News roundup, 8 April 2026

- Donald Trump has agreed to defer the annihilation of Iran's infrastructure for two weeks, following negotiations brokered by Pakistan. The Israelis are making it clear that they don't consider this to apply to Lebanon, and have continued to bomb that country, ostensibly in an attempt to root out Hezbollah.

- Some 25% of Pakistan's households now have solar power, meaning that the country has suffered a lot less from the surge in energy prices than most countries.  

- There are warnings that this summer's expected El Niño could be a big one, possibly a "super El Niño". Weather impacts in various parts of the world could be significant; in Canada it could mean a mild winter, but possibly more lake effect snow in southern Ontario if the Great Lakes don't ice up.

- Manitoba PC leader Obby Khan has been scolded by the Speaker of the legislature for a hateful comment made against Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara. Khan had initially denied making the remark as reported but a recording indicated otherwise; he has apologized.

- The Somali community in Minnesota is feeling more than a bit uneasy about living under the Trump regime. Many are seeking asylum in Canada; unfortunately new (and controversial) legislation may limit their ability to do so.

- New legislation in the UK will prohibit "no-fault evictions"; there has been a surge in such evictions in the leadup to the legislation taking effect next month. 

News roundup, 13 Jan 2026

- Manitoba premier Wab Kinew is voicing solidarity with Minnesota following the killing of Renee Good last week. Less sympathetic is far-right perennial candidate Patrick Allard, who has had his membership and board position with the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party suspended following some unpleasant social media posts about the killing. One tweet quoted in the article was posted as an inquiry about whether ICE is hiring in Canada; not mentioned in the article is that he also declared that Good was "rightfully terminated". I guess stuff like that is a bridge too far even for Obby Khan. The thing is, the Cons presumably knew he was a scumbag when he was elected to their board (he hasn't exactly made a big secret of it) so they're presumably just annoyed that he said the quiet part out loud.

- The US sanctions against the International Criminal Court are making life difficult for the court's judges. They find themselves unable to do business with any American company, including credit card companies, or even buy US dollars. The court itself is having to adopt new payment systems in order to pay its employees and receive payments from the countries that recognize its authority; it has also abandoned Microsoft Office in favour of openDesk, an open source package similar to LibreOffice. This doesn't solve all their problems by any means; there are fears that even non-American companies might be reluctant to deal with them for fear of annoying the US.

- Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has managed to talk Trump down from intervening militarily in her country. Trump has mused lately about doing just that to deal with drug cartels; hopefully he can be sufficiently distracted by something else (and hopefully that something else won't be Canada).

- The US Department of Labor released a promotional video that contains the slogan "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage". The similarity to "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" is hard not to notice; whether they're actively trying to sound like Nazis or just using punchy slogans that will resonate with the simple-minded folks that they're trying to appeal to and just end up sounding that way is uncertain. Either way, not a good thing.

- A Dallas woman who worked for a subcontractor for the Hilton hotel chain was apparently fired after posting a warning on TikTok about ICE agents staying in one of the chain's hotels. 

- A novel that had been awarded both the grand prize and "reader's choice" awards in a contest in Japan has had the prizes revoked after it was discovered that it had been written mostly by AI. 

- A 19 year old woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was apparently irate at being blocked on TikTok by an 18 year old acquaintance. She's now accused of killing her over the matter. 

News roundup, 28 April 2025

- Polls have already opened in Atlantic Canada. Information about where to watch the results once the polls close can be found here.

- Donald Trump will not shut up about his desire to take over Canada. He'd been a bit quiet about this lately, no doubt being advised about the risk of electing a less friendly government up here, but it seems he can't help himself.

- 11 people were killed and numerous others injured when someone drove an SUV into a crowd at a Filipino community festival in Vancouver on Saturday. The suspect was grabbed by bystanders and held until the police arrived; he has been charged with second-degree murder. The police have dismissed the idea that this was a terrorist attack, and Vancouver mayor Ken Sim stated that the suspect has a significant mental health history, but it's difficult to assess these claims because a publication ban prevents the details from being released.

- The FBI showed up at a Wisconsin courtroom to arrest a man who was in court for another matter. The judge hearing the case, Hannah Dugan, refused to cooperate with them due to the lack of a warrant, whereupon the FBI arrested her as well. Stuff like this does not bode well for judicial independence in America.

- CentreVenture Development Corporation has agreed to fund a study to evaluate the possibility of saving Holy Trinity Anglican Church, which faces possible demolition due to structural issues.

- China has successfully built a nuclear reactor that runs on thorium (more accurately, it runs on uranium-233 which is bred from thorium). It's a small facility, generating only two megawatts, but it's an important proof of concept. Notably, such reactors are much more difficult to weaponize, due to the difficulty of handling uranium-233 to shape it into the kind of structure that can be imploded to make a nuclear explosion.

- Manitoba's Progressive Conservative Party has chosen former CFL star turned MLA Obby Khan as its new leader. Khan will probably poll somewhat better in Winnipeg than opponent Wally Daudrich, though he still probably faces an uphill battle to win the next election.

- The MAGA crowd has created a website, Public Square, which bills itself as "the anti-woke online marketplace" to show Trump supporters which businesses they should be supporting. To their chagrin, the sane crowd discovered the site and has been using it to find out which businesses to boycott.

News roundup, 11 March 2025

- Various fake images of Mark Carney with such despicable people as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are being circulated on social media. The images show signs of having been generated with AI.

- Donald Trump apparently has his eyes on the Columbia River Treaty, which regulates the flow of the eponymous river for hydroelectricity and flood prevention. Trump apparently listed the treaty among his grievances against Canada in discussions with Trudeau.

- While interim Manitoba PC leader Wayne Ewasko has belatedly apologized for his party's stance on the landfill search in the last provincial election, leadership candidate Obby Khan isn't so sure; while he eventually came around to supporting the apology (presumably after sniffing the wind) he is not prepared to say that the Stefanson government made a mistake in its decision not to conduct a search at the time. For his part, the other leadership candidate, Wally Daudrich, is now saying that he's in favour of a search but that he thinks it should be paid for by private sector donations (like that's ever going to happen).

- X (the former Twitter) was hit with a massive distributed denial of service attack that shut down the platform several times on Monday. Musk has hinted that it might be a country who's responsible due to the scale of the attack, however a hacker organization called Dark Storm Team is claiming responsibility for the outage.

- A&W Canada, which has long been independent of its American former parent company, may be reaping the benefits of Canadians' rage against the US. The fact that the food is considerably better than McDonalds fare is a bonus.

News roundup, 18 Oct 2024

- The Manitoba government has hired former federal cabinet minister Lloyd Axworthy to study the feasibility of relocating the rail yards that separate Winnipeg's city centre from the North End. The matter has been mooted for years, but perhaps the closure of the Arlington Bridge has added a sense of urgency to the matter. Axworthy was involved in the relocation of CN yards from the Forks in the 1980s while serving as transport minister; notably, though, that was when CN was still owned by the federal government.

- The Kinew government is also scrapping the previous government's plans to use a P3 model to build schools. Part of the concern is over the terms seen in previous P3 agreements in other provinces; because the private partners retained a stake in the schools, they put undue restrictions on the use of classrooms (including prohibiting teachers from putting art on classroom walls) - not to mention the fact that many such arrangements ended up costing considerably more than the traditional way of building schools once maintenance is factored in.

- Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan and Churchill hotel owner Wally Daudrich will be competing for the Manitoba PC leadership - assuming that Daudrich passes the party's vetting (Khan has already been approved).

- The Green Party's candidate in Steinbach, who withdrew from the race shortly before last year's election, was found to have forged two signatures on her nomination papers.

- An organization calling itself "West Coast Proud" has spent tens of thousands of dollars on social media ads promoting the BC Conservatives and attacking the NDP. Turns out that the people behind it are Albertans trying to influence the outcome of another province's election.

- The BC Conservatives have finally released their platform on Tuesday, only days before the election (and after a record number of people had already voted in advance). Turns out that they plan to run a deficit of nearly $11 billion in their first year, higher than the NDP or the Greens. Their candidates also have a poor record for turning up at all candidates debates, and one of them has apparently been calling herself a medical doctor based on her doctorate in "integrative medicine" from an institution called "Quantum University" in Hawaii. I suspect the College of Physicians and Surgeons would like a word with her about that.

- Christopher Yoo, a 17-year-old chess grandmaster competing in the US Championship, has been expelled from the tournament following an incident in which, after being defeated by Fabiano Caruana, he crumpled up his scoresheet and stormed out of the tournament hall, allegedly assaulting a videographer in the process.

- A woman tore down what she believed to be Israeli flags at a restaurant in Montclair, New Jersey, while shouting "Free Palestine! This is genocide!" Thing is, the flags were actually Greek flags, not Israeli ones.