News roundup, 10 Oct 2025

- The Israeli government has ratified a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, calling for a "suspension of hostilities" between the two regimes within 24 hours, and the release of 20 Israeli prisoners as well as the remains of 28 others. Of course, Gaza is pretty much uninhabitable now, which presumably suits the Israelis fine, since they'll probably just send in a bunch of settlers to rebuild the place for themselves. Trump is of course talking a lot about this, presumably hoping to convince the Nobel committee to give him the Nobel Peace Prize. Speaking of which, many Norwegian politicians and journalists are seriously concerned about how Trump will react to not receiving the prize, now that it's been awarded to someone else. One columnist and analyst doesn't even rule out the possibility of Trump declaring Norway an enemy.

- Mark Bray, the Rutgers University historian who is moving to Europe to escape death threats, showed up at Newark International Airport with his family on Wednesday night, only to be told at the boarding gate that their flight had been cancelled. They were able to rebook a flight for Thursday night, which suggests that this was not the action of the regime but of one of its overly enthusiastic supporters. No doubt the MAGA crowd would still like us to believe that they aren't fascists, but they aren't making a very good case for themselves.

- FBI director Kash Patel has disbanded a working group studying corruption and fired several agents, saying that they had "weaponized law enforcement against the American people". This comes after the group had placed several Republican senators under investigation.

- Vyacheslav Leontyev, a former editor of the Russian newspaper Pravda, has died after falling from his fifth floor apartment in Moscow. Authorities have ruled his death a suicide; as we know, depression is a very common affliction among those with insider knowledge of the Russian state.

- Elections BC has ruled that signs that billionaire Chip Wilson, founder of Lululemon, violated third-party advertising rules when he posted signs in front of his Vancouver mansion declaring the NDP to be "Communist" during the last election campaign. He was fined $600; for perspective, the signs themselves cost him over $1,600 and the maximum penalty for a violation is $10,000.

- A licensed counsellor in Colorado is challenging the state's ban on "conversion therapy" for LGBT* minors on "free speech" grounds. Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court is widely expected to rule in the counsellor's favour.

- Researchers in Switzerland are growing human neurons from stem cells in order to make artificial brains that can be integrated into computer systems.

- The mayor-elect of the German town of Herdecke suffered serious injuries in a stabbing on Tuesday. Given the current political climate around the world, an assassination attempt is the first thing that comes to mind, however she has apparently pointed the finger at her adopted daughter.

News roundup, 20 Nov 2024

- A severe storm, with winds up to 160 km/h hit the coast of BC last night, causing widespread disruption and power outages but no deaths or injuries so far in that province, though south of the border in Seattle a woman died when a tree fell on a homeless encampment.

- The Kinew government has presented their throne speech, outlining their priorities for the new legislative session. These include maintaining the Manitoba Hydro rate freeze, the elimination of restrictive covenants that limit competition for grocery stores, and new measures for healthcare, including over 100 new beds and strategies for cutting ER wait times. The rate freeze has raised some eyebrows due to the financial status of Hydro and the need for the renewal and expansion of electrical infrastructure.

- Josh Guenter, the Tory MLA for Borderlands, seemingly couldn't help himself when the opportunity came to make a dog whistle about the presumed ethnicity of the trucker who killed two people near Altona last week. He has apologized for this, but he has a long history of rightwing populism (e.g. his support for the trucker convoy in 2022, which got him in trouble back then but not enough to keep him out of the good graces of the party leadership for long).

- The Danish government plans to convert 10% of the country's farmland back into forest. They also plan to tax livestock farmers for the emissions from their animals. A good start, but some bigger countries need to start doing this. And there's doubtless going to be a lot of populist pushback.

- The US Department of Justice hopes to do some "trust-busting" before Donald Trump takes power; they plan to ask a judge to order Google to sell off the Chrome web browser and impose restrictions on other aspects of the company's business. Google claims that this will harm consumers (but then of course they would).

- Winnipeg city council is debating a proposal to tinker with zoning and enable some of the parking lots around malls to be converted into housing. It's a step in the right direction, at least.

- The City of Winnipeg may be only four to six years away from having no capacity to further expand sewage treatment, meaning that no new residential or commercial developments could be approved. Construction on a new facility with more biosolids capacity needs to start immediately if this is to be avoided.

- Police were called to the campus of the University of Manitoba after a man was spotted with a knife; police say there is no further threat to the public despite not making any arrests. Some students are alarmed and confused by the lack of clarity about the situation.

- The Slender-billed Curlew, a shorebird that was once fairly widespread in Eurasia, has been declared extinct after all attempts to find one since 1995 failed.

- A Russian ballet star who had criticized Vladimir Putin has died after falling from his fifth floor apartment. It's awfully strange how careless those Putin critics are around windows.