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, 21 Jan 2026

- Mark Carney, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, warned that "the old order is not coming back" and that mid-range powers such as Canada need to adapt and cooperate rather than competing with each other for the crumbs from the US and China. His full speech may be found here. Meanwhile EU leader Ursula von der Leyen, speaking at the same conference, vowed that if Donald Trump follows through with his latest tariff threats, the federation's response will be "unflinching" and "united". Some European leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron, are calling for the union to enact a never-before-used regulation known as the Anti-Coercion Instrument, which could be used to impose measures such as tariffs, trade and foreign investment restrictions, and measures affecting the intellectual property rights of the target country. A potential spanner in the works is the European far right, who are polling a little too well for elections that are due over the next few years. And you can be sure that the Trump regime will pull out all the stops to maximize the chance of those parties taking over. For his part, Trump himself is scheduled to address the WEF today, and continues to be as belligerent as ever. Perhaps the most ridiculous part is the fact that Trump is actually saying that he's pushing ahead with this in response to not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He's not so much a Bond villain as a Maxwell Smart or Austin Powers villain.

- Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, also spoke at the WEF, and claimed that AI will create so many jobs that immigration won't be a problem anymore. Whether anyone actually believed him is another question.

- Doug Ford claims that Chinese cars are a security risk, saying that "when you get on your cellphone, it’s the Chinese that are going to be listening to your … telephone conversation". Now to be fair, there might be a kernel of truth to that - but given the way the US is going I'm not sure that the risk is any lower with American cars. In any case, the risk probably isn't as big as Ford thinks; BYD sells a lot of cars in Europe, where they have significantly better privacy protections than we do. The fact that they're allowed to do that suggests that Ford is wrong. In taking this position he's also doing the bidding of the US, but don't tell him that.

- A Danish pension fund, AkademikerPension, is selling off its entire holdings of US Treasuries, worth approximately $100 million. They cite concerns about the financial stability of the country under Trump.

- Donald Trump has reposted private texts from Emmanuel Macron, apparently under the impression that what he posted would make Macron look bad. Macron stands by his words (and why shouldn't he?) Then again, why would you expect Trump to understand the concept of a rhetorical question?