News roundup, 2 Sept 2026

- Solar has overtaken coal as China's largest source of installed power capacity. Its overall contribution to power generation is still lower than coal due to its intermittent nature, though.

- The death toll in flash flooding that struck Nepal last week has risen to more than 1,100 confirmed fatalities, with nearly 4,000 still missing. The flood resulted from the collapse of a glacier on the Nepal-Tibet border; China reports an additional 16 dead and 546 missing on the Tibet side.

- The BC Conservative Party has lost yet another caucus member after Chilliwack-Cultus Lake MLA Áʼa꞉líya Warbus announced that she cannot serve under leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay. Warbus is the seventh MLA to leave the party in a month.

- The renewed fighting in Iran has led to a spike in yields of government bonds, indicating a decline in confidence. This has impacted not only US bonds but those of other countries, including the UK, Germany, and Japan. In related news, central bankers are worried at rising pressure on governments to weaken central bank independence.

- MapQuest, which had long fallen behind Google Maps as the preferred online mapping platform, has seen a surge in downloads of its app after it refused to fall in line and rename Lake Ontario in response to Trump's declaration.

- Instagram has closed the account of a Vancouver strip club after the club posted a photo of their marquee with the slogan "Can't handle a pool, but wants our lake?" The Penthouse Night Club had previously had its account on X suspended last year when they posted a a photo with the slogan "Forever Neighbours Never Neighbors"; X had called this out as "hate speech" (while ignoring the large amounts of actual hate speech on that platform) but subsequently reversed their decision.

News roundup, 15 May 2026

- Some municipalities in BC, including the City of Powell River, the Village of Pemberton, and the Resort Municipality of Whistler, are imposing their own campfire bans in response to the BC Wildfire Service lifting the general ban for the south coast for the Victoria Day weekend. The fact that the province lifted the ban when local officials don't think it's wet enough to lift the ban adds to my suspicions that the Eby government has been so spooked by recent polls that they're trying to avoid anything that populists might try to rally around. This is a fool's errand, of course; populists can always find something else, legitimate or otherwise, to rouse the rabble against the government.

- The student health clinic at McGill University has said that they will not prescribe gender transition hormones to American exchange students under the age of 19 for fear of repercussions from the Trump regime. They say they are doing this based on legal advice from the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA); the most credible fear they had was about difficulty crossing the border. That said, if you care more about being able to keep vacationing in Florida than about helping your patients, maybe you shouldn't be in the business.

- Energy ministers in every Australian state except one are calling for data centres to be forced to invest in enough wind and solar energy to completely cover their energy consumption. The exception, not surprisingly, is Queensland, which is kind of the Alberta of the southern hemisphere (in terms of political culture; the weather is nicer though).

- Hotels in the US are not seeing the expected rise in bookings for the World Cup that they were hoping for. This is not a big surprise; most Americans don't like soccer (they like to see bigger numbers on the scoreboard) and most foreigners don't want to visit the US right now.

- A recent survey of adults in the US found that 7.3% of respondents had thought about shooting somebody at some point in their lives, and 3.3% had experienced such thoughts in the last year. 

- A man has been arrested in Panama after more than three decades on the lam as the suspect in the murder of Rodney Barger, aka Rawn Beauty, lead singer of punk rock band Cold as Life. He is accused of shooting Barger in the head while he slept. The motive is unclear.

- Most strippers in Montreal depend entirely on tips for their income; strip clubs generally don't actually pay their dancers, and in fact some actually charge them for the "privilege" of working there. This may be about to change though; strippers and other sex workers in the city are planning to go on strike - and just in time for the Grand Prix. I imagine there will be a lot of disgruntled Formula 1 fans in the city that weekend.

News roundup, 13 May 2026

- A man walked onto an active runway at Denver International Airport and into the path of a Frontier Airlines Airbus A321 on its takeoff roll in an apparent suicide. Unfortunately he was sucked into one of the engines. The cockpit and cabin immediately filled with smoke, and the pilots successfully aborted the takeoff. The ensuing evacuation of the 231 passengers and crew, however, was chaotic; not only were passengers wasting time trying to get their stuff, but three passengers jumped onto a slide before it had properly inflated, putting it out of commission (and hopefully injuring themselves in the process). Juan Browne (blancolirio), besides praising the pilots and strongly condemning the behaviour of the passengers, reports that the entire fan on the front of that engine was gone, and raises the possibility that this might have released oil that could have gone into the bleed air system, causing the smoke issue. If so it's fortunate that the crew were able to abort the takeoff; exposure to that stuff is potentially fatal.

- Another passenger from that Dutch plague ship in the Atlantic appears to be close to death. The passenger, a French woman, is said to be in the "final stage of supportive care"; the outbreak has already killed three people. The ship has now been fully evacuated and is on its way back to the Netherlands to be disinfected.

- A report the from International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) concludes that the cost of battery storage has dropped by 90% since 2010, making solar and wind cost competitive with fossil fuels. Parts of Europe are already seeing drops in their electricity prices as a result.

- Residents of the Rural Municipality of Ritchot, Manitoba are up in arms about plans from a Las Vegas based company, Jet.AI, in collaboration with Vancouver-based Consensus Core, to build a data centre north of the community of Île des Chênes. The provincial government is aware of the plan but has not yet made a decision on the matter.

- A 35 year old fugitive from Greenbriar, Tennessee was arrested in Winnipeg on child sex abuse charges. The man had somehow slipped across the border, possibly through farm fields, and potentially carrying several firearms, although the guns weren't in his possession when he was caught. He was captured after getting caught speeding.

- A Winnipeg funeral home owner, who has announced his intention to run for mayor, has been accused of sexual harassment by a former employee. Mike Vogiatzakis of Voyage Funeral Homes claims that this was a disgruntled employee who only made the allegations after being fired, but then he would, wouldn't he. More info about the allegations may be found here. Even if the claims are false, he's someone that thoughtful voters will hopefully stay far away from; he's already been spreading far-right conspiracy theories about the "15 minute city", and folks here allege that he has gang connections as well.

- South Korea's military is looking at using robots in some non-combat roles (e.g. reconnaissance and logistics) to make up for declining enlistment due to the country's low birthrate.