News roundup, 6 March 2026

- Mark Carney is refusing to rule out getting involved in the Iran war despite his misgivings, apparently trying to avoid arousing the ire of Donald Trump. Fen Osler Hampson of Carleton University calls Carney's stance "studied ambiguity" and suggests that he might fear that Trump will use crippling trade sanctions to force Canada to cooperate. Part of me would like to see Canada respond to such pressures by threatening to cut off exports of oil and electricity to the US, but that would require more courage than the Liberal Party usually shows, and if we're honest with ourselves it might not even be a good idea; it's the sort of thing that just might provoke the Mango Mussolini to use military force against us. Many members of the Liberal caucus are worried about the matter; the party's caucus meeting today will be interesting. Meanwhile the war itself continues apace, with drone attacks throughout the Middle East on everything from hotels to fossil fuel infrastructure. The Guardian's Gaby Hinsliff suggests a possible reason why Iran would be lashing out at so many countries - not only are they trying to dissuade those countries from helping the Americans, this may be their version of Israel's Samson option, i.e. "to show Washington that if it’s going down then it’s taking the neighbourhood with it" and "make the wider Gulf look too dangerous a place to invest".

- The Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia via Ukraine, has been offline since January. Ukraine attributes this to damage from a Russian strike, but the Orban regime is accusing Ukraine of deliberate delays in getting the pipeline up and running, and in February they vetoed the EU's latest sanctions package against Russia as well as a loan for Ukraine. Now Orban is getting even more belligerent - in a recent post on X (the former Twitter) he called this a "blockade" that Hungary would break "by force". Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded by suggesting that he could give Orban's address to Ukraine's military; most recently, Hungarian authorities seized two vehicles owned by a Ukrainian bank and took seven bank employees into custody. The vehicles were apparently carrying 40 million US dollars, 35 million euros, and 9 kg of gold, which was being shipped to Ukraine from Austria. Hungarian authorities claim that this is a money-laundering investigation;  the speculation on Reddit is that this is a sign of desperation on Orban's part as his Fidez party has been slumping in the polls of late.

- The Trump regime plans to allow the US Department of Justice to interfere with ethics investigations by state bar associations against current and former DOJ lawyers. A proposed regulation would give Attorney General Pam Bondi "the right to review the complaint and the allegations in the first instance" and would suspend the bar associations' investigations until the review is completed.

- Kristi Noem has been removed from her position as Homeland Security secretary, to be replaced by Markwayne Mullin (currently a Republican senator from Oklahoma). I guess she's going to spend more time shooting dogs with her family.

- One of the objections sometimes raised against Canada choosing Saab's Gripen fighter is that there are concerns about "interoperability" with F-35s. On the face of it this should not be a problem; Danish F-35s and Swedish Gripens have been operating together for some time without difficulty - but it has been suggested that the Americans can make it a problem by denying Canada access to the systems that allow this to work.

- Google is facing a wrongful death lawsuit after a Florida man, Jonathan Gavalas, killed himself upon being asked to do so by the company's AI chatbot, Gemini. The suicide followed a long and bizarre series of exchanges with the chatbot.

News roundup, 28 Jan 2026

- Over 97% of all new cars registered in Norway last November have been electric. The government is now removing some of the initiatives it introduced to encourage people to buy them, as they seem not to be needed anymore.

- US ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra is warning that more American aircraft will need to enter Canada's airspace to address perceived threats if Canada goes ahead and buys planes from those dirty Swedes instead of from Lockheed-Martin. Denmark, on the other hand, is warning us not to listen to the Americans; they're in the position of having previously done what they were told and replaced their entire fleet with F-35s, and now fear that the US could cut off access to replacement parts if the Greenland crisis reescalates.

- Ilhan Omar was sprayed with an unknown substance at a town hall meeting in Minneapolis. The assailant was removed by security; Omar refused to end the meeting and continued, not wanting to give the enemy a success.

- The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight in response to increasing risks of war as well as climate change and artificial intelligence. Particularly concerning is the increasing breakdown of international cooperation which, as flawed as it is, has managed to prevent nuclear war since 1945. Meanwhile, in the UK a national security assessment released following a freedom of information request paints a pretty dismal picture, warning of possible threats to the country's food security unless there are major dietary shifts away from meat, and of growing risks of international conflict. The version initially released had some redactions, including fears that the loss of glaciers in the Himalayas could lead to conflict between the nuclear powers of India, Pakistan, and China. Evidently the government wanted the report suppressed because it was overly negative, and because it calls attention to the government's own failures.

- A lawyer says she was viciously assaulted by Durham Regional Police while finishing up some post-trial work in an interview room at the Oshawa court house. Apparently they thought a black woman in a hijab didn't look like she belonged there, and expressed their displeasure in the way that cops so often do.

News roundup, 26 Nov 2025

- A competition held by Canada's defense department in 2021 found that Lockheed Martin's F-35 had substantially better combat capabilities than Saab's Gripen; the superiority is based on the F-35's "greater stealth and ability to integrate information from various military assets". It's worth noting, though, that stealth in particular is far more important for an aircraft's offensive capabilities than its defensive ones, and all this presupposes that we're still friendly enough with the Americans that they don't remotely disable them or something.

- Another special election is being held next month, to fill a vacant congressional seat in Tennessee. While the district has been reliably Republican of late (Trump outpolled Harris by 22% in the district last year) the race is now seen as competitive, with the possibility of an upset. Whether this will pan out as hoped is another question, though.

- Organizers of a pro-Palestinian conference that was shut down by authorities in Berlin last year are suing the state. Hundreds of police in riot gear had swarmed the venue and pulled the plug to ensure that speeches at the event could not be heard or livestreamed; the state defends this on the grounds that they "predicted" that criminal statements would be made by presenters.

- Violence on Winnipeg Transit buses increased by 281% between 2018 and 2024, the sharpest increase seen among Canadian cities that specifically track this kind of thing. The biggest category of such crimes is common assault, but it also includes a substantial number of more serious cases involving weapons and/or bodily harm.

- University of Winnipeg president Todd Mondor has left office, apparently having been removed by the Board of Regents. He had been appointed in 2022 for what was supposed to be a five year term. The chair of the board is denying suggestions that this was connected to a whistleblower complaint alleging misconduct.

- A fire at a Hong Kong high-rise complex has killed at least four people, including a firefighter, and injured at least five; there are reports that numerous other people are still unaccounted for. The spread of the fire has been attributed to bamboo scaffolding used by maintenance workers.

- An executive with Campbell's is on leave after reportedly mocking the people who eat the company's products, calling the soup "shit for fucking poor people". Not going to win any marketing prizes like that...

News roundup, 18 Nov 2025

- Mark Carney's first budget passed by a margin of 170 to 168, averting an election, after two NDP MPs and two Conservatives abstained.

- The UN Security Council has approved the Trump regime's plan for an international "stabilization force" for Gaza; Russia and China abstained. A lot of the details still have to be worked out, of course, but it almost certainly won't do the Palestinians any good in the long run (it wouldn't have passed otherwise).

- The Palestinian flag was raised at the Manitoba legislature for the first time in history, on the anniversary of Palestine's declaration of independence in 1988. This is consistent with flag-raisings held on national days of more established countries, but of course the rabidly pro-Israel B'nai Brith was not pleased.

- Several former officers in the Canadian air force are urging the government to go ahead with F-35 purchases and not get sidetracked by Sweden's Gripen. I can't help wonder, though, if they're stuck in a past when the US was thought of as a reliable ally. They do argue that the F-35 has better technology, but one has to ask, better for what? Its much-touted stealth capabilities are more important for attack than for defense, for instance; meanwhile its limited range and single engine make it less suited for Arctic operations. Even its communications are ill-suited to the task. Perhaps it's better at attacking people in their own countries than the Gripen, but should that be what we want in a fighter? I guess that has to be weighed against American threats about what will happen if we don't buy it though.

- The Manitoba Municipal Board has given the Granite Curling Club everything they wanted in terms of stopping an affordable housing project if it's going to cost the club even a single parking space. The fact that the club operates out of a building on city-owned land, and that the parking spaces they'd lose are also on city-owned land, seems not to matter. Premier Kinew says he's "open to looking at" the ruling, but is also a bit leery about interfering in a heavy-handed way. 

- Prosecutors in Milan are investigating reports that wealthy Italians paid large amounts of money (around £70,000 each) to participate in "human safaris" run by the Bosnian Serbs in which they would get to shoot at Bosnian civilians from rooftops during the siege of Sarajevo. Not surprisingly, many of these tourists had ties to the far right.

News roundup, 14 Nov 2025

- A full vote in the House of Representatives on the full release of the Epstein files appears imminent after Donald Trump failed to convince Republican representatives Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert to remove their names from the discharge petition. Of course, a yes vote in the House won't force the release; it would still have to be voted on in the Senate, where it is expected to be blocked, but some in the Trump camp fear that this could open divisions in the Republican Party that might get out of control. In other Epstein-related news, Steve Bannon reportedly sought advice on political messaging from him during a pro-Trump media campaign in 2018.

- Lawyers for New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey are arguing for the dismissal of charges against their clients on the grounds that prosecutor Lindsey Halligan's appointment was illegitimate. Halligan was installed on an interim basis without Senate approval after her predecessor, Erik Siebert, resigned after refusing to proceed with the prosecutions.

- Saab CEO Micael Johansson has confirmed that his company is in talks with the Canadian government as well as with Bombardier for a licensing deal to build the Gripen fighter in Canada. There are suggestions that this could not only provide fighters for Canada, but also for Ukraine, who have announced the intention to buy at least 100 of the aircraft.

- Winnipeg's 2026 budget is expected to include a 3.5% increase in property taxes. The city has a lot of catching up to do, given that taxes were frozen for many years while expenses kept creeping up, and time is running out for upgrades to the North End Water Pollution Control Centre, among other things.

- Toronto's city council has voted to relax zoning restrictions that prevented new retail stores and cafes from opening on residential streets, despite the best efforts of NIMBYs like these people. There will still be restrictions; for instance, they can only open on corner lots, or lots next to parks or locations that are already zoned commercial. Food services will be limited; while cafes and the like are OK, large commercial kitchens will not be allowed. And councillors will have a veto on new facilities in their wards.

- The Silicon Valley crowd is apparently looking for ways to get around legislation prohibiting genetic engineering of human embryos. I guess we can add Gattaca to the list of science fiction dystopias that the techbros see as utopias.

- Sonder, a chain of boutique hotels, suddenly went bankrupt on Monday after defaulting on payments and losing their licensing deal with Marriott, stranding thousands of guests in over 40 cities around the world.

- After an intoxicated woman fell while disembarking from a carnival ride in Port Hardy, BC, sustaining significant injuries, investigators learned that the ride attendant had left his nine year old child in charge of operations while he went to "wash up". The company involved is no stranger to such investigations; earlier this year one of their employees was killed when he was hit by the same ride involved in the most recent incident.

News roundup, 20 Aug 2025

- US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra called Canada's second thoughts about whether to go all in on Lockheed-Martin's F-35 fighter are "an irritant that makes it harder to get to a [trade] agreement". More ominously, there are suggestions that Saab, say, might not be able to sell aircraft to Canada if the US doesn't want them to - many of the components in the Gripen fighter are American in origin, so in theory all they'd have to say is "Nice export permits you've got. It would be a shame if something happened to them". If I were in Mark Carney's position I'd be calling their bluff on that. If the Yanks were forced to show their true colours, they'd quickly find that their defense contractors are getting fewer and fewer new foreign orders for components.

- Some AI experts fear that the US power grid, in contrast to China's, is not robust enough to handle the massive energy demands of artificial intelligence. Fortunately, most of the massive amount of new generating capacity in China is solar; unfortunately, there's still a great deal of existing fossil fuel infrastructure in the country. Even more unfortunately, the current American regime will probably try to make up the difference by building new coal and natural gas plants (or nuclear, if we're lucky).

- A 40 year old man in Vernon, Connecticut had to be rescued from a tubular slide in a playground after becoming stuck inside. Authorities had to cut through the slide in order to get him out.

- The commissioner of Greater London's Metropolitan Police has made a specific order that beat cops assigned to the Notting Hill Carnival are not allowed to dance while on duty at the event. The official reason is a fear that dancing officers won't be sufficiently alert to signs of trouble, but Guardian columnist Hugh Muir suspects that the real reason is that someone might take a picture of an officer dancing, and if the police look too friendly and human, the rightwing press would see them as woke. 

- A Florida man has been convicted of second-degree murder after fatally stabbing his friend in a dispute over Donald Trump's financial acumen. The victim and the attacker were at a gathering at a residence in the small city of Arcadia. The victim had apparently made a remark about Trump having gone bankrupt (which, spoiler alert, he's done a few times) and in the ensuing dispute the other chap stabbed him with a kitchen knife.

- In other Florida news, a 71 year old woman in Wakulla County has been charged with several crimes after holding a family at gunpoint because she didn't believe the kids belonged to the father. The article doesn't say anything about the victims other than saying it was a father with two daughters under 13, but I'd wager donuts to dollars that the father is black and the daughters are sufficiently light-skinned to pass as white.

News roundup, 18 March 2025

- The second set of remains found at the Prairie Green Landfill have been identified as having been Marcedes Myran, another victim of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki. In other news, a woman from Buffalo Point First Nation who was severely injured in a hit and run in Winnipeg last Friday believes that she was hit intentionally - she says a van followed her as she walked down Osborne Street, then as she crossed the street she made eye contact with the driver, only for the van to strike her, reverse over her, and drive over her again.

- A poll by Leger Marketing suggests that Canadians' sense of national pride is increasing overall - but has decreased by 10% in Alberta. There is also a slight (2%) decline in Atlantic Canada; whether this is statistical noise is hard to say, since the poll was conducted online and doesn't give a margin of error. The Alberta thing, though, is probably real (and would probably be much worse if you didn't include Calgary and Edmonton).

- The Canadian government is seriously reconsidering whether it's a good idea to buy any more F-35 fighters beyond the 16 we've already paid for, especially given that we'd be dependent on the (possibly hostile) US for maintenance and software upgrades. Defence Minister Bill Blair is suggesting that the remainder of the fleet could be made up of the Saab Gripen; as a bonus, Saab has promised that assembly and maintenance of the aircraft could be done in Canada under license, potentially bringing a lot of jobs.

- Canadians crossed the US border by car 23% less last month than they did the previous February. Air travel dropped as well, albeit by only 2.4%. I suspect if you don't count non-discretionary (e.g. job related) crossings, the drops would be considerably higher.

- In his most recent "state of the city" address, Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham mused about ending remote and hybrid work. CUPE Local 500 has filed a grievance on the matter; the local's president Gord Delbridge points out the fact that remote work has been beneficial for employee retention and has not significantly harmed productivity. Gillingham says that bringing workers back into the office will help downtown businesses; no doubt that is the real motivation here, especially since a decline in the value of commercial real estate will be bad for the city's revenue stream. Delbridge, however, questions the benefit to downtown businesses; he says some of his members are vowing to boycott downtown businesses if forced back into the office.

- The Canadian woman who was detained in an immigration facility in Arizona has been released and has returned home to BC. Most of her fellow inmates are not so fortunate; to her credit, she recognizes that.

- The metaphor of the "dumpster fire" has been used to describe a number of things, including Trump's first term. Now, in Brandon we finally have something worthy of comparison to Trump's second term - a whole landfill is burning.