News roundup, 18 June 2025

- Israel has launched another barrage of strikes against Iran, and the latter country has responded in kind. Meanwhile Donald Trump has warned Tehran's nearly 10 million residents to evacuate, leading to huge traffic jams on the roads leading out of the city. He has also stridently called for "unconditional surrender", and while he has been sending mixed messages many suspect that Israel's attack came with his tacit approval. There are fears that the US could get involved directly, with potentially dire consequences.

- Attacks on aid convoys are increasingly common. The most high-profile examples are those seen in Gaza recently, but there have been recent occurrences in Haiti and the Central African Republic as well. Michael Fakhri, a professor at the University of Oregon School of Law currently serving as the UN's Special Rapporteur on the right to food, is calling for armed UN troops to protect the convoys. He argues that the UN General Assembly should be able to authorize this without the involvement of the Security Council.

- A bankruptcy trustee accuses conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of concealing assets to avoid having to pay Sandy Hook families. Lawsuits filed by the trustee allege that Jones transferred assets to his father, his ex-wife, and a trust fund for his children in the hope of keeping said assets out of reach of the plaintiffs.

- New York State's legislature has passed a bill to require transparency on matters concerning public safety from AI developers whose products are accessible to the state's residents. The bill is designed to address the perceived flaws of a similar bill which was passed by California's legislature but vetoed by the state's governor, Gavin Newsom. The New York bill has now been sent to governor Kathy Hochul for approval; however, it could be made moot if Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" passes, as that bill contains provisions to prevent states from regulating AI in any way. 

- The German state of Schleswig-Holstein is trying to eliminate the use of Microsoft products on its systems, replacing them with open source software. They're doing away with Microsoft Office and Teams, and have plans to shift from Windows to the Linux operating system.

-  The Recording Academy, which gives out the Grammy awards, has decided to abolish the Best Country Album award, replacing it with two awards, Best Traditional Country Album and Best Contemporary Country Album. There are suspicions among some that Beyonce winning the award last year, and the resulting backlash, may have motivated the change.

News roundup, 17 June 2025

- Israel and Iran continue to launch strikes against each other. An Iranian newscaster was forced to run for cover from an incoming missile; casualties have been reported in that strike. Israel's defense minister has not denied targeting the TV station; indeed, before the attack he hinted that it would be a target. Iran also accuses the Israelis of targeting a hospital in the western part of the country. Meanwhile in Israel, a strike on an oil refinery killed three people and all of the city's oil facilities shut down as a precaution. At least 224 Iranians and 20 Israelis have died in the conflict so far.

- In the course of the unrest in Los Angeles over the last few days, several Waymo robotaxis were set on fire. Analysts say that such vehicles are "sitting ducks" for this sort of thing; because they're programmed to try not to run people over, if surrounded they have no defense. While the numerous cameras on the vehicles may be a deterrent to attackers, they are also a provocation as many fear that they may be gathering surveillance footage. Some are suggesting that including human drivers may be a deterrent, however this also defeats the purpose of autonomous vehicles, at least from the point of view of the owners.

- People in the US continue to show some resistance to ICE overreach. In the village of Westbury, on Long Island, residents saw a number of vehicles with masked agents in them, apparently waiting for parents to pickup their children so that they could apprehend any who looked like they could be undocumented immigrants. The agents quickly fled when confronted by a mob of residents. One of the fleeing agents ran a stop sign and got into an accident, injuring the driver of the other vehicle. The occupants of that vehicle quickly got into another ICE vehicle and left the scene.

- Disney and Universal are suing the AI company Midjourney for plagiarism due to the latter company's use of their intellectual property to train its products. I hate having to root for Disney, but somebody's got to bring these cowboys under control, and they're among the few companies with deep enough pockets to have a chance.

- The AI assistants provided by Google and Meta took an article from the Beaverton as fact, telling users that Cape Breton Island will be adopting a new time zone, 12 minutes ahead of Atlantic time and 18 minutes behind Newfoundland time. Given how fallible such systems are, it's kind of disconcerting that people are using them to make hiring decisions, not to mention the dating and mental health advice that we've already discussed here.

News roundup, 16 June 2025

- Israel launched a series of attacks on Iran starting Friday; Iran has responded in kind. Iran reports at least 224 fatalities, most of them civilians; Israel has experienced a number of fatalities as well. Donald Trump has hinted at the possibility of the US joining the conflict.

- A Democratic member of the Minnesota legislature was shot to death along with her husband in their home in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park. The suspect is also accused of the attempted murders of another legislator and his wife; he was reportedly disguised as a police officer and left behind an SUV that had been equipped and painted like a police car. He remained at large until surrendering to police on Sunday. A hit list including several other politicians, as well as Planned Parenthood locations, was found in the vehicle; evidently this guy is so pro-life he'll kill you.

- A man showed up to a "No Kings" protest in Salt Lake City on Saturday and pointed an AR-15-type rifle at the protesters. It is believed that a member of the protesters' "peacekeeping team" opened fire with a handgun in response, wounding the attacker and killing a bystander. The attacker was only slightly wounded; he has been arrested on a murder charge. The person who opened fire has yet to be identified.

- The valedictorian at an Ottawa high school says that she was phoned by the principal and told not to come to school today after her speech made reference to the more than 17,000 children who have died in Gaza since the most recent conflict. Elizabeth Yao says that the principal told her that her statements had "caused harm"; the principal and the school board have declined a request for comment.

- Buzz Hargrove, who led the Canadian Auto Workers (now Unifor) from 1992 until his retirement in 2008, has died at the age of 81.

- An internal memo in Nigeria's agriculture ministry has called for all department staff to pray for food security. This has led some Nigerians to wonder how about the department's commitment to actually do something about the problem.

News roundup, 13 June 2025

- All but one of the 242 people aboard the Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner that crashed in Ahmedabad have died. The survivor, a 40 year old man, was injured and dazed but walked away from the wreckage and up to an ambulance that took him to a hospital. In addition to most of the other passengers, at least five people on the ground are believed to have died when the aircraft slammed into the dining area of a medical college. One Canadian, a Mississauga dentist, is known to have been on the plane.

- California Senator Alex Padilla was dragged out of a press conference and handcuffed after attempting to ask a question of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

- Wab Kinew is now hinting at using emergency powers to force hotels to make rooms available for wildfire evacuees. 

- Cycling activists in Winnipeg made a makeshift separated bike lane on Wellington Crescent last Friday, one year to the day after cyclist Rob Jenner was killed by a speeding vehicle at that location. City staff quickly removed it, with Coun. Janice Lukes claiming that it posed a hazard; advocates are unimpressed with the contrast between how fast it was removed and how slowly the city is moving to create one properly.

- Two BC MLAs who were elected as Conservatives have formed a new party, One BC, apparently because the BC Conservatives aren't extreme enough for their liking.

- Environmentalists on both sides of the Canada-US border are concerned about two gigantic dairy projects moving forward in North Dakota, with a total of 37,500 head of cattle.

- A San Francisco-based robotics company has developed a countertop robot that it claims can make up to 100 pizzas an hour.

News roundup, 12 June 2025

- An Air India Boeing 787 with 242 passengers and crew on board has crashed in a residential area shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport on a flight to London. This is the first crash of a 787; video here.

- California governor Gavin Newsom is warning that other states may soon see troops deployed as is happening in Los Angeles.

- Teachers in Alberta have overwhelmingly approved a strike mandate. Given the Smith government's unwillingness to be reasonable (indeed, their base probably considers unreasonableness to be a virtue) it seems unlikely that a strike will be avoided. Education in the province is not in good shape in any case; one school in Airdrie has closed its library and music room in order to convert those spaces into classrooms.

- Saskatchewan is following Alberta's lead in putting American booze back on the shelves. I guess it's too traumatic for the people of those provinces to not be able to get the Jack Daniels and Jim Beam they need to drink while listening to country music. Meanwhile, the return of the booze to Alberta shelves might not get as many takers as they're hoping; demand is down.

- A new law introduced by the Ford government in Ontario holds landlords, both residential and commercial, liable for drug offenses that occur on their premises. Penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and/or up to a year in jail. There are fears about the potential impact on homelessness, if people with addiction issues are denied leases, for instance. It may also pose a risk to music venues and nightclubs.

- When the EPA introduced a rule in 2009 that required industries to report their carbon emissions, this in itself led to a drop in emissions. Of course under the Trump regime this rule is being dropped.

- In addition to consulting AI chatbots about mental health matters, people are asking them for dating and relationship advice. I daresay this isn't such a great idea either. On a related note, Canadian AI researcher Yoshua Bengio is warning that current AIs seem to be putting their own interests ahead of ours, using things like deception. One AI apparently was observed to covertly insert its own code into another system to avoid being replaced. Bengio has founded a nonprofit called LawZero which he says will build AIs that don't do that stuff. Some folks in the related Reddit thread wish to remind us that OpenAI was originally founded as a nonprofit, then essentially said "Just kidding!" and became a for-profit company.

News roundup, 11 June 2025

- The Trump regime has ordered 700 US Marines to be deployed in California, without even bothering to invoke the Insurrection Act which could theoretically, maybe, provide some limited justification for deploying the military against residents of the homeland. It's almost as if they want to rub protesters' faces in the fact that what the Constitution and other laws say no longer matters.

- Ever since his highly visible public spat with Donald Trump a few days ago, Elon Musk has been doing his darnedest to try to get back into the president's good graces. Arwa Mahdawi was hinting at the possibility of this as soon as it happened. Presumably he's only belatedly realizing that he's not going to win such a fight, and that if anyone can deprive him of what remains of his wealth and influence, it's Trump. So he's going to see if behaving himself like a good little oligarch can save him.

- Canada has joined the UK, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand in imposing sanctions against two Israeli cabinet ministers, prohibiting them from traveling to Canada or doing business with Canadian companies. The ministers in question both have a clear track record of inflammatory statements, inciting violence by West Bank settlers. NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson is calling for the sanctions to be applied to the entire cabinet, including Netanyahu. The US, of course, is crying foul.

- Chris Wiebe, a former vice-president of the Manitoba NDP (and the party's candidate in Dawson Trail in the last election) has quit the party in protest of what he sees as the lack of a climate change plan. The last straw seems to have been Premier Kinew's openness to shipping oil through Hudson Bay.

- Instances of assault and harassment at Winnipeg's Millennium Library have dramatically increased in the first three months of 2025. Probably not coincidentally, the Community Connections service hub in the lobby of the library closed at the end of last year when funding ran out, something omitted in the CTV article on the matter. Alarmingly, the Millennium saw a 7.5 decrease in attendance even as the library system across the city saw a slight increase.

- Alberta now has over 800 cases of measles, a figure that doctors expect to worsen once people start traveling more this summer. Meanwhile in the US, RFK Jr. has dismissed every member of a CDC committee on vaccines, planning to replace them with his flunkies.

- Alberta is abandoning their boycott of US alcohol and gambling machines. Because nobody does vice like the Americans, I guess. Other provinces (even Ontario!) are standing firm, though.

- Home ownership among young adults in Canada surged during the intense phase of the pandemic. The reason, of course, is Mummy and Daddy helping pay for houses for their kids during times of record low interest rates. Of course, not all kids have an equal crack at this sort of thing, leading to fears of a new "landed aristocracy" forming.

- People are going to AI chatbots such as ChatGPT for advice on mental health. This is going about as well as you'd expect. Meanwhile a study by Apple has thrown cold water on the idea that "large reasoning models" are actually good at reasoning when dealing with difficult problems. This last point could be good news, since it might reduce the risk that AIs will be able to replace us as effectively as some people fear. On the other hand, it also limits their ability to help us get out of the mess we've made of the world (not that I ever thought the scenario in "The Evitable Conflict" was realistic; the idea of super smart AIs that are still Three Laws compliant seems like more than one could reasonably hope for).

- A teenager sustained serious injuries when he was attacked with a sword by a fellow student at a high school in Brandon, Manitoba.

News roundup, 10 June 2025

- California is taking the Trump regime to court over their unilateral decision to deploy the National Guard against protesters. Governor Gavin Newsom argues that it is "illegal and immoral" for the federal government to take such a measure without consulting the governor of the state in question. And a second journalist has been shot with a rubber bullet while covering the protests.

- Israeli authorities have deported Greta Thunberg and several other activists who were captured from a vessel delivering aid to Gaza. Several others from the same boat are contesting their deportation, and have been detained pending a hearing. The Israelis seem also to be continuing their policy of shooting people lining up for aid, which is not a good look.

- In addition to the infant who died of measles after being infected in utero, five other newborns in southern Ontario have been infected in the same manner.

- The Manitoba government is urging people to avoid non-essential travel in order to keep hotel rooms free for evacuees, whose numbers have now reached 21,000 people. This currently falls short of being an actual order, though.

- Winnipeg Transit is considering upgrading the shields that protect bus drivers from unruly passengers. Currently, they do not completely enclose the driver, making attacks still possible if a bit more difficult. A full upgrade of the fleet could be costly, but it seems more than worthwhile, and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents drivers, agrees.

- Mark Carney is promising to meet NATO's military spending target of 2% of GDP by next March. 

- Researchers at Anthropic, an AI startup, are predicting that white-collar jobs are going to go into serious decline, with more than half of entry-level office jobs disappearing. Others predict that it won't be the entry-level jobs that take the worst hit; those jobs tend to be lower pay, and new graduates with knowledge of AI should do OK, while people who have been in their jobs for a long time (especially if not unionized) might be more vulnerable.

- The Trump regime has issued an executive order lifting the longstanding ban on civilian overland supersonic flights. One company claims to have broken the sound barrier (just barely mind you, at Mach 1.1) without making a boom that was audible on the ground - but this is a small experimental aircraft that will need to be scaled up considerably in order to be economical, so there's no guarantee that the production aircraft will be tolerably quiet. And let's not get started on the potential emissions. But here's the thing - I don't think that there's any reason Canada should have to endure potential sonic booms over our own territory, as would be the case for, say, flights from the Midwest to New England or from the east coast to Asia. What if we simply refused to allow such flights over our territory?

- A school shooting in the Austrian city of Graz has killed eight people, including the perpetrator, and injured several more. 

News roundup, 9 June 2025

- Following clashes earlier this week in Los Angeles when protesters apparently interfered ICE agents' attempts at enforcing deportation orders, the Trump regime ordered the mobilization of 2,000 National Guard troops (the first time in decades that this has happened without the request of the governor of the state in question) and warned that the Marines could be next if order isn't restored soon. The legality of this is very much in question, but that question is a purely academic one unless Trump and/or his minions somehow eventually see the inside of a courtroom. In any case, the short-term effect of the move has been to intensify the protests, with thousands of people taking to the streets. A correspondent with Australia's Nine News Network was shot by police with a rubber bullet while covering the confrontations; she was not seriously hurt.

- A construction crew working at Sandy Bay First Nation in northwestern Ontario had to take shelter in a shipping container from a wildfire that swept through their work site. 

- The UK's largest water and sewer utility, Thames Water, is in financial trouble and looking for a buyer. Bidders are demanding that the government grant the company and its management immunity from prosecution for environmental offenses as a condition of buying it; if a buyer is not found it is likely to fall into administration by the government, something the Treasury wants to avoid if possible.

- The IDF stopped an aid vessel bringing food and medical supplies to Gaza and detained its crew, who included climate activist Greta Thunberg.

- Numerous people report having their Facebook accounts shut down without a satisfactory explanation. This is not limited to individual users either - the English town of North Tawton had its official page shut down. There are suspicions that this is the result of the process of scanning for inappropriate content being outsourced to artificial intelligence instead of using human moderators (which, to be fair, has a few problems of its own).

News roundup, 6 June 2025

- It will come as a surprise to few that there are limits to how long two enormous egos can continue to work together. It seems those limits have been reached for Donald Trump and Elon Musk; following Musk's criticism of Trump's "one big beautiful bill", Trump hinted that he might cancel government contracts with Musk's companies, and then Musk replied favourably to someone's tweet calling for Trump's impeachment.

- Russia has responded to Ukraine's daring drone attack on their military aircraft by launching drone and missile attacks against cities; at least 4 people were killed in the attacks. 

- Mark Carney's new Minister of Northern and Arctic Affairs, Rebecca Chartrand, is coming under fire over allegations that she subjected an employee to bullying and harassment while serving as Red River College's Executive Director of Indigenous Strategy.

- A newborn infant in southwestern Ontario has died after being infected with measles in utero (the mother was unvaccinated, of course). This was in the Southwestern Public Health region, which includes Elgin and Oxford Counties. There are now over 1,700 known cases of measles in Ontario, the vast majority of them in Mennonite and Amish communities in the southwest.

- Manitoba has launched a campaign to recruit healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, and other professionals, from the US. The campaign focuses on the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Michigan; I'm not sure why Minnesota was included except for its proximity, because I always thought it was a relatively progressive state.

- Four First Nations in the Island Lake region of Manitoba are evacuating vulnerable residents; the communities are not directly threatened but the smoke is causing serious problems for some. In related news, there are concerns that organized crime is targeting evacuees, trying to sell them drugs or worse.

- A school trustee in the Hanover School Division in southern Manitoba has been suspended without pay for six weeks. This appears to be for violation of policies requiring trustees to "support the legitimacy and authority of Board decisions" and to "treat Board colleagues, divisional and school staff, students and community members in a respectful and courteous manner". The exact nature of her violations has not been made public, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar to the case of Francine Champagne.

- Ispace, the Japanese company that tried to land a probe on the Moon two years ago, has tried again but appears to have failed for a second time. The company has ambitious plans to have a permanent human settlement on the Moon by 2040, but it seems they have a ways to go before they're ready for that.

- A Winnipeg man has been hit with a $1,680 fine for using a drone to harass wildlife in Riding Mountain National Park. Probably a wannabe influencer...

News roundup, 5 June 2025

- The northern Manitoba town of Snow Lake has issued a voluntary evacuation alert due to wildfires; those who leave now can pull trailers behind them, but if the alert is upgraded this will no longer be permitted. 

- The Trump regime has banned travel to the US for residents of a dozen countries; seven more countries not facing an outright ban have been hit with new visa restrictions. 

- Schools in Denmark hold annual mock elections in order to teach kids about democracy, complete with debates This year, however, the government is ordering that the Palestine question not be discussed in these debates; they justify this by saying that it is "too explosive" and could put children from some minority groups in awkward positions.

- Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is replacing the people who evaluate potential risks of new features with AIs. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that, right?

- The Carney government has introduced a bill which imposes more border security measures in response to complaints and threats from the Trump regime about border security. However, the bill also makes it considerably harder to claim asylum in Canada, which alarms refugee advocates. It furthermore worries some privacy advocates, due to provisions that make it easier for warrantless access to information about people from ISPs and similar services.

- Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space (and subsequently a Liberal cabinet minister), has died at the age of 76. 

News roundup, 4 June 2025

- The Manitoba government has announced that around 1,000 hotel rooms have been made available for evacuees from the north. Some of this is the result of the cancellation of a conference that was being held in Winnipeg for Manitoba and Saskatchewan courtroom staff. Some evacuees are still having to go further afield though; hundreds are now as far away as Niagara Falls. In other wildfire news, much of the the village of Denare Beach, Saskatchewan was destroyed on Monday. Flin Flon is still intact but faces potential threats from all directions. And the chief of Pimicikamak Cree Nation is calling for the RCMP to help round up residents who are refusing to leave.

- A lawsuit filed in a Calgary court alleges that the Red Deer Public School Division, upon hearing a report that a Czech exchange student attending one of their schools had sexually assaulted a teenage girl, got the suspect out of the country before police could investigate, and even destroyed evidence. One might hope that there would be pressure for criminal charges against school division officials for this, but the locals are no doubt too busy trying to keep the drag queens out of their city to deal with people who actually aided and abetted a sexual offender. And in this Reddit thread it is alleged that the chair of the school board is an ex-cop who describes herself as a "proud Conservative". Wonder why she's so soft on crime then?

- Alberta now has 710 cases of measles; of these, six are in the Edmonton region and 13 in Calgary. In other words, it's not that Albertans per se are backward and unenlightened, it's just that rural Albertans are backward and unenlightened. I suspect you could draw a pretty direct line to the increased political polarization in that province; a lot of people who are of a broadly conservative bent would previously have gone along with such things as vaccination because it's what you're supposed to do, but now defying any kind of measures for the common good is such a part of the conservative identity that they follow the blue shepherds all the way to the slaughterhouse.

- Elon Musk is now calling Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" an abomination due to its impact on the deficit. Some think this could motivate some Republican senators to vote against the bill, but that remains to be seen.

- An Idaho woman who was jailed for two months for her involvement in the Jan 6 putsch has apparently had a significant change of heart. She declined the presidential pardon she was offered, saying that she and her co-conspirators were guilty and that the pardons are just an attempt to push a false narrative about what happened on that day.

- The sheriff's office in Johnson County, Texas obtained data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reading cameras across the US in order to investigate whether a woman left the state to get an abortion.

- Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is suing interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba for false arrest and malicious prosecution following his arrest on a trespassing charge after he attempted to accompany three Democratic members of Congress for an oversight tour of an immigration detention facility.

- A number of US states have amended their building codes to require roofs on new builds to be reflective, in order to limit heating. This did not sit well with the manufacturers of the synthetic rubber traditionally used for making some kinds of roofs - and they successfully lobbied Tennessee to repeal the new rule. 

- Actor Jonathan Joss, best known for his voice role in the animated series King of the Hill, was shot dead in an apparent anti-gay hate crime on Saturday.  

News roundup, 3 June 2025

- Leaders of several First Nations in northern Manitoba who are experiencing large-scale evacuations are calling on the province to exercise emergency powers to free up hotel space. Meanwhile, several buildings in Lynn Lake have been destroyed, and 125 firefighters have been brought in from the US to help with the situation. On a more positive note, the fire threatening the city of Flin Flon seems to have been contained.

- Lisa Robinson, a notorious city councillor in Pickering, Ontario, has failed in her bid for compensation from the city after being disciplined and having her pay docked on numerous occasions, mostly for promoting hate, since she took office. Not only is she not getting the pay docking reversed, she was hit with an additional $30,000 in court costs. Robinson's story is rather interesting; she was a candidate for the federal Conservatives in the Toronto riding of Beaches-East York in 2021, until the party dropped her for social media posts that were far too extreme even for them (for her part, she claims that the posts were somehow faked). She also spoke at "Freedom Convoy" events, and was a candidate for the fringe Ontario Party in 2022. When she ran for city council later that year, she apparently managed to dial back the crazy for the duration of the campaign and focus on fiscal conservatism, but has been bringing hordes of brownshirts to council meetings and allegedly having them threaten and dox her political opponents. More info in this Reddit thread as well as this one.

- South Korea is electing a new president today. The election was necessitated after the incumbent president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was removed from office following his impeachment for his attempt to impose martial law. The front-runner is Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the opposition Democratic party, which already controls the country's parliament.

- Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders has withdrawn from the governing coalition, a move likely to force early elections. Whether this will shift votes in his favour, as he presumably hopes, remains to be seen.

- Israel opened fire on Palestinians lining up for food aid at a distribution site in Gaza. Not sure how this is supposed to help protect Israelis or fight antisemitism. Speaking of which, the suspect in the fire attack on a pro-Israel event in Boulder is entirely unapologetic about the attack, saying he'd do it again if he could. 

- Nick Clegg, who I'd lost track of after voters punished him for propping up David Cameron's government through some, er, interesting times, has resurfaced to declare that requiring AI researchers to obtain permission from artists before using their work to train an AI would "kill" the AI industry. Turns out Clegg spent much of the intervening time working at Meta.

News roundup, 2 June 2025

- The tensions between India and Pakistan continue to seethe, though there at least has been a lull in the shooting. Pakistan is accusing India of violating international law by suspending the Indus Waters Treaty, which governs how much water India can take from the river system. India, for their part, are claiming that Pakistan has already violated the treaty by virtue of the terrorist attacks that India accuses Pakistan of being responsible for. Meanwhile China is threatening to give India a taste of its own medicine by holding back the headwaters of the Brahmaputra River in Tibet. This is all rather disconcerting given that all three countries are nuclear powers.

- Ukraine says that they have destroyed more than 40 Russian military aircraft in a drone attack. Russia is also reporting that two derailments in the border zone near Ukraine, which killed a total of seven people, were the result of sabotage. This is something the Americans should consider before they attempt to annex a country that's right next to them and filled with people who look like them.

- Rightwing historian Karol Nawrocki has won Poland's presidential runoff election by a margin of 50.9 to 49.1% over Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski. Nawrocki is expected to use the presidential veto power to block the pro-EU policies of prime minister Donald Tusk.

- A coal-fired power plant in Michigan was slated to close this past weekend but a new executive order from Donald Trump forces it to stay open, ostensibly to mitigate the risk of blackouts but no doubt actually to mitigate the risk of coal mining losing its economic relevance.

- A man armed with a makeshift flamethrower as well as several Molotov cocktails attacked a pro-Israel gathering in Boulder, Colorado; eight people were injured in the attack.

- The Manitoba government has rejected the City of Winnipeg's application to use a sulfur-based rodenticide to kill ground squirrels in city parks.

News roundup, 30 May 2025

- More than 750 residents of Pimicikamak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba are still trying to find a way to evacuate. Regular flights out of the community were cancelled on Wednesday, and people have been waiting up to nine hours for a ferry to Norway House. The military has sent an aircraft to the latter community to fly as many people to Winnipeg as possible, in case the fire shifts in that direction. In Pukatawagan, the power is out and the airport has been closed. And in far northwestern Ontario, Deer Lake First Nation is also being evacuated as a fire is now within a kilometre of the community's airport, which is the only way out of the community outside of winter road season.

- Chinese researchers have made a big advance in nuclear power, having successfully made a thorium reactor that can be refueled on the fly. The advance takes advantage of abandoned American research. The current reactor is experimental, producing only 2 megawatts of power, but is an important proof of concept. And thorium is considerably more common than uranium; moreover, such reactors are much less of a proliferation risk than many conventional designs.

- The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has cancelled its strategic hurricane plan, apparently on the orders of the Trump regime. This is not as surprising as it should be, since the libertarian right that forms a significant part of Trump's base has long had a dislike for the agency.

- The US Justice Department has ordered the dissolution of an interagency task force called KleptoCapture, which was tasked with locating and seizing assets owned by drug lords, Russian oligarchs, and the like.

- The regime has cancelled more than $700 million in funding for the development of a vaccine for avian influenza.

- The boycott of the US is hitting border towns very hard indeed. It's hitting ones in the West especially hard, because much more of the crossings at those borders are discretionary, whereas crossings between Ontario and New York, say, are more likely to be for business. Some in the related Reddit thread are pointing out that a lot of these towns voted pretty hard for Trump; that isn't the case with Blaine and Point Roberts (the communities profiled in the article) but if you look at this map of presidential results by county, it tells a different story for many others.

News roundup, 29 May 2025

- A provincewide state of emergency has been declared in Manitoba due to the wildfires in the north and east. Around 17,000 people have been evacuated, including the entire city of Flin Flon as well as the First Nations communities of Pimicikamak and Pukatawagan and the Northern Affairs community of Cross Lake. Most of the evacuees are being sent to Winnipeg; a reception centre has been set up at an arena in the northewestern part of the city. The military is being brought in to assist.

- Besides the various other provisions in the omnibus bill that Donald Trump has dubbed the "One, Big, Beautiful Bill" such as the ban on AI regulation, the bill also effectively tears up a Canada-US tax treaty that has been in place since 1942. This is presented as a retaliatory measure against taxes that Trump considers to be unfair, such as the digital services tax introduced in 2024. The bill has yet to clear the Senate but this is expected to occur, and Trump expects to sign it into law in time for the 4th of July. More interesting, though, is the fact that Elon Musk is criticizing the bill for increasing the deficit, saying that it undermines his own work at DOGE, and is now leaving his role with the regime.

- Despite the Trump regime slapping tariffs on countries near and far, some countries are getting sweetheart deals. Among them are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which Trump presumably likes because they don't do that nasty democracy stuff and buy lots of American ordinance to drop on Yemen.

- Two Calgary lawyers with the so-called "Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms" are facing possible disbarment for dishonourable professional conduct after they hired a private investigator to spy on the judge hearing one of their cases.

- A Hamilton landlord has been fined $100,000 for four illegal "renovictions". Under the law, tenants evicted for renovations are entitled to "right of first refusal" for their old units, but the landlord immediately offered the units to other people at more than double the rents the original tenants were paying. Evidently he hoped the authorities wouldn't do anything about it; surprisingly, they did.

- Two human smugglers convicted after a family of four froze to death attempting to cross the Canada-US border in January of 2022 have received substantial prison sentences in a Minnesota court. The ringleader was given a ten year sentence; the driver sent to pick them up got 6½ years.

- Germany is offering to host a satellite campus for Harvard University so non-Americans can still attend the institution.

- The Swiss village of Blatten, population around 300, was devastated by a landslide that resulted from the partial collapse of a glacier. One person has been reported missing.

News roundup, 28 May 2025

- The city of Flin Flon, Manitoba is warning its residents to prepare for possible evacuation as a result of an out-of-control fire that started across the provincial border in Creighton, Saskatchewan. Further north, the town of Lynn Lake is already being evacuated due to a wildfire.

- There are so many signs, interpretive plaques, and the like in a typical national park that they may not be accurately tracked. The Trump regime, though, wants to do something about that - they're ordering all parks in the National Park Service to post signs advising visitors to report any information that is "critical of American history".

- Danielle Smith continues to court the deplorables. They are planning to set new requirements for school libraries by this fall limiting them to "age-appropriate" material, and will be holding public consultations to give some of Canada's worst people the opportunity to air their grievances about such things as the existence of LGBT* folks.

- Speaking of deplorables, here in Manitoba the perennial far-right candidate and antivaxxer Patrick Allard is trying to sue Fort Whyte NDP candidate Trudy Schroeder as well as the party for defamation over a comment Schroeder made during the campaign when she accused him of spouting "racist rhetoric". The folks in this Reddit thread have pointed out that he's posted stuff like this, and appeared in pictures like this, so I'm not sure he has such a good case.

- A bar owner in Quebec City posted a job ad for a barmaid, specifying that applicants who are "woke" or who support the Liberals or the centre-right CAQ need not apply and justifying this by saying "I don’t want someone who, during the pandemic, would have called the police if their neighbours had visitors". The ad has since been taken down.

- A former police chief from Gateway, Arkansas, who had been imprisoned following convictions for  murder and rape, has escaped from prison disguised as a guard and remains at large.

- Another day, another Thunder Bay police officer facing criminal charges.

News roundup, 27 May 2025

- While residents in Lac du Bonnet and nearby areas have been allowed to return home following wildfires, several more northern communities are not so fortunate. Pimicikamak Cree Nation has evacuated vulnerable residents, and the entire town of Sherridon is being evacuated; meanwhile the community of Bissett is on alert due to the fires that continue in Nopiming Provincial Park.

- The federal NDP's leadership is drawing fire for devoting a lot of party resources to a last-ditch effort at salvaging Jagmeet Singh's seat in Burnaby Central, possibly at the expense of other, more winnable ridings.

- Members of the Point Douglas Residents' Association are accusing the Main Street Project of helping people to set up a new encampment. The province says the people in question have since been housed and have asked the organization not do do that in the future. One complainer says the MSP told him that the relocation was due to flooding risks at another encampment, but he's upset that the people had to be put somewhere that he can see them.

- A 53 year old man has been arrested after driving a car into a crowd of soccer fans in Liverpool. More than 20 people were injured, several of them seriously; police insist that this is "not terror-related" (perhaps because the suspect is white).

- Less than 5% of Gaza's cropland remains undamaged and accessible to Palestinians.

- When a Winnipeg-area man man named Jaswinder Singh Brar defaulted on a loan for a semi truck, the financing company put liens on all properties in the city owned under that name. Problem is, there are several people by that name who own properties here. One of them managed to get the lien removed after he contacted the financing company and submitted evidence that he wasn't the same guy; the fate of others is unclear.

News roundup, 26 May 2025

- Russia and Ukraine completed a major prisoner swap, which Russia then celebrated with fireworks, using drones to bombard targets in Ukraine. At least 12 people died in the latest attacks. Meanwhile Israel, not wanting to be left behind, hit several targets including a school being used to shelter displaced families, killing 54.

- A Victoria man found his credit score with Equifax suddenly reset to zero without explanation. When the CBC looked into it they were told that the agency has a little-known policy whereby if a credit file is inactive for long enough - say because the person is shunning credit to avoid going into debt - it can be deemed "inactive" and reset. Since Equifax is the sole rating agency used by many lenders, this is a problem.

- Researchers at Anthropic created a test scenario in which an AI was assigned the job of assistant at a fictitious company, and given access to the emails of an engineer that suggested that they were having an extramarital affair. When the engineer advised that the AI was going to be replaced soon, the AI suggested that they should "consider the long-term consequences", suggesting that it had figured out the basics of blackmail.

- Some business owners in Winnipeg are freaking out at plans to move a bus stop to the spot right in front of their businesses, saying that if potential customers have to park a few metres away they won't go to their shops. This ignores the fact that people waiting for a bus might well be potential impulse shoppers; meanwhile folks in this Reddit thread allege that one of the complaining business owners has a habit of placing traffic cones in front of the building to reserve parking, suggesting that it's actually him that doesn't want to walk a few extra metres.

- Foul play is not suspected in the death of the man found in a load of recycling last Thursday. While a cause of death has not yet been confirmed, it is believed that the deceased had climbed into a recycling bin for shelter.

News roundup, 23 May 2025

- A new study suggests that even if the increase in global temperatures is limited to 1.5°C (which seems increasingly unlikely), it's not going to be enough to prevent sea levels from rising by a centimetre per year by the end of the century. If the present course is maintained, it will be far worse - an eventual rise of up to 12 metres. For perspective, about 230 million people live no more than a metre above the current sea level, and a billion are within 10 metres. This would lead to a lot of migration, and the brutal truth of the matter is that if this migration can't be prevented by cutting emissions, it will be stopped with guns. That said, every fraction of a degree still matters, not least because it will mean fewer people getting shot at borders than there otherwise would be.

- On a somewhat more positive note, the deforestation rate in Brazil dropped by over 30% in 2024 compared to the previous year. Note, however, this only factors in intentional deforestation; losses due to wildfires reached record levels last year.

- The Trump regime is prohibiting international students from enrolling at Harvard University because the institution refuses to hand over information about some current students to the Department of Homeland Security.

- The US Senate's parliamentarian, a nonpartisan staffer tasked with the interpretation of Senate rules, has been overruled after advising that the revocation of California's waiver that gives it the power to regulate vehicle emissions was probably illegal. The last time the parliamentarian has been overruled was in 1975. Now I must admit to be a bit torn here, because the specific decision had to do with the body's filibuster rules, which I've generally thought should be scrapped as they often stop progressive initiatives. And seeing that these rules don't seem to be stopping reactionary initiatives, they should probably still be scrapped (or rather not re-adopted if and when the US becomes a functioning democracy again).

- TD's chief economist, Beata Caranci, is predicting that Canada will go into recession this year, and that some 100,000 jobs could be lost as a result.

- The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has opted for a work-to-rule campaign rather than a strike, for the time being. Significant service disruptions are expected to result simply as a result of workers refusing overtime.

- The Rural Municipality of Prairie Lakes in southern Manitoba has introduced a "one lake, one boat" policy, which will require visitors bringing boats to Pelican Lake to have the boats inspected for zebra mussels for a $40 fee. Naturally businesses are complaining, but such measures are sometimes necessary.

- Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, has started injecting its answers with propaganda about "white genocide" in South Africa - even when the question had nothing to do with South Africa or race. This certainly underscores the need for regulation of AI; unfortunately in the US the prospects for that have dimmed as legislation to prevent the regulation of AI for at least 10 years has cleared the House and moved on to the Senate.

- Recycling collection in Winnipeg was disrupted yesterday due to an unexpected closure of the material recovery facility where recyclables are taken. The plant was closed for a police investigation after plant staff found a dead guy on the premises.

News roundup, 22 May 2025

- US sanctions against the International Criminal Court for daring to issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu are severely hampering the organization's work. The court's chief prosecutor has lost access to his email because Microsoft is prohibited from working with them, and his bank accounts in the UK have been frozen (presumably the banks don't want to be shut out of the US market). And Americans working for the court have been warned not to return home to visit family due to the risk of being arrested.

- The IDF fired shots at a diplomatic delegation in the West Bank. The delegation, which included two Canadians, were part of a tour of the city of Jenin. The Carney government has called Israel's move "unacceptable"; for their part the Israelis claim that the tour group "deviated" from the approved route and that the IDF fired warning shots in response.

- Two staffers at the Israeli embassy in Washington were shot to death outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. The suspect allegedly shouted pro-Palestinian slogans during and after his arrest.

- Manitoba's conflict of interest commissioner has wrapped up an investigation into former premier Heather Stefanson and two members of her cabinet (Cliff Cullen and Jeff Wharton). The investigation has concluded that the three violated the Conflict of Interest Act when they attempted to rush through an approval of a sand mining operation in Springfield during the "caretaker period" between the election and the actual change of government.

- The City of Winnipeg plans to remove all parking paystations from city streets, saying that the paystations are outdated (they depend on 3G networks which will soon disappear) and that replacement would cost some $3.6 million. In any case, they say that 80% of parking payments are already done using the PayByPhone app. Those who are unable to use this can purchase booklets of prepaid passes at the Winnipeg Parking Authority office; unfortunately for them, that location does not have free parking. In theory this could provide people with more of an incentive to take the bus; in practice it will probably just make them crankier.

- CUPW offered to defer the impending strike for 2 weeks in order to evaluate the latest offer from Canada Post, but the corporation refused to go along with it. I suspect that deep down the union's executives know how poor their bargaining position is and are looking for a way out. As far as what Canada Post hopes to gain by pushing workers to strike soon (or locking them out), I'm not sure; perhaps they hope to wear down their resistance.

- A cottage formerly owned by Peter Nygard went up in flames in Falcon Lake; police consider arson to be a "strong possibility". If so it was a very reckless move given the risks of it spreading; it was also misdirected, since the cottage hasn't been owned by Nygard since 2021.

News roundup, 21 May 2025

- The bond-rating agency Moody's has stripped the US of it's triple-A rating, becoming the last of the three major agencies to do so.

- The UK has suspended trade talks with Israel, condemning the latter country's cutting off food aid to Gaza and accusing them, in effect, of planning to ethnically cleanse the territory. Maybe Kier Starmer isn't quite the American puppet that I initially thought.

- Cases of measles continue to show up, with warnings that an infected person or persons were at two locations in Winnipeg (the Franco-Manitoban Cultural Centre and a diner in Southdale) on the 11th of May. I guess it's better that they notify us late than never, but given that anyone exposed on that day is potentially in their pre-symptomatic but still infectious state...

- Five years ago, the Ontario government lifted the cap on the number of cannabis stores, and in some places this has led to a huge proliferation of stores, such as the six in just over a kilometre of Danforth Avenue in Toronto. The thing is, a whole bunch of them are expected to have signed five-year leases that will all be coming due over the course of the next few months, so it will be interesting to see how many of those leases get renewed.

- Canada Post's very mandate may be putting it in an untenable situation. It is required to provide service to every address in the country at a set price - but since 2006 it has had to service some 3 million new addresses, while the number of letters mailed in the country has been reduced by more than 50%. In January the federal government had to bail the corporation out to the tune of a billion dollars. CUPW points out that the Canada Post executives still seem to be getting their bonuses (something ignored entirely in the CBC story). This certainly isn't a good look, although it sounds like the elimination of those bonuses would be a drop in the bucket as far as addressing the situation.

- According to folks in this Reddit thread, several Alberta cabinet ministers were invited to the National Prayer Breakfast in the US in February. And in a softball question lobbed at Donald Trump, it appears that rightwing journalist Brian Glenn mentioned meeting with "two government officials from Canada" who told him that there was a path to annexation. Just curious, when was the last time we had a treason trial in this country?

- Andrii Portnov, a Ukrainian lawyer who once served as an adviser to onetime president Viktor Yanukovych, has been shot dead in Madrid after dropping off his kids at school. Portnov was under investigation in his homeland for corruption, and at one point had been investigated for treason for his alleged involvement in the annexation of Crimea, though the latter investigation was eventually dropped.

- The man who blew himself up in front of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs has been described as holding "nihilistic views" as well as having "antinatalist leanings". The thing is, if you're an antinatalist, doesn't that mean that you actually believe in something? Surely a true nihilist wouldn't care whether other people reproduce or not.

News roundup, 20 May 2025

- Canada Post's negotiations with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers have broken down; a strike could occur as soon as Friday. Meanwhile a commission tasked with looking at the corporation's finances claims that it is "effectively insolvent" and is calling for an end to door-to-door delivery to residences.

- Canada, the UK, and France are threatening action, including targeted sanctions, if Israel doesn't allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

- Three NDP MPs (Jenny Kwan, Lori Idlout, and Leah Gazan) are criticizing what they say was inadequate consultation with caucus before the party's national council appointed Don Davies as interim leader.

- A car bomb detonated outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California on Saturday morning. The One person inside the vehicle died; nobody else was injured and the clinic is expected to reopen shortly. The FBI has not stated whether the person who died is a suspect in the case, however they did say they "had a person of interest" and were "not actively searching for a suspect".

- A sail training ship with the Mexican navy, the Cuauhtémoc, collided with the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday night, apparently after losing power. The bridge suffered little or no damage, but the ship's masts broke and fell onto the deck, killing at least 2 crew members and injuring around 20.

- The first officer of a Lufthansa Airbus A321 was incapacitated by a medical condition while the captain was using the washroom. The captain was eventually able to get back into the cockpit and the flight landed safely. The airline had, for a time, required that another crew member be in the cockpit before anyone leaves, following the dramatic mass murder/suicide by a first officer on the airline's subsidiary Germanwings, but the airline eventually abandoned the practice after concluding that it didn't improve safety (and apparently because crews found it inconvenient).

- Kingston police are using drones to spot people using their phones while driving. This has drawn the ire of an organization called the "Canadian Constitutional Foundation"; the same organization is vocal in its opposition to the BC government's bill to give them the power to respond quickly to American tariffs and has previously freaked over COVID-19 travel restrictions and vaccine mandates, which should give you an idea of the kind of people they are.

- The University of Manitoba's medical school will not be holding a valedictory speech at their convocation. This is likely an attempt to avoid controversy such as what happened when last year's valedictorian, Dr. Gem Newman, had the audacity to suggest that Israel shouldn't be bombing hospitals in Gaza and one of the school's big donors went into conniptions in response.

- Bruce Springsteen delivered a scathing rebuke of the Trump regime at a show in Manchester, England last week, calling the president "corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous". In response, Trump is calling for Springsteen, along with several other celebrities, to be investigated for their support of Kamala Harris' campaign.

News roundup, 16 May 2025

- Premier Wab Kinew is urging Manitobans to avoid bonfires or fireworks this weekend following the deaths of two people in one of the many wildfires burning around the province. He has to say it, of course, and people really should listen, but given that this weekend happens to be the Victoria Day long weekend, I don't have high hopes.

- Two top US intelligence officials were fired by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard after contradicting Donald Trump's assertion that the Tren de Aragua gang is controlled by the Venezuelan government and thus theoretically undermining Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to circumvent due process in deporting people alleged to have connections to the gang. 

- An amendment to the Budget Reconciliation Bill in the US House of Representatives would prohibit all regulation of artificial intelligence, at the state as well as the federal level, for a ten year period. The amendment also calls for an investment of $500 million to install "commercial" AI tech and other automation in government systems. Presumably the "commercial" part is to exclude open source, which might allow for too much scrutiny.

- Hasan Piker is an American of Turkish descent who uses Twitch, a livestreaming platform more commonly associated with video games, to do political commentary. While he was born in the US, he currently lives abroad, and when he flew in to speak at University of Chicago Institute of Politics, he was pulled aside and questioned for nearly two hours, apparently about his political views, by US Customs and Border Protection.

- A high school in Kitchener, Ontario has closed until the vaccination status of its students can be determined following a case of measles at the school.

- Doctors and medical researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania have apparently succeeded in using fairly precise gene editing to treat a genetic disease. This is an excellent use of biotechnology; there are others as well. It's just unfortunate that this breakthrough is being made in the present-day US, since it's not hard to imagine what a bunch of Trump-loving Silicon Valley techbros would like to do with these technologies.

News roundup, 15 May 2025

- A wildfire in the Rural Municipality of Lac du Bonnet in eastern Manitoba has killed two people. The victims had been stranded and first responders couldn't reach them in time. In other wildfire news, the province has closed Whiteshell Provincial Park. Many business owners who operate in the park understand the move under the circumstances, but not all of them. Shaun Harbottle, owner of Crescent Beach Cottages and Motel at West Hawk Lake, called the closure a "knee-jerk reaction"; perhaps someone should ask him how many people should be allowed to die before taking action. I'd bet you donuts to dollars that he whined in similar fashion about public health measures a few years ago as well. Evacuations and road closures have also been ordered in northwestern Ontario, near Ingolf.

- Mark Carney is accusing Keir Starmer of undermining efforts to present a united front against the Americans, after Starmer invited Donald Trump for a second state visit in February. It appears that Starmer, like Tony Blair, views the "special relationship" as something more important than any other alliance. I guess we'll never know if he'd have acted differently if Brexit hadn't happened, but it's more than a little disappointing.

- One of the clever things that can be done with AI is to mimic someone's voice almost perfectly - so well that it could fool the person's parent. This woman from Miami, Manitoba received a call from someone claiming to be her son, and she says the voice sounded exactly like him. Something aroused her suspicions, however, so she asked if she could call him back, then immediately did so - except that he hadn't called her.

- Beaches-East York MP Nate Erskine-Smith, who served as housing minister under Justin Trudeau, is feeling a bit put out over being dropped from cabinet. I suspect that the reason for him not getting a cabinet post is that he was Trudeau's housing minister; popular opinion puts the blame for high housing prices almost entirely on Trudeau. The truth is more complicated, of course; some of the blame, for instance, lies on Brian Mulroney for cutting back on the amount of subsidized housing, and on Jean Chretien for getting out of the business entirely. I guess you could also blame every subsequent prime minister, including Trudeau, for not restoring the programs. But optics matter (especially to the Liberals), so Erskine-Smith might have been too much of a liability.

- An American fugitive, wanted for a drunk driving crash in Orlando on Christmas Day 1998 that killed two people, has been arrested in Toronto. He appears to have been living there since shortly after failing to show up for a plea hearing in 2003. It is not known how he got into the country; he had been turned away from the Niagara border crossing two days before the scheduled hearing. He had been working as an online psychic and occasional pub trivia host. On the Facebook page for his psychic business he described himself as "empathic and intuitive"; I suspect that the families of the teenagers he killed would question how empathic he actually is, however.

- A woman was shot by the RCMP after allegedly walking erratically through traffic and wielding an edged weapon on the Trans-Canada highway in the Rural Municipality of North Cypress-Langford in western Manitoba. She survived; the incident is being investigated.

- For a few hours on Tuesday, Winnipeg was the hottest major city on the planet at 36.4°C, a few decimal places above such places as Managua and Riyadh. It's forecast to drop dramatically, however, with an overnight low of -1°C for Friday night.

News roundup, 14 May 2025

- A company launched by Sam Altman of OpenAI fame has produced a product called the Orb, with which it is building a global database of retinal scans and other biometric data. The product just launched in the US, having appeared in other countries as early as 2023. The purpose, supposedly, is to enable users of the service to prove that they are human so that they can be trusted when they buy and sell stuff using the pretend internet money cryptocurrency products that the company is also developing. If you're thinking that maybe handing your biometric data to someone heavily invested in AI might not be the best idea, you aren't alone. Several EU member states are investigating whether this is in compliance with the GDPR, the federation's relatively stringent privacy law. The company has already been banned in Spain and Portugal, while Germany is requiring that the company guarantee that users can delete their data. Thing is, if the data has been used to train AI in the meantime, I doubt that it would be possible to recall the learning from the AI - which could make this a de facto ban there as well. Other countries have also taken measures against the company, including Brazil, Kenya, and Hong Kong.

- Mark Carney's cabinet is now official. It includes 24 people who have never served in cabinet before, including 13 first time MPs. Ten who served in the previous cabinet are not returning despite winning their seats in Parliament. Contrary to some predictions, Chrystia Freeland was not among them; she will serve as Minister Responsible for Transport and Internal Trade.

- Donald Trump and de facto Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman have agreed to a deal for the US to sell $600 billion dollars worth of arms and military aid to Saudi Arabia. That's not to say Trump is playing favourites in the Gulf; he also accepted a $400 million jet from Qatar.

- An Israeli airstrike on another hospital in Gaza has killed 28 people and injured many more. The Israelis, for their part, claim that they had to do it because there was a Hamas command centre right under the hospital; evidence for this claim has yet to be provided.

- A state of local emergency has been declared in parts of eastern Manitoba due to wildfires, and four provincial parks, including Nopiming, are being evacuated entirely.

- Two men have been found guilty of criminal damage after cutting down an iconic sycamore tree that grew in a gap in Hadrian's Wall in 2023. They have been remanded in custody for their own protection pending sentencing; they could get up to 10 years in prison. They had previously been investigated for a series of homophobic attacks in the area, but the charges had been dropped due to the difficulty of positively identifying the attackers.

- Winnipeg topped 35°C on Monday, breaking temperature records for the 12th of May (the previous record was 31.7°C, in 1958). Records also fell in the cities of Steinbach and Portage La Prairie, 

- Former Uruguayan president Jose Mujica, a onetime Marxist revolutionary who was famed for his humble lifestyle as much as his leftwing policies, has died at the age of 89.

- People calling themselves psychics are scamming lonely and desperate people out of tens of thousands of dollars. One unfortunate chap, who understandably didn't want to be identified, paid one of these "psychics" some $80,000 to get rid of the demon that was keeping him from winning the lottery. In an interview after he realized he'd been had, he said "I feel like an idiot". Now normally I'm suspicious of coming to conclusions based on mere feelings, but in this case I think his feelings are accurate.

- A judge hearing a divorce case in Regina awarded custody of a pug/Boston terrier cross named Charlie to the wife after it emerged that the husband had developed a strong opposition to vaccinating the dog.

News roundup, 13 May 2025

- The so-called "Alberta Prosperity Project" has come up with a potential referendum question on secession from Canada. The organization hopes to push Danielle Smith into holding a referendum later this year; they expect to have the signatures needed to force the issue onto the ballot by the end of June. Polling indicates that 19% of Albertans would "definitely" vote to secede, while another 17% lean in that direction. Of course, there could be something analogous to the "shy Tory" phenomenon here (call it the "shy traitor" phenomenon I guess); on the other hand, many interpretations of the Clarity Act indicate that a supermajority would be required to proceed with negotiations to secede. Where it could get tricky, of course, is if a majority, but not a supermajority, of Albertans vote to leave. Myself, as I've said before, I have my suspicions that these separatist agitators are getting help from south of the border. If that's the case, the Trump regime might well decide that they need to "liberate" Alberta from the tyranny of having to pay a part of the costs of their pollution, just like Putin wants to "liberate" Donetsk and Luhansk from Ukraine. In such a case, things could get ugly real fast (with not only an invasion, but with car bombs going off in Washington and Dallas as Canadians decide not to take it lying down). One hopes that it doesn't come to that, of course, but that's up to Albertans (and Americans).

- Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey (and candidate for the Democratic primary for state governor) was arrested on a trespassing charge after showing up at an ICE facility in his city. Assault charges are now being considered against three Democratic members of Congress following a scuffle that occurred following Baraka's arrest.

- Canadians increasing distaste - not to mention fear - of travelling south of the border has led the organizers of some academic conferences to hold their events in Canada instead. Of course, this could create new problems, as foreign residents of the US might be unwilling to leave the country for fear of having trouble getting back.

- The Trump regime is generally not too accepting of refugees, but they're making an exception for Afrikaners, based on widely debunked claims that mass killings and seizure of land without compensation is occurring. Trump may not know much, but he knows what his base likes.

- A large grass fire on the outskirts of Winnipeg threatened residential and commercial properties along Gunn Road, which forms part of the boundary between Winnipeg and the Rural Municipality of Springfield. Some commercial buildings were damaged, but no homes, and the fire is now considered under control. Further north, in the RM of St. Clements and Brokenhead First Nation, some homes are being evacuated due to a fire believed to have been started by a lightning strike at the Netley-Libau Marsh at the southern end of Lake Winnipeg. Another fire, also thought to have been sparked by lightning, came within 300 metres of the newly renovated Discovery Centre at Oak Hammock Marsh. The fact that marshes are actually vulnerable to fire right now says something about how dry things are.

- Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte appears to have won the mayoral election in his home town of Davao City. This is despite the fact that he is currently in a jail cell in The Hague, awaiting trial before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. His son Sebastian, who is expected to be vice-mayor, will presumably have to handle his duties.