News roundup, 6 Dec 2024

- Police continue to search for the suspect in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Many people definitely understand the anger towards such companies, even if they wouldn't advocate such a drastic solution to the problem.

- A storm bearing down on the UK may subject parts of Wales and southwestern England to hurricane-force winds, and may be potentially damaging as far away as Scotland and Northern Ireland.

- Joe Biden is considering preemptive pardons for some critics of Donald Trump, in the hope of shielding them from the revenge that Trump has vowed to take against them. Potential recipients including former Chief Medical Advisor Dr Anthony Fauci as well as Democrats involved in the impeachment proceedings against Trump. California representative turned Senator-elect Adam Schiff, who has been cited as a possible recipient, questions the need for this, saying that he is confident that the courts are robust enough to deal with Trump and throw out spurious cases, but I'm not sure I share his confidence given Trump's stacking of federal courts during his first term. Maybe Schiff is afraid to admit just how broken his country's democracy is.

- Winnipeg appears poised to announce the largest property tax hike since 1990, according to unnamed sources who say a preliminary draft of the budget includes a 5.95% increase. This is probably necessary but will come as a shock to some.

- A bill before the Manitoba legislature will amend the Highway Traffic Act to allow for lifetime suspensions to be given to drivers convicted of impaired driving causing death or bodily harm for a second time within a 10 year period (currently the maximum suspension is 10 years). The bill would also require that anyone whose license is reinstated after their first conviction for such offenses have a zero BAC for driving for a seven year period.

- A plea deal in which Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a single count of criminal fraud related to what it failed to tell regulators about the MCAS system used on the Boeing 737 Max which killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019 has been rejected by a judge, who said that the deal gave the court too little power to monitor Boeing's compliance with its side of the deal.

- The Grand Chief of the Southern Chiefs Association was beaten up in front of a bar in Ottawa ahead of an Assembly of First Nations conference. Someone in this Reddit thread alleges that the assailants were councillors from Lake Manitoba First Nation but this is unconfirmed.

- Hongchi Xiao, an "alternative healer" who practiced "slap therapy" has been convicted of manslaughter in the UK after a 71 year old client with Type 1 diabetes to stop taking her insulin in favour of his treatments, with fatal results. This is actually his second conviction for this; he was convicted by an Australian court in the death of a six year old boy whose parents stopped giving him insulin on Xiao's advice.

News roundup, 8 July 2024

 - French voters in the second round of parliamentary elections have largely rejected the far right; Marine Le Pen's National Rally came third after the left alliance and Macron's centrists. The party's parliamentary leader Jordan Bardella, who hoped to become prime minister, declared that "alliances of dishonor" were responsible for the outcome; perhaps he's learned something from the late Jacques Parizeau. Building a viable coalition may take some time; they don't have a lot of experience with hung parliaments there.

- Joe Biden says he's still not quitting. Unless something happens soon, the Democrats are going to be stuck with him for the fall. This is ungood.

- California has imposed permanent restrictions on water utilities across the state, requiring the utilities to reduce their total consumption by around 40%. How the goal is to be met is up to the individual utilities. There are also efforts by the WWF to encourage other places to grow the crops that California has traditionally supplied. Meanwhile in Florida, where the citrus industry has been decimated by disease, efforts are being made to get farmers to grow pongamia trees, potentially a valuable source of biofuel. Getting farmers to switch away from crops they've been growing for years isn't easy, but it's going to be increasingly necessary in the coming years.

- Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to fraud in connection to the 737 Max disasters in 2018 and 2019, following revelations that the company violated a settlement related to the accidents.

- Solar power is growing so fast that it may be the biggest source of energy on the planet in a decade or so. Growth that experts had predicted could take 20 years happened in only 6. And various industries, notably data centres, are moving to "behind the meter" projects that produce electricity in their own microgrids without having to worry about such matters as feed-in tariffs.

- Canada's new anti-greenwashing law is already spooking energy companies into removing claims from their websites about how environmentally friendly they are, even as they try to claim that the sites they've taken down aren't greenwashing.

- 21 species are being removed from the US Endangered Species list; unfortunately the reason is that they are thought to be extinct.

- Ukraine's largest pediatric facility was severely damaged in a Russian missile strike. At least two people were killed there, in addition to 34 others killed in strikes in other locations.

News roundup, 17 April 2024

- A whistleblower is calling for the grounding of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, alleging that production issues could make the aircraft susceptible to in-flight breakup.

- Jury selection in Donald Trump's trial for the hush money allegedly paid to Stormy Daniels is progressing better than might be expected, with seven jurors already selected.

- Back in Canada, federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has delivered this year's budget to Parliament. Notably, this includes $8.5 billion for housing (better late than never certainly), as well as a national disability benefit (albeit less than what advocates were hoping for). There will be a deficit of $40 billion; predictably, the deficit hawks are getting antsy, and some worry that this could worsen inflation. Some others point out that this is a simplistic view of things and that austerity could do a lot more harm than a deficit (citing the basket case that the UK has become as an example). Then again, it may not matter what the fundamentals are if big economic interests lose confidence. It may be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

- The Manitoba PCs are going to stick with interim leader Wayne Ewasko until next year. Interestingly Ewasko is being touted as a potential candidate for the full job; many parties prohibit an interim leader from running for the main prize, due to them enjoying an unfair advantage due to their higher profile. Other potential candidates include MLA Obby Khan, former MLA Kevin Klein, and East St. Paul Mayor Carla Devlin.

- Emergency departments in rural Manitoba experienced some 80,000 hours of closures due to being shortstaffed. Three ERs (in Shoal Lake, Teulon, and Winnipegosis) have been closed indefinitely for several years. The Tories did a lot of complaining about this kind of thing the last time they were in opposition, and no doubt the NDP will happily point out that the Tories were in power as the current situation developed. What neither party will likely want to say, though, is that the problem may be as much a cultural problem as a fiscal one. To put it bluntly, most people who spend years at university to become doctors and nurses don't want to move out to a small town, and the growing hostility in many of those communities towards those edumacated big city folks with their electric cars and rainbow flags isn't going to make the situation any easier.

- The US House of Representatives is holding separate votes on aid packages for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Originally this was planned as a single vote, but given the willingness (or even desire) of many Republicans to throw Ukraine under the bus, I guess AIPAC and their ilk decided that the possibility of the whole package being defeated meant that the votes had to be separated, or else. On a related note, some of the Republicans are trying to oust Speaker Mike Johnson for not being sufficiently extreme for their liking (even though he's pretty darned extreme).

- A fire has devastated the historic building that once housed Copenhagen's stock exchange. Happily there were no fatalities, and a lot of the artworks stored there were rescued, but the building itself is likely to be a total loss.

- The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, who had been held liable by a lower court for injuries that a police officer sustained when a protester at a rally organized by Mckesson. A previous Supreme Court decision in 1982 had ruled that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, unless there was evidence that the leaders had actually directed or incited the violence, but I guess the present court didn't want to do the legal gymnastics needed to say that the Mckesson case is somehow different.

- The University of Southern California has cancelled their valedictorian speech, citing "safety concerns". No doubt they're particularly concerned about their donor base, since the valedictorian has been highly critical of Israel on social media.

- A former US Marine has been sentenced to 9 years in prison for the firebombing of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa, California in 2022. He had also admitted to planning other attacks.

- Julian Assange's prospects of avoiding extradition to the US are diminishing after the Americans assured the High Court of England and Wales that he will not face the death penalty if convicted.

- A debate over a controversial bill requiring NGOs that accept money from abroad to register as "foreign agents" turned into a punch-up in the Georgian parliament.

News roundup, 24 March 2024

- A total of 137 people have been confirmed dead in the mass shooting in a Moscow suburb the other day. The Islamic State/ISIS/Daesh/whatever has claimed responsibility, though Putin apparently did not mention this fact in his video address in response to the attack. He did apparently claim that the suspects in the attack tried to flee to Ukraine.

- The US Congress has kicked the can down the road once again, averting a government shutdown until September at least (which will be an interesting time for brinksmanship, incidentally). Even though the bill had been negotiated by Republicans, many of the more hardline folks in that party voted against it; it only passed with Democratic support.

- Sixteen American states are suing the federal government for its moratorium on export permits for liquefied natural gas.

- The federal and provincial governments have each promised $20 million for a search of the Prairie Green Landfill north of Winnipeg.

- Two adults have been charged for a shoplifting spree; what is notable is that they're accused of having brought a child with them for some of their activities. The child is apparently not theirs; in any case, I don't think they're setting a good example.

- Some travellers are cancelling or rebooking flights to avoid having to ride on a Boeing airplane. It's worth noting that after a disaster in 1979 there were a bunch of people wanting to avoid the DC-10; here, though, the unease is not about a specific aircraft type but an entire company. I still can't help but wonder if Boeing is fated to join Lockheed-Martin, Convair, etc. on the list of "military contractors that used to make airliners" and leave the commercial industry to Airbus and Embraer.

- The Tennessee state senate has passed a bill banning "chemtrails" (it has yet to pass in the lower house):

The bill claims it is "documented the federal government or other entities acting on the federal government's behalf or at the federal government's request may conduct geoengineering experiments by intentionally dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere, and those activities may occur within the State of Tennessee," according to the bill.

The legislation would ban the practice in Tennessee.

"The intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight is prohibited," the bill reads.

The funny thing is, jet contrails do contain chemicals that affect temperature - specifically carbon dioxide and water vapour. And yet the people who believe in the "chemtrails" conspiracy theory tend not to believe that - go figure. They have, however, been careful enough to include the phrase "with the express purpose", to make sure their bill couldn't be weaponized against carbon emitters.

News roundup, 12 March 2024

- Knowing that he can't hope to get a progressive budget that adequately taxes the wealthy and big corporations through Congress, Joe Biden appears to be trying to get the Republicans to publicly oppose such measures, hoping that they'll harm their own popularity in so doing. Worth a try, certainly, though it's hard not to think of the aphorism paraphrasing John Steinbeck, that "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

- Given that Great Salt Lake is in danger of becoming the American version of the Aral Sea, some hard decisions are likely to be necessary. Local farmers would have us believe that they support solutions to the problem, but given that extraction of water for agriculture is a big part of the problem, their protestations have to be taken with more than a few grains of the lake's namesake.

- A former longtime Boeing employee who had raised concerns about quality control issues in the production of its aircraft has apparently shot himself.

- The Youth For Christ skatepark in Winnipeg is having a hard time getting staff and volunteers as a result of negative publicity over their policies towards the LGBT* community. I dunno, maybe it should be turned over to the city, or another nonprofit, if YFC can't keep it open enough to serve it's function.

- Recent fires in apartment blocks have caused serious difficulties for the displaced tenants as they try to find new accommodation in a tight rental market. Meanwhile a commercial building is a total loss after a fire last Friday.

- Community activists are concerned with the pace of action on a potential search of the Prairie Green Landfill. The premier is being coy about the matter; presumably there are complex negotiations involved, but one can understand the activists' frustration.

- A 27 year old woman in Alberta, who has autism, is trying to access MAID, and her father is trying to get a court to stop her. She was scheduled to be put to sleep last month, but an injunction halted the process. It's an ugly scene no matter how you slice it, and I don't envy the judge who has to make a decision on this.

- In South Korea, where addressing the country's low birth rate by increasing immigration is anathema to most of the population, they're now deploying talking AI dolls to keep lonely seniors company. Some studies indicate that this has reduced depression among seniors.

News roundup, 25 Jan 2024

- The UAW has strongly endorsed Joe Biden for this fall's elections, which is expected to significantly help him in rust belt states. You can never be sure about these things, of course; the kind of people inclined to vote for Trump aren't easily persuaded by reason.

- The chair of the Republican Party in Arizona has resigned following revelations that he tried to bribe Trump loyalist Kari Lake into abandoning her run for the Senate. Setting aside the crookedness of doing this, one could understand why, given that Arizona is kind of purple and the GOP would have a better chance running someone who isn't insane, but as David Shribman points out, it's essentially Trump's party now; the New Hampshire primary should remove all doubts about that.

- Despite some recent cold weather, the ice road serving Temagami First Nation in northern Ontario, which normally opens before Christmas, is still closed, because the ice is not considered safe for anything larger than a snowmobile.

- BC is considering a ban on the installation of new natural gas furnaces by 2030.

- Following the little misadventure on an Alaska Airlines flight a couple of weeks ago, inspections are revealing "many loose bolts" on Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft like the one involved in the incident. The FAA is also calling for the inspection of another 737 variant with similar "door plugs" to the one that blew out, and a whistleblower is reporting numerous lapses (or, as CEO Dave Calhoun would say, "quality escapes") at one of Boeing's plants.

- The Ford government in Ontario is still taking a beating from the Greenbelt scandal, especially with new revelations that the government was far more involved (not to mention less truthful) than they'd have us believe.

- Part of the Merced River in California has dried up completely as a result of diversion of water for agriculture. The farmers who did so were within their legal rights; the regulation of water in that state definitely leaves something to be desired. Essentially, the onus is on the state to stop them from using the water, something that generally only happens when it's already reached a crisis point.

- Researchers have managed to grow chickpeas in simulated lunar soil, making the idea of a self-sustaining colony on the Moon a bit more plausible.

- Despite some grumbling from the usual suspects, bans on single-use plastic bags have been successful in reducing litter and other related issues.

- Following an ugly incident this past Christmas in which a young woman from a First Nation in northern Manitoba was restrained and bound with zip ties at the Marlborough Hotel in Winnipeg, allegedly after pulling a knife on hotel staff, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has cut business ties with the hotel, and the hotel has been temporarily closed as a result of threats. From an outsider's point of view this might seem to be a questionable hill to die on, especially since the woman has previously been charged with stabbing somebody, but given the decades of mistreatment experienced by the First Nations community in this province it's understandable that the community is skeptical that this situation is different from all the other stuff they've gone through.

- A man found a dead snake in a box of strawberries at a Safeway in Winnipeg's River East neighbourhood.