Monday, September 16, 2024

News roundup, 16 Sept 2024

- Another person apparently tried to kill Donald Trump yesterday, but was chased off before he could get a shot off at the former president. The suspect has been captured alive; the impact on public opinion remains to be seen. It doesn't speak well for the political culture in that country, in any case.

- Several schools as well as state and municipal offices in Springfield, Ohio were closed on Thursday over a bomb threat. The threat was reportedly related to Trump's rather strange claims about the dietary practices of Haitian immigrants.

- The byelections in Elmwood-Transcona and LaSalle-Emard-Verdun happen today. The latter one has a ballot with no less than 91 candidates thanks to an organization called the Longest Ballot Committee, who say they recruited numerous candidates as a protest measure against the first-past-the-post electoral system. While the system is very much worth protesting, I'm not sure if this is the most effective way to do so. And you can be sure that if the Liberals hold onto that riding, but the results are delayed as a result of the committee's stunt, people will use this to claim that the election was rigged.

- Pierre Poilievre still refuses to go through the necessary procedures to get a security clearance that would allow him to read the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) report on foreign interference in Canadian politics, despite the fact that 60% of his own party's supporters would like him to do so. He says this is because he would be unable to publicly discuss details of the report. Of course he can't publicly discuss those things anyway, and some in this Reddit thread suspect ulterior motives.

- Two new candidates have expressed an intent to compete with former Winnipeg Blue Bomber and current Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan for the leadership of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party. Trevor Sprague, a tax consultant and onetime Canadian Alliance candidate, announced last week that he is considering a run, and hotel operator and onetime federal Conservative candidate Wally Daudrich made a similar announcement shortly after.

- A woman in Norfolk County, Ontario was charged with assault after what she says was an inadvertent squirting of her neighbour with a water pistol while playing with her child. Folks on Reddit are insinuating that the neighbour in question has a long history with his neighbours of calling the authorities over trivial and petty matters; in this thread as well as this one it is further alleged that the woman's ex-husband is an OPP officer.

- An eastbound Ford F-150 left the road just inside the Perimeter and annihilated a bus shelter and the person inside it as well as a utility pole and another vehicle before running into a gas station. Three other people were injured.

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