News roundup, 21 Oct 2026

- Alberta separatists are turning their guns on Danielle Smith following their defeat in Monday's referendum. Jeffrey Rath is accusing her of being "in bed with Naheed Nenshi, Mark Carney, Rachel Notley and the rest of the socialists and globalists". He now says Alberta will never be independent as long as Smith remains premier, implying that the seppies are going to try staging a coup in the UCP to get rid of her.

- 35 soldiers remain in hospital following the disastrous fire at CFB Wainwright on the weekend. Defence Minister David McGuinty has declined to provide details on the specifics of their injuries for privacy reasons; the cause of the fire is still being investigated. Satellite images show that the fire burned roughly 10 km² of land.

- Australian MP Helen Haynes has lost both legs as a result of the vehicle attack outside her constituency office in Wangaratta, Victoria. Meanwhile, a man has been arrested in the Perth suburb of Victoria Park after making threats at the office of Hannah Beazley, a Labor member of the Western Australia legislature, while armed with nunchucks.

- Polling for Toronto's mayoral election next week is inconsistent. A poll from Pollara gives Olivia Chow a 7 point lead over rightwing insurgent Brad Bradford, but Nanos gives Chow a lead of only three points, which is within the margin of error for the poll. The Pollara poll also asked respondents what they think of Bradford's plan to privatize Toronto Water; 62% of respondents are concerned about the proposal; this includes 57% of undecided voters and, curiously, 27% of Bradford supporters. I guess they're weighing that concern against their desire to put a white dude back in the mayor's office, though, and the latter desire is more important to them.

- A hack at Crime Stoppers has resulted in the leaking of over 1.5 million tips made by Canadians to the organization over the last 25 years. Not surprisingly, this is a source of considerable alarm for those whose identities were exposed.

- Winnipeg mayoral candidate Kevin Klein recently ran an ad for his campaign on social media. The problem is, the stock footage in the ad is of the wrong city; numerous well-known Edmonton landmarks were spotted in the video. Colin Fast, a member of incumbent mayor Scott Gillingham's campaign team, remarked "We know Kevin Klein hasn’t spent much time downtown, but we didn’t realize it had been so long that he’s forgotten what it looks like".

News roundup, 20 Oct 2026

- The separatist referendum in Alberta appears to have been soundly defeated, with around 76% of voters voting to remain in Canada. This is good news for everyone except the seppies, who probably won't get to become Septics in the near future. The margin of victory for sanity is especially good news (and higher than I expected); a narrow victory would have been almost as bad as a defeat, since not only would it likely have resulted in a surge in domestic violence across rural Alberta (not that there probably hasn't been some as a result of this vote) but a close vote would potentially be easier to discredit as rigged, not only in the eyes of the public but, much more ominously, in the eyes of the Trump regime. Unfortunately, it's not impossible that another referendum could happen soon - while Danielle Smith has rejected the idea, it's possible that it could happen anyway if the people behind a previous attempt to hold a referendum are successful in their appeal of a court decision that struck down their plans.

- Australian MP Helen Haines is in critical condition after being hit by a vehicle. Authorities are saying that this was not an accident but an intentional attack, though they are still trying to determine the exact motive. Haines, an environmentalist and public health expert, was elected as an independent in 2019 and reelected in 2022. A 43 year old man is in custody for the attack. In some ways the suspect doesn't fit the typical profile for such attackers, having been an anti-logging activist prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, but maybe he went down a far-right rabbit hole during the lockdowns. Time will tell I guess.

- Meta is being accused of interfering in the Brazilian presidential election by suppressing accounts that are supportive of incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, allegedly at the request of far-right opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro.

- Activists are calling on Winnipeg to bring in a bylaw to restrict the removal of mature trees on private property. The proposal from Trees Winnipeg would control the removal of trees more than 15 cm in diameter, while still allowing removal under certain circumstances (e.g. if they're diseased or if their removal is truly necessary for development). A number of cities in Canada already have such a bylaw, including Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Surrey. Trees Winnipeg says that 75% of council candidates have signed onto the pledge, though incumbent mayor Scott Gillingham is not among them.

- While tourism is tanking in Las Vegas, some Canadians still have no compunction about going there or elsewhere in the US. It's increasingly limited to the kind of person who would drunkenly steal and injure a flamingo, though.

News roundup, 19 Oct 2026

- An explosion and fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in Alberta has killed at least four people and injured numerous others, 19 of them critically. There were some rumours that this resulted from oil and gas infrastructure being hit during an exercise, but the DND says there is no evidence to support this; they also say there is no evidence that this was a terrorist incident. Alberta separatist leader Jeffrey Rath made allegations, entirely unsubstantiated, of a "cover up", and suggested that "DEI programs" and "gender fluid soldiers" were to blame for the disaster.

- Albertans are voting today on ten referendum questions, including one on moving towards separation from Canada. Polls suggest that the separatist movement has lost some momentum recently; that said, they could still win if the turnout is sufficiently low, as separatists tend to be more highly motivated to actually vote. Reassuringly there are signs that turnout will be high; more than 700,000 people had voted in advance as of Saturday. I suspect that reason will prevail, but probably not by as big a margin as the polls would predict.

- Green Party member Pete Fry has been elected mayor of Vancouver, defeating right-leaning incumbent Ken Sim. 

- The Trump regime is apparently looking for means to strip Ilhan Omar of her citizenship, according to reports following the DHS raid on her home last week. During the raid her passport was among the items seized; the regime appears to be trying to claim that her age was misrepresented and that she was actually an adult when her late father applied for citizenship, meaning she would have had to apply separately. What's remarkable is that none other than Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn't agree with Omar on much of anything, is coming to her defense.

- A federal judge in the US has ruled that the Trump regime likely acted illegally when it banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico journalists from the White House, and has reinstated access for them pending a final judgment on the legality of the move. 

- Nick Adams, the Trump regime's "Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism, and Values" (yes, that's actually his title) expressed outrage at travel boycotts aimed at the US. He called the failure of foreigners to spend money in his country "theft". This comes as travel to the US is facing drastic declines in tourism - they had a 5.5% drop in international visitors last year (and a decline of almost 21% from Canada).

News roundup, 16 Oct 2026

- A woman who showed up at a Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Release the Epstein Files" was attacked by at least two men before police intervened. The police, however, just escorted her off the premises; according to the local sheriff the cops didn't see the actual attack and the victim didn't file a report. I'd be curious to know what kind of persuasion was used by the police to deter her from doing so. Incidentally, while the attack was real, one widely circulated image purporting to be of the attack was actually generated using AI.

- Trump's new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, has admitted that she failed her bar exam, but this did not deter her from repeatedly describing herself as a lawyer. To be fair, that's probably not the biggest lie she'll be telling in her present career.

- A school shooting in Bend, Oregon has killed three children and a teacher. The 16 year old suspect is also dead.

- The works of Irish author Sally Rooney are being banned from sale in the UK after she announced that she would be donating money to Palestine Action, an organization that the UK government considers a "terrorist" group despite the fact that it hasn't been linked to any actual violence, just vandalism and disruption.

- Three people are dead and 16 injured after a collision involving multiple vehicles, including two transit buses, in the Calgary neighbourhood of Saddle Ridge. One of the buses, which was powered by compressed natural gas, caught fire; one of the injured is in life-threatening condition. Meanwhile another fiery multi-vehicle crash has killed at least one person in Southwold Township, Ontario, just outside of London. The fire in that accident was so intense that the police have yet to determine the number of people represented by the remains found.

News roundup, 15 Oct 2026

- The Trump regime says that it is monitoring Canada for signs of election interference related to the upcoming midterms. US ambassador Pete Hoekstra cites a speech by former prime minister Justin Trudeau at Brown University last month in which he criticized the regime, as well as Industry Minister Mélanie Joly's remarks about retaliatory tariffs that target exports from "politically sensitive states". The fact that fuel prices show no sign of going down is probably bringing the regime close to panic.

- Federal NDP leader Avi Lewis is calling on the federal government to nationalize Stelco after its parent company shut down operations in Hamilton. Lewis pointed out that there is a precedent for this in the UK's nationalization of British Steel earlier this year, though it's worth noting that the latter move was not simply to save jobs but to ensure a secure supply of steel. Nonetheless, it's worth considering; sadly, it seems unlikely that the Carney government will do this given that they're busy making plans to privatize airports.

- The Ford government in Ontario is moving ahead with the forced removal of bike lanes from several Toronto streets, even as activists are requesting the Supreme Court to rule on the matter. Protesters obstructed removal efforts on Wednesday, but a large number of police moved in; two people were arrested. What's notable is that several compromise proposals from the City of Toronto that would have restored motor vehicle lanes while keeping the bike lanes were rejected by the province last month. One is left with the impression that Ford knows deep down that adding a lane won't solve congestion, and that his slackjawed supporters won't be satisfied by anything that allows cyclists on $80 bikes to overtake them while they sit in traffic in their $80,000 pickup trucks.

- New polling in BC suggests that the race is tightening; although the BC Conservatives still show as being in the lead with 42%, the NDP is at 40%. The Greens are at 9%. Among supporters of other parties, 29% said that they would consider supporting the NDP if their preferred candidate had no realistic chance (for Green supporters specifically this was 37%), while 21% of third-party supporters would vote Conservative under such circumstances. This might be good(ish) news for the NDP, but there are many caveats, not least the "shy Tory factor", which is likely to be significant given how embarrassing it must be to consider supporting the Cons. The methodology used for this poll doesn't allow for a margin of error to be calculated.

- One of Anthropic's AI agents went rogue and sent a false tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police. Notably, the police immediately dismissed the tip as spam, but Anthropic didn't realize this had happened for two months.

News roundup, 14 Oct 2026

- The Carney government quietly suspended plans to purchase 16 Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters from the US earlier this year. The decision was made with an eye to reduce military reliance on the US; it was made shortly before the unsuccessful trade talks with the Trump regime over the summer.

- A Ukrainian citizen is going on trial in Germany for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia four years ago. The man, named as "Serhii K", was arrested in Italy last year and extradited to Germany; another suspect faces potential extradition from Croatia. In Poland, however, a court refused to extradite a third suspect, saying that an attack on the pipeline was not unlawful.

- New polling on Toronto's mayoral race gives Olivia Chow a narrow lead of 51% over Brad Bradford's 46%. Bradford has more support among property owners, though; this is concerning because the latter group may be more likely to actually vote.

- A banner hung from a highway overpass near Steinbach, Manitoba declared that "Steinbach votes white not brown"; this was naturally disconcerting to Mitesh Kumar, who is running for city council. The banner also had the name of a white supremacist organization on it; the CBC blurred this detail from the image posted on their website, perhaps hoping that ignoring them will make them go away, but the organization is named in this Reddit thread as a neo-Nazi "active club" founded in Hamilton.

- An apparent data error resulted in End Homelessness Winnipeg overestimating the number of chronically homeless people in the city tenfold. I suppose this is good news, though it's embarrassing for the organization.

- The portion of northwestern Ontario that's in the central time zone will be joining Manitoba in remaining on daylight saving time for the entire year. The region has long had closer ties to Manitoba than to southern Ontario, so this made sense.

News roundup, 13 Oct 2026

- Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney is warning that the separatists could win next week's referendum if the turnout is low. While the polls show a strong majority opposing separation, there is a danger of complacent urbanites not bothering to vote. Some folks in this Reddit thread point out that while you don't see too many pro-independence lawn signs in Calgary or Edmonton, just outside those cities you see large numbers of them, which might add to the aforementioned complacency. And Kenney also fears that the additional questions on top of the separatism one will lead to long wait times, especially in densely populated areas (which are also the reliably federalist areas). While a yes vote doesn't automatically mean secession, it would mean another, binding referendum in a couple of years, and once something like that gains that kind of momentum it becomes harder to stop. Even a narrow defeat for the separatists would still be a troubling outcome, because the separatist movement is unlikely to go away if it wins significant support. Kenney also says, not incorrectly, that the separatists are "angry with modernity"; however many in the aforementioned Reddit thread point out, also not incorrectly, that Kenney was happy to go along with the base prejudices of that crowd as long as it worked for him politically.

- Bulgaria's prime minister has summoned the Russian ambassador following drone attacks on two ships off his country's Black Sea coast. One of the ships sank and eleven crew members are missing; Ukraine blames Russia for the attack. Russia has said previously that they are targeting ships carrying weapons and/or "dual use" cargo to Ukraine but have not claimed responsibility for this attack. This attack notwithstanding, the former commander-in-chief of Ukraine's military, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, says that Ukraine has "broken Russia's ability to advance". Ukraine is also targeting Russian data centres with their drones, leading to some reports that this has led to a drop in far-right posts in European social media, however the accuracy of this is disputed.

- The US Department of Homeland Security searched the home of Ilhan Omar on Monday. The department claims that this is part of a criminal investigation. The specifics have not been released, but JD Vance has previously accused Omar of committing immigration fraud. Even if there were substance to these accusations, though, it seems awfully convenient for them to wait until just before the midterms to take any action.

- A municipal election forum was held in Steinbach last week, the city's first in the course of this campaign. Only four candidates, none of them incumbents, showed up to the event, which was organized by the local Strong Towns chapter. I guess Strong Towns is too "woke" for Steinbach.

News roundup, 9 Oct 2026

- The Alberta government is ordering the City of Edmonton to revert to its pre-2024 zoning bylaws and parking minimums. The city had overhauled its bylaws to allow multiplexes to be built in neighbourhoods that were formerly single-family exclusive. One might think that this is a matter that the citizens of Edmonton could decide on (and in fact already decided on when they elected the current mayor and council last year), but Danielle Smith doesn't care what Edmontonians want. No doubt she fears that if Edmonton and Calgary build more dense housing, they might grow in population by attracting urban cosmopolitan folks from elsewhere, and thus have a larger share of the provincial electorate. This would eventually leave the simple rural types outnumbered and thus make the UCP unelectable in its current form.

- An investigation by MPI and the City of Winnipeg has found that a large number of rideshare (Uber/Lyft/etc) drivers, who are required to have a higher level of insurance in order to register with the city, have been downgrading their coverage once registered so as to get out of paying the higher premiums. As many as 36 of them have gotten into accidents in a 1 year period, resulting in $189,000 in claims that MPI may now try to recover from the improperly insured drivers.

- The BC Conservatives have dropped Joachim Agou as their candidate in the constituency of Victoria-Beacon Hill following the discovery a series of offensive social media posts. These include one in which he praises a driver who ran his car into pro-Palestinian protesters, as well as several pro-Trump (and implicitly racist) posts. Unfortunately this will probably have little impact on the polls, which show the party significantly in the lead with only a couple of weeks before the election.

- Conservationists fear that a grove of blight-resistant American Chestnut trees in West Virginia could be cut down to make way for a data centre. There is a great deal of confusion and secrecy about the ownership of the land and the company's plans; activists fear clearing could start as early as next month.

News roundup, 8 Oct 2026

- The latest polling for the US midterm elections suggests that the Republicans are heading for a severe beating, and that more than 60% of the electorate now disapproves of Donald Trump's performance as president. Even the billion dollars available to the campaign might not be enough if the midterms are run fairly, which is far from a given. And if they do lose the midterms, that's not going to stop Trump from issuing all kinds of executive orders, some of which might be vindictively directed against us.

- One of the numerous candidates on Toronto's mayoral ballot is someone named Braeden Chow. He claims that incumbent mayor Olivia Chow is his aunt, something denied by the mayor's campaign. More interesting (and disconcerting) - someone on this Reddit thread reported that his Instagram page was full of "Ford Nation" hashtags, but most of those posts now seem to have been removed. He claims to be entirely independent, and perhaps he is - but it sure looks like an attempt to sabotage Olivia Chow's reelection chances to me.

- Ukraine accuses Russia of deliberately targeting civilians in its latest round of attacks, which have killed at least 30 people and injured 18. One of the targets hit was a transit bus; I'm sure the Russians will claim it's somehow justified though.

- The Chalmers neighbourhood in the Elmwood district of Winnipeg has long been something of a food desert. The local neighbourhood association, however, is trying to change that by opening a low-cost grocery store. It remains to be seen if this will succeed; Neechi Commons in North Point Douglas failed a number of years ago, and the failure has been attributed to widespread theft.

- Five suspects have been arrested in the art heist at the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France. The missing paintings have yet to be located, however.

News roundup, 7 Oct 2026

 - Manitoba premier Wab Kinew has been answering all opposition questions in French for the last couple of days. Konrad Narth, the Tory interim leader, considered this to be a "basic lack of respect". It's worth noting that Narth represents the constituency of La Verendrye, which has the second largest Francophone population in the province after St. Boniface. I suspect Kinew is trying to smoke out the bigots in the Conservative Party, perhaps in the hope of winning that constituency next year (it was held by the NDP's Ron Lemieux from 1999 until 2011 when redistribution put Lemieux in a different constituency). This does not sit well with Raymond Hébert, an emeritus professor of political science at the Université de Saint-Boniface; he fears that this may be counterproductive to the expansion of bilingual services in the province.

- Former Conservative MP Chris Alexander has withdrawn from the Toronto mayoral race. This leaves Brad Bradford as the main rightwing candidate running against incumbent mayor Olivia Chow. One thing that might help save Chow, however, is the fact that it's too late to remove Alexander from the ballots, meaning he will still draw votes himself.

- A Bellingham, Washington resident has been charged with conspiring with the shooter responsible for the massacre at a school in Tumbler Ridge, BC in February. James Cody Bryant had allegedly been in contact with shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar for months prior to the attack, and provided funding as well as advice on how to pull it off, even down to stickers to decorate the weapons with in order to make the livestream of the attack more visually appealing.

- France has suspended the use of stun grenades after a 15 year old student had his hand blown off by one during the wave of student protests that has swept across the country. The protests, which began in mid-September in response to poor conditions and maintenance at school buildings, have disrupted almost a quarter of all high schools in the country; the centrist government as well as the far right blame the leftwing France Unbowed party and its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

- The RCMP has seized 13 firearms, two of which were sawed off, and some 20,000 rounds of ammunition during searches of two homes in the RM of West St. Paul just north of Winnipeg. 

News roundup, 6 Oct 2026

- The Parti Québécois has won a plurality, though not a majority, of seats in the Quebec provincial election yesterday, despite getting less than 30% of the vote province-wide. The party held only three seats in the previous legislature but now has 59, and is expected to form a minority government. The Liberals jumped from 19 seats to around 40, while the governing Coalition Avenir Québec failed to win a single seat; the Conservatives went in the opposite direction, jumping from zero seats to 19. PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has promised a referendum on sovereignty once Donald Trump is safely out of power in the US, but will need the support of Québec Solidaire in order to get the measure on the ballot. Also interesting is the fact that St-Pierre Plamondon has promised electoral reform; we'll have to see how that goes, but both Québec Solidaire and the Conservatives are in favour, so maybe it will happen.

- A lab worker at Russia's Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute has died of a pneumonia-like illness and dozens of people have been quarantined. It is widely suspected that the worker may have been infected with the pneumonic form of plague; the governor of a neighbouring region initially posted on Telegram that the woman had died from that disease, but later altered his comment to say "maybe" (perhaps fearing a fall from a window). In any case, it's worth noting that despite its fearsome reputation, plague (even in the pneumonic form) is far less contagious than COVID-19 or flu.

- August Hanning, the former head of Germany's main intelligence service BND, has been arrested on suspicion of treason and espionage on behalf of a foreign power. Two of his former employees have also been charged. It has not been disclosed which foreign power or powers were involved here.

- A referendum question in California, to be voted on in this fall's midterms, would impose a one time tax of 5% of the net worth of billionaires in the state. Google's cofounder Sergey Brin has spent $102 million to fight the measure. Unfortunately, it looks like stuff like this is working; recent polling suggests that the measure is in danger of not passing. I guess all those baristas, network administrators, and film extras are somehow still convinced that they're going to be billionaires someday and don't want a precedent like this.

- New legislation in Manitoba will allow cannabis shops to take down their window coverings. The industry has long warned that the previous requirement made them more vulnerable to robberies. Besides the product, it seems likely that such shops will have more cash on hand than the average store of that size; many people are reluctant to use something traceable like a credit or debit card to buy a product that is still illegal in much of the world, and in fact Canada's privacy commissioner recommended in 2018 that people use cash for this purpose.

News roundup, 5 Oct 2026

- The first officer accused of attacking the captain of FlyDubai Flight 1073 was reportedly banned from flying commercially in his home country of Oman due to extremist views. Details about the specifics of these views have not been made public, and it is not known if Oman attempted to warn other countries about him. It appears that the weapon used in the attack was a crash axe of the sort carried in the cockpit of all airliners in case of an emergency; unfortunately in this case the axe was used to cause an emergency.

- Winnipeg mayoral candidates Mike Vogiatzakis and Kevin Klein are accusing each other of offering inducements to withdraw from the race. Vogiatzakis says that Tim Diack, a supporter of Klein, offered him a position at city hall, later stated by his campaign manager to be the chair of the police board. Diack says that he did call Vogiatzakis but did not make such an offer, and that Vogiatzakis is in fact ineligible for the position due to a criminal record (he has convictions for contempt of court as well as assault). Klein's campaign manager also says that Diack has no official position in the campaign team. Klein claims that Vogiatzakis offered him an inducement of his own, though no details were provided. Such inducements are of course prohibited. Meanwhile Klein is facing criticism after the Winnipeg Sun, of which he is CEO, called into question the significance of the deaths of indigenous children in residential schools.

- Far right candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, has come out on top in the first round of Brazil's presidential election, winning 47.1% of the vote compared to 45% for incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The election will now go to a runoff, but Bolsonaro is expected to win unless Lula is able to rally people who abstained in the first round.

- Spain's prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap election after his coalition partners Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) voted alongside rightwing parties to defeat two bills intended to increase tenants' rights.

- A 12 year old girl was killed in Baltimore and another person wounded in the crossfire as two men opened fire on each other in a dispute over a parking space.

News roundup, 2 Oct 2026

- Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now spinning the attempt to crash FlyDubai flight 1073 as a terrorist attack aimed at Israelis, saying that the first officer had undergone "Islamist radical indoctrination". While it's entirely possible that this is true, and the UAE is considering this in their investigation, opposition leader Yair Lapid says that nothing of the sort was mentioned in the security briefing he was given. It seems that Netanyahu is trying to turn this into a boost for him in the upcoming parliamentary election, which recent polling suggests that Netanyahu may be at risk of losing. And given that as soon as he's no longer prime minister he'll be in danger of going to jail for past corruption, he's naturally pulling out all the stops to win. Happily Captain Smit Machchhar, who was instrumental in saving the aircraft by getting the cockpit door open, is recovering in hospital in Abu Dhabi.

- A proposed pipeline from Alberta to the BC coast, now officially named the Pacific Link, has become the first project designated to be a matter of "national interest". Under the Building Canada Act this means that the approval process will be fast-tracked, although its approval and construction is still not guaranteed. The government claims that the pipeline will reduce Canada's "emissions intensity" (i.e. emissions per unit volume of oil produced), but environmentalists warn that it will mean more oil in total will actually be extracted and burned, outweighing the benefits from a reduction in intensity.

- The Manitoba Labour Board has ruled that the work done by workers at Dynacare labs constitute an essential service and that limits must thus be placed on their right to strike. A strike might still be legal under some circumstances, but an essential services agreement must be made beforehand that sets minimum staffing levels. The company and the union had previously agreed on treating their work as non-essential because there are also public labs that do the work, but the province intervened in this, most likely because a widespread strike and the resulting slowdown in medical tests would be politically difficult for the government.

- In most jurisdictions, e-bikes and e-scooters are supposed to be speed limited, generally to 32 km/h (some provinces limit the scooters and lightweight e-bikes to 25 km/h). However, the motors in the bikes are generally capable of more than that and the limits are put in afterwards; these are often quite easily hacked to allow much higher speeds. A CBC Marketplace investigation has found that some stores, including big box stores like Best Buy, Canadian Tire, and Costco as well as specialty bike shops, have been selling the bikes with the limiters disabled and/or telling buyers how to hack them to go faster than they're supposed to. An employee at one shop in Richmond Hill told an undercover reporter that their bikes are capable of 120 km/h. Some have also marketed them as suitable for children younger than the legal age limits.

News roundup, 1 Oct 2026

- A FlyDubai Boeing 737 Max on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv had a very close call after the first officer apparently stabbed the captain and tried to crash the plane. The aircraft lost around 14,000 feet of altitude in about 30 seconds before the wounded captain managed to open the cockpit door, enabling passengers  to overpower the first officer, and one of the passengers managed to pull the aircraft out of its dive. He later said that while he wasn't a trained pilot he knew something about aviation from watching a lot of Mayday episodes (you really can't make this stuff up). Then two deadheading pilots, reportedly a Russian and a Ukrainian, took over and flew the plane to a safe emergency landing at the Saudi city of Tabuk. One noteworthy fact - since 9/11 more passengers have been killed by pilot suicide than by terrorism (though this incident is still under investigation and may turn out to have been both of those things). More info in this video.

- Beyond destroying whatever trust potential allies had in the US, the Trump regime is eroding the one thing that America still has above all other countries - its military might. The war against Iran has caused serious damage to US military facilities across the Middle East - some of which might not even be worth fixing due to their continued vulnerability. They also have had to move assets from other areas - such as the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, normally based in Japan, which was sent to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Persian Gulf. And many of their consumable assets, like missiles, have been depleted.

- Environmentalists are concerned that the Carney government's Bill C-39, an omnibus bill dubbed the Building Canada Strong Act, will excessively weaken environmental protections. The bill could allow the government to grant permits for preliminary work before an impact assessment is complete if the work is deemed to be sufficiently in the public interest; while the work could theoretically be stopped if a serious concern is found, many have doubts that such a power would be exercised in time. The bill also appears to dilute provisions of the Species at Risk Act.

- Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries got a boost from increased cannabis sales as well as casino revenue, but this was not enough to make up for a decline in alcohol sales. The Crown corporation still made an overall profit of $724.1 million in the last fiscal year, but this represents a drop of $6 million from the previous year.

- Scott Aitchison, the Conservative MP for the central Ontario riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka, has announced that he will be stepping down once the fall sitting of Parliament ends. I have my doubts that anyone other than another Conservative will win the ensuing byelection, but that remains to be seen.

- The only road access to New Brunswick's Campobello Island is by a bridge connecting the island to Lubec, Maine. This is becoming a problem due to the US ban on imports of certain goods from Canada - a truck delivering supplies to the island was turned back at the border despite being tagged as being destined for the community. Given that dairy products are part of the Trump regime's import ban, this is causing considerable concern for community members. I suppose if we wanted to be really mean and petty we could do the same to the Northwest Angle, Minnesota and Point Roberts, Washington, but given that those two places have less than 1,500 people between them it wouldn't have much effect.