News roundup, 29 June 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

News roundup, 14 Jan 2026

- Austria's advisor on NATO enlargement, Gunther Fehlinger, has warned the US that if they go ahead with trying to take Greenland, Europe just might respond with the seizure of US bases in their territory. I do hope this is policy and not just bluster.

- ICE appear to be conducting door to door raids in the Twin Cities. Meanwhile, more than half the staff at the US Attorney's office in Minnesota, responsible for federal prosecutions in the state, have resigned in protest over directives from Washington following the killing of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. In addition to locking state officials out of the investigation, the Justice Department is asking the office to look into possible charges against Good's widow.

- Philadelphia's district attorney, Larry Krasner, is echoing the warnings of the city's sheriff, saying that ICE agents who commit crimes will be prosecuted.

- The Toronto Sun's parliamentary bureau chief has been suspended after his tweet calling Renee Good's death at the hands of ICE "well-deserved" embarrassed his employer just a bit too much.

- Manitoba premier Wab Kinew says his government will not mandate full-time return to office for its employees, in contrast to Alberta and Ontario. Instead, the current policy of up to 2 remote days per week will be continued. This will not apply to managers of frontline staff. I can kind of see the reasoning behind that from a staff morale point of view, but on the other hand fewer cars on the road and less crowding on buses is good no matter who it is that gets to stay home. A side note - the CBC interviewed the founder of a company called Gov Fox Municipal Consulting for the contrary view; she actually admitted that RTO isn't about productivity but still favours it due to nebulous notions of "improving culture". I looked at her company's client list, and most of them are rural municipalities. So her position may be more a reflection of rural prejudices than actual good business.

- Rob Ashton, a union leader who is one of the frontrunners in the NDP leadership race, recently participated in one of those "ask me anything" sessions on Reddit. Ashton has raised (entirely legitimate) concerns about the growth of AI, but Redditors are an astute bunch and several of them noticed telltale signs that he was using AI to generate his responses. Having been caught out, he confessed and apologized. Hopefully this will harm his campaign; he seems to be the "anti-environmentalist" candidate, accusing fellow candidate Avi Lewis of being "divisive" due to his focus on climate change.

- The City of Winnipeg will be installing tempered glass suicide barriers in the Millennium Library to prevent future tragedies like the one last August.

- An Air Canada flight from Toronto to Moncton was cancelled after a baggage handler was locked in the cargo hold. Passengers heard the man screaming and banging as the aircraft began to taxi. By the time the matter was addressed, the flight had to be cancelled because the crew would have exceeded their maximum work hours by the time they reached their destination.