News roundup, 9 July 2026

- Flooding as a result of recent storms has resulted in the evacuation of the Dauphin Regional Health Centre. The city got 115 millimetres of rain in a two day period, and the hospital's basement was flooded, knocking out power to the facility and causing substantial damage. Patients were sent to other hospitals across the province, the largest share being sent to Brandon. It may be months before full service is restored. Also in Dauphin, a huge commercial greenhouse was flooded, destroying vast amounts of crops. While the Parkland region, which includes Dauphin has gotten the worst of it, more than 50 municipalities across the province have declared local states of emergency due to recent storms.

- The federal government is cutting funding to a weather radar research group, even as the incidence of tornadoes is increasing in this country. More than a little short sighted, I'd have to say.

- Jesse Wheatland is accused of setting numerous fires across Winnipeg, including at the constituency offices of ministers Bernadette Smith and Nahanni Fontaine as well as several downtown businesses and an addictions treatment centre. He was reportedly in possession of a list of potential targets when he was arrested; these included the office of Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara and the CBC. Another list found following searches mentioned a proposed location for a supervised consumption site; he is also accused of having attempted to start a fire there as well. He had previously posted concerns about that site on a community Facebook group; other targets appear to have been former employers.

- The Rural Municipality of East St. Paul is refusing to publicize the names of registered candidates in this fall's municipal election until the deadline to register has passed in September. The policy has been in place since 2022; the practice is anomalous and the province has urged the municipality to be more transparent, but there is no legislation to actually prohibit such secrecy. The motivation for the policy has not been made public; none of the council members would address the matter with the CBC. I suspect it may have something to do with councillors and/or the mayor hoping to get in by acclamation and not wanting it to be known that they're running unopposed until it's too late to do anything about it. Certainly some community activists fear that this could be a consequence of the policy.

- Graham Platner, the winner of the Democratic primary for the Maine Senate seat that's up for grabs this fall, is withdrawing from the race following sexual assault allegations. Platner had been seen as a progressive compared to the establishment candidate Janet Mills who he'd defeated in the primary. The party must now select a new candidate by the 27th of July in order to contest the seat, which is critical in gaining control of the Senate.

- Mark Zuckerberg, whose company just laid off thousands of people to replace them with AI, admits that it isn't working as well as he had hoped. In his words, the "trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected". Other companies are facing similar issues; Ford has had to rehire many engineers and technicians. The company's VP of vehicle hardware engineering, Charles Poon, is trying to spin this as bad timing, saying that the experienced workers left before they could transfer their knowledge to the AIs. This comes as Ford had more recalls than any other US automaker so far this year. I have to assume all this folly is driven by investors.

News roundup, 12 May 2026

- Eileen Wang, the mayor of the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia, has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to acting as an "illegal foreign agent" of China. This apparently involved the creation of a news website for the Chinese community, which carried the Chinese state's version of news and current affairs. That in itself doesn't sound like a crime, however the US alleges that she and her co-conspirator were posting specific articles requested by the Chinese government and reporting back with screenshots and hit counts, all without disclosing that she was doing so at the request of China. That definitely sounds a bit more suspect, as does the accusation that her co-conspirator is accused of "cultivating" her in the hope of strengthening China's influence in California. That said, under other circumstances I'd be suspicious of the truth to these claims; I could easily see the Trump regime manufacturing these kind of charges against a political enemy - but her plea agreement casts some doubt on that possibility.

- Winnipeg's Siloam Mission is laying off 16 staff and reducing hours at its drop-in space beginning in June. The organization is caught in a pinch between increased homelessness (meaning more demands for their services) and a decline in donations (which has been observed across the charitable sector in Canada). The organization is also riven with internal turmoil following the hiring of new CEO Sonia Prevost-Derbecker; she began her term with an organizational review to get to the bottom of the financial difficulties, but was immediately hit with accusations of making derogatory comments about indigenous people (despite being indigenous herself). Not being privy to any internal discussions, I can't say who's to blame - but in any case, as a friend of mine who used to work there says, we can expect the downtown to look worse than usual this summer.

- The backlash against the use of existing social housing stock to house previously homeless people continues. The Your Way Home program, introduced by housing minister Bernadette Smith, ultimately aims to use 20% of Manitoba Housing's stock for this purpose. Several longtime residents of Manitoba Housing buildings are up in arms - but it's worth noting that the biggest noisemaker quoted in the article lives in a building that's not part of the program. More reasonably, Erika Wiebe of the Right To Housing Coalition favours keeping 55+ buildings out of the program and improving support for residents as well as security.

- Ontario's education minister Paul Calandra is ordering school boards to make sure that graduation ceremonies remain apolitical. This follows an incident last year when an Ottawa student included pro-Palestinian remarks in her graduation speech. Calandra warns that he "will not hesitate to consider every tool available to me in the Education Act"; this comes not long after the passage of new legislation that makes it easier for the province to take over school boards.

- A new issue related to data centres has emerged - noise pollution. For one thing, many of these centres generate their own power using gas turbines, which produce a sound similar to a jet engine (since that's essentially what they are). There are also reports of low-frequency vibrations (infrasound) near these centres, which aren't audible to humans but have been associated with physiological effects like headaches and nausea.

- Country singer (and fourth-generation Albertan) Corb Lund is getting called a "woke bastard" for his stance on coal mining in the Rockies. Danielle Smith's government is lifting a moratorium on mining on the eastern slopes that was imposed by Peter Lougheed's government half a century ago and was accepted as necessary by all parties until Smith came along; Lund is among those gathering signatures to force a referendum on the matter.

News roundup, 20 Nov 2025

- Trump has signed the bill authorizing the release of the Epstein files. The bill contains provisions that parts may still be withheld if they are related to an active investigation... or if they are deemed to "invade personal privacy". So in all likelyhood, just about anything in the files could be withheld if Trump so desires.

- Ukraine is accusing Russia of recruiting Ukrainian teens for sabotage jobs. Some of those recruited are said to have been as young as 11. The BBC managed to contact one of the recruiters posing as an interested party; they were offered $1,500 for setting fire to a post office or $3,000 for a bank.

- The federal government plans to move ahead with plans for high speed rail between Toronto and Quebec City. The travel time between Toronto and Montreal would be about 3 hours. Of course a flight is only about 90 minutes, but once you factor in getting to the airport an hour early and checking in, it's pretty much a wash.

- An ICE employee was among 16 men arrested in a sex trafficking investigation in Minnesota, allegedly for attempting to purchase sex from an underage girl. He tried to dissuade the arresting officers by telling them who he worked for, but they weren't swayed.

- Winnipeg police have made an arrest in a string of arsons around the city, including the constituency offices of cabinet ministers Bernadette Smith and Nahanni Fontaine as well as multiple businesses. Interestingly, the police claim that he acted alone and that this is not related to recent reports of extortion by many business owners.

- The Manitoba Nurses Union has voted to "grey-list" Thompson General Hospital, warning that it is not a safe place to work. The last straw was the stabbing of a patient in September. The union had previously given this dubious designation to Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg.

- Sioux Valley Dakota Nation in western Manitoba has called in the RCMP to investigate threats made during their band election last week. Among other things, vote counting had to be paused after someone tried to storm the hall where the count was occurring; the incumbent chief, who is facing sexual assault charges, was defeated in the election but is trying to have the results thrown out. Whether the threats are connected with this has not been stated by the authorities.

- A Christian organization calling itself the Burn 24/7 Canada Worship Ministries Society is suing Quebec City for cancelling a concert by American far-right musician Sean Feucht at a city-owned venue. They have retained the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms for legal assistance.

News roundup, 6 Nov 2025

- The death toll in the UPS plane crash in Louisville has risen to 12, and may rise further as the search for victims continues. One of the dead was a child who had accompanied a parent to the auto parts business where the parent worked. In other aviation-related news, the FAA is reducing air traffic by 10% at numerous high traffic airports, as they struggle to deal with the number of sick calls by air traffic controllers (who still aren't getting paid thanks to the government shutdown).

- The US Department of Justice has been firing immigration judges before their probationary period ends, including an entire incoming class of newly trained judges. NPR reports that a disproportionate number of the judges who were fired had previously represented immigrants in their past legal careers.

- Manitoba's legislature has passed Bill 48, the Protective Detention and Care of Intoxicated Persons Act, which extends the time that such persons can be detained to 72 hours. The entire legislature, except independent MLA Mark Wasyliw, voted in favour of the bill. This is intended to address the long-lasting nature of the psychosis resulting from meth. A facility, to be run by the Main Street Project, will be set up on the fringes of the city centre. The medical community is divided on the issue; while several doctors signed a letter in support of the change, others question the merits of doing so. One of the points made by the critics is more relevant for opioids than for meth - the fear is that their tolerance could decline enough during the detention period to put them at increased risk of overdose when released.

- Waterloo Regional Council has voted to extend the Ion LRT line to Cambridge. The only council member to vote against the extension was Cambridge's mayor, Jann Liggett. Liggett claims her opposition is because the extension doesn't cover enough of the city, but that doesn't make a lot of sense; you have to start somewhere, and people who don't live right by the line will still benefit from being able to catch a short bus ride to a station. Of course, Cambridge's biggest employer is an auto plant, so...

- A trustee with the River East Transcona School Division has been censured for the third time since 2023 for breaching the board's code of conduct. Rod Giesbrecht has a history of discussing confidential internal board matters with outsiders.

- A Winnipeg veterinarian with a lengthy disciplinary history has been ordered to wind down his practice by June of next year following his most recent transgression, a botched surgery that resulted in a cat's leg being amputated. For his part, the vet claims to have been singled out due to his ethnicity, though he offered no evidence.

- A former nurse at a German hospital has received a life sentence after being convicted of murdering 10 patients and attempting to kill 27 others. He had apparently singled out elderly patients who required more intense care, and desired to reduce his workload.

News roundup, 1 Oct 2025

- The US has entered a government shutdown due to the failure to get a budget through Congress. Among other things, this means that air traffic controllers and TSA workers, who are considered "essential", will be expected to show up for work despite not getting paid; it is widely expected that many of them will call in sick and flights will be grounded. Other federal workers will simply be laid off until the budget crisis is resolved, and programs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also referred to as "food stamps") are expected to run out of money. 

- Donald Trump is again expressing a desire to annex Canada. He had stopped talking about that for a while after the election of Mark Carney, but his mind has wandered back in that direction. Carney, for his part, is hoping to placate the Americans by lifting or reducing restrictions on US dairy sales in Canada.

- A bill before the North Carolina legislature will, if passed, prohibit overseas citizens from casting a ballot in that state. This is part of a broader push by the Republicans to disenfranchise overseas voters. Until 2016, the majority of overseas voters were military personnel stationed abroad, but now the majority are civilians; presumably they fear that people exposed to foreign media without the countervailing influence of the military might be too reasonable (read: anti-Trump) for comfort.

- Winnipeg police are investigating after a fire broke out at the constituency office of  Manitoba Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine on Tuesday morning. This comes a week after the windows were smashed at the same office, and also follows several fires at the office of Housing Minister Bernadette Smith.

- South Africa's ambassador to France, Nathi Mthethwa, fell to his death from the 22nd floor of the four star Hyatt Hotel in Paris. One naturally wonders if maybe he annoyed the Russians in some way, however his wife had reported receiving a "disturbing message" from him and had reported him missing, which seems to suggest a more mundane (though no less tragic) explanation.

News roundup, 23 July 2025

- A Nouvelair Airbus A320-200 attempted to land on the wrong runway at Nice on Sunday and was forced to execute a last-minute missed approach, coming within three metres of another A320 operated by Easyjet that was lined up on the runway. The Easyjet flight returned to the gate because the pilots were too shaken to continue; passengers reported that the captain was crying and his hands were shaking as he exited the cockpit.

- ABC is walking back their cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and FCC chair Brendan Carr is denying that any threats were made to the licenses of ABC stations. I guess he didn't explicitly threaten to pull licenses, though when he said things like "These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead", it's hard not to interpret this as a threat. Nonetheless, the show is set to return to the airwaves tonight.

- The US Supreme Court has issued an "emergency order" allowing Donald Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, the last remaining Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission. The agency, like many federal agencies, was designed to be bipartisan, and a unanimous 1935 ruling of the Supreme Court forbade then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt from firing commissioners, but that precedent seems to be of no merit to the MAGA-dominated court. The court has so far indicated that the Federal Reserve will be handled differently, but it remains to be seen if this will be the case.

- Not satisfied with the existing sanctions against the International Criminal Court in the wake of their call for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump regime reportedly has a bunch more coming up the pipeline. Possible sanctions could include prohibiting banks that do business with the ICC from doing business with the US. The court has responded by paying the remainder of their staff's 2025 salaries in advance, which if nothing else gives the staff time to make alternative plans for their livelyhoods. Perhaps the court should follow the lead of New South Wales premier Jack Lang, who in 1932 withdrew the state's assets from the bank and stored it in cash at the Sydney Trades Hall in response to a threat to seize the state's bank accounts in order to move forward with their deflationary plans. Lang's government was dismissed by Governor Philip Game soon after, but Trump can't do that to the ICC, much as he'd like to.

- In other ICC-related news, the court has issued an indictment against former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity, including murder.

- Winnipeg police are investigating after fires were set on four different occasions since August at the constituency office of housing minister Bernadette Smith. Damage in all cases was relatively minor and the office remains open. Police say they do not know if the fires were random or targeted. Tellingly, however, there were no signs of similar attempts on nearby buildings.

- The noted American shock-rock band GWAR beheaded Elon Musk in effigy on stage at Riot Fest in Chicago. Of course, stuff like this is nothing new to GWAR, who have previously pulled the same stunt with effigies of other people (including both Donald Trump and Joe Biden). The stunt is getting a bit more scrutiny in the present political climate, though.

- A 47 year old math teacher at a middle school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was arrested after a drug-sniffing dog brought into the school by police took an unusual interest in her purse. Police searched and found cocaine inside a wallet, and subsequently found marijuana and pipes in her car.

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, 21 March 2025

- Manitoba's efforts to address the homelessness crisis are starting to pay off, albeit slowly. About a dozen people from five encampments in downtown Winnipeg have been moved into housing. The availability of housing units is the main bottleneck, though housing minister Bernadette Smith says that 40 more units are expected to become available soon.

- Manitoba's 2025 budget forecasts a deficit that could range from $800 million to as high as $1.9 billion, depending on how badly things go with Trump's tariffs. Some of the costs result from efforts being made to cushion the economy against the tariffs; there is also a lot of money going into infrastructure. As it should be, though I suspect that there will be pressure for austerity soon enough.

- Amtrak's CEO, Stephen Gardner, is resigning from his position, saying that he is doing so "to ensure that Amtrak continues to enjoy the full faith and confidence of this administration". Given that Elon Musk has called for Amtrak to be privatized, it's probably a futile move, unfortunately.

- Germany as well as the UK have issued travel warnings about the US to their citizens, advising that they are not guaranteed entry to the country even with a visa or travel waiver and that they often detain people, sometimes in appalling conditions, for small errors or misunderstandings.

- Austin's efforts to increase housing availability by relaxing zoning laws are paying off in spades, as thousands of new apartments have been built and rents in the city have declined 22%. No doubt landlords are frantically lobbying their state legislature to limit the city's ability to do this.

- An examination of Tesla's accounting practices has found that some 1.4 billion dollars can't be accounted for. Normally this would mean serious trouble for the company, but since the SEC is being kneecapped by Trump and Musk, that isn't likely to happen. That said, the company's share price continues to decline, even after Trump's commerce secretary Howard Lutnick went on Fox News to beg viewers to buy the stock. Meanwhile vandalism at Tesla dealerships continues, most recently in Hamilton where 80 cars were damaged.

- The 2025 World Happiness Report has concluded that Finland's people are the world's happiest, followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. The US has dropped to its lowest ever position at 24, just behind the UK. Canada is also declining, falling to 18th place.

- A fire at an electrical substation forced the closure of Heathrow Airport, the world's 5th busiest. Diverted flights have led to cascading disruptions around the world due to aircraft and crews not showing up where they're needed.

- Some of Trump and Musk's more vocal supporters are finding themselves getting "swatted". I can't say I advocate this, since such a move can have fatal consequences (possibly for someone other than the target of the attack) but nobody should be surprised when this sort of thing happens.

News roundup, 9 Oct 2024

- One noteworthy thing about the far-right orientation of the American countryside - it wasn't always this bad. In 2000, Republicans only had a five point lead over Democrats in rural America - but today they lead by 25 points. How much difference the folksiness of Tim Walz will make in that regard is doubtful, though the Democrats are hoping that it will help in places like Nebraska which doesn't use a winner-takes-all system for their electoral votes. One wonders how much longer this will matter; the shift of the population towards large cities may not be as pronounced in the US as in a lot of countries, but it's still happening there, and the more that happens, the more irrelevant rural voters will become. Of course they will also become even angrier than they already are as that happens.

- The Manitoba government is putting $10 million into the Collaborative Housing Alliance Real Estate Investment Trust. The trust is being created by the Business Council of Manitoba and will assist community groups in the creation of affordable housing; Housing Minister Bernadette Smith hopes to have three projects going within a year.

- The Mountain View School Division in western Manitoba, which recently passed a motion banning all flags except the Canadian, Manitoban, and school flags despite not having a quorum, says that the motion was meant to "foster inclusivity" and "promote unity". An employee of the school division believes otherwise, though, saying that this is a veiled attack on the LGBT* community. I suspect that the employee is right.

- The BC Conservatives are vowing to "end tent cities" in the province; they plan to achieve this via policing to eliminate encampments, and involuntary treatment in secure facilities. Party leader John Rustad was evasive when asked about how they plan to get around recent court decisions such as the one last year which ruled that municipalities cannot evict encampments if they don't have sufficient shelter space for the residents; the folks in this Reddit thread suspect the notwithstanding clause will likely be used if deemed necessary.

- A new Leger poll in BC has the NDP up 5 points over the BC Conservatives; perhaps the Cons' extreme positions are starting to worry voters. Let's hope so.

- The Halifax Chronicle-Herald has fired award-winning editorial cartoonist Michael de Adder, who had worked for the paper for almost 30 years. The paper's parent company was recently taken over by Postmedia, and maybe the new owners didn't like cartoons like this one.

- The Ontario government's move to allow alcohol sales in convenience stores includes fortified wine. So you'll be able to pick up a bottle of Westminster at your local 7-11 to drink under a bridge. Ain't that grand?

- A Republican candidate for the US Senate has some awkward questions to answer about a social media post from a couple of years ago in which he said that "the bad guys won" in WWII.

News roundup, 17 July 2024

- The City of Winnipeg has released a transportation plan that calls for residents to be using private automobiles for no more than 50% of trips by 2050 (it's currently about 80%). Of course 26 years is a long time; one would hope that some reductions in car use could happen before then.

- The UBC professor who made an injudicious tweet about the attempt on Donald Trump's life was apparently responding to another one by Shoshanah Jacobs, a biology professor at the University of Guelph, who had posted the video of the shooting with the comment "When 4 inches really matters". That university is also investigating the matter.

- Trump has selected JD Vance as his running mate for the fall. I guess Mike Pence was never in the running this time around. Vance apparently once declared himself to be a "Never Trumper", but it turns out he really meant "not a Trumper until it's necessary to further my political career". He's calling for tax rebates for fossil fuel powered cars instead of the ones for electrics, something that serves no real purpose other than to "own the libs". None of this, though, is enough to prevent some of the Republican base from making racist insults about his wife, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants.

- Wyoming has imposed restrictions on who can bid on oil and gas leases after a conservation organization, Wyoming Outdoor Council, bid on some leases in the hopes of preventing them from being developed.

- A severe storm hit Toronto on Tuesday morning, with roughly 76 mm of rain falling in the downtown core over a few hours and around 100 at Pearson Airport. Major flooding and power outages have resulted.

- Lab-grown meat has been approved in the UK for pet food; this is important because many pets (most notably cats) are obligate carnivores and can't live on a conventional vegan diet. Hopefully approval for human consumption will follow.

- Viet Duong Hoang, an engineering researcher at the University of Southern Denmark, has developed an autonomous drone that can recharge itself from the magnetic fields emitted by power lines without tapping into the lines So far, plans are to use them for the most obvious purpose - inspecting power lines.

- Remember Spirit Rising, the group home operator that made the news a while back for allegedly giving cannabis to their teenage wards, supposedly in the name of harm reduction? That already stretches the boundaries, but at least there was a kind of logic to it. More recently, though, it has been reported that they were also allowing their wards to be sexually exploited in return for alcohol and other drugs. That's worse than Sandra Guiboche's claim that she was helping with harm reduction because she was selling cleaner crack than the competition. And you can bet donuts to dollars that Poilievre will use this case as a "typical" example of harm reduction; one hopes that if he brings it up in an interview the reporter will ask him how many other cases like that he can name.

- Following an inspection that found that some fire safety systems were not working at a North End apartment complex, the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service issued an order to the building's owner last Friday to remedy the situation. In particular, they ordered that the exits must remain clear and that a "fire watch" be put in place over the weekend, to keep the tenants safe until the problems were fixed. Instead the slumlord immediately evicted all tenants with no notice, giving them each a wad of cash equivalent to slightly over a month's rent to go away, presumably calculating that this would be cheaper than making the necessary repairs. Presumably they plan to either charge hire rents for the units once the fix is eventually made (essentially a low-budget renoviction), or else let the building become yet another vacant derelict building that someone can break into and burn down. Housing Minister Bernadette Smith is rightly appalled and condemns the mass eviction as illegal. Be nice if the province could just seize the building, fix it up, and permanently add it to Manitoba Housing's stock; we'll have to see.

- Members of a community Facebook page for Saskatoon's Fairhaven neighbourhood (yeah, those kind of people) are calling on the city to prune the lower branches of pine trees in parks in the hopes that this will stop people from sleeping under them.

- Winnipeg lawyer David Davis has pleaded guilty to professional misconduct after punching an articling student in the groin. He has been convicted of professional misconduct on three previous occasions; nonetheless he escaped with a six month suspension.