News roundup, 24 July 2026

- Tens of thousands of people are being evacuated from several communities in southwestern France due to wildfires. The situation is not being helped by the weather, with temperatures as high as 37°C and winds of up to 50 km/h. Spain has also seen significant evacuations due to fires in the last few days. More disturbingly, several wildfires in southern Italy are being attributed to arson, sometimes committed by tying rags soaked with accelerants to the tails of cats and lighting them on fire. It's suspected that mobsters are hoping to buy land cheaply after fires go through.

- Mark Carney says that retaliatory measures are being considered if Trump's planned 50% tariffs on pretty much every Canadian export that the US can get elsewhere come into effect later in August. Predictably, Danielle Smith says she's opposed to using tariffs for this purpose. Carney isn't saying yet what measures are being considered.

- A high school student in Marin County, California was given an assignment for his journalism class, namely to tell a news story in the form of an Instagram slideshow. Living in an extremely wealthy area, he figured he'd search the Epstein files for references to his county and see what came up. He ended up making a lot of people very angry, much like the protagonist of the German film The Nasty Girl whose high school project shines unwanted light on her town's Nazi past. A modelling agent named Gisele Attias Bonnouvrier threatened to sue the school district for defamation after being named as having supplied models to Epstein; she didn't go ahead with her lawsuit, presumably because she actually was named in the files for this. Perhaps she'd never heard of the Streisand effect.

- A bar in Toronto just got caught buying stolen booze at a homeless encampment. The owner claimed that he was doing this to "keep the peace" because people from the encampment retaliated against his earlier refusals; a provincial tribunal didn't buy his explanation, though, and the bar's license has been revoked. None of this would have happened in Manitoba thanks to the MLCC's security measures; interestingly, the Ford government shot down a plan by the LCBO to introduce similar measures a couple of years ago. As I said at the time, the most likely reason for this is because Ford wants to sell more alcohol in convenience stores, who would probably not be able to compete with the LCBO on security and many would thus decide that selling it wasn't worth the risk.

- Orcas have been observed ganging up on ocean sunfish and ramming them so hard that they explode. Scientists are divided on the reason; some think it's simply practical to break them up into smaller pieces to be easier to eat, but others say it shows signs of being a sort of social game; orcas are among the few animals (alongside humans and cats) that will kill for fun.

News roundup, 21 July 2026

- The US and Iran continue to exchange fire for the tenth day since the breakdown of the ceasefire. Trump is in an awkward spot, since any course of action he takes is almost sure to at the very least look bad in the eyes of his supporters and at worst be a total disaster.

- Andrew Tate and his equally vile brother Tristan were arrested in Florida on a British extradition warrant. Both are wanted for multiple sexual assault and trafficking charges; Andrew also faces child pornography charges. This would seem to be good news, except that the US Secretary of State has the power to veto extraditions, and given how popular Andrew is with the MAGA base, plus the fact that Trump has previously bullied Romania into releasing the brothers, it seems unlikely that they'll be extradited.

- The Trump regime is threatening 50% tariffs against a wide range of Canadian exports. Energy, potash, critical minerals, fish, and auto parts are exempt; presumably the costs to the US would be too high if they weren't. The tariffs don't take effect until mid-August; Trump presumably hopes that Carney will capitulate in the ongoing CUSMA talks.

- Andy Burnham has now taken office as the UK's prime minister, and has selected his cabinet. There are 15 new faces in the cabinet, in addition to Burnham himself.

- Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has announced that his country will not be holding any more elections in order to keep the opposition out of power. It's a pity; in the 1980s Ortega was a hero to much of the left for standing up to the US, but he seems to have turned into just another tinpot dictator.

News roundup, 13 July 2026

- Reform UK is panicking about the possibility of Nigel Farage losing the byelection resulting from his resignation stunt. The party had been hoping to win the mayoralty of Greater Manchester, where polls showed them within striking distance after the position was vacated by Andy Burnham, but are now desperately shifting resources to Farage's riding of Clacton in the hope of avoiding the embarrassment of losing to Count Binface. Daniel Hannan at the Telegraph seems a bit worried too. Unfortunately it looks like the Official Monster Raving Looney Party is running a spoiler candidate. Kind of like one of the races in Monty Python's Election Night Special, except that this time it won't be the Sensible Party that benefits from the split.

- A recent poll of Canadian manufacturers found that 40% of them have either moved some of their operations to the US or are planning to do so in response to ongoing tariffs, while 11% plan to move their headquarters there. This isn't an exclusively Canadian problem, of course; Toyota is expanding its plant in Texas while reducing operations in Mexico, but voters tend not to care about such niceties - in fact they don't care if the people they vote in are worse than the people they vote out, because they're voting out of vengeance, not out of hope of improvement. So naturally this puts Carney in a tough spot. If he wanted to be really bold he could expropriate any plant closed in such a move at current market value, with the proviso that the compensation will not occur until relations are normalized with the US. I wouldn't count on him doing that, though; I don't think he's made of that kind of stuff (he is, ultimately, still a neoliberal at heart, even as he recognizes that neoliberalism doesn't seem to be working anymore). Maybe the NDP should start loudly pushing for that sort of thing; it's not like not being radical has done them much good at the federal level of late.

- South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham has died at the age of 71. On the other hand Mitch McConnell seems to be in better shape than many suspected, assuming of course that it was actually him that made the statement in question and not a staffer.

- A 37 year old man has been arrested after allegedly delivering a hateful and threat-filled tirade against two hijab-wearing women in a Costco in Halifax and assaulting someone who filmed his rant. He had to be Tasered after reportedly brandishing a weapon at police; he has been charged with assault, public incitement of hatred, and four counts of uttering threats to cause bodily harm or death.

- An economics professor at Brown University announced one year that one of his classes would use a take-home exam format. The class then had a surge of enrollments compared to previous years; when the midterms were marked, the average grade was 96% and 40 students got a 100% grade. Not surprisingly, the people who marked the exams found answers with a wording that was uncannily similar to the way ChatGPT answered the questions. At this point he decided to change the format for the final exam, making it an in-person test and warning the class that if the grade distribution was substantially different from the midterm, only the final would count towards the actual grade in the class. 27 students dropped out of the class by the time the final rolled around, of whom 22 had scored 100% in the midterm.

News roundup, 8 July 2026

- A new bill before the US Congress would direct the US Trade Representative to investigate the bans on American alcohol by most Canadian provinces. In the modern American tradition of contrived backronyms, the bill is called the Combating Attacks on our National Alcoholic Drinks by Allies (CANADA) Act. It was introduced by Claudia Tenney, who represents a large part of rural and small-town New York State and who is a rabid Trump supporter. Curiously, the bill makes no mention of the annexation threats and tariffs that led to the bans in the first place.

- Markus Chambers has become the latest Winnipeg city councillor to announce that he will not be running again this fall. Chambers, who represents the suburban St. Norbert-Seine River ward, says that he wants to spend more time with his family, which is fair enough. However, the sheer number of veteran councillors who are quitting is significant - Janice Lukes, John Orlikow, and Brian Mayes are also not running again. One thing all those councillors have in common is that they represent suburban (or largely suburban) wards; I wouldn't be surprised if they know darn well that continuing to insist on car-centric design and exclusively single-family neighbourhoods is financially unviable (you just don't have enough taxpayers per kilometre of street, water main, etc to properly maintain the infrastructure) but for these councillors to acknowledge this in front of their constituents would be politically unviable.

- Mark Carney has appointed Conservative MP Richard Martel to the Senate. This creates a vacancy in the riding of Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, which Martel narrowly won in the last election.

- The leader of a rightwing fringe party, the Freedom Party of BC, has been charged with vandalizing a Pride crosswalk in Surrey. Amrit Birring, 58, was arrested along with a 67 year old man and charged with mischief over $5,000.

- Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has resigned his seat and announced that he will run for reelection in the resulting byelection. Some may remember when Canadian Liberal MP Sheila Copps did that in 1996; she had promised in the previous election campaign to resign if the GST wasn't abolished, but then ran again, winning without difficulty. In Farage's case, his critics believe this is a way of distracting the public from an investigation into his finances; all the other parties, from the Greens and Labour on the left, to the Liberal Dems in the centre, to the Conservatives and Restore Britain on the right are refusing to contest the seat and give him the attention he seems to crave. He won't be acclaimed, though; comedian Jon Harvey, aka Count Binface, has said that he will contest the seat.

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, 23 June 2026

- The Trump regime has turned its sights on the EU again, this time looking at Germany's regulation of pharmaceutical prices. Trump claims that this practice forces drug makers to charge higher prices in the US in order to make up the difference.

- The Manitoba government is still looking at Sio Silica's bid to open a sand mine in the Rural Municipality of Springfield, but Premier Wab Kinew has dropped hints that the mine will not be approved. In an interview with radio station CJOB, Kinew indicated that the fact that the company's last bid for this is the subject of an upcoming public inquiry into the previous government's actions could impact the decision.

- The Toronto Star has an interesting take on Carney's pipeline deal with Alberta - they suggest that the proposal is not economically viable and will likely never be built. If this is true, I have to give some credit to Carney for moving to placate Danielle Smith while not doing real damage to the climate. However, as the article points out, such a move could backfire if the idea collapses before this fall's referendum.

- A blind woman was apparently denied service by the Stella's restaurant chain in Winnipeg due to her guide dog. The chain has a long history of questionable practices (including sexual harassment and union busting) so this is entirely in character for the company. That said, the article does touch on an issue with the legislation surrounding service animals - there's no standard certification process for the animals, leaving the door wide open to abuse by the kind of people who claim their dog is an "emotional support" animal. If I were to guess, I'd say someone involved in drafting the legislation thought that requiring disabled people to prove the legitimacy of their service animals constituted a "microaggression" of some sort; while this was no doubt well-intentioned, it fails to take into account the realities of human behaviour.

- A Russian journalist who reported in 2008 that Putin planned to divorce his wife in favour of Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva has died. Grigory Nekhoroshev had been living in exile in Latvia for a number of years, and allegedly died from eating poisonous mushrooms foraged from his front yard. I guess that has more plausible deniability than polonium.

News roundup, 5 June 2026

- Mark Carney is backing away from plans to roll back a wide range of environmental regulations. The government had planned to create "federal economic zones" where various developments were pre-approved, and to give the cabinet the power to exempt projects from endangered species legislation. Following condemnation from First Nations as well as environmental activists, though, the government seems to be backing down.

- Wab Kinew is putting the kibosh on a proposal by a company called Consensus Core to build a gigantic data centre in the Rural Municipality of Ritchot, south of Winnipeg. The facility would have used so much electricity that they planned to power it with natural gas turbines because they couldn't divert enough from the power grid, not to mention the amount of water these things often use for cooling. It's not like it would have created a lot of permanent jobs anyway - in fact part of the point of AI is to not have to hire so many people. Meanwhile a recent study suggests that by 2030 AI could consume as much electricity as Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Pakistan combined - with carbon emissions equivalent to that of the UK. And for cooling it could consume as much fresh water as 1.3 billion people. 

- Following Doug Ford's ban on municipalities' use of photo enforcement cameras, a study at eight former camera locations in Ottawa has found that less than half of drivers passing the locations were obeying the posted speed limit. At one of the locations compliance was down to 20%, down from 86% in the last month that the cameras were allowed to operate.

- Two Chinese automakers, Chery and Geely, have begun shipping electric and plug-in hybrid cars to Canada. Some are being sold under the Lotus marque; Geely bought a majority stake in the British automaker in 2023. Buyers of these vehicles might be prohibited from driving them across the border, though, if a bill introduced by two Michigan legislators makes it through the US Congress. Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Senator Elissa Slotkin claim that this is a matter of "national security", claiming that the vehicles will record critical information about their drivers and surroundings. I wouldn't be surprised if they do, but this isn't something limited to Chinese cars - GM has already gotten a talking to for spying on their users via their OnStar system. The people who might have a legitimate reason to fear surveillance by China would mostly be Chinese expats living overseas - but nobody's forcing them to buy the cars. And if the Chinese state wants to spy on them, they can probably just buy the info from their cellphone providers and social media companies anyway. Of course, the fact that the sponsors of the bill come from Michigan probably has something to do with the matter...

- The European Parliament has made European-based Qwant, rather than Google, the default search engine on its in-house systems, as part of the EU's efforts to achieve "tech sovereignty". The company, founded in France in 2013, bills itself as a "privacy-first" alternative to Google. The article reporting this doesn't link to the search engine (perhaps Politico doesn't want their articles to be deindexed) but you can find it here.

News roundup, 28 May 2026

- The Carney government will be buying a fleet of Saab GlobalEye reconnaissance planes from Sweden instead of the Boeing E-7. The GlobalEye is actually a modification of Bombardier's Global 6500 business jet; the E-7 is derived from the Boeing 737. No word on what the Americans have to say about this yet. There are also indications that Canada is interested in ordering four submarines from Germany's ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, who say they can deliver them by 2036. However, South Korea's Hanwha claim they can deliver a year earlier, in time for the scheduled retirement of Canada's current fleet of Victoria-class subs.

- Liberal MP Steven Guilbault, who served as environment minister under Justin Trudeau, will be resigning his seat when the House of Commons rises for the summer. He say that Canada is backsliding on climate, citing the Carney government's efforts to negotiate with Danielle Smith's government in Alberta. Guilbault also warns that this is "rewarding bad behaviour" on the part of Alberta and that this is the sort of thing that could "fan the flames" of Quebec separatism.

- An apartment building in inner city Winnipeg is being converted to a mix of transitional and long-term affordable housing with the assistance of St. Boniface Street Links. Existing tenants will be allowed to stay; however the owner and the organization have had to remove squatters from the building and hire 24 hour security.

- The number of hate crimes reported to Winnipeg police in 2025 was more than double that of the previous year. The majority of these crimes would be considered simple mischief in the absence of the hate component, but these also included criminal harassment, threats, and assault.

- A man working on a uranium exploration site in Saskatchewan was killed by a black bear earlier this month. Hrishikesh Koloth, 27, was experienced in mixed martial arts, but that was evidently no match for a bear. This was only the fourth fatal bear attack in the recorded history of the province; it's noteworthy, though, that the third happened only six years ago.

- A large wooden play structure was stolen from a schoolyard in Headingley, Manitoba by thieves who apparently drove a vehicle through the school's fence. The structure was later recovered from a home in Winnipeg, along with an RV that had also been reported stolen; a 35 year old man has been arrested.

News roundup, 26 May 2026

- A poll of Albertans conducted by Angus Reid has found that the majority of respondents would vote no to Danielle Smith's revised referendum - but by a narrower margin than a straight up yes or no on separation. Respondents were also critical of Smith's handling of the affair. The thing is, all of this needs to be taken with substantial quantities of salt, given the "shy Tory factor". In particular I think the kind of person who would vote to secede from Canada would also be reluctant to answer pollsters at all for fear of getting on some kind of "gummint list". For his part, Mark Carney has called the referendum plan a "dangerous bluff" and is drawing parallels to Brexit; it's worth noting that polls in the UK failed to predict the outcome of that referendum.

- Uber drivers in Victoria have successfully unionized. More than 1,000 drivers in the city voted to approve a contract negotiated by the United Food and Commercial Workers local 1518. Notably, this wouldn't have been possible without changes in provincial legislation that classifies rideshare drivers as employees rather than independent contractors, limiting their ability to do this in other provinces.

- Russia is warning foreign nationals, including diplomats, to leave Kiev as they threaten a fresh waves of "systematic strikes" against the city. Strikes on the capital have been pretty much incessant, but this new warning suggests that they plan to escalate. Most recently they tested out one of their new hypersonic missiles over the weekend as part of a heavy wave of attacks that killed four people and injured over 100. Meanwhile the US is claiming self-defense in their latest wave of attacks on Iran.

- A powwow organized with Mountain View School Division in western Manitoba created a stir after a table set up by the Sexuality Education Resource Centre, a Brandon organization, distributed materials that some parents considered sexually explicit to younger kids. One parent claims that her eight year old son was given condoms and other items by the table, and that this made him "uncomfortable". I daresay that may be a bit of projection on the part of the mum. There were also documents such as this one handed out. The school division and the SERC have apologized for the incident.

- Competition was halted at the World Surf League in New Zealand, and jet skis were dispatched to get competitors out of the water as quickly as possible, after a photographer covering the event was bitten by an unseen sea creature.

News roundup, 21 May 2026

- An Air France flight from Paris to Detroit was forced to divert to Montreal after American authorities found that a person from the Democratic Republic of Congo was aboard. The US has prohibited non-citizens who have been to the DRC as well as Uganda and South Sudan in the last 21 days from entering their country. The hapless passenger, who did not have any symptoms of the disease, was removed from the flight and sent back to Europe; the flight was then allowed to continue on its way.

- Mark Carney is pressuring BC on pipelines, warning that if they keep delaying new pipeline plans, "we're going to be spending more time elsewhere in the country because we need to move forward". That sounds suspiciously similar to "Nice federal funding you've got, it would be a shame if something happened to it".

- The Manitoba government is conducting a survey on the biannual time changes. It's a voluntary survey, so it will be skewed in favour of those with strong opinions, which likely means either that we'll be adopting permanent daylight savings time or, if sleep experts succeed in convincing the government that it's a bad idea, that we'll stick with time changes. Those who wish to fill it out can do so here.

- Toronto is looking at the possibility of deploying automated cameras equipped with microphones in order to catch violators of the city's bylaw on vehicle noise. Unfortunately they have yet to receive permission from the province to do so, and given the Ford government's track record on these matters I doubt it will happen any time soon.

- Shots were fired at the Surrey, BC home of Cricket Canada's newly elected president, Arvinder Khosa. Nobody was hurt; police believe the attack was extortion-related.

- Police had to be summoned to an elementary school in Brandon, Manitoba after an 11 year old boy threw a temper tantrum so severe that he not only punched the principal but put a hole in a classroom wall clear through to the next room. Being under 12 he cannot be held criminally responsible; his mother was briefly taken into custody after interfering with police but was released without charges. Police arranged for him to meet with mental health professionals before releasing him into the custody of his father.

- In other western Manitoba news, a 46 year old man from the community of Russell has been convicted of uttering threats after repeatedly threatening police; the prosecution is not only calling for a two year jail term but for him to be banned from the community following his release. His defense lawyer argues that this would be harmful to his rehabilitation, as he has spent most of his life there and has no connections elsewhere.

News roundup, 28 April 2026

- The suspect in the White House Correspondents' Dinner incident has been charged with attempting to assassinate the president as well as several firearms offenses. People from his hometown, the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, seem for the most part not to know him very well, saying that he lived with his parents and didn't interact with very many people.

- Mark Carney has announced plans to create a sovereign wealth fund for Canada. Unlike the one so successfully operated by Norway over the decades, it doesn't sound like it will be filled up with oil royalties - under our federal system, these kind of resources fall largely under provincial jurisdiction (as frothing-at-the-mouth Albertans are all too keen to point out whenever any plans to federally manage that sector of the economy are made). Instead, it sounds like it's going to just be some kind of investment fund that you (as well as "the private sector and international partners") buy units of the way you would for a mutual fund or ETF. Ironically, Norway's own sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world (which does get much of its money from oil), was initially inspired by the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust fund as initially set up by Peter Lougheed (but sadly nerfed by Ralph Klein). Now, unfortunately, that sort of thing is anathema to that province.

- Water levels in Ontario's Lake Simcoe are at their highest level in decades, with the potential to cause flooding in parts of Barrie and Orillia as well as the towns of Innisfil and Georgina and the township of Ramara. This is threatening croplands in an area sometimes called the "salad bowl", a major producer of vegetable crops.

- State Farm Insurance is facing hundreds of lawsuits from people who were denied coverage for hail damage, including over 600 in Oklahoma alone. There are allegations of a "wide-ranging program" by the company to avoid claims for such damage, as well as for wildfires. Perhaps the company can see a rise in such claims coming due to climate change and wants to make sure they don't have to pay them. Meanwhile millions of properties in the US are uninsured because the owners can't afford the premiums.

- Tenants at a North End apartment building operated by the nonprofit Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corporation, are raising concerns after the organization began housing homeless people in vacant units in cooperation with social service agencies. Several longtime tenants report that they no longer feel safe; a representative of the nonprofit acknowledges the concerns, saying that while they have been working to house the homeless for several years the situation has worsened in the last year. In contrast to this, organizations in Steinbach are proposing a dedicated building for people in such situations, which would have onsite psychiatrists. This sounds like a better way of dealing with the situation; while I can see some having concerns about the segregating effect of this, that may be a necessary evil in order to maintain a satisfactory level of buy-in from the public.

- A man in his 70s has been arrested following the fatal shooting of a 62 year old man in Mississauga. Police believe the shooting was targeted; you'd think one would outgrow one's gangster phase by that age.

News roundup, 27 April 2026

- Trump was rushed out of the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday after a shooting incident. He escaped unscathed; a suspect is in custody and has been identified as a part time teacher and game developer. Investigators believe he was targeting administration officials but haven't said if Trump himself was among those he was after.

- Municipal leaders in Manitoba want provincial legislation amended to allow municipalities to ban disruptive people from public meetings. This follows an attempt to do so by the Rural Municipality of Alexander that was nixed by the courts.

- Alexandre Boulerice, the only NDP MP from Quebec, reportedly plans to step down and run provincially for the leftwing Quebec Solidaire party (there is no provincial wing of the NDP in Quebec). This will leave the NDP with only 5 MPs.

- The Kinew government in Manitoba plans to follow Australia's lead in banning social media for youth. The proposed legislation also covers things not covered by Australia's law, most notably AI chatbots. Interestingly, many young people asked by the CBC about this draw a distinction between the two, being in favour of restricting chatbots but not social media. No timeline for a ban has been announced so far.

- The Carney government has released a fiscal update indicating a deficit of $25.5 billion for the period from April 2025 and February 2026. This is considerably lower than the forecast from November, which projected a deficit of $78.3 billion for that time period. Poilievre, of course, is never satisfied on such matters and is calling for the cancellation of the high speed rail plan as well as the gun buyback program and a hard cap of $31 billion for deficits.

- A French teenager has been arrested in Singapore after posting footage on Instagram of himself licking a straw from a vending machine and putting it back in the dispenser. He has been charged with mischief and being a "public nuisance"; he could face up to two years in prison and thousands of dollars of fines if convicted. That does seem a bit excessive, but these sort of social media-fueled pranks are definitely a plague.

News roundup, 20 April 2026

- The US captured an Iranian container ship that was planning to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has called the seizure "piracy" and has announced that they will not be going back to the negotiating table any time soon.

- Mark Carney has recognized that Canada's trade ties to the US have become weaknesses, due to the erratic nature of that country's leadership in these times. This follows an outburst by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in response to Canada's trade breakthroughs with China.

- To the surprise of few, the BBC has found that there is often a large spike in securities trading activity in the leadup to major announcements by Donald Trump. This might seem pretty trivial compared to some of Trump's crimes, of course.

- The uncontrolled building of data centres is becoming a potential issue in the US midterms as opposition grows to the impacts of these centres on energy prices, water use, and other matters. No doubt Silicon Valley will be pulling out all the stops to nip this in the bud, though.

- Two First Nations in Manitoba's Interlake region have declared states of emergency due to impending flooding. Peguis and Fisher River are both anticipating evacuations in the aftermath of a late snowstorm that affected the region. Peguis in particular has been calling for federal assistance towards a permanent solution for years, to no avail. Flooding is also causing disruptions in northeastern Ontario and in Gatineau, Quebec.

- A Chinese-born artist who emigrated to the US in 2022 was arrested while visiting family back in China in 2024 on charges of "insulting revolutionary heroes and martyrs". This is in response to works he exhibited back in 2009 that satirized Mao Zedong.

- A couple from Kelowna, BC were hit with a huge bill by Enterprise Rent-A-Car for allegedly damaging their rental vehicle by filling it up with diesel. The thing is, they had kept receipts from the gas station, and even taken a photo of the gas pump, showing that it doesn't even dispense diesel - and yet the company still sent them a bill for $9,500. Evidence was also provided that the fuel filler could not accommodate the larger nozzles from diesel pumps. The company only backed down after they hired a lawyer and the CBC started asking the company questions. I can confirm that this sort of thing isn't that uncommon in the car rental business; a number of years ago I had a disconcerting experience with a different company when I rented a truck and then was sent a bill claiming that I'd racked up a huge amount of mileage on the vehicle. Fortunately they immediately reversed this when I called them and pointed out that there was no way I could have driven thousands of kilometres in the couple of hours that the truck was in my possession. One is left with the impression, though, that these companies like to throw something at the wall and see if it sticks every so often.

News roundup, 15 April 2026

- Donald Trump is threatening to revoke the trade deal he made with the UK last year if relations between the two countries don't improve. Trump accuses the UK, as well as numerous other countries, of being "not there when we needed them" for the war on Iran. To his credit, PM Kier Starmer says he will not give in. Meanwhile Trump is suggesting that peace talks with Iran could resume in the coming days, after breaking down over the weekend. 

- Along with the war, Trump's feud with the Pope and circulation of an AI-generated image of himself as a Christlike figure may be among the few things he's done that could significantly cut into his support. He's drawn a lot of support from conservative Catholics, but there seem to be limits. On the other hand, his followers are extremely good at compartmentalization, especially when he causes people they dislike to suffer.

- The Carney government is temporarily suspending the excise taxes on gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel. I still say a better way of providing relief, if you're going to reduce taxes, would be to reduce the GST by a revenue-equivalent amount, thus helping everyone rather than just those who drive or fly. This just incentivizes people to keep driving. And this sort of thing tends to develop a momentum; already Manitoba's opposition is calling on the province to scrap its gas tax permanently. This needs to be nipped in the bud.

- Communities in Manitoba's Interlake region are concerned about the flooding situation this spring. Peguis First Nation as well as the town of Arborg are watching anxiously to see if it's as bad as it's been in some recent years. Even in Winnipeg the floodway is being operated to protect low lying properties. This isn't entirely bad news, since it means some relief for Manitoba Hydro from the impacts of the drought we've seen over the last few years.

- An American influencer who calls himself Johnny Somali has been sentenced to six months in prison for public order violations in South Korea. He had caused public outrage by filming himself kissing a statue commemorating wartime sex slaves, referred to as "comfort women" by Japan. He has previously created a stir by taunting Japanese commuters about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

News roundup, 14 April 2026

- Mark Carney's Liberals have swept three byelections held yesterday, giving them a slight majority of 174 seats in the 338 member House of Commons.

- There are already predictions being made about how the defeat of Viktor Orbán will impact the global right. Certainly it's a sign that Trumpism isn't popular on the international scene, but before we get our hopes up too much, it's worth noting that the incoming prime minister,  Péter Magyar, is right of centre himself and was a member of Orbán's Fidesz party until 2024.

- German chancellor Friedrich Merz is the most unpopular head of government across 24 democracies. Only 19% of Germans approve of his performance, while 76% disapprove; Emmanuel Macron had a lower approval rating (18%) but also a lower disapproval rating (74%). The margin of error for the survey isn't given, though, so it's questionable how meaningful the ranking is for those two. Meanwhile Donald Trump's approval rating is still 38% in spite of everything, and his disapproval rating is only 57%. Leaders of Spain, Italy, and Argentina also fall into that mid-range; the most popular leaders among the countries surveyed were Indian PM Narendra Modi (70%), South Korean president Jae-myung (63%) and Czech PM Andrej Babiš (55%). From that it's probably safe to say that there's no correlation in either direction between how popular a leader is and how good they are.

- Electric vehicles are getting cheaper; even in the US they're increasingly competitive with conventional cars. Combine that with the impact of Trump's war on fuel prices and Americans just might find themselves dragged into the EV era, no matter how emasculating it might be to not hear that V8 roar when you press the accelerator.

- Two people have been arrested after allegedly opening fire on the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. This comes only two days after someone else tried torching the place. Nobody was injured in either incident. Meanwhile a survey of  2,400 "knowledge workers" found that 29% of those surveyed admitted to taking actions to sabotage their companies' rollout of AI. Of course the way AI gets introduced is often pretty haphazard; some of the accounts given in this related Reddit thread are pretty telling:

"The majority of AI rollouts that I've seen have been 'Please guys, find any problem that we can solve with AI. Anything, please. Just do something, the executives don't have any ideas either but we need AI.' and then they blame the workers when there's not any useful use case."

"My wife's company had that. Find a way to build it into your workflow. Then suddenly someone changed they mind and they're requiring you NOT to use it. I think someone just found out how shit it can be. So now, weeks after being aggressively pushed to use AI whenever possible, it's now pause all AI use." 

I think in a lot of cases companies have been sold on the idea that investors want you introducing AI as soon as possible and that your stock value depends on this, so executives push people to find some use, any use, for the technology so that they can include metrics about how much they're using it in their annual reports. Certainly that's what the AI companies themselves would have you believe. And I guess day traders don't hold onto the stock long enough to see the technology fail to deliver anyway.

News roundup, 10 April 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

News roundup, 9 April 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

News roundup, 1 April 2026

- NORAD's US commander, Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, has thrown cold water on the idea that the F-35 is essential for the defense of North America. Guillot says that the aircraft is better suited to assaults on overseas targets where its stealth and air-to-surface weapons would be more useful. Prime Minister Mark Carney is holding off on commenting on the matter pending a review.

- The Artemis II mission is scheduled to launch today. It will carry four astronauts, including Canada's Jeremy Hansen, in a loop around the Moon before returning to Earth, in preparation for Artemis III which is planned to actually land.

- Stephen Lewis has died at the age of 88, having lived just long enough to see his son Avi win the NDP leadership.

- Numerous airlines around the world, including Air Canada and Air Transat, are imposing surcharges to deal with the rising cost of jet fuel as a result of the Iran war.

- Pierre Poilievre is calling for the cancellation of the proposed high speed rail line between Toronto and Quebec City, using his usual simplistic populist slogans.

- A man in Niagara Region, Ontario has been sentenced to 20 years in prison on terrorism charges. Matthew Althorpe had created propaganda for the Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist group, and an agreed statement of facts at the sentencing hearing showed that documents that he posted on the Telegram social media platform had inspired multiple terrorist attacks. This included an attack against the LGBT* community in Slovakia that killed two people, as well as a mass stabbing at a mosque in Turkey.

- French MEP Rima Hassan was invited by several organizations to speak at events in Quebec, but was denied entry to Canada. The official explanation was that she had "failed to disclose a previous visa refusal or denial of entry" as well as "an alleged criminal offence, arrest, indictment or conviction". Both of these appear to stem from her participation in one of the flotillas bringing aid to Gaza in June. B’nai Brith Canada has praised the denial, accusing her of "promoting terror"; presumably they think that if those kids in Gaza are given enough food to survive they'll surely grow up to be terrorists. 

- A teacher in Manitoba's Frontier School Division, which serves mostly remote communities in the northern part of the province, has been decertified after admitting to supplying a student with alcohol and cannabis. In other professional misconduct news, a lawyer who is already under suspension by the Manitoba Law Society has been accused of conspiracy to smuggle cannabis into Headingley Jail as well as conspiracy to obtain a prohibited or restricted firearm.

News roundup, 24 March 2026

- New York's LaGuardia Airport has reopened after Sunday's fatal collision between an Air Canada jet and a fire truck. The NTSB is investigating the accident; they are expected to scrutinize the role of the air traffic controller who cleared the truck onto an active runway as well as staffing levels that may have led to the controller being overworked.

- The funding shortfall for the Department of Homeland Security continues, with TSA workers still not receiving paycheques. Trump has insisted that any funding deal has to allow his "SAVE America Act", which complicates voter registration for many voters (significantly, those whose current legal name differs from that on their birth certificate, such as the majority of married women in the country) to move ahead. However, some Republicans in the Senate are getting antsy as more people's flights down to resorts get delayed or cancelled, fearing that said voters might turn on them.

- The European Union and Australia have signed a trade agreement. Negotiations on the agreement had been going on for eight years, but the rise of the Trump regime seems to have focused their minds on getting a deal.

- The Carney Liberals continue to lead the Conservatives by a significant margin. Of course, voters are a fickle lot, and this could change easily based on outside factors (e.g. high fuel prices resulting from the war in Iran).

- Amanda Lathlin, who represented The Pas-Kameesak in the Manitoba legislature for the NDP, has died at the age of 49. She was the first First Nations woman to serve in the legislature.

News roundup, 13 March 2026

- Mark Carney has finally come out and said that Canada will not participate (directly at least) in the attack on Iran, while still saying that "Canada supports the necessity to prevent Iran’s nuclear program and the export of terrorism". 

- A man is dead after ramming a vehicle into a synagogue in Detroit and exchanging gunfire with a security guard, who was wounded. Authorities say that the attacker was a 41 year old US citizen who was born in Lebanon. They say they haven't found a motive yet, but this probably has something to do with it.

- FBI director Kash Patel gutted a counterintelligence unit specialized in monitoring potential threats from Iran mere days before the US-Israeli attack on the country. One wonders what the motivation for this might have been - had the unit not gathered enough evidence of a threat to justify the attack? Or, more ominously, are they hoping that a major attack will occur that could serve as the "Reichstag fire" that Trump could then use as justification to cancel the midterms, and that the unit might actually foil such an attack?

- The Pentagon has banned press photographers from briefings on the war after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took exception to photos that he deemed unflattering to him.

- Bill C-9, the "Combatting Hate Act", was forced through committee by the Liberals with the assistance of the Bloc Quebecois, against the objections of both the NDP (who along with civil liberties organizations are concerned about the implications for freedom of protest) as well as the Conservatives (who are afraid about possible impacts on freedom of religion). It's kind of telling that the Globe and Mail glosses over the differences between the reasons for the two parties' objections.

- The Alberta Prosperity Project seems to be having difficulty getting enough signatures to force a referendum on independence, judging from the fact that they're now canvassing snowbirds in Arizona and Mexico. They have until May to get enough signatures, 

- Bob Gale, who was appointed by the Ford government as the chair of the Regional Municipality of Niagara, Ontario last December following the death of the previous regional chair, Jim Bradley, has resigned following revelations that he went to the effort (and considerable expense) to obtain an autographed copy of Mein Kampf. The fact that he was heavily pushing amalgamation of the lower tier municipalities in the region probably made him some enemies who might have blown the whistle on his rather curious collection habits.

- A Tennessee woman who was misidentified by facial recognition software was held for six months without bail and hauled off to North Dakota, a state where she says she's never been, over a bank fraud case in Fargo. Apparently they never checked to see if she had an alibi until she was brought there; perhaps it didn't occur to them that the software could get anything wrong. After it was shown that she couldn't have committed the crime they just turned her loose in a strange city until a volunteer with a prison-related nonprofit drove her to Chicago so that family could pick her up from there.