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.

News roundup, 25 March 2024

- The US actually abstained in a UN Security Council vote on a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza for the duration of Ramadan. Since no other permanent member exercised their veto power either, the resolution passed; naturally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threw a huge hissy fit. But it makes it seem like Israel's recent conduct is too much even for the Americans; whether this is for principled reasons (i.e. seeing the ongoing devastation of Gaza as beyond the pale) or pragmatic ones (i.e. seeing Israel becoming a foreign policy liability for the US) is for the reader to decide.

- An appeals court in New York State has given Donald Trump a huge break, lowering the amount he must post as bond in the civil fraud case to $175 million and giving him another 10 days to come up with the money. Meanwhile Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, is going public tomorrow, potentially providing Trump with a huge cash injection just when he needs it. It's almost as if the rich are governed by different rules than you or I.

- Four Tajik citizens have been arrested for the concert hall attack outside Moscow. The Russians are doubling down on their claim that the suspects were trying to escape to Ukraine through a "window" prepared for them on the Ukrainian side; how the Ukrainians are supposed to have done this in a war zone where much of their border territory is occupied by Russian troops and local allies has not been explained. Given that the suspects had reportedly undergone some in-depth interrogation, we might not be able to rely on what they might have said about Ukrainian involvement (or their own involvement, for that matter). As to the potential impact on Putin, well, potentially not much.

- Houston's approach to managing homelessness, which they call "The Way Home", has won much praise as one of the most successful in North America. Both Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew and Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham are taking notes; hopefully this can be implemented here, since we have a very serious problem here.

- Elon Musk's defamation suit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, who critically examined X/Twitter's moderation policies with regard to hate speech, has been dismissed by a federal court.

- Churches, and American Baptist churches in particular, sometimes get a bad rap (not without cause). Gethsemani Baptist Church in San Luis, though, has made it their mission to feed anyone, without question. Sounds like the kind of thing Jesus would approve of, right? Perhaps, but apparently it isn't something that the City of San Luis approves of; the church is suing the city for harassing them by what they say are misuse of zoning laws.

- American TV actor Forrie J. Smith apparently got kicked off a plane after refusing to sit next to someone who was wearing a mask. Exactly how someone else exercising their freedom to wear a mask is supposed to harm him is anybody's guess; perhaps it's more that it's a perverse form of "virtue signalling" on his part (for those who think that refusing to wear a mask is a virtue, at least).

News roundup, 24 March 2024

- A total of 137 people have been confirmed dead in the mass shooting in a Moscow suburb the other day. The Islamic State/ISIS/Daesh/whatever has claimed responsibility, though Putin apparently did not mention this fact in his video address in response to the attack. He did apparently claim that the suspects in the attack tried to flee to Ukraine.

- The US Congress has kicked the can down the road once again, averting a government shutdown until September at least (which will be an interesting time for brinksmanship, incidentally). Even though the bill had been negotiated by Republicans, many of the more hardline folks in that party voted against it; it only passed with Democratic support.

- Sixteen American states are suing the federal government for its moratorium on export permits for liquefied natural gas.

- The federal and provincial governments have each promised $20 million for a search of the Prairie Green Landfill north of Winnipeg.

- Two adults have been charged for a shoplifting spree; what is notable is that they're accused of having brought a child with them for some of their activities. The child is apparently not theirs; in any case, I don't think they're setting a good example.

- Some travellers are cancelling or rebooking flights to avoid having to ride on a Boeing airplane. It's worth noting that after a disaster in 1979 there were a bunch of people wanting to avoid the DC-10; here, though, the unease is not about a specific aircraft type but an entire company. I still can't help but wonder if Boeing is fated to join Lockheed-Martin, Convair, etc. on the list of "military contractors that used to make airliners" and leave the commercial industry to Airbus and Embraer.

- The Tennessee state senate has passed a bill banning "chemtrails" (it has yet to pass in the lower house):

The bill claims it is "documented the federal government or other entities acting on the federal government's behalf or at the federal government's request may conduct geoengineering experiments by intentionally dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere, and those activities may occur within the State of Tennessee," according to the bill.

The legislation would ban the practice in Tennessee.

"The intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight is prohibited," the bill reads.

The funny thing is, jet contrails do contain chemicals that affect temperature - specifically carbon dioxide and water vapour. And yet the people who believe in the "chemtrails" conspiracy theory tend not to believe that - go figure. They have, however, been careful enough to include the phrase "with the express purpose", to make sure their bill couldn't be weaponized against carbon emitters.

News roundup, 22 March 2024

- A mass shooting and arson has occurred at a concert hall in the Moscow suburb of Krasnogorsk; at least 40 people have been killed. Ukraine has denied involvement in the attack.

- The US is urging Ukraine to stop attacking Russian oil refineries. This is partly motivated by fear that it will lead to massive retaliation, and partly by fear that it will drive up world oil prices and thus American gasoline prices during an election year.

- The Russians are now actually using the W word, which they had previously shunned, for what they previously called their "special military operation" in Ukraine. They claim the reason for the distinction is the (so far indirect) support given to Ukraine by western powers.

- The Biden administration is introducing strict emissions rules for the auto industry, including a target of 56% of new vehicles being electric by 2032. Whether they'll be able to sell this to the masses remains to be seen.

- An article in Time magazine, of all places, acknowledges what many of us have suspected for a long time, namely that leaving things to the private sector and the free market is not going to be enough to adequately address climate change. In fact, some go further and argue that endless economic growth is the real problem - that it won't be possible to "decouple" carbon emissions from economic growth the way many people hope. Rather, they say, a transition to a steady-state economy, as advocated by Herman Daly and others, is necessary. This is a problem, because continued economic growth is integral to capitalism as we know it, and even social democrats are reluctant to question the commitment to growth. On the positive side, though, the prospect of global population decline due to the precipitous drop in birth rates in most countries may help with this - if the population is declining, you can theoretically keep the total GDP constant, or even reduce it, while keeping per capita GDP high. So all the hand-wringing by establishment types about population decline seems badly misplaced, even if the transition will be rough for some.

- Some experts believe that fossil fuel companies could be tried for homicide for deaths resulting from climate change. While this may be theoretically true, it's worth remembering that even in such a blatant case as the Ford Motor Company deliberately selling a car that was more dangerous than it needed to be to save money, the prosecution wasn't able to get a conviction.

- After the Ford government in Ontario scrapped the previous government's basic income pilot study before its scheduled end, participants were unexpectedly left in the lurch. They are now bringing a class action against the government.

- China plans to launch crewed spacecraft using a "railgun" (i.e. a mass driver). The device would electromagnetically accelerate a spaceplane about the size of a narrow-body airliner to supersonic or hypersonic speeds before the craft's rocket engines even fire. Definitely an ambitious idea.

News roundup, 20 March 2024

- Pierre Poilievre plans to introduce a non-confidence motion against the Trudeau government based on the carbon tax. This is largely symbolic as it is not expected to pass, but a signal that the Tories are going to be making this the centre of their campaign. Sadly, it's highly probable that it will work; Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne sums it up neatly as follows:

As for the Conservative Leader, Pierre Poilievre, I suppose he is to be congratulated. The Liberals won three elections on a promise of taking action on climate change, which had become equated with the carbon tax. Many people concluded this meant the public wanted action on climate change, and were willing to pay the carbon tax.

But Mr. Poilievre saw through the public. He understood that the public are deeply, almost perversely, hypocritical on this as on most things: they want something done about the climate but they want someone else to pay for it. Or, perhaps: they are prepared to pay for it, if they have to, but they want to be lied to about it.

They want to pretend that a tax that applies only to “the big polluters” would not be passed on to them, or that they would not also pay the costs of whatever regulations and subsidy schemes Mr. Poilievre eventually proposes, if he does. They know it is a lie. They know that nothing is free. They just don’t want to have it rubbed in their faces. Which is more or less the point of a carbon tax.

Or perhaps it’s simpler than that. It may simply be that the public were all for action on climate change as long as the economy was strong, but as soon as inflation began to climb, they lost all interest.

Either way, Mr. Poilievre correctly read their ambivalence, understood that they were every bit as cynical as he is and is about to be rewarded for it. To the victor the spoils and all that.

Cynical indeed, but in the words of Sir Humphrey Appleby from Yes Minister, a cynic is what an idealist calls a realist. I do have to take issue with one thing Coyne says here, however:

What if, instead of receiving the occasional opaquely labelled “climate action incentive payment” – too small to notice, too far removed to make the connection – Canadians had been compensated with offsetting income-tax cuts, something they would have seen and felt every two weeks on their paycheques?

A far better approach, to my mind, would be to apply the offsets to sales taxes, not income taxes. You see, one of the things about a carbon tax where the critics actually do have a valid point is that carbon taxes are somewhat regressive, all other things being considered. And offsetting a regressive tax by cutting a progressive tax like income tax is the wrong way to do it; if you offset carbon taxes by a reduction in the GST, you have no net increase in the regressiveness of the tax regime, and people will see the savings every time they buy something. Yet I never see this idea brought forward, even to later dismiss it. Why, I wonder?

- New York Attorney General Letitia James appears to be preparing to seize property owned by Donald Trump in the state due to his failure to cough up the bond money to allow an appeal of the civil fraud case.

- The British government is planning to conduct a review of the takeover of the Daily Telegraph by a company based in the United Arab Emirates. This is expected to delay the deal long enough for a new piece of legislation to stop the takeover entirely.

- The Manitoba NDP is moving forward with plans to create an independent seniors' advocate; the Tories, for their part, plan to use their limited power of delay on this legislation. Not clear why they'd choose this hill to die on, except maybe that such a position could make things awkward for them once they're back in power.

- A majority of Winnipeg residents now favour reopening Portage and Main to pedestrians. Most of the owners of buildings at the intersection, though, are opposed, the exception being the Manitoba Métis Federation which owns the former Bank of Montreal building at the southeast corner.

- The recall campaign against Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek seems to be backed by a rightwing organization called Project YYC that uses a lot of buzzwords like "common sense". Some of you may recall that back when the campaign started I said in this very blog that it reeked of rightwing populism; I'd say this new information supports this.

News roundup, 19 March 2024

- It's almost a given that living in a great international city (Hong Kong, New York, Toronto, Sydney, Dubai, etc) will be very expensive. Almost, but not quite; Paris has managed to remain remarkably affordable. The secret - government investment in housing. Around 25% of the city's residents live in public housing. Of course, you also need to take action against people who fraudulently represent themselves as being entitled to subsidized housing, like a bunch of folks in Victoria seem to have done.

- An analysis by the US National Institute of Health of "Havana syndrome", the mysterious illness that affected American and Canadian diplomats in Havana and other capitals has found no evidence of anything physically wrong with the afflicted people. This lends a fair bit of support to the mass hysteria theory, though as a caveat it's worth noting that some neurological conditions (most famously chronic traumatic encephalopathy) are only detectable in an autopsy.

- Winnipeg Transit's community safety team are getting good reviews from bus drivers and passengers so far. The Winnipeg Police union, though, shows no sign of withdrawing the grievance they filed about the team in January; in fact, I suspect the success of the team in showing how problem passengers can be apprehended without shooting them is probably adding to their displeasure.

- The Kinew government has introduced a bill to prohibit the use of strikebreakers in legal strikes and lockouts, as well as to make it easier to join a union. Predictably, the Tories are doing their utmost to delay the bill's passage.

- The American Bullfrog is native to eastern North America but is an invasive species in the west, including in California. People keep importing them for food; a proposed ban on further importation is causing concern by some that it is culturally insensitive to those who eat them.

- BC is warning its residents to be prepared for a "prolonged wildfire season" this year.

- Europe is banning imports related to deforestation starting next year. This includes a ban on products such as palm oil that originates on land that was deforested after 2020. Malaysian and Indonesian officials are fulminating about what they call "regulatory imperialism". No doubt there's an element of injustice here given that once again it's developing countries having to pay the price for damage that until recently has mostly been done by rich countries, but the obvious counterargument is that deforestation isn't going to bring justice to those countries anyway - quite the opposite.

- The scientist who was fired from the National Microbiology Lab in 2021 has been located in China.

- A Winnipeg attorney has been suspended for "conduct unbecoming a lawyer" after she was convicted of impaired driving and assault with a weapon after ramming another vehicle in a road rage episode.

News roundup, 18 March 2024

- To the surprise of no one, Vladimir Putin has been announced as the winner in Russia's presidential election. Yulia Navalnaya seems to be taking over from her late husband as the chief opposition figure, at least until she falls out of a window or something. In related news, Ukraine reported over the weekend that their citizens in Russian-occupied regions were being forced to vote in Russia's presidential election.

- Donald Trump's lawyers have admitted that he is unable to come up with the $450 million needed to cover his bond for the New York civil fraud case. They are trying to argue that the amount is excessive and thus unconstitutional; whether this will persuade the courts remains to be seen. Of course, he may yet get a mysterious foreign bailout, but only if the mystery donor(s) think he has a chance of regaining the White House in the fall; if not, this could be another nail in his campaign's coffin, one much more significant than his reported inability to speak in complete sentences (which his supporters probably just see as authenticity).

- With the UN warning that famine is imminent in Gaza, the EU is now accusing Israel of weaponizing hunger. Still not quite fair to compare it to the Holocaust, but it's starting to look a bit like the Holodomor.

- The federal NDP has introduced a motion in the House of Commons that calls on the government to recognize a Palestinian state. This is expected to open up divisions, particularly in the Liberal caucus.

- New modelling suggests that a major outbreak of measles could be imminent in Canada. Only 31 cases have been reported so far, but the risk is high in communities where less than 85% of the population is vaccinated, and there are pockets where the rate is as low as 30%. Ironically, efforts to contain COVID-19 may have contributed to the problem as medical appointments where vaccinations might have occurred were deferred due to lockdowns.

- A bill introduced this past Thursday in the Manitoba legislature would prohibit those convicted of certain sexual offenses from changing their names. Some people who work with offenders oppose this, however, saying that existing sex offender registries will still enable them to be tracked and that this will further stigmatize offenders and potentially prevent them from getting treatment.

- South Sudan is closing all of its schools due to a heatwave that has been forecast to reach as high as 45°C. This is unusually hot even for that country; usually they don't get higher than 40. They're urging people to keep their kids indoors; looking at the picture in the article showing what constitutes "indoors", though, I wonder how much good that will do.

- Wildlife Haven, a nonprofit specializing in rehabilitating injured or orphaned wildlife, is facing a financial crunch, and has announced that they will not treat invasive species (notably House Sparrows, Starlings, and Pigeons). They are also putting a three year moratorium on raccoons.

- Dell has told their workers that fully remote employees won't be eligible for promotions. Whether the bump in pay the workers would get from a promotion would outweigh the added costs of the commute is another question; the folks at Reddit mostly think it's just a way of getting people to quit and thus removing them from the payroll without having to record it as a layoff. If that's the case, though, it's shortsighted, because the people who leave will be the ones who can get a better job elsewhere, i.e. the people you'd expect they'd want to hold on to.

News roundup, 16 March 2024

- While cities like to tout how many trees they plant, many are not very good at maintaining them. The small city of Morden, Manitoba is an exception. 

- Municipalities in Minnesota are apparently able to set their own minimum wage. Minneapolis' city council passed a bylaw last fall that applies this to rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft. Mayors there have the power to veto a bill, and did so, whereupon a supermajority of council exercised their power to override the veto. Now, Uber and Lyft are threatening to pull out of the city entirely.

- Mike Pence is not endorsing Donald Trump this time round. Funny that.

- Cape Tribulation, a hamlet in far north Queensland, is dependent on tourism for its very existence. The destruction of the only road to the community by a cyclone is therefore a serious problem.

- Quebec premier François Legault claims that his province is "full" and has asked the federal government for full power over immigration. The feds have refused.

- A Winnipeg doctor who suffered significant injuries when an elevator in the parkade across from HSC suddenly fell while she was using it is suing the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, Shared Health, and the elevator manufacturer.

- A man in Richmond, BC has been arrested after police executed a search warrant and found over $150,000 worth of stolen Lego, other toys, and clothing in his home.

- Police have arrested a man for several instances of damage to gas lines serving businesses at several locations near Winnipeg's downtown, causing an extremely hazardous situation. Whether this was motivated by some sort of animus against those businesses, or just the act of a methhead who realized that a gas meter or regulator is several kilograms of scrap metal is not clear.

- American pop singer Olivia Rodrigo allowed reproductive rights activists to set up at her concerts, and at one concert in Missouri they were handing out condoms and morning after pills (particularly bold in that state given that abortion is banned in nearly all cases in that state). However, her management subsequently decided that actually handing these things out went too far, although the groups will still be allowed to distribute information and collect donations.

News roundup, 14 March 2024

- A large number of staff at the Republican National Committee are being pushed out as Donald Trump seemingly tries to remake the committee in his image. How that will turn out remains to be seen; some speculate that this will turn out badly for a lot of down-ballot candidates, as increasingly limited RNC money is diverted to Trump's own campaign at the expense of the party at large. Then again, you can't count on billionaires not to pony up for them.

- Transport for London, and indeed pretty much every public facility in the UK, has long had huge numbers of CCTV cameras installed; the biggest limitation is not how many cameras you can install but how frequently you can monitor them. Never fear; they're now experimenting with AI to monitor the cameras. Some of the things they've done have actually been useful (e.g. preventing suicides and helping people in difficulties) but it's hard not to wonder what else this could be used for. That said, the biggest problem with AI may not be this, but rather the stupendous amounts of energy that are required to run it and the water needed to keep the hardware cool. And all the minerals needed to make that hardware could be put to better use in greening up the grid.

- A bill working its way through the New York State legislature would force companies to reduce single-use plastic packaging by 50%, as well as prohibiting certain toxic materials entirely from use in packaging. Lobbyists from the petrochemical industry are, of course, pulling out all the stops to try to prevent its passage.

- The organization providing services to troubled folks in the lobby of Winnipeg's Millennium Library is not having its funding renewed. Councillor Evan Duncan, who chairs council's Community Services Committee, says this is because he thinks it should be funded by the province, and that the lobby of the library is "not the best place" for these services. I'm guessing his suburban constituents have been telling him they don't want to have to look at those poors as they go to check out their books.

- In response to the Main Street Project's lawsuit against the neighbouring Manwin Hotel, which alleges that runoff from the hotel roof is causing damage to their building, the hotel's owners, in their statement of defense, not only denied wrongdoing but claim that the MSP's services harm the hotel's bottom line. They are seeking $10 million in punitive damages, and an injunction stopping MSP from operating their shelter at that location. I guess if your business model depends on a steady stream of broken people, having an agency that helps to fix said people is bad for business, but it takes a fair amount of chutzpah to actually admit that.

News roundup, 13 March 2024

- This past winter (the meteorological winter ends on the 1st of March, not the equinox), was the warmest winter in the US in over a century of records. The Lower 48 had an average temperature of +3.1°C (37.6°F); that's 3°C above average. Those numbers don't fully convey the story, though. Leaves are budding on trees weeks earlier than normal, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario have been essentially ice-free all winter, and mosquitoes were biting in Michigan as early as February.

- Since Paris moved to triple parking costs for SUVs, other cities are looking to follow their example. It's almost as if everybody knew it was a good idea, but nobody had the nerve to go first until Anne Hidalgo did.

- Manitoba's minimum wage will be going up to $15.80 an hour this fall. It did not go up this past fall because the deadline to make a decision on the matter came too soon after the election, and the new government, rightly or wrongly, was reluctant to make a snap decision on the matter. In the long run they want to bring it up to a "living wage", currently pegged at $19/h by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

- The interim leader of the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives, Wayne Ewasko, is following the standard rightwing playbook, calling for parents to be notified when their kids request to be addressed by different pronouns at school. I'm sure that the life of a trans kid in, say, the RM of Hanover would not be made any easier by this (not that it's easy in any case, of course) but it seems the PCs don't care and are doubling down on the far-right messaging that contributed to their defeat last fall.

- Manitoba Public Insurance has suspended the sale of "special risk extension" coverage for truckers that operate outside the province. The Tories are trying to make political hay with this by accusing the NDP of "abandoning" truckers; funny thing is, though, MPI says that they made this move in August, while the Tories were still in power.

- The City of Winnipeg's Executive Policy Committee has voted 5-1 in favour of moving ahead with reopening Portage and Main to pedestrians. It will not be surprising to anyone that North Kildonan councillor Jeff Browaty was the holdout.

- Loblaws, like many grocery companies, has been pushing hard on self-checkout, but they're having to take measures to combat theft, like setting up gates with receipt scanners at the exits. Many customers find this to be an alienating experience, of course. Interestingly, Loblaws claims that this is largely driven by "organized crime", even as many studies find that self-checkout makes thieves of previously honest people (and that's not even counting the number of people who accidentally fail to scan an item). In other places, many chains are abandoning it entirely, finding that it's not even cutting down on their labour costs.

- Many people think of opioid addiction as a big city problem. In fact, in Canada at least, when municipalities are sorted by population, the ones with the highest incidence of hospitalization from overdoses are small cities between 50,000 and 100,000 people, and the next worst are municipalities with less than 10,000. Hospitalizations were actually least common in large cities over half a million.

News roundup, 12 March 2024

- Knowing that he can't hope to get a progressive budget that adequately taxes the wealthy and big corporations through Congress, Joe Biden appears to be trying to get the Republicans to publicly oppose such measures, hoping that they'll harm their own popularity in so doing. Worth a try, certainly, though it's hard not to think of the aphorism paraphrasing John Steinbeck, that "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

- Given that Great Salt Lake is in danger of becoming the American version of the Aral Sea, some hard decisions are likely to be necessary. Local farmers would have us believe that they support solutions to the problem, but given that extraction of water for agriculture is a big part of the problem, their protestations have to be taken with more than a few grains of the lake's namesake.

- A former longtime Boeing employee who had raised concerns about quality control issues in the production of its aircraft has apparently shot himself.

- The Youth For Christ skatepark in Winnipeg is having a hard time getting staff and volunteers as a result of negative publicity over their policies towards the LGBT* community. I dunno, maybe it should be turned over to the city, or another nonprofit, if YFC can't keep it open enough to serve it's function.

- Recent fires in apartment blocks have caused serious difficulties for the displaced tenants as they try to find new accommodation in a tight rental market. Meanwhile a commercial building is a total loss after a fire last Friday.

- Community activists are concerned with the pace of action on a potential search of the Prairie Green Landfill. The premier is being coy about the matter; presumably there are complex negotiations involved, but one can understand the activists' frustration.

- A 27 year old woman in Alberta, who has autism, is trying to access MAID, and her father is trying to get a court to stop her. She was scheduled to be put to sleep last month, but an injunction halted the process. It's an ugly scene no matter how you slice it, and I don't envy the judge who has to make a decision on this.

- In South Korea, where addressing the country's low birth rate by increasing immigration is anathema to most of the population, they're now deploying talking AI dolls to keep lonely seniors company. Some studies indicate that this has reduced depression among seniors.

News roundup, 11 March 2024

- Israel's claim that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) included Hamas militants apparently is based partly on "confessions" made when agency employees were subjected to what the Brits like to call "in-depth interrogation". In response, Canada is restoring funding to the agency after previously suspending it based on Israel's allegations. Meanwhile the US airdrop of aid supplies to Gaza appears to have actually caused more civilian deaths, as the parachutes on the aid packages failed to open. 

- Pope Francis has raised more than a few eyebrows with his suggestion that Ukraine should have “the courage to raise the white flag” and negotiate an end to the war with Russia. The most charitable interpretation is that he's viewing the conflict in pragmatic terms and has concluded that Ukraine can't win in the long run (which may well be true), but even by those criteria it's a questionable recommendation, since if Ukraine simply surrenders, rather than tying the Russians down in a long drawn-out guerilla conflict, Russia might possibly be motivated to have a go at someone else like Georgia or, much worse, the Baltic states. On the other hand, a drawn-out guerilla war would sap Russia's resources and make them less of a threat to the rest of the world (much as in the case of their attempt to conquer Afghanistan almost half a century ago). It'd be nice if there were a better role for Ukraine to play than as Europe's sacrificial anode, but that is the world we live in I guess.

- Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew remains popular with the electorate; a recent poll gives him a 63% approval rating, up six points since the last poll.

- Sarah Guillemard, the former Tory MLA for Fort Richmond, says that she was sexually assaulted by an "older former MLA" several years ago.

- Naheed Nenshi has made it official - he's off and running for the leadership of the Alberta NDP.

- At least 50 people were injured, 13 seriously enough to require hospitalization, when a Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by the Chilean carrier LATAM Airlines suffered a sudden loss of altitude on the Sydney to Auckland leg of a flight to Santiago. The airline attributed the incident to "a technical event during the flight which caused a strong movement", though no more details about the cause were made available.

- Mahikan Bus Lines, a partnership owned by several First Nations and based in The Pas, has purchased a bus terminal in Brandon that had been mothballed following Greyhound's departure from the Canadian market a few years ago. 

- Joe Biden made it through his State of the Union address, described by David Shribman as "the most important speech in his political career", without any major gaffes. The same cannot be said for the response to the speech from rookie Republican senator Katie Britt, which was ridiculed by friends and foes alike.

- Donald Trump has posted a bond in the E. Jean Carroll case in order to be able to appeal the decision, after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan refused his request for a delay.

- The number of unclaimed dead bodies is on the rise in Ontario. According to the province's Office of the Chief Coroner, 1,183 bodies went unclaimed last year, compared to 983 in 2022 and 438 in 2019.

News roundup, 7 March 2024

- The World Meteorological Association has confirmed what many have already suspected - that this past February was the warmest in recorded history. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to have a good idea why, you just have to not be an idiot or an ideologue.

- Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has endorsed Donald Trump's candidacy for president, despite having previously said that Trump was "morally responsible" for the Jan. 6 insurrection, and also despite the fact that he is stepping down from that leadership post. I guess despite the latter he still thinks he has something to lose by not endorsing Trump - his seat perhaps, or maybe his life.

- A Republican former member of Congress is warning that Trump's appeal outside the hardcore MAGA crowd might not be enough to push him over the top in November. Let's hope that's the case.

- The Manitoba NDP government is repealing a Tory-era ban on "project labour agreements". These agreements, which require non-union workers on projects be covered by the same rules as union workers, were common before 2016, and are allowed in every other province. Members of the Manitoba Building Trades agree with the repeal, however an organization called the "Merit Contractors Association", which claims to represent those non-union contractors, is not happy at the prospect of having to provide their employees with proper wages and benefits.

- The provincial Tories are trying to make hay with the Kinew government's lifting of the ban on school tax increases; the government says (I think correctly) that school boards need to catch up after years of Tory cuts. Unfortunately if you hold off on tax increases (either voluntarily or not) until you really have to, the increase will be that much harder when it comes.

- Los Angeles County has passed a law requiring that all food purchases by county departments be plant-based by default.

- A commissioner of Sussex County, New Jersey has left the Republican Party after the four other Republicans on the commission board voted to censure him for lying about his supposed military service.

- The Israeli government has ordered physicians and other healthcare workers not to cooperate with a UN commission investigating atrocities committed by Hamas in October, calling it "an anti-Israeli and antisemitic body". In other Israel/Palestine news, even Germany, which has tended to shy away from criticism of Israel owing to not wanting to remind people of their own rather problematic history with the Jewish people, is condemning new settlements planned for the West Bank.

News roundup, 6 March 2024

- To the surprise of few, Donald Trump has won a crushing victory in Super Tuesday, and as a result, Nikki Haley is suspending her campaign. Notably, she has not endorsed Trump; more notably, exit polls found that roughly a third of Republican primary voters are not guaranteeing a vote for Trump in November. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, hundreds of thousands of voters cast an "uncommitted" protest vote in their own primaries. Fair enough as a protest, as long as they don't lose sight of the bigger picture. Worryingly, though, there are signs that some voters are; for instance, even as the economy improves, Biden is still getting poor marks for that from poll respondents. And despite the Republicans' recent fundraising woes, Trump may have an ace in the hole in the form of bailouts from billionaires such as Elon Musk.

- The US Supreme Court has struck down Colorado's attempt to keep Trump off the ballot. The specifics of the ruling are interesting - while everyone on the court, including the three more liberal judges, agreed that the enforcement of the "insurrection clause" is not up to the states, the liberals argued that a federal court should be able to enforce it. Unfortunately they were outvoted by the five conservatives who insist that only Congress can rule someone ineligible.

- A recent poll concluded that a slight majority of Americans, including 62% of those who voted for Biden last time around,  oppose arms shipments to Israel while the current conflict continues.

- At the New York Times, a rift appears to be opening up over the coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. In particular, the producers of a podcast apparently questioned some of the claims made in an article from December that claimed that Hamas was "weaponizing sexual violence" for the conflict; the podcast has not seen the light of day so far, but The Intercept got wind of the dispute, leading management to circle the wagons and allegedly conduct "targeted interrogations" of journalists of Middle Eastern ancestry to try to find the source of the leak. The journalists' union has filed a grievance.

- Universities in the US are required by law to record on-campus crimes and warn their communities. Lynchburg, Virginia's Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell, has been fined $14 million for multiple failures to comply with the law, including cases involving sexual violence (I guess they didn't want to investigate those good Christians for something they'd prefer to blame others, such as the LGBT* community, for).

- The city of Miami Beach, Florida has announced that they're "breaking up with spring break". In practical terms it just means they aren't going to look the other way regarding illegal activity, and they're limiting the supply of parking and raising its price.

- France is considering penalizing the manufacturers of "fast fashion" by charging the companies up to 50% of the selling price of the items.

News roundup, 5 March 2024

- The anticipated winter storm had relatively little effect in Winnipeg, but 200km to the west, in Brandon, it was a different story, with 29cm of snow. Sucks if you live there, but probably a good thing for the province as a whole given the drought conditions we've been dealing with lately.

- While earthworms are generally a boon to agricultural soil, they are problematic in ecosystems that developed in their absence - such as the forests of northeastern North America. They consume the leaf litter that provides habitat for a lot of arthropods as well as for many plants. To make matters worse, the loss of understory plants often drives deer to consume more seedlings, reducing the prospect of the forest regenerating as it did in the past.

- Climate change doesn't seem to be as big an issue in the US as it ought to be. While polling does show many eligible voters consider climate change to be a top issue, among people who have an actual history of voting it's not so high on their priorities. 

- Donald Trump is saying that a president could be vulnerable to blackmail unless they're immune to prosecution from anything they might have done while in office.

- Winnipeg Transit is planning to replace their current electronic fare system. This may make it possible to pay your fare with a credit or debit card; apparently in other cities this has been possible for quite some time.

- A van used by Winnipeg nonprofit Street Connections to deliver harm reduction services to vulnerable persons was stolen over the weekend.

- A hardware store that has been a fixture of Winnipeg's Corydon Village neighbourhood for decades is closing after a long decline. Big box stores were a part of the problem, but the final nail in the coffin was the pandemic and the resulting surge in online shopping.

News roundup, 4 March 2024

- The response to Mayor Scott Gillingham's announcement that he wants to see the barriers come down at Portage and Main has so far been better than you might expect. The owners of most of the neighbouring buildings agree with the decision; some folks, though, are concerned about the fates of the businesses that draw much of their customer base from users of the underground concourse.

- Donald Trump faces yet another trial this summer over the classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. With luck it could be completed before November, not that this will stop most of his sycophants from voting for him.

- Super Tuesday is this coming week. Most of the states involved use a winner take all system, meaning that it's Nikki Haley's last realistic chance of avoiding annihilation (and a pretty slim chance at that).

- Desjardins Group, North America's largest federation of credit unions, has announced that they will no longer issue mortgages for properties at high risk of flooding. 

- Haiti is under a state of emergency after armed gangs stormed a prison, releasing around 3,700 prisoners.

- Germany is accusing Russia of eavesdropping on a military conference call in which the war in Ukraine was discussed. Of course, that's kind of what espionage is all about...

- Transnistria, that breakaway region of Moldova that looks like a Soviet theme park, is requesting protection from Russia, accusing the Moldovan state of "genocide" against its people.

- The city of Ithaca, NY is pushing hard to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to heat buildings. They have set a goal to eliminate these emissions by 2030.

- Do you use your phone for online banking? I don't. If you do, make sure your phone doesn't get stolen, or at the very least have it well secured.

News roundup, 1 March 2024

- The Center for Renewing America, a think tank with ties to Donald Trump, is overtly calling for a Christian nationalist revamp of government. Funny thing is, Christian nationalists are really getting their knickers in a knot about the fact that someone had the audacity to report on this.

- A lawyer who has previously worked with Trump says that the former president is very embarrassed about his inability to come up with the bond money in the E. Jean Carroll case. Assuming Trump is actually capable of shame, it would make sense that not being as rich as he's supposed to be would be the thing to bring it on. Potentially even better news, though, is the fact that his party is worried about their fundraising prospects for the fall election.

- A bill working its way through the Kentucky legislature will, if passed, do away with many basic rights that workers have, including the right to lunch and rest breaks, the right to overtime pay if you work seven days in a row, and the right to be paid for the time taken to get to a job site. It also decreases the statute of limitations for the violation of whatever remaining rights workers have.

- A report commissioned by the City of Winnipeg has concluded that the repairs necessary at Portage and Main would cost some $73 million if the present pedestrian-free configuration is to be maintained, as well as creating several years of traffic disruption that would likely be far worse than any disruption that might result from reopening it to pedestrians. Faced with this, Mayor Scott Gillingham now says that he favours reopening it and closing down the underground concourse, which the report says would cost only around $60 million. Suburbanites who only encounter the intersection on their commutes will not be happy, but oh well.

- A community meeting on Toronto's cycling plan was held in the suburban district of Etobicoke (the Ford brothers' home turf), hosted by the local city councillor, Stephen Holyday. The meeting devolved into chaos after a presenter went into an unhinged anti-cyclist rant, to a chorus of cheers from the audience, and then said "Personally, I'd like to run them [cyclists] over". Reportedly city staff were berated at the meeting as well, and some members of the general public who attended were also a bit uncomfortable with these antics. Despite this, Holyday apparently made no attempt to stop the speaker from rousing the rabble. Everything I hear about Etobicoke, in fact, makes it sound like the worst that Canadian suburbia has to offer.

- A group of young adults who got lost while trying to find the party to which they'd been invited in rural New York state turned into the wrong driveway. The resident of the property, like any good red-blooded rural American would, opened fire with a shotgun as the vehicles were leaving, killing a 20 year old passenger in one of the vehicles. Unfortunately for him, the victim was a white girl, and he was therefore convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison.

- A number of Indians who answered an ad from a Dubai-based recruitment agency thinking they were going to get jobs in the UAE learned to their dismay that they had been duped into joining the Russian army and sent to Ukraine instead. Well, I guess they both begin with U...