News roundup, 20 March 2026

- Iran's retaliatory measures seem to have escalated. A strike on natural gas facilities in Qatar has reportedly wiped out 17% of the country's export capacity for at least three years. Whether the MAGAts will be able to draw a connection between their Dear Leader's war and the inevitable increase in the cost of home heating is an open question. While a handful of those people might actually change their ways, the best possible outcome for most of them would be for them to become sufficiently disillusioned that they don't bother to vote anymore. And some will stubbornly keep voting for Trump and his associates out of sheer spite, taking consolation in the fact that it's directly hurting people that they hate - assuming that there are even meaningful elections by then.

- Generally, in a functioning democracy law enforcement is supposed to get a warrant to access private information such as cellphone location data. But what if this data is already being sold by data brokers? The FBI under Kash Patel has been buying data from said brokers in order to track people; defenders of the practice argue that this is publicly available information and thus a warrant should not be necessary. Maybe the real question we should be asking is whether this sort of data should be allowed to be sold on the open market in the first place. For instance, if the authorities can buy this data, then presumably so can a stalker.

- London mayor Sadiq Khan is calling on Labour to campaign on rejoining the EU in the next general election. Certainly some recent polling suggests that this might be a good move; the extent to which this would translate into actual votes is far from clear, though.

- The war in Iran has helped to focus the minds of European leaders on renewable energy. Trump wants to export more American natural gas to Europe, but the spike in prices instead incentivized Europeans to try to replace natural gas with renewables.

- In some parts of the world, you can buy solar panels that just plug into a regular outlet and feed power back into your house's wiring. In some US states, electric utilities are trying to keep them out, claiming that it's a safety concern for their lineworkers (suggesting that it could still lead to power being supplied to a line that a worker thinks is dead because it's not being powered by the utility). Advocates say that this hasn't been a problem in other places and suspect that what the utilities are really concerned about is the "safety" of their shareholders' investments.

- Russia has issued new guidelines for physicians, calling on doctors to ask women how many children they want and to refer them to psychologists if they give "zero" as an answer. The country has already imposed restrictions on abortion and prohibited "childfree propaganda", but evidently those measures aren't doing the job in bringing the birth rate up to a level acceptable to Putin.

- Two Texas-based scientists have found a way to make usable soil from simulated lunar surface material, by combining it with vermicompost and certain fungi which are effective at sequestering heavy metals so they aren't taken up by plants so much. They've managed to grow chickpeas to the point of producing seed, though the success of those seeds in producing new plants remains to be seen.

News roundup, 19 March 2026

- Opponents of Avi Lewis in the federal NDP leadership race have focused on the Leap Manifesto and Lewis' involvement in its creation. Former Alberta environment minister Shannon Phillips, who has endorsed Heather McPherson, has gotten worked up about a video from 2020 in which Lewis and his wife Naomi Klein read out and ridicule negative tweets people had made about them. Along with the usual rightwing suspects, there is one from Phillips in which she calls Lewis a "radical ecoterrorist" who will "send Alberta's economy off a cliff". Interestingly that detail was omitted from the CBC article, which was happy to report how Klein and Lewis made fun of her in response to it. Phillips also accuses Lewis of "writing off Alberta New Democrats". Similarly, candidate Rob Ashton has accused him of being "divisive". The brutal truth, though, is that any even remotely satisfactory action on climate is going to be divisive, and some people are going to see themselves as being left behind. When you need to treat a cancer, you can't afford to lose too much sleep over the damage the chemo and radiation do to adjacent, non-malignant tissue. Oh, and let's not forget who else Phillips has endorsed; there are few topics more divisive among left-leaning folks in this country than tactical voting.

- Ontario premier Doug Ford is urging BC and Quebec to drop their electric vehicle targets, fearing the impact on auto manufacturing in his province. Both province have scaled back their targets, but not enough to satisfy Ford.

- After Ontario's Information and Privacy Commission (IPC) learned that Doug Ford had used his personal cellphone for government business, apparently to avoid scrutiny, the commission ordered the premier to release records related to this. In order to avoid having to comply with the ruling, the government has introduced a bill to retroactively change the law governing the commission to exclude any communication by the premier, cabinet, and their staff.

- Two teens, one in Rivers, Manitoba and another in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, have been arrested after allegedly planning coordinated attacks on schools in their respective communities. 

- Scotland's parliament has voted down a bill that would have legalized assisted dying. So no MAID in Fife for the foreseeable future.

- A staff member at the Pioneer Ridge Long Term Care Home in Thunder Bay, Ontario has been charged with criminal negligence for allegedly causing the death of an 86 year old resident. The care home itself faces the same charge, as well as one of obstructing justice.

- Jeremy Frimer, a psychology professor at the University of Winnipeg who came very close to being fired following a complaint against him by a student, is suing the university along with the faculty union for allegedly giving him complex PTSD. The union is included in the suit because he says they didn't go to bat for him adequately; he's representing himself after 21 different law firms declined to take the case. How credible his case is, I leave as an exercise for the reader.

News roundup, 18 March 2026

- Pete Hegseth, in a press briefing, made the flippant remark "We will keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemies". The thing is, the very act of someone near the top of the chain of command saying this may be a violation of American law going back to the Civil War, not to mention international law. 

- Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center in the US, has resigned, saying that he "cannot in good conscience" back the war on Iran.

- The partial government shutdown in the US and resulting shortage of TSA security screeners means that some smaller airports may have to close, just in time for Spring Break. That could get interesting for Florida businesspeople who gleefully supported Trump until now.

- The Israel question is starting to become an issue in Democratic primaries. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is spending huge amounts of money on primary campaigns, but there seems to be a generational shift that has caught AIPAC off guard.

- New polling from Leger suggests that 60% of the electorate says that the province is on the wrong track, but a strong plurality (48%) would still vote for the UCP if an election were held now. I guess as long as being on the wrong track is worse for women, ethnic minorities and LGBT* folks than it is for straight white dudes, Albertans are fine with it.

- Speaking of the UCP, their former candidate Caylan Ford, who had to exit the race after some of her comments came to light, is trying to sue the news outlets that reported on said comments, including the CBC, the Toronto Star, and Press Progress. A lawyer for the Broadbent Institute, which operates Press Progress, has pointed out that "you cannot be defamed by your own words". I should hope the courts will agree, but don't worry about Ford, she should be fine; all she needs is a GiveSendGo campaign to raise enough money from the rubes to more than cover her legal bills.

News roundup, 17 March 2026

- Donald Trump appears to have admitted in an interview about Iran that "maybe we shouldn't even be there at all". This comes in the context of his increasing alarm about the fact that Europeans aren't keen to follow him into the war, and the fact that he seems not to have realized that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed by Iran in the event of a war. And of all of Trump's numerous shortcomings, failures, and out-and-out crimes, the thing most likely to do actual damage to his political fortunes (even more than the Epstein files) would be a failure to bring fuel prices back down.

- Israel has commenced a large ground invasion of Lebanon, ostensibly in response to Lebanon's failure to disarm the militant group Hezbollah. Around a million people have been displaced by the invasion.

- Palantir CEO Alex Karp recently declared that the AI revolution will disproportionately affect female Democratic voters. There is plenty of suspicion, far from unfounded, that this was meant not so much as a warning but a promise. There's another take, though, namely that this is a warning after all, and that what Karp is urging AI companies to do is not to slow down, but rather to make sure they don't alienate the US military, the implication being that Democratic voters, and especially women, are never going to be in AI's corner, so they have to make sure that the military is. And it seems to be particularly aimed at Anthropic, whose recent blacklisting by the Pentagon is causing Palantir concern due to the latter company's use of Anthropic's product Claude Opus.

- The US Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) has been unable to pay its staff since funding ran out for the Department of Homeland Security last month. A bill to restore funding to the department is being held up by Democrats until reforms to ICE and CBP are agreed to. Now that they're missing actual paycheques, TSA employees are starting to call in sick at higher rates, and staffing shortages are causing huge delays at many airports.

- The timeline for the opening of a supervised consumption site in Winnipeg has been pushed back indefinitely, with the Kinew government asking the organization that intends to run the site to address local concerns about safety before it is approved.

- Following the death of her husband, Kouri Richins published a book for children on how to deal with grief, called Are You With Me. However, she has now been convicted of poisoning him with fentanyl as well as with fraudulently claiming insurance benefits. To add to all that, it appears that the book was ghostwritten.

- German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has died at the age of 96.

News roundup, 16 March 2026

- Donald Trump seems to be trying to move the goalposts on the war on Iran; evidently even he can recognize that maybe getting into an endless war might not be a good idea. Unfortunately it's a bit late for that.

- FCC chair Brendan Carr is hinting that broadcasters who cause displeasure to the Dear Leader might have difficulties renewing their broadcast licenses unless they "correct course" before their renewal time comes up.

- Many Iranian dissidents understandably looked on the US/Israeli attack on their country with rose-coloured glasses before it happened, hoping that this might be the thing that finally liberates them from a regime that certainly is far from benevolent. However, disillusionment is starting to set in among those actually live in the country and are seeing huge amounts of destruction with no benefit. Opinions among the diaspora will doubtless lag somewhat, since they aren't face to face with the bombing, but it will probably come in due time.

- The Trump regime is having a hard time finding allies who will help keep the Strait of Hormuz open. France is willing to consider, but on their own terms; Trump seems to want countries to sign on to an open-ended commitment, which is naturally not an easy sell. He is responding in his usual fashion by hinting that for NATO allies to sit this one out would "be very bad for the future of NATO".

- While Waterloo's university district has often gotten rowdy on and around St. Patrick's Day, the regional police service shocked many, including the city's mayor, when they deployed a sniper to the district. Police have so far not explained their reasoning; the mayor has requested a meeting with the police chief.

- An 81 year old man has been charged with second degree murder following a shooting at a trailer park in Port Alberni, BC. 

News roundup, 13 March 2026

- Mark Carney has finally come out and said that Canada will not participate (directly at least) in the attack on Iran, while still saying that "Canada supports the necessity to prevent Iran’s nuclear program and the export of terrorism". 

- A man is dead after ramming a vehicle into a synagogue in Detroit and exchanging gunfire with a security guard, who was wounded. Authorities say that the attacker was a 41 year old US citizen who was born in Lebanon. They say they haven't found a motive yet, but this probably has something to do with it.

- FBI director Kash Patel gutted a counterintelligence unit specialized in monitoring potential threats from Iran mere days before the US-Israeli attack on the country. One wonders what the motivation for this might have been - had the unit not gathered enough evidence of a threat to justify the attack? Or, more ominously, are they hoping that a major attack will occur that could serve as the "Reichstag fire" that Trump could then use as justification to cancel the midterms, and that the unit might actually foil such an attack?

- The Pentagon has banned press photographers from briefings on the war after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took exception to photos that he deemed unflattering to him.

- Bill C-9, the "Combatting Hate Act", was forced through committee by the Liberals with the assistance of the Bloc Quebecois, against the objections of both the NDP (who along with civil liberties organizations are concerned about the implications for freedom of protest) as well as the Conservatives (who are afraid about possible impacts on freedom of religion). It's kind of telling that the Globe and Mail glosses over the differences between the reasons for the two parties' objections.

- The Alberta Prosperity Project seems to be having difficulty getting enough signatures to force a referendum on independence, judging from the fact that they're now canvassing snowbirds in Arizona and Mexico. They have until May to get enough signatures, 

- Bob Gale, who was appointed by the Ford government as the chair of the Regional Municipality of Niagara, Ontario last December following the death of the previous regional chair, Jim Bradley, has resigned following revelations that he went to the effort (and considerable expense) to obtain an autographed copy of Mein Kampf. The fact that he was heavily pushing amalgamation of the lower tier municipalities in the region probably made him some enemies who might have blown the whistle on his rather curious collection habits.

- A Tennessee woman who was misidentified by facial recognition software was held for six months without bail and hauled off to North Dakota, a state where she says she's never been, over a bank fraud case in Fargo. Apparently they never checked to see if she had an alibi until she was brought there; perhaps it didn't occur to them that the software could get anything wrong. After it was shown that she couldn't have committed the crime they just turned her loose in a strange city until a volunteer with a prison-related nonprofit drove her to Chicago so that family could pick her up from there.

News roundup, 12 March 2026

- Israel bombed a residential neighbourhood in Beiruit, claiming that an apartment building they hit was "used" by an organization called Jama’a Islamiye (Islamic Group). The organization says none of its members were impacted by the attack. Israeli ground troops are also pushing into border areas in Lebanon, and there are fears that a wider invasion is planned. Meanwhile Iran has announced a full closure of the Strait of Hormuz (except for China apparently), causing a dramatic increase in oil prices. Air New Zealand is cancelling around 1,100 flights as the price of jet fuel spikes due to the war. Oil barons in Canada are salivating of course, as are those in Russia.

- The Manitoba government has announced that their proposed supervised consumption site, planned for a former industrial site on Henry Avenue, may open sooner than expected. This has led nearby homeowners to argue for reduced assessed values for their properties. In other provincial government news, Mintu Sandhu, the minister responsible for consumer protection, has introduced a "right to repair" bill modeled after similar legislation recently passed in Quebec.

- A Swiss man in his 60s set him self on fire on a bus in the town of Kerzers, killing himself and five other people. Police have ruled out a terrorist motive, describing the perpetrator as a "marginalised and disturbed individual" who had recently been reported missing by his family.

- Matthew Chorney, a paramedic in West St. Paul, Manitoba, received a call about an emergency in his immediate vicinity ten minutes before the end of his shift. He declined the call and left it to another paramedic who was almost 20 minutes away. Fortunately the patient did not die, but Chorney has been convicted of multiple charges by a disciplinary panel of the College of Paramedics of Manitoba. The charges include professional misconduct; his registration has been suspended for three months and he is being ordered to pay the college for the $25,000 cost of the investigation.

- Kenyan authorities arrested a man who they say was attempting to smuggle over 2,000 queen ants back to his native China. The ants are sold for the pet trade in that country; there are fears that they are being harvested at a rate that could have significant impacts on ecosystems.

News roundup, 11 March 2026

- The US consulate in Toronto was hit by gunfire early Tuesday morning. Nobody was hurt; police are looking for two suspects in what they are calling a "national security incident". As someone on this Reddit thread remarked:

So have your pick of suspects : Canadian angry at the tariffs? Iranian angry at the attack? Muslim supporting other Muslims? Indian, Brazilian, Mexican, European, Chinese angry at tariffs? Venezuelan angry at Maduro's ousting? Russian angry at America? Palestinian?

There are 195 sovereign countries on Earth, Trump managed to piss off most of them.

Others have pointed out the fact that the shots appear to have fired from a handgun, meaning that there's an excellent chance that the gun was originally smuggled into the country from the States, bringing things full circle.

- The US is reportedly putting pressure on Sri Lanka not to repatriate the survivors from the Iranian ship sunk by an American submarine last week, as well as the crew of a second Iranian vessel that became stranded near the island nation. A State Department cable indicates that the US ambassador to Sri Lanka has urged the country to "minimize Iranian attempts to use the detainees for propaganda".

- Nunavut's Lori Idlout has become the latest MP to to defect to the Liberals, this time from the NDP. This defection, along with 3 recent Conservative MPs who defected recently, brings the Liberals up to 170 seats, two short of a majority. The motive for Idlout's decision is unclear. Meanwhile at the provincial level in Manitoba, Conservative MLA Bob Lagassé has left his party to sit as an independent, saying that the last straw was the party's failure to eject Jeff Wharton after he was implicated and fined in the Sio Silica scandal.

- A recall campaign against Alberta premier Danielle Smith has failed after activists only managed to get 2,300 of the 12,000 signatures needed to force a byelection in her constituency of Brooks-Medicine Hat.

- French authorities are investigating an apparent foreign disinformation campaign against two members of the leftwing France Unbowed party who are running for municipal office. One of the candidates, Sebastien Delogu, who is running for mayor of Marseille, was the subject of a blog posting by an anonymous person who claims that he ruined their life; posters with a QR code linking to the blog were posted around the city. The blog, which has since been removed, appears to be connected with a network of accounts linked to the pro-Israeli ELNET organization, a registered lobby group in the country. The group had also targeted Francois Piquemal, who is running for the mayoral office in Toulouse. Both Delogu and Piquemal have been vocal critics of Israel.

- Hungary's parliament has passed a resolution opposing the admission of Ukraine to the EU. Hungary has also adopted a special resolution to permit the cash and gold that was seized while being transported through the country by Ukrainian financial institution Oschadbank to be held for the duration of their investigation into what they claim may be linked to organized crime. Strangely, in light of Hungary's claims, they have released the bank employees that they arrested during the seizure; perhaps they don't want the inconvenience of a trial that might undermine their case for taking the assets. And Slovak prime minister Robert Fico is vowing to "take up the baton from Hungary" and block EU funds to Ukraine even if Hungary's Viktor Orbán is defeated in the upcoming election.

- Lou Callaghan, a captain with the Canadian Coast Guard has been fired after he ignored a distress call from a fishing boat that had run aground. Callaghan claimed to have initially not heard the first call; crew members on his vessel claimed that he turned down the radio after the call came through. Fortunately he was eventually persuaded to attend and the crew of the fishing boat were rescued.

News roundup, 10 March 2026

- The bombing of a girls' school, killing 150 students, during the first salvo of attacks on Iran may have resulted from the US military's use of AI to select targets. I daresay that the use of a poorly tested technology for something so consequential is not a good idea.

- Republican senator Lindsey Graham has warned Saudi Arabia of unspecified "consequences" if the Saudis don't join the US/Israel attack on Iran. Graham was reportedly one of the biggest proponents of the attack in the first place, having been pushing Trump on the issue for months.

- An autonomous vehicle owned by Waymo blocked a street and delayed the arrival of an ambulance at an emergency scene in Austin until a cop was able to gain access and move the vehicle. Although this particular incident probably didn't make a difference in anyone's survival, stuff like this has understandably made people question the wisdom of letting the company operate; unfortunately Texas banned municipalities from regulating such vehicles back in 2017.

- A plan to build what would be Canada's largest data centre in Olds, Alberta has run into a snag - due to its enormous energy requirements (equal to the entire city of Edmonton), the centre would need its own dedicated natural gas power plant. The Alberta Utilities Commission, which among other things regulates power plants in the province, has rejected the proposal due to a lack of consultation and general secrecy. I assume the next step will be for the Smith government to pass legislation to overrule the commission.

- The spike in oil prices resulting from the attack on Iran has led to a significant increase in interest in electric cars in the US. It's too soon to tell how permanent this is going to be, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise buy an EV will get one as a second car and then discover that they work better than the talking heads on Fox say. Once that happens, they might not be eager to go back to gas.

- The Game Developers Conference, a huge week long convention, is being held this week in San Francisco as it has been every year since 1988 (except 2020 of course), but many developers from outside the US are planning to skip the event, saying that they don't feel safe entering the country right now. International attendance had declined since 2020 anyway, with one developer remarking that the value of in-person events had declined anyhow due to the workarounds developed for the pandemic, and with the current political situation in that country many just don't want to risk it.

- School divisions in Alberta have pulled dozens of graphic novels from their shelves, including graphic novel adaptations of 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale and a historical work about the Trojan War as well as the more expected ones (e.g. the stuff with LGBT* content). Possibly the school boards just want to err on the side of caution, though there may be an element of malicious compliance here as well.

News roundup, 9 March 2026

- The late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be succeeded by his son Mojtaba. According to some diplomatic cables that turned up on Wikileaks back in the noughties, the Americans seem to have thought he was pretty much running things anyway; meanwhile one member of the country's main religious body claims that the elder Khamenei apparently did not want his son as a successor, and in any case the current Iranian state was supposed to be a republic, not a monarchy, so this could prove divisive. Also divisive was the statement by the country's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who had apologized for the strikes on Gulf states but then withdrew the apology following criticism from hardliners who called his stance "unprofessional, weak and unacceptable".

- Oil prices have surged by more than 25% since the start of the war, due to the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz and damage to oil infrastructure. If a Democrat were in power when oil prices surged like that, no matter the reason, you can be sure that the MAGA crowd would not shut up about it. I'm not counting on this to make them worry about their Dear Leader's role in this now, though, since in the minds of many of those people the license he gives them to be mean and hateful is worth paying more for gas. In terms of the impact on the energy market, the impact could be mixed; on the one hand it could push people and countries to switch to renewables faster, but it could also lead to the use of more coal in place of natural gas.

- The Manitoba government has refused to allow the City of Winnipeg to change the default speed limit on residential streets to 40 km/h from 50. Premier Wab Kinew rationalizes the decision by saying that "they can do it on their own". Well technically it's true that they could put signs at the entrance to each and every residential street, but realistically that's not going to happen - the cost of the signs alone would be considerable. This is disappointing, but not all that surprising; for all of Kinew's virtues (and they are considerable) he has a populist streak to him that comes out at times like this. And maybe he still clings to hopes of winning back constituencies like Interlake and doesn't want to deal with the rage from people who come into the city from out in the sticks and don't pay attention to the changes to the "unless otherwise posted" signs at the city limit.

- A 45 year old woman who worked as a personal support worker was ambushed and stabbed to death outside a client's home in the Windsor suburb of LaSalle. Nancy Grewal was also a social media influencer in the Sikh community, and had been a vocal critic of the Khalistan independence movement, leading to suspicions that this was the motivation for her killing. It's certainly possible, but I was under the impression that stabbing tends to be more common when the motive is personal, rather than a professional job. It could be that this was one enraged individual rather than an arranged hit, but I do hope police are considering other possibilities (such as a stalker or an ex-partner).

- A white supremacist dating site called WhiteDate, described by some as "Tinder for Nazis", was hacked and had its data published. Some of the data was published on a website called OK Stupid, while more sensitive data was provided only to journalists and researchers; the CBC used some of the latter data to find information implicating current members of the Canadian military. 

News roundup, 6 March 2026

- Mark Carney is refusing to rule out getting involved in the Iran war despite his misgivings, apparently trying to avoid arousing the ire of Donald Trump. Fen Osler Hampson of Carleton University calls Carney's stance "studied ambiguity" and suggests that he might fear that Trump will use crippling trade sanctions to force Canada to cooperate. Part of me would like to see Canada respond to such pressures by threatening to cut off exports of oil and electricity to the US, but that would require more courage than the Liberal Party usually shows, and if we're honest with ourselves it might not even be a good idea; it's the sort of thing that just might provoke the Mango Mussolini to use military force against us. Many members of the Liberal caucus are worried about the matter; the party's caucus meeting today will be interesting. Meanwhile the war itself continues apace, with drone attacks throughout the Middle East on everything from hotels to fossil fuel infrastructure. The Guardian's Gaby Hinsliff suggests a possible reason why Iran would be lashing out at so many countries - not only are they trying to dissuade those countries from helping the Americans, this may be their version of Israel's Samson option, i.e. "to show Washington that if it’s going down then it’s taking the neighbourhood with it" and "make the wider Gulf look too dangerous a place to invest".

- The Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia via Ukraine, has been offline since January. Ukraine attributes this to damage from a Russian strike, but the Orban regime is accusing Ukraine of deliberate delays in getting the pipeline up and running, and in February they vetoed the EU's latest sanctions package against Russia as well as a loan for Ukraine. Now Orban is getting even more belligerent - in a recent post on X (the former Twitter) he called this a "blockade" that Hungary would break "by force". Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded by suggesting that he could give Orban's address to Ukraine's military; most recently, Hungarian authorities seized two vehicles owned by a Ukrainian bank and took seven bank employees into custody. The vehicles were apparently carrying 40 million US dollars, 35 million euros, and 9 kg of gold, which was being shipped to Ukraine from Austria. Hungarian authorities claim that this is a money-laundering investigation;  the speculation on Reddit is that this is a sign of desperation on Orban's part as his Fidez party has been slumping in the polls of late.

- The Trump regime plans to allow the US Department of Justice to interfere with ethics investigations by state bar associations against current and former DOJ lawyers. A proposed regulation would give Attorney General Pam Bondi "the right to review the complaint and the allegations in the first instance" and would suspend the bar associations' investigations until the review is completed.

- Kristi Noem has been removed from her position as Homeland Security secretary, to be replaced by Markwayne Mullin (currently a Republican senator from Oklahoma). I guess she's going to spend more time shooting dogs with her family.

- One of the objections sometimes raised against Canada choosing Saab's Gripen fighter is that there are concerns about "interoperability" with F-35s. On the face of it this should not be a problem; Danish F-35s and Swedish Gripens have been operating together for some time without difficulty - but it has been suggested that the Americans can make it a problem by denying Canada access to the systems that allow this to work.

- Google is facing a wrongful death lawsuit after a Florida man, Jonathan Gavalas, killed himself upon being asked to do so by the company's AI chatbot, Gemini. The suicide followed a long and bizarre series of exchanges with the chatbot.

News roundup, 5 March 2026

- A LNG tanker suspected of being part of Russia's "shadow fleet" has exploded in the Mediterranean between Malta and Libya. The crew were rescued; there are indications that a drone attack may have been the cause. Russia blames Ukraine for the attack.

- While the MAGA movement was pretty solidly opposed to renewable energy until recently, the matter is now getting more complicated as its merits become harder to ignore. While Trump continues to ramble about how awful it is, rightwing influencer Katie Miller (who is married to Trump's domestic policy chief) has lately started to talk about the virtues of solar. So have Kellyanne Conway, Newt Gingrich, and other prominent figures. And solar and related technologies continue to move ahead, even in the US, despite Trump's efforts - for instance, nearly 58 GWh of battery storage was installed in the country last year. The war with Iran could make renewables even more attractive, especially if a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure in the Middle East is damaged. And there are fears that the major US automakers could find themselves reduced to making niche vehicles that hardly sell outside the US.

- The Manitoba government will be introducing legislation in the upcoming session to make it harder to use the notwithstanding clause from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The bill will compel any future government using the clause to explain its reasoning to an appeals court judge, who would then advise on whether the proposed use of the clause would violate certain sections of the Charter. While the judge's ruling would be nonbinding, it would also be public, which would hopefully force the government to explain its move to the public at election time.

- Winnipeg-based bus manufacturer New Flyer has expanded its Winnipeg facility and is once again manufacturing entire buses in the city for the first time in 15 years. The company's practice of late has been to manufacture the shells here but complete the buses in the US to meet American content rules, and this will continue for the US export market, but it will no longer be necessary to ship the shells to the States and then ship the completed product back here for the domestic market.

- The European Union is moving forward with plans to require companies that receive public money to meet minimum thresholds for EU-made parts and require a minimum number of European workers for foreign investors.

News roundup, 4 March 2026

- Mark Carney says that his approval in principle of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is "not a blank cheque", and represents a "failure of the international order". He also acknowledges that "it appears that these actions ‌are ⁠inconsistent with international law" but says he'll leave the final determination to the experts. The most charitable interpretation of his rather confusing stance on the matter is that he's trying to keep Trump off his back, which while not especially admirable is understandable in light of such things as Trump's fury at Spain for not letting the US use bases on their territory for the attack. On the other hand, Keir Starmer is not getting rewarded for his reversal on the use of the Diego Garcia base for the attack, and I'm not sure that Carney will be either, so maybe he should have just taken a principled stance from the start.

- An Iranian ship sank off the coast of Sri Lanka, apparently following a submarine attack. One sailor has been confirmed dead and 78 injured; over a hundred are missing.

- Toronto police are investigating after shots were fired at a synagogue in North York on Monday night. Nobody was injured.

- The Green Party of England and Wales (Scotland has its own Green Party) has overtaken Labour and is only two points behind Reform UK in the latest poll. This is a big thing, because it might drive some tactical voters towards the Greens in the hope of stopping Reform. 

- Jake Lang, a participant in the Capitol riot who was pardoned by Donald Trump, turned up at a fifth anniversary event this year and screamed abuse at Metropolitan Police commander Jason Bagshaw, who he had confronted during the putsch. Among other things, Lang shouted that Bagshaw should be "put down like a dead dog". Besides mangling the metaphor, prosecutors say that this and other things he shouted at Bagshaw constituted threats, and he has been slapped with another charge as a result. It's worth noting that until he was pardoned he had been remanded in custody (he hadn't gotten to trial yet) upon the orders of a Trump-appointed judge who nonetheless couldn't ignore the "very strong" evidence against him.

- A security guard has been charged with assault with a weapon and possession of a prohibited weapon after allegedly using brass knuckles to subdue a shoplifter at a Dollarama in downtown Winnipeg. The victim has also been charged with robbery and uttering threats.

- BC has announced that once they switch to daylight saving time this weekend they will not be switching back in the fall. Actual sleep experts generally think that sticking with standard time rather than DST would be better, but their voices generally get drowned out by those who want more daylight in the evenings (such as retailers). The Manitoba government is deferring any decision on the matter for now.

- Owners of six "holistic spas" in Guelph, Ontario have been charged under a city bylaw with "failure to ensure no adult entertainment services were provided". The services were apparently advertised online.

News roundup, 3 March 2026

- Along with Mark Carney, several other leaders of countries with close ties to the US are being very circumspect about what they're saying about the attack on Iran. Leaders of the UK, France, and Germany, while quick to point out that they weren't involved in the strikes, seem very reluctant to condemn them either. French president Emmnauel Macron had initially, on Saturday, called for an end to military escalation in the region, calling it "dangerous to all" but he'd evidently changed his tune by the time the joint statement with Germany and the UK came out. In contrast, Spain's prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has not held back, calling for "immediate de-escalation and full respect for international law", while Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he was "deeply troubled" by the attack (while also condemning Iran's counterstrikes on countries not directly involved in the attack). Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz has been closed by Iran; what that will do to gas prices remains to be seen, but from a more cynical (or, as Sir Humphrey Appleby would say, "realistic") point of view, I can see Mark Carney being privately happy, since an Alberta that's flush with oil money as a result might be less fractious than the province is currently. In the US, the Democrats are divided on the matter - while Bernie Sanders condemned what he called "an illegal, premeditated and unconstitutional war", and other such as Tim Kaine and Chris Van Hollen have also been critical, other such as Henry Cuellar and Tom Suozzi have been supportive (presumably because of Israel's involvement, though they aren't putting it in those terms of course). In other related news, Kuwait seem to have inadvertently shot down three American fighters in the confusion.

- A judge in North Dakota has upheld a $345 million judgment against Greenpeace following a lawsuit by pipeline company Energy Transfer over the organization's actions in fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. On paper, the judgment affects not only Greenpeace USA but also Greenpeace International, which is based in Europe; one hopes the latter organization can get sheltered from the verdict by the EU, but it looks like Greenpeace USA is finished.

- Peter Thiel's company, Palantir, went to great efforts to try to sell their services to the Swiss government over several years, but Switzerland rejected their advances for multiple reasons, including legal matters concerning data sovereignty as well as straight up national security concerns, a reasonable concern when you're being courted by a company with close ties to the US government. When the Swiss online publication Republik investigated the matter and asked Palantir for comment, the company sent them what Republik’s managing director called "very lengthy" counterstatements for each of a series of articles, which she says "do not fairly address or rebut the reporting". Nonetheless, Palantir is taking the magazine to court under Switzerland's "right to reply" legislation, calling the reporting "misleading", but notably they are not suing for defamation, which you'd expect they would be if the reporting actually were misleading. Perhaps Thiel has never heard of the Streisand Effect.

- Far-right independent MLA Tara Armstrong introduced a bill in the BC legislature to repeal the province's Human Rights Code. The bill was defeated, but the entire BC Conservative caucus voted in favour. Armstrong, who represents the constituency of Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream, was originally elected as a Conservative but left that party along with a colleague to form the OneBC party. She then left that party a few months later to sit as an independent; evidently she doesn't play well with others, but the Cons are all too happy to have her drop bills that they can claim need to be debated, serving as a sort of Vladimir Zhirinovsky or Avigdor Lieberman to Rustad's Putin or Netanyahu. More info about her can be found here.

- Ivermectin, the antihelminthic drug that was touted (with zero evidence) as a treatment for COVID-19, is now being used as an alternative cancer therapy, again with no evidence that it works. It's almost as if the drug has become a sort of totem or sacrament for deplorables.

News roundup, 2 March 2026

- Israel and the US launched an extensive attack on Iran beginning on Saturday morning, killing hundreds. The US Congress has yet to vote on the matter. The country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was among those killed in the attacks, as were at least 148 people at a school in the southern part of the country. Mark Carney says he supports at least one of the objectives of the attack, namely preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. It would have been nice of him to mention that this probably wouldn't be an issue were it not for Trump's tearing up Obama's deal with Iran during his first term, but he left that part out. Perhaps he's got an eye on the votes of the Iranian diaspora in the GTA and elsewhere, whose most visible members are very supportive of the attacks. In contrast, the NDP has condemned the attacks. Iran has responded with retaliatory strikes in Israel and the Gulf states; three US soldiers are among the dead. And British journalist Tariq Ali cites Iranian sources who allege that the Americans and Israelis are specifically targeting the homes of leftwing activists to get rid of the competition for their preferred choice for leader in the event that the current regime collapses. Meanwhile someone won over half a million dollars betting on Khameni's death on a prediction trading platform.

- The AI industry is funding at least two super PACs in the US, one that backs select Democratic candidates and one that backs select Republicans. They're running a whole bunch of ads for their preferred candidates, generally without mentioning AI at all.

- Manitoba's budget is set to be unveiled later this month. Premier Wab Kinew says that there are going to be some "big ticket" items included.

- A Thunder Bay police sergeant has been convicted of obstruction of justice and breach of trust as a result of an incident in 2020 when he entered a residence without a warrant and edited another officer's report.

- A Wisconsin man who bikejacked a Mexican immigrant, wounding him with a box cutter in the process, then posed as the victim to send letters threatening to kill Donald Trump in the hope that he would be deported (and thus presumably unable to testify against him in the bikejacking case). Fortunately, the victim was exonerated when it was shown that his English wasn't good enough for him to have written the letters. The perpetrator has now been sentenced to over 16 years in prison for the crime.