News roundup, 12 Feb 2026

- More information is being released about the Tumbler Ridge shooting. The RCMP has identified the suspect as an 18 year old transwoman who killed her mother and stepbrother before going to the school to kill others; no motive has yet been revealed but it's a safe bet that the far right is going to use this as an excuse to opportunity up the transphobia (while being very quiet about the question of whether this might have been less likely to happen in a more accepting society, of course).

- The FAA closed the airspace over El Paso, Texas to all civil aircraft on Wednesday morning, initially saying flights were grounded for a ten day period but later reversing that position, all the while saying that there was no threat to commercial aircraft. Some reports say that this was for the testing of top secret anti-drone technology, which might be the truth, or not. As regards initially saying ten days and then reversing that (perhaps after the test was completed) maybe they thought they'd give the public the sense that they're not as bad as they seemed. And given where we're talking about, it might well work.

- The crisis now developing in the Colorado River system stands to be worsened - or at least happen sooner - thanks to the poor design of the Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back the waters of Lake Powell. The dam was designed for a narrow range of water levels - which would be problematic even in the absence of human-induced climate change. In fact, it very nearly led to disaster in 1983 when the waters of the reservoir came dangerously close to washing over the top of the dam. Now it has the opposite problem - the lowest outlets of the dam are some 240 ft above the lake bed, and water levels are getting dangerously close to that point, meaning that the lake could face "dead pool" in the near future. At that point, no more water could even reach downstream locations, and a lot of people would be leaving the American southwest and not returning. And the lake itself would become a deep, stagnant, stinking mess. Even before that point, the levels will fall too low to use the dam for hydroelectric power.

- The Winnipeg couple convicted of torturing and killing numerous animals and selling the videos online have both been sentenced to 12 years in prison following a joint recommendation of the prosecution and the defense. 

- A Ukrainian Olympian has been disqualified for wearing a helmet with pictures of Ukrainian athletes who have died in the war with Russia. Had he honoured friends who died in a car crash in the same way he'd have been fine, but the IOC considers honouring war dead to constitute political messaging, which is prohibited at the Olympics.

- Switzerland will be holding a referendum this summer on imposing a hard cap on the country's population. If passed, this would oblige the government to close the country to all immigration (including refugees and relatives of foreign residents) in the event that the population comes to exceed 9.5 million (it is currently 9.1 million). The initiative comes from the rightwing Swiss People's Party; opponents fear that if passed this move could violate agreements with the EU and harm the economy.

News roundup, 4 Feb 2026

- Bill Blair has resigned his seat as the MP for Scarborough Southwest in order to take up a new position as Canada's high commissioner to the UK. Doly Begum, who has represented the seat for the NDP at the provincial level since 2018, has announced that she will be running for the Liberals to replace Blair, sparking condemnation from the federal party.

- The seven states that depend on the Colorado River basin are at an impasse about how to manage the long-term drought the area is experiencing. The upstream states - Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming - are refusing to cut their own consumption, saying that the problem lies with the other three states in the basin (Nevada, California, and Arizona), which consume far more water but which, on the other hand, have taken some measures to cut their consumption. The New York Times article on the matter takes the position that this is entirely the fault of the upper basin states. I'm not so sure; while those states should doubtless be making cuts, one has to question whether growing alfalfa in a desert for the Saudis is a wise or sustainable industry.

- Colorado is challenging the Trump regime's order to keep an aging coal-fired power plant open. Even the state's power utilities want to close the plant, but Trump can't tolerate any kind of move away from coal, so...

- Thousands of Epstein-related documents have been removed from the Department of Justice website after some of his victims said that they were identified in the documents.

- At least 17 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in response to an Israeli soldier being wounded by gunfire. Israel seems to take "one of ours, all of yours" seriously.

- The federal government is considering amending the Canadian Migratory Birds Regulations to allow the hunting of Tundra Swans in the prairie provinces. This has raised concerns among some that this will lead to collateral damage to the more vulnerable Trumpeter Swan, which looks very similar and could easily be mistaken for the more common species.

News roundup, 17 March 2025

- Mark Carney was sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada on Friday. Sadly (but predictably) the first thing he did was to eliminate the consumer-level carbon tax. As I've said before, if it were up to me I'd have reduced the GST by an amount equivalent to the carbon tax, and if that still left some GST in place I'd have gotten rid of that too and increased the carbon tax to replace the revenue. Of course, that wouldn't help with rural alienation, but I'm not sure that anything is going to reach those people in the near future anyway.

- The Bureau of Reclamation, which among other things is responsible for managing dams on the Colorado River system, is facing staffing reductions of up to 40% as part of the regime's war on the public sector, and has been ordered to stop nearly all spending. Given that some of the bureau's spending is on things like maintenance for dams, and that the region is plagued by high demand for water as precipitation declines, this does not bode well.

- A court challenge to Ontario's anti-bike lane legislation has brought to light internal documents that suggest that the move will not make a meaningful impact on congestion, and will furthermore mean a 54% increase in the risk of collisions for all road users. Of course, if you're a populist like Doug Ford the truth isn't really what matters; what matters is what "the people" think. Hopefully the court will put the government in its place.

- Federal judges in the US that rule against the Trump regime are being threatened with violence; moreover, some Republican legislators are making moves to start impeachment proceedings against some of them. Combine that with the fact that Trump might simply ignore court orders, and the prospects of containing him through peaceful means do not look good.

- Europeans are torching Teslas to show their displeasure with Elon Musk. Some Americans are also taking various forms of direct action in this department, a matter that the regime wants investigated as "terrorism". Meanwhile the FBI is investigating a suspected arson attempt at the home of a Bayer executive.

News roundup, 27 Aug 2024

- Despite Justin Trudeau's unpopularity with the general public, his cabinet are standing solidly behind him - at least publicly. The fact that the party has no mechanism to force him out probably has something to do with that.

- A patchwork of treaties and compacts dictate how water in the Colorado River system is shared between Mexico and the various affected US states. The problem is, the rules were drawn up over a century ago, at a time when the watershed received a lot more rainfall than it does now, and serious conflicts are looming unless new agreements can be reached. The one silver lining is that those conflicts would probably be worked through in courts rather than on the battlefield, which is more than can be said for the situation on the Nile or, much worse, the Indus.

- An Irish climate scientist is calling on her country to be proactive in moving people and key infrastructure, such as railway lines, away from the coasts before sea level rise becomes too severe.

- The push to force workers back to the office continues. This article concedes that working from home generally does not harm productivity or collaboration - but still argues that the push for RTO is a good thing. It blames working from home for the so-called "loneliness epidemic", which is kind of dubious (how many of your strongest social connections come from work?) but also says the quiet part out loud by admitting that the decline in commercial real estate is one of the biggest reasons. Strangely, it also blames remote work for "the growing homelessness and crime in city 'ghost towns'", which seems to me to be getting it backwards - devaluing real estate is a potential solution to homelessness, not a cause. That said, it does mention one valid concern - a decline in commercial real estate means declining tax revenues for municipalities.

- The Manitoba government has appointed an adviser to the Hanover school division, which serves the city of Steinbach and surrounding areas and has thus been riven with culture wars. The Tory opposition, predictably, is making angry noises about the move.

- Further to the reports that 7-Eleven is considering closing up to 10 locations in Winnipeg, the one at Arlington and Notre Dame was robbed six times in a single day.