replacement for the existing bicycle registry. The main advantage of this is that it's continent-wide; thus a bike stolen here and shipped to Vancouver could potentially be identified and recovered.

- Conservative MP Gary Vidal, who represents the northern Saskatchewan riding of Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River, will no longer reside in the district under the new boundaries. He hoped to seek the nomination for the new riding that contains his hometown, but the party has already decided not to hold an open nomination race for that riding. In response, Vidal has announced that he will not be running again.

- Some military horses ran amok in central London, UK; several people as well as some of the horses suffered minor injuries before the situation was brought under control.

News roundup, 23 April 2024

 - An independent review headed by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has concluded that there is no evidence connecting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA) to terrorism, despite claims to the contrary by the Israelis.

- Apparently Trump is not happy at the small number of protesters outside the courthouse where he is on trial. He's trying to convince anyone who will listen that the poor turnout for the protests is in itself further evidence of a plot against him.

- Among the numerous bad things the Tories did during their time in office, it seems they might have done something good as well, if only by accident. Legislation passed in 2022 that imposes strict restrictions on the purchase of catalytic converters has apparently reduced the theft of converters to near zero.

- A Canadian Pacific train experienced an en-route fire late Sunday night in several boxcars full of old railway ties. The train was brought to a stop in a residential neighbourhood of London, but fortunately the fire was contained and nobody was hurt.

- When a buyback program was announced for firearm types banned following the Portapique mass shooting in Nova Scotia, the plan was for the guns to be shipped via Canada Post. However, the corporation does not want to be involved out of fear that it will bring their staff into conflict with gun enthusiasts.

- The City of Winnipeg's Executive Policy Committee has voted to spend up to $170,000 to develop a program for the removal of garbage from homeless encampments, in cooperation with the Main Street Project, Siloam Mission, and the Downtown Community Safety Partnership. More important, they're trying to make more housing available in cooperation with the province. Some folks aren't satisfied with this, though; they want the city to crack down on those damned poors. Because property values, dammit!

News roundup, 22 April 2024

- The Manitoba government has confirmed that they will be lifting the ban on homegrown cannabis in the province. Most other provinces (except Quebec) already allow this.

- The Israel Defense Force's head of intelligence has resigned over the failure to see the October 7 attack coming. Some are asking why the shekel stops there, though; opposition leader Yair Lapid is calling for Netanyahu to resign as well. In related news, the US is reportedly preparing sanctions against a specific battalion of the IDF, following reports of human rights violations by the battalion. The Israelis are not pleased.

- The US Supreme Court will be hearing a case on whether laws against sleeping rough are enforceable if there is no adequate shelter elsewhere. Courts in Canada have ruled against such laws in similar cases, though whether the current makeup of the American court is conducive to this is another question.

- Sections of Ontario's Security from Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act, an "ag-gag" law, have been declared unconstitutional. The affected sections are those that allow activists or journalists who take on a job at livestock facilities to be considered trespassers if they are found to have misrepresented their backgrounds in order to get the job.

- A climate activist in the UK was charged with contempt of court for standing outside a courthouse where other activists were on trial while holding a placard advising jurors of their right to acquit based on conscience. The charges have been dismissed, however.

- Populist politicians (most of whom are rightwing these days) love the phrase "common sense". Whenever I hear it, though, I am reminded of a saying (often attributed to Einstein, though as with most "Einstein" quotes it's unclear whether he actually said it) that "Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before age eighteen". Lurking behind the phrase is anti-intellectualism, atavism, and in a lot of cases, xenophobia. John Wiens has a lot to say on the subject here.

News roundup, 20 April 2024

-  Jury selection is now complete for Donald Trump's trial on the Stormy Daniels case. In other trial-related news, the New York Times has obtained information about where the jurors and alternates get their news; looking at juror #2, I have to wonder why the prosecution allowed that one. Meanwhile a man has died after setting himself on fire in front of the courthouse yesterday.

- Mike Pence accuses Trump of "betraying the pro-life movement" by moderating his stance on abortion. Division of this sort is good news for the Democrats.

- The US Forest Service is losing firefighters, even as the wildfire situation gets worse.

- Mayoral candidates in two different Mexican cities were found dead on the same day. Some 15 other candidates have been killed in the campaign period leading up to the elections scheduled for June; drug cartels are the most likely suspects.

- Assiniboine Credit Union is seeking to absorb two more institutions, Westoba Credit Union and Caisse Financial Group; if approved by the membership of the three entities this will be the only bilingual credit union in the province.

- While you can hardly throw a stone in Winnipeg without hitting a dope store, the province currently prohibits people from growing their own. This may be about to change, however; the government is expected to announce that Manitoba will be joining most other provinces in allowing it.

- Apparently they've developed an algorithm that tries to assign a risk score indicating how likely a person is to become addicted to opioids. Since this is a proprietary algorithm, though, it can't be easily scrutinized for accuracy, and it could leave a mark on patients' records that could be very hard to remove.

- Researchers are trying to selectively breed corals for heat tolerance in the hope of saving some coral reefs.

News roundup, 19 April 2024

- The situation in the Middle East doesn't seem to be improving, with reports of explosions in western Iran. Iran is warning that they will respond to an attack on their nuclear facilities with a like response, though whether they're holding back on something that could penetrate the "iron dome" is a good question. In Israel, the former head of their air defense forces has said that Iran's attack was a "declaration of war", though one can't help but thinking that attacking another country's diplomatic mission in a third country kind of seems like act of war in the first place... although Iran's response is clearly an escalation, and a dangerous one. It's also giving Netanyahu exactly what he wants, because remaining at war is his best chance of staying out of jail.

- Prominent members of the Kennedy family have publicly endorsed Joe Biden, mostly without mentioning their wayward relative Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A more interesting thing in that article, though, is this:

For its part, the Democratic National Committee has emphasized donations supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy from billionaire Timothy Mellon, a major MAGA Inc donor, pushing the concept that Kennedy Jr. is a “stalking horse” for Trump.

That differs from the approach of those supporting Trump, including the Make America Great Again Inc super PAC, which has aimed to paint Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a “leftist radical.”

The efforts by the two parties underscore concerns they both have that Kennedy could take votes away from their candidate.

Who will RFK Jr. hurt more? I guess that remains to be seen.

- They've now picked a full 12 jurors in Trump's criminal trial for the Stormy Daniels episode, though they're still looking for alternates. Opinions are divided on how strong the prosecution's case is. The thing is, the payment itself was not actually a crime; the prosecution is arguing that the falsification of business records to prevent the payment from becoming public before the 2016 election was the real crime.

- Pierre Poilievre is hinting that he just might dismantle the nascent pharmacare program upon his widely expected rise to power after the next election.

- Björn Höcke, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) leader in the German state of Thuringia, who is already on trial for using a Nazi slogan in a campaign speech, is being investigated for having used the same slogan on another occasion as well.

- An Winnipeg inner city nonprofit, Sunshine House, has been operating a converted RV as a "mobile overdose prevention site", or MOPS since 2022. Essentially it's a safe consumption site on wheels, but they also test samples of street drugs, provide clean needles, pipes, and the like. In its first year of operation they had 26,154 visits to the vehicle, of whom 7,086 involved actual drug consumption; naloxone had to be administered 82 times, out of which 4 led to hospitalization. Nobody died. That certainly suggests that they've saved a lot of lives.

- Whereas Sunshine House's service provides pretty much everything except the actual drugs, we can't forget about Spirit Rising, the for-profit foster home operator that was discovered a couple of months ago to have, in a rather bold harm reduction initiative, been giving actual drugs to the kids. Now I kinda, sorta get the idea that at least they aren't doing meth or booze and all that, but giving 15 year olds a daily marijuana allowance still seems a bit suspect to me. Evidently the Winnipeg Police think so too.

- Ron DeSantis has signed into law a bill that allows schools to bring in chaplains, while vowing that the Satanic Temple will not be allowed to take advantage of this, as he does not consider them to be an actual religion. Given that they are recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt church, there may be some court battles ahead.

- The New South Wales Police say that 51 of their officers were injured in the riot following the stabbing of that bishop in Sydney on Monday night. The article shies away from ascribing any motive, though one can't help but wonder if it resulted from the cops trying to take the accused away before they were finished with him. Apparently the bishop, Mari Emmanuel, belongs to a rather fringe (and far-right) splinter group of the Orthodox Christian tradition.