News roundup, 21 April 2025

- Pope Francis has died. No doubt some of the more conservative Vatican officials are secretly breathing a sigh of relief.

- An awkward truth about efforts to get people to use public transit - if people feel unsafe, they're less likely to use it. For this reason, many are calling for more police on transit. This is controversial; some activists warn that this may discourage many poor and racialized passengers from using the service. The thing is though, if the primary goal of a public transit system is to keep cars off the road, the wealthy passengers who are afraid of the absence of police are more likely to actually switch to driving than the poor ones who are afraid of the presence of police - because they can. Of course this line of thinking will make many activist types uncomfortable, but the ultimate goal has to be minimizing total harm to the community as a whole, and while the harms of more traffic are more abstract and less in-your-face than the harms of causing discomfort to poor and racialized people, they are no less real, and all harms have to be weighed in order to develop the least bad policy. And more traffic is bad for everybody, including poor and racialized people (not to mention the biosphere).

- Following Thursday's leaders' debate, the plan was for a media scrum where reporters could ask questions of the leaders. However, this was cancelled due to what the Leaders Debate Commission called "security concerns". These concerns seem to have involved far-right pseudo-journalists like Ezra Levant; in particular, there was a confrontation between Levant and Hill Times reporter Stuart Benson in the leadup to the scrum after Benson pointed out that another organization owned by Levant was registered as a third party advertiser in the campaign and questioned whether Levant should be accredited as a journalist for the event. This of course sent Levant into one of his trademark emotional outbursts, leading to the cancellation of the scrum. For their part, the commission was apparently unaware of the connection between Levant and the third-party advertiser at the time they accredited him and his outlet; in any case, they were reluctant to shut him out due to his having been able to sue his way into similar events in previous elections.

- JD Vance is warning Keir Starmer's government that there will be no trade deal between the US and UK unless the latter's hate speech laws are repealed; Vance is also demanding that a proposed online safety law and a digital service tax be abandoned.

- It's not just leisure travel to the US that's in decline; it's now business travel as well. The fact that people visiting that country are being arbitrarily detained seems to have something to do with it.

- Following "Freedom Convoy" organizer Chris Barber's conviction for mischief, the prosecution is seeking to use civil forfeiture to seize his truck, which he calls Big Red. Of course he and his sheeple are up in arms about this; meanwhile more sensible people are making interesting suggestions like turning it into a mobile vaccine clinic. Now it should be said that civil forfeiture is problematic the way it is used in some jurisdictions; it is sometimes applied before the actual criminal trial so even if you're acquitted your property has still been seized. That concern doesn't apply here, though, since Barber has been duly convicted of a criminal offense in a court of law.

- The tariffs on China are driving up the cost of small appliances and electronic devices, many of which are made nowhere else (at least for the US market). 

- A knife-wielding American citizen attempted to hijack a small passenger aircraft in Belize, wounding two people (one seriously) before he was fatally shot by another passenger.

- A drop-in centre for the homeless operated by the Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation, which provided food, washrooms, and showers for people, has been permanently closed due to escalating violence at the facility. Understandable, but the closure is unlikely to lead to less violence in the city overall; probably the opposite is true.

- A Toronto couple with four kids between them took an Uber home from a Raptors game following a flat tire, but as they were unloading the driver took off with one of their kids still in the vehicle. They contacted the company but representatives refused to contact the driver; they called 911 but the company wouldn't provide info even to the police. Fortunately the police located the vehicle by other means; the driver was still unaware of the 5 year old child sleeping in the back of the car. For their part, Uber apologized afterwards and offered a $10 credit in compensation.

News roundup, 11 March 2024

- Israel's claim that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) included Hamas militants apparently is based partly on "confessions" made when agency employees were subjected to what the Brits like to call "in-depth interrogation". In response, Canada is restoring funding to the agency after previously suspending it based on Israel's allegations. Meanwhile the US airdrop of aid supplies to Gaza appears to have actually caused more civilian deaths, as the parachutes on the aid packages failed to open. 

- Pope Francis has raised more than a few eyebrows with his suggestion that Ukraine should have “the courage to raise the white flag” and negotiate an end to the war with Russia. The most charitable interpretation is that he's viewing the conflict in pragmatic terms and has concluded that Ukraine can't win in the long run (which may well be true), but even by those criteria it's a questionable recommendation, since if Ukraine simply surrenders, rather than tying the Russians down in a long drawn-out guerilla conflict, Russia might possibly be motivated to have a go at someone else like Georgia or, much worse, the Baltic states. On the other hand, a drawn-out guerilla war would sap Russia's resources and make them less of a threat to the rest of the world (much as in the case of their attempt to conquer Afghanistan almost half a century ago). It'd be nice if there were a better role for Ukraine to play than as Europe's sacrificial anode, but that is the world we live in I guess.

- Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew remains popular with the electorate; a recent poll gives him a 63% approval rating, up six points since the last poll.

- Sarah Guillemard, the former Tory MLA for Fort Richmond, says that she was sexually assaulted by an "older former MLA" several years ago.

- Naheed Nenshi has made it official - he's off and running for the leadership of the Alberta NDP.

- At least 50 people were injured, 13 seriously enough to require hospitalization, when a Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by the Chilean carrier LATAM Airlines suffered a sudden loss of altitude on the Sydney to Auckland leg of a flight to Santiago. The airline attributed the incident to "a technical event during the flight which caused a strong movement", though no more details about the cause were made available.

- Mahikan Bus Lines, a partnership owned by several First Nations and based in The Pas, has purchased a bus terminal in Brandon that had been mothballed following Greyhound's departure from the Canadian market a few years ago. 

- Joe Biden made it through his State of the Union address, described by David Shribman as "the most important speech in his political career", without any major gaffes. The same cannot be said for the response to the speech from rookie Republican senator Katie Britt, which was ridiculed by friends and foes alike.

- Donald Trump has posted a bond in the E. Jean Carroll case in order to be able to appeal the decision, after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan refused his request for a delay.

- The number of unclaimed dead bodies is on the rise in Ontario. According to the province's Office of the Chief Coroner, 1,183 bodies went unclaimed last year, compared to 983 in 2022 and 438 in 2019.