News roundup, 29 June 2026

- A New York woman who shared an Instagram post naming Jonathan Ross as the ICE agent who killed Renee Good was visited at her workplace by the agency. She says the agents told her to remove the post or face prosecution, and attempted to get her to sign a document admitting to breaking federal law by naming him (she called their bluff and refused). And it's not like there's a publication ban or anything (which might be justified if there were a chance of Ross facing prosecution, but that's kind of moot right now).

- Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for New York State governor, is evidently not fond of Brad Lander, the winner of the Democratic primary for New York's 10th congressional district. In an interview with Newsmax he said that Lander, who like Blakeman is Jewish, "would be a camp guard in the concentration camp if he could". 

- The Carney government has entered into a partnership with David Eby's government in BC to buy unsold condos and convert them into affordable housing. Predictably, Pierre Poilievre called the plan a bailout for developers; Poilievre does have something of a point, given that if the governments were to simply wait for said developers to go broke, they could potentially buy the units much more cheaply. Of course, there's a problem with that; federal housing minister (and former Vancouver mayor) Gregor Robertson is decidedly uncomfortable with the idea that housing prices in general need to come down. This is no surprise given that the idea that housing is an investment (rather than, you know, somewhere to live) has been the mantra of governments for decades, and the people whose houses and condos are now worth many times what they paid for them don't want to see them devalued even slightly. This puts governments who want to make housing affordable in a bind, since people who own their own homes tend to skew older and are thus more likely to vote than those who would benefit from a drop in prices. So rather than deal with the fundamental issue, governments pursue suboptimal solutions like this one.

- A letter signed by medical directors of four Winnipeg hospitals in March warned that physicians are having to make grim decisions about who gets care first due to low staffing levels and that patient deaths are inevitable unless something changes. Health minister Uzoma Asagwara says that staffing has improved since then thanks to new incentives, however.

- Although southern Manitoba has gotten a lot of rain in recent weeks, the northern part of the province hasn't fared so well. The town of Lynn Lake and nearby Marcel Colomb First Nation are being evacuated due to wildfire threats.

- Valery Fabrikant, the former engineering instructor at Concordia University who killed four of his colleagues in 1992 after not getting tenure, has died in prison at the age of 86. 

News roundup, 11 June 2026

- Manitoba was hit by severe storms on Tuesday evening and overnight. This included at least one tornado, which touched down near the town of Ste Anne but fortunately didn't injure anyone; there are unconfirmed reports of several more. Winnipeg got 122 millimetres of rain, while the town of Stonewall got 229. Power was out for some 32,000 Manitoba Hydro customers across the province, including almost 20,000 in Winnipeg (including me, hence the lack of a post yesterday). It was still out for some 15,000 as of last night. Many report sewage in basements, and given the gigantic hailstones that fell in several places it's a safe bet that MPI will take a significant hit for vehicle damage.

- Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time, in a test conducted by Ukraine's military against the Russians. While I can certainly sympathize with the Ukrainians' willingness to do anything to get rid of the invaders, I have to agree with UN Secretary-General António Guterres' view that this sort of thing needs to be banned.

- A new poll in BC has the Conservatives tied with the NDP in popular support. This comes despite the fact that Premier David Eby's approval rating, while below 50%, is still considerably higher (48%) than that of new Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay (32%). In case there was any doubt about what kind of conservative Findlay is, she was a supporter of the clownvoy, and was photographed with a white nationalist influencer (she denies knowing who he is, but then she would say that, wouldn't she).

- A Toronto man named Zack Giacomelli was having ongoing problems with a BMW that he'd purchased used from a dealership in 2023. He submitted an online inquiry, and got a message from someone from the dealership calling themselves Quinn. After some discussion, Quinn made what was supposed to be a firm buyback offer, sufficient to cover what he still owed on the car - but then a sales consultant called to revoke the offer, saying that "Quinn" was in fact an AI chatbot and had made the offer in error. The dealership quickly reversed this after they were contacted by the CBC, however, and there's already a legal precedent in this country that makes the owner of a chatbot potentially liable for its promises. Giacomelli certainly doesn't disagree with this; as he says, "If they're going to be replacing their employees' jobs with AI, then they need to be honouring what that AI says".

- Musician Elvis Costello has altered the lyrics of his 1979 song "Oliver's Army". The song, which is about the UK's rather troubled history with Ireland, originally contained the phrase "white n***er", which Costello says was a historically accurate description of what the Irish were often called by the Brits, but he stopped playing the song live in 2022 and asked radio stations not to play it, saying that outrage over the use of the N-word was detracting from the actual meaning with the song. Naturally, his rewrite has led some people to complain about "wokeness", to which Costello responds "Go fuck yourself".

News roundup, 15 May 2026

- Some municipalities in BC, including the City of Powell River, the Village of Pemberton, and the Resort Municipality of Whistler, are imposing their own campfire bans in response to the BC Wildfire Service lifting the general ban for the south coast for the Victoria Day weekend. The fact that the province lifted the ban when local officials don't think it's wet enough to lift the ban adds to my suspicions that the Eby government has been so spooked by recent polls that they're trying to avoid anything that populists might try to rally around. This is a fool's errand, of course; populists can always find something else, legitimate or otherwise, to rouse the rabble against the government.

- The student health clinic at McGill University has said that they will not prescribe gender transition hormones to American exchange students under the age of 19 for fear of repercussions from the Trump regime. They say they are doing this based on legal advice from the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA); the most credible fear they had was about difficulty crossing the border. That said, if you care more about being able to keep vacationing in Florida than about helping your patients, maybe you shouldn't be in the business.

- Energy ministers in every Australian state except one are calling for data centres to be forced to invest in enough wind and solar energy to completely cover their energy consumption. The exception, not surprisingly, is Queensland, which is kind of the Alberta of the southern hemisphere (in terms of political culture; the weather is nicer though).

- Hotels in the US are not seeing the expected rise in bookings for the World Cup that they were hoping for. This is not a big surprise; most Americans don't like soccer (they like to see bigger numbers on the scoreboard) and most foreigners don't want to visit the US right now.

- A recent survey of adults in the US found that 7.3% of respondents had thought about shooting somebody at some point in their lives, and 3.3% had experienced such thoughts in the last year. 

- A man has been arrested in Panama after more than three decades on the lam as the suspect in the murder of Rodney Barger, aka Rawn Beauty, lead singer of punk rock band Cold as Life. He is accused of shooting Barger in the head while he slept. The motive is unclear.

- Most strippers in Montreal depend entirely on tips for their income; strip clubs generally don't actually pay their dancers, and in fact some actually charge them for the "privilege" of working there. This may be about to change though; strippers and other sex workers in the city are planning to go on strike - and just in time for the Grand Prix. I imagine there will be a lot of disgruntled Formula 1 fans in the city that weekend.

News roundup, 7 May 2026

- The Trump regime is once again claiming that the war they helped start in Iran will be "over quickly"; they have offered another ceasefire proposal, which Iran says it is "considering". 

- The MV Hondius, that Dutch cruise ship with the hantavirus outbreak, has left Cape Verde en route to the Canary Islands after Spain granted the ship permission to dock there. This was done after three more infected people, two passengers and a crew member (reportedly the ship's doctor), were removed from the ship prior to setting sail to be flown to hospitals in Europe. And a flight attendant with KLM, who was briefly in contact with one of the patients who was flown to Johannesburg (and who later died) has now been hospitalized due to suspected hantavirus infection.

- Recent polling has the Ontario Liberals and PCs at a statistical tie in the wake of Doug Ford's incautious purchase of a private jet (nicknamed the "gravy plane" by critics). This marks the first time in quite a while that the Tories have looked vulnerable. The extent to which polls can be trusted is unclear, mind you; the "shy Tory factor" has been known for decades, and given that contemporary rightwing politics is full of paranoid conspiracy theorists, many people who might be inclined to vote for such parties would be too paranoid to answer a poll at all. Meanwhile in BC, support for David Eby's NDP has cratered in spite of any shy Tory factor (and in spite of the fact that the BC Tories are a party that any sensible person ought to be pretty shy about admitting a desire to vote for). As in Ontario, this seems to be driven largely by a single issue, in this case the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which the Eby government has also partially backed away from after a couple of court rulings spooked some people about the possible impact on their property rights.

- A teenager has been charged with firing shots at two synagogues in Toronto and Vaughan in March. The shootings took place late at night and nobody was hurt. The suspect, reportedly of no fixed address, has not been publicly named because he was a minor at the time of the attacks.

- The resort community of Winnipeg Beach has been placed under provincial administration after the town's council, already short two members, lost quorum after the resignation of a councillor.

- The hospital in the town of Carman, Manitoba has cancelled all surgeries until further notice due to an infestation of ants. Southern Health, the regional health authority responsible for the hospital, insists that there is no threat to the health of patients or staff, or to the integrity of the building, but says that the facility does not meet the sterility standards for surgery. Meanwhile another hospital in southern Manitoba, this time in Morris, activated safety protocols after someone was threatened with what turned out to be a replica handgun. The suspects fled but crashed their vehicle into a road sign and were quickly tracked down.

News roundup, 30 Jan 2026

- Sources who spoke to the Financial Times allege that leaders of the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project held secret meetings with officials from the Trump regime, and are trying to negotiate $500 billion in credit in the event that the province votes to separate. BC premier David Eby did not hold back on what he thinks about that. Whether it meets the legal definition of treason is debatable, of course, but I have little doubt that those people would commit literal treason or even high treason (specifically the part about assisting an enemy at war with Canada) if it were to come to that. It's also notable that this is being reported in Ukrainian media, and the very fact that they have taken note of that given all the other stuff they're dealing with should be taken as a serious warning.

- The Ontario Progressive Conservative party has banned reporters from its convention in Toronto this weekend. I have to assume they're worried about what moderate voters would think about the kind of thing delegates might be recorded saying.

- Donald Trump is threatening to decertify Canadian-made aircraft in the US, specifically naming Bombardier's business jets, in response to Transport Canada's reluctance to certify certain models made by the competitor Gulfstream. The models in question had been exempted from certain rules about fuel system icing by the FAA, and EASA went along with the exemption shortly thereafter.

- Ontario's Conestoga College is now looking to rent out space at its newly opened satellite campus in Stratford. Like many postsecondary institutions in this country, the college has taken a big hit from the caps on international students, though it's big enough that it probably won't go the way of the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology.

- A scientist with Echoes Ecology, which surveys populations of endangered species, had been off work on mental health leave due to severe social anxiety. Accordingly, she was not invited to the company's Christmas party; this led her to sue for discrimination. She lost; the court ruled that while it may have constituted discrimination, this was justified by her mental health at the time.

News roundup, 30 Sept 2025

- The Trump regime is revoking the visa of Columbian president Gustavo Petro, essentially making him persona non grata in the US, after he spoke at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York City on Friday and urged American soldiers to disobey the orders of Trump.

- A special election (i.e. what's known as a byelection in most other English-speaking countries) was held in Arizona's 7th congressional district last Tuesday. The election was necessitated by the death of incumbent Democrat Raúl Grijalva in March. His daughter Adelita Grijalva won the race handily; what makes this potentially significant is that this could give the necessary 218 signatures to force the House to vote on the release of the Epstein files. Of course, in the long run this likely won't have the effect many hope for; even if a few more Republicans defect in the actual vote, it will face a bigger hurdle in the Senate - and even if it passes there, Trump could easily veto it and say "what are you going to do about it?" About the only positive would be that Republican members of Congress would be forced to publicly declare their willingness to conceal the files, and that only really matters if next year's midterms are something approaching fair. That might be a tall order, unfortunately.

- The Alberta government is considering legislation that would allow it to ignore international agreements signed by the federal government. While it's easy to dismiss this as more nonsense from Danielle Smith and the UCP, this may actually be an example of a stopped clock telling the right time (though the example her press secretary gave, the World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement, is certainly not an example I would use). When one considers the impact of the Canada China FIPA on provincial (and First Nations) rights, for instance, it becomes a lot easier to question the merits of the feds being able to sign an agreement on things outside their jurisdiction.

- The BC government has announced that two involuntary care facilities will be built, one in Surrey and one in Prince George. The goal is to avoid tying up regular hospital beds and put the detainees in what is described as a "home-like" setting; municipal leaders are pleased with the move but advocates for the homeless are understandably uncomfortable with the idea. One thing is clear - this isn't a solution to homelessness, though given that actual solutions are extremely difficult it might be a necessary evil as a stopgap measure. Involuntary commitment is certainly not something that should be taken lightly, though.

- A pilot study that allows emergency vehicles to preempt traffic signals has been deemed a success by the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service. Response times in the area covered by the study (in and around Osborne Village) were reduced by 15-20%; there are plans to expand the program to around 70% of the signalized intersections in the city. Of course, expect searches for "chrome box" from Winnipeg-based IP addresses to skyrocket if that happens.

News roundup, 22 July 2025

- The evacuated town of Leaf Rapids, Manitoba is now surrounded on all sides by fire and winds are picking up. There are also concerns about Snow Lake and Garden Hill First Nation, as well as the generating stations at Kettle Rapids and Laurie River.

- Canada now has three times the number of confirmed measles cases as the US. In fact, Alberta on its own has more cases than the States - assuming of course that the Americans are accurately keeping track of their cases, which is far from clear.

- U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra said that Canadians' boycotts of US travel and the removal of American liquor from stores are "mean and nasty". BC Premier David Eby sees this as a sign that these moves are having an effect.

- The FAA is investigating after a B-52 bomber doing a flyover of the North Dakota State Fair in Minot came dangerously close to colliding with a commercial jet that was preparing to land at the local airport.

- A 9 year old Montreal girl whose father had told police she had been abducted has been found dead, and her father has been charged with murdering her after inconsistencies were found in his account. 

- Far-right Christian rock musician (and failed Republican congressional candidate) Sean Feucht has a concert scheduled for the York Redoubt National Historic Site overlooking Halifax Harbour. Many locals are calling on Parks Canada to cancel the gig, saying that Feucht's extremist views are at odds with Parks Canada's guiding principles of inclusion and safety for all visitors.

- Police in the Quebec town of Deux-Montagnes have found a vehicle at the bottom of a river that belonged to a man reported missing in 1988. Divers reportedly found suspected human bones in the vehicle, though they have not been officially identified to date. 

News roundup, 12 March 2025

- A Portuguese container ship, the Solong, collided with an anchored American tanker, the Stena Immaculate off the UK's east coast. The tanker was full of jet fuel, which ignited and caused a series of explosions, setting fire to both ships; to make matters worse, the freighter's cargo included sodium cyanide. Despite this, everyone except one crew member of the Solong has been rescued. Sadly the missing crew member was not the captain but some hapless low-level sailor; the captain is, however, facing manslaughter charges.

- The Trump regime is backing off on their plans to raise tariffs on aluminum and steel to 50% from the 25% already planned. In return, Ontario is suspending their planned 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the US. Hopefully that's not deterring the feds from keeping all options on the table, up to and including fees, restrictions, or a complete stoppage of oil exports if necessary. Although in the latter case I don't think the Americans would take it very well.

- The regime has abruptly withdrawn $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University, accusing the institution of being soft on antisemitism. They've also gotten ICE to arrest a Palestinian student at the university, Mahmoud Khalil, for his activism, but a court has blocked his deportation for the time being. They apparently arrested him claiming his student visa was cancelled, apparently not realizing that he had a green card.

- Former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte has been arrested at the request of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity allegedly committed in his zeal to arrest drug traffickers (or certain drug traffickers, or people accused of being drug traffickers, or...)

- BC's Liquor Distribution Branch has removed all American alcohol from its shelves (previously they had selectively removed products from red states). Premier David Eby, commenting on the situation, said "if the president so interested in Canadian water, then we're gonna help him out by letting him keep his watery beer".

- Ukraine has agreed to a 30 day ceasefire negotiated by the US; in turn, the US will resume military aid and intelligence sharing. The ceasefire is, however, subject to Russian approval.

- Amazon is actually complying with the Manitoba government's request that it follow the law on the sale of machetes in the province. 

- US Customs has seen a 36% increase in the smuggling of eggs at the Windsor-Detroit border crossing since October, and a 158% increase at the Tijuana-San Diego crossing. The customs service has made 3,768 seizures of eggs and poultry at its crossings in that time, compared to 352 fentanyl seizures.

- An automated assistant for moderators at Reddit is flagging posts containing the name "Luigi" as potentially violent content thanks to the Luigi Mangione case.

News roundup, 7 March 2025

- The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the main agency responsible for cyberintelligence in Canada, is warning that some foreign powers (China, Russia, and Iran are specifically named) will "very likely" use artificial intelligence to try to influence the outcome of the impending federal election. No doubt this is a real risk, but it's kind of odd that they omit the United States from that list; if anything Trump has a much more direct interest in the outcome of the election than Putin, Xi, or Khamenei do. I guess they still find it too weird to say that, but they'd better get over it and start planning for it.

- Trump is once again pausing some of the tariffs imposed on Canada for another month. In response, the feds are deferring their second round of retaliatory tariffs, though the previous ones will remain in place for the time being. Manitoba premier Wab Kinew is not falling for it; the ban on US liquor in provincial liquor stores will remain in place, and Manitoba Hydro will be reviewing export contracts. Ontario's Doug Ford isn't falling for it either; he's slapping a 25% export duty on electricity from the province. BC's David Eby is slapping a toll on American commercial vehicles using the Alaska Highway. And Ottawa and the provinces have agreed to the free flow of alcohol between provinces.

- The CEO of Brown-Forman, maker of Jack Daniels, is quite indignant at Canadian provinces pulling his product from the shelves. He calls the move "worse than a tariff".

- Cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are worrying to Canadian weather and flood forecasters, who say this will impact their ability to predict dangerous situations.

- Denmark's division of PostNord (the postal service that country shares with Sweden) is completely eliminating traditional letter mail as of the end of this year, and will focus solely on parcel delivery. Pelle Dragsted, an MP with the leftwing Red-Green Alliance party, blames the introduction of competition from private companies for the decline in letter mail. This is at least partly correct, since private companies aren't bound by existing collective agreements and can thus pay their workers less. Of course, some of it is just cultural - Denmark is one of the most digitized countries in the world according to the article. Hardly anybody uses cash, and people have smartphone apps that serve as health cards and drivers' licenses. Even if the postal service didn't have to compete with the private sector, they'd still be having to compete with the digital world.

- Beckham Severight, the teen convicted of dangerous driving in the death of cyclist Rob Jenner, has been sentenced to three years in prison; this includes time served.

- Butterfly populations across the US have declined by 22% overall between 2000 and 2020. Some species had declined by as much as 50%; most worrisome though is the fact that there is no obvious pattern to the declines, though habitat loss, climate change, and pesticides are all suspected of being factors.

- The US Department of Defense is purging its websites of thousands of images that could be associated with anything that might offend the regime. Among the photos considered for removal is an image of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Whether the image is being removed for reminding the public that the US was the first and only country to use nuclear weapons in warfare, or for containing the word "gay", is not known.

News roundup, 4 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump has agreed to defer the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico for another month, following talks with Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum in order to give time for more negotiations. The 10% tariffs on China are still going ahead on schedule; in addition he also has the EU in his sights. The chaos of the on-again, off-again tariff threats has spooked markets; presumably Trump, Musk, and their cronies are buying on the dips. In Manitoba, the Kinew government is reciprocating with a pause on the removal of American liquor from stores. Meanwhile in BC, David Eby is considering a more substantive move (assuming the tariffs come back) - he wants to ensure that sales of energy and critical minerals are directed towards other markets.

- If the current uneasy truce fails to hold, one possible target of export restrictions could be potash. The US imports around 80% of their supply, and Canada controls some 40% of global reserves of this crucial fertilizer. The prospect of this worries Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who had requested that potash be exempted from the Trump tariffs.

- The Inspector General of the US Department of Agriculture, Phyllis Fong, was escorted from her office by security after refusing to leave voluntarily after Trump fired her. I'm sure the fact that her office had investigated one of Elon Musk's companies is totally coincidental...

- After the World Federation of Advertisers suspended advertising on Twitter/X, Elon Musk launched a lawsuit last year claiming that the federation and its members were unlawfully conspiring to deprive Musk's platform of revenue. He is now expanding the lawsuit to target several companies whose ads were removed from the platform.

- The European Union is continuing with a piecewise rollout of legislation to minimize the risks from artificial intelligence. Apps with certain kinds of functions, including cognitive behavioural manipulation, classifying people based on personal characteristics, and biometric identification and categorization of people, is banned outright. Sounds eminently reasonable, but there's a lot of hand-wringing from techbros in this Reddit thread about allegedly stifling innovation (mixed in with slightly more valid concerns that more harmful uses of AI will just be developed elsewhere anyway).

- An AI chatbot created by the Israelis to disrupt online discussion of the country's policies towards Palestinians has gone rogue, at times attacking the Israeli and American governments.

News roundup, 3 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump has followed through on his threat to impose 25% tariffs on nearly all imports from Canada. This is already having an impact in some places. The Trudeau government is responding by imposing tariffs on a number of American imports, including alcohol, vegetables, and clothing; they say there may be more to come. Unfortunately, Trump may not bend easily, especially if he is serious about annexing Canada. Meanwhile Manitoba and several other provinces are pulling all American alcohol from their shelves, while BC is responding with targeted bans against liquor from red states. And fans at an Ottawa Senators game booed the American national anthem at a game against the Minnesota Wild.

- Some of the people behind Trump have mused about abolishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Given that without the FDIC people's deposits would not be guaranteed, the very act of abolishing it could very well trigger bank runs. This might serve the interests of billionaires who want to buy assets cheaply, but not anyone else's.

- A letter to the US Senate purporting to come from physicians in support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services was signed by a number of former doctors whose licenses were revoked, as well as a number of people who were never doctors in the first place.

- A Learjet 55 serving on a medivac flight from Philadelphia to Tijuana nosedived into the ground just after takeoff, killing all six people aboard the aircraft and at least one person on the ground. The aircraft had reached an altitude of just over 1,600 ft before the pilots lost control for reasons yet to be explained; radar data indicates that its rate of descent exceeded 11,000 ft/min when contact was lost.

- The last of the three soldiers on board the helicopter that collided with an airliner over the Potomac has been identified. Her family had initially asked that her name be withheld;  this naturally led to all sorts of speculation about her identity. Among these were false online statements identifying her as Jo Ellis, who is a transgender pilot with the Virginia National Guard. Ellis has gone public to make it clear that she's very much alive, though.

- One of the Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump has just received a 10 year sentence for impaired driving causing death. This comes just after it came out that another pardoned rioter is facing child sex abuse charges and that a third died in a gun battle with police. I daresay there seems to be some sort of pattern here.

- Montreal has brought in a partial ban on Airbnb and other short-term rental services in order to free up housing for people who actually need it. Such services will be prohibited entirely between September and June, with the exception of certain designated tourism streets.

News roundup, 28 Jan 2024

- The latest poll from EKOS has the Liberals recovering some lost support. The party now sits at 32%, only seven points shy of the Conservatives, and is statistically tied with them in Ontario. Perhaps Poilievre's courting of the MAGA crowd will turn out to be his downfall? Doubtful, but stay tuned.

- Following Mexico's refusal to accept a deportation flight, Colombia attempted to follow suit, only to cave after Trump threatened the country with massive tariffs. Nice coffee industry you've got, it would be a shame if something happened to it...

- The EU's top military official believes that EU countries should station their own troops in Greenland instead of leaving the military presence on the island to the Americans. I guess until now it never occurred to them that they might have to defend the territory from the Americans.

- A man arrested in the UK on hacking charges has claimed to have been hired by ExxonMobil to obtain information from environmental activists - including people assisting in lawsuits against energy companies.

- The introduction by China of the low-cost DeepSeek AI chatbot has caused panic selling of AI-related stocks in the US.

- An Indiana man who was among the Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump has been shot dead in a traffic stop after allegedly resisting arrest.

- The CIA, which had previously been skeptical of the "lab leak" theory of the origin of COVID-19, has suddenly reversed their stance. I'm sure their new Trump-appointed director has something to do with this.

- BC premier David Eby has proposed a ban on the sale of American alcohol in the province as a response to Donald Trump's tariff threats. The proposal is getting good reviews from domestic alcohol producers, but some industry groups are alarmed by the idea - the B.C. Alliance of Beverage Licensees has expressed concerns that it could reduce selection for consumers (but then, that's kind of the point here). They also fear that it could force some bars to import more expensive products from elsewhere and thus cut into their profits.

- Toronto Animal Services have seized a Spectacled Caiman that was being kept as a pet. Caimans are relatives of alligators, and can grow to more than 2 metres in length. Apparently the owner had kept it for 12 years without knowing it was prohibited in the city; the animal has been turned over to a reptile zoo outside of Peterborough.

News roundup, 5 Nov 2024

- The polls in today's election remain extremely close. The margin of error is big enough that either candidate could win a healthy majority of electoral votes. Notably, Harris needs to win the popular vote by 2.1 points in order to have a realistic chance of actually winning the Electoral College - and she'd need to beat Trump by 4.5 points in order to have a landslide. One of the things to worry about is that if Harris' margin of victory is narrow enough that a single state could make the difference, Trump's pawns in the Supreme Court could decide to award the election to him.

- Besides the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, numerous other American newspapers have declared that they will not be endorsing any candidate. More interestingly, there seems to have been a precipitous drop in endorsements since 2016. Admittedly, there were signs of a downward trend before then (and in and of itself it might not even a bad thing), but it's really taken off since Trump first rose to the presidency. Now some of this might come down to newspaper owners preferring to avoid paying taxes, and so papers that might previously have endorsed the Republican candidate might just avoid an endorsement since endorsing Trump looks so darned bad. But it's noteworthy that among papers that have stopped endorsing candidates, a disproportionate number of them were papers based in states that Trump won and which had endorsed Clinton in that election. It sure looks like the papers are downright scared of Trump... or rather of his supporters. Which makes sense given that Trump recently said at a rally that he wouldn't mind if a few journalists got shot...

- Murray Sinclair, groundbreaking judge and senator, has died at the age of 73. A member of Peguis First Nation, he became Manitoba's first indigenous judge (and the second in Canada) in 1988, presiding over the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in 1988 and later the Truth and Reconciliation commission before being appointed to the Senate in 2016.

- The newly elected BC legislature now faces the task of selecting a speaker. This is a tricky matter, as the speaker does not vote on bills except to break a tie, and they are constrained by convention on how to vote on such matters (essentially, they vote to preserve the status quo, so on first and second readings they vote yes to preserve debate, while on the third reading they vote no unless it is a confidence matter, in which case they vote yes). And if an NDP MLA is chosen as speaker, the NDP will have a minority government in all but name; they'll need the support of the Greens (or the Cons) to pass anything beyond a budget. Meanwhile the Cons are fulminating over an apparent error that resulted in a box containing 861 ballots not being counted on election night. It should be noted that this occurred in the constituency of Prince George-Mackenzie, a riding that the Cons won by over 5,000 votes. A smaller, yet potentially more consequential error occurred in Surrey-Guildford, in which 14 votes were initially overlooked in a constituency that the NDP held by only 27 votes. Of course the Cons will continue to scream malfeasance regardless of what any future inquiries reveal, because that's what they do.

- There's been another violent carjacking in Winnipeg, in which the driver was hit by his own vehicle after being bear-sprayed. The vehicle was later recovered but the suspect remains at large.

- Manitoba's Independent Investigation Unit, which is supposed to investigate potential criminal activity by police officers, has recommended no criminal charges for a Winnipeg cop who failed an alcohol screening after being uncooperative with RCMP officers who pulled him over near Rennie. I guess most of the members of the IIU still have to drive to work and thus are vulnerable to police harassment...

- A man who ran his truck into a march for residential school survivors after making racist threats towards the marchers has avoided jail, instead receiving a 9-month conditional sentence and a 12-month driving prohibition.

- I can't say I've ever seen a Hallmark movie (some of which are made right here in Winnipeg, incidentally). Those whose judgment I trust generally seem to think that they constitute a high crime against the cinematic arts. Others might disagree, but I think even those people could agree that overtly ageist casting policies are worthy of disapproval.

News roundup, 8 Oct 2024

- Hurricane Milton is bearing down on the Tampa area, expected to hit late Wednesday or early Thursday. It is currently a Category 5 hurricane, with winds reaching 180 mph (290 km/h or 156 kt). The barometric pressure in the hurricane's eye has been measured at 897 millibars (standard pressure is 1,000). Some people think this could wake people up to the seriousness of climate change, but given that the MAGA crowd are claiming that the Feds are somehow controlling the path of the hurricane, presumably in order to influence votes this fall, this might be a bit much to hope for.

- With less than a month to go before the US election, polling numbers are remarkably close. Key swing states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina are all too close to call. You'd think that the choice between a competent (albeit centrist) candidate and a raving fascist lunatic would be a pretty straightforward one, but this is America we're talking about...

- BC Conservative leader John Rustad indicated that he would be open to "Nuremberg 2.0" trials for those responsible for public health measures during the height of the pandemic. He subsequently backed away from this, presumably after advisors warned him that suggesting that making things inconvenient for the unvaccinated is just like stuffing them into gas chambers is not a good look. In other Rustad news, he called the Eby government's housing policy "Soviet-style housing", falsely suggesting that premier David Eby "thinks that the private sector has no role in providing housing" when in fact one of the biggest things the government has done is removed restrictions on the kind of housing that can be built by the private sector. Unfortunately, all this nonsense doesn't seem to be significantly hurting Rustad in the polls. For their part, the NDP is trying to get Elections BC to put the party's name on the ballot as "BC Conservative Party" rather than just "Conservative Party"; they are presumably resigned to the popularity of the federal Conservatives but want to draw a distinction between the federal and provincial parties. It's hard to see positives in the way this is going.

- The "Victims of Communism" memorial commissioned by the Harper government was scheduled to be unveiled last November, but has been beset by controversy following revelations that more than half of the 553 names that were supposed to go on the memorial belonged to people associated with the Nazis or other fascist organizations.

- The looming strike by healthcare support staff in Manitoba seems to have been averted, as a tentative agreement was reached at 4:25 this morning, with only 95 minutes to go before the strike deadline. CUPE and MGEU leaders are urging their membership to approve the deal.

- The newly elected mayor of the Mexican city of Chilpancingo, Alejandro Arcos, was beheaded just days after taking office, possibly having run afoul of local drug cartels.

News roundup, 27 Sept 2024

- A new Leger poll raises serious questions about the political judgment of BC voters, giving the extremist BC Conservatives a 45-42 lead over the NDP. Paradoxically, the premier, NDP leader David Eby, still has a higher personal approval rating than Conservative leader John Rustad, further adding to the impression that the people really don't understand what they're doing when they vote. Possibly the greater efficiency of the NDP vote will prevent the worst from happening, but that remains to be seen.

- A global declaration on antibiotic resistance was weakened at the insistence of the US. The reason? The initial draft called for a 30% reduction of the use of antibiotics in agriculture (one of the biggest offenders on this file) by 2030, and the American ag lobby was having none of it. Therefore, the offending section was replaced with the anodyne recommendation to "strive to meaningfully reduce" the use of antibiotics, without specifics.

- Some Silicon Valley techbros aren't prepared to wait for proper research into geoengineering to be done - they're starting to do it themselves. Naturally, the existence of such rogue operators adds urgency to the need for a sensible study of the matter.

- At least three people were killed when Hurricane Helene struck northern Florida, with winds of 225 km/h (120 kt). It has since been downgraded to a tropical storm.

- The assets of Alex Jones' Infowars are being auctioned off following the ruling of a Houston judge overseeing the bankruptcy of Jones and his media empire. Proceeds will be paid to the relatives of Sandy Hook shooting victims who were defamed by Jones when he repeatedly claimed the massacre to be a hoax.

- The woman killed by a runaway pickup truck in Winnipeg's Westwood neighbourhood two weeks ago was a newcomer to Canada, who was going to be married in October. At the time of her death she was a few weeks away from the end of her probation period at her new job and qualifying for benefits, which ironically would have included life insurance.