News roundup, 25 April 2025

- Gunfire was reported on the India-Pakistan border following escalating tensions over the massacre of tourists in Kashmir. India accuses Pakistan of shooting first; Pakistan has not commented on whether this is the case or not.

- The Hudson Bay Company, having filed for creditor protection last month, will be liquidating all of its merchandise at the six stores that had previously been spared this fate, after concluding that there was little chance of finding a buyer for those stores. More alarming to First Nations, historians, and UNESCO alike is the prospect of valuable historical artifacts being auctioned off. A court has just ruled that they can go up for auction; a lawyer representing the attorney general's office has requested that a catalogue of the artifacts be provided to him as well as to the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs before proceeding with such an auction.

- Russian authorities say a senior military officer, Yaroslav Moskalik, was killed in a car bombing in the city of Balashikha, near Moscow. The bomb was reportedly detonated remotely in a car parked along a route where Moskalik routinely walked. One hopes the Trump regime is paying attention to the kind of thing that happens when you try to take over a country whose citizens can easily pass for your own.

- Pierre Poilievre uses the word "woke" a lot, but he seems unable, or more likely unwilling, to give a clear and concise definition of it. The things that the word gets applied to can range from common decency to some things that actually are annoying, but if he doesn't want to tell you where his use of the word lies on that spectrum, you can guess pretty easily. He's also warning that the country will "face nothing but despair" if the Liberals win. That might well be true, but current polls suggest that most Canadians recognize that it's going to be even worse if the Conservatives win.

- Peel Regional Police officers summoned to the scene of a dispute at Pearson International Airport fatally shot a man, allegedly after he pointed a gun at them.

- As of the first of May, Manitobans will be legally able to do what residents of most other provinces (except Quebec) have been able to do for years - grow their own pot. One activist, however, thinks the change isn't good enough, because you're only allowed to grow it indoors. He argues that keeping it out of sight reinforces the "stigma" around cannabis. The thing is, even if it were allowed I don't think it would be such a great idea to grow pot outside - it's likely to be stolen anyway.

- Winnipeg's partnership with the 529 Garage bike registry has led to a 19% increase in the recovery rate of stolen bicycles.

- A Russian-born scientist at Harvard Medical School was detained by ICE and had her visa cancelled because she had neglected to declare biological specimens (specifically frog embryos) in her luggage as she returned from France. She says that this was an error, though a Homeland Security representative alleges that she had deliberately concealed them. She fears persecution if sent back to Russia due to her opposition to the war in Ukraine.

- Quebec's language watchdog has ordered Montreal's transit system, STM, to stop displaying slogans such as "GO! Canadiens GO!" on its buses - because "go" is an English word. Undaunted, STM has changed the slogan to "Allez! Canadiens Allez!"

News roundup, 10 March 2025

- Mark Carney has won the leadership of the federal Liberals in a landslide, and will be sworn in as prime minister shortly. He will become the first person to hold the office of prime minister while not yet having a seat in the House of Commons.

- The Hudson Bay Company has filed for creditor protection. The company intends to restructure; they cite the trade issues with the US as one of the problems, but another one cited is "post-pandemic declines in downtown store traffic". This seems questionable, though; these days most of their stores aren't in downtown locations. The downtown store in Winnipeg closed early in the pandemic (and the writing had been on the wall well before); all remaining locations in the city are in suburban malls.

- Human remains found in the Prairie Green Landfill in Rosser, Manitoba have been identified as having been Morgan Harris, one of four women killed by a Winnipeg serial killer. Moreover, there appear to be remains from another, as yet unidentified person. That person could be Marcedes Myran, or the woman known provisionally as Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe (Buffalo Woman). Or it could be someone else entirely; time will tell.

- Mere hours after declaring another pause in the tariffs on Canada, Trump is now threatening new ones on lumber and dairy products. For her part, Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt openly declared that if Canada wants to avoid tariffs, it should accept American rule. And four different anonymous sources, apparently with insider knowledge of the recent discussions between Trump and Trudeau, report that Trump does not accept the legitimacy of the 1908 treaty that settles the boundary between Canada and the US. Trump also wants to eject Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement, presumably so that the US can spy on Canada with impunity, but other members of the agreement now want to limit what they share with the US. So do Saudi Arabia and Israel - and if those two countries don't fully trust the US with their intelligence secrets, I doubt anyone else will either.

- Trump is blaming "globalists" for the decline in stock markets in response to his erratic tariff behaviour. Of course that term tends to be a bit of a dog whistle among his ilk, kind of like "rootless cosmopolitans" was for an earlier generation.

- Investigators into the death of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, have concluded that Arakawa died of hantavirus, a disease carried by deer mice. Hackman, who was in an advanced state of dementia, may not even have realized that she was dead, much less been able to seek help, but lingered on for another week or so before dying of heart failure.

- A Florida man has been arrested after making multiple calls to 911 to ask them for assistance in assassinating Donald Trump. He also claimed to have hacked into a missile system that would enable him to destroy New York City, and that the missiles were "attracted" to Trump Tower. He reportedly has a history of mental health issues.