Thursday, August 15, 2024

News roundup, 15 Aug 2024

- Canada's two main railways, Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) are both in talks with their unions, and a strike and/or lockout is expected if they don't have a deal by the 22nd of August. The impact on industry in Canada as well as in the US could be dramatic.

- WestJet expects flight cancellations "for the foreseeable future" after 16 of their aircraft, representing some 10% of their entire fleet, were heavily damaged in a hailstorm in Calgary earlier this month.

- A new political party called the "Canadian Future Party", billing itself as a "centrist" party for "politically homeless" voters, has just been launched. The thing is, Canada already has a centrist party - it's called the Liberal Party. The interim party president is a former Conservative Party activist, which gives a clue to how they claim to position themselves; a moderate centre-right party might seem "centrist" if you think of the Liberals as "left". In any case, though, I don't see this party going anywhere of significance.

- Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American dual citizen who was arrested on a family visit last January, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for treason. The "treason" in this case consisted of donating $51.80 to a charitable organization that says it is focused on humanitarian aid and disaster relief; the Russians claim, though, that the organization provides arms to the Ukrainian military.

- Winnipeg has long been known as the "Slurpee capital of the world" despite not having suitable Slurpee weather for a sizeable chunk of the year. The reason is likely the fact that we have a huge number of 7-Eleven locations; up to ten of them could be facing closure in the near future, though. The chain attributes this to increased theft cutting too much into profit margins. Some folks in this Reddit thread, though, think that this might just be cover for questionable franchising decisions, especially given that some of the closing locations are almost new.

- Moosomin is a small town on the Trans-Canada just west of the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border. The town is trying to resist the global trend of declining small-town and rural populations by paying people $30,000 to move there. I guess if you had a full-time remote job that could be attractive.

- The organizers of Texas' State Fair are prohibiting guns on the fairgrounds following a shooting at last year's event. The state's attorney general is not pleased with this, and is threatening to take them to court if they don't reverse their decision.

No comments: