Thursday, December 7, 2023

News roundup, 7 Dec 2023

- The fiscal situation in Manitoba isn't as favourable as the previous government wanted us to believe during the election campaign. This is going to make it more difficult for the Kinew government to proceed with their agenda. At the municipal level things aren't looking too good either.

- On a more positive note, the provincial Tories are in considerable disarray trying to figure out how they're going to choose a new leader. All memberships in that party expire at the end of the year, just two weeks before a special meeting is to be held to determine the rules of the leadership race; given that many people may not get their memberships renewed in time, those decisions could end up being made by a fairly small number of people, which is making the likes of Kevin Klein uncomfortable.

- There's a new uproar about posters that have been put up at the University of Manitoba that the university claims are antisemitic. They say that the police have been brought in to investigate. Over at Reddit, someone has posted a photo of one of the posters; to my eyes it looks more like an attack on the legacy of one individual than on an entire people. However, since that individual's family are big donors to the university (their business school is named after him, after all) the university considers this to be a hate crime, when really it's more a crime against the aesthetics of poster design.

- An officer with the Thunder Bay police service has been charged with assault, breach of trust, and obstruction of justice over a number of incidents occurring between 2014 and 2020. If found guilty, I daresay he risks being docked a day of pay, maybe even two. A similar fate might well await an RCMP officer in Surrey who abused his power to take advantage of a teenage sex worker.

- The city of Miramachi is being taken to court by a group of businesses in the hope of forcing them to  reverse their decision to allow a nonprofit to open a homeless shelter on city property.

- Kevin McCarthy is retiring from Congress at the end of the month. Combined with the expulsion of George Santos, this will bring the Republicans to a razor-thin margin, and many believe this increases the risk of a government shutdown. Meanwhile, his successor is showing his true colours to anyone who didn't already know (or hadn't guessed). And Donald Trump is refusing to rule out abusing his power if reelected.

- The first turbine in a new offshore wind farm off Long Island is now supplying power to the grid. A second is undergoing testing, and ten more are under construction. When complete, the wind farm will generate up to 132 megawatts of power, enough to supply 70,000 homes.

- Federal funding has been approved for a high speed rail line between Las Vegas and the LA exurb of Rancho Cucamonga. It will be capable of speeds up to 180 mph (almost 290 km/h).

- A conspiracy theorist is presumed dead after his house blew up during a police standoff. In other all-American news, a former professor killed three people and wounded one in Las Vegas before perishing in a shootout with police.

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