News roundup, 30 Oct 2025

- Donald Trump has ordered the Department of War (formerly the Department of Defense) to immediately restart nuclear weapons testing on an "equal basis" with other countries. None of the nuclear powers officially recognized as "legitimate" in the Non-Proliferation Treaty have conducted a nuclear test since 1996 (although India, Pakistan, and the DPRK, who aren't supposed to have such weapons at all, have conducted several tests more recently).

- The BC government plans to run its own set of ads in the US, attacking the tariffs imposed by the Trump regime. Of course, BC can probably get away with running the ads for a lot longer than Ontario can, since they don't have an auto industry and thus have a lot less to lose. Then again, Ontario's auto industry doesn't seem to have a promising future anyway. In another sign of the dim future for the industry, a Stellantis executive being grilled by MPs repeatedly dodged questions about whether subsidy deals with the federal government for their Brampton facility include jobs guarantees as the government claims. My suspicion is that such guarantees were made, but that the company intends to just break their promise and say "what are you going to do about it?" A sufficiently bold government would reply, "seize them and sell them to someone who will actually make stuff there", though that might be a tall order. 

-  Oslo's public transit provider purchased 300 buses made by the Chinese manufacturer Yutong, then discovered a significant security flaw - the buses can, in theory at least, be remotely disabled by the manufacturer or by a hacker. Other buses purchased from the Dutch company VDL did not have this flaw.

- A man in Alexandria, Virginia who made a number of incautious posts on Bluesky wishing for the death of Donald Trump has been acquitted of incitement in a jury trial. Of course, incitement is a crime of intent, and it can be very hard to prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt. If anything this will probably embolden a lot of so-called "stochastic terrorism" by all sides, and especially on the far right.

- Youtuber Kevin McNally (@McNallyOfficial) has a channel where he shows how easy it is to open many locks. One company whose lock he opened easily just tried to sue him for defamation and copyright infringement after 10 million people watched the video (the "copyright infringement" consisted of clips of the company's promos in his own video, something generally covered by fair use provisions). The lawsuit backfired spectacularly, with the manufacturer not only getting some pretty nasty blowback from the public but also having a fairly humiliating first day in court, after which they withdrew their lawsuit and instead requested that the proceedings be sealed. A ruling on whether to seal the proceedings has yet to be made.

- Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is said to be dating pop singer Katy Perry. Whether Perry was inspired to pursue the relationship after seeing the slogans painted on many trucks in Canada is unknown.

News roundup, 26 Sept 2025

- Former FBI director James Comey has been indicted on charges of making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The basis of the indictment is a claim by his former deputy Andrew McCabe that Comey authorized a leak of information about the FBI's investigations into Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, something Comey denied in hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The indictment comes just days after Trump publicly called for it. 

- Tech billionaire Peter Thiel allegedly gave a lecture in San Francisco in which he warned that regulating AI could hasten the arrival of the Antichrist. His reasoning is not entirely clear, except that he apparently said that people's fear of existential threats could give them an appetite for the kind of leadership the Antichrist would provide. A curious side note from the article - apparently the UK office of Thiel's company Palantir is headed by Louis Mosley, grandson of 1930s British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley.

- Hundreds of senior American military officers have been ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to attend a meeting in Quantico, Virginia next Tuesday. The subject of the meeting has not been disclosed, leading some to speculate that a mass firing is in the works, especially given Hegseth's disdain for much of the current leadership of the military.

- The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has gone on strike in response to the federal government's proposed reforms to Canada Post, which include the elimination of home delivery and the closure of a number of post offices.

- An RBC employee has been charged with gaining unauthorized access to the accounts of Mark Carney and someone named Justin Trudeau - though in the latter case it turned out not to be the former prime minister but someone else with the same name. He allegedly told police that he was lured into the scheme by someone on the social media platform Telegram. Police believe organized crime is behind this, though I have to wonder if it was "regular" organized crime, or some kind of "gotcha" attempt sort of like when lawyers with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms hired a private investigator to spy on a judge hearing their case in the hope of catching him being hypocritical about the laws he was enforcing.

- Marchers in Fredericton's Take Back The Night rally were harassed by several young men on motor scooters on Friday. Police are investigating but no charges have been laid so far.

- The Kinew government is considering changes to the Intoxicated Persons Act to allow people to be detained for more than 24 hours if intoxicated. While 24 hours might be enough to come down off most drugs, including alcohol, it sometimes isn't enough for meth, leading to situations in which people have to be released when they're in no condition to be out on the street. The Main Street Project is not opposed to this so long as adequate supports and medical supervision are provided, something the government is looking at.

- Doug Ford has announced the intention to ban municipalities in the province from using speed cameras, for which he uses the usual populist slogan "cash grab". Setting aside the fact that there's a very simple way to avoid getting your cash grabbed (namely, pay attention to your speed and the signs on the road, both things you should be doing anyway), one might think that if people in the cities that use such cameras were sufficiently bothered by them, they could decide at the municipal level not to use them. Of course, the people Ford is serving here are people in the suburbs and exurbs around big cities, who refuse to live in an actual urban centre but need to go there for work and are always running late.

- The owners of a house outside St. Thomas, Ontario with a swastika mowed into its front lawn have been charged with criminal harassment and other offenses.

News roundup, 30 July 2025

- A major earthquake in eastern Russia has led to tsunami warnings on the BC coast and throughout the Pacific. 

- An intelligence report from the Netherlands' National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) has identified Israel as a potential national security threat for the first time. This follows attempts by Israel to influence public opinion in the country following a soccer riot by fans of the Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam last year. Fans of the team were caught on video vandalizing property and threatening people, but the Israelis planted stories in the Dutch media claiming that their team's fans were victims of antisemitism. NCTV has also raised concerns about Israeli and American threats towards the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague.

- After Toronto police officer Jason Boag got drunk and crashed his car two years ago, the incident was described as having occurred "off duty". However, an investigation has found that his superior seems to have falsified paperwork to cover up the fact that he, Boag, and several other officers spent the better part of their shift drinking at a restaurant before the accident.

- Evacuees are returning to Tataskweyak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba after two months. They had left at the end of May due to the threat from wildfires, and then their return was delayed by problems with the community's water treatment plant.

- A Winnipeg teenager named who checked in to a fight from Calgary to Tokyo was found to have 30 kilograms of meth in her luggage. I have to assume she wasn't acting alone.

- Former prime minister Justin Trudeau was spotted having dinner with American pop singer Katy Perry at a posh Montreal restaurant on Monday.

- A 76 year old man in the Chicago exurb of Schaumburg has been charged with murder after allegedly shooting his daughter-in-law to death. Apparently he was displeased that she had filed for divorce from his son.

News roundup, 15 May 2025

- A wildfire in the Rural Municipality of Lac du Bonnet in eastern Manitoba has killed two people. The victims had been stranded and first responders couldn't reach them in time. In other wildfire news, the province has closed Whiteshell Provincial Park. Many business owners who operate in the park understand the move under the circumstances, but not all of them. Shaun Harbottle, owner of Crescent Beach Cottages and Motel at West Hawk Lake, called the closure a "knee-jerk reaction"; perhaps someone should ask him how many people should be allowed to die before taking action. I'd bet you donuts to dollars that he whined in similar fashion about public health measures a few years ago as well. Evacuations and road closures have also been ordered in northwestern Ontario, near Ingolf.

- Mark Carney is accusing Keir Starmer of undermining efforts to present a united front against the Americans, after Starmer invited Donald Trump for a second state visit in February. It appears that Starmer, like Tony Blair, views the "special relationship" as something more important than any other alliance. I guess we'll never know if he'd have acted differently if Brexit hadn't happened, but it's more than a little disappointing.

- One of the clever things that can be done with AI is to mimic someone's voice almost perfectly - so well that it could fool the person's parent. This woman from Miami, Manitoba received a call from someone claiming to be her son, and she says the voice sounded exactly like him. Something aroused her suspicions, however, so she asked if she could call him back, then immediately did so - except that he hadn't called her.

- Beaches-East York MP Nate Erskine-Smith, who served as housing minister under Justin Trudeau, is feeling a bit put out over being dropped from cabinet. I suspect that the reason for him not getting a cabinet post is that he was Trudeau's housing minister; popular opinion puts the blame for high housing prices almost entirely on Trudeau. The truth is more complicated, of course; some of the blame, for instance, lies on Brian Mulroney for cutting back on the amount of subsidized housing, and on Jean Chretien for getting out of the business entirely. I guess you could also blame every subsequent prime minister, including Trudeau, for not restoring the programs. But optics matter (especially to the Liberals), so Erskine-Smith might have been too much of a liability.

- An American fugitive, wanted for a drunk driving crash in Orlando on Christmas Day 1998 that killed two people, has been arrested in Toronto. He appears to have been living there since shortly after failing to show up for a plea hearing in 2003. It is not known how he got into the country; he had been turned away from the Niagara border crossing two days before the scheduled hearing. He had been working as an online psychic and occasional pub trivia host. On the Facebook page for his psychic business he described himself as "empathic and intuitive"; I suspect that the families of the teenagers he killed would question how empathic he actually is, however.

- A woman was shot by the RCMP after allegedly walking erratically through traffic and wielding an edged weapon on the Trans-Canada highway in the Rural Municipality of North Cypress-Langford in western Manitoba. She survived; the incident is being investigated.

- For a few hours on Tuesday, Winnipeg was the hottest major city on the planet at 36.4°C, a few decimal places above such places as Managua and Riyadh. It's forecast to drop dramatically, however, with an overnight low of -1°C for Friday night.

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.

News roundup, 5 March 2025

- The Trump regime, as expected, has imposed its threatened 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico; counter-tariffs are being imposed on some US exports. Justin Trudeau has stated something that many of us would consider at least plausible, namely the fact that Trump's tariffs are intended to soften Canada up for annexation. What's noteworthy is that in his standing up to the Americans now, Trudeau is showing more political courage than he has at any previous time in his career, much as Jean Chrétien declined to join the US and UK in their ill-conceived (not to mention criminal) adventure in Iraq only after he had announced that he would be retiring prior to the next election. That's the Liberal Party of Canada way, I think. But hey, we'll take it.

- Several provinces are already taking retaliatory action. Manitoba's Wab Kinew is focusing on "non-tariff countermeasures", including the removal of American alcohol from shelves as well as giving businesses the option to defer their payroll and sales tax. Ontario's Doug Ford has cancelled an agreement with Elon Musk's Starlink and banning US companies from procurement contracts; Ford is also exploring export levies on electricity and critical minerals. BC's David Eby is selectively pulling "red state" liquors, so you'll be able to buy California and Washington wine, but not Jack Daniels or Jim Beam. Nova Scotia's Tim Houston is not only pulling American booze but doubling tolls for US-registered commercial vehicles passing through the Cobequid Pass. Even Danielle Smith, one of only two premiers certifiably worse than Doug Ford, is now saying she "fully supports" the federal government's response and will be discussing her own government's response with her cabinet shortly.

- Tom Brodbeck is unimpressed with the level of resistance to Trump's policies in the US. Some say that this is actually a failure of the media to cover protests rather than an actual lack of protests; there are some photos of what look like big protests in this Reddit thread but I'm not sure how representative they are or even if they're being posted in accurate context.

- US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says that Trump is willing to meet Canada and Mexico "in the middle". Does that mean we'll have to settle for 12.5% tariffs? Or does it mean that Trump is getting spooked by crashing stock markets? Stay tuned I guess.

- Despite how Trump treated him the other day, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not abandoning hope that Trump will come to his senses. Then again, the sad truth of the matter is that Trump and Putin hold all the cards. I suspect Ukraine will be forced to make major territorial concessions, unless Europe can somehow make up for the fact that the US has suspended all military aid to the country.

- The UK government is considering several possible alternatives to prison, including banning offenders from pubs and sporting events. I guess for many of the typical offenders such a punishment might be so devastating that it might make them think twice about reoffending?

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, 19 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump is tipping his hand about one of the reasons he wants to conquer Canada - our water. This should come to no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention; the US has coveted Canada's water for decades, and there have been all kinds of grandiose schemes like NAWAPA and the GRAND Canal about how large amounts of Canadian water could be sent south. The long-term consequences of shifting such vast amounts of water across thousands of kilometres are, of course, hard to predict and might well not be limited to one continent - more water at temperate latitudes, for instance, might mean changes in rainfall patterns halfway around the world if there were enough of it. Plus if more evaporation occurred overall this could amplify global warming, since water vapour is a greenhouse gas.

- Steve Burgess of The Tyee made a relatively innocuous post on the former Twitter as well as on Bluesky, characterizing Donald Trump's treatment of Justin Trudeau as a "hostile act". On Bluesky the post faded into the obscurity that gentle complaints typically fade into, but on Musk's platform the post was brigaded by huge numbers of rabid Trump supporters, many of whom seemed to be reading from the same script.

- Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been ordered to get senior staff approval for "all upcoming international engagements" until the end of March. This includes international travel paid for by their employer as well as virtual meetings about pretty much any topic of significance.

- John McConnell Jr., a judge with the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island, has had articles of impeachment issued against him by Georgia Republican congress member Andrew Clyne. This is ostensibly because he was acting as "partisan activist" by pointing out the fact that the Trump administration is ignoring his court orders. Of course, he would need to be convicted by two thirds of the Senate in order for the impeachment to be successful, which seems unlikely so long as not too many Democrats are stopped from voting on the matter somehow - like say if a dozen of them suddenly get arrested by the Trump loyalists with whom the FBI is being stacked.

- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is warning that Trump's policies - both in their own right and in the erratic manner in which they are being imposed - puts the country at significant risk of stagflation. The fact that Elon Musk's DOGE has mooted the idea of a selective default on some American bonds does not help matters.

- The library board in the town of Valleyview, Alberta (population 1,673 as of 2021) has voted to close the town's free-standing library and move it into a new school that is being built. This will cut their available space in half, and will also potentially force the library to comply with school division rules about LGBT* content - the latter almost certainly being seen by the board as a feature rather than a bug. The library was subject to bitter debate as far back as a year ago, and the folks in this Reddit thread believed at the time that there is a broad plan to get far-right types elected to local positions so as to gain a foothold from which to build their movement. This is a tried and true tactic in the US, and folks in that thread think that it's starting in earnest in rural Canada. Notably, some say that rural Alberta is considerably more extreme than similar-sized communities on the other side of the Rockies in BC.

- Some American doctors, especially women, are looking at their options for setting up practices in Canada, fearing that the political climate in the US will make their jobs difficult or even legally dangerous. If nothing else, this could go some distance towards filling gaps in Canadian healthcare.

- The decline of organized religion in urban areas across North America and Europe means that there are a lot of badly underutilized churches sitting around. As with the conversion of office buildings into residential, converting a church is not as easy as it might seem. However, it's definitely possible; I live a block away from a perfect example of this. That said, that particular building is owned by Manitoba Housing, meaning that a fair amount of provincial money had to be spent in order to make it work. No reason why you couldn't do more of that, though.

- A proposal before the Steinbach, Manitoba city council would create a whole new zoning category - the emergency shelter - and could potentially throw the door open to NIMBYs who don't want poors living in their neighbourhood.

News roundup, 10 Feb 2025

- The fact that a bunch of Musk-rats straight out of high school have been given access to the crown jewels of the US Treasury's IT systems has many tech professionals shaking in their boots at what kind of damage they could do, either intentionally or otherwise. Administration officials tried to claim that there's nothing to worry about because they only have read access to the systems, but this appears not to be true. Moreover, many of the systems these lads have been given access to are running code that's decades old and which they probably didn't learn about in high school computing class, and which furthermore is highly integrated with other systems. All it could take is for one of these kids to break something and you could have a situation where the US government's ability to make a payment could be compromised. And that's not even considering the possibility of intentional harms that could be done, say by feeding big databases about millions of people into an AI that's been trained to spot signs that someone could be an enemy of Musk or Trump.

- Justin Trudeau thinks that Donald Trump is entirely serious in his desire to annex Canada. Apparently in a recent phone call between the two leaders Trump spewed a litany of grievances against Canada, including actual policies (e.g. supply management) as well as imagined ones (e.g. Trump's belief that American banks are prohibited from operating in Canada). Trudeau thinks the most likely motive is US access to critical minerals. Meanwhile the US has imposed 25% tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminum, and Trump continues to make declarations about how Canada is "not viable as a country".

- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced an agreement with El Salvador that would effectively allow the US to use the troubled Central American country as a penal colony, sending not only deportees of any nationality but also American criminals to be housed in prisons there. I guess that will suffice until Musk can set one up on Mars, as seen in D. G. Compton's novel Farewell, Earth's Bliss.

- BC Conservative leader John Rustad is coming under fire for a social media post in which he falsely accused former provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry of "promoting fentanyl use" due to her harm reduction advocacy. There are obvious fears that this could lead to threats to her safety; then again, she's lived with threats against her life for several years simply for being a voice of reason on COVID-19.

- Last year, Minneapolis City Council approved a pilot project where food deliveries to students living in residence on the University of Minnesota campus are done by robots. Now, halfway through the study, the city is considering whether it's necessary to regulate them in some way, in order to ensure safety as well as to protect jobs. On cue, the techbros on r/Futurology are in a tizzy at the mere thought of regulation.

- Someone has been putting copies of a far-right book into "Little Free Libraries" around Ottawa. The title of the book in question has not been made public.

News roundup, 4 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump has agreed to defer the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico for another month, following talks with Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum in order to give time for more negotiations. The 10% tariffs on China are still going ahead on schedule; in addition he also has the EU in his sights. The chaos of the on-again, off-again tariff threats has spooked markets; presumably Trump, Musk, and their cronies are buying on the dips. In Manitoba, the Kinew government is reciprocating with a pause on the removal of American liquor from stores. Meanwhile in BC, David Eby is considering a more substantive move (assuming the tariffs come back) - he wants to ensure that sales of energy and critical minerals are directed towards other markets.

- If the current uneasy truce fails to hold, one possible target of export restrictions could be potash. The US imports around 80% of their supply, and Canada controls some 40% of global reserves of this crucial fertilizer. The prospect of this worries Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who had requested that potash be exempted from the Trump tariffs.

- The Inspector General of the US Department of Agriculture, Phyllis Fong, was escorted from her office by security after refusing to leave voluntarily after Trump fired her. I'm sure the fact that her office had investigated one of Elon Musk's companies is totally coincidental...

- After the World Federation of Advertisers suspended advertising on Twitter/X, Elon Musk launched a lawsuit last year claiming that the federation and its members were unlawfully conspiring to deprive Musk's platform of revenue. He is now expanding the lawsuit to target several companies whose ads were removed from the platform.

- The European Union is continuing with a piecewise rollout of legislation to minimize the risks from artificial intelligence. Apps with certain kinds of functions, including cognitive behavioural manipulation, classifying people based on personal characteristics, and biometric identification and categorization of people, is banned outright. Sounds eminently reasonable, but there's a lot of hand-wringing from techbros in this Reddit thread about allegedly stifling innovation (mixed in with slightly more valid concerns that more harmful uses of AI will just be developed elsewhere anyway).

- An AI chatbot created by the Israelis to disrupt online discussion of the country's policies towards Palestinians has gone rogue, at times attacking the Israeli and American governments.

News roundup, 3 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump has followed through on his threat to impose 25% tariffs on nearly all imports from Canada. This is already having an impact in some places. The Trudeau government is responding by imposing tariffs on a number of American imports, including alcohol, vegetables, and clothing; they say there may be more to come. Unfortunately, Trump may not bend easily, especially if he is serious about annexing Canada. Meanwhile Manitoba and several other provinces are pulling all American alcohol from their shelves, while BC is responding with targeted bans against liquor from red states. And fans at an Ottawa Senators game booed the American national anthem at a game against the Minnesota Wild.

- Some of the people behind Trump have mused about abolishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Given that without the FDIC people's deposits would not be guaranteed, the very act of abolishing it could very well trigger bank runs. This might serve the interests of billionaires who want to buy assets cheaply, but not anyone else's.

- A letter to the US Senate purporting to come from physicians in support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services was signed by a number of former doctors whose licenses were revoked, as well as a number of people who were never doctors in the first place.

- A Learjet 55 serving on a medivac flight from Philadelphia to Tijuana nosedived into the ground just after takeoff, killing all six people aboard the aircraft and at least one person on the ground. The aircraft had reached an altitude of just over 1,600 ft before the pilots lost control for reasons yet to be explained; radar data indicates that its rate of descent exceeded 11,000 ft/min when contact was lost.

- The last of the three soldiers on board the helicopter that collided with an airliner over the Potomac has been identified. Her family had initially asked that her name be withheld;  this naturally led to all sorts of speculation about her identity. Among these were false online statements identifying her as Jo Ellis, who is a transgender pilot with the Virginia National Guard. Ellis has gone public to make it clear that she's very much alive, though.

- One of the Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump has just received a 10 year sentence for impaired driving causing death. This comes just after it came out that another pardoned rioter is facing child sex abuse charges and that a third died in a gun battle with police. I daresay there seems to be some sort of pattern here.

- Montreal has brought in a partial ban on Airbnb and other short-term rental services in order to free up housing for people who actually need it. Such services will be prohibited entirely between September and June, with the exception of certain designated tourism streets.

News roundup, 10 Jan 2024

- Economic losses from the fires in the Los Angeles area are now estimated to be at least $135 billion. Thousands of buildings, including celebrities' homes, have been destroyed; at least five people have died.

- Justin Trudeau now calls abandoning electoral reform his "biggest regret". And indeed, it was one of the more regrettable aspects of his tenure; too bad he's only acknowledging this now when there's no time to do anything about it. Of course, up until recently he didn't have to worry about his party being pushed into third place; coincidentally, the Liberals had fewer seats than the NDP at the time they promised electoral reform in the first place. And it turns out that his decision to abandon electoral reform came not long after a committee recommended some form of proportional system, rather than the instant-runoff system preferred by the Liberals. Meanwhile the party plans to have Trudeau's replacement selected by March 9, giving the winner 15 days before Parliament reconvenes (and probably votes non-confidence in the government).

- Elon Musk has heaped praise on Pierre Poilievre. This should come as no surprise to anyone, of course, except maybe those who hoped that he would be too busy heaping praise on the likes of Alice Weidel of Germany's AfD to remember who Poilievre is. I guess it's possible that stuff like this might harm the Tories somewhat after a while, but it's unlikely to hurt them sufficiently to stop them from winning a pretty solid majority.

- While most have until now dismissed Donald Trump's musings about annexing Canada to be a joke, some federal cabinet ministers, including Finance Minister Domenic LeBlanc, aren't so sure anymore now that Trump has repeatedly declared the intent to "use economic force" to compel Canada to join. One thing that's kinda, sorta reassuring is that he says he wouldn't use military force against Canada, even if he won't rule out using it against Denmark or Panama if they won't hand over the territories he wants to take from them. Perhaps he's seeing from his buddy Vlad's experience that invading and taking over your next door neighbour isn't as easy as it might look on paper. Or, more likely, Musk and Vance are seeing it and talking him down; I'm not sure Trump has the mental capacity to figure that out on his own, even with the evidence right in front of him.

- At a sentencing hearing for the Coutts border blockade trial, the prosecutor has called for prison time for two men convicted of mischief over $5,000 as a result of their actions during the protest. They're still likely to get off pretty lightly compared with two others who each got 6½ years each for weapons charges related to the same protest.

- Frances Haughen, the whistleblower who reported a few years ago about how Meta knew that their products were harming children and teens and damaging democracy, thinks it's no surprise that Meta is now doing away with fact checking in jurisdictions where they can get away with doing so. She believes that the company has "heard the message" from Trump; perhaps Zuckerberg isn't keen on the idea of falling out of a window.

News roundup, 7 Jan 2024

- Justin Trudeau has finally seen the writing on the wall and announced that he will step down as Liberal leader and prime minister once the party has chosen a successor. He has also prorogued Parliament until the 24th of March to give the party time to make that selection. The leader will be selected according to existing rules, despite fears that this facilitates foreign interference by allowing non-citizens to buy party memberships and vote for the leader. As to who might run for the position, it's kind of hard to say; the usual suspects might not be quick to step up to the plate. After all, whoever wins will have virtually no chance of beating Pierre Poilievre, though they will have an excellent chance of beating Sir Charles Tupper for the title of shortest serving prime minister in Canadian history.

- New York City has followed the lead of London, England by introducing congestion pricing for approximately half or Manhattan. This hasn't gone through without a fight; several legal challenges, including one from the State of New Jersey, were launched in the hope of derailing the plan, but they were defeated. The plan is expected to reduce the number of vehicles entering the congestion zone by at least 13% while bringing much-needed revenue to pay for transit improvements; behavioural changes are expected to take some time, though, and as Paul Krugman points out, people really don't like these sorts of nudges, no matter how beneficial they are.

- Ann Telnaes, who has worked as an editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post since 2008, has resigned in protest of the paper's refusal to publish a cartoon that showed several billionaires (including Post owner Jeff Bezos) lining up to offer Trump money.

- Hot on the heels of allegations that an oil tanker was used to sabotage an undersea cable by dragging its anchor, Taiwan is claiming that a Chinese ship did the same thing to a telecom cable connecting the island with the US.

- Since Pornhub pulled out of Florida in response to a new piece of legislation, use of VPNs in the state has surged by 1150%.

News roundup, 6 Jan 2025

- A new poll from Angus Reid puts the Liberals at 16% support nationally, considerably behind the NDP at 21%. Some are predicting that this will finally lead to Trudeau's resignation and perhaps a prorogation of Parliament to give the Liberals time to choose a new leader before a non-confidence vote forces an election. Tom Brodbeck thinks such a measure would be pointless and that Trudeau should go down with the ship.

- Although the Winnipeg Police Service gets more money in the city's budget than any other department, in the newest proposed budget they are only getting six new officers; this is reasonable however given the huge needs in other areas. Winnipeg Transit will be hiring 27 new staff, and 24 new firefighters will be stationed in Waverley West to deal with surging populations there. Also welcome will be eight new full time equivalents in the Urban Forestry Branch to deal with huge backlogs for tree pruning.

- Under new legislation, any business in Manitoba selling most long-bladed tools (such as machetes) is required to ask for photo ID and to keep sales records for two years. Saws, hedge trimmers, and pruning shears are exempt.

- Amazon is completely ending remote work, having previously ordered employees back three days a week in 2023. As usual, they rationalize this move with vague statements about "collaboration", while refusing to provide any data to support this claim. Of course, the real reason probably has more to do with the fact that Amazon owns 10 million ft² of commercial real estate in Seattle and would likely lose a lot of money on said real estate if they just sold it off; to be fair the impact of this would be significant and would not be limited to Amazon. It's worth noting that there is already a 10-20% default rate on mortgages in the sector regardless of the efforts of the likes of Amazon, and many fear that this will start to impact the broader economy.

- While many cetaceans are doing badly these days, orcas seem to be thriving - and are in fact expanding their range into the Arctic. Unfortunately, their success may come at the expense of belugas and narwhals.

- Ryan Wedding, who competed for Canada in the snowboarding event in the 2002 Olympics, is wanted in California for numerous crimes including murder. Authorities say the murders were commissioned by him in support of a billion dollar criminal enterprise he was running.

News roundup, 31 Dec 2024

- Gerald Butts, a former advisor to Justin Trudeau, thinks Chrystia Freeland's resignation from cabinet increases the likelyhood of Trudeau stepping down. Whether that matters or not is another question; in a recent poll, 25% of Canadians said that none of the potential candidates for the Liberal leadership were appealing to them. This is higher than the degree of support for any of the hypothetical candidates, including Mark Carney at 18% and Chrystia Freeland who is tied with Trudeau at 11%. Of course Carney and Freeland will likely wait for Trudeau or his short-term replacement to crash and burn in the hope of getting credit for rebuilding the party later on.

- Apparently another Jeju Air Boeing 737 reported landing gear issues similar to those apparently experienced by the aircraft that crashed on Sunday. And others are reporting that the plane that crashed had been forced to divert only two days before the accident. Stuff like this does not build confidence in the airline's maintenance culture.

- Donald Trump is calling on the US Supreme Court to delay the implementation of legislation that will ban TikTok in the US if it is not sold by its parent company by then. This has led to speculation that his puppeteer Elon Musk is hoping to buy the platform.

- The Saudi-born doctor accused of ramming his car into a Christmas market in Germany appears to be a Muslim apostate and a supporter of the far-right AfD party. This will no doubt be ignored by AfD when they use him as an example of why they shouldn't allow immigration from such countries.

- Belgium is banning disposable e-cigarettes as of the new year, both for environmental reasons and because they're suspected of getting teens addicted to nicotine.

- Ten years ago, Manitoba premier Greg Selinger routinely rode his bicycle to the legislature for work. Wab Kinew does not, due to security concerns, something that does not speak well to the evolution of our political culture.

News roundup, 23 Dec 2024

- Justin Trudeau's new cabinet includes eight MPs who have never served in cabinet before. Given that Jagmeet Singh has decided that enough is enough and that the NDP is ready to vote non-confidence at the first opportunity, they may have little more to show for it than the right to say that they were once a cabinet minister.

- Manitoba's government hopes to have some movement on the homelessness file in the near future; they plan to have people moving from encampments into more stable housing within the first few months of 2025.

- The US narrowly averted a government shutdown after passing a budget at the last minute in the wee hours of Saturday morning with some provisions sought by the Democrats removed.

- Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates so as to deprive Trump of the pleasure of kicking off his second term with an orgy of executions.

- Ukraine's prosecution service says that at least 147 Ukrainian POWs have been executed by Russian forces since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Of those, 127 occurred just this year.

- In a rare bit of good news on the invasive species front, a population of the Asian Giant Hornet (often known as the "murder hornet") that got established in Washington State a few years ago has apparently been eradicated, as has another population in BC. Across the Atlantic, a population in England seems to have been contained as well. Of course, it's a lot easier to locate nests to eradicate when the target is a spectacular orange and black wasp that grows up to 5 cm long and is active out in the open during the daytime than it is with many invasive animals.

- A 31 year old employee of a manufacturer in Michigan is accused of stabbing his boss at a staff meeting.

News roundup, 20 Dec 2024

- Donald Trump is suing media outlets who report negative stories about him. Among the defendants are a newspaper that published a negative poll about him (he's suing the pollster too, of course), as well as the Pulitzer Prize foundation for giving awards to newspapers that reported on his ties to Russia.

- Justin Trudeau is reportedly preparing to announce a major cabinet shuffle today, in an attempt to fill the holes left by recent resignations; meanwhile more MPs keep coming out of the woodwork and calling for him to step down. For his part, Jagmeet Singh is unwilling to commit to bringing down the government in a confidence vote, but he isn't saying he won't either; he says it depends on the specific situation at the time of the vote. This is an eminently reasonable position, but unfortunately it probably won't endear him to a public who, especially in these times, tend to view caution as dithering.

- As has been predicted for some time, insurance companies are starting to cancel policies in areas facing serious climate-related risks. Nearly 2 million policies have been cancelled since 2018 for such reasons.

- Joe Biden has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to give California a waiver to enable the state to ban the sales of new fossil fuel-powered cars and light trucks by 2035. Eleven other states are also on board; the hope is that this will delay Trump's efforts to reverse course on EVs long enough for the automakers to shift their production to a degree that they won't want to undo.

- Montana's supreme court has upheld a ruling by a lower court that issuing permits for fossil fuel extraction without regard for climate change is a violation of the right to a clean environment that is written into the state's constitution.

- Residents of a Winnipeg apartment block who were evacuated last spring after structural issues were found in the building have been allowed to return home, though some lack confidence in the safety of the building and are declining the offer.

- A Winnipeg police officer who crashed his motorcycle last year was acquitted of impaired driving because the folks who took the blood samples used as evidence somehow "forgot" to label them with the date.

- Police in the Spanish town of Soria got a break in a missing person case when they found a Google Street View image of someone stuffing a corpse-sized object into the trunk of a car. Further investigation led to the discovery of remains believed to be the victim and the arrest of the deceased's ex and her new boyfriend.

News roundup, 18 Dec 2024

- Many Liberal MPs are now calling on Justin Trudeau to step down. This includes people like Francis Drouin, who had previously defended the prime minister. Notably, another MP who had previously been silent, Chad Collins, said that Chrystia Freeland received a standing ovation at the caucus meeting following her resignation from cabinet. Whether this will be enough to overcome Trudeau's ego remains to be seen. Meanwhile the Globe and Mail is reporting that Freeland's resignation came after Trudeau told her in a Zoom call that he intended to replace her with former central banker Mark Carney; curiously, Carney himself has so far said nothing about such a plan. Jumping the gun like this on a highly competent and loyal member of cabinet is not a good look for the PM.

- The school shooting in Wisconsin yesterday appears to have been the work of a 15 year old female student at the school, who appears to have shot herself. A manifesto entitled "War Against Humanity", claimed to have been written by the shooter, has been circulating on social media, though its authenticity has yet to be confirmed. The school in question is a private institution called the Abundant Life Christian School; it's almost as if posting the Ten Commandments in schools isn't enough to prevent violence. Who'd have thought?

- Joe Biden is now calling for a ban on stock trading by members of Congress. That would be an excellent idea, but it's rather unfortunate that he waited till now, when the proposal has nearly no chance of going forward in the foreseeable future, to speak up about the matter.

- Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, who was arrested in Greenland in July on an Interpol notice from Japan, has been freed after Danish authorities refused to extradite him. The Danish justice minister says that this is because of a lack of assurances from Japanese authorities that time served would be deducted from whatever sentence he received; given that he was facing up to 15 years in prison, it seems odd that Japan was unwilling to waver on a few months.

- A dietary supplement, Bovaer, has the potential to significantly reduce methane emissions from cattle and other ruminants when added to their feed. Of course, it would be much better to eliminate the farming of such livestock entirely, but it's probably unrealistic due to the romanticization of agriculture in so many different societies. Unfortunately, even this modest measure is receiving a lot of pushback from the masses, some of whom apparently think this is yet another sinister plot to control their minds or some such nonsense.

- Doctors Manitoba has been placing recruitment ads in several Republican-dominated American states, notably the Dakotas and Florida, suggesting that the political environment here might be better for them than where they are currently. A worthwhile move, though probably more useful for getting ob-gyns than regular family doctors.

- The Thompson Citizen, the last remaining local newspaper in the northern Manitoba city, is expected to shut down in the near future. The province has lost 31 news outlets since 2008.

- In much of Canada the number of "winter days" (defined as days in a year with temperatures below 0°C) has decreased significantly in just the last decade. Vancouver has lost 19 such days since 2014 and Toronto has lost 13; Winnipeg has only lost one so far, though.

News roundup, 17 Dec 2024

- In a surprise move, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has resigned from Justin Trudeau's cabinet, mere hours before she was scheduled to deliver the government's fall economic statement. Freeland says her resignation was prompted by Trudeau approaching her about moving her to another cabinet role. She also cited concerns about what she calls "costly political gimmicks" (assumed to refer to the GST "holiday" that began this past weekend) at a time when Freeland believes it is necessary to "keep our fiscal powder dry" owing to the uncertainties arising from the impending Trump presidency in the US. Freeland says she will remain as an MP and plans to run for the Liberals in the next election; whether Trudeau will allow her to run under the party banner (or whether he'll even be leader by then) remains to be seen. In the meantime, the fiscal update was tabled by Liberal house leader Karina Gould; subsequently public safety minister Dominic LeBlanc was appointed finance minister. And housing minister Sean Fraser has also announced that he will be leaving cabinet and will not run again next year. And the Liberals were defeated yesterday in yet another byelection, this one in BC.

- In Ontario, there is speculation that an early election may be in the offing; presumably the Ford government sees hard times coming due to the looming tariff threat from the US. The threats may not be limited to tariffs; some fear that the incoming Trump administration could push the US economy into stagflation, and something like that is likely to make it very difficult for all governments. So it's not surprising that they want to get the election out of the way before that happens. It's worth noting that when David Peterson called an early election in anticipation of a recession, he got thumped... not sure if we can hope for the same thing here though.

- The minority government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been defeated in a confidence vote in the Bundestag (the lower house of the country's parliament). The government's minority status and resulting defeat follows the withdrawal of the neoliberal Free Democrats from the "traffic light" coalition with the Greens and Scholz' Social Democrats. An election has been called for the 23rd of February; opinion polls so far seem to favour the centre-right Christian Democrats to win the most seats. Disturbingly, the party coming second in these polls is the far-right AfD; this could well tempt the Christian Democrats to abandon the longstanding unwritten rule in postwar Europe that you don't take extremist parties into your coalition.

- Some 77% of aquifers in coastal areas could be vulnerable to saltwater intrusion as sea levels rise, making the water unsuitable for drinking or agriculture.

- A Russian general, who has been accused of ordering the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, was killed in an explosion in Moscow; Ukraine's SBU security service has claimed responsibility for the explosion.

- Two Winnipeg high schools, Elmwood High School and Oak Park High School in Charleswood, were closed yesterday after receiving emailed threats. Police have not said whether the two cases are linked. Meanwhile in Madison, Wisconsin, there was a fatal shooting at a Christian school... but only three fatalities so it's pretty mild by American standards.

- A Florida woman, in a heated phone discussion with her health insurance provider, blurted out "Delay, deny, depose, you people are next"; she has been charged with "threats to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism".

News roundup, 4 Dec 2024

- At Justin Trudeau's meeting with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago this past Friday, the incoming president quipped that Canada should join the US if we can't handle the 25% tariffs being slapped on imports. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc insists that Trump was joking, but he has previously expressed interest in our water, and as anyone who's read Richard Rohmer's novel Ultimatum or seen the miniseries H₂O knows, these things should not be taken lightly.

- South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol is facing possible impeachment following the short-lived imposition of martial law overnight. Yoon says his move was necessitated by "North Korea-sympathizing anti-state forces" and accuses the opposition of "attempting to overthrow the liberal democratic system through legislative dictatorship", but the fact that he's facing serious corruption allegations that were being investigated by the opposition is probably the real reason.

- French prime minister Michel Barnier, appointed by President Emmanuel Macron only 90 days ago, is facing a motion of non-confidence, after using executive powers to push a budget through without parliamentary support.

- The Auto Trader website forecasts that the number of gasoline-powered cars in the UK will fall by over 40% over the next decade.

- Several businesses in Winnipeg are no longer accepting cash, apparently to deter robberies. This has become somewhat common elsewhere as well, and has raised concerns. Some are calling for legislation to limit this, since it discriminates against people who don't have a bank account or credit card, and from a certain point of view this could be seen as discrimination on the grounds of "social condition", which is prohibited in some jurisdictions. Some cities and states in the US have adopted or are considering such legislation.

- More than six weeks after a BC man, Jim Barnes, went missing on a hunting trip, a dog believed to be his has been found alive. The dog is not tattooed or microchipped, but appeared to recognize Barnes' partner and other people that it would have been familiar with.