Tuesday, April 16, 2024

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.

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