News roundup, 14 May 2026

- New York mayor Zohran Mamdani managed to eliminate a $12 billion deficit inherited from his predecessor without cutting services. He did it, of course, by taxing the rich, with the help of the state government which enabled him to impose a "pied-à-terre tax" as well as other measures. It's worth noting, though, that while he hasn't cut services he's delayed the improvement of some (e.g. he negotiated a delay in the reduction in school class sizes imposed at the state level). But politics is the art of the possible; Mamdani just seems to be a bit better than most politicians at this.

- The Court of King's Bench in Alberta has ruled against Elections Alberta’s approval of a pro-independence petition from Stay Free Alberta, on the grounds that it failed to take into account the impact of such a referendum on treaty rights and failed to consult with the potentially impacted First Nations. Danielle Smith has already announced the intention to appeal the decision, in case there were any doubt about where she stands. I would love to have a robotic fly on the wall of Smith's next caucus meeting. Meanwhile an organizer with another separatist group, the Centurion Project, is refusing to sign a statutory declaration that he will cease and desist from using and distributing the voter list information that the organization seems to have illegally obtained.

- Travel to the US by Canadians appears to be down even more than official stats indicate. Statistics Canada reported in February that visits are down by about 25%, however a study conducted by the University of Toronto's School of Cities that tracked cellphone data found that it's closer to 42%. The decline is even greater in sunbelt cities - around 50% in several cities in Florida, and 65% in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

- The BC Wildfire Service has lifted a fire ban along parts of the south coast of the province, just in time for the Victoria Day long weekend. They say this is because "current and forecasted" weather conditions reduce the risk. I do hope this is the real reason, and not fear of a populist backlash. Some fear that the days of the campfire may be numbered in this country.

- The University of Victoria has introduced new policies regarding use of AI to cheat. The university can now theoretically punish students for cheating even after graduation, which raises the possibility of revoking degrees. The thing is, the policy does not prohibit the use of software to detect AI use, even though such software is known to produce false positives. Someone in this Reddit thread says that they tested one such software product on papers they'd written before AI became widely available, and it concluded that up to 50% of the writing was AI-generated. Others in the same thread say that people on the autism spectrum tend to get hit with a disproportionate number of these accusations.

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. 

News roundup, 12 May 2026

- Eileen Wang, the mayor of the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia, has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to acting as an "illegal foreign agent" of China. This apparently involved the creation of a news website for the Chinese community, which carried the Chinese state's version of news and current affairs. That in itself doesn't sound like a crime, however the US alleges that she and her co-conspirator were posting specific articles requested by the Chinese government and reporting back with screenshots and hit counts, all without disclosing that she was doing so at the request of China. That definitely sounds a bit more suspect, as does the accusation that her co-conspirator is accused of "cultivating" her in the hope of strengthening China's influence in California. That said, under other circumstances I'd be suspicious of the truth to these claims; I could easily see the Trump regime manufacturing these kind of charges against a political enemy - but her plea agreement casts some doubt on that possibility.

- Winnipeg's Siloam Mission is laying off 16 staff and reducing hours at its drop-in space beginning in June. The organization is caught in a pinch between increased homelessness (meaning more demands for their services) and a decline in donations (which has been observed across the charitable sector in Canada). The organization is also riven with internal turmoil following the hiring of new CEO Sonia Prevost-Derbecker; she began her term with an organizational review to get to the bottom of the financial difficulties, but was immediately hit with accusations of making derogatory comments about indigenous people (despite being indigenous herself). Not being privy to any internal discussions, I can't say who's to blame - but in any case, as a friend of mine who used to work there says, we can expect the downtown to look worse than usual this summer.

- The backlash against the use of existing social housing stock to house previously homeless people continues. The Your Way Home program, introduced by housing minister Bernadette Smith, ultimately aims to use 20% of Manitoba Housing's stock for this purpose. Several longtime residents of Manitoba Housing buildings are up in arms - but it's worth noting that the biggest noisemaker quoted in the article lives in a building that's not part of the program. More reasonably, Erika Wiebe of the Right To Housing Coalition favours keeping 55+ buildings out of the program and improving support for residents as well as security.

- Ontario's education minister Paul Calandra is ordering school boards to make sure that graduation ceremonies remain apolitical. This follows an incident last year when an Ottawa student included pro-Palestinian remarks in her graduation speech. Calandra warns that he "will not hesitate to consider every tool available to me in the Education Act"; this comes not long after the passage of new legislation that makes it easier for the province to take over school boards.

- A new issue related to data centres has emerged - noise pollution. For one thing, many of these centres generate their own power using gas turbines, which produce a sound similar to a jet engine (since that's essentially what they are). There are also reports of low-frequency vibrations (infrasound) near these centres, which aren't audible to humans but have been associated with physiological effects like headaches and nausea.

- Country singer (and fourth-generation Albertan) Corb Lund is getting called a "woke bastard" for his stance on coal mining in the Rockies. Danielle Smith's government is lifting a moratorium on mining on the eastern slopes that was imposed by Peter Lougheed's government half a century ago and was accepted as necessary by all parties until Smith came along; Lund is among those gathering signatures to force a referendum on the matter.

News roundup, 11 May 2026

- Municipal elections were held across the England on Thursday; Scotland and Wales held their parliamentary elections on the same day. The results show crushing defeats for Labour across much of the country. The blogger behind Council Estates Media seems to think Starmer's unwavering support of Israel has something to do with it; I'd say it's a stretch to say that's a big factor in the defeat, but it definitely says something about the way the party has gone when they tried to play the antisemitism card against Green leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish. Ironically, while the Greens did respectably well in the elections, the main beneficiary was Reform UK, which has a fair number of actual antisemites. While it's fair to say the swing away from Labour is an indictment of that party, the fact that a plurality of those voters chose Reform is an indictment of the English people. The Scots and Welsh did a better job in their parliamentary elections, though.

- Three more passengers on board that Dutch plague ship now moored in the Canary Islands have tested positive for hantavirus, all after flying home. The incubation period for this virus is substantial; four Canadians who were on the ship have been ordered to isolate for 21 days.

- An Edmonton couple on vacation in Mexico got notifications from WestJet saying that their flight home from Los Angeles was cancelled; they had to be rerouted through Victoria and got home some 16 hours late. Under Canadian legislation this is a long enough delay to trigger compensation as per the Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) - but the airline claims to be exempt because the cancellation was due to an unexpected safety-related issue with the aircraft. The problem is, the aircraft in question had been grounded several days previously; WestJet apparently switched which aircraft was to be used for the flight immediately before cancelling it in the hope of getting around paying compensation to passengers.

- Jana Ronne, a high school teacher in BC, got in hot water after confronting a student for the use of the word "pussy" as an insult. She responded by saying "Do you think women are weak? Women can be stronger than men"; somehow the discussion got steered into religion, and she responded to this by disputing the validity of religion (not clear how she got there; I suspect the kid cited the Bible/Koran/whatever). Subsequently she appears to have brought up the incident in class, unprompted. Apparently this made students who witnessed the interaction feel "uncomfortable", and they complained to the vice principal; the BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation has given her a one day suspension of her teaching certificate and forced her to take courses on "creating a positive classroom" and "intercultural dialogue".

- A motorcyclist was seriously injured in a collision with a car on Scott Road, which forms the boundary between the cities of Surrey and Delta, BC. What is remarkable about this case, though, is that the motorcycle somehow ended up hanging from a traffic signal standard.

News roundup, 8 May 2026

- Elections Alberta has issued cease and desist letters to everyone known to have accessed a database compiled by the secessionist Centurion Project, which created it from illegally obtained voter lists. The lists were identified as having been legitimately issued to the Republican Party of Alberta; registered parties are legally entitled to the lists, but aren't supposed to share them. The lists were traced to the party via an interesting trick - the lists issued to each party are "salted" with a number of fake entries, and different fakes are used for each party. The potential impact on high profile individuals - such as former premier Jason Kenney who, while reliably rightwing by most standards, regularly gets death threats from extremists. And that's not even considering other criminal uses - stalking, robbery, hate crimes, etc. Meanwhile the NDP say they have obtained video evidence of two high ranking UCP members (president Rob Smith and caucus director Arundeep Sandhu) attending a Centurion meeting.

- Amsterdam's municipal government has banned public advertising of fossil fuels as well as meat. This is certainly a good move, though I'd throw airline and cruise ads into the mix as air travel is up there with meat as far as drivers of climate change go.

- The US Department of Homeland Security demanded that Google hand over information about a Canadian who has not set foot in the US in more than a decade after he criticized the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Information requested included location data and activity logs. Presumably the US authorities already know he hasn't been across the border recently, so I have to wonder if maybe they were really trying to find information on somebody else (e.g. to keep someone out of the US, or take them into custody on arrival, because they'd interacted with him).

- Air Canada is ending four seasonal routes to the American sunbelt early due to fuel prices. They currently still plan to reopen the routes on schedule in the fall, but we'll have to see how that goes.

- Manitoba has declared a public health emergency due to the high incidence of HIV in the province. The infection rate is 19.5 cases per 100,000 residents, compared to the national average of 5.5, according to chief medical officer of health Dr. Brent Roussin. He says that part of the purpose of the declaration is as an "awareness tool", however it does open more options for testing. 

- Meta is threatening to cut New Mexico off from Facebook and Instagram if prosecutors in an upcoming trial for "public nuisance" get what they are requesting. The company has already been hit with $375 million in civil penalties after it came out that they knowingly harmed kids' mental health and failed to report sexual exploitation of children that occurred on their platforms. In the nuisance trial, the prosecution is asking for the court to order the company to not allow sexual exploitation of kids, not make their apps addictive, and improve age verification. Meta claims that complying with this will be unfeasible and that they'll have no choice to leave. I do hope the court calls their bluff.

- For some unknown reason (at least none that OpenAI made public) several iterations of ChatGPT had a bizarre predilection for mentioning goblins without the subject having been brought up by the user. It also would insert unprompted references to various other creatures, both real and imaginary. This was eventually patched with a general instruction to "Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query". If this actually was spontaneous, this is both impressive and unsettling. I wouldn't put it past the company to have set this up by design, though, just to get people talking.

- David Attenborough turns 100 today. 

News roundup, 7 May 2026

- The Trump regime is once again claiming that the war they helped start in Iran will be "over quickly"; they have offered another ceasefire proposal, which Iran says it is "considering". 

- The MV Hondius, that Dutch cruise ship with the hantavirus outbreak, has left Cape Verde en route to the Canary Islands after Spain granted the ship permission to dock there. This was done after three more infected people, two passengers and a crew member (reportedly the ship's doctor), were removed from the ship prior to setting sail to be flown to hospitals in Europe. And a flight attendant with KLM, who was briefly in contact with one of the patients who was flown to Johannesburg (and who later died) has now been hospitalized due to suspected hantavirus infection.

- Recent polling has the Ontario Liberals and PCs at a statistical tie in the wake of Doug Ford's incautious purchase of a private jet (nicknamed the "gravy plane" by critics). This marks the first time in quite a while that the Tories have looked vulnerable. The extent to which polls can be trusted is unclear, mind you; the "shy Tory factor" has been known for decades, and given that contemporary rightwing politics is full of paranoid conspiracy theorists, many people who might be inclined to vote for such parties would be too paranoid to answer a poll at all. Meanwhile in BC, support for David Eby's NDP has cratered in spite of any shy Tory factor (and in spite of the fact that the BC Tories are a party that any sensible person ought to be pretty shy about admitting a desire to vote for). As in Ontario, this seems to be driven largely by a single issue, in this case the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which the Eby government has also partially backed away from after a couple of court rulings spooked some people about the possible impact on their property rights.

- A teenager has been charged with firing shots at two synagogues in Toronto and Vaughan in March. The shootings took place late at night and nobody was hurt. The suspect, reportedly of no fixed address, has not been publicly named because he was a minor at the time of the attacks.

- The resort community of Winnipeg Beach has been placed under provincial administration after the town's council, already short two members, lost quorum after the resignation of a councillor.

- The hospital in the town of Carman, Manitoba has cancelled all surgeries until further notice due to an infestation of ants. Southern Health, the regional health authority responsible for the hospital, insists that there is no threat to the health of patients or staff, or to the integrity of the building, but says that the facility does not meet the sterility standards for surgery. Meanwhile another hospital in southern Manitoba, this time in Morris, activated safety protocols after someone was threatened with what turned out to be a replica handgun. The suspects fled but crashed their vehicle into a road sign and were quickly tracked down.

News roundup, 6 May 2026

- Longtime Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour has been appointed as Canada's next governor general. Hard not to approve of the choice, not only because of her competence but because it's something of a statement in this geopolitical context to choose someone who served as an international war crimes prosecutor.

- Governments of numerous countries including Brazil, Canada, Germany, and Nigeria are sending representatives to discuss how to go about actually phasing out fossil fuels rather than setting warming targets by consensus and letting everyone figure out on their own how to do it, which has been the standard approach by the UN. Now it's easy to be a bit cynical about a bunch of elite types flying down to Colombia, mostly in gas-guzzling business jets, to discuss climate solutions, but such are the realities of diplomacy for the time being. Notably absent from the conference are the US, China, and the Gulf states, which is a positive development on all counts.

- A new paper suggests that even in the best-case scenario, New Orleans is not going to be one of those places that survives climate change. One of the authors says that "Even if you stopped climate change today, New Orleans’s days are still numbered". The city may find itself surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico by 2100; the paper's authors recommend that efforts be made to start relocating its residents now. This concept, known as "managed retreat", has come up a lot in the last while. Naturally, a lot of people are not comfortable with the idea for a lot of reasons, but I don't see how it will be possible to avoid some kind of retreat, managed or otherwise, in a lot of places around the world.

- Reform UK has vowed to put migrant detention centres in ridings that elect Green MPs if they win the next general election. This is kind of ironic given that the kind of climate policy advocated by that lot (i.e. "let it burn" in every sense of the phrase) will inevitably lead to huge amounts of migration.

- The US National Transportation Safety Board has released the findings from their part of the investigation into the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 in 2022 which killed 132 people. The NTSB was involved in the investigation as the home country of the manufacturer; they reported that the engines were suddenly shut down, and that this looked like a deliberate act of murder-suicide by one of the pilots. If so it would be far from the first time that something like this has happened - see for example this, this, and this, and probably also this. China's own Civil Aviation Administration has yet to make a ruling on the cause of the crash, which makes me wonder if they suspect a political motive, or if they just don't want their citizens thinking too much about why a highly skilled professional would just decide to kill himself and take a planeload of people with him.

- Health officials now suspect human-to-human transmission of hantavirus in the fatal outbreak on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, but are quick to say (perhaps at the urging of the cruise industry) that they don't think it's a big concern.

- A Toronto woman is seeking an exemption to the restrictions in MAID legislation in order to get herself put to sleep for mental health disorders; the legislation specifically disqualifies patients whose only major health issues are psychiatric. This is a highly contentious issue; on the one hand, organizations like Dying With Dignity Canada are calling for it to be allowed, while on the other side some argue that the very conditions often complicate the matter of informed consent.

- A new viral fad has groups of young people arranging a time to get out of their mums' basements and conduct what twenty years ago would probably have been called a flash mob but is now called a speedrun (named, of course, after a term from the video game community) in which they try to get into Scientology facilities and film themselves. Most recently this happened in Vancouver on the weekend; up to 300 people apparently showed up. A 16 year old was arrested at the scene but later released with no charges. Some people say they know more about the motives for this stunt/protest, but are reluctant to speak on the record due to Scientology's famously litigious nature.