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.

News roundup, 18 April 2024

- Opinions continue to pour in about Canada's federal budget. Bill Morneau, who served as finance minister under Trudeau until 2020 (and seems to have left his position on bad terms) is condemning the increase in the capital gains tax, fearing that it will discourage investment. That's pretty standard fare for Morneau's kind of Liberal. The real problem with this budget, though, is not what's in it but the fact that it's not going to save the government anyway and thus the good parts won't be followed through with long enough to have a beneficial effect.

- Ukraine scored a series of hits on a Russian airfield in Crimea; on the other hand they suffered a number of fatalities from a Russian attack on the city of Chernihiv. Looking at the big picture, though, things are starting to look pretty bleak for Ukraine; while the Russians have lost around 50,000 troops so far, Ukraine has also lost over 31,000, and Russia simply has more reserves. Some think Ukraine's defenses could collapse as early as this year; in any case, though, it seems unlikely that Russia's victory will be complete. Perhaps the least bad realistic scenario is that Russia gets bogged down in a long, drawn out guerilla campaign that saps their resources and kills any possibility of them attacking other countries; maybe Ukraine can do to Putin's Russia what Afghanistan did to the USSR. No doubt Ukraine deserves better than to serve as Europe's sacrificial anode, but that's how it goes I guess.

- The situation in the Middle East has gotten more awkward for Joe Biden following Iran's retaliation for Israel's attack on their embassy in Damascus. Unfortunately Israel has been spoiling for a fight with Iran for years now, so long as they can get the Americans to back them up. And if the Americans don't back them up after strikes on their own soil, I'm sure the folks at AIPAC would have something to say about that.

- Red River College Polytechnic's medical lab technologist program only filled 28 of 40 available spots for their newest cohort of students. This is likely to lead to problems down the line for the healthcare system, especially in rural areas that have a harder time attracting educated and skilled workers anyway.

- Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee are voting on whether to join the United Auto Workers. VW themselves don't seem particularly bothered by this; then again, all of their other plants are already unionized. State politicians, though, are freaking out at the example this might set for other workers in the state if it goes through.

- Several people, including two former Air Canada employees, have been arrested in connection with a huge gold heist that happened at Pearson airport last year.

- A developer who built two condo towers in San Jose, California was not able to sell all the units in the towers. Since they remained the owners of the units, they were supposed to pay condo fees for those units - but they fell behind on their payments, and the condo association decided to auction off the units to cover the delinquent fees. They sold for an average of $30,000 each, a very low price anywhere, but unheard of in the Bay Area. The developer isn't taking this lying down, though; they're suing the trustee who auctioned off the units, as well as the buyers of the units.

- Tim Hortons emailed a number of people indicating that they had won a boat worth $55,000. The company attributes this to a "technical error"; the people whose hopes were raised are less than impressed.

- A school bus driver in western Manitoba was arrested for driving a busload of kids with a blood alcohol content double the legal limit. I can't say that sounds like a good career move.

News roundup, 17 April 2024

- A whistleblower is calling for the grounding of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, alleging that production issues could make the aircraft susceptible to in-flight breakup.

- Jury selection in Donald Trump's trial for the hush money allegedly paid to Stormy Daniels is progressing better than might be expected, with seven jurors already selected.

- Back in Canada, federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has delivered this year's budget to Parliament. Notably, this includes $8.5 billion for housing (better late than never certainly), as well as a national disability benefit (albeit less than what advocates were hoping for). There will be a deficit of $40 billion; predictably, the deficit hawks are getting antsy, and some worry that this could worsen inflation. Some others point out that this is a simplistic view of things and that austerity could do a lot more harm than a deficit (citing the basket case that the UK has become as an example). Then again, it may not matter what the fundamentals are if big economic interests lose confidence. It may be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

- The Manitoba PCs are going to stick with interim leader Wayne Ewasko until next year. Interestingly Ewasko is being touted as a potential candidate for the full job; many parties prohibit an interim leader from running for the main prize, due to them enjoying an unfair advantage due to their higher profile. Other potential candidates include MLA Obby Khan, former MLA Kevin Klein, and East St. Paul Mayor Carla Devlin.

- Emergency departments in rural Manitoba experienced some 80,000 hours of closures due to being shortstaffed. Three ERs (in Shoal Lake, Teulon, and Winnipegosis) have been closed indefinitely for several years. The Tories did a lot of complaining about this kind of thing the last time they were in opposition, and no doubt the NDP will happily point out that the Tories were in power as the current situation developed. What neither party will likely want to say, though, is that the problem may be as much a cultural problem as a fiscal one. To put it bluntly, most people who spend years at university to become doctors and nurses don't want to move out to a small town, and the growing hostility in many of those communities towards those edumacated big city folks with their electric cars and rainbow flags isn't going to make the situation any easier.

- The US House of Representatives is holding separate votes on aid packages for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Originally this was planned as a single vote, but given the willingness (or even desire) of many Republicans to throw Ukraine under the bus, I guess AIPAC and their ilk decided that the possibility of the whole package being defeated meant that the votes had to be separated, or else. On a related note, some of the Republicans are trying to oust Speaker Mike Johnson for not being sufficiently extreme for their liking (even though he's pretty darned extreme).

- A fire has devastated the historic building that once housed Copenhagen's stock exchange. Happily there were no fatalities, and a lot of the artworks stored there were rescued, but the building itself is likely to be a total loss.

- The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, who had been held liable by a lower court for injuries that a police officer sustained when a protester at a rally organized by Mckesson. A previous Supreme Court decision in 1982 had ruled that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, unless there was evidence that the leaders had actually directed or incited the violence, but I guess the present court didn't want to do the legal gymnastics needed to say that the Mckesson case is somehow different.

- The University of Southern California has cancelled their valedictorian speech, citing "safety concerns". No doubt they're particularly concerned about their donor base, since the valedictorian has been highly critical of Israel on social media.

- A former US Marine has been sentenced to 9 years in prison for the firebombing of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa, California in 2022. He had also admitted to planning other attacks.

- Julian Assange's prospects of avoiding extradition to the US are diminishing after the Americans assured the High Court of England and Wales that he will not face the death penalty if convicted.

- A debate over a controversial bill requiring NGOs that accept money from abroad to register as "foreign agents" turned into a punch-up in the Georgian parliament.

News roundup, 16 April 2024

- The US Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation last month against Boeing over their handling of their latest safety issues. Mentour Now has just put out a highly detailed video on the topic; Boeing really seems to be testing the limits of "too big to fail". They probably still are, but are they too big to fail in the civil aviation market? I dunno, but if I were the sort of person to invest in that sector (which I wouldn't) I'd be looking at Embraer stock.

- An abortion rights referendum is going to be on the ballot in Florida this fall. Could it give Biden a chance at winning the state? That remains to be seen, but it probably won't hurt. Meanwhile a Republican operative in that state has admitted to recruiting a third party candidate with the same surname as Democratic incumbent José Javier Rodríguez, in order to siphon votes away from him. The scheme worked; Rodríguez lost by a scant 32 votes while the other Rodríguez drew over 6,000. One is reminded of a similar scandal in Manitoba in the 1990s.

- Donald Trump's trial in the Stormy Daniels hush money case has commenced. Jury selection is underway; there is an extensive list of questions to screen prospective jurors. The trial itself is expected to last about six weeks.

- One of the biggest barriers to solving the housing crisis is the fact that in order to solve the problem you need to drive down property values - and a lot of people don't like that since they've been conditioned to see houses not as a place to live but as an investment. Meanwhile, in Innisfil, Ontario, a guy seems to be trying to unlock the master slumlord achievement by charging people to camp on his property.

- Parti Quebecois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon expects to form government in 2026, and is vowing that the province will see a third referendum on independence by the end of the decade.

- Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara has given the direction for the institutional safety officers at Health Sciences Centre to be provided with pepper gel, however this has not yet happened as the necessary training has not yet occurred. Shared Health and the WRHA have expressed concerns that "some patients who might be uncomfortable around armed, uniformed security personnel chose not to seek needed medical assistance"; this is not an invalid concern but it has to be weighed against the fact that some patients who might be uncomfortable at an ER with inadequate security might also not seek assistance, or, more seriously, that staff recruitment and retention could be more difficult.

- Following the mass stabbing in metro Sydney's Bondi Junction, massive amounts of disinformation about the attacker circulated on social media. Some falsely implicated a student at Sydney University, while others claimed, equally falsely, that the attacker was a Muslim immigrant (one of the victims was, but that's another story). In actual fact, the attacker seems to have been a follower of the incel movement.

- In yet another stabbing incident in the Sydney area, a bishop and three others were wounded at an Assyrian Orthodox church; following the incident the police got a less than friendly reception from parishioners and two were injured. I guess the parishioners wanted to take the law into their own hands.

- A senior officer in the Australian Federal Police has pleaded guilty to having a blood alcohol content nearly three times the legal limit when she crashed her car into a tree on the way home from a work-related function.

- The spectacular crash in East St. Paul last week appears to have resulted from an online sale that came to a dispute when the people met to transfer the item. The driver of one of the trucks now faces charges of dangerous operation of a vehicle causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon.

- A man in Guelph was charged with possession of an explosive device after showing up at the local hospital with hand injuries.

News roundup, 15 April 2024

- Iran launched a number of missiles and drones at Israel over the weekend, stating that this was retaliation for the attack on Iran's embassy in Damascus earlier this month. The attack had little effect owing to Israel's advanced air defense systems.

- Jury selection for Donald Trump's first actual criminal trial, regarding the hush money allegedly paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, begins on Monday. Finding twelve jurors who are sufficiently impartial about Mr. Trump will be a challenge, though. Some are hoping that the details that come out during the trial will be "mortifying" for Trump, but that makes the questionable assumption that he is capable of feeling shame. In other Trump news, shares in Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, are down by about 20% for the week and over 47% so far this month.

- Six people were killed and several others wounded in a stabbing attack in a mall in a suburb of Sydney before the attacker was shot to death by police. The attacker was known to police and wasn't a well fellow by the sound of it.

- Despite the fact that pretty much everyone in a position of authority knows better, new coal plants continue to be built and places that are phasing them out aren't doing it near fast enough. I hate to advocate for geoengineering given all the risks, but they're making it harder and harder to avoid that.

- Four out of the five councillors in the Rural Municipality of Armstrong, in Manitoba's Interlake region, have resigned citing a "toxic work environment" and leadership problems. Details of these issues have not been made public so far, but rural and small town politics can be a pretty nasty business (see for instance the case of St Andrews mayor Joy Sul).

- Danielle Smith hopes that Red Deer will grow tenfold from its current population of 106,000. Many locals aren't so keen. Setting that aside, one wonders if Smith is really thinking things through on this matter, since the rise of a third huge city in the province would probably require a lot of people to move there from outside the province, and this would probably not favour the UCP electorally.

- Former Thunder Bay police chief Sylvie Hauth has been charged with obstruction and breach of trust, becoming the third employee of the force to face criminal charges in the last few months. Meanwhile in Durham Region the police force there released personal information about a woman who had complained about being threatened by cyberstalkers directly to said cyberstalkers in response to a freedom of information request.

- A new law in Florida, just signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, effectively prevents civilian boards from investigating police misconduct.

News roundup, 12 April 2024

- In Israel, a decision of their Supreme Court a few years ago calls on the government to end the exemption from conscription that the ultra-orthodox community has enjoyed. This is rather awkward for Netanyahu since his governing coalition depends on the support of parties from that community, who would love their country to regain lands that they consider to have been promised to them by God, while wanting to ensure that it's other people's kids who have to risk their lives doing it. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, a mob of Israeli settlers stormed a Palestinian village, setting fire to homes and shooting at residents, killing at least one and wounding 25. And in Ireland, the government is making noises about possibly recognizing a Palestinian state. More alarmingly, following the bombing of Iran's embassy in Damascus, apparently by Israel, and the resulting threats of reprisals from Iran, many countries are issuing travel warnings for Israel, Iran, and in some cases the entire Middle East.

- Following his failure to provide a financial statement required for his bond in the New York civil fraud trial, Donald Trump submitted documents indicating that the company backing him is itself backed by a company based in the Cayman Islands, leading to concerns that the money may not be collectable if he loses his appeal.

- It's looking more and more like there will be a very bad wildfire season in much of Canada this year.

- The US has issued permits for 25 gigawatts of clean energy, a year earlier than anticipated.

- There's still some concern about vacancy rates in downtown Winnipeg office buildings. I still say get to work on retrofitting as many of them as practical for residential use.

- Two dogs that killed an 11 year old in Edmonton last week had been reported to the city's animal control department for previous attacks, including one in which a woman was seriously injured a mere two months ago. In spite of this, the city says that it had no lawful basis to seize the dogs until the fatal attack; if true that suggests that the city's animal control bylaws need a bit of work.

- A man in Stony Plain, Alberta has been getting numerous unwanted pizza deliveries to his home and workplace. Initially they were coming from a company called Pizza 73, but after he called the company's head office and asked them to cancel any orders coming from him, the orders started coming from Domino's instead. He suspects a disgruntled former coworker.

- An astrology influencer on the former Twitter, after warning her followers that Monday's eclipse was "the epitome of spiritual warfare", apparently stabbed her partner to death, then threw her two children from her car, killing one of them, before fatally crashing the vehicle into a tree.

News roundup, 11 April 2024

- Following criticism for his "bicycle Nazi" remark the other day, Transcona councillor Russ Wyatt has apologized for his choice of words, but defends the substance of what he was saying. He insists that he's not against all cycling; fair enough, but this is kind of telling:

"A number of us councillors have been advocating for bike paths to be built," including the Transcona Trail and the North Winnipeg Parkway, said Wyatt.

"What's frustrating is to hear Bike Winnipeg not necessarily representing those projects when they come forward, but want to represent closing of lanes to cars, such as closing Assiniboine Avenue at Main Street, or removing the slip lane in Osborne Village."

Now there's nothing wrong with the bike paths Wyatt says he's advocating for, but those paths are better suited to recreational cycling than commuting (though the North Winnipeg Parkway is doubtless useful for some). And what is really needed is to get people out of their cars, not merely have them riding around when they don't have anywhere in particular to go.

- Hawaii's aquifers are being depleted at a dangerous rate. And that's not even considering what will happen as sea levels rise and cause wells to go salty.

- Israel has faced international criticism for its actions before, but even its staunchest supporters are starting to wonder.

- Apparently the starting wages for new FBI agents, who have no say in where in the US they are assigned, are inadequate to comfortably cover the costs of living in many cities (New York, San Francisco, and others). That sounds like something that a spy, terrorist, or gangster could take advantage of.

- A lawyer who formerly worked for the Thunder Bay Police Service has been charged with several offenses related to the Ontario Provincial Police's investigation of the force's numerous problems.

- The owners of the Winnipeg Jets are considering going into the charity business by creating transitional housing. Obviously part of the motivation is the fact that the area around the Canada Life Centre has a lot of highly visible homelessness, but it's still a good thing if done well.

- Kathleen Cook, the Manitoba Tories' advanced education critic, raised the issue of the cyberattack at the University of Winnipeg in the legislature last week in an attempt to throw shade on the Kinew government. What she doesn't understand (or at least hopes that you don't understand) is that the condition of public institutions doesn't magically change overnight when a government changes - it can take years for this to happen. Which means that the state of such institutions in this province right now is more a reflection of Tory policy than NDP policy.

- A planned residential development in Waterloo, Ontario is less than 500 metres from an LRT station - but separated from it by the Conestoga Parkway. There were plans to build an active transportation bridge across the freeway, but unfortunately the involvement of a provincial highway meant that the Ministry of Transportation needed to approve its construction, and Doug Ford's government never misses an opportunity to fire a shot in the culture war against getting around by some means other than private cars.

News roundup, 10 April 2024

- The City of Winnipeg is still considering the possibility of a pedestrian scramble somewhere, though probably not at River and Osborne thanks to the report that concluded that the price of pedestrian safety could be as much as 30 extra seconds on suburbanites' commute. On a related note, at a meeting of Winnipeg's Standing Policy Committee on Public Works yesterday, Mark Cohoe, executive director of Bike Winnipeg, was presenting on behalf of the organization regarding the proposals for the intersection of Osborne and River when Transcona councillor Russ Wyatt showed up late and berated Cohoe and other delegations, calling them "bike Nazis". The organization is outraged, and is calling for Wyatt to be removed from the committee. Based on that and other aspects of his character I have to assume that if he follows through on his threat to run federally in Elmwood-Transcona he'll run for the Tories.

- At Manitoba's largest hospital, University of Manitoba medical and nursing students have better security than working nurses at the same institution. The security guards employed by the university are equipped with batons and pepper gel, but those employed by the hospital itself (e.g. in the emergency room) are not. The nurses' union is naturally lobbying for changes following a number of incidents including the stabbing of a security guard in February; the union wants weapon scanners and armed security. Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara says that the training of additional security is a top priority but is uncomfortable with some aspects of the union's demands, saying "Some people maybe feel nervous or anxious or have a reaction based on their trauma when they see people who look like security or look similar to police". Now the minister is not wrong about that, however in order to properly evaluate this it's necessary to also factor in the fact that some people may be made more comfortable, especially given what's been going on there of late, and to choose a course of action that leads to the lowest overall amount of anxiety - not that it's necessarily easy to do that, of course.

- In the US, a federal court has upheld the right of California to set its own emission rules that are stronger than federal standards, following a challenge by several Republican-held states.

- Toronto is now less affordable than New York City or Miami. At the same time, commercial landlords are freaking out about the high vacancy rate for offices in the city. It seems to me that the second problem could be turned into a solution to the first, although converting an office building to an apartment building isn't always easy.

- Arizona's Supreme Court has reinstated an 1864 law that outlaws abortion in nearly all cases. You might expect Republicans to be rejoicing at this, but in fact they're freaking out, with even Sen. Kari Lake having suddenly changed her mind on the merits of this old law. Trump also says that the law goes too far. Of course in Trump's case it's likely partly because he's no doubt been spared huge amounts of money in child support payments by the availability of abortion, but the fact that there's going to be a referendum on abortion in the state in November probably has a lot to do with it too, given the potential increase in Democratic turnout that could result. The fact that shortly before the court ruling a Republican legislator brought in a delegation to pray and speak in tongues probably doesn't help their image either.

- Parks Canada is considering a temporary ban on boating on Clear Lake in Riding Mountain National Park in order to limit the spread of Zebra Mussels. The premier is uncomfortable with that due to the popularity of the lake, but it seems like it may be a necessary evil to protect the lake.

- There was a big spike in Google searches for the phrase "my eyes hurt" following Monday's eclipse. Whether this is a result of people actually damaging their eyes from not following precautions, or just psychosomatic pain due to people second-guessing whether their precautions were adequate, is not clear.

News roundup, 9 April 2024

- Donald Trump is trying to distance himself from some of the more rabid anti-abortion folks, apparently realizing that the issue is not something that will help him in November. He has to do a careful balancing act here, though; we'll have to see how it goes.

- The European Court of Human Rights (which is a body of the Council of Europe, not the EU, hence it having jurisdiction in this case) has ruled that Switzerland's inadequate efforts to reduce carbon emissions constitute a violation of the rights of the plaintiffs. Realistically, courts rather than elected officials will probably have to do a lot of the heavy lifting, climate wise.

- The Sierra Club is undergoing huge internal upheavals including layoffs and labour disputes as well as massive turnover among the organization's leaders.

- Residents of a trailer park in the RM of St Clements, Manitoba are up in arms about the proposed construction of a pharmaceutical plant near their homes. Now pharmaceutical manufacturing is about as low-impact as large scale manufacturing can get in terms of noise, smell, etc, but the residents are convinced that it will "push them out of their neighbourhood". The plan includes the addition of a wastewater system, and perhaps the park residents are concerned that they'll be forced to hook up to the system once it exists, which would mean a significant short term expense for the trailer park (and hence its residents). Or maybe they just think the plant will be making those vaccines with the microchips that Bill Gates wants to inject into everyone. Who can say?

- Pierre Poilievre may be trying to replace Justin Trudeau (and will very likely succeed) but he's targeting the NDP as well, trying to present himself as a supporter of working-class people. It's nonsense, of course, but it's nonsense that a disturbing number of working-class people actually believe. What did L7 say again?

- A school trustee in Hamilton says she has been banned from in camera meetings over her refusal to delete a social media post in which she states that she is "under investigation" for other social media posts related to the Israel/Palestine situation.

- A Canadian laboratory that sold DNA test kits that were supposed to determine the paternity of a child apparently continued to sell the kits after they had been demonstrated to be inaccurate, making a mess of some people's lives as a result.

- A food bank in Cambridge, Ontario was the target of an arson attack on Monday night. The building seems not to have been seriously damaged but the condenser units for the food bank's walk-in freezer were destroyed; repairs have been estimated at $5,000 but the amount of food lost as a result could be twice that. No suspects or motive have been found so far, though that has not deterred some from speculating about it.

- The Ontario Provincial Police have warned the public that no, a dog in the passenger seat does not count as an extra person and thus does not make you eligible to use car pool lanes.

- Some may remember the old Flintstones cartoon "Daddies Anonymous" in which Fred and Barney leave their kids out in the parking lot while they play poker in a private club. Well, something similar appears to have happened in real life - two women from York Region have been charged with leaving their kids in the car as they gambled in a Pickering casino.

News roundup, 8 April 2024

- Another veteran NDP MP, Charlie Angus, has announced that he will not be running again. Pierre Poilievre responded to the news in his typical mean-spirited fashion, though sadly I don't think he's necessarily factually wrong in saying Angus might have a hard time getting reelected. Because Poilievre has been very successful in convincing a lot of working class people that he's their guy. This is nonsense of course, but a few flashy ads and zippy slogans work on the common mind far better than many of us would like to admit.

- Also on the subject of MPs stepping down, Transcona councillor and all-round loose cannon Russ Wyatt is apparently considering a run for the seat vacated by Elmwood-Transcona MP Daniel Blaikie. He apparently hasn't decided which party he would run for; I guess he'll go for whoever will take him.

- In the US Congress, the House Freedom Caucus (comprised of the kind of people who give freedom a bad name) are threatening to withhold funding needed to rebuild the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge unless environmental and union wage regulations are waived for the project. One of their claimed reasons for this is to avoid delays, yet they are also demanding that the government seek compensation from the shipping companies responsible for the accident before funding is released, something that would itself cause delays. They further want the administration's pause on approvals of LNG export terminals to be lifted.

- Joe Biden wants companies that use American airspace to launch spacecraft to pay the same taxes that airlines do. The taxes in question help to cover the cost of the ATC system, and controllers do have to take space launches into account when directing aircraft, so it's an eminently reasonable proposal. No doubt Elon Musk and his followers (or as I call them, the Muskrats) will cry foul, though.

- A hydrogen plant has opened in Gladstone, Queensland. Unlike many such facilities, which produce hydrogen from natural gas and are thus not carbon-neutral, this uses electrolysis of water, and renewables can be used to produce the electricity for this. So a definite step in the right direction.

- The impact on the power grid from the disruption of solar power from the coming eclipse has yet to be determined as of this post.

- Tick season, as well as mosquito season, is expected to start early this year in Manitoba due to the warm weather.

News roundup, 5 April 2024

- Several Israeli military officers have been fired following the airstrikes on the World Central Kitchen convoy that killed seven aid workers. Officially it's because they violated military operating procedures, but we all know that it's really because they embarrassed the country.

- A redevelopment plan for the troubled Portage Place mall has been presented by the Manitoba government, the Southern Chiefs' Organization, and True North Real Estate Development. This will involve a 15 storey residential tower at the west end of the mall and a 12 storey healthcare facility at the east end.

- The Kinew government is being criticized by the opposition for cutting the budget for some infrastructure upgrades in provincial parks. Putting things into perspective, though, this is not a cut to things important to conservation so much as tourism. If you want to criticize something they're doing, it should be their trying to get out of the federal carbon tax - except the Tories no doubt approve of that. University of Winnipeg biologist Scott Forbes certainly is not pulling his punches on the issue, though. In any case, the federal government says that any alternative to the federal levy must include carbon pricing. Maybe the provincial NDP knew that all along and are just making a show of opposing the tax to score points; still, it's unfortunate.

- The cyberattack at the University of Winnipeg seems to have been more than just vandalism - it could have an impact on all students enrolled there since 2018 and all staff since 2003. The university will be covering the cost of credit monitoring for two years, but one wonders if the stolen data might still be floating around after that.

- A report presented to Winnipeg city council by transportation planning staff is recommending against the proposal to convert the intersection of River and Osborne into a scramble crossing. They do acknowledge that it would improve safety, but they say that it could cause delays of up to 30 seconds, plus the expenses involved in things like resynchronizing nearby traffic signals. And what's a few dead pedestrians compared to that?

- The legalization of marijuana in various US states has been a mixed bag in terms of results. In some states, like California, legalization has done little to put a dent in the black market, while in others, like Washington, legalization was accompanied by a strong crackdown on illegal sales, giving the legal market time to get on its feet. Sadly, Canada seems to have followed the California model rather than the Washington one.

News roundup, 4 April 2024

- Apparently Donald Trump, having managed to get the $454 million bond for his appeal of the civil fraud trial in New York reduced to $175 million, has not yet provided a current financial statement as required. Some discussion of this here; whether this will be sorted out in time to prevent asset seizures remains to be seen. In other Trump-related news, he seems to be testing the limits of the gag order imposed by Judge Juan Merchan.

- Joe Biden has called for an "immediate ceasefire" following the deaths of seven aid workers in Gaza, saying that US policy "will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps". He's been careful, of course, not to threaten anything specific; AIPAC is always watching.

- There have been substantial reductions in deforestation in Brazil and Columbia, but unfortunately this is offset by losses elsewhere in the tropics.

- Geoengineering, which is increasingly looking like it may be necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change, has some serious issues of its own. Perhaps the biggest risk is that geoengineering activity in one country could potentially affect its neighbours, possibly in ways that are harmful to them and thus increasing the risk of armed conflict. Or, a natural disaster could be mistakenly attributed to geoengineering, with the same result.

- In northern Manitoba, leaders are trying to prepare for what could potentially be a very bad wildfire season due to the dry winter.

- A Hamilton man has been jailed after livestreaming himself assaulting someone and unleashing a vicious transphobic rant on a city bus. You'd think anyone with an IQ above room temperature would know better than to record their crimes, but there you go.

News roundup, 3 April 2024

- An earthquake measured at between 7.2 and 7.4 on the Richter scale has caused significant damage in Taiwan, including at least 9 fatalities and hundreds of injuries.

- The new provincial budget presented by the Kinew government includes money for major healthcare projects, including a new ER at Victoria General Hospital and one in Ericksdale. Perhaps more important, it includes funding for a thousand sorely needed healthcare workers, including 100 doctors, 90 paramedics and 600 healthcare aides. It also includes funding for a supervised consumption site in the North End. The 50% education property tax rebate is being replaced with a flat $1,500 for all homeowners (the profiteers are predicting apocalyptic results from this, of course). I'm less keen on the fact that they're extending the gas tax holiday until September, although to be fair they're taking other more positive measures on climate as well. The full document is here.

- The City of Winnipeg will be considering several apartment projects planned for vacant properties, including one the Norwood East neighbourhood of St Boniface, one in West Broadway, and one in East Elmwood. The West Broadway one is drawing some local opposition despite the underused nature of the affected land. This has led to a fair bit of skepticism about the opposition to the project on this Reddit thread. Perhaps the best summary there was this:

Winnipeg needs to densify if it's ever going to get in front of its annual operating cost. Poverty is a larger and complicated issue that I certainly don't have all the answers to but preventing this development doesn't solve it.

- Doug Ford wants to get international students out of Ontario universities, even as the universities need their money more than ever thanks to inadequate funding from... Doug Ford and his government.

- A bill expected to pass the Vermont legislature shortly will require fossil fuel companies to contribute to the cost of damage resulting from increasing natural disasters as a result of climate change. Several other states have similar bills, albeit not as advanced as this one. Vermont's governor, a Republican, is expressing concerns about the bill, but given that this is Vermont he has to try not to sound crazy, so he's arguing that a small state shouldn't be the one to go first because whoever does will face a fierce legal battle from the affected companies. His opposition is probably moot, though; the Democrats have the supermajority needed to override his veto should that occur.

- ExxonMobil has an ad campaign in the UK where they talk a lot about carbon capture, but there's no sign that the project they refer to will ever get off the ground, leading to accusations of greenwashing.

- The Israelis are apparently using AI to select targets in Gaza. Not everyone is reassured by this.

- Germany is considering a ban on the import of hunting "trophies". This does not sit at all well with the president of Botswana; his country gets a lot of revenue from that trade, and he's threatening to send 20,000 elephants to Germany if they go ahead. How he plans to accomplish this is not clear.

- Police in Fontana, California managed to fatally shoot the kidnapped teen they were trying to rescue as she ran towards what she thought was safety.

News roundup, 2 April 2024

- A bill recently passed by Florida's legislature, and now awaiting Governor Ron DeSantis' signature, will ban offshore wind turbines in state waters, and will furthermore purge virtually all references to climate change from existing legislation. On the other coast, the city of Berkeley, California has agreed to repeal its recent ban on natural gas for new builds, following a court decision. Oh, and despite their constant bleating about "freedom" and "liberty", Republicans in numerous states want to take away people's freedom to buy and sell lab-grown meat. There has been the odd bit of good news too (such as the closure of the last two coal plants in the New England states) but on balance the situation is not looking good, and Gwynne Dyer is probably right in saying that we will need to resort to geoengineering, with all the risks that entails, in order to keep temperatures within acceptable limits. Or maybe someone should just release Captain Trips and hope that the survivors build a better civilization than the one we have now.

- A federal appeal court has cancelled a ban on takeout containers contaminated with PFAS (the so-called "forever chemicals"). Interestingly, the court did not deny the health concerns about these chemicals, but ruled that the EPA did not have the authority to use the legislation they did.

- The European Union subsidizes farms based on area cultivated, which means that livestock farms get far more subsidies than crop farms do. More than 80% of the subsidies in the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) program went to make meat cheaper.

- Judge Aileen Cannon, who is scheduled to hear Trump's criminal trial for retaining classified national security documents, has apparently still not decided when the hearing will happen, almost certainly meaning that he will not be tried in this case before this fall's election. According to Wikipedia this judge was appointed in 2020 by Trump, but I guess we're supposed to assume that this is a coincidence.

- The lower house of France's parliament has passed a bill that imposes penalties on the manufacturers of "fast fashion".

- Doctors working in Gaza are accusing Israeli snipers of deliberately targeting young children.

News roundup, 1 April 2024

- The Kinew government says they have plans, to be revealed in tomorrow's budget, that they say will justify their request for an exemption to the federal carbon tax. We'll have to see how that goes.

- Speaking of the carbon tax, countrywide protests against it are scheduled to start today. There's something kind of ironic about their choice of a date... or maybe it was intentional. When the Tories' campaign against the tax uses terms like "so-called experts", they're not going for your vote or mine, they're going for people who hate expertise on "principle". People who are ignorant, and proud of it. One can't help but think of the story (perhaps apocryphal) of how US Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson was told by a supporter, "Mr. Stevenson, you have the support of every thinking American". Stevenson supposedly replied "That's not enough, ma'am, we need a majority". Pierre Poilievre is going for the votes of the kind of people who would kick off their protest campaign on April Fools Day, and it's likely to pay off for him.

- Donald Trump's criminal trial for the hush money allegedly paid to Stormy Daniels begins later this month.

- Far-right extremists and their fellow travellers are trying to create a parallel economy, or as they call it a "freedom economy", because they think the established banks and e-commerce platforms are too woke.

- Several American and European investigative journalists have come to some conclusions about "Havana syndrome". Whereas the conclusion from US officials a year ago was that this was not something inflicted by a foreign adversary, and a recent report found no sign of physical harm to the patients (which would lend support to the mass hysteria theory), this report draws connections to Russian intelligence. Certainly this does have a ring of plausibility.

- AI is becoming sufficiently widespread that it's creeping into almost everything. That might be OK if it were reliable, but it isn't. It even poses problems for further developments in AI (and our control thereof), since as AIs are trained on text found on the internet, they will encounter more and more text that was produced by AIs in the first place.

- Former Winnipeg city councillor Bill Neville has died. He was a "conservative" of a sort that most present day conservatives would not recognize as one of their own; as a friend of his said, he "was part of a political culture that seriously valued forethought and moderation". The conservatives of today would consider forethought and moderation to be an affront to their freedumb.

News roundup, 29 March 2024

- Officials have abandoned hope of finding any more survivors from the hapless construction crew that was on the Francis Scott Key bridge when it collapsed. Meanwhile the next priority is to clear the remains of the bridge so that shipping can resume. As to how long that could take, an engineering professor said "I'd be shocked if it's weeks, but I don't think it'd take a year." That's a lot of uncertainty.

- The Kinew government in Manitoba has cleaned house at Efficiency Manitoba, removing nine out of the ten board members appointed by the Tories. They have also restored the standard 1 to 1 supervisor to apprentice ratio in the trades, a move welcomed by Manitoba Building Trades as well as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but condemned by the Winnipeg Construction Association. In addition they're tinkering with the credits for property taxes, in order to shift a bit more of the burden onto high value properties. On the downside, though, they have joined the chorus of provincial leaders calling for an end to the carbon tax. Don't get me wrong, I kind of understand why they're doing it (the right has been very successful at making carbon pricing politically toxic) but I wish they'd have pushed for a more creative approach to the problem than simply doing away with the tax. Like if you're concerned about the cost of living, why not hit the PST, and if that costs too much in revenue, hike the carbon tax to compensate? That would keep average costs around the same but make greener products cheaper while making more polluting products more expensive, and I'd like to think the public could be sold on that idea, but maybe not. Or maybe there are administrative barriers that aren't obvious except to insiders in finance ministries, I dunno.

- School boards in Toronto, Peel, and Ottawa are suing Meta, Snapchat, and TikTok, alleging that they are harming students' mental health. I wish them luck (it's almost certainly true, after all). I have to admit that this is one of the very few issues on which I find myself in agreement with Ron DeSantis, at least in principle (the devil is always in the details with something like this, though, and DeSantis isn't someone I'd count on getting it right with something like this).

- The judge who issued the gag order prohibiting Donald Trump from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors did not include himself or his family on the list. No doubt he had to do it that way to avoid any perceived conflict of interest, but it's no surprise that Trump is taking full advantage of that omission.

- The city of Richmond, California now has only one remaining local news website, the Richmond Standard. It's owned by Chevron, which has a huge presence in the city and seems to get away with a lot of shenanigans as a result.

- Former US senator Joe Lieberman has died. Hopefully No Labels will follow.

- A Boston Dynamics robot dog used by the Massachusetts State Police was shot during a standoff.

News roundup, 27 March 2024

 - The Manitoba government is reviewing a contract signed by the previous government in August with a staffing agency that was supposed to bring 150 doctors to the province. So far the agency has recruited none at all.

- This year is not expected to be a bad year as far as flooding in Manitoba. Wildfires, though, may be another story.

- The latest Abacus poll indicates that former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi is the most favoured candidate for the Alberta NDP leadership, but even under his leadership the party would have a hard time winning an election. Because Albertans gonna Alberta I guess.

- A report from Environmental Defence has concluded that the Trudeau government is still subsidizing fossil fuels with billions of dollars. It's kind of a mystery; the kind of people who they're trying to win over aren't going to vote Liberal no matter what, because of their irrational hatred of everything Trudeau and the Liberals represent. And by doing this they're giving sensible, rational Canadians a good reason to hate them.

- The University of Winnipeg had to cancel classes Monday and is still struggling, after what was described as a "cyber incident" shut down the school's networks. Apparently professors have forgotten how to deliver a lecture without computers.

- Across the country, school attendance has failed to recover to pre-pandemic levels. The long term impact of this remains to be seen. Meanwhile in Manitoba drug-related deaths have skyrocketed since 2020 as well.

- A Toronto woman has been charged with multiple offenses, including criminal negligence causing bodily harm, after her dog, which was unlawfully off leash in a playground, attacked a child and caused injuries described as "life-altering". She allegedly then attempted to flee the scene rather than render assistance; what makes this especially galling is that she and her partner have been in trouble before over the same issue.

- Two men charged in the human smuggling case that led to an Indian family freezing to death on the Manitoba-Minnesota border have pleaded not guilty.

News roundup, 26 March 2024

- The MV Dali, a gigantic Singapore-flagged container ship, collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last night, apparently after losing engine power and directional control and being carried by the current into one of the bridge pillars. Given the enormous size of this vessel, the physics of such a collision did not favour the bridge. Fortunately this happened in the middle of the night and only eight people, all construction workers repairing potholes, fell into the river below; unfortunately six of the eight are missing and feared dead. Predictably, the usual suspects (including Marjorie Taylor Greene) are spouting their usual nonsense about terrorism, diversity hires, how Baltimore is a "failed city", and the like; longtime Baltimore residents like The Wire creator David Simon are not amused.

- Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun has announced that he's leaving his position at the end of this year. Some would say this is not before time, given recent news as well as that of a few years before. It's often said by commentators, with lament, that Boeing was run by the engineers rather than the accountants until the merger with McDonnell-Douglas in 1997, after which the accountants with their short-term thinking ran the company into the state it's in now. That is certainly one of the claims of this guy writing for Forbes, though upon reading the article I was struck with something else - he certainly thinks that Boeing is something that's "too big to fail", but he doesn't mention the idea of nationalization, even to subsequently reject it. But I guess you don't talk about that sort of thing if you want to get published in Forbes.

- Russian President Vladimir Putin would have us believe that Ukraine somehow were able to order radical Islamists to attack the Crocus City concert hall. Seems a bit less likely than the possibility that specialized "interrogators" working for Putin's own security services were able to order the suspects to "confess" that they were working for Ukraine...

- In the latest shenanigans related to Donald Trump, the judge presiding over one of his criminal trials has imposed a gag order prohibiting him from commenting about jurors, witnesses, prosecutors, court staff, or their relatives. Because, you know, he's Donald Trump. In other Trump news some are predicting that the Truth Social IPO won't be the boost to his finances that he hopes for, though the jury is still out on how many shares he can unload before the market realizes that they're worth almost nothing.

- Austria is scheduled for an election soon, likely in September. There are fears that the far right could triumph; that country does have a certain history with that sort of thing.

- China has reportedly been working on nuclear fission space propulsion. They believe it would enable humans to reach Mars in as little as three months.