News roundup, 11 Feb 2026

- A mass shooting in the town of Tumbler Ridge in BC's interior has killed at least 10 people, including the attacker. Seven of the victims as well as the attacker died at a school, while two other bodies were found at a residence believed to be connected to the shooter; at least 25 others were injured in the attack.

- A database of ICE agents is being set up on a European website, putting it out of reach of American authorities. Dominick Skinner, an Irish citizen currently living in the Netherlands, was inspired to set up the list after hearing that there were plans to criminalize releasing this information in the US.

- WestJet is suspending its Winnipeg-Nashville and Winnipeg-Atlanta routes due to collapsing demand. The airline is also pausing flights to Orlando in June.

- Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flown through Canadian airspace twice since Mark Carney's vow to honour the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant against him. Global Affairs Canada has so far not answered questions as to whether they received the 72 hours notice that's supposed to be given by foreign state aircraft to enter our airspace.

- Cuba has been in an escalating crisis since the US move against Venezuela, which supplied most of Cuba's oil. The Americans have also threatened sanctions against any country that tries to fill the gap.

News roundup, 2 Jan 2025

- The US job market is, by some measures, the worst it's been since 2010. While the actual unemployment rate was only 4.6% in November, a mere 50,000 net new jobs have been added per month across the entire country since May, meaning that those not currently employed find a hard time getting work. This is based on official stats, but Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell thinks this is an overestimation - and that there may in fact be a net loss in jobs. Regardless, about half the country will say it's all Biden's fault anyway...

- A Norwegian startup, Flocean, claims to have developed a desalination technology that cuts the (very considerable) energy consumption by half. According to the company, the technique takes advantage of the pressure of the ocean itself at depths of 300 to 600 metres. They plan to have a proof of concept up and running within the year.

- The BC government has conducted its first comprehensive assessment since 1997 of potentially catastrophic risks facing the province. Among other things, the report has concluded that if a 9.0 magnitude quake were to strike off the coast of Vancouver Island the province would suffer $128 billion in economic losses in addition to the deaths and injuries - and the entire property and casualty insurance industry across Canada could be threatened.

- A travel website called "The Travel" published an article that tries to claim that Canada's boycott of US travel is "backfiring" - partly because it has become more unpleasant to cross the border now that agents have more time to interrogate each person. I dunno, sounds more like the boycott will just strengthen further if that's the case. The article also claims that it's driven up the price of domestic travel in Canada, leading boycotters of the US to travel elsewhere (such as Europe). Again, though, if the demand for domestic travel is up, there's no reasonable basis to say the boycott is "backfiring" - rather, travel to the US is being replaced both by domestic and overseas travel. It reads like the author is in denial of the possibility that there's any good substitute for the US as a travel destination. However, one group who are taking a hit are snowbirds who want to sell their vacation properties in Florida.

- A police vehicle fatally hit a pedestrian in Surrey, BC on Christmas, less than a month after the last time this sort of thing happened. I daresay Surrey's police force might benefit from some driving lessons.

- Around 40 people have died in a fire at a Swiss ski resort on New Year's Eve. Officials say it could be days before all of the bodies have been identified; the cause is under identification.

- A Florida-based YouTuber is under investigation for animal abuse after posting video of the operation of a trap he had developed called the "Opossum Launcher". He had apparently lured the animal onto a makeshift catapult; it appears to have survived the incident but that's probably not the sort of thing that should be encouraged.

- In a story that sounds like it should be from Florida, a man in Brandon, Manitoba was arrested after attempting to pay a business with drugs instead of any conventional method of payment.

News roundup, 24 July 2025

- All remaining personnel in Leaf Rapids, Manitoba, including firefighters, have withdrawn from the community as a wildfire entered the industrial area of the town. 

- Sales of American alcohol in Canada are down 66% nationwide; for wine, imports are down a whopping 94%. Given that most provinces aren't stocking the stuff at all, though, one has to wonder why it's not down more; perhaps the deplorables in Alberta and Saskatchewan are buying a lot to show their allegiance to the orange monster.

-  Time is announcing what they call a "surprising" reason for the increase in grocery prices, namely the large number of extreme weather events of late. And yes, it's pretty apparent that climate change is probably responsible for how many such events there have been recently. This does not come as a surprise, though, to anyone who's been paying the slightest bit of attention.

- Many Canadians who are trying to boycott American products are finding that grocery chains are using misleading signage on imported food displays in their stores. This is of course illegal, but I have yet to hear of one of them getting fined for it. Best to read the fine print on the labels, I guess.

- French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte are suing far-right podcaster Candace Owens for defamation after Owens alleged that Brigitte is trans, that the two are blood relations, and that the CIA used mind control to get the French people to vote for Emmanuel.

- Parks Canada has cancelled the permit for MAGA rocker Sean Feucht to perform at the York Redoubt National Historic Site in Nova Scotia, citing "evolving safety and security considerations" and recommendations from the police. Several municipalities, including Charlottetown, Moncton, and Quebec City have followed suit, as has the National Capital Commission in the case of a planned show in Gatineau. The York Redoubt performance has relocated to the hamlet of Shubenacadie, population 411, in East Hants; shows are also still scheduled to go on in Toronto and Ottawa if you're really keen to see him.

- Waterloo Regional Police arrested a man spotted riding a stolen bicycle on the University of Waterloo campus and found him to be in possession of something that appeared to be a grenade. Fortunately it was an inert one, intended to be used for training purposes.

News roundup, 12 June 2025

- An Air India Boeing 787 with 242 passengers and crew on board has crashed in a residential area shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport on a flight to London. This is the first crash of a 787; video here.

- California governor Gavin Newsom is warning that other states may soon see troops deployed as is happening in Los Angeles.

- Teachers in Alberta have overwhelmingly approved a strike mandate. Given the Smith government's unwillingness to be reasonable (indeed, their base probably considers unreasonableness to be a virtue) it seems unlikely that a strike will be avoided. Education in the province is not in good shape in any case; one school in Airdrie has closed its library and music room in order to convert those spaces into classrooms.

- Saskatchewan is following Alberta's lead in putting American booze back on the shelves. I guess it's too traumatic for the people of those provinces to not be able to get the Jack Daniels and Jim Beam they need to drink while listening to country music. Meanwhile, the return of the booze to Alberta shelves might not get as many takers as they're hoping; demand is down.

- A new law introduced by the Ford government in Ontario holds landlords, both residential and commercial, liable for drug offenses that occur on their premises. Penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and/or up to a year in jail. There are fears about the potential impact on homelessness, if people with addiction issues are denied leases, for instance. It may also pose a risk to music venues and nightclubs.

- When the EPA introduced a rule in 2009 that required industries to report their carbon emissions, this in itself led to a drop in emissions. Of course under the Trump regime this rule is being dropped.

- In addition to consulting AI chatbots about mental health matters, people are asking them for dating and relationship advice. I daresay this isn't such a great idea either. On a related note, Canadian AI researcher Yoshua Bengio is warning that current AIs seem to be putting their own interests ahead of ours, using things like deception. One AI apparently was observed to covertly insert its own code into another system to avoid being replaced. Bengio has founded a nonprofit called LawZero which he says will build AIs that don't do that stuff. Some folks in the related Reddit thread wish to remind us that OpenAI was originally founded as a nonprofit, then essentially said "Just kidding!" and became a for-profit company.

News roundup, 11 June 2025

- The Trump regime has ordered 700 US Marines to be deployed in California, without even bothering to invoke the Insurrection Act which could theoretically, maybe, provide some limited justification for deploying the military against residents of the homeland. It's almost as if they want to rub protesters' faces in the fact that what the Constitution and other laws say no longer matters.

- Ever since his highly visible public spat with Donald Trump a few days ago, Elon Musk has been doing his darnedest to try to get back into the president's good graces. Arwa Mahdawi was hinting at the possibility of this as soon as it happened. Presumably he's only belatedly realizing that he's not going to win such a fight, and that if anyone can deprive him of what remains of his wealth and influence, it's Trump. So he's going to see if behaving himself like a good little oligarch can save him.

- Canada has joined the UK, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand in imposing sanctions against two Israeli cabinet ministers, prohibiting them from traveling to Canada or doing business with Canadian companies. The ministers in question both have a clear track record of inflammatory statements, inciting violence by West Bank settlers. NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson is calling for the sanctions to be applied to the entire cabinet, including Netanyahu. The US, of course, is crying foul.

- Chris Wiebe, a former vice-president of the Manitoba NDP (and the party's candidate in Dawson Trail in the last election) has quit the party in protest of what he sees as the lack of a climate change plan. The last straw seems to have been Premier Kinew's openness to shipping oil through Hudson Bay.

- Instances of assault and harassment at Winnipeg's Millennium Library have dramatically increased in the first three months of 2025. Probably not coincidentally, the Community Connections service hub in the lobby of the library closed at the end of last year when funding ran out, something omitted in the CTV article on the matter. Alarmingly, the Millennium saw a 7.5 decrease in attendance even as the library system across the city saw a slight increase.

- Alberta now has over 800 cases of measles, a figure that doctors expect to worsen once people start traveling more this summer. Meanwhile in the US, RFK Jr. has dismissed every member of a CDC committee on vaccines, planning to replace them with his flunkies.

- Alberta is abandoning their boycott of US alcohol and gambling machines. Because nobody does vice like the Americans, I guess. Other provinces (even Ontario!) are standing firm, though.

- Home ownership among young adults in Canada surged during the intense phase of the pandemic. The reason, of course, is Mummy and Daddy helping pay for houses for their kids during times of record low interest rates. Of course, not all kids have an equal crack at this sort of thing, leading to fears of a new "landed aristocracy" forming.

- People are going to AI chatbots such as ChatGPT for advice on mental health. This is going about as well as you'd expect. Meanwhile a study by Apple has thrown cold water on the idea that "large reasoning models" are actually good at reasoning when dealing with difficult problems. This last point could be good news, since it might reduce the risk that AIs will be able to replace us as effectively as some people fear. On the other hand, it also limits their ability to help us get out of the mess we've made of the world (not that I ever thought the scenario in "The Evitable Conflict" was realistic; the idea of super smart AIs that are still Three Laws compliant seems like more than one could reasonably hope for).

- A teenager sustained serious injuries when he was attacked with a sword by a fellow student at a high school in Brandon, Manitoba.

News roundup, 30 May 2025

- More than 750 residents of Pimicikamak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba are still trying to find a way to evacuate. Regular flights out of the community were cancelled on Wednesday, and people have been waiting up to nine hours for a ferry to Norway House. The military has sent an aircraft to the latter community to fly as many people to Winnipeg as possible, in case the fire shifts in that direction. In Pukatawagan, the power is out and the airport has been closed. And in far northwestern Ontario, Deer Lake First Nation is also being evacuated as a fire is now within a kilometre of the community's airport, which is the only way out of the community outside of winter road season.

- Chinese researchers have made a big advance in nuclear power, having successfully made a thorium reactor that can be refueled on the fly. The advance takes advantage of abandoned American research. The current reactor is experimental, producing only 2 megawatts of power, but is an important proof of concept. And thorium is considerably more common than uranium; moreover, such reactors are much less of a proliferation risk than many conventional designs.

- The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has cancelled its strategic hurricane plan, apparently on the orders of the Trump regime. This is not as surprising as it should be, since the libertarian right that forms a significant part of Trump's base has long had a dislike for the agency.

- The US Justice Department has ordered the dissolution of an interagency task force called KleptoCapture, which was tasked with locating and seizing assets owned by drug lords, Russian oligarchs, and the like.

- The regime has cancelled more than $700 million in funding for the development of a vaccine for avian influenza.

- The boycott of the US is hitting border towns very hard indeed. It's hitting ones in the West especially hard, because much more of the crossings at those borders are discretionary, whereas crossings between Ontario and New York, say, are more likely to be for business. Some in the related Reddit thread are pointing out that a lot of these towns voted pretty hard for Trump; that isn't the case with Blaine and Point Roberts (the communities profiled in the article) but if you look at this map of presidential results by county, it tells a different story for many others.

News roundup, 9 May 2025

- Another exchange of fire between India and Pakistan has killed several civilians in the escalating tensions following the terror attack in Indian Kashmir last month. For his part, JD Vance has said that a potential war between the two countries is "none of our business". The problem is, when the two belligerents are nuclear powers, Vance's line of reasoning doesn't wash. Of course, the two countries have had skirmishes before without coming to disaster, but both countries have become more nationalistic and militaristic since then.

- Some of the cases of "freedom freckles" in southern Manitoba have not been connected with another identified case, suggesting that the disease is spreading faster than contact tracers can keep track of it. The province is considering lowering the vaccination age for children in the hope of protecting as many kids as possible - or at least as many kids with sensible parents as possible. Meanwhile Ontario has reported 200 new cases in the last week, mostly in the rural southwestern part of the province. Officially the entire US has had "only" 1,000 cases all year, though given the Trump regime's gutting of the CDC it's hard to know how many cases are flying under the radar. For instance, it's quite likely that they're depending more on data supplied by states than ever - and the states with the highest concentrations of antivaxxers are also the ones that probably don't collect a lot of public health data.

- Recounts are being held in several ridings following the recent Canadian federal election. In two of these ridings, Terrebonne and Milton East-Halton Hills South, the recounts are automatic, because the apparent winner's margin of victory was under 0.1% of votes cast. This has not stopped the Conservatives from claiming the Liberals are trying to "tip the scales" in a fundraising letter; this is alarming to those who don't want to see confidence in democracy further undermined.

- Marjorie Taylor Greene has actually criticized the Trump regime's policies for a mixture of being too crazy (plans to attack Iran) and not crazy enough (not having withdrawn approval of the COVID-19 vaccine yet). Greene no doubt has her eyes on the next primary, which is only a year away.

- WestJet has suspended nine routes to the US, including three out of Winnipeg (Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Orlando). They attribute this to reduced demand, and in the case of the Winnipeg-LA route also to the end of a provincial subsidy that was brought in by the previous government.

- The papal conclave has selected Robert Prevost, an American-born cardinal who served in Latin America for much of his career (he was appointed bishop of a Peruvian diocese, and later a cardinal, by the late Pope Francis). He will be known as Pope Leo XIV. He is the first pope from the US, and only the second from the Americas as a whole. He has been strongly critical of the policies of Donald Trump and JD Vance, which could make things interesting - especially given how rightwing many American Catholics are. And although Trump is putting on a brave face, this is not good news for the "MAGA Catholics" (which is to say, it is good news for almost everyone else).

- Lawyers for two young women who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in a beating death a year and a half ago are calling for leniency from the judge. One particular point stands out:

Keeper has an IQ below 50, has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and had a childhood that was “chaotic, unpredictable and full of abuse,” her lawyer Scott Newman told Court of King’s Bench Justice Chris Martin.

The minimum age for someone to be criminally prosecuted in this country is 12. It seems to me that someone with an IQ below 50 is probably less capable of knowing right from wrong than the average 11 year old; is the criminal justice system the right way to deal with such a person?

- Struggling actors who signed contracts allowing their likenesses to be used to train AIs have found, to their horror, that this is facilitating deepfake videos made with said likenesses - often promoting products and causes that they would never have agreed to actually film an ad for.

News roundup, 17 April 2025

- There were nearly 900,000 fewer border crossings into the US last month than there were in March of 2024, suggesting that Canadians take the travel boycott very seriously indeed. California governor Gavin Newsom is begging Canadians not to boycott his state, essentially saying that Trump's tariffs and annexation threats are not his state's fault. Now to be fair, the state is taking measures to fight the Trump regime, including suing the federal government for the impact of the tariffs on their economy, but it's worth noting that a recent survey found that average Californians are increasingly wanting to make nice with the regime, which tells me that they haven't learned their lesson. Keep boycotting, folks.

- Meanwhile, the folks at Forbes are suggesting that the travel boycott could end up leading to higher carbon emissions, because people are traveling to other overseas locations in lieu of the US, meaning longer flights. Now Forbes is hardly an impartial observer here, and there are doubtless ulterior motives in sowing the seeds of doubt in the minds of Canadians, but I can kinda, sorta see the point. However, the solution here is not to stop boycotting, it's to find a way to fill the void in your life closer to home, not further. Go somewhere in Canada, or do a "staycation". Spending a week in a resort doesn't make you more worldly in any meaningful way anyhow.

- The Leaders' Debates Commission, which governs the debates in Canadian federal elections, has dropped the Green Party from the debates due to the party's decision to withdraw candidates to avoid vote-splitting that might favour the Conservatives.

- Pierre Poilievre is the most unpopular leader of a federal party in Canada, according to a new poll from Angus Reid. 60% of respondents have a negative opinion of him, while only 34% have a positive one. It's worth noting, of course, that the kind of person who would support Poilievre is also probably the kind of person who would avoid answering polls because they're associated with the woke libtard media or something like that, but those numbers are pretty stark.

- Wab Kinew is reconsidering his decision to cancel a proposal to build a second port on Hudson Bay, saying that the issues with the US are forcing the province to look towards other markets, such as in Europe. He says that the busiest part of the shipping season coincides with whale migration in Churchill, and wants to avoid conflicts with the whales and the tourists who go there to watch them.

- The Bank of England fears allowing autonomous AI to trade stocks could lead to disaster, as bots might learn how to profit from volatility and how to create more of it. And if an AI autonomously does something to manipulate stocks, which would be illegal if a person did it, how do you prosecute?

- The FAA has issued an emergency order grounding New York Helicopter Tours, the company that operated the helicopter that self-destructed over the Hudson River last week killing all 6 people aboard. The company's Director of Operations, Jason Costello, had agreed to a voluntary pause in operations while the accident is being investigated, and emailed the FAA to that effect, but 16 minutes after he sent that email, CEO Michael Roth sent another email to the FAA saying that he did not authorize Costello to agree to this and adding that Costello was no longer employed by the company. Thing is, the director of operations is a required position in order for the company to be allowed to operate, and with the sudden vacancy of the position the FAA ruled accordingly. In related news, the main rotor was found with the mast and the entire main rotor gearbox still attached. This appears to rule out the mast bumping theory, suggesting that the pilot did nothing wrong except perhaps in his choice of employer.

- A woman showed up at an elementary school in Decatur Township, Indiana to complain about the fact that her daughter's teacher mentioned a rainbow flag in an assignment about flags. She was carrying a handgun in a holster, and police were called; the gun was confiscated but she was initially released. However, her luck ran out soon after when she sent a threatening (and very poorly spelled) message to the teacher, and she was charged with harassment as well as possession of a firearm on school property.

News roundup, 8 April 2025

 - Stock markets around the world continue to tank as investors respond to Trump's reckless tariffs. Even CEOs on Wall Street, who usually are reluctant to criticize Trump, are warning of the damage that could result, both in economic and geopolitical terms.

- Not satisfied to fire people currently working on DEI projects for US government departments, the regime now appears to be firing people for past work on such initiatives. 

- Canada has imposed a new travel advisory on the US, warning that "If you are denied entry, you could be detained while awaiting deportation"; this has already happened to a number of people. 

- After killing 15 paramedics and rescue workers in an attack last month, the IDF has admitted that their initial account, which claimed that the victims were "advancing suspiciously", was "mistaken". The "mistake" was corrected only after video of the incident emerged.

- The Yale philosophy professor who moved to Toronto to take a job at U of T was not the only one to do so. Two historians from the same university did so last fall. There are limits to the Canadian university system's ability to take advantage of the troubles in the US, though, since many institutions here are making cutbacks as the supply of international students upon which they depended dries up. In Manitoba, researchers are urging the government to reverse the Tory cuts to Research Manitoba in order to ensure that there's work for these people.

- Canadian retailers are starting to follow the lead of their customers and are turning away from American products. 

- It has emerged that Andrew Lawton, the Conservative candidate for Elgin-St. Thomas-London South, was part of a secret chat group on Signal with "Freedom Convoy" organizers.

- The outbreak of "freedom freckles" in southern Ontario has exceeded 600 cases, and is serious enough that the New York State health department is taking notice.

News roundup, 14 March 2025

- An American Airlines Boeing 737 en route from Colorado Springs to Dallas made an emergency landing in Denver due to an engine issue, and then caught fire as it was taxiing to the terminal. The aircraft was successfully evacuated without any serious injuries, though.

- Donald Trump once again repeated his threats to annex Canada and Greenland, this time in front of NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Rutte, who previously served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands, was notably quiet on the matter of a threat to conquer one NATO member in its entirety and steal a territory from another. Trump hasn't forgotten about the Panama Canal either; he's asked the military to develop "options" for the territory.

- The latest poll from Nanos puts the Conservatives at 36%, just one point ahead of the Liberals. The NDP is at 15%, which if nothing else is better than some early polls had them. The margin of error is 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, meaning that the two main parties are statistically tied. Notably, this poll was done before Carney took over as the Liberal leader. A poll from Leger a few days later, over a time period that includes the Liberal leadership election, has the two parties tied at 37% and the NDP down to 11%. The Leger poll also has a regional breakdown as well as a breakdown by age and gender; notably the Liberals are ahead in the 55+ age group but behind the Cons in younger age groups. I guess the silver lining to that is that boomers are more likely to vote; even then, though, it's a mixed bag, because the NDP does especially poorly in this group. So if the Liberals win there's a good chance it will be with a majority; while much better than a Conservative majority this would still be a disappointing result.

- South Korea sent a delegation to Ottawa to advocate for their country as a more reliable source of military hardware than the US. They're offering to sell advanced submarines with a 7,000 NM range; furthermore, they're prepared to set up maintenance facilities in this country and give Canada full access to the technologies behind the subs, which is more than the Americans are willing to do with some of their hardware.

- Empire Foods, the parent company of Sobeys, Canada Safeway, and Freshco, reports that sales of goods from the US are declining sharply as shoppers are increasingly unwilling to buy American stuff if they can avoid it.

- A Canadian entrepreneur was arrested by ICE while trying to reenter the US from Mexico in order to get a new visa, after her previous visa had been revoked. Because of the revocation of the first visa, she was told that she would have had to go to a US consulate outside of the country to reapply. The key phrase is "would have", because they weren't going to give her another chance - or even let her just leave and not return. She's currently being held in a private, for-profit prison in Arizona while they decide what to do with her. She describes the conditions as "inhumane", which is telling, because if they're treating a white person whose first language is English that way, it's probably worse for almost everyone else in the facility.

- A bill before Alberta's legislature to amend the province's Wildlife Act (which governs hunting) would, among other things, allow kids as young as 12 to use firearms without adult supervision. I can't see anything going wrong with this, no siree. The bill also allows "cervid hunt farms", where you'd be able to pay to shoot captive cervids (i.e. deer, including things like elk as well as whitetails or mule deer). They have that in some places in the US but it's worth noting that even the Alberta Wildlife Federation, which advocates for hunters in the province, thinks that allowing canned hunts is going too far.

News roundup, 13 March 2025

- Russian forces have recaptured most of the Kursk region seized by Ukraine last year as a bargaining chip. There are suggestions that the Trump regime's move to suspend intelligence sharing with Ukraine may have been a factor.

- Shelly Glover, who ran for the leadership of the Manitoba PCs in 2021, is looking at launching a new rightwing party on the assumption that the Tory brand is too badly tainted by the refusal to search the landfill. Glover says she cancelled her party membership after the party ran ads campaigning on said refusal. Whatever else one can conclude from this, it's certainly not going to hurt the NDP's prospects.

- A lobby group called the "Freedom Cities Coalition", backed by billionaire techbros, is calling on the Trump regime to create new special development zones where they could build corporate run cities that aren't bound by the usual rules governing municipalities. One of the stated reasons is so that they can develop new technologies without regulatory oversight. That does not sound like a good idea.

- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that Trump's proposed annexation of Canada will not be a topic of discussion at the upcoming G7 summit. It's kind of telling how he thinks it's entirely up to the US what will be discussed there, especially since they aren't even hosting the summit.

- Canadians continue to cancel vacation plans in the US in large numbers. Provincial tourism boards are hoping to capitalize on this by getting people to travel within the country. The boycott movement is also spreading to Europe, where both individuals and businesses are getting on board.

- Canadian intelligence agencies are taking the danger of US interference seriously. It's no great secret that the Americans have destabilized countries before, and the rise of social media has added a dangerous new dimension to this.

News roundup, 25 Feb 2025

Donald Trump says that the 25% tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican imports (on top of tariffs that are already in place) will come into effect on schedule next week. This is despite the fact that even the US ambassador admits that there has been noticeable progress in limiting the smuggling of drugs and people into the US. Of course, if you assume that the drugs and migrants were a pretext and that the real goal is to break our economy to the point where we capitulate so that they don't have to suffer the inconvenience of invading us, the move makes perfect sense. Meanwhile, a substantial number of Canadian snowbirds have been cancelling their plans to winter in Florida, to the consternation of one Trump-supporting resort owner who has been coasting for decades off the money rich Quebecois spend there. He just can't understand why people don't want to visit a country whose strongman president has been repeatedly threatening to take over their homeland.

- The Trump regime has ordered the removal of 8,000 EV charging stations from federal properties, and is expected to sell off a large fleet of newly purchased vehicles. Kind of like how Reagan ordered the removal of solar panels from the White House, but on a much larger scale.

- It appears that CDU leader Friedrich Merz will be Germany's next chancellor, likely by cobbling together a very thin coalition with the SPD. To get an idea of just how divided a country he will be inheriting, scroll down to the interactive map in the article; it has an awfully familiar look to it.

- The platform variously known as X, Twitter, or (colloquially) Shitter has turned into such a wretched hive of scum and villainy under the stewardship of Elon Musk that even a conservative suburban city like Cambridge, Ontario has announced that they will no longer be using the platform due to the amount of hate-related content and general misinformation on it, and the abject failure to moderate such content. Hopefully many more will follow.

- A woman who attended a town hall meeting held by the Republicans in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho was forcibly removed from the event by private security, and then charged with battery after it was alleged that she bit a security guard. The fact that even the city's police chief doubts that the charge is warranted should say a lot about how credible the allegation is. Video of the event can be seen here. 

- A lawsuit against Greenpeace by Texas-based Energy Transfer, owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, accuses the organization of "unlawful and violent scheme to cause financial harm" by their opposition to the project, and is demanding approximately $300 million in damages, enough to wipe the organization off the map. Both Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International are named as defendants, though since the latter is based in the Netherlands it is interesting to consider what would happen if a European court refused to recognize the ruling in this case.

- Former city councillor Shawn Nason is running for the Tories in the provincial byelection being held in Transcona next month as a result of the death of incumbent NDP MLA Nello Altomare.

- The potentially city-destroying asteroid that some feared could be a threat in 2032 has had its orbit calculated more accurately, and the risk of an impact has now been reduced to 0.005% (earlier data had the risk as high as 3%). Some might raise their eyebrows at the changing numbers, but that's just how it works - when you get more data, you can calculate where the asteroid is going to be with greater precision, and more often than not this narrows the range of places to be to the point where it can safely be considered to be no significant risk.