News roundup, 15 Jan 2024

- Special Counsel Jack Smith has delivered a report to Attorney General Merrick Garland outlining the evidence against Donald Trump related to the Jan. 6 putsch and the hoarding of classified documents. Smith says that the evidence was sufficiently strong to convict Trump had the case gone to trial, but unfortunately that is now moot as the cases have been dropped.

- There are more signs that Mark Carney plans to seek the federal Liberal leadership, with a report that some 30 MPs are willing to back him. Liberal house leader Karina Gould is also expected to announce a run for the party leadership shortly; meanwhile Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne and former B.C. premier Christy Clark have announced that they will not be running. Clark was apparently planning a run but has decided not to following revelations that she misspoke herself when she said she'd never been a member of the Conservative Party.

- Janice Morley-Lecomte, who served as Minister of Mental Health and Community Wellness under Heather Stefanson, has been nominated as the federal Conservative candidate in Winnipeg South. She probably has a good chance of unseating Liberal MP Terry Duguid.

- Wally Daudrich, a businessman and candidate for the leadership of the Manitoba Tories, is in damage control mode after his campaign shared someone else's Facebook post, which just happened to contain a comment on the necessity to keep Obby Khan, a Muslim, from winning the leadership. Daudrich's campaign manager tried to downplay the issue, pointing out that the post in question originally came from outside the campaign, but it definitely raises questions about the kind of people he attracts.

- Quebec-based pilot Pascal Duclos flown water bombers for many years, and has worked 14 seasons in California alone, but he says he's never seen conditions like he's seeing now. Of course the fact that this time it's a huge sprawling city that's burning, plus the fact that the Santa Ana winds are still gusting up to 70 km/h and idiots are flying drones in the path of the planes, would tend to make for a challenging job. In related news, 93 seniors had to be evacuated from an Los Angeles care home shortly before the structure was consumed in flames. The director the facility was dreading the possibility of having to decide who would be saved, and no doubt had the fate of some residents of the Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina gnawing at the back of her mind. And the major record labels are cancelling all Grammy-related events; for showbiz to be impacted in L.A. of all places you know things are bad.

- A home security camera in PEI has been credited with the first known video and audio recording of a meteorite impact.

- A wandering senior in Guelph, Ontario was successfully located and brought home with the help of a tracking bracelet. While many praise the program for saving lives, some are also a bit uncomfortable about the privacy implications.

News roundup, 2 Jan 2025

- There was yet another aviation accident/incident on the weekend, when a de Havilland Dash 8, operated by PAL Airlines on behalf of Air Canada, landed at Halifax without its left main gear extended. Despite a fire breaking out, passengers were successfully evacuated without serious injury.

- The Jeju Air Boeing 737 that crashed at Muan International Airport in South Korea had passed a pre-flight inspection with no apparent issues prior to the fatal flight. The government has ordered that airline as well as another one, Aero K, to suspend operations while the matter is investigated; several safety violations not directly related to the crash have been found so far.

- There have been 16 major disease outbreaks on cruise ships in the last year; diseases include norovirus, salmonella, and pathogenic strains of E. coli. 

- Joe Biden has said that he could have won the election; he has, however, expressed regret for going along with advice to appoint Merrick Garland as attorney general. While I have my doubts that the first part is correct, Garland's failure to aggressively prosecute Trump seems worthy of regret.

- Finnish investigators have found a 100 km long seabed trail where the anchor of that Cook Islands-registered oil tanker seems to have been dragged, adding to suspicions that the undersea electrical cable to Estonia was the target of sabotage. Estonia has been trying to make its power grid independent of Russia, and many suspect that this didn't sit well with the Kremlin.

- Fifteen people are dead and around 30 injured following a vehicle attack on New Year's revellers in New Orleans on Wednesday morning. The driver, who was killed by police, was American-born, but a flag associated with ISIS/Daesh was found at the scene. Meanwhile in Las Vegas someone detonated a primitive device in a rented Cybertruck in front of the Trump Hotel in that city, killing the driver and injuring several other people; police are still investigating whether the two events are connected.

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.