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, 17 June 2024

- A poll conducted by Probe Research on behalf of the Winnipeg Free Press indicates that the provincial NDP under Wab Kinew are actually more popular now than when they were first elected. Province-wide, the party is at 51% support, compared to the Tories at 38% and the Liberals at 6%. In Winnipeg specifically, the NDP is at 59%, and this encompasses suburban as well as inner city constituencies. Whether this is enough to push them over the top in Tuesday's byelection in Tuxedo remains to be seen, though they may get a boost from recent revelations that Tory candidate Lawrence Pinsky is being sued for stiffing a contractor who worked on his cottage.

- Benjamin Netanyahu has dissolved his war cabinet following the departure of Benny Gantz from his coalition.

- After the October 7 attacks, 73 students at Toronto Metropolitan University's Lincoln Alexander School of Law signed an open letter calling on the law school to drop its "neutral" position on the conflict. Many signed using pseudonyms, but 36 used their full names. While the petition acknowledged that the attack was a war crime, it also included some statements seen many as inflammatory, and some signatories were doxxed. More alarming, some law firms, in the course of their hiring process for the coming summer, have started asking applicants if they were among the pseudonymous signatories, and the provincial Office of the Attorney General went so far as to require applicants to sign an attestation that they did not sign, "either openly or anonymously". Some firms even mentioned internal pressure not to hire any TMU students, for fear that they might have been among the anonymous signers.

- A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 came within 400 feet of crashing into the Pacific off the coast of Hawaii in April after the first officer, who was the pilot flying at the time, inadvertently pushed the control column forward too soon after a go-around. Nobody was injured in the incident. And in May, another aircraft of the same type, with the same airline, went into a "Dutch roll" in which yaw and roll are coupled and oscillate in a potentially dangerous manner. Nobody was hurt in this case either, however damage to one of the aircraft's power control units for the rudder was found after landing. Despite this close call, the airline waited 13 days before reporting the incident to the NTSB. Juan Browne (blancolirio) gives a clear and detailed explanation here.

- Ontario's Ministry of Finance quashed a pilot study by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario that would have introduced the controlled entrances similar to those in Manitoba that have been extremely successful in controlling theft. Requests for interviews with LCBO officials have not been granted, so the reason for the move is unclear. My suspicion is that the government fears that if the move is successful, it will interfere with the government's plans to put beer, wine and similar products in grocery and convenience stores - if all the theft that previously occurred at LCBO stores moves to those retailers, it might make alcohol sales less attractive to those retailers and undermine the government's privatization plans.

- A former Air Canada manager implicated in last year's multi-million dollar gold heist at Toronto's Pearson International Airport is preparing to return to Canada to face trial. Perhaps he's spent all the money.

- Donald Trump challenged Joe Biden to take a cognitive test, but confused the name of the White House physician who had administered his own tests during his presidency, giving Dr. Ronny Jackson as "Ronny Johnson". Jackson, incidentally, is now a Republican representative in Congress (and big Trump supporter); make of that what you will.

News roundup, 11 Jan 2024

- Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent has died at the age of 87.

- South African delegates to the International Court of Justice in The Hague have presented their opening arguments in a case accusing Israel of genocidal acts. Meanwhile, Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar has expressed discomfort with the idea, based on past crimes against Jews in Europe. Varadkar has, in fact, articulated what is probably the main reason a lot of people in the West want to handle Israel with kid gloves; probably there's a certain amount of guilt mixed in even on the part of countries that fought against Nazi Germany, given that many of them (including Canada) were not keen on accepting Jewish refugees from there back when it was really needed. And for their part, many Israelis are questioning what the war will achieve.

- Toronto police have charged a protester with public incitement of hatred for waving what is described as a "terrorist flag" at a demonstration. Police have declined to identify the specific flag that was waved; if it was an ISIS flag that would be one thing, but if it was a Palestine flag that would be quite another.

- A bomb threat was made against the home of the judge hearing Donald Trump's civil fraud trial. This follows the judge's ruling that Trump cannot make his own final arguments because he would not agree to stick to "relevant" issues.

- The National Review has published an editorial urging Republicans to select anyone except Trump for the nomination, on the grounds that it's the only reliable way to beat Biden. Encouragingly, a poll indicates that Biden now has a three point lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, so maybe the editors' fears are justified. In any case, whoever might beat Trump, it's not going to be Chris Christie.

- The US Food and Drug Administration is warning that vaccination rates, not only for COVID-19 but for numerous other diseases, are low enough that herd immunity is now at risk. Unfortunately the prospects for fixing this any time soon are poor, especially when even the Democrats don't want to talk about the subject, even as some 1,500 Americans a week are still dying from COVID. And some reports indicate that, in the case of COVID, that which does not kill you might make you weaker.

- At a Fox News town hall session, Trump was asked about a congressional report that found that he was paid almost $8 million from multiple foreign governments while president. His reply was that he was "doing services" for those governments, and that it was "a small amount" of money anyway.

- The Conservative Party of Canada's entire strategy under Pierre Poilievre is centred around framing the next election as a referendum on Justin Trudeau. Given Trudeau's dismal standing in the polls, that is understandable, and it may well work, but it's interesting to note that Deveryn Ross, a columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press and the Brandon Sun who tends to lean right, is not comfortable with this, fearing that it could backfire. Jagmeet Singh's NDP is not mentioned in the article at all, but a situation like this would seem to be ripe for exploitation for them, if they are both bold and lucky. Maybe that's what Ross is really afraid of.

- Worldwide renewable energy production is growing at a remarkable rate, which is very good news (in a "the future may not be very good, but at least there probably is going to be a future" kind of way. In Europe, wind has overtaken coal for electricity production, for instance.

- The Max 9 variant of the Boeing 737 remains grounded in the US following Alaska Airlines' little misadventure with one last week. In the course of inspections of their fleet, as well as that of United Airlines (the only other North American carrier to operate the type) several other aircraft were found to have loose bolts that would have the potential to cause a similar failure; it appears that the aircraft may have been delivered to the airlines in that condition. Boeing CEO David Calhoun admitted the existence of the loose bolts; when asked how something like this could have happened, he replied "Because a quality escape occurred". Have to remember that one, "quality escape". If you want the really geeky details of what is known about the incident so far, check this video out.

- It appears that China isn't the only place where they actively harvest the organs of people who die in custody. Several families in Alabama say that their deceased relatives have been returned to them with organs missing.

- In Florida, the Escambia County School District, serving Pensacola and vicinity off in the western panhandle, has apparently gone above and beyond in their effort to keep forbidden thoughts from impressionable minds - they've removed dictionaries and encyclopedias from school libraries.