News roundup, 7 Aug 2026

- The heat wave striking Europe continues to rage. Temperatures as high as 42°C have been recorded in Slovakia; in Poland two coal-fired power plants were forced to shut down due to low water levels in the Vistula River, removing 1.3 gigawatts of power from the country's grid.

- Danielle Smith is criticizing the Edmonton Police Service for a video that encourages people to report hate speech. Smith posted on X (the former Twitter) that the police should focus on crime, not "free speech".

- A judge in New Mexico has slapped Meta with a $567 million fine for failing to warn the public about the possible harm that its social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, can do to children. This is on top of another $375 million in fines related to the same case. The judge compared the psychological harm done to young people to pollution, calling it a "public nuisance".

- Several legislators in the US are concerned that "prediction markets" such as Polymarket and Kalshi allow people to place bets regarding wildfires, possibly providing an incentive for people to deliberately start said fires. They are calling on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates the industry, to prohibit the practice. Similar concerns are being raised about such bets on the outcome of clinical trials, with fears that researchers could have an incentive to tamper with trials in some way.

- Toronto police have charged two people, aged 19 and 15, in connection with the recent gunfire incident at the US consulate in that city. The two are believed to have been hired for the job; police are still trying to determine who hired them.

- A 14 year old Thai boy killed his grandparents, then went on a rampage at the prestigious school he attended outside Bangkok. Five teachers were fatally shot and more than 30 teachers and students were wounded before he turned the gun on himself. The murder weapon was a 9 mm handgun owned by his grandfather.

News roundup, 3 July 2026

- The Bank of England has announced that fossil fuel companies' debt will be downgraded from October onwards. Other central banks are taking similar measures; some 40 of them use a statistic called "weighted average climate intensity" (WACI); notably one of the easiest ways to improve that statistic is to sell US Treasuries. The fact that it's the Telegraph (aka the "Torygraph") reporting this is particularly interesting, given that paper's general hostility to things like renewable energy. Unfortunately, the changes that result probably won't happen in time to stop the collapse of the Thwaites glacier and the resulting sea level rise (possibly up to 2 metres by the end of this century), but it might buy some time to adapt to the rise.

- Spain has banned state-owned enterprises from entering into new contracts with Palantir on national security grounds. Other places are taking measures as well; London's mayor Sadiq Khan recently blocked a £50 million contract that the Metropolitan Police had negotiated with the company. Palantir intends to sue over the matter.

- Wally Daudrich, the former Manitoba Progressive Conservative leadership candidate who was disqualified from running in the Turtle Mountain constituency, has left the party in favour of the far right Keystone Party. He will be running for the latter party in the upcoming byelection in The Pas-Kameesak.

- Edmonton seems to be making excellent use of the land formerly occupied by the decommissioned City Centre Airport. The new neighbourhood, called Blatchford, is being developed with a lot of mixed use midrise buildings with retail on the main floor. This is something that many would see as simply good sense, but it's been difficult to build in much of North America for many decades due to archaic zoning laws. The buildings will be heated and cooled by a shared geothermal system and be well served by the city's LRT.

- A recent study in BC has found that life expectancies in the province are diverging. As of 2024, the provincial average has increased since 2004, and in most of Metro Vancouver (with the stark exception of the Downtown Eastside and vicinity) as well as the Victoria area, people can be expected to live substantially longer. A resident of Richmond born in 2024, for instance, should have an average life expectancy of 89.4 years. The Downtown Eastside itself, not surprisingly, has the lowest life expectancy in the province, but notably the province's interior is doing badly as well - and the farther inland you live, the worse your life expectancy is on average. It's not simply that the interior isn't gaining, it's actually retreating - the life expectancy there actually rose between 2000 and 2014 and has been declining since.

- Nine monks on a pilgrimage walk in Thailand were killed when they were hit by a pickup truck driven by an 11 year old boy. The child is in custody.

New roundup, 28 Feb 2025

- Doug Ford's "Progressive" Conservative Party has won its third straight majority, projected to win 80 seats (from 79 at time of dissolution) in the 124 seat legislature. The NDP holds onto Official Opposition status with 27 seats (previously 28). The Liberals are projected to regain official party status with 14 seats (from 9), but their leader Bonnie Crombie was defeated in her own constituency of Mississauga East–Cooksville. The Greens reelected their 2 MPPs, while only one of the six independent members in the old legislature, Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Bobbi Ann Brady, was reelected. Full results, including an interactive map, can be found here. One statement in the CBC article stands out as a bit weird though:

When Ford triggered the $189-million election he asked Ontario voters give him "the largest mandate in Ontario's history" to combat continued economic threats from U.S. President Donald Trump.

On that front, it may prove a bittersweet night for Ford and his PCs, who are likely to return to Queen's Park with roughly the same number of seats after a campaign his rivals called a cynical and unnecessary power play.

I guess it's "bittersweet" in that he didn't win every seat in the legislature (which Frank McKenna actually did in New Brunswick in 1987) but for a government on its third time around, who have presided over the province becoming, by some measures, the worst province in the entire country to live in, the only way it could possibly be bittersweet for Doug and co. is because of the hangovers they'll have this morning for all the cheap American wine and bourbon they drank in celebration.

 - Donald Trump insists that the 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico will go ahead as planned, claiming that drugs are still "pouring" across the borders. Or maybe not. We'll know in a few days I guess. One note from the second article, though:

When asked if the Canadian government is doing enough to meet Trump's bar, Klobuchar, a Democrat, said she can't predict everything Trump is going to do, "but what I can say is that it's enough to meet my bar."

I can't say I find that particularly reassuring. Then again, Trump is so unpredictable that maybe he will let us off the hook - or defer it for another month. The thing about Trump and those influencing him is that, while they're nowhere near as smart as they think they are, they're smarter than they look - and far more cunning. I think Trump and Musk got where they are now largely by throwing their opponents off balance with chaos, and they'll keep doing so as long as it continues to work for them, probably longer.

- Manitoba has become the first province to sign onto the national pharmacare program. The province will receive $219 million over four years to cover diabetes medication, contraceptives, and certain other products. Contraceptives are already covered by the province but many more will benefit from this - assuming the Cons don't win the federal election and claw back the money.

- In Thailand, over 40 Uyghurs who had been detained for a decade after fleeing China have been deported back to Xi Jinping's welcoming arms. Of cousre it couldn't be Thailand caving to Chinese pressure, could it?

- Speaking of caving to a more powerful overlord, UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer seems to share Tony Blair's fear of doing anything, anything, to offend the United States, no matter who is in charge in that country. Starmer refused to answer questions about Trump's proposed annexation of Canada on a visit to Washington on Thursday, accusing the reporter of "trying to find a divide between us that doesn’t exist". And Romanian authorities have permitted Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan to leave Romania as they await their trials for rape and sex trafficking. There had been reports of pressure from the Trump regime to allow this, though of course the Romanians are denying that this had anything to do with their decision.