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, 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.