Monday, November 13, 2023

News roundup, 13 Nov 2023

- Peter Nygard has been convicted of the majority of the charges against him in the Toronto case. Charges in Quebec and New York are still pending, as are some civil suits.

- Hundreds of patients are trapped in Gaza's largest hospital; at least 32 life support dependent patients are reported to have died in the three days since fuel for generators ran out, with nowhere to bury them. The fuel shortage is also affecting aid agencies, including the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which expects to have to suspend its work within 48 hours. And settlers in the West Bank have ramped up the violence against Palestinians. But most alarming is the fact that both the US and Russia have bombed separate targets in Syria, which has the potential bring global catastrophe if things aren't coordinated better than they have been so far.

- Here at home, a pro-Palestinian demonstrator has been charged with causing a disturbance and had a "hate motivation" appended to the charge. The justification for the charge is an "antisemitic" slogan allegedly uttered by the accused; the slogan in question has not been confirmed by the police but is suspected to be the ubiquitous "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" chant that has been heard at numerous such protests. Naturally, a lot of people question whether this is grounds for a hate charge.

- The trade agreement between New Zealand and the EU has an interesting feature - an enforceable promise by both parties to "effectively implement" their 2030 climate targets under the Paris Agreement. Which means that if the new government tries to back out of it, they could find themselves in violation of the agreement. Nice to see rightwing governments being the ones constrained by such agreements for once; perhaps former PM Ardern (and her European counterparts) learned a lesson from the neoliberals about how to constrain your enemies' choices.

- Security guards at a Shoppers Drug Mart in Winnipeg's Osborne Village neighbourhood confronted someone who they considered to be suspicious. It appears that the suspect panicked and ran for the exit, stabbing three people on her way out. No fatalities, but not a good scene.

- David Cameron is back in the UK's cabinet as foreign secretary. I guess they figure he hadn't already done enough to ruin the country as PM and needed another shot at it. Suella Braverman has been turfed from cabinet, leading to rightwing backbenchers meeting to discuss the matter (and presumably stage a coup against Rishi Sunak).

No comments: