News roundup, 2 Oct 2026

- Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now spinning the attempt to crash FlyDubai flight 1073 as a terrorist attack aimed at Israelis, saying that the first officer had undergone "Islamist radical indoctrination". While it's entirely possible that this is true, and the UAE is considering this in their investigation, opposition leader Yair Lapid says that nothing of the sort was mentioned in the security briefing he was given. It seems that Netanyahu is trying to turn this into a boost for him in the upcoming parliamentary election, which recent polling suggests that Netanyahu may be at risk of losing. And given that as soon as he's no longer prime minister he'll be in danger of going to jail for past corruption, he's naturally pulling out all the stops to win. Happily Captain Smit Machchhar, who was instrumental in saving the aircraft by getting the cockpit door open, is recovering in hospital in Abu Dhabi.

- A proposed pipeline from Alberta to the BC coast, now officially named the Pacific Link, has become the first project designated to be a matter of "national interest". Under the Building Canada Act this means that the approval process will be fast-tracked, although its approval and construction is still not guaranteed. The government claims that the pipeline will reduce Canada's "emissions intensity" (i.e. emissions per unit volume of oil produced), but environmentalists warn that it will mean more oil in total will actually be extracted and burned, outweighing the benefits from a reduction in intensity.

- The Manitoba Labour Board has ruled that the work done by workers at Dynacare labs constitute an essential service and that limits must thus be placed on their right to strike. A strike might still be legal under some circumstances, but an essential services agreement must be made beforehand that sets minimum staffing levels. The company and the union had previously agreed on treating their work as non-essential because there are also public labs that do the work, but the province intervened in this, most likely because a widespread strike and the resulting slowdown in medical tests would be politically difficult for the government.

- In most jurisdictions, e-bikes and e-scooters are supposed to be speed limited, generally to 32 km/h (some provinces limit the scooters and lightweight e-bikes to 25 km/h). However, the motors in the bikes are generally capable of more than that and the limits are put in afterwards; these are often quite easily hacked to allow much higher speeds. A CBC Marketplace investigation has found that some stores, including big box stores like Best Buy, Canadian Tire, and Costco as well as specialty bike shops, have been selling the bikes with the limiters disabled and/or telling buyers how to hack them to go faster than they're supposed to. An employee at one shop in Richmond Hill told an undercover reporter that their bikes are capable of 120 km/h. Some have also marketed them as suitable for children younger than the legal age limits.

News roundup, 1 Oct 2026

- A FlyDubai Boeing 737 Max on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv had a very close call after the first officer apparently stabbed the captain and tried to crash the plane. The aircraft lost around 14,000 feet of altitude in about 30 seconds before the wounded captain managed to open the cockpit door, enabling passengers  to overpower the first officer, and one of the passengers managed to pull the aircraft out of its dive. He later said that while he wasn't a trained pilot he knew something about aviation from watching a lot of Mayday episodes (you really can't make this stuff up). Then two deadheading pilots, reportedly a Russian and a Ukrainian, took over and flew the plane to a safe emergency landing at the Saudi city of Tabuk. One noteworthy fact - since 9/11 more passengers have been killed by pilot suicide than by terrorism (though this incident is still under investigation and may turn out to have been both of those things). More info in this video.

- Beyond destroying whatever trust potential allies had in the US, the Trump regime is eroding the one thing that America still has above all other countries - its military might. The war against Iran has caused serious damage to US military facilities across the Middle East - some of which might not even be worth fixing due to their continued vulnerability. They also have had to move assets from other areas - such as the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, normally based in Japan, which was sent to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Persian Gulf. And many of their consumable assets, like missiles, have been depleted.

- Environmentalists are concerned that the Carney government's Bill C-39, an omnibus bill dubbed the Building Canada Strong Act, will excessively weaken environmental protections. The bill could allow the government to grant permits for preliminary work before an impact assessment is complete if the work is deemed to be sufficiently in the public interest; while the work could theoretically be stopped if a serious concern is found, many have doubts that such a power would be exercised in time. The bill also appears to dilute provisions of the Species at Risk Act.

- Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries got a boost from increased cannabis sales as well as casino revenue, but this was not enough to make up for a decline in alcohol sales. The Crown corporation still made an overall profit of $724.1 million in the last fiscal year, but this represents a drop of $6 million from the previous year.

- Scott Aitchison, the Conservative MP for the central Ontario riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka, has announced that he will be stepping down once the fall sitting of Parliament ends. I have my doubts that anyone other than another Conservative will win the ensuing byelection, but that remains to be seen.

- The only road access to New Brunswick's Campobello Island is by a bridge connecting the island to Lubec, Maine. This is becoming a problem due to the US ban on imports of certain goods from Canada - a truck delivering supplies to the island was turned back at the border despite being tagged as being destined for the community. Given that dairy products are part of the Trump regime's import ban, this is causing considerable concern for community members. I suppose if we wanted to be really mean and petty we could do the same to the Northwest Angle, Minnesota and Point Roberts, Washington, but given that those two places have less than 1,500 people between them it wouldn't have much effect.

News roundup, 30 Sept 2026

- A group of 20-30 masked members of the far right Second Sons Canada showed up on the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc reserve outside Kamloops, BC over the weekend, until they were ordered to leave by the RCMP. The organization is what is referred to as an "active club", many of which are recruitment tools for white nationalist movements. After they were moved on by the police, they hung a banner from a nearby overpass that appeared to call into question the numerous deaths in the residential school system.

- The Manitoba government and the City of Brandon have purchased a campground on the outskirts of the city that once served as a cemetery for deceased students of a residential school until 1912. The city had taken over the cemetery and unceremoniously removed the gravestones and turned it into a park, eventually selling the land to a private operator in 2001.

- The Manitoba Progressive Conservatives have chosen La Verendrye MLA Konrad Narth as interim leader in the wake of Obby Khan's resignation. Narth insists that the party is "not fractured" and that the party will move ahead to choose a semi-permanent leader in due time. He says he will not run for the position. For his part, Khan has not held back in attacking caucus members who opposed him. He accused MLAs Jodie Byram (Agassiz), Kathleen Cook (Roblin), Richard Perchotte (Selkirk), and Lauren Stone (Midland) of planning to meet in secret to plot against him on Monday following the confidence vote which he had won earlier that day.

- Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, is asking interesting questions about the sudden appearance of a migrant caravan headed towards the US just in time for the midterms. In a post on X (the former Twitter), Greene asks, "We have not seen a caravan headed to the U.S. southern border in several years, why now?" One wonders if this is something analogous to the sudden surge into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta earlier this year, which was heavily organized over social media. One of the things about the social media era is that it no longer requires a large conspiracy to create sudden shifts in public opinion and behaviour; only a small number of accounts can cause a post or idea to go viral, if it's carefully prepared. Rebecca Watson (aka Skepchick) discusses how celebrities' PR agencies do that sort of thing here; it's not hard to imagine strategists for the Republican Party (or their European equivalents like AfD and National Rally in the Ceuta case) doing something similar to get migrants moving at a convenient time to scare people into voting for their party.

- A jury in New Mexico has found Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, liable for over 43 million violations of consumer protection laws. The ruling could cost the company over $200 billion in penalties, unless of course a Trump-appointed judge hears their appeal.

News roundup, 29 Sept 2026

- Manitoba Progressive Conservative leader Obby Khan has resigned, not only as party leader but from the caucus; he will sit as an independent for the remainder of his term. Khan had recently survived a confidence vote by his caucus, winning the vote 13-6, and had initially planned to stay on but learned over the weekend that a "small group of MLAs" intended to continue to push for his removal.

- Donald Trump's threatened import bans on several Canadian products, including motorcycles, alcoholic beverages, dairy byproducts, and molasses, have taken effect. The impact of these bans may not be very significant, though the alcohol will hit a bit harder than the others. Nonetheless, Trump is convinced that Canada will back down any day now.

- Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally has just gained enough seats in the French senate to have party status in that assembly. Senators in France are indirectly elected by municipal and regional representatives.

- South Africa's ambassador to the US, who is white, is rejecting the claim by the US that there is a campaign of genocide against people like him. That hasn't stopped the US from accepting nearly 13,000 white South Africans as refugees, at a time when they are quick to dismiss most refugee claims. Of course, the people claiming that there is a genocide are mostly far right racist types - in other words, exactly the kind of people that Trump and his supporters want in their country. Pastor Rudi Swanepoel, who is also white, believes (probably correctly) that the real thing many white South Africans fear is not persecution but loss of privilege (mind you, to people who have grown up with privilege the two might appear to be the same thing).

- Chinese researchers say they are making progress towards proton-boron fusion, which has the potential to be much more useful than the deuterium-tritium fusion being focused on by most other researchers. Besides not requiring scarce isotopes, proton-boron fusion is aneutronic whereas D-T fusion produces high energy neutrons that would gradually make the containment materials radioactive. Getting the reaction to scale, though, is expected to be much more difficult than with D-T fusion.

News roundup, 28 Sept 2026

- Germany now plans to phase out fossil fuels by 2045. The fact that these fuels have skyrocketed in price thanks to the US/Israeli war on Iran is a major factor, of course; I hate to have to say anything good about Trump or Netanyahu but if enough other countries follow Germany's lead those awful humans may actually have a net positive impact on humanity.

- While several executives at AI companies, including Open AI Sam Altman, have paid lip service to the need to contain the technology, one researcher at Altman's company thinks that the proposed solutions, described as "pacing the frontier", won't be enough and that progress on it must be slowed down.

- The campaign director of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party, Stephen Carter, has resigned after only nine months in the position, and a year before the next election is scheduled to occur. Both Carter and party leader Obby Khan are being tight-lipped about the reason for his departure.

- The council of the East German town of Heidenau has approved a motion to ban future installation of memorial plaques ‌commemorating Holocaust victims. The motion was introduced by an AfD councillor but was supported not only by that party but also by the Christian Democrats, who you'd hope would know better.

- A cybersecurity researcher has published a detailed map of the locations of what he says are 300,000 Flock surveillance devices (cameras and related hardware) across the US. The company wants the website taken down, claiming that the use of their name on the website is a trademark infringement.

- Researchers have tested for various illegal drugs in the wastewater of eight Canadian cities. They found that of the cities studied, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan had the highest concentration of methamphetamine as well as cocaine, while Metro Vancouver was the worst for fentanyl; Toronto and Montreal were lower in all these drugs but higher for MDMA (aka ecstasy or molly). Winnipeg was not among the cities studied; not sure if the researchers didn't ask, or if the city's administration had suspicions what the results would be and didn't want them publicized.

News roundup, 25 Sept 2026

- Mark Carney said in an interview with the New York Times that he has investigated the possibility of a US invasion of Canada. Carney says that while he does not consider this to be a high probability event (so far at least) it would be irresponsible not to look into the matter given the consequences, given that Trump has repeatedly mused about annexing the country. For obvious reasons he did not reveal what exactly had been investigated in terms of countermeasures.

- A new poll suggests that support for Alberta independence has declined. With less than a month before the referendum, only 23% of respondents said they supported separation, with only 4% unsure. This is down from 27% support for secession in the spring. This is definitely good news, but it should be noted that these people aren't going to go away, and if anything rural Alberta will likely become an even more hostile environment for reasonable people than it already is.

- The suspect in the shooting at the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario has died. It appears he was a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, serving from 2017 to 2022. A childhood friend of his reports that he had alluded to antisemitic violence before; he'd created the username "kitekiller" for an online video game after his initial version, which had a K where the T is in that word, was rejected.

- The nominations for this fall's municipal elections in Manitoba have closed. A substantial number of positions, including the mayors of the cities of Portage La Prairie and Winkler and the town of Niverville, are getting in by acclamation since no opponents have registered to run. In the RMs of Argyle and Cartwright-Roblin, entire councils are getting in unopposed. Niverville mayor Myron Dyck expressed concern over the lack of willingness among citizens to run. This is a valid concern, though he does not come out and say that the toxic nature of municipal politics in rural and small-town Manitoba might be a factor.

- Toronto police are investigating a suspected arson at a store that sold Hells Angels merchandise. And in neighbouring Mississauga, two flatbed tow trucks were torched; while there is no indication of a direct connection between the incidents, it's reasonable to suspect that organized crime was involved in both cases (the towing industry in this country has long had a problem with that).

News roundup, 24 Sept 2026

- BC premier David Eby has called a snap election for the 24th of October. This was widely expected given the state of the opposition, with the BC Conservatives in a state of disarray. Whether this will have the intended effect remains to be seen. Early elections worked well for Eby's predecessor John Horgan, as well as for Ontario premier Doug Ford; on the other hand it went very badly for David Peterson and Jim Prentice. The latest polling looks pretty good for the government, but these polls are a couple of weeks old and predate the election call.

- The Republicans are considering suspending the export of diesel fuel in order to keep domestic supply, and hence prices, under control, and Trump appears to like the idea. This is raising concerns in Canada and even more so in Mexico; moreover, this could backfire on the US as refiners would likely respond by cutting production, causing other fuels (including gasoline) to experience price increases fairly soon. That might be enough to deter the regime from making such a move; on the other hand, they might think they could time it so as to cause a drop in diesel prices just before the midterms while the rise in gasoline prices would be delayed until after the election.

- Trump gave a belligerent speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, threatening to "annihilate" Iran if he doesn't get what he wants. He also rejected proposals to create an international body (or, as he put it, a "globalist scheme") to place limits on AI technology.

- Israel is facing a self-inflicted water shortage as a result of the devastation of Gaza. The destruction of sewage treatment plants in the territory has resulted in huge amounts of raw sewage pouring into the sea, leading to algal blooms that have clogged desalination plants. This is on top of an invasion of rats that have taken advantage of the destruction to breed out of control.

- A man found dead of cyanide poisoning in an Idaho church in 1982 has been identified using DNA technology, and is being investigated for possible involvement in the Tylenol poisonings that killed seven people n the Chicago area earlier that year. Dr. Mathew Betkouski was a chemist who had suffered from mental health issues, which were exacerbated by a brain injury in 1974, and had reportedly written of feelings of "euphoria" when thinking about violence. He had been working for Lockheed until he was fired following an incident when he attempted to obtain gelcaps from a pharmacy.