News roundup, 3 Oct 2025

- Two CRJ-900LR regional jets owned by the Delta subsidiary Endeavor Air collided at the intersection of two taxiways at New York City's LaGuardia Airport on Wednesday. Fortunately the collision occurred at low speed, but both aircraft were substantially damaged; a flight attendant on one of them suffered minor injuries. Juan Browne (blancolirio) offers his opinions here.

- California governor Gavin Newsom has signed the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act into law. This is a diluted version of the original bill, which Newsom vetoed last year following intense lobbying by the tech industry, but still requires tech companies to report safety protocols used and their projections of the biggest dangers that could arise from the technologies they develop. It also offers enhanced whistleblower protection for employees. Predictably, the cowboys who dominate the tech industry aren't satisfied; they've created superPACs to fight AI regulation.

- Germany plans to invest more than €2 billion in nuclear fusion research by 2029. Hopefully this will bear fruit; the world badly needs it.

- Leonardo Garcia Venegas was born in the US, but that hasn't stopped ICE from hauling him into custody twice in the last few months on suspicion of being an illegal resident. He's suing, saying his Fourth Amendment rights were violated. A reasonable court of law ought to agree; unfortunately his chances of getting a reasonable court in Trump's America are not good.

- A Benin-flagged oil tanker suspected of being part of Russia's "shadow fleet" was boarded by the French navy, and the captain and first mate were taken into custody on suspicion of espionage. The tanker, currently named the Boracay, had been blacklisted by the EU under its previous name Kiwala.

- Redditor u/-Badger3- says that they received a thinly veiled threat from the Tennessee branch of the Republican Party, reminding them that voter records are public and that "Party leadership would be VERY DISAPPOINTED" if they don't turn out to vote in an upcoming special election (byelection) in the state's 7th Congressional District. Although the district includes part of Democratic-leaning Nashville, it also includes some heavily Republican rural areas, and is considered a likely Republican hold, which raises the question about why such intimidation tactics would be necessary - except to remind potential dissidents that they're being watched.

- Following the postponement of Steinbach's Pride parade due to far-right threats following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the LGBT* community are being forced to downsize events and hire security. They are also finding that security is harder to come by; the firm they previously worked for has backed out citing "a need to protect its own staff because they aren’t armed".

- A consortium including Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has taken over video game giant Electronic Arts. This is not the Saudis' first venture into the sector; they already own significant stakes in Nintendo and Take-Two Interactive as well as other gaming companies. Some Redditors are afraid that the new owners' socially conservative values will leak into the games, notably the Sims franchise, though it seems doubtful that existing titles will be impacted due to the difficulty of changing the code to, say, prohibit premarital sex or LGBT* content. It's possible that the products will be discontinued, though, or that future releases will be less inclusive. 

News roundup, 31 March 2025

- The new tariffs that the Trump regime is going to impose on automobiles and parts is going to impact all automakers, including American ones, but one automaker is expected to be impacted a lot less than the others. Guess which one.

- The regime is continuing with their efforts to curb activism by international students. Hundreds of students have already had their visas revoked, apparently for participating in protests against the war in Gaza. Last week Rumeysa Öztürk, a Turkish-born PhD student, was arrested by masked ICE officers and taken away in an unmarked vehicle; she had co-authored this op-ed for the university's newspaper last year, which I guess in their eyes constitutes "supporting Hamas".

- A fan was removed from the Toronto Blue Jays' home opener on Thursday for wearing a "Canada Is Not For Sale" hat, with security guards citing a ban on "political statements". Following the inevitable bad publicity, the organization has apologized to the man, and attributed the incident to an "error" on the part of staff. Some folks on the related Reddit thread have their doubts, though, saying that the Jays' chair Ed Rogers is a big Trump supporter and that security was going around in the stands stopping people from booing the American anthem.

- The Conservatives are doing their utmost to stop their supporters from saying the quiet part out loud. At Poilievre rallies across the country, they are seizing items such as MAGA hats and signs (as well as more mundane items such as knives and e-cigs) from people attending the events, presumably not wanting to give the media the opportunity to remind the non-crazy part of the Canadian population what the Cons are actually like. Stuff like this adds to fears among party insiders of division and dysfunction within the organization.

- The National Post is claiming to have found evidence of plagiarism in Mark Carney's 1995 PhD thesis. Funny thing is, most of the academics who actually went on record for the article dismiss the accusations. I guess the Post hopes that most people won't read beyond the headline.

- Paul Chiang, the Liberal candidate in the suburban GTA riding of Markham-Unionville, is facing criticism and calls for his withdrawal from the race after suggesting in a Chinese-language news conference that people should claim the bounty that China has placed on his Tory opponent, Joe Tay.

- The Vancouver Auto Show broke attendance records despite calls by the MAGAts for a boycott over their exclusion of Tesla from the event.

- A gospel singer is facing criticism for his fundraising pitch after delivering a speech to the 109th Pentecostal Assemblies for the World Convention in Baltimore last summer. Following the speech he asked church ushers to lock the doors until he got $40,000 in donations.

- China hopes to have a 100 megawatt hybrid fission-fusion reactor operating by 2030. The idea is to use the neutrons from deuterium-tritium fusion to induce fission in uranium; since no chain reaction is involved it is considerably safer than many fission reactors and no enrichment is necessary (natural or even depleted uranium would suffice). If this could be achieved, this could be an important stepping stone to a pure fusion reactor.