News roundup, 11 April 2025

- A Bell 206 sightseeing helicopter broke up in midair and crashed into the Hudson River near Jersey City yesterday afternoon, killing a family of 5 from Spain along with the pilot. It appears that the main rotor came off in flight, chopping off the tail boom as it went. The first thing that comes to mind is mast bumping, but it could also be a mechanical issue. I guess the NTSB will figure it out eventually.

- Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at stopping states from enforcing their own climate laws. Vermont, New York, and California are specifically named in the order. Whether or not the regime will be able to enforce this order remains to be seen, but regardless it's kind of funny that the American far right is really big on states' rights with regards to owning people, but takes a very different view on their rights to protect people.

-The International Maritime Organization's Maritime Environmental Protection Conference (MEPC) is meeting in London to negotiate an agreement on greenhouse gas emissions from shipping. The US is boycotting the meeting, instead sending a letter to the participants warning them that they will take reciprocal measures to protect their own shipping interests if an emissions price is imposed.

- Bridget Brink, the US Ambassador to Ukraine, is apparently planning to resign her position; she has not submitted a formal resignation but sources indicate that she has been "making farewell calls to colleagues". No doubt her position is increasingly untenable given the new regime in Washington.

- China's central bank is ordering major state-owned financial institutions to reduce US dollar purchases and to increase scrutiny on dollar purchases by their clients (the latter apparently an attempt to control speculation).

- Turkey has detained two journalists, accusing them of "threats" and "blackmail". Authorities say the accusation was made by the owner of a TV station who is currently in jail for money laundering; the journalists and their supporters believe the real reason for their arrest was their coverage of protests against the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.

- The UK intends to develop techniques to predict who is most likely to commit homicide. This involves the use of algorithms to analyze detailed information about large numbers of people; they claim that they will only be using data related to people with at least one criminal conviction, but activists are skeptical of this, and furthermore fear that the algorithms themselves will likely have built-in biases against the poor and minorities. I seem to recall Philip K. Dick having imagined something like this...

- A biotech company claims to have achieved the "de-extinction" of the Dire Wolf that lived throughout much of the Americas until the end of the Pleistocene. Critics argue that what have actually been created are genetically modified Grey Wolves with a few Dire Wolf genes inserted. Some Redditors speculate that this is a deliberate attempt to make people think protecting diversity is irrelevant (since hey, we can just bring back anything that goes extinct, right?) Regardless of whether that's the case or not, though, this certainly isn't something we should be relying on to protect biodiversity.

News roundup, 28 March 2025

- Protesters in the UK who broke into a factory owned by an Israeli weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems last year, causing over a million dollars worth of damage, have been locked up indefinitely under anti-terrorism legislation. Evidently the British are going along with the Americans and treating politically motivated vandalism as if it were violence against actual people (which is usually what is usually meant when one speaks of "terrorism"). Some of the protesters have even been denied access to lawyers. I have to assume that the reason for such draconian measures is that the protesters have been effective - nine British companies have cut ties with the firm, and the landlords of one Elbit site in Leicester have sold the property.

- Donald Trump initially nominated Elise Stefanik, a Republican member of Congress from New Jersey, to be the next ambassador to the UN. However, he has now withdrawn the nomination - apparently due to fears that the Republicans' majority in the House is a bit to slim for comfort.

- When Marjorie Taylor Greene was asked a question by journalist Martha Kelner of UK outlet Sky News about the scandal now being referred to in some circles as "Signalgate", Greene refused to answer and told her to "go back your country".

- Jason Stanley, a Yale University professor and author of a book entitled How Fascism Works, has given up his post to take one at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, saying that he has lost confidence in American academia's ability and/or willingness to resist the regime. He says that the last straw was when Columbia University agreed to take several disturbing measures, including a crackdown on campus protests as well as "internal reviews" of some academic programs, in order to retain millions of dollars in federal funding. If that's not a warning to take seriously, I don't know what is.

- A BBC reporter was arrested and deported from Turkey as a "threat to public order" following his coverage of widespread protests against the government. Expect the US to do the same thing to foreign journalists before long.

- A Manitoba judge has ordered CityNews journalist Morgan Modjeski to hand over the raw footage of an on-camera interview with a man at a rooming house in the aftermath of a shooting there. Modjeski had challenged an order to hand the footage over on the grounds of protecting journalistic sources, however the judge ruled that this was irrelevant because the man interviewed was not an anonymous source. His lawyer, though, is concerned about the precedent set by effectively turning journalists into tools of law enforcement.

- The Canadian Research Insights Council (CRIC), an industry group for polling agencies, is warning about an organization called  ERG National Research, which is not a member of the group. ERG has been texting people with election polls, and then asking for their names, something polling agencies generally don't do. The CEO of CRIC has done some digging, but found little about the organization other than the fact that it shares a mailing address with an organization called ElectRight, and that the two organizations list each other as "communication service providers".

- A man has been charged with dangerous driving following an investigation into a crash on St. Mary's Road last October in which a Dodge Charger left the road while doing 213 km/h in a 60 km/h zone and collided with a building. The (surprisingly uninjured) driver fled the scene on foot; I have to assume that he tried to claim that the vehicle was stolen and the delay in pressing charges resulted from an investigation into this claim.

News roundup, 20 March 2025

- Prime Minister Mark Carney is widely expected to issue an election call this weekend, with the election to be held on the 28th of April. Presumably he wants to take full advantage of the Liberals' recent surge in the polls.

- China has slapped tariffs on numerous Canadian exports, mostly agricultural products, in retaliation for Canada's 100% levy on cheap EVs from that country. Some are calling for the EV tariffs to be lifted, both to get relief from China's retaliation and to spite Tesla; the Canadian auto industry isn't keen on the idea of course, but given what Trump is doing the Canadian industry might not have much of a future anyway.

- A court in North Dakota has hit Greenpeace with hundreds of millions of dollars in liability after Energy Transfer, the owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, managed to convince a jury likely composed of slackjawed Trump supporters that the organization was to blame for costs incurred as a result of the Standing Rock protests. This could destroy the organization, or at least its American branch. One thing that's not clear, though - one of the defendants is Greenpeace International, which is based in the EU - who enforces the ruling if that entity doesn't pay up?

- Nova Scotia's Minister of Opportunities and Social Development, Scott Armstrong, is coming under fire after it came out that he used $3,000 of public money to attend Donald Trump's inauguration. Armstrong justifies this by saying it was needed in order for him to advocate for jobs in the province.

- Ben and Jerry's, the famously progressive ice cream manufacturer, is suing its own parent company Unilever over alleged violations of the merger agreement which was supposed to leave the company's "social mission" intact. Apparently Unilever wanted Ben and Jerry's to stop criticizing Trump among other things, and is now removing its CEO without consulting the ice cream maker's board of directors.

- Istanbul University has annulled the degree of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, claiming irregularities in a program transfer he made when he was attending the institution in 1990. This comes just in time to make him ineligible to run for president (a university degree is a necessary qualification for the job in Turkey). Then, just to make sure he was out of the way, Turkish authorities arrested Imamoglu, accusing him of corruption and "links to terror groups". Imamoglu was considered the only credible opponent to incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is up for reelection shortly.

- Tesla has been removed from the upcoming Vancouver Auto Show. Organizers say that this is necessary to protect "the safety of attendees, exhibitors, and staff". Don't know about safety, but it probably is necessary if they want to avoid having the event disrupted by protesters. Meanwhile, people continue to target Tesla dealerships, most recently one in Montreal.

- A doctoral student in urban planning at Columbia University has had her student visa revoked and has fled the US for Canada. The US Department of Homeland Security has labelled her as a "terrorist sympathizer" and "supporter of Hamas", something she denies. But I guess studying urban planning, and thus potentially hurting the market for cars and petroleum, is pretty much the same thing to the Republicans.

News roundup, 22 July 2024

- Joe Biden has abandoned his bid for reelection and endorsed Kamala Harris. European leaders are praising him for his decision (even if it comes a bit late in the game) as well as for his actions as President. One thing is clear - you likely won't see much talk about the candidates' ages coming from the Republicans anymore.

- Many Republican strategists fear that their legislative agenda will alienate women. Many Democrats hope for that very thing; certainly if Harris becomes the candidate as expected she is expected to put this front and centre. And there are promising signs that the Republicans may have peaked too early; hopefully a relatively fresh and young candidate will be able to take advantage of this.

- While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly made statements about the need for caution with AI, whistleblowers from his company say that in actual practice he is using the traditional Silicon Valley "move fast and break things" approach.

- Over half of Turkey's power grid is now supplied by renewables, though they have a long way to go to catch up with places like the EU. The shift has been recent, and seems to be primarily motivated by a desire to reduce dependence on Russia, who supplies most of their fossil fuels.

- The zebra mussel situation at Clear Lake in Riding Mountain National Park is not looking good. Parks Canada is still looking at what measures they can take, but this ship may well have sailed. In other invasive species-related news, some lakes in Manitoba seem to have been illegally stocked with largemouth bass (a popular species with sport anglers). This is a potential problem for native trout and pickerel species.

- Manitoba's Residential Tenancies Branch has ordered the owners of that North End apartment block to reverse the eviction of all their tenants. Still not a good look, especially given that the landlord threw out some tenants' possessions without warning. The province warns that additional orders, and charges, may be pending. In other somewhat promising Winnipeg housing news, a long-vacant block in the Riverview neighbourhood has been purchased by Fisher River Cree Nation and may well be up and running by next year.

- CO₂ levels are now comparable to what they are thought to have been in the middle of the Pliocene epoch, around 3 million years ago. At that time the mean global temperature is estimated to have been about 3°C above present levels; this can be expected to happen over the next few decades unless dramatic changes are made right quick (and possibly even then). Much of Greenland was ice-free at the time; sea level may have been close to 10 metres above current levels. For an idea of what that might look like, check out this site.

- It's so hot in parts of the US that pop cans are under significantly more pressure than usual. When carried in airplanes, they're sometimes bursting as a result. In 20 cases, injuries have resulted.

- A former Ukrainian MP was fatally shot on Friday. She had been a member of an ultranationalist party and had drawn criticism for not considering Russian-speaking Ukrainians to be properly Ukrainian; nonetheless, this is not the optimal way of dealing with people with problematic views.

- Thefts of catalytic converters have dropped significantly in the past year. Some of this may be attributable to legislation that makes it harder for thieves to sell them, but a big part of it is simply that the precious metals in them aren't worth as much as they were before.

- At least 12 Russian soldiers died after eating poisoned watermelons in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.