News roundup, 26 Aug 2026

- California governor Gavin Newsom believes that Donald Trump will restart trade talks with Canada quite quickly, alleging that the Republicans are turning on Trump as the possible consequences of the trade war hit their constituents. Whether this is really the problem for Trump that Newsom claims is unclear, though; the assumption that it is hinges partly on this fall's midterm elections being free and fair, which is not safe to asume.

- An officer in the US Air Force is facing criminal charges after calling for the impeachment of Trump. Maj. Jason Watson had initially done an interview with a Substack blog called Defenders of Our Republic, then was arrested at a demonstration on the steps of the Capitol in July and again a week ago. After the most recent arrest he was placed into pretrial confinement, where he has been held without bail ever since. 

- A journalist who was found in contempt of court for refusing to disclose her confidential sources is appealing the finding to the US Supreme Court. Catherine Herridge had been found in contempt in 2024 over sourcing for her coverage of Chinese-American scientist Yanping Chen, who had been investigated for possible ties to China's military; Chen had sued the US government for allegedly illegally disclosing information to Herridge. Herridge was ordered to pay $800 for each day she refused to identify her sources, though the payments have been suspended pending the appeal.

- Loblaws, the parent company of Superstore and a number of other regional chains, is reversing its decision to remove country of origin labelling on produce displays. The company had removed the labelling in every province except Ontario and Quebec, both of which make this information mandatory. The company had removed the labelling in other provinces after getting caught mislabelling foreign products as Canadian.

- Six employees at Frankfurt Airport were recently infected with malaria, and one has died. The source of infection is believed to be mosquitoes that arrived by aircraft.

- A ramp agent at Montreal-Trudeau International Airport was killed on Monday when he was run over by a plane. To the shock of many passengers, the aircraft's external cameras captured the accident and showed it on screens in the cabin. The TSB as well as the federal labour department are investigating.

- Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80 from cancer.

News roundup, 3 Oct 2025

- Two CRJ-900LR regional jets owned by the Delta subsidiary Endeavor Air collided at the intersection of two taxiways at New York City's LaGuardia Airport on Wednesday. Fortunately the collision occurred at low speed, but both aircraft were substantially damaged; a flight attendant on one of them suffered minor injuries. Juan Browne (blancolirio) offers his opinions here.

- California governor Gavin Newsom has signed the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act into law. This is a diluted version of the original bill, which Newsom vetoed last year following intense lobbying by the tech industry, but still requires tech companies to report safety protocols used and their projections of the biggest dangers that could arise from the technologies they develop. It also offers enhanced whistleblower protection for employees. Predictably, the cowboys who dominate the tech industry aren't satisfied; they've created superPACs to fight AI regulation.

- Germany plans to invest more than €2 billion in nuclear fusion research by 2029. Hopefully this will bear fruit; the world badly needs it.

- Leonardo Garcia Venegas was born in the US, but that hasn't stopped ICE from hauling him into custody twice in the last few months on suspicion of being an illegal resident. He's suing, saying his Fourth Amendment rights were violated. A reasonable court of law ought to agree; unfortunately his chances of getting a reasonable court in Trump's America are not good.

- A Benin-flagged oil tanker suspected of being part of Russia's "shadow fleet" was boarded by the French navy, and the captain and first mate were taken into custody on suspicion of espionage. The tanker, currently named the Boracay, had been blacklisted by the EU under its previous name Kiwala.

- Redditor u/-Badger3- says that they received a thinly veiled threat from the Tennessee branch of the Republican Party, reminding them that voter records are public and that "Party leadership would be VERY DISAPPOINTED" if they don't turn out to vote in an upcoming special election (byelection) in the state's 7th Congressional District. Although the district includes part of Democratic-leaning Nashville, it also includes some heavily Republican rural areas, and is considered a likely Republican hold, which raises the question about why such intimidation tactics would be necessary - except to remind potential dissidents that they're being watched.

- Following the postponement of Steinbach's Pride parade due to far-right threats following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the LGBT* community are being forced to downsize events and hire security. They are also finding that security is harder to come by; the firm they previously worked for has backed out citing "a need to protect its own staff because they aren’t armed".

- A consortium including Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has taken over video game giant Electronic Arts. This is not the Saudis' first venture into the sector; they already own significant stakes in Nintendo and Take-Two Interactive as well as other gaming companies. Some Redditors are afraid that the new owners' socially conservative values will leak into the games, notably the Sims franchise, though it seems doubtful that existing titles will be impacted due to the difficulty of changing the code to, say, prohibit premarital sex or LGBT* content. It's possible that the products will be discontinued, though, or that future releases will be less inclusive. 

News roundup, 18 Aug 2025

- The IDF has reportedly created a "legitimization cell", tasked with trying to find whatever tenuous connections it can find between Hamas and journalists working in Gaza. That way, when they kill said journalists, they can present this "evidence" as a way of claiming self-defense.

- California, unlike most states, has an independent electoral commission to draw district boundaries. However, Governor Gavin Newsom is prepared to override the commission for seats in the House of Representatives if other states, such as Texas, go ahead with highly gerrymandered districts for their own states. Public opinion in California opposes this, and partisan redistricting has been shown to erode confidence in democracy, but it might be the best chance the Democrats have of regaining control of the House.

- The Carney government attempted to order striking Air Canada flight attendants back to work over the weekend, invoking Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to order binding arbitration. The union, however, is defying the order, essentially calling the government's bluff. It definitely seems like a questionable order; being able to hop on a plane to fly wherever you like is not an essential service by any reasonable standards.

- Back in the 1970s, uneasiness about the safety of nuclear fission energy led Oregon's liberal legislators to introduce legislation to give the public more say over the location of power plants. Unfortunately this has now backfired; rightwing activists are using the legislation to hold up the construction of wind farms and upgrades to transmission lines.

- The Winnipeg Humane Society was kicked out of the Hanover Ag Fair because they had a display with a papier mâché pig. The display was meant to show people the kind of conditions actual pigs are typically kept in, but the fair's organizers were not amused. They have said little about the reason for kicking the WHS out other than saying that the display was not what they had expected. 

News roundup, 4 July 2025

- The Trump regime is trying to shut down the Mauna Loa laboratory in Hawaii, which has been measuring atmospheric CO₂ concentration since the 1950s. Of course this is no doubt because he doesn't like the implications of what the laboratory is documenting. In a better world someone else (like, say, the UN) would step in and take over the lab's operations, but I suspect Trump would actively seek to dismantle it before that becomes a possibility.

- The US dollar has lost over 10% of its value when compared to those of its closest trading partners - the most dramatic loss of value since 1973. Trump's tariffs are one plausible reason. There are concerns about inflation, and even more so, concerns that foreign investors are avoiding the US. 

- California governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law two bills that make significant changes to the California Environmental Quality Act. While the existing law has drawn praise from some environmentalists, some provisions in it have been weaponized by NIMBYs, not only against affordable housing but even against clearly pro-environment measures like bike lanes. The amendments are intended to fix these issues; among other things they exempt infill housing from the Act's requirements for environmental review (since such housing is by its very nature not constructed on pristine land anyway).

- Russia bombarded Kyiv overnight with hundreds of drones and several larger missiles, injuring at least 23 people and causing widespread damage. This would seem to be a lot less indiscriminate than Ukraine's recent strikes on military factories; one could be forgiven for thinking that the real goal is to destroy Ukraine's viability as a country.

- Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, says that he was brutally beaten and subjected to various psychological torments while incarcerated at the CECOT facility there.

- Flights in Canada were heavily disrupted on Thursday as bomb threats were called into airports in six major cities. 

- Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham plans to seek a second term in next year's municipal elections. 

News roundup, 19 June 2025

- The Trump regime plans to deploy another 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to anti-ICE protests. Governor Gavin Newsom points out that these troops are being diverted from critical roles in managing wildfires and, ironically enough, patrolling the border; evidently Trump considers sticking it to California to please his base more important though.

- An Iranian missile hit the main hospital in the Israeli city of Beersheba this morning; no deaths are reported but a number of people were injured. The Israelis are outraged; evidently they can dish it out but can't take it themselves (not that anyone should be targeting hospitals, of course). Donald Trump is apparently still not sure whether he wants to join Israel in the war on Iran. I guess Netanyahu is pushing him one way, and Putin is pushing him the other way. Meanwhile Ted Cruz got a grilling from none other than Tucker Carlson over his hawkish stance towards Iran.

- The Trump regime wants Canada to increase its tariffs on China in return for the US lowering its tariffs on Canada. While Melanie Joly was open to this idea earlier this year, a recent poll finds that a plurality of Canadians are opposed.

- Conservative MP Damien Kurek, who represents the Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot, has resigned his seat to allow Pierre Poilievre to run in the resulting byelection and thus reenter Parliament. This will not stop a leadership review from occurring at the next Conservative Party convention, scheduled to occur in Calgary next January, but he seems unlikely to be removed unless he somehow loses the byelection, which is highly improbable unless an even more extreme candidate (like, say, Maxime Bernier) is able to capture the attention of the voters in that riding.

- Norway has introduced new regulations for cruise ships, prohibiting them from coming closer than 500 metres away from polar bears in order to minimize interference with the bears. Predictably, the cruise industry is up in arms, with one expedition leader saying ships are sailing "empty" as a result and calling the policy "conservation fascism". Doesn't really look like fascism to me; I must have missed the part where tour operators get put into concentration camps. The remark seems especially tone-deaf given what looks very much like the rise of actual fascism in places like the US.

- Czech authorities have charged three people with running a fake dental office in which an unqualified, self-taught individual conducted root canals, extracted teeth, and even used anesthesia.

News roundup, 12 June 2025

- An Air India Boeing 787 with 242 passengers and crew on board has crashed in a residential area shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport on a flight to London. This is the first crash of a 787; video here.

- California governor Gavin Newsom is warning that other states may soon see troops deployed as is happening in Los Angeles.

- Teachers in Alberta have overwhelmingly approved a strike mandate. Given the Smith government's unwillingness to be reasonable (indeed, their base probably considers unreasonableness to be a virtue) it seems unlikely that a strike will be avoided. Education in the province is not in good shape in any case; one school in Airdrie has closed its library and music room in order to convert those spaces into classrooms.

- Saskatchewan is following Alberta's lead in putting American booze back on the shelves. I guess it's too traumatic for the people of those provinces to not be able to get the Jack Daniels and Jim Beam they need to drink while listening to country music. Meanwhile, the return of the booze to Alberta shelves might not get as many takers as they're hoping; demand is down.

- A new law introduced by the Ford government in Ontario holds landlords, both residential and commercial, liable for drug offenses that occur on their premises. Penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and/or up to a year in jail. There are fears about the potential impact on homelessness, if people with addiction issues are denied leases, for instance. It may also pose a risk to music venues and nightclubs.

- When the EPA introduced a rule in 2009 that required industries to report their carbon emissions, this in itself led to a drop in emissions. Of course under the Trump regime this rule is being dropped.

- In addition to consulting AI chatbots about mental health matters, people are asking them for dating and relationship advice. I daresay this isn't such a great idea either. On a related note, Canadian AI researcher Yoshua Bengio is warning that current AIs seem to be putting their own interests ahead of ours, using things like deception. One AI apparently was observed to covertly insert its own code into another system to avoid being replaced. Bengio has founded a nonprofit called LawZero which he says will build AIs that don't do that stuff. Some folks in the related Reddit thread wish to remind us that OpenAI was originally founded as a nonprofit, then essentially said "Just kidding!" and became a for-profit company.

News roundup, 10 June 2025

- California is taking the Trump regime to court over their unilateral decision to deploy the National Guard against protesters. Governor Gavin Newsom argues that it is "illegal and immoral" for the federal government to take such a measure without consulting the governor of the state in question. And a second journalist has been shot with a rubber bullet while covering the protests.

- Israeli authorities have deported Greta Thunberg and several other activists who were captured from a vessel delivering aid to Gaza. Several others from the same boat are contesting their deportation, and have been detained pending a hearing. The Israelis seem also to be continuing their policy of shooting people lining up for aid, which is not a good look.

- In addition to the infant who died of measles after being infected in utero, five other newborns in southern Ontario have been infected in the same manner.

- The Manitoba government is urging people to avoid non-essential travel in order to keep hotel rooms free for evacuees, whose numbers have now reached 21,000 people. This currently falls short of being an actual order, though.

- Winnipeg Transit is considering upgrading the shields that protect bus drivers from unruly passengers. Currently, they do not completely enclose the driver, making attacks still possible if a bit more difficult. A full upgrade of the fleet could be costly, but it seems more than worthwhile, and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents drivers, agrees.

- Mark Carney is promising to meet NATO's military spending target of 2% of GDP by next March. 

- Researchers at Anthropic, an AI startup, are predicting that white-collar jobs are going to go into serious decline, with more than half of entry-level office jobs disappearing. Others predict that it won't be the entry-level jobs that take the worst hit; those jobs tend to be lower pay, and new graduates with knowledge of AI should do OK, while people who have been in their jobs for a long time (especially if not unionized) might be more vulnerable.

- The Trump regime has issued an executive order lifting the longstanding ban on civilian overland supersonic flights. One company claims to have broken the sound barrier (just barely mind you, at Mach 1.1) without making a boom that was audible on the ground - but this is a small experimental aircraft that will need to be scaled up considerably in order to be economical, so there's no guarantee that the production aircraft will be tolerably quiet. And let's not get started on the potential emissions. But here's the thing - I don't think that there's any reason Canada should have to endure potential sonic booms over our own territory, as would be the case for, say, flights from the Midwest to New England or from the east coast to Asia. What if we simply refused to allow such flights over our territory?

- A school shooting in the Austrian city of Graz has killed eight people, including the perpetrator, and injured several more. 

News roundup, 17 April 2025

- There were nearly 900,000 fewer border crossings into the US last month than there were in March of 2024, suggesting that Canadians take the travel boycott very seriously indeed. California governor Gavin Newsom is begging Canadians not to boycott his state, essentially saying that Trump's tariffs and annexation threats are not his state's fault. Now to be fair, the state is taking measures to fight the Trump regime, including suing the federal government for the impact of the tariffs on their economy, but it's worth noting that a recent survey found that average Californians are increasingly wanting to make nice with the regime, which tells me that they haven't learned their lesson. Keep boycotting, folks.

- Meanwhile, the folks at Forbes are suggesting that the travel boycott could end up leading to higher carbon emissions, because people are traveling to other overseas locations in lieu of the US, meaning longer flights. Now Forbes is hardly an impartial observer here, and there are doubtless ulterior motives in sowing the seeds of doubt in the minds of Canadians, but I can kinda, sorta see the point. However, the solution here is not to stop boycotting, it's to find a way to fill the void in your life closer to home, not further. Go somewhere in Canada, or do a "staycation". Spending a week in a resort doesn't make you more worldly in any meaningful way anyhow.

- The Leaders' Debates Commission, which governs the debates in Canadian federal elections, has dropped the Green Party from the debates due to the party's decision to withdraw candidates to avoid vote-splitting that might favour the Conservatives.

- Pierre Poilievre is the most unpopular leader of a federal party in Canada, according to a new poll from Angus Reid. 60% of respondents have a negative opinion of him, while only 34% have a positive one. It's worth noting, of course, that the kind of person who would support Poilievre is also probably the kind of person who would avoid answering polls because they're associated with the woke libtard media or something like that, but those numbers are pretty stark.

- Wab Kinew is reconsidering his decision to cancel a proposal to build a second port on Hudson Bay, saying that the issues with the US are forcing the province to look towards other markets, such as in Europe. He says that the busiest part of the shipping season coincides with whale migration in Churchill, and wants to avoid conflicts with the whales and the tourists who go there to watch them.

- The Bank of England fears allowing autonomous AI to trade stocks could lead to disaster, as bots might learn how to profit from volatility and how to create more of it. And if an AI autonomously does something to manipulate stocks, which would be illegal if a person did it, how do you prosecute?

- The FAA has issued an emergency order grounding New York Helicopter Tours, the company that operated the helicopter that self-destructed over the Hudson River last week killing all 6 people aboard. The company's Director of Operations, Jason Costello, had agreed to a voluntary pause in operations while the accident is being investigated, and emailed the FAA to that effect, but 16 minutes after he sent that email, CEO Michael Roth sent another email to the FAA saying that he did not authorize Costello to agree to this and adding that Costello was no longer employed by the company. Thing is, the director of operations is a required position in order for the company to be allowed to operate, and with the sudden vacancy of the position the FAA ruled accordingly. In related news, the main rotor was found with the mast and the entire main rotor gearbox still attached. This appears to rule out the mast bumping theory, suggesting that the pilot did nothing wrong except perhaps in his choice of employer.

- A woman showed up at an elementary school in Decatur Township, Indiana to complain about the fact that her daughter's teacher mentioned a rainbow flag in an assignment about flags. She was carrying a handgun in a holster, and police were called; the gun was confiscated but she was initially released. However, her luck ran out soon after when she sent a threatening (and very poorly spelled) message to the teacher, and she was charged with harassment as well as possession of a firearm on school property.

News roundup, 8 Nov 2024

- Manitoba premier Wab Kinew is trying to be optimistic about the province's prospects for dealing with the incoming Trump administration, including the proposed 10% tariffs that Trump wants to impose on all imports. Disconcertingly, the best thing he could come up with was to point out that we have a lot of minerals critical to the American defense industry. Also disconcertingly, I can't think of anything better to shelter the province's economy. Meanwhile, Quebec premier François Legault is calling on the federal government to "act quickly" to secure Canada's borders, as he expects migrants fearing deportation from the US to attempt to cross the Canadian border in large numbers. And south of the border, California governor Gavin Newsom has convened a special session of the state legislature to call for increased funding for legal defenses against the anticipated actions of the incoming administration.

- Manitoba's legislative session has wrapped up for the year. The government successfully passed several significant pieces of legislation, including landmark changes to labour law (a ban on replacement workers and changes to make it easier to certify a union) as well as rules restricting the sale of machetes. Controversially, the labour provisions were included in the omnibus budget bill, something often done by governments of all stripes but seen by many as a way of avoiding scrutiny.

- One move by the Kinew government has to do with changes to the certification of teachers. Most controversial is the removal of the requirement for education students to have a minimum of six credit hours in mathematics. The Tories are opposed, of course, but more notably, University of Winnipeg mathematics professor Anna Stokke, who was among those who petitioned for the requirement to be introduced in the first place in 2015. University of Manitoba professor Martha Koch disagrees with Stokke, claiming that better math education in teachers sometimes leads to worse outcomes; it's worth noting, though, that Koch is a professor of education, not mathematics; I'm more inclined to believe what Stokke says about the actual level of math knowledge that she sees in her students than whatever pet education theory Koch is drawing on. Having said that, loosening the requirements might be helpful in alleviating the shortage of teachers; nonetheless, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and this might be one of those occasions where the Tories are right about something.

- The Quebec government is considering legislation to force medical graduates to reimburse the government for the cost of their education unless they practice in the province for a yet-to-be-determined period of time. The government has expressed a willingness to use the notwithstanding clause in order to avoid constitutional challenges; one constitutional lawyer thinks this would not work, though, since mobility rights are guaranteed in a section of the Charter not covered by the clause.

News roundup, 4 Oct 2024

- The BC Conservatives have been quietly editing their platform on their website, removing nearly half of the content in an attempt to make themselves look a bit more moderate. The party's leader is also refusing to answer questions about one of their candidates' claims that vaccines cause AIDS. In a sane world this kind of evasive behaviour would hurt their chances, but the latest polls suggest that they're gaining popularity and are now slightly favoured to win. It's as if the perceived momentum the Cons have gotten since the collapse of BC United is triggering the herding instinct of the electorate to rally around the party that's making gains.

- Following a recent mandate, many federal civil servants in Canada have been ordered back into the office for a minimum of three days a week. The government is not ruling out further moves in this direction; it seems a strange choice, given that a lot of those workers are likely to be Liberal-NDP swing voters and may throw their lot in with the NDP out of frustration. There's a lot of discussion over on Reddit about this; some think the NDP could make big gains by campaigning on this, though I fear that this could alienate some of their traditional labour base who can't work from home due to the nature of their jobs. The commercial real estate angle is also prominent in those discussions; some in that same thread point out Mark Carney's role at Brookfield Corporation, which has rather a lot of those holdings. A more charitable take could be that a collapse in commercial real estate could be bad for the tax base of many municipalities, not to mention that things like pension plans are probably heavily invested in the same thing.

- California governor Gavin Newsom has followed through on his vow to veto the new AI safety bill passed by the legislature, saying that the bill could "stifle innovation" (presumably we're supposed to believe that innovation is a good in and of itself, as opposed to something that could be good or bad depending on the nature of the innovation) and "prompt AI developers to move out of the state". This is despite the urging of numerous people in the entertainment industry who signed an open letter calling for him to allow it to be passed; I guess tech trumps entertainment even in California though. It also comes despite disturbing revelations about the internal workings of OpenAI.

- To many observers, Donald Trump doesn't seem to be seriously trying to win the election. This does not make much sense in terms of his ego, much less in terms of the legal troubles he could face in the near future. It might, however, make sense if he is sufficiently confident that his pre-stacked Supreme Court will hand the presidency to him anyway.

- Clarence Woodhouse, who served 12 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, has finally been exonerated, more than a year after two equally innocent co-accused. His brother, who was also convicted of the crime, died in prison before he could be exonerated.

- Hockey has sometimes been described as "soccer on ice"; some parents at a kids' game in Hamilton last weekend seem to have taken that to its logical conclusion and brawled like soccer fans.