News roundup, 5 Sept 2025

- At least 16 people were killed on Wednesday and 21 injured, five seriously, when one of Lisbon's funicular trams went out of control and derailed, colliding with a building. Two Canadians are among the dead. Initial reports suggest a problem with the cable; a full investigation of an accident like this can take quite some time, however. As an odd side note - in the course of browsing Wikipedia about funicular railways, I learned that the classic Italian song "Funiculì, Funiculà" was written to celebrate the opening of such a railway in 1880.

- A stabbing rampage and ensuing police chase in Hollow Water First Nation has left two people dead, including the suspect, and eight people, including an RCMP officer, with serious injuries.

- The Norwegian government, along with a consortium of oil companies, has launched the world's first large scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) operation, injecting CO₂ into the seabed 2,600 metres beneath the North Sea. I'm not opposed in principle, but even if it works as well as advertised it's a stopgap, not a solution; the storage capacity may well run out before fossil fuels do.

- While condos are a good idea in principle, a disproportionate number of condos built in Canada in recent decades were built as something to invest in more than something to live in. As a result, many of them aren't really good to live in for the long haul, and sales have cratered recently to the point where many investors are now underwater on their mortgages. Not mentioned in the article, but suggested by folks in this Reddit thread, is the role of the short-term rental industry in the whole matter; apparently many condos built since the advent of Airbnb were built more like hotel rooms than actual apartments.

- Donald Trump intends to sign an executive order that will rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War. To be fair, there was a time when most countries gave their defense ministries such a name, but that was mostly before WWII, after which it became less fashionable to treat war as if it were some kind of goal (or at least to advertise yourself as doing so by naming an entire government department after it). For a while, at least; now that the Americans are going back that way we'll have to see if the rest of the world follows their lead.

- Self-styled "Queen of Canada" Romana Didulo was released without charges on Wednesday, only to be rearrested on Thursday for violating conditions of her release. The owner of the decommissioned school where she and her followers were based was also rearrested; the two had been ordered not to communicate with each other.

- Human remains found in Algonquin Provincial Park in 1980 have been identified using genetic genealogy as being from a Cleveland man who disappeared in 1973. Eric Singer had fled the US after being drafted.

News roundup, 4 Sept 2025

- The RCMP raided the compound of self-proclaimed "Queen of Canada" Romana Didulo in Richmound, Saskatchewan on Wednesday. Didulo and 15 others were arrested following a firearms investigation; charges are pending.

- Calgary lawyers John Carpay and Jay Cameron, of the so-called "Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms", have been disbarred by the Law Society of Alberta after hiring a private investigator to put Manitoba judge Glenn Joyal, who was presiding over their case against pandemic restrictions, under surveillance.

- The Manitoba government is backing away from a plan to open a supervised consumption site near the Disraeli overpass. The government still plans to open a site, but strident opposition from local residents is forcing them to reconsider the location.

- A proposal to build supportive housing in Winnipeg's Grant Park neighbourhood is getting a lot of pushback from residents in neighbouring River Heights. An unsigned leaflet is being distributed to stoke fear of crime and mental illness.

- The Quebec government has rejected an offer of federal money that would have helped address systemic racism in the justice system. Presumably they feared that accepting the money would be an admission that the province has a problem with racism.

- The states of Washington, Oregon, and California are creating a new public health agency in response to the Trump regime's takeover of federal agencies. They will be issuing their own public health recommendations with regards to vaccines and the like.

- A long-lost painting, Giuseppe Ghislandi's "Portrait of a Lady", painted in 1710, has been recovered in Argentina, some 80 years after it was stolen by the Nazis. The painting was discovered by accident in photos on a real estate agent's website; it was hanging on the wall of a house being sold by the daughter of the late Friedrich Kadgien, an advisor to Hermann Goring.