News roundup, 22 Nov 2024

- While it's too late to do anything about it now, it's an interesting academic exercise to consider whether US Attorney General Merrick Garland could have prevented the reelection of Donald Trump. Dean Obeidallah argues that Garland has utterly failed his country by failing to push aggressively enough in prosecuting Trump after the Jan 6 putsch. Many in this Reddit thread agree with Obeidallah; others think that Garland had no choice but to do his utmost to build an airtight case against the former President, due to the inevitable perception among half the country that this was a partisan hit job against their hero. But I can't help but think that maybe he should have just recognized that this would happen no matter how airtight the case and pushed ahead aggressively; on the other hand, if he did that and it ended in an acquittal, that could have won a lot of support for Trump.

- If RFK Jr. is appointed health secretary as everyone expects, we'd better hope that we don't get another pandemic during the coming years - like, say, a mutant version of H5N1 (avian influenza) that can easily spread human to human like many other flu strains. Some fear that the recent case in BC could be a sign that this is happening; on the other hand, you'd expect to have heard of more cases by now if that were true.

- Matt Gaetz has abandoned his quest to become the US Attorney General; Trump has selected prosecutor Pam Bondi for the position instead.

- The Trudeau government is suspending the GST on a number of items for a two month period; the list of affected items includes things like children's clothing and diapers but also less essential things like restaurant meals, Christmas trees, and beer. They're also sending out $250 cheques in the spring to anyone who earned less than $150,000 last year. One could be forgiven for being a bit cynical about the government's motives here.

- The truck driver involved in that fatal crash last week near Altona, Manitoba was charged with two counts of dangerous driving causing death and one of obstructing a police officer. He has now disappeared and is the subject of a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest.

- While Waterloo Region's LRT system, the Ion, has been very successful, there is one recurring problem - morons keep trying to pull U-turns in front of the trains. In the most recent case the train was actually derailed, though fortunately nobody was injured, not even the idiot driving the car. You can see video of the accident here.

- There are indications that the highly popular weight-loss drug Ozempic not only helps people to lose weight, it seems to actually change people's tastes towards more healthful foods. The fast food industry is sufficiently worried about this to be intensely studying the incidence of this; it's bad news for them if this is true, albeit good news for everybody else. On the downside, there is some evidence that more food might be wasted by users of Ozempic and similar drugs.

- A bill before Australia's parliament would ban most social media for persons under 16. An exception is made for YouTube due to the large amount of educational and other child-friendly content on the platform; some who called for the legislation approve of enabling youth to watch YouTube, but would prefer to have a limitation on young users' ability to upload material to avoid the potential for exploitation and bullying.

- Six people have died of apparent methanol poisoning after visiting Vang Vieng, Laos, a popular destination for young tourists. This is a shockingly common occurrence in much of the world, including the EU.

News roundup, 19 Nov 2024

- Donald Trump's list of picks for his cabinet was never going to be something sane and reasonable people would like, but some of his picks have been described by critics as "political performance art", choosing some of the most hardline and extreme people as a way of "owning the libs". Choosing a possible sex offender as Attorney General? A possible Russian asset as head of intelligence? An antivax nutter as Secretary of Health? With most countries, the rest of the world could just ignore them or look on with pity, but when it's the country with the world's reserve currency (not to mention the world's largest military), it's kind of hard to ignore.

- A bill before the US House of Representatives, the so-called "Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act", would empower the Secretary of the Treasury to unilaterally declare a nonprofit as a "terrorist supporting organization" and revoke its tax-exempt status. While the majority of Democrats oppose the bill, a significant minority do not; coincidentally a lot of pro-Israel groups are lobbying for its passage, so I think we all know where this is going. The fact that the Secretary of the Treasury is soon going to be an as-yet unnamed Trump appointee in a couple of months does not faze that lot in the slightest.

- Russia continues to make gains in Ukraine, but at a high cost in terms of casualties. They are now cutting back on payments to wounded soldiers. Of course, in all likelyhood all they have to do is hold out until January and Ukraine's weapon supplies will be seriously curtailed, but at least Russia may suffer enough damage to limit their conquests to one country. That's about the best one can hope for, in today's world. Meanwhile the US has authorized the transfer of long-range missiles to Ukraine, and Russia has responded by threatening a nuclear response to any "massive aerial attack". This may be a bluff but Germany doesn't want to take any chances and is unwilling to give Ukraine such weapons.

- The European Union recently brought forward a policy to address deforestation by requiring importers to prove that supply chains for their products do not cause deforestation anywhere in the world. Unfortunately their parliament is delaying the legislation and seems set to weaken it to placate said importers.

- A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 was hit by gunfire as it prepared to take off from Dallas on a flight to Indianapolis. Nobody was hurt, and the aircraft returned safely to the terminal and was removed from service for repairs.

- A student in Michigan who was asking Gemini, the Google AI chatbot, for homework advice was suddenly hit with an admonition to "Please die". One wonders if the chatbot may have been subject to some sort of priming by the 4chan crowd. I hope that this is the case; alternative explanations are even more worrisome.