News roundup, 31 July 2025

- The Carney government says they will recognize a Palestinian state, with certain conditions. Notably, the Palestinian Authority must hold an election and commit to other democratic reforms. A step in the right direction, certainly, though it's worth noting that no such condition is placed on the recognition of other sovereign states (e.g. Saudi Arabia).

- The Poilievre Conservatives have been attacking the prosecutors in the case of the clownvoy leaders Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, prompting the Ontario Crown Attorneys' Association to accuse the Cons of an attack on prosecutorial independence. Prosecutors are seeking a seven year sentence for Lich and eight years for Barber.

- A court in Ontario has struck down the Ford government's order to remove bike lanes from certain Toronto streets. The government, of course, plans to appeal

- The acquisition of CBS parent company Paramount by Skydance has been approved by the Federal Communications Commission - on the condition that they appoint an ombudsman to ensure that news coverage isn't "biased" against the Trump regime. I can't see any way this could go badly... 

- The City of Winnipeg is the latest to deny Sean Feucht's application for a permit to perform on public land in the city. Montreal went further, denying a church a permit to host Feucht on their own property, and then fining the church $2,500 when they called their bluff.

- In tangentially related news, Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert (who was alleged to have had an affair with Feucht while still married to her husband) is claiming that the child abuse charges against her son were the result of a "miscommunication".

- A man in Ridgeway, Virginia who had shot his wife to death in an argument decided that since he wasn't going to get away with it anyway, he might as well kill someone else too. I think the old saying "Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb" comes closer to the mark than usual here.

News roundup, 30 July 2025

- A major earthquake in eastern Russia has led to tsunami warnings on the BC coast and throughout the Pacific. 

- An intelligence report from the Netherlands' National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) has identified Israel as a potential national security threat for the first time. This follows attempts by Israel to influence public opinion in the country following a soccer riot by fans of the Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam last year. Fans of the team were caught on video vandalizing property and threatening people, but the Israelis planted stories in the Dutch media claiming that their team's fans were victims of antisemitism. NCTV has also raised concerns about Israeli and American threats towards the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague.

- After Toronto police officer Jason Boag got drunk and crashed his car two years ago, the incident was described as having occurred "off duty". However, an investigation has found that his superior seems to have falsified paperwork to cover up the fact that he, Boag, and several other officers spent the better part of their shift drinking at a restaurant before the accident.

- Evacuees are returning to Tataskweyak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba after two months. They had left at the end of May due to the threat from wildfires, and then their return was delayed by problems with the community's water treatment plant.

- A Winnipeg teenager named who checked in to a fight from Calgary to Tokyo was found to have 30 kilograms of meth in her luggage. I have to assume she wasn't acting alone.

- Former prime minister Justin Trudeau was spotted having dinner with American pop singer Katy Perry at a posh Montreal restaurant on Monday.

- A 76 year old man in the Chicago exurb of Schaumburg has been charged with murder after allegedly shooting his daughter-in-law to death. Apparently he was displeased that she had filed for divorce from his son.

News roundup, 29 July 2025

- The Manitoba government says that 59 people have been housed through the "Your Way Home" program since it launched in January. According to housing minister Bernadette Smith, all 59 are still housed; nonetheless, some are concerned about the slow pace of getting people into housing. The City of Winnipeg's move to shut St. Boniface Street Links out of the process and give the Main Street Project an exclusive contract is also getting poor reviews from some; city councillor Ross Eadie says that he will be calling for the city to review this decision. For her part, Street Links' executive director, Marion Willis, says that her organization has housed 28 people this month; it would be interesting to know more about the difference in the organization's approach compared to MSP.

- Elections Canada says that they will be using write-in ballots in order to make balloting for the Battle River-Crowfoot byelection manageable. The best thing to be hoped for would be if one of the 209 candidates has a similar name to Pierre Poilievre; that could lead to some interesting results.

- Donald Trump is now saying that a trade deal with Canada to avoid the planned increase in tariffs may not be in the cards. Of course, given that Trump said months ago that he wants to use economic force to compel Canada to join the US, this is not surprising. Probably the negotiations were set up by Trump to fail from the beginning. Meanwhile, the EU has agreed to a deal with the US that will set baseline tariffs at 15%; this is lower than the 30% threatened but considerably higher than the 4.8% tariffs in place now. German chancellor Friedrich Merz says that this was the best deal that could be hoped for, while French prime minister François Bayrou called it a capitulation.

- Two prominent Israeli human rights organizations are now accusing their country of genocidal acts in Gaza. Of course this is old news to anyone who's been paying attention to organizations outside that country, but it makes it a bit harder for the Netanyahu regime to deny it when their own people are saying it.

- A British judge has ordered the last will and testament of Freddie Scappaticci, widely suspected of being a mole in the Provisional IRA for the government, to be sealed for 70 years. A representative of the estate had requested this to protect his heirs from possible retribution in case someone considers them guilty by association.

- The city of Vaughan is the latest to deny MAGA rocker Sean Feucht a permit to perform in one of its parks. Instead, he will performed in a church in Etobicoke. It's worth noting how nearly all of his performances seem to have been initially booked for venues that are owned by public entities. I'm pretty sure he's not doing that as a way of showing solidarity with the public sector; more likely he's hoping for this very result so he can play the victim.

News roundup, 28 July 2025

- The US economy has so far taken surprisingly little damage from the tariffs imposed on other countries. Economists are attributing this to the unwillingness of other countries to retaliate, as well as the unwillingness of American companies to pass on the costs of tariffs to their customers for fear of enraging Trump. Whether this pattern will hold, or whether the impact is merely delayed rather than avoided, remains to be seen.

- MAGA musician Sean Feucht has a concert planned for Winnipeg's Central Park in August. The city has not yet issued a permit for the show, however; one hopes the city will follow the lead of other public bodies across the country and deny it.

- There are now over 200 candidates on the ballot for the byelection in Alberta that Pierre Poilievre hopes to use to reenter Parliament.

- A new map of potential growth zones indicates that it may be possible to grow some citrus trees in parts of Vancouver Island and the lower mainland.

- In the latest illustration of how fierce the competition in southern Ontario's tow truck business is, seven tow trucks showed up at the scene of an accident in Cambridge, despite the fact that it's illegal for them to show up unless called by one of the people involved. By the time police arrived, two of the drivers had gotten into a fistfight.

- Neighbours say that the dispute in Maple Ridge, BC that left three people and a dog dead had been simmering for years. 

- Tom Lehrer has died at the age of 97. 

News roundup, 25 July 2025

- Five former members of Canada's World Junior Hockey Championship team have been acquitted of sexual assault following a lengthy trial. 

- Dennis Modry, the former CEO of the Alberta Prosperity Project, is claiming to have had discussions with Trump officials about the possibility of getting a loan from the US to assist with the costs of secession from Canada. 

- An Afghan man who served as an interpreter for the US military in the early years of the post-9/11 war was detained by ICE following a seemingly routine appointment related to his application for a green card. The DHS claims that he is "under investigation for a serious criminal allegation" but provided no details about said allegation. One thing is clear - if sent back to Afghanistan he would not be a good risk from a life insurance company's point of view.

- Starlink's entire network went down worldwide on Thursday. 

- Carmen Prefontaine has officially entered the race in the byelection to replace deceased Winnipeg city councillor Jason Schreyer. She has been endorsed by the Winnipeg Labour Council. Besides her labour credentials (she is a CUPE vice-president) she has worked for the city's 311 service in the past, which should give her a reasonably broad-based understanding of how the city bureaucracy actually works. On the other hand, the other viable candidate, Emma Durand-Wood, has excellent urbanist credentials. If I lived in the ward I would doubtless vote for one of the two, but I'm not at all sure which one. I do have to admire the youthful enthusiasm of the third candidate, Zekaria Selahadin, though.

- Some residents of Winnipeg's North Kildonan ward are angry at the fact that their neighbourhoods are now more accessible by Transit with the recent changes, blaming it for increased criminal activity. The long-term solution, of course, would be to improve social conditions to reduce crime, but of course that is a long-term goal (and one that North Kildonan residents probably wouldn't want to pay the taxes needed in order for to it work). Failing that, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505, which represents Transit employees, is calling for more enforcement of fare evasion, hoping that this will discourage the more desperate and less lawful elements from making the trip.

- Three people, including the suspect, are dead following what police are calling a "neighbourhood dispute" in Maple Ridge, BC. A couple in their sixties were shot to death in their home, and several vehicles torched, before the suspect died of a self-inflicted wound during a standoff with police. According to someone in this Reddit thread he had been threatening the victims for years over such petty matters as on-street parking and property lines.

- Several large pickups and SUVs in Elmira, Ontario had their tires deflated on Monday morning. The tires were not actually slashed; the valves were just partially opened and left to deflate overnight. A statement was emailed to the CBC claiming responsibility on behalf of an organization called Tyre Extinguishers, saying they wanted to "bring attention to the immense danger these gas guzzlers present to the environment, pedestrians, cyclists and other motorists".

- Two "street preachers" with a history of harassing women have been arrested on hate-motivated mischief charges after attempting to interfere with services at two Surrey churches and spewing misogynist and anti-LGBT* bile.

News roundup, 24 July 2025

- All remaining personnel in Leaf Rapids, Manitoba, including firefighters, have withdrawn from the community as a wildfire entered the industrial area of the town. 

- Sales of American alcohol in Canada are down 66% nationwide; for wine, imports are down a whopping 94%. Given that most provinces aren't stocking the stuff at all, though, one has to wonder why it's not down more; perhaps the deplorables in Alberta and Saskatchewan are buying a lot to show their allegiance to the orange monster.

-  Time is announcing what they call a "surprising" reason for the increase in grocery prices, namely the large number of extreme weather events of late. And yes, it's pretty apparent that climate change is probably responsible for how many such events there have been recently. This does not come as a surprise, though, to anyone who's been paying the slightest bit of attention.

- Many Canadians who are trying to boycott American products are finding that grocery chains are using misleading signage on imported food displays in their stores. This is of course illegal, but I have yet to hear of one of them getting fined for it. Best to read the fine print on the labels, I guess.

- French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte are suing far-right podcaster Candace Owens for defamation after Owens alleged that Brigitte is trans, that the two are blood relations, and that the CIA used mind control to get the French people to vote for Emmanuel.

- Parks Canada has cancelled the permit for MAGA rocker Sean Feucht to perform at the York Redoubt National Historic Site in Nova Scotia, citing "evolving safety and security considerations" and recommendations from the police. Several municipalities, including Charlottetown, Moncton, and Quebec City have followed suit, as has the National Capital Commission in the case of a planned show in Gatineau. The York Redoubt performance has relocated to the hamlet of Shubenacadie, population 411, in East Hants; shows are also still scheduled to go on in Toronto and Ottawa if you're really keen to see him.

- Waterloo Regional Police arrested a man spotted riding a stolen bicycle on the University of Waterloo campus and found him to be in possession of something that appeared to be a grenade. Fortunately it was an inert one, intended to be used for training purposes.

News roundup, 23 July 2025

- Pierre Poilievre is in a tizzy about the fact that the ballot in the byelection he's running in has over 150 candidates. The Longest Ballot Committee, which was responsible for recruiting most of the candidates, is doing it as a protest against the first past the post electoral system; Poilievre is calling for legislative changes to make it harder to get a candidate on the ballot in response. Some independent and fringe party candidates in the byelection actually agree with Poilievre on this point, saying that they are facing a backlash from people who think they're part of the protest.

- Tom Van Lent, a hydrologist with the Everglades Foundation, resigned from the nonprofit in 2022 in a dispute over water management related to a new reservoir for Palm Beach County, and went to work for another nonprofit that he said "puts facts over politics". The Everglades Foundation responded by suing Van Lent for "theft of trade secrets"; a court ordered him to turn over all his computers and other electronic devices to the Foundation. He did so, but only after removing his and his family's personal information from the devices; the Foundation then asked a court to hold him in criminal contempt, which it did. He has been sentenced to 10 days in jail; in addition he has declared bankruptcy after being ordered to pay $178,000 in legal fees.

- A Swiss woman who entered the US on a tourist visa in April, hoping to celebrate her birthday with friends in New York City, was detained by officials who suspected that she planned to work in the US. She was shipped to a privately owned detention facility in New Jersey where she was held for 24 hours before being deported.

- Winnipeg city council is debating a motion introduced by Coun. Cindy Gilroy, which would prohibit homeless encampments in places used by children. That much might be reasonable, but suburban councillor Jeff Browaty thinks it needs to go further - he advocates banning encampments along "image routes", i.e. major traffic thoroughfares. Complicating matters is the fact that the Supreme Court has previously ruled that blanket bans on encampments are unenforceable until enough shelter beds are available. A ban on camping specifically in places used by children might be justifiable on public safety grounds, but a ban based essentially on aesthetics, as Browaty is calling for, seems like a bridge too far.

- Winnipeg police seized two homemade Tasers when they arrested a man in North Point Douglas. 

- A correctional officer in Manitoba has been charged with two counts of sexual assault following complaints from two separate prisoners who he was escorting to Winnipeg for medical treatment. One of the victims reportedly suffered an injury in the assault.

- A double-decker bus in the Manchester suburb of Eccles took a wrong turn and collided with an overpass. Twenty people were injured, three of them seriously; the driver has been charged with careless driving.

- Ozzy Osbourne has died at the age of 76, which is probably about half a century later than anyone, including him, would have expected.

News roundup, 22 July 2025

- The evacuated town of Leaf Rapids, Manitoba is now surrounded on all sides by fire and winds are picking up. There are also concerns about Snow Lake and Garden Hill First Nation, as well as the generating stations at Kettle Rapids and Laurie River.

- Canada now has three times the number of confirmed measles cases as the US. In fact, Alberta on its own has more cases than the States - assuming of course that the Americans are accurately keeping track of their cases, which is far from clear.

- U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra said that Canadians' boycotts of US travel and the removal of American liquor from stores are "mean and nasty". BC Premier David Eby sees this as a sign that these moves are having an effect.

- The FAA is investigating after a B-52 bomber doing a flyover of the North Dakota State Fair in Minot came dangerously close to colliding with a commercial jet that was preparing to land at the local airport.

- A 9 year old Montreal girl whose father had told police she had been abducted has been found dead, and her father has been charged with murdering her after inconsistencies were found in his account. 

- Far-right Christian rock musician (and failed Republican congressional candidate) Sean Feucht has a concert scheduled for the York Redoubt National Historic Site overlooking Halifax Harbour. Many locals are calling on Parks Canada to cancel the gig, saying that Feucht's extremist views are at odds with Parks Canada's guiding principles of inclusion and safety for all visitors.

- Police in the Quebec town of Deux-Montagnes have found a vehicle at the bottom of a river that belonged to a man reported missing in 1988. Divers reportedly found suspected human bones in the vehicle, though they have not been officially identified to date. 

News roundup, 21 July 2025

- A Virgin Airlines Boeing 737 was on final descent towards Hobart when a fire broke out in one of the overhead bins. The fire was extinguished by flight attendants and nobody was hurt; a lithium ion battery is suspected of being the cause.

- In addition to the wildfire crisis currently facing Manitoba, the dry conditions are causing problems for agriculture in parts of the province. The Interlake is in a state of severe drought, with the rural municipalities of Coldwell and St. Laurent taking the worst hit. Numerous events have been cancelled due to the smoke and associated health concerns; not surprisingly, the Morris Stampede was not among them.

- A network of AI-driven MAGA-boosting chatbots has become divided over the Epstein issue. The bots were apparently created in a couple of batches last year, and were designed to react favourably to pro-Trump messaging on social media - but they don't know how to handle this situation. Whether this will blow over before the midterms next year remains to be seen.

- The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the parent organization of NPR and PBS, has been hit with $500 million per year in funding cuts; this is expected to hit rural communities hardest as the urban stations will have a better chance of securing funding from donors. The result, of course, is that rural listeners and viewers will have even more of a media echo chamber than they already do.

- Danielle Smith is demanding that the municipality of Jasper apologize for a report that the town commissioned into the wildfire that devastated the community last year. Smith is apparently upset that the report criticizes her government for not getting involved sooner in the effort to fight the fire.

- Trump is threatening to intervene to stop the construction of a new stadium for the Washington Commanders (formerly known as the Redskins) unless the team reverts to the old name. 

News roundup, 18 July 2025

- The IDF shelled a Catholic church in Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least two people and injuring several others. The church was providing shelter to hundreds of people, both Muslims and Christians, who had been displaced by the ongoing conflict.

- Daniel Martindale, an American missionary who was living in Poland at the time of Russia's invasion of Ukraine decided he needed to do something. So he crossed the border into Ukraine, set himself up in a village near the front lines, and secretly passed intelligence over to the Russians. Once the village was captured by the Russians, they spirited him out of there and have now given him Russian citizenship as a reward for his service.

- CBS is cancelling the Late Show once Stephen Colbert's contract runs out next year, saying that this was a "financial decision". The most charitable interpretation the folks in this Reddit thread could come up with was that CBS could have to pay a lot more legal fees fighting the roadblocks the Trump regime could throw up for their business if they keep Colbert on the air.

- At a town hall event in Edmonton, Danielle Smith faced a lot of hostile questions from the crowd regarding such matters as schemes to withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan and to create a provincial police force. Notably, though, while the majority of actual speakers on the issue were opposed, a show of hands indicated that the majority of those attending were in favour of both policies.

- An independent candidate in the Alberta riding of  Battle River-Crowfoot, where Pierre Poilievre is running to pick up a seat, has stopped going door-to-door due to receiving death threats.

- Three candidates have registered so far for the byelection in the Winnipeg ward of Elmwood-East Kildonan. The byelection was necessitated by the death of incumbent councillor Jason Schreyer in April. Emma Durand-Wood, a community activist, was the first to register; she has the support of a lot of urbanist types, however the Winnipeg Labour Council has endorsed CUPE activist Carmen Prefontaine. Most recently, a 25 year old candidate named Zekaria Selahadin has entered the race; the byelection will be held in October. 

- The Rural Municipality of Alexander in eastern Manitoba has a serious problem with trolls on their Facebook page. Reportedly some councillors are thinking twice about running in the next municipal election due to the amount of abuse and threats directed at them. A cursory glance at their page failed to bring up any examples (presumably the moderators have been removing them as fast as they can) and the only thing I can see there that might have provoked this is a fire ban (since lifted) that was imposed due to the risk of wildfires. I can easily see the freedumb crowd wanting to stir the pot on such an issue. 

- Police in the Indian state of Karnataka found an undocumented Russian woman living in a cave with two of her children.

- The Oakbank detachment of the RCMP, whose jurisdiction includes Bird's Hill Provincial Park, are investigating after a Tesla Cybertruck parked at the Winnipeg Folk Festival parking lot had a naughty word written on it in marker. They've gone so far as to distribute a photo of the suspect. I have to wonder why anyone driving a Cybertruck would expect that not to happen; of the thousands of people attending a festival like that, there's sure to be at least one who would think you're enough of an asshole to warrant having your truck vandalized. 

News roundup, 17 July 2025

- The possibility of Donald Trump firing Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is still looming. Powell has refused to cut interest rates as Trump wants; he needs some sort of a pretext to do this, though, and the alleged mismanagement of the renovations on two Federal Reserve buildings just might be it. Trump has already been polling Republican legislators on the issue. He's denying, however, that he actually plans to do so, perhaps leery of what such an unprecedented move might do to the markets. Interfering with their central banks didn't do Hungary and Turkey any favours, after all.

- The Trump regime is doing its utmost to stop the expansion of renewable energy, even as China races ahead. China already has five times the amount of renewable energy in its grid as the US - and they have greatly expanded electricity supply without increasing their fossil fuel consumption as a result. Their crackdown on offshore wind now has Massachusetts and New York looking to buy power from an offshore project in Nova Scotia.

- The matter of the Epstein files continues to cause problems for Donald Trump. Some think that this could be thing that finally makes the MAGA crowd question their previously unquestioning loyalty to the orange monster. Then again, it might just as easily make them question their previously unquestioned belief that sexual abuse of minors is a bad thing.

- A plastic surgeon in Utah who allegedly destroyed more than $28,000 worth of government provided COVID-19 vaccines and gave kids saline shots so they would answer yes when asked if they had been vaccinated has had all charges against him dropped by the Department of Justice under Pam Bondi. Dr. Michael Kirk Moore Jr. had allegedly accepted cash bribes to distribute fraudulent vaccination cards as well.

- Two people have been arrested after allegedly using a tow truck to steal several vehicles in Transcona.  

News roundup, 16 July 2025

- Mark Carney has acknowledged something many of us have long believed - that it is highly unlikely that Canada will be able to satisfy Donald Trump sufficiently to avoid having to put up with tariffs. This is a good thing; how he handles the situation remains to be seen (and there may be no truly good way of doing so). It seems that other world leaders are thinking the same thing, though; hopefully our people are talking to their people to find some mutually beneficial ways to avoid dealing with the US any more than necessary. Couple that with the fact that fewer people than ever even want to visit the place now, and they're going to find themselves very lonely on the international stage, probably for a long time to come.

- Brampton, Ontario mayor Patrick Brown is under police protection following reports of threats to him and his family. According to the CBC article, the police are withholding details so as not to jeopardize the investigation; the Toronto Sun has filled the void by juxtaposing the threats to Brown with a news conference about organized crime to let readers connect the dots, whether justifiably or not.

- Immigration judges are allowing the names of lawyers representing ICE to be suppressed in the public record, possibly to make it more difficult for bar associations to take action against them in the event that they do anything unethical in the course of their work (like, I dunno, collaborate with a fascist regime maybe).

- Ro Khanna, a Democratic member of Congress from California, attempted to introduce a motion that would have allowed the House of Representatives to vote on whether to make the Epstein files public. Republicans on the House Rules Committee voted all but unanimously to stop the motion from being debated by the House; presumably this is to protect Republican members of the House from the impossible choice of having to either be seen as defending child abuse or going against the wishes of their Dear Leader.

- Gas powered motorcycles, scooters and mopeds are certainly more fuel efficient than cars, but their emissions other than CO₂ are far worse due to their being exempt from a lot of the regulations on cars. Vietnam, which has rather a lot of these vehicles, is doing something about it - they're banning them from central Hanoi as of a year from now. Hopefully e-bikes and e-scooters are going to replace them.

- The two men who cut down the famous Sycamore Gap tree have been sentenced to four years and three months in prison on two counts of criminal damage - one for the tree and the other for damage caused to Hadrian's Wall itself.  

- Chinese researchers have created a chip that can be implanted in a bee so as to turn it into a cyborg. The biggest barrier to making this practical is having a power supply that is both long-lived enough to carry out a mission and light enough that the bee would still be able to fly.

News roundup, 15 July 2025

- Clownvoy organizer James Bauder is seeking political asylum in the US after his lawyers warned him that his chance of avoiding conviction on charges related to the protest are virtually nonexistent, given the fates of his co-conspirators.

- A man who was born in New Brunswick but has lived in New Hampshire for most of his life was denied reentry into the US after a family trip due to convictions he received some two decades ago for marijuana possession and driving while suspended. Funny thing is, he approved of the Trump regime until this happened to him, but now he's not so sure.

- The property committee of Winnipeg city council has unanimously approved an exemption to height limits for an apartment tower that's part of the Market Lands project. The tower, when completed, will include 148 units of which two thirds will be rented out below median market rates.

- The fire district serving northeastern BC could see 30% of its forested areas burn this year, according to provincial forestry minister Ravi Parmar. South of the border, an iconic lodge in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona was destroyed in a wildfire over the weekend. Here in Manitoba preparations are being made to house thousands of people if needed; for perspective, if the city of Thompson alone were to be evacuated that would more than double the number of evacuees. Fortunately some progress is being made towards protecting Thompson. But given that there's only a single highway connecting Thompson with the rest of the province's road system, they also might not want to wait until the city is in imminent risk of burning down - if the highway is cut off, getting 13,000 people onto airplanes on short notice would not be an easy task.

- For the first time, one of Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social has been "ratioed"; in social media jargon, the ratio in question is that of replies (which are disproportionately often negative reactions to a post) compared to likes and shares (which are normally positive). The post in question was made in defense of his attorney general Pam Bondi's handling of the Epstein files.

- Nahanni Fontaine, whose cabinet post includes responsibility for accessibility, has again apologized for her unfortunate remarks about the ASL interpreter at a recent event. She has agreed to undergo training on deafness and deaf culture. That's a good move, certainly. Not such a good move was when whoever runs her official social media accounts made the decision to block the entire news team of APTN, the network whose mic picked up her remarks in the first place. Fontaine attributes this to overzealous staffers and she says she directed them to reverse this once she became aware of it. For what it's worth, I believe her (it's the norm for staffers to handle that sort of thing), but it still isn't a good look.

News roundup, 14 July 2025

- Elizabeth May is calling for the federal government to impose a potash embargo on the US. As this would devastate the Canadian potash industry if done in isolation, she is calling for the government to buy the potash that would otherwise have been exported to the States and set it aside as a strategic reserve. She is also calling for them to reinstate the digital services tax, since removing it doesn't seem to have done any good. Seems like a good idea; whether Mark Carney will take the advice remains to be seen however.

- Solar power now has the largest share of Europe's electricity generation, narrowly topping nuclear and far above fossil fuels.

- A farm worker was killed and several hundred were arrested in an ICE raid on a farm in California. The worker had climbed to the roof of a greenhouse in the hope of avoiding the raid and fell to his death.

- A US District Court in California has requested that the LAPD please stop shooting journalists, even if it's just with rubber bullets. 

- Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has acknowledged what many of us already recognize - that Israel actually is guilty of war crimes and that not everyone who points that out is an antisemite.

- The MAGA crowd are losing whatever remained of their minds over the latest Superman movie, calling it "super woke" and accusing it of attempting to indoctrinate viewers. Their concerns centre partly around the fact that Superman/Clark Kent is explicitly called an immigrant.  This is of course true, but then the guy is from another planet, what else are you going to call him? And the pro-Israel crowd is incensed over a plot point in the film - a conflict between two fictional nations, one of which is brutally occupying the other. The countries aren't directly based on Israel and Palestine, of course (the occupier seems to be imagined as a former Soviet republic while the other is some unspecified west Asian one) but it's kind of telling that ultra-Zionists feel threatened by any fictional presentation of a brutal occupation.

- A radio station in Swan River, Manitoba was destroyed by fire on Thursday; investigators have concluded that it was arson. The incident follows a heated discussion on a social media account run by the station owner. Following the death of a passenger in the car that also killed two much loved members of the Winnipeg arts community, a post made reference to the dead passenger's criminal history. Given that he's dead there's not much of a public interest in the details of said history unless it was really weird or interesting (which it isn't), so a lot of people thought that it was needlessly hurtful to his family to dwell on the matter. That said, torching a radio station does seem like an excessive response.

News roundup, 11 July 2025

- Manitoba has once again declared a provincewide state of emergency due to wildfires. Garden Hill First Nation (population 4,000) and the town of Snow Lake (population 1,000) are being evacuated, bringing the number of evacuated communities to nine. Thompson (population 13,000) is preparing for the possibility of evacuation as well; there is a fire near the city that is estimated at over 10,000 hectares. While there has been some favourable weather that has helped those trying to protect the city, officials are pre-registering residents just in case. Meanwhile several Republican members of Congress have sent a letter to Canada's ambassador in Washington, demanding that Canada stop ruining their summer by sending smoke their way. Wab Kinew is not amused.

- Donald Trump is threatening to hit Brazil with tariffs as high as 50%, accusing the country of a "witch hunt" against its former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is being prosecuted for a Jan 6-style putsch following his defeat in the 2022 election. Trump also accuses Brazil of unspecified "attacks" on American tech companies. He's also threatening Canada with 35% across the board tariffs, citing fentanyl as well as our supply management systems as the reasons.

- The Trump regime is imposing sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories. Trump accuses her of "political and economic warfare" against the US as well as Israel. The executive order essentially prohibits "US persons" (which includes corporations) from doing business with her. How this will impact her work remains to be seen.

- The Market Lands project, a mixed income housing project planned for the site of the former Public Safety Building in downtown Winnipeg, is running into opposition from heritage advocates. The plan calls for a 16 storey building to be constructed on part of the site; this would require an exemption from the standard height limit of 100 ft for the area. While the site is outside the limits of the heritage-protected area of the Exchange District, Heritage Winnipeg executive director Cindy Tugwell fears that it would set a precedent that could lead to other tall buildings being built in the area. Whether this is the actual reason, or whether said heritage advocates own condos in the area that they fear could be devalued by too much affordable rental housing in the area, is unclear. In any case, city council's property and development committee will be voting on the matter on Monday.

- While the recent changes to Winnipeg Transit are getting mixed reviews, some of the complaints are downright absurd. This person has gone full Karen about the fact that a bus route now goes down Waterfront Drive; she has half-baked arguments against it but given how much she has blathered on about homeless people in the past I suspect that the real reason has something to do with not wanting to live near the kind of people who take the bus.

- The citizen science database iNaturalist is a hugely useful resource for naturalists, but it has come under some scrutiny after Erin Patterson used it to locate the mushrooms that she used to kill her in-laws. Many entries on the site give the exact latitude and longitude where something has been found; some are advocating that the precise location should be obscured on the public portion of the website. Others question this, pointing to the extreme rarity of situations like this. 

News roundup, 10 July 2025

- Four men from Quebec have been arrested over a plot to forcibly seize land near Quebec City; they appear to have been trying to start an American-style far-right militia. They had stockpiled 83 firearms and 16 bombs, as well as such things as smoke grenades and night vision goggles; all four have ties to the military.

- Donald Trump is musing about a federal takeover of New York City and the District of Columbia. In the case of New York, he suggested that it might be necessary if Zohran Mamdani (who he called a "communist") gets elected mayor. He also fulminated about the city's use instant-runoff (ranked choice) voting. In the case of DC, he tries to justify a takeover on the basis of excessive crime (despite the fact that overall crime in the federal district is down 8% compared to last year, and violent crime is down 25%). That said, there might well be a legal route to a takeover of DC (they could theoretically repeal the Home Rule Act). Ultimately, though, even in the case of New York the ability to stop a takeover depends on the whims of the courts, which have disproportionately been stacked with Trump loyalists.

- During the Biden years, the Democrats designed their climate law in such a way that many of the new green jobs would be in red states. The idea was that the Republicans, when they took power, would be reluctant to undo work that had created so many jobs for their supporters. Unfortunately the Democrats seem to have given voters too much credit for understanding this; the Republicans are betting on the bleating masses continuing to support them. Sadly it's probably a safe bet, even supposing that next year's midterms and the 2028 presidential election are fair (which seems unlikely in any case).

- A 25 nation survey by the Pew Research Center found that 59% of Canadians now view the US as the greatest threat to the country. Canadians' resolve to boycott as many American goods as possible and to avoid travel to the country seems to remain strong as well.

- Vaccination rates in the Maritimes are too low to reliably control the spread of measles. In Nova Scotia, about 23% of children have less than the requisite two doses of the vaccine; New Brunswick and PEI are somewhat better, but 10% of kids aren't fully vaccinated. The rate should be below 5% to keep the disease under control.

- The developer of ICEBlock, an app that allows people to share sightings of ICE officers has been threatened by the Department of Justice; Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that "he better watch out". Moreover, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem is threatening CNN for reporting on the very existence of the app. Admittedly, there are people out there who would happily do harm to ICE officers, but the people who lured a bunch of them out of a detention facility in Texas and opened fire on them didn't need an app to find them in any case.

News roundup, 9 July 2025

- Two single-engine Cessna aircraft collided in midair in the Rural Municipality of Hanover, Manitoba, just outside Steinbach. Both pilots were killed.

- Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, is condemning Greece, Italy, and France for allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to fly through their airspace when as signatories to the Rome Statute they are obligated to hand wanted war crimes suspects over to the International Criminal Court. One can't help but contrast this with the time when several countries, including France and Italy, refused to allow Bolivian president Evo Morales' plane into their airspace because they believed (wrongly) that Edward Snowden was aboard.

- Toyota is considering possible "adjustments" at their plants in Cambridge and Woodstock if US tariffs aren't scaled back. It's a pretty good bet that any such "adjustments" will involve job losses.

- The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, a federal agency that investigates accidents involving hazardous substances, is the latest agency on the Trump regime's chopping block.

- A series of widely circulated TikTok videos of a white guy who says he can't get a job at Tim Hortons because all those dirty brown people are taking all the jobs has been found to be an AI-generated hoax. TikTok has now taken them down, not because of the racially charged claims but because of the undisclosed use of AI. Ironically, AI is likely to be a much bigger threat to the job market than immigration ever was.

- A man drove the wrong way up to the terminal at Milan's Bergamo airport, abandoned his car, then ran through a security door and threw himself into an engine of an Airbus A319 that was waiting on the taxiway. As suicide methods go, this is an expensive one; I do hope that the airline and/or their insurers aren't so callous as to go after the estate for the cost of repairs to the engine, but I'd be surprised if they don't at least consider it.

News roundup, 8 July 2025

- The town of Leaf Rapids, Manitoba is being evacuated due to wildfires. Thompson has also declared a local state of emergency; while the city of 13,000 is not immediately threatened, officials are warning people to ensure their vehicles are fueled up in case the situation changes.

- Nahanni Fontaine will keep her job as Manitoba's Minister of Families (whose responsibilities include accessibility) after Premier Wab Kinew accepted her apology for her unfortunate gaffe last week.

- The Smith government in Alberta is considering withholding social services from immigrants who don't have an "Alberta-approved" immigration status. The premier hasn't said exactly what "Alberta-approved" would mean, but I think we can all guess what she hopes rural Albertans will take from that particular dog whistle.

- The auto industry is pressuring the Carney government to scrap the zero emissions mandate. Currently the requirement is 20% of new vehicles sold in 2026 to be either fully electric or plug-in hybrids; this is supposed to rise to 100% by 2035. The industry claims that these requirements "cannot be met"; no explanation for this claim is given other than a vague statement about "current market forces".

- A lawyer in Orange County, California was detained by ICE despite being an American citizen. She apparently was in a park in the city of Santa Ana when she spotted ICE vans, and started speaking in Spanish to advise people of their rights. Evidently ICE did not approve of this and hauled her in, though they released her after confirming her citizenship.

- Border crossings from BC to Washington are down for the fifth straight month. Crossings in June were down over 40% compared with the previous June; anger at the US, not to mention fear of getting sent to some hellhole concentration camp in El Salvador, probably has something to do with it.

- A Winnipeg man was refused boarding on his return flight from Montreal after a WestJet agent refused to accept his Indian Status Card as a valid form of ID. 

- A time capsule in Seward, Nebraska that was sealed in 1975 has just been opened. The capsule, which at the time was billed as the world's largest, contained various memorabilia from that year, of which perhaps the most notable is a 1975 Chevrolet Vega. The car was found to be in very good condition, which is more than can be said for the vast majority of Vegas sold. The capsule also contained a Kawasaki motorcycle and over 5,000 other miscellaneous period items such as the infamous Pet Rocks.

- An Australian woman has been found guilty of murdering three of her in-laws and the attempted murder of her husband after she served them a meal containing deadly death cap mushrooms. Erin Patterson had claimed that the poisonings were accidental, but evidence was found that she had searched online where to find the mushrooms, and dehydrated the mushrooms in a food dehydrator (which she later disposed of in the hope of covering her tracks) and mixed doses into the individual servings given to the victims, then feigned illness herself as they sickened and died.

News roundup, 7 July 2025

- Torrential rains have caused flash flooding on the Guadalupe River in Texas. At least 69 people have been killed, many of them campers from a Christian summer camp; many others remain missing.

- Foreign investors are increasingly leery of the US. A survey of fund managers worldwide by the Bank of America has found that only 23% of them preferred American stocks over those of other countries, a sharp reversal from the last 20 years. And while the S&P 500 is up over 6% compared to last year, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index and Germany's DAX are up more than 20%. Of course, abandoning the US dollar as a reserve currency isn't something that can be done on a whim, or without significant disruption in its own right, but the dollar's status is more uncertain than ever.

- The director of one of Gaza's largest hospitals was killed along with much of his family by an Israeli airstrike on his apartment. His surviving children believe that he was targeted; they say his unit was the only one hit in the airstrike. If true, this would of course be yet another war crime; I guess you can file that along with the countless other war crimes Israel has been accused of in the last few years. All hospital directors in northern Gaza are now either dead or detained. Meanwhile there are also allegations that some of the food aid being distributed in Gaza is laced with the opioid oxycodone.

- The Brokenhead Ojibway Nation has obtained land to build an urban reserve in the RM of East St. Paul, just outside of Winnipeg.

- Tataskweyak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba was hit by a wildfire that has destroyed at least 7 homes; meanwhile the town of Lynn Lake has been evacuated for the second time this summer and residents of Leaf Rapids have been warned to prepare for the same.

- Bob Vylan are facing a rash of cancellations of their booked events in response to on-stage remarks at the Glastonbury festival. The Radar Festival in Manchester has dropped them from their lineup. A representative of the festival says that they did not want to cancel them but were "forced", with suggestions that the venue being partially owned by AMG and Live Nation was a factor. In response, other artists, including GENN and The Scratch, are cancelling their appearances at the Manchester festival in solidarity.

News roundup, 4 July 2025

- The Trump regime is trying to shut down the Mauna Loa laboratory in Hawaii, which has been measuring atmospheric CO₂ concentration since the 1950s. Of course this is no doubt because he doesn't like the implications of what the laboratory is documenting. In a better world someone else (like, say, the UN) would step in and take over the lab's operations, but I suspect Trump would actively seek to dismantle it before that becomes a possibility.

- The US dollar has lost over 10% of its value when compared to those of its closest trading partners - the most dramatic loss of value since 1973. Trump's tariffs are one plausible reason. There are concerns about inflation, and even more so, concerns that foreign investors are avoiding the US. 

- California governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law two bills that make significant changes to the California Environmental Quality Act. While the existing law has drawn praise from some environmentalists, some provisions in it have been weaponized by NIMBYs, not only against affordable housing but even against clearly pro-environment measures like bike lanes. The amendments are intended to fix these issues; among other things they exempt infill housing from the Act's requirements for environmental review (since such housing is by its very nature not constructed on pristine land anyway).

- Russia bombarded Kyiv overnight with hundreds of drones and several larger missiles, injuring at least 23 people and causing widespread damage. This would seem to be a lot less indiscriminate than Ukraine's recent strikes on military factories; one could be forgiven for thinking that the real goal is to destroy Ukraine's viability as a country.

- Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, says that he was brutally beaten and subjected to various psychological torments while incarcerated at the CECOT facility there.

- Flights in Canada were heavily disrupted on Thursday as bomb threats were called into airports in six major cities. 

- Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham plans to seek a second term in next year's municipal elections. 

News roundup, 3 July 2025

- A severe heatwave is sweeping through much of Europe as it has so often in recent summers. Temperatures in the Spanish town of El Granado hit 46°C, and a municipal employee in Barcelona collapsed and died shortly after completing her shift operating a street sweeper.

- Having cleared the Senate, Donald Trump's "one big beautiful bill" is expected to be passed in the House of Representatives by tomorrow. Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly had to make some unspecified concessions to get compliance out of a few Republicans; the exact nature of the concessions is not public, but probably something like "we won't back your opponent in the primary".

- Trump is now musing about revoking the citizenships of people he doesn't like, including New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and possibly also Elon Musk.

- Ukraine successfully carried out a drone attack on a military factory in the Russian city of Izhevsk, killing three people. The operation was carried out from 1,300 km away, some 300 km inside the Ukrainian border.

- Edward Kelley, a man who participated in the Jan 6 putsch, was of course pardoned by Trump along with all his co-conspirators. Unfortunately for him, that pardon probably doesn't apply to crimes committed since his arrest on those charges, such as his involvement in a conspiracy to attack an FBI office with car bombs and drones, for which he was just handed a life sentence. Of course, Trump could very well pardon him for that too if the case manages to hold his attention long enough.

- Two Alberta MLAs now sitting as independents after being kicked out of the UCP caucus for dissent are petitioning to restore the old Progressive Conservative party. In order to accomplish this they will need to collect signatures representing 0.3% of eligible voters, or 8,819 people. Amusingly, two other splinter parties are trying to use the Wildrose name as well. I wish all of these little parties a modest amount of success; not too much though.

- Brendan Berg, the bassist for Winnipeg band Royal Canoe, was killed in a car accident along with his partner Olivia Michalczuk on Highway 10 near Duck Mountain Provincial Park. Their vehicle was stopped on the side of the road when a vehicle coming in the other direction crossed the centre line and hit them at high speed. Berg would have turned 43 the following day.

News roundup, 2 July 2025

- The feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk continues, as Musk condemns the huge increase in the US deficit that will result from the "One Big Beautiful Bill", which has just made it through the Senate. Trump is now hinting that he might cancel contracts with Musk's companies; others are questioning the feasibility of this given the Pentagon's dependence on SpaceX. And now Musk is threatening to form a new political party to challenge the Republicans. Meanwhile China is watching the feud with great interest.

- Manitoba is considering increasing the markup on cannabis. Glen Simard, the minister responsible for Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries (which serves as the wholesaler for cannabis in the province) says this will bring Manitoba in line with other provinces and will help to fund measures to combat impaired driving and the like, however some in the industry fear that this will simply make it harder to compete with the black market. The industry is more hopeful, however, about a proposal to eliminate the requirement that cannabis stores cover their windows; other provinces have already done away with similar rules due to fears that it made it easier to rob them.

- A Sikh activist in the UK died suddenly two years ago after being admitted to hospital; while the official story is that he died from acute myeloid leukemia, some are calling for further investigation, especially given that his death occurred around the same time as the shooting death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada and the attempted murder of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in the US.

- The revamp of Winnipeg Transit's routes is getting mixed reviews; many are not happy that more transfers are needed and there are fewer stops; others say that the more frequent service of the major routes outweighs the downsides. Transit officials expect that service will improve for 60% of passengers, get worse for 10-20%, and stay about the same for the rest; we'll have to see.

- Noted televangelist Jimmy Swaggart has died at the age of 90. Swaggart, a cousin of musician Jerry Lee Lewis, was one of the most successful televangelists in the US, despite several embarrassing transgressions.

News roundup, 1 July 2025

- Numerous nonprofits, including Amnesty International, Save the Children, and Oxfam, are calling for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a joint US-Israeli operation, to be shut down. They accuse the organization of putting people in harm's way by essentially serving as a honeypot for the IDF.

- The Carney government's move to cancel the digital services tax may have been short-sighted. The next thing in the Trump regime's sights is supply management, and getting rid of that would be a hard sell indeed. Fortunately, a recently passed piece of legislation, Bill C-202, explicitly prohibits trade negotiators from "making any commitment on behalf of the Government of Canada" that would impact supply management.

- Criminologists report that homicides in the US, after peaking dramatically in 2020-2021, have declined just as dramatically. It is believed that the spike was driven by the pandemic, and that the decline was driven by the return of jobs and services that had been disrupted.

- A church in Winnipeg's West End has just held its final service; the building will be donated to a nonprofit to serve as housing for seniors. 

- A man who had been assaulted by a crowd of people was taken to the drunk tank at the Main Street Project after being medically cleared by paramedics, and was again cleared on arrival, however he died shortly afterwards. The death is under investigation; if I had to guess it might be that he sustained a concussion in the assault and the symptoms were mistaken for signs of intoxication, but we'll have to see.

- British punk/rap act Bob Vylan, as well as Irish rap group Kneecap, are being investigated for possible "public order offenses" over things they said from the stage at the Glastonbury music festival. Bob Vylan chanted "death to the IDF" (the BBC is apologizing for not pulling the plug on the live broadcast) while Kneecap also made anti-Israeli chants as well as attacking UK prime minister Kier Starmer. The Trump regime has revoked Bob Vylan's visas for a planned US tour; Liberal MP Anthony Housefather and several Conservative MPs are calling for Canada to take similar measures. I do have to wonder if an artist who chanted "death to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps" would have been subject to the same scrutiny.