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.

Health care not the only thing set back in Massachusetts vote...

... nor even the most important:

SINGAPORE/OSLO (Reuters) - Hopes for stronger world action in 2010 to curb climate change have dimmed after the U.S. Democrats lost a key Senate seat to a Republican opposed to capping emissions, experts said on Wednesday.

The election of Republican Scott Brown, an opponent of cap and trade, to the Senate after the death of Democrat Edward Kennedy dims prospects for U.S. action. Once Brown takes office, Democrats will have 59 seats in the Senate and the Republicans 41. The bill needs 60 votes to overcome procedural hurdles.

Backers of the existing international Kyoto Protocol, which obliges all industrialized nations except the United States to cut emissions until 2012, will be more reluctant to take on tougher new goals for 2020 unless Washington also joins in.

U.N. climate talks in Mexico in November are meant to build on a weak "Copenhagen Accord" worked out last month by nations including the United States that sets a goal of limiting warming to no more than 2 Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times.

But the Mexico meeting will be undermined if the United States, the top emitter behind China, has not set caps on carbon emissions. That might dash hopes for a Kyoto successor from 2013 and mean a system of domestic pledges instead.

From Scientific American. Bad news any way you slice it.

So they have some kind of a deal...

It appears that the Copenhagen climate talks have produced something or other:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other world leaders — including those from the U.S., China, India, Brazil and South Africa — are leaving Copenhagen with a compromise climate deal and a vow to work out the details.

Of course, "the details" is where one is most likely to find the man in the red suit. In this case, though, there's no need to wait for said details:

Harper called it a "comprehensive and realistic" agreement, while U.S. President Barack Obama hailed it as a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough."

However, the agreement is not binding and does not set new greenhouse-gas reduction targets. Instead, countries are to set their own emission-reduction commitments, which would not be legally binding.

So in other words, it's utterly meaningless, except as a way for the leaders to claim they've accomplished something. And yet, something good could still come of this; the leaders have in effect made a very public admission that they recognize the reality of climate change, which could force them to make some effort to actually do something about the problem. And then there are other possible spinoffs:

The US and Russia on Friday said they were close to an agreement on nuclear arms reduction after presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev met on the sidelines of the Copenhagen climate conference.

Mr Obama reported ”excellent progress” towards a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired this month, while Mr Medvedev said a deal was “very close”, with only “technical details” to resolve.

Both leaders have pledged to sign a fresh accord leading to further reductions in nuclear arms, after cutting their respective arsenals to fewer than 6,000 warheads and 1,600 delivery vehicles under the previous Cold War-era treaty.

If only the climate talks themselves could produce such concrete results. Of course, 6,000 warheads and 1,600 delivery vehicles is still a ridiculous amount of firepower, and it remains to be seen what the new agreement will bring. Still, it's a clear step in the right direction, and there's already a precedent for agreeing to actual numbers. And if we are to face significant climate change, the fewer nuclear weapons there are, the better; things are likely to get ugly in the next few decades.

Our government continues to shame us

George Monbiot says of Canada that "It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling":

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

From the Guardian. And yet the Cons still lead in the polls? Disgraceful.

Harper shamed into going to Copenhagen

I guess the fact that the Obama and Wen are going forced his hand:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will attend the Copenhagen climate change meeting next month after all, his office said Thursday — a day after saying he would not go.

Harper decided Thursday to attend the meeting to work on a new climate change agreement after the U.S. president and Chinese premier announced that they will show up, his spokesman said.

Canada has been strongly criticized internationally for reneging on the Kyoto climate protocol and for refusing to sign on to a new deal limiting greenhouse gases unless developing nations are included.

From the CBC.