News roundup, 6 Nov 2025

- The death toll in the UPS plane crash in Louisville has risen to 12, and may rise further as the search for victims continues. One of the dead was a child who had accompanied a parent to the auto parts business where the parent worked. In other aviation-related news, the FAA is reducing air traffic by 10% at numerous high traffic airports, as they struggle to deal with the number of sick calls by air traffic controllers (who still aren't getting paid thanks to the government shutdown).

- The US Department of Justice has been firing immigration judges before their probationary period ends, including an entire incoming class of newly trained judges. NPR reports that a disproportionate number of the judges who were fired had previously represented immigrants in their past legal careers.

- Manitoba's legislature has passed Bill 48, the Protective Detention and Care of Intoxicated Persons Act, which extends the time that such persons can be detained to 72 hours. The entire legislature, except independent MLA Mark Wasyliw, voted in favour of the bill. This is intended to address the long-lasting nature of the psychosis resulting from meth. A facility, to be run by the Main Street Project, will be set up on the fringes of the city centre. The medical community is divided on the issue; while several doctors signed a letter in support of the change, others question the merits of doing so. One of the points made by the critics is more relevant for opioids than for meth - the fear is that their tolerance could decline enough during the detention period to put them at increased risk of overdose when released.

- Waterloo Regional Council has voted to extend the Ion LRT line to Cambridge. The only council member to vote against the extension was Cambridge's mayor, Jann Liggett. Liggett claims her opposition is because the extension doesn't cover enough of the city, but that doesn't make a lot of sense; you have to start somewhere, and people who don't live right by the line will still benefit from being able to catch a short bus ride to a station. Of course, Cambridge's biggest employer is an auto plant, so...

- A trustee with the River East Transcona School Division has been censured for the third time since 2023 for breaching the board's code of conduct. Rod Giesbrecht has a history of discussing confidential internal board matters with outsiders.

- A Winnipeg veterinarian with a lengthy disciplinary history has been ordered to wind down his practice by June of next year following his most recent transgression, a botched surgery that resulted in a cat's leg being amputated. For his part, the vet claims to have been singled out due to his ethnicity, though he offered no evidence.

- A former nurse at a German hospital has received a life sentence after being convicted of murdering 10 patients and attempting to kill 27 others. He had apparently singled out elderly patients who required more intense care, and desired to reduce his workload.

News roundup, 3 Oct 2024

- The House of Commons has passed a motion from the Bloc Quebecois that calls on the government to "take the necessary steps" to pass Bill C-319 and ensure it is signed into law. The Conservatives, NDP, and Greens all voted in favour of the motion, as did five Liberal MPs. The actual bill, a private member's bill introduced by the Bloc, would boost benefits for seniors aged 65 to 74; since it involves expenditures it cannot actually be passed without the support of the government. The bill is controversial, with some warning that it is a fiscal disaster waiting to happen.

- Manitoba premier Wab Kinew has apologized to the legal community for his comments related to the expulsion of Mark Wasyliw from the NDP caucus. The affair doesn't seem to have harmed the premier's popularity, though.

- Community health services in much of Manitoba could face significant disruptions as CUPE and MGEU threaten to go on strike effective October 8. MGEU head Kyle Ross believes a strike is likely based on the offers from Shared Health.

- As more disasters like Hurricane Helene take their toll, we can expect to see a lot of migration as people leave the most vulnerable areas. And once it starts, it will tend to feed on itself. Not everyone is equally mobile, though, and it's likely that those who don't leave early will be unable to sell their properties. Meanwhile the tax base in the affected areas will collapse, making it harder to cover costs associated with climate change even as those costs keep increasing.

- The US military is testing robot dogs with rifles. They say the robots will only be used against drones. And of course the US military would never lie about something like that, right?

- A Pickering man seems not to have realized that modern cars keep a record of when you overrev them and that manufacturers may not honour the warranty when you do that. You'd think he'd know better, being a student of auto mechanics...

News roundup, 23 Sept 2024

- French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed a new government from the fragmented parliament elected in a snap election earlier this year. The new government is a coalition between his own Renaissance party and the conservative Republicans; however the two parties combined do not have a majority and they will need the support of other parties to pass legislation - possibly including Marine Le Pen's National Rally.

- The author of a recent article in the Manitoba Law Journal on the question of whether it's OK for a backbench MLA such as Mark Wasyliw to be practicing criminal law at the same time thinks there are real issues with the matter, with potentials for conflict of interest as well as the more basic question of whether it's advisable to be trying to do two fairly demanding jobs at the same time. He is, however, critical of the focus on the connection with Peter Nygard. Meanwhile NDP caucus chair Mike Moyes has stated that Wasyliw was a difficult person to deal with; that he may well have been, but I guess that doesn't resonate with the public the way the Nygard thing does. In any case, the matter does not seem to have impacted Wab Kinew's popularity; he still has the highest approval rating of any premier in the country.

- In Ontario, the Ford government is planning to override municipal powers again, this time to restrict municipalities' ability to build bike lanes. The proposed legislation is called the "Reducing Gridlock and Saving You Time Act". In actual fact, fewer bike lanes likely means more motor vehicles on the road and hence more gridlock, but the suburbanites Ford is trying to court seem incapable of understanding that. Or else they don't care because they're stuck driving anyway thanks to their questionable lifestyle choices, so they want to make sure inner city residents don't have it any better.

- Solar energy continues to surge worldwide, and some are predicting that this could finally be the tipping point that starts to cause a reduction in global carbon emissions. Some environmentalists are concerned about the impact of some solar installations, fearing that this will alter some pristine habitats, but the truth is that no habitat is likely to escape dramatic change in the next few decades, so maybe the best approach is to focus on keeping as many habitats viable as possible, rather than pristine. Meanwhile in Norway, electric cars now outnumber gas-powered ones.

- Speaking of keeping habitats viable, as opposed to pristine, researchers in the US, Mexico, and the Caribbean have had some success in breeding heat-resistant corals. Stuff like this is necessary, though it will probably also make some uncomfortable because it's pretty much an admission that wilderness, as we understand it, is essentially a thing of the past. In a similar vein, I think it would make a lot of sense to replant the burned areas of Jasper National Park, say, with broad-leaved trees that are better suited to a warmer climate (and less prone to severe wildfires), but that might be unpopular since it would greatly change the nature of the park. Like it or not, though, engineered ecosystems are going to have to be a much bigger part of our world in the future.

- A large housing and commercial project planned for the French city of Caen has been scrapped following a study that concluded that the sea level rise that's already locked in from climate change will render the site where it was planned uninhabitable in a matter of decades.

- While Kamala Harris stands a good chance of winning in the fall, the possibility that a state with enough electors to decide the outcome could end up in the Supreme Court is worrisome.

- Bruce Zuchowski, the sheriff of Portage County, Ohio, suggested that residents of his county keep lists of addresses with Democratic election signs. One resident who called the sheriff's office and left a message critical of this says that they started getting calls from blocked numbers, and when they finally answered the caller simply read out their name and address. Not particularly subtle of them, that's for sure.

News roundup, 20 Sept 2024

- Dozens of pagers and similar devices used by Hezbollah members have simultaneously exploded in two waves, killing over 30 people and injuring many more. Experts think this is a case of the Israelis playing the long game to get explosives into the supply chain for the devices; this may have been in the works for years. Gwynne Dyer has some ideas on the matter here.

- The fallout related to Mark Wasyliw's expulsion from the Manitoba NDP caucus continues. Caucus chair (and Riel MLA) Mike Moyes says that Wasyliw's conduct towards his colleagues and the premier shows a pattern of disrespect. Now if it's a longstanding issue, then the decision to expel Wasyliw may well have been correct - but in that case mentioning the tenuous Nygard connection, which has aroused the ire of law societies across the country, should have been avoided.

- Manitoba Hydro has plans to add 600 megawatts of wind power to the grid in cooperation with several First Nations and Metis governments. They are also trying to promote the use of heat pumps. The government concedes, however, that they won't be able to completely eliminate fossil fuels in the short term, though they want to make the power grid clean by 2035 and bring the entire province to net zero by 2050.

- Despite pulling out of the supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals, federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is not going to back the Cons' non-confidence motion, and neither is the Bloc Québécois. Not surprisingly, the Cons are enraged by this, and some of their brownshirts tried to confront Singh on Parliament Hill on Tuesday (the Cons deny any connection with them, of course).

- South Carolina is preparing to execute a man even after new evidence, including his co-defendant admitting to having lied about his presence during the trial, has come forth. I guess they can't risk admitting that they could be executing an innocent man, otherwise there might be questions about all the other people they've executed over the years.

- A Kentucky sheriff has been charged with fatally shooting a judge following a confrontation in the judge's chambers at the Letcher County courthouse in Whitesburg. There have been no official statements about the motive so far, though there's some speculation here.

News roundup, 17 Sept 2024

- The federal NDP managed to squeak out a win in the Elmwood-Transcona byelection. The Liberals weren't so fortunate, losing the longtime stronghold riding of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun to the Bloc Québécois.

- At the provincial level, the Manitoba NDP is facing a bit of awkwardness after Fort Garry MLA Mark Wasyliw was expelled from the party caucus. The party's caucus chair, Riel MLA Mike Moyes, was quoted as saying that this follows revelations that one of Wasyliw's colleagues in his law practice was involved in the defense of Peter Nygard. Now it's possible that Moyes was misquoted, or misspoke himself, but if not then this is a very strange and rather troubling move - even a monster like Nygard is entitled to legal representation, and this should not be seen as a stain on the lawyer who takes the job, much less their colleagues. That said, as far back as last fall concerns were raised by the party about the amount of time Wasyliw would be able to devote to the job of representing his constituents if he remained active as a defense lawyer, and he got all pissy when denied a cabinet post last fall (even though being a cabinet minister while practicing law would have been even more difficult than being a backbencher).

- Charges have been laid against the owners of Spirit Rising House, the private, for-profit foster home provider that was giving marijuana to the kids in their care.

- Amazon is completely doing away with hybrid work. They say they fear that without such measures their corporate culture could be "diluted"; as usual, they make absolutely no mention of commercial real estate. Notably, the demand for office space in Amazon's home city of Seattle is the lowest among major American cities; I have to assume that Amazon owns a fair bit of that real estate and that this is a measure to protect their investment. To be fair, there could be real issues with a crash in that market; there could be ripple effects in the economy as REITs that specialize in these products collapse, and the decline in property values could potentially starve municipalities of revenue.