Thursday, May 1, 2025

News roundup, 1 May 2025

- Winnipeg city councillor Jason Schreyer has died suddenly at the age of 57. No cause of death has been reported.

- Alberta premier Danielle Smith is promising to protect the province from "future hostile acts" by the federal government. She accuses the feds of "overtly attacking" the province's economy, and claims (without evidence) that the NDP and Liberals "demeaned and demonized Albertans" during the campaign. What really needs to be watched, though, is what Smith is doing with the province's election laws - new legislation was tabled the day after the federal election (presumably in the hope that it would go unnoticed as people focused on federal matters). The bill restores corporate donations to campaigns, eliminates the process to vouch for a voter's identity at a polling station, and lowers the threshold necessary to initiate recall proceedings against an MLA.

- The Trump regime is doing their utmost to try to convince Europeans that switching from Russian gas to clean energy, instead of to American fossil fuels, is "harmful and dangerous" and leaves Europe open to "concessions to or coercion from China". Happily, Europeans don't seem to be sold on the matter.

- When protests erupted at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn over their hosting of a speech by Israeli far-right extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, clashes arose between protesters and the Orthodox Jewish community. One bystander who was mistaken for a protester says she was assaulted and threatened with rape by a large mob of men as a result.

- A Canada-wide poll by Leger found that only 16% of respondents consider Canada to have a good relationship with the US. That's only one percentage point better than Russia; in contrast, 36% of respondents think Canada's relationship with China is good.

- The Trump tariffs could cost Ontario over 68,000 jobs this year, mostly in Windsor, Guelph, Brantford, Waterloo, and London. Next year could see almost twice that many jobs lost.

- Following a report that Amazon was planning to start showing consumers how much tariffs contribute to prices, Donald Trump placed a call to Jeff Bezos, and Amazon then announced that it wasn't going to happen. Perhaps Trump asked Bezos if he wanted Jones back.

- Japanese authorities rescued an international student from Mount Fuji after he experienced altitude sickness. A few days later, they had to rescue him again because he went back for his cellphone.

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