News roundup, 4 March 2026

- Mark Carney says that his approval in principle of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is "not a blank cheque", and represents a "failure of the international order". He also acknowledges that "it appears that these actions ‌are ⁠inconsistent with international law" but says he'll leave the final determination to the experts. The most charitable interpretation of his rather confusing stance on the matter is that he's trying to keep Trump off his back, which while not especially admirable is understandable in light of such things as Trump's fury at Spain for not letting the US use bases on their territory for the attack. On the other hand, Keir Starmer is not getting rewarded for his reversal on the use of the Diego Garcia base for the attack, and I'm not sure that Carney will be either, so maybe he should have just taken a principled stance from the start.

- An Iranian ship sank off the coast of Sri Lanka, apparently following a submarine attack. One sailor has been confirmed dead and 78 injured; over a hundred are missing.

- Toronto police are investigating after shots were fired at a synagogue in North York on Monday night. Nobody was injured.

- The Green Party of England and Wales (Scotland has its own Green Party) has overtaken Labour and is only two points behind Reform UK in the latest poll. This is a big thing, because it might drive some tactical voters towards the Greens in the hope of stopping Reform. 

- Jake Lang, a participant in the Capitol riot who was pardoned by Donald Trump, turned up at a fifth anniversary event this year and screamed abuse at Metropolitan Police commander Jason Bagshaw, who he had confronted during the putsch. Among other things, Lang shouted that Bagshaw should be "put down like a dead dog". Besides mangling the metaphor, prosecutors say that this and other things he shouted at Bagshaw constituted threats, and he has been slapped with another charge as a result. It's worth noting that until he was pardoned he had been remanded in custody (he hadn't gotten to trial yet) upon the orders of a Trump-appointed judge who nonetheless couldn't ignore the "very strong" evidence against him.

- A security guard has been charged with assault with a weapon and possession of a prohibited weapon after allegedly using brass knuckles to subdue a shoplifter at a Dollarama in downtown Winnipeg. The victim has also been charged with robbery and uttering threats.

- BC has announced that once they switch to daylight saving time this weekend they will not be switching back in the fall. Actual sleep experts generally think that sticking with standard time rather than DST would be better, but their voices generally get drowned out by those who want more daylight in the evenings (such as retailers). The Manitoba government is deferring any decision on the matter for now.

- Owners of six "holistic spas" in Guelph, Ontario have been charged under a city bylaw with "failure to ensure no adult entertainment services were provided". The services were apparently advertised online.

News roundup, 7 Aug 2025

- Manitoba's Southern Health Region has warned that numerous people appear to be defying public health directives regarding the measles outbreak in the region. I can't help thinking that while the law may allow for action to be taken against these people, public health officials are having to weigh this against the social harm that could result from the inevitable populist backlash against such measures.

- A man who was caught on video during the Jan 6 putsch calling on rioters to kill cops is now a senior advisor for the US Department of Justice. 

- The Trump regime appears to be planning to end the missions of the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, which measure CO₂ and plant growth around the world. NASA has been "asked" by the government to draw up plans to end the missions, including deorbiting one of the satellites. 

- Although some parts of the world have gotten wetter with climate change, a lot more have become drier. 75% of the world's people live in the latter. 

- Manitoba Justice sometimes outsources prosecutions to people who normally serve as defense lawyers. There has been a significant increase in this recently, with more than 70% of criminal cases being outsourced. Justice Minister Matt Wiebe attributes this to logistical matters (e.g. juggling maternity leave) and to the practice of hiring a special prosecutor when there is a potential conflict of interest. The union representing prosecutors, however, says the government needs to hire more prosecutors to deal with rising caseloads.

- A BC man who suddenly found himself getting rejected for loans discovered that his credit score with Equifax had been reset to zero. The agency refused to provide any explanation until the CBC started investigating, whereupon they pointed to an obscure policy under which they reset the scores of anyone whose file is labelled "inactive". The other major rating agency in the country, TransUnion, says that they do not do this, but many lenders rely solely on Equifax, with the result that people who studiously avoid using credit are putting themselves at a disadvantage.

- China has submitted plans to the UK government for a new embassy, to be located near London's financial district. The thing is, parts of the submission have been redacted, leading to fears about espionage. There are also fears that the facility could be used to detain dissidents living in Britain - Hong Kong authorities recently offered large amounts of money for information leading to the capture of 19 pro-democracy activists living abroad.

- The UK has arrested three people, two of them seniors, and charged them with showing support for a banned organization (Palestine Action) under the Terrorism Act of 2000. The "terrorism" attributed to the organization has consisted of disruption of the operations of factories owned by Israeli arms companies; it seems a bit of a stretch to call that terrorism, given the lack of actual violence. More on the organization here.

- Police in LaSalle, Ontario caught a man who had apparently entered Canada illegally by crossing the Detroit River in a kayak.

News roundup, 3 July 2025

- A severe heatwave is sweeping through much of Europe as it has so often in recent summers. Temperatures in the Spanish town of El Granado hit 46°C, and a municipal employee in Barcelona collapsed and died shortly after completing her shift operating a street sweeper.

- Having cleared the Senate, Donald Trump's "one big beautiful bill" is expected to be passed in the House of Representatives by tomorrow. Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly had to make some unspecified concessions to get compliance out of a few Republicans; the exact nature of the concessions is not public, but probably something like "we won't back your opponent in the primary".

- Trump is now musing about revoking the citizenships of people he doesn't like, including New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and possibly also Elon Musk.

- Ukraine successfully carried out a drone attack on a military factory in the Russian city of Izhevsk, killing three people. The operation was carried out from 1,300 km away, some 300 km inside the Ukrainian border.

- Edward Kelley, a man who participated in the Jan 6 putsch, was of course pardoned by Trump along with all his co-conspirators. Unfortunately for him, that pardon probably doesn't apply to crimes committed since his arrest on those charges, such as his involvement in a conspiracy to attack an FBI office with car bombs and drones, for which he was just handed a life sentence. Of course, Trump could very well pardon him for that too if the case manages to hold his attention long enough.

- Two Alberta MLAs now sitting as independents after being kicked out of the UCP caucus for dissent are petitioning to restore the old Progressive Conservative party. In order to accomplish this they will need to collect signatures representing 0.3% of eligible voters, or 8,819 people. Amusingly, two other splinter parties are trying to use the Wildrose name as well. I wish all of these little parties a modest amount of success; not too much though.

- Brendan Berg, the bassist for Winnipeg band Royal Canoe, was killed in a car accident along with his partner Olivia Michalczuk on Highway 10 near Duck Mountain Provincial Park. Their vehicle was stopped on the side of the road when a vehicle coming in the other direction crossed the centre line and hit them at high speed. Berg would have turned 43 the following day.

News roundup, 4 June 2025

- The Manitoba government has announced that around 1,000 hotel rooms have been made available for evacuees from the north. Some of this is the result of the cancellation of a conference that was being held in Winnipeg for Manitoba and Saskatchewan courtroom staff. Some evacuees are still having to go further afield though; hundreds are now as far away as Niagara Falls. In other wildfire news, much of the the village of Denare Beach, Saskatchewan was destroyed on Monday. Flin Flon is still intact but faces potential threats from all directions. And the chief of Pimicikamak Cree Nation is calling for the RCMP to help round up residents who are refusing to leave.

- A lawsuit filed in a Calgary court alleges that the Red Deer Public School Division, upon hearing a report that a Czech exchange student attending one of their schools had sexually assaulted a teenage girl, got the suspect out of the country before police could investigate, and even destroyed evidence. One might hope that there would be pressure for criminal charges against school division officials for this, but the locals are no doubt too busy trying to keep the drag queens out of their city to deal with people who actually aided and abetted a sexual offender. And in this Reddit thread it is alleged that the chair of the school board is an ex-cop who describes herself as a "proud Conservative". Wonder why she's so soft on crime then?

- Alberta now has 710 cases of measles; of these, six are in the Edmonton region and 13 in Calgary. In other words, it's not that Albertans per se are backward and unenlightened, it's just that rural Albertans are backward and unenlightened. I suspect you could draw a pretty direct line to the increased political polarization in that province; a lot of people who are of a broadly conservative bent would previously have gone along with such things as vaccination because it's what you're supposed to do, but now defying any kind of measures for the common good is such a part of the conservative identity that they follow the blue shepherds all the way to the slaughterhouse.

- Elon Musk is now calling Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" an abomination due to its impact on the deficit. Some think this could motivate some Republican senators to vote against the bill, but that remains to be seen.

- An Idaho woman who was jailed for two months for her involvement in the Jan 6 putsch has apparently had a significant change of heart. She declined the presidential pardon she was offered, saying that she and her co-conspirators were guilty and that the pardons are just an attempt to push a false narrative about what happened on that day.

- The sheriff's office in Johnson County, Texas obtained data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reading cameras across the US in order to investigate whether a woman left the state to get an abortion.

- Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is suing interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba for false arrest and malicious prosecution following his arrest on a trespassing charge after he attempted to accompany three Democratic members of Congress for an oversight tour of an immigration detention facility.

- A number of US states have amended their building codes to require roofs on new builds to be reflective, in order to limit heating. This did not sit well with the manufacturers of the synthetic rubber traditionally used for making some kinds of roofs - and they successfully lobbied Tennessee to repeal the new rule. 

- Actor Jonathan Joss, best known for his voice role in the animated series King of the Hill, was shot dead in an apparent anti-gay hate crime on Saturday.  

News roundup, 14 Feb 2025

- The Trump regime has banned an Associated Press reporter from White House events due to the news service's failure to immediately start calling the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America". AP's style guide now calls for the internationally recognized name to be used, while acknowledging the name the regime uses; evidently this isn't enough for Trump, though.

- The White House is saying that the 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum will be in addition to the 25% across the board tariffs that they plan to impose on all Canadian and Mexican imports. And that's not even considering the fact that the regime has plenty more tariffs planned. The Bank of Canada fears that a drawn out trade war could lead to a permanent decline in the country's GDP.

- Video evidence used to convict one of the Jan. 6 rioters has been removed from government websites, to the alarm of  news organizations. Several of these organizations have taken legal action, and a judge has responded by ordering the administration to stop removing such things and to provide an explanation for their removal.

- Donald Trump discussed Ukraine in a phone conversation with Russia and has agreed to help negotiate a ceasefire. To the surprise of few, and to the alarm of much of Europe, he seems to have agreed that Russia should be able to keep most of the territory it has seized from Ukraine, and that NATO membership for that unfortunate country is not in the cards.

- The City of Toronto has issued a cease and desist order to a man who was making tiny trailer homes, designed to be towable with a bicycle. The letter said that the trailers were unlawfully occupying city property; in one sense this is kind of odd because usually in this country municipalities only have the power to regulate how something is used, not whether you can sell it or not. Maybe Toronto is an exception to that rule, or maybe nonprofits that give things to people are held to different legal standards than businesses that sell things. Apparently the trailers include smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms as well as fire extinguishers in an effort to make them safer. On the other hand, according to a councillor who supports the idea in principle but wants the current operation stopped for now, they also have heaters that burn diesel fuel, which could be a safety concern as well as an environmental and health concern. Whether that outweighs the health and safety concerns about people living in tents in the dead of winter is another question.

- In a campaign speech at a gala held by the London, Ontario police chief, Doug Ford was recorded saying that judges should have the power to "send 'em right to sparky". Once this became public, though, he told reporters that he was joking and that he doesn't actually support the death penalty.

- The mayor of Swift Current, Saskatchewan has asked city council to make a recommendation on whether to remove the US flag from the city's flag court. The matter has provoked some lively (but surprisingly civil) debate but has not come to a resolution.

News roundup, 31 Jan 2025

- No survivors have been found in the midair collision near DC, and none are expected. For his part, Donald Trump is blaming diversity efforts at the FAA. I'm sure Germany's leaders probably cast a few similar aspersions about the blame for the Hindenburg disaster as well. In actual fact, the FAA may well deserve some of the blame, not because of diversity but because of short-staffing - there was only a single controller working that night in one of the busiest and most complicated airspaces in the country.

- Trump is accusing the Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome Powell, of causing inflation after the Fed decided to keep interest rates at their current level. On cue, he's also blaming DEI policies for the matter. No doubt Trump's supporters in Congress will be all too willing to pass the necessary legislation to weaken the independence of the central bank, assuming of course that Trump's attention span is long enough to keep him from moving on to something else before acting.

- One of Trump's executive orders mandates schools, among other things, to provide "patriotic education". The order even goes so far as to provide a definition:

(d)  “Patriotic education” means a presentation of the history of America grounded in:
(i)    an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles;
(ii)   a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history;
(iii)  the concept that commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified; and
(iv)   the concept that celebration of America’s greatness and history is proper.

Setting aside the fact that any characterizing of America's founding that is accurate and honest is almost certain not to be "unifying, inspiring, and ennobling", this whole thing sounds like it could have come straight out of the Chinese Communist Party.

- A bill before the Tennessee legislature would make make it illegal for legislators to vote in favour of immigration policies opposed by Trump, punishable by up to six years in prison and/or a $3,000 fine.

- Trump has purged the National Labor Relations Board; not only has he removed the board's general counsel (which is legal, since that is an "at pleasure" position), but he has also removed a board member who, according to legislation, has a fixed term. As a result, the board lacks a quorum and is unable to make rulings or certify union representation. Worse, since Trump is almost sure to get away with this, it is expected that he will take similar measures with other ostensibly independent government agencies.

- FCC chair Brendan Carr, appointed by Trump during his previous term (and notably not removed by the Biden administration) has ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS, with the ultimate goal of slashing funding for the broadcasters.

- A priest in an Anglican splinter group has been defrocked after giving a Nazi salute during a speech at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington. Worth noting is the fact that the church in question, the Anglican Catholic Church, had actually split from the main Anglican communion because the latter wasn't sufficiently socially conservative. I guess even they have standards, though.

- Hot on the heels of one of those Dec. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump dying in a confrontation with police, it turns out that another of them is wanted for soliciting sex with a minor.

- A woman who recently died in Taber, Alberta turned out to have been a longtime fugitive from American and Mexican authorities. She was suspected of killing two people in Missouri, then after fleeing to Mexico was jailed for killing a man in a botched robbery but escaped from prison in 1969 and remained at large for the rest of her life.

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, 22 Jan 2025

- Donald Trump has issued pardons for over 1,500 rioters who participated in the Jan 6 coup attempt, as well as commuting the sentences of several leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who were imprisoned for their part in the putsch.

- European leaders are not giving up on the Paris agreement despite the US withdrawal. This is reassuring, but it should be noted that Europe is not immune to the kind of madness that has swept the US (some may recall that they had problems of that kind before). And those problems just keep threatening to come back. Austria's centre-left, centrist, and centre-right parties just failed to piece together a coalition following last September's election, meaning that the far right Freedom Party (FPÖ) will have a crack at forming government. There are fears that Germany could be at risk of a similar takeover.

- French President Emmanuel Macron is concerned at the possibility of the US withdrawing forces from Europe, perhaps to focus on China, and called for EU countries to increase their defense spending. That in itself would be fair enough; more worrisome is the fact that Macron, who is in command of the world's third largest combat-ready nuclear arsenal, is talking about possibly sending troops to Ukraine, which while easy to sympathize with would pose unacceptable escalation risks. Evidently too many people have forgotten the lessons of Cold War era war simulations like Proud Prophet, which among other things concluded that "relying on escalation as a means of conflict resolution" would likely lead to all-out nuclear war.

- Another of Trump's executive orders blocks the leasing of any federal land for wind farms, and could potentially even lead to the removal of existing ones by not renewing their leases.

- For all you can say about Joe Biden's handling of the Israel-Palestine situation, he did at least impose sanctions on far-right settler leaders in the West Bank. Yet another of Trump's executive orders has lifted those sanctions, though.

- The Manitoba RCMP has deployed a Black Hawk helicopter to the Canada-US border to monitor the smuggling of people and other commodities across the border, perhaps in an attempt to placate the US.

- A Winnipeg man has pleaded guilty to several offenses, including dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, mischief over $5,000, and assaulting a police officer following a crack- and meth-fuelled rampage with an excavator at a water treatment plant, which caused damage to 5 buildings, as well as several vehicles and pieces of heavy equipment.