News roundup, 10 April 2026

- Several anonymous sources interviewed for an upcoming book report that in a series of Situation Room meetings earlier this year, various Trump advisors dropped hints that going to war with Iran would be a bad idea - but none of them except JD Vance pressed the issue. You know it's a mess when JD freaking Vance is the voice of reason.

- The American Automotive Policy Council, which represents the US automakers, is concerned about new EU vehicle safety standards that could limit the importation of gigantic pickup trucks. Andrew Puzder, the US ambassador to the EU, suggests that this could breach the spirit of a trade deal with the US that the EU has signed but has not yet ratified.

- People who have worked with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman say that he barely knows how to code and has a "surprisingly shallow" knowledge of how AI actually works. Then again, to do what he does you don't have to know how it works. You don't even have to know if it works, so long as you have plausible deniability about what you know or don't know when you issue an IPO. You just have to know how to sell stuff, and evidently Altman is very good at that.

- Conservative-turned-Liberal MP Marilyn Gladu was welcomed with open arms at the Liberal party convention in Montreal. When Mark Carney was asked about her rather sketchy past (which includes opposition to abortion, opposition to bans on conversion therapy, and support for the Freedom Convoy and other antivaxxers), he stated that Gladu has agreed to vote with the government on those issues. I guess she's flexible, if nothing else. Perhaps Gladu believed, rightly or wrongly, that she had to take such positions to run for office in a place like Sarnia even if she didn't actually believe in them. I'm guessing that she doesn't intend to run again and wants to end her career on the winning side. 

- Solar farms in the UK generated a record 14.1 gigawatts of power on Monday. That's pretty impressive for a country that's not exactly known for being sunny.

- Representatives of 85 countries will be meeting in Colombia at the end of this month for the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. Unlike UN-run climate summits, this will be governed by majority vote rather than consensus, preventing a small number of countries from sabotaging plans like Saudi Arabia and other petrostates did at COP30. The countries plan on putting together a workable plan for the transition; what could be promising is the fact that put together, the countries participating have enough economic heft to force investors to reconsider whether it's still worth investing in new fossil fuel reserves.

News roundup, 9 April 2026

- An Israeli bombardment of Lebanon on Wednesday has killed over 250 people and injured hundreds more. Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, says that the inclusion of Lebanon in the ceasefire with the US is essential, but JD Vance is urging Iran to throw Lebanon under the bus. Meanwhile, uncertainty arising from the conflict is driving banks to raise their lending rates, which could have significant implications for those who have to renew their mortgages soon.

- Marilyn Gladu, until now the Conservative MP for Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong, has become the latest to cross the floor and join Mark Carney's Liberals. This brings the Liberals up to 172 seats, one short of a majority.

- A study at Tufts University on how to increase election turnout among students has been halted by a federal order, ostensibly because the feds are concerned about the privacy of students. I think we all know the real reason though.

- The Manitoba government is warning that the flood situation in the Interlake region could be severe this spring, possibly as bad as 2014 when much of Peguis First Nation had to be evacuated. In other parts of the province, conditions are drier - so dry, in fact, that people are already getting anxious about the coming wildfire season.

- A referendum in the Milwaukee suburb of Port Washington to restrict the construction of data centres in the city has passed by a large margin. It will require any future data centres to win the approval of voters. A regional business organization is fighting the initiative in court, fearing that it will set a precedent for other forms of development.

- Danhao Wang, a semiconductor researcher at the University of Michigan, has died after falling from a campus building, apparently intentionally. This came shortly after he was subjected to "hostile questioning" by authorities. Wang is not the first Chinese-born researcher to die in this manner recently; Jane Wu of Northwestern University killed herself in 2024 while under investigation by federal authorities.

News roundup, 10 Feb 2026

- Rightwing populist André Ventura has been soundly defeated in Portugal's presidential runoff by centre-left candidate António José Seguro. This is more important than it would be in many European countries (though less so than in the US) due to the fact that Portugal has a semi-presidential system, and the president has the power to veto legislation and dissolve parliament at will.

- New York mayor Zohran Mamdani has introduced an executive order prohibiting ICE agents from municipal property without a warrant as well as several other measures aimed at limiting the power of the agency to conduct "abusive immigration enforcement". Interestingly, apart from a single article on CBS, there seems to be very little coverage online from the US - nothing from the New York Times, NPR, NBC, Associated Press, or any of the other usual suspects - and there's surprisingly little international coverage either, just stuff from places like this Spanish website and this Turkish one. I'm always a bit leery when someone on Facebook or whatever claims stridently that there's a "news blackout" about a subject, because generally a simple Google search brings up something - but this comes a lot closer than most to being the real deal. And yes, I tried the built-in search features of those American sites named above, just in case it was Google rather than the sites themselves burying the story, but it seems not.

- Dr. Philippe Lagacé-Wiens, a microbiologist at St Boniface Hospital, warns that the measles exposure at Brandon's Ag Days has the potential to be a superspreader event. Some 35,000 people attended the trade show, and in this day and age there's a definite correlation between attending agricultural trade fairs and not getting vaccinated.

- The Canadian government appears to have made advance payments for parts for 14 additional F-35s, seemingly still wanting to hedge their bets on the matter. The parts are needed in order to keep Canada's place in the order queue.

- Canada's airlines are cancelling flights to Cuba as Havana's airport runs short on jet fuel following the country's loss of access to Venezuelan oil in the wake of the US attack. This comes after a travel advisory was already issued for the country due to the fuel shortage.

- NBC appears to have altered the audio of the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics to cut out the boos from the audience directed at JD Vance.

- Donald Trump is threatening to cancel the planned opening of a second bridge between Windsor and Detroit. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is scheduled to open in the next few months, but has become the latest fixation for the orange monster.

News roundup, 9 Jan 2026

- Fiona Hill, a former advisor to Donald Trump, alleges that Russian officials indicated to Trump in 2019 that they would be willing to throw Venezuela under the bus so long as Trump would let them have their way with Ukraine. I guess from a realpolitik point of view, it makes perfect sense. Meanwhile Columbia's president, Gustavo Petro, fears that his country may be next to be attacked by the US. 

- Two people were shot and wounded by a Customs and Border Patrol officer in Portland on Thursday. The regime once again claims that this was self-defense after the victims allegedly tried to use a vehicle as a weapon and that they were involved in a Venezuelan gang.

- State investigators in Minnesota say that Kash Patel's FBI is denying them access to evidence in the fatal shooting of Renee Good by one of Trump's ICE stormtroopers. For his part, JD Vance says that the suspect (recently identified as Jonathan Ross, though the agency refuses to confirm this) has absolute immunity from prosecution for her death. Meanwhile some witnesses say that a doctor was denied access to the scene and ambulances were delayed because ICE had blocked the street.

- A hotel in Lakeville, Minnesota that refused to rent rooms to ICE agents has had its franchising agreement with the Hilton chain cancelled despite issuing a grovelling apology.

- Iran has shut down all internet access as protests rock the country. Trump is threatening to intervene if protesters are hurt; kind of ironic in view of his attitude towards protests against his own regime.

- A NASA mission to the International Space Station is being cut short due to a medical emergency experienced by one of the crew.

- A philosophy professor at Texas A&M University has been ordered to remove Plato's Symposium from an introductory course reading list due to it being too woke on gender and sexuality matters. 

News roundup, 17 Sept 2025

- Chrystia Freeland is reportedly stepping down from her cabinet post in favour of a role as an envoy to Ukraine.

- The American far right is experiencing internal divisions over the killing of Charlie Kirk. Some figures in the movement, including Steve Bannon and Candace Owens, are working on new conspiracy theories. Owens went so far as to accuse the Trump regime of withholding information, and suggested that Israel might be to blame, claiming that Kirk had taken a more critical stance against that country shortly before his death. Maybe a civil war in the far right movement is exactly what the rest of humanity needs, though.

- Radio-Canada has suspended journalist Elisa Serret for making on-air statements that were perceived as antisemitic. Now hearing something like that arouses suspicion, since there are all kinds of things that are being called "antisemitic" that just aren't. However, if the reports are accurate, Serret made allegations that big cities and Hollywood are "run by Jews", which certainly sounds like just a wee bit more than simply criticizing Israel or Zionism.

- Donald Trump has filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times for reporting on the birthday letter that Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. He has previously launched a suit against the Wall Street Journal for covering the same story.

- The Washington Post has fired longtime editor and columnist Karen Attiah for her social media activity. Attiah had reposted an old tweet from the late Charlie Kirk that apparently revealed a bit too much about his character for owner Jeff Bezos' liking. Meanwhile JD Vance is calling for a mass doxing of people who have posted negative things about Kirk.

- Surrey, BC has such a problem with extortion that they have announced a $250,000 reward fund for tips leading to convictions. There has been a large increase in crimes of this nature recently, mostly affecting the city's large south Asian community. Perhaps Winnipeg should follow their lead, given how many similar occurrences there have been here of late.

- Blumenort School in Hanover, Manitoba was placed under lockdown last Wednesday after an irate 43 year old father threw a tantrum and assaulted staff members. When police arrived he threatened to assault them as well. He was charged with assault and uttering threats. As far as what set him off in the first place, we'll have to wait and see to know for sure, but I'm going to hazard a guess that it was something he saw on social media.

- In addition to their failed protest in Toronto, the far-right movement also attempted to hold one in Thunder Bay, according to this Reddit thread. Apparently only one or two people actually showed up to that one. This is certainly good news, but we shouldn't get too complacent given that there's been a dramatic decline in support for immigration in this country in the last few years. And take note that across the pond, far-right activist Tommy Robinson drew a crowd comparable to Thunder Bay's entire population. Things are pretty much certain to get worse in that regard as climate change drives more migration, as Gwynne Dyer starkly reminded us in 2018.

- Russ Wyatt, who represents Transcona on Winnipeg's city council, has endorsed Braydon Mazurkiewich in the Elmwood-East Kildonan byelection, which will be held on the 25th of October. If I lived in that ward I don't think Mazurkeiwich would have been my choice anyway (I'd most likely support Emma Durand-Wood, or maybe Carmen Prefontaine) but this pretty much seals the deal.

News roundup, 8 Aug 2025

- JD Vance had the US Army Corps of Engineers change the outflow of a lake so as to create better kayaking conditions on the river downstream so he could enjoy his vacation.

- Mike Flood, a Republican member of Congress from Nebraska, faced a lot of public outrage at a town hall session over his support of Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" and fears for what it will mean for programs that people depend on. He's not backing down, however, and he'll probably weather the storm just fine given how willing Republicans are to vote against their own interests as long as it's also against the interests of people they don't like.

- Two senior Winnipeg police officers were arrested on Wednesday on several charges, which included drug trafficking as well as distributing a photo of a dead woman. One of them was already awaiting trial on theft and other charges dating back to November, along with two other officers.

- A man has died after being found with severe injuries at Winnipeg's Millennium Library on Wednesday. Police would provide no information other than saying that the death was "non-suspicious" (the folks on Reddit are naturally drawing their own conclusions about what that means, of course); the library will remain closed until Saturday.

- The RV that Sunshine House used as a mobile safe consumption site was destroyed in a hit and run crash last month. They are in the process of obtaining a decommissioned ambulance as a replacement. This requires them to reapply for the federal exemption that allows them to operate; predictably, Tory leader Obby Khan is calling for the federal government to deny them the exemption.

- Environment and Climate Change Canada is investigating reports of a "likely tornado" near Belleview in the Rural Municipality of Sifton, Manitoba. No reports of damage or injuries so far. More ominously, there were also reports of tornadoes in East St. Paul and Springfield, just outside Winnipeg.

- The New South Wales state parliament voted to expel one of their members, Gareth Ward, following his conviction for several sexual offenses. Ward has been sitting as an independent since getting turfed from the Liberal caucus following his arrest; he attempted to appeal his expulsion in court but lost. Assuming he has no other appeals he will be the first member expelled from the NSW parliament in 66 years.

News roundup, 25 June 2025

- The ceasefire in the Israel-Iran conflict seems to be holding for the time being. Meanwhile there are some doubts about whether the US strikes on Iran's nuclear sites were as effective as Trump claims.

- Heat warnings are in place for a large portion of North America, including the US Midwest and east coast as well as parts of Ontario, Quebec, and even Nova Scotia. Even overnight temperatures are hovering in the high twenties in some cities.

- Kat Cammack, a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Florida who serves as co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, found herself in a dangerous situation due to experiencing an ectopic pregnancy. It seems doctors were initially reluctant to treat her due to fears that new anti-abortion legislation could be used against them, although they eventually went ahead and saved her life. For her part, Cammack blames the messaging from Democrats and pro-choice activists for the doctors' fears, which she says are unfounded.

- A Norwegian tourist says he was denied entry into the US because a search of his phone revealed a meme that made fun of JD Vance. This is DPRK-level pettiness, and his handling while they were waiting for a flight to deport him on, while not yet in DPRK territory, certainly doesn't sound like how a well-functioning democracy is supposed to behave.

- Leftwing candidate Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, defeating former state governor Andrew Cuomo. In the general election he will be facing off against incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent, and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels vigilante organization. The possibility has also been raised of Cuomo also running as an independent. Meanwhile another Democratic primary, for a seat in Florida's state senate, featured two siblings facing off against each other. LaVon Bracy Davis defeated her brother Randolph Bracy in that contest.

- Flin Flon residents who were evacuated due to wildfires will be able to return home as of this morning. The city was spared direct damage from the fires, though residents fear smoke damage, not to mention the prospect of cleaning out the contents of freezers and the like.

News roundup, 9 May 2025

- Another exchange of fire between India and Pakistan has killed several civilians in the escalating tensions following the terror attack in Indian Kashmir last month. For his part, JD Vance has said that a potential war between the two countries is "none of our business". The problem is, when the two belligerents are nuclear powers, Vance's line of reasoning doesn't wash. Of course, the two countries have had skirmishes before without coming to disaster, but both countries have become more nationalistic and militaristic since then.

- Some of the cases of "freedom freckles" in southern Manitoba have not been connected with another identified case, suggesting that the disease is spreading faster than contact tracers can keep track of it. The province is considering lowering the vaccination age for children in the hope of protecting as many kids as possible - or at least as many kids with sensible parents as possible. Meanwhile Ontario has reported 200 new cases in the last week, mostly in the rural southwestern part of the province. Officially the entire US has had "only" 1,000 cases all year, though given the Trump regime's gutting of the CDC it's hard to know how many cases are flying under the radar. For instance, it's quite likely that they're depending more on data supplied by states than ever - and the states with the highest concentrations of antivaxxers are also the ones that probably don't collect a lot of public health data.

- Recounts are being held in several ridings following the recent Canadian federal election. In two of these ridings, Terrebonne and Milton East-Halton Hills South, the recounts are automatic, because the apparent winner's margin of victory was under 0.1% of votes cast. This has not stopped the Conservatives from claiming the Liberals are trying to "tip the scales" in a fundraising letter; this is alarming to those who don't want to see confidence in democracy further undermined.

- Marjorie Taylor Greene has actually criticized the Trump regime's policies for a mixture of being too crazy (plans to attack Iran) and not crazy enough (not having withdrawn approval of the COVID-19 vaccine yet). Greene no doubt has her eyes on the next primary, which is only a year away.

- WestJet has suspended nine routes to the US, including three out of Winnipeg (Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Orlando). They attribute this to reduced demand, and in the case of the Winnipeg-LA route also to the end of a provincial subsidy that was brought in by the previous government.

- The papal conclave has selected Robert Prevost, an American-born cardinal who served in Latin America for much of his career (he was appointed bishop of a Peruvian diocese, and later a cardinal, by the late Pope Francis). He will be known as Pope Leo XIV. He is the first pope from the US, and only the second from the Americas as a whole. He has been strongly critical of the policies of Donald Trump and JD Vance, which could make things interesting - especially given how rightwing many American Catholics are. And although Trump is putting on a brave face, this is not good news for the "MAGA Catholics" (which is to say, it is good news for almost everyone else).

- Lawyers for two young women who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in a beating death a year and a half ago are calling for leniency from the judge. One particular point stands out:

Keeper has an IQ below 50, has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and had a childhood that was “chaotic, unpredictable and full of abuse,” her lawyer Scott Newman told Court of King’s Bench Justice Chris Martin.

The minimum age for someone to be criminally prosecuted in this country is 12. It seems to me that someone with an IQ below 50 is probably less capable of knowing right from wrong than the average 11 year old; is the criminal justice system the right way to deal with such a person?

- Struggling actors who signed contracts allowing their likenesses to be used to train AIs have found, to their horror, that this is facilitating deepfake videos made with said likenesses - often promoting products and causes that they would never have agreed to actually film an ad for.

News roundup, 21 April 2025

- Pope Francis has died. No doubt some of the more conservative Vatican officials are secretly breathing a sigh of relief.

- An awkward truth about efforts to get people to use public transit - if people feel unsafe, they're less likely to use it. For this reason, many are calling for more police on transit. This is controversial; some activists warn that this may discourage many poor and racialized passengers from using the service. The thing is though, if the primary goal of a public transit system is to keep cars off the road, the wealthy passengers who are afraid of the absence of police are more likely to actually switch to driving than the poor ones who are afraid of the presence of police - because they can. Of course this line of thinking will make many activist types uncomfortable, but the ultimate goal has to be minimizing total harm to the community as a whole, and while the harms of more traffic are more abstract and less in-your-face than the harms of causing discomfort to poor and racialized people, they are no less real, and all harms have to be weighed in order to develop the least bad policy. And more traffic is bad for everybody, including poor and racialized people (not to mention the biosphere).

- Following Thursday's leaders' debate, the plan was for a media scrum where reporters could ask questions of the leaders. However, this was cancelled due to what the Leaders Debate Commission called "security concerns". These concerns seem to have involved far-right pseudo-journalists like Ezra Levant; in particular, there was a confrontation between Levant and Hill Times reporter Stuart Benson in the leadup to the scrum after Benson pointed out that another organization owned by Levant was registered as a third party advertiser in the campaign and questioned whether Levant should be accredited as a journalist for the event. This of course sent Levant into one of his trademark emotional outbursts, leading to the cancellation of the scrum. For their part, the commission was apparently unaware of the connection between Levant and the third-party advertiser at the time they accredited him and his outlet; in any case, they were reluctant to shut him out due to his having been able to sue his way into similar events in previous elections.

- JD Vance is warning Keir Starmer's government that there will be no trade deal between the US and UK unless the latter's hate speech laws are repealed; Vance is also demanding that a proposed online safety law and a digital service tax be abandoned.

- It's not just leisure travel to the US that's in decline; it's now business travel as well. The fact that people visiting that country are being arbitrarily detained seems to have something to do with it.

- Following "Freedom Convoy" organizer Chris Barber's conviction for mischief, the prosecution is seeking to use civil forfeiture to seize his truck, which he calls Big Red. Of course he and his sheeple are up in arms about this; meanwhile more sensible people are making interesting suggestions like turning it into a mobile vaccine clinic. Now it should be said that civil forfeiture is problematic the way it is used in some jurisdictions; it is sometimes applied before the actual criminal trial so even if you're acquitted your property has still been seized. That concern doesn't apply here, though, since Barber has been duly convicted of a criminal offense in a court of law.

- The tariffs on China are driving up the cost of small appliances and electronic devices, many of which are made nowhere else (at least for the US market). 

- A knife-wielding American citizen attempted to hijack a small passenger aircraft in Belize, wounding two people (one seriously) before he was fatally shot by another passenger.

- A drop-in centre for the homeless operated by the Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation, which provided food, washrooms, and showers for people, has been permanently closed due to escalating violence at the facility. Understandable, but the closure is unlikely to lead to less violence in the city overall; probably the opposite is true.

- A Toronto couple with four kids between them took an Uber home from a Raptors game following a flat tire, but as they were unloading the driver took off with one of their kids still in the vehicle. They contacted the company but representatives refused to contact the driver; they called 911 but the company wouldn't provide info even to the police. Fortunately the police located the vehicle by other means; the driver was still unaware of the 5 year old child sleeping in the back of the car. For their part, Uber apologized afterwards and offered a $10 credit in compensation.

News roundup, 3 March 2025

- Volodymyr Zelenskyy attempted to talk some sense into Donald Trump and JD Vance in a meeting at the White House on Friday. It did not go well; Trump and Vance spent the whole time berating Zelenskyy and trying to get him to grovel, and then kicked him out of the meeting without an agreement when he didn't. Europeans were appalled; Italy is calling for an immediate summit between the EU and the US, though it's doubtful that this will change anything. The Globe and Mail's Andrew Coyne has made no bones about the scale of the disaster we are seeing; he warns that we have always underestimated just how far Trump will go, and that we're going to have to learn fast. Now it's worth noting that Coyne is a liberal (his cousin Deborah Coyne ran for the Liberal Party leadership in 2013), and a centrist or centre-right liberal at that. So he naturally sees the potential collapse of the American hegemony as an unmitigated disaster. From a more leftwing perspective, it's a bit less clear. Some hope that this could lead to a more multipolar world, where instead of a single hegemon you have a number of major powers (perhaps the US, EU, China, Russia, and India) balanced against each other. That is indeed possible, and it could lead to a good outcome in the long run. On the other hand, another possibility (probably more likely) is the US and Russia both become sufficiently weak due to their own failings that China simply becomes the new hegemon - and while the Americans have been far from benevolent overlords in much of the world I don't share the confidence of some leftists that the Chinese would be better. A third possibility that no new stable equilibrium can form and the world degenerates into chaos and, eventually, nuclear war; a fourth is something not unlike the scenario created decades ago by science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle, in which the US and Russia (the USSR in the novels) form a political union called the "CoDominium" to maintain stability, which they do but at immense social cost. Given the friendly relations between Trump and Putin, and the fact that they seem to need each other, this last scenario actually starts to look sort of plausible.

- Jagmeet Singh is calling for Donald Trump to be "uninvited" from the G7 summit that Canada is hosting in Kananaskis, Alberta in June, and for the meeting to be refocused on building a "common front" against Trump's America. This seems to be a bridge too far for the federal government; energy minister Jonathan Wilkinson was particularly dismissive, calling on Singh to "find new advisers who could provide him with more thoughtful positions". See my comments above about liberals being unable to imagine an alternative to the existing world order; it seems that in Wilkinson's mind the only possible course of action is to continue doing CPR on the old order until rigor mortis sets in.

- A "guidance document" from the US Centers for Disease Control prohibits scientists employed by the agency from co-authoring papers with anyone employed by the World Health Organization. It further orders that employees who have co-authored papers with WHO employees that were submitted before the Trump regime took power must withdraw them, or remove their names from the papers prior to publication. Because "international" is a four-letter word to the MAGA crowd, after all.

- Tesla's sales in Europe have dropped by 45% since last year, even as EV sales overall increased by 37% over the same period. The company's stock has dropped by 23% since the start of the year.

- One of the many downsides of firing huge numbers of civil servants is that you end up with a lot of disgruntled people, who may become recruitment targets for foreign intelligence.

- Kash Patel, Trump's new FBI director, wants the agency to establish a formal relationship with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I guess he figures submission holds could be a useful technique for interrogating prisoners.

News roundup, 20 Feb 2025

- Winnipeg Transit has taken delivery of its first fuel cell powered bus. The city will be testing a number of fuel cell and battery electric buses, with some financing coming from the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program. A total of 16 such buses are expected to be deployed this year, and another 24 next year. The original plan was to buy 100 but supply chain issues as well as costs threw a wrench into those plans.

- Justin Trudeau has announced more details about the plans to build high speed rail between Toront and Quebec City. There will apparently be stops in Peterborough, Ottawa, Laval, Montreal, and Trois-Rivieres, with top speeds of up to 300 km/h. Unless the Cons win the election, of course, or unless the Liberals squeak a majority and don't need the support of the NDP anymore, or unless the Americans invade us before it can be built...

- Speaking of the Liberals, some recent polling suggests that if Mark Carney wins the party's leadership as expected, they might actually have a shot at a majority. New polling from Mainstreet Research as well as Leger project this very result; on the other hand, the latest poll from Angus Reid puts the Cons ahead. Worryingly, in all three polls the NDP as well as the Bloc do very poorly, meaning that whoever wins will probably do so with a majority. This also illustrates that much of the increased Liberal support likely comes from tactical voters. Just in case anyone was still wondering why they broke their promise about electoral reform, you know.

- The Trump administration has cancelled all funding for the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center. And the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to suspend "all election security activities" pending the results of an "internal investigation". It's often been said of the MAGA crowd that "every accusation is a confession". Given how many accusations they've made about electoral fraud, and given what they're doing to agencies that oversee elections, one does have to wonder.

- Tom Homan, the acting head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is calling for the Department of Justice to investigate whether "know your rights" seminars run by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez constitute impeding the agency's operations. No doubt they'll be far more likely to arrest AOC than they are to arrest, say, Elon Musk, whose department appears to have just posted classified information on its website.

- New York City mayor Eric Adams, who was elected as a Democrat, suddenly seems all too keen to work with Donald Trump. Maybe because that's because Trump seems to have made corruption investigations against him go away.

- Trump and Putin, having already decided what to do with Ukraine without the inconvenience of actually having the Ukrainians' input on the matter, are now looking at joint oil and gas projects in the Arctic. Of course, a lot of sea ice will have to melt before they can proceed, but they're doing their darnedest to address that matter too.

- JD Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference last week that terrified Europe's leaders. If nothing else, maybe it will ram home the idea that Europe and the US are no longer friends. The conventional wisdom up until now has been that Europe needs the US to protect them from Russia, but George Allison of the Telegraph argues that this is not the case. I'm inclined to agree with him; in fact I think it would have been a lot better if Europeans had realized this long before (say, around 2002) and gone their separate ways from the Americans back then rather than continuing to enable them until now.

News roundup, 17 Feb 2024

 - The Trump regime has a proposal for Ukraine. Essentially the proposal is, "you give us a 50% interest in all of your rare earth deposits, and we'll politely ask Putin not to take any more of your territory than he already has". Not surprisingly, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is less than impressed with the idea.

- JD Vance has met with AfD leader Alice Wiedel, and is condemning the "firewall", that unwritten rule that German mainstream parties will not form coalitions with extremist parties such as Wiedel's.

- WestJet is reporting a 25% drop in inquiries about tickets to US destinations since Trump's aggressive moves against Canada, and a duty-free store on the BC-Washington border has lost 80% of their business since the tariffs were imposed. And not only are individual Canadians thinking twice about US spending, municipalities are as well - for instance, the City of Surrey has cancelled a $740,000 contract for American-made bleachers.

- Elon Musk's close ties to the regime are seriously impacting Tesla sales in many places, as people increasingly don't want to be associated with Musk. There has also been a rash of vandalism at Tesla stores; unusually for cases of vandalism, the FBI is getting involved.

- Aisha Ahmad, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, has studied insurgencies for many years. She thinks (no doubt rightly) that an attempt by the US to militarily invade Canada would be catastrophic for both countries:

 Even if one per cent of all resisting Canadians engaged in armed insurrection, that would constitute a 400,000-person insurgency, nearly 10 times the size of Taliban at the start of the Afghan war. If a fraction of that number engaged in violent attacks, it would set fire to the entire continent.

While the prospect of a military invasion still seems far off, it's worth noting that many didn't think Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was very likely either. Gwynne Dyer thought, in February 2022, that the idea that Russia would actually invade Ukraine was preposterous, because it would be harmful to Russia's interests. And if you consider the fact that the people pulling Trump's strings may not actually care about the well-being of the US anyway...

News roundup, 24 July 2024

- US Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle has resigned following a grilling from a congressional committee regarding the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

- Marcel Colomb First Nation in northern Manitoba is evacuating vulnerable residents to Lynn Lake due to a wildfire. Further south, closer to Flin Flon, a wilderness camp has been destroyed by another fire; fortunately nobody seems to have been there when it happened. Meanwhile in Alberta, Jasper remains under evacuation following the pair of surprise fires that sprung up the other day, although a handful of residents refuse to leave and crews with helicopters are trying to find backcountry hikers. One of the fires is within 12 km of the townsite.

- A student at at Memorial University of Newfoundland emailed the university's board of regents as part of a campaign in support of pro-Palestinian protesters on campus. The chair of the board forwarded the email to her father; the father thought this to be inappropriate and replied accordingly, whereupon the chair replied "I am telling parents that I know just what their kids are doing. They need to grow up." The university is investigating.

- Donald Trump is apparently having second thoughts about his selection of JD Vance as his running mate this fall. Vance was apparently selected to appeal to Trump's base, not swing voters, and the withdrawal of Joe Biden from the race has changed the dynamics in a way that worries some Trump allies.

- Given Trump Nation's obsession with fossil fuels, as well as their disdain for science and reason in general, many scientists are quite fearful of what another Trump administration might mean for them. Many fear that it will be worse than the previous one, especially with Project 2025 to guide them.

- An American manufacturer of herbal supplements has announced a nationwide recall of one of their products, marketed as a pain reliever, after the discovery of acetaminophen and two non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in samples of the product.

- The coach of the Canadian women's Olympic soccer team has withdrawn from coaching a match against New Zealand, and two staffers have been fired, following revelations that a drone was used to spy on the New Zealand team.

- A Portage la Prairie man was one of seven people charged and publicly named in connection with a teen sexual exploitation case, only to have the RCMP suddenly say "oops, he had nothing to do with it". The retraction comes a bit too late for him, though, given that he's already been facing the wrath of the public for two weeks.

- Two teenage boys in Saskatoon have been arrested following the robbery of a 7 year old girl's lemonade stand. One of them, aged 16, already had outstanding warrants, while the other, 14, was in possession of a knife and was allegedly in violation of a previous court order.

News roundup, 17 July 2024

- The City of Winnipeg has released a transportation plan that calls for residents to be using private automobiles for no more than 50% of trips by 2050 (it's currently about 80%). Of course 26 years is a long time; one would hope that some reductions in car use could happen before then.

- The UBC professor who made an injudicious tweet about the attempt on Donald Trump's life was apparently responding to another one by Shoshanah Jacobs, a biology professor at the University of Guelph, who had posted the video of the shooting with the comment "When 4 inches really matters". That university is also investigating the matter.

- Trump has selected JD Vance as his running mate for the fall. I guess Mike Pence was never in the running this time around. Vance apparently once declared himself to be a "Never Trumper", but it turns out he really meant "not a Trumper until it's necessary to further my political career". He's calling for tax rebates for fossil fuel powered cars instead of the ones for electrics, something that serves no real purpose other than to "own the libs". None of this, though, is enough to prevent some of the Republican base from making racist insults about his wife, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants.

- Wyoming has imposed restrictions on who can bid on oil and gas leases after a conservation organization, Wyoming Outdoor Council, bid on some leases in the hopes of preventing them from being developed.

- A severe storm hit Toronto on Tuesday morning, with roughly 76 mm of rain falling in the downtown core over a few hours and around 100 at Pearson Airport. Major flooding and power outages have resulted.

- Lab-grown meat has been approved in the UK for pet food; this is important because many pets (most notably cats) are obligate carnivores and can't live on a conventional vegan diet. Hopefully approval for human consumption will follow.

- Viet Duong Hoang, an engineering researcher at the University of Southern Denmark, has developed an autonomous drone that can recharge itself from the magnetic fields emitted by power lines without tapping into the lines So far, plans are to use them for the most obvious purpose - inspecting power lines.

- Remember Spirit Rising, the group home operator that made the news a while back for allegedly giving cannabis to their teenage wards, supposedly in the name of harm reduction? That already stretches the boundaries, but at least there was a kind of logic to it. More recently, though, it has been reported that they were also allowing their wards to be sexually exploited in return for alcohol and other drugs. That's worse than Sandra Guiboche's claim that she was helping with harm reduction because she was selling cleaner crack than the competition. And you can bet donuts to dollars that Poilievre will use this case as a "typical" example of harm reduction; one hopes that if he brings it up in an interview the reporter will ask him how many other cases like that he can name.

- Following an inspection that found that some fire safety systems were not working at a North End apartment complex, the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service issued an order to the building's owner last Friday to remedy the situation. In particular, they ordered that the exits must remain clear and that a "fire watch" be put in place over the weekend, to keep the tenants safe until the problems were fixed. Instead the slumlord immediately evicted all tenants with no notice, giving them each a wad of cash equivalent to slightly over a month's rent to go away, presumably calculating that this would be cheaper than making the necessary repairs. Presumably they plan to either charge hire rents for the units once the fix is eventually made (essentially a low-budget renoviction), or else let the building become yet another vacant derelict building that someone can break into and burn down. Housing Minister Bernadette Smith is rightly appalled and condemns the mass eviction as illegal. Be nice if the province could just seize the building, fix it up, and permanently add it to Manitoba Housing's stock; we'll have to see.

- Members of a community Facebook page for Saskatoon's Fairhaven neighbourhood (yeah, those kind of people) are calling on the city to prune the lower branches of pine trees in parks in the hopes that this will stop people from sleeping under them.

- Winnipeg lawyer David Davis has pleaded guilty to professional misconduct after punching an articling student in the groin. He has been convicted of professional misconduct on three previous occasions; nonetheless he escaped with a six month suspension.