News roundup, 20 Oct 2026

- The separatist referendum in Alberta appears to have been soundly defeated, with around 76% of voters voting to remain in Canada. This is good news for everyone except the seppies, who probably won't get to become Septics in the near future. The margin of victory for sanity is especially good news (and higher than I expected); a narrow victory would have been almost as bad as a defeat, since not only would it likely have resulted in a surge in domestic violence across rural Alberta (not that there probably hasn't been some as a result of this vote) but a close vote would potentially be easier to discredit as rigged, not only in the eyes of the public but, much more ominously, in the eyes of the Trump regime. Unfortunately, it's not impossible that another referendum could happen soon - while Danielle Smith has rejected the idea, it's possible that it could happen anyway if the people behind a previous attempt to hold a referendum are successful in their appeal of a court decision that struck down their plans.

- Australian MP Helen Haines is in critical condition after being hit by a vehicle. Authorities are saying that this was not an accident but an intentional attack, though they are still trying to determine the exact motive. Haines, an environmentalist and public health expert, was elected as an independent in 2019 and reelected in 2022. A 43 year old man is in custody for the attack. In some ways the suspect doesn't fit the typical profile for such attackers, having been an anti-logging activist prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, but maybe he went down a far-right rabbit hole during the lockdowns. Time will tell I guess.

- Meta is being accused of interfering in the Brazilian presidential election by suppressing accounts that are supportive of incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, allegedly at the request of far-right opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro.

- Activists are calling on Winnipeg to bring in a bylaw to restrict the removal of mature trees on private property. The proposal from Trees Winnipeg would control the removal of trees more than 15 cm in diameter, while still allowing removal under certain circumstances (e.g. if they're diseased or if their removal is truly necessary for development). A number of cities in Canada already have such a bylaw, including Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Surrey. Trees Winnipeg says that 75% of council candidates have signed onto the pledge, though incumbent mayor Scott Gillingham is not among them.

- While tourism is tanking in Las Vegas, some Canadians still have no compunction about going there or elsewhere in the US. It's increasingly limited to the kind of person who would drunkenly steal and injure a flamingo, though.

News roundup, 19 Oct 2026

- An explosion and fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in Alberta has killed at least four people and injured numerous others, 19 of them critically. There were some rumours that this resulted from oil and gas infrastructure being hit during an exercise, but the DND says there is no evidence to support this; they also say there is no evidence that this was a terrorist incident. Alberta separatist leader Jeffrey Rath made allegations, entirely unsubstantiated, of a "cover up", and suggested that "DEI programs" and "gender fluid soldiers" were to blame for the disaster.

- Albertans are voting today on ten referendum questions, including one on moving towards separation from Canada. Polls suggest that the separatist movement has lost some momentum recently; that said, they could still win if the turnout is sufficiently low, as separatists tend to be more highly motivated to actually vote. Reassuringly there are signs that turnout will be high; more than 700,000 people had voted in advance as of Saturday. I suspect that reason will prevail, but probably not by as big a margin as the polls would predict.

- Green Party member Pete Fry has been elected mayor of Vancouver, defeating right-leaning incumbent Ken Sim. 

- The Trump regime is apparently looking for means to strip Ilhan Omar of her citizenship, according to reports following the DHS raid on her home last week. During the raid her passport was among the items seized; the regime appears to be trying to claim that her age was misrepresented and that she was actually an adult when her late father applied for citizenship, meaning she would have had to apply separately. What's remarkable is that none other than Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn't agree with Omar on much of anything, is coming to her defense.

- A federal judge in the US has ruled that the Trump regime likely acted illegally when it banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico journalists from the White House, and has reinstated access for them pending a final judgment on the legality of the move. 

- Nick Adams, the Trump regime's "Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism, and Values" (yes, that's actually his title) expressed outrage at travel boycotts aimed at the US. He called the failure of foreigners to spend money in his country "theft". This comes as travel to the US is facing drastic declines in tourism - they had a 5.5% drop in international visitors last year (and a decline of almost 21% from Canada).

News roundup, 16 Oct 2026

- A woman who showed up at a Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Release the Epstein Files" was attacked by at least two men before police intervened. The police, however, just escorted her off the premises; according to the local sheriff the cops didn't see the actual attack and the victim didn't file a report. I'd be curious to know what kind of persuasion was used by the police to deter her from doing so. Incidentally, while the attack was real, one widely circulated image purporting to be of the attack was actually generated using AI.

- Trump's new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, has admitted that she failed her bar exam, but this did not deter her from repeatedly describing herself as a lawyer. To be fair, that's probably not the biggest lie she'll be telling in her present career.

- A school shooting in Bend, Oregon has killed three children and a teacher. The 16 year old suspect is also dead.

- The works of Irish author Sally Rooney are being banned from sale in the UK after she announced that she would be donating money to Palestine Action, an organization that the UK government considers a "terrorist" group despite the fact that it hasn't been linked to any actual violence, just vandalism and disruption.

- Three people are dead and 16 injured after a collision involving multiple vehicles, including two transit buses, in the Calgary neighbourhood of Saddle Ridge. One of the buses, which was powered by compressed natural gas, caught fire; one of the injured is in life-threatening condition. Meanwhile another fiery multi-vehicle crash has killed at least one person in Southwold Township, Ontario, just outside of London. The fire in that accident was so intense that the police have yet to determine the number of people represented by the remains found.

News roundup, 15 Oct 2026

- The Trump regime says that it is monitoring Canada for signs of election interference related to the upcoming midterms. US ambassador Pete Hoekstra cites a speech by former prime minister Justin Trudeau at Brown University last month in which he criticized the regime, as well as Industry Minister Mélanie Joly's remarks about retaliatory tariffs that target exports from "politically sensitive states". The fact that fuel prices show no sign of going down is probably bringing the regime close to panic.

- Federal NDP leader Avi Lewis is calling on the federal government to nationalize Stelco after its parent company shut down operations in Hamilton. Lewis pointed out that there is a precedent for this in the UK's nationalization of British Steel earlier this year, though it's worth noting that the latter move was not simply to save jobs but to ensure a secure supply of steel. Nonetheless, it's worth considering; sadly, it seems unlikely that the Carney government will do this given that they're busy making plans to privatize airports.

- The Ford government in Ontario is moving ahead with the forced removal of bike lanes from several Toronto streets, even as activists are requesting the Supreme Court to rule on the matter. Protesters obstructed removal efforts on Wednesday, but a large number of police moved in; two people were arrested. What's notable is that several compromise proposals from the City of Toronto that would have restored motor vehicle lanes while keeping the bike lanes were rejected by the province last month. One is left with the impression that Ford knows deep down that adding a lane won't solve congestion, and that his slackjawed supporters won't be satisfied by anything that allows cyclists on $80 bikes to overtake them while they sit in traffic in their $80,000 pickup trucks.

- New polling in BC suggests that the race is tightening; although the BC Conservatives still show as being in the lead with 42%, the NDP is at 40%. The Greens are at 9%. Among supporters of other parties, 29% said that they would consider supporting the NDP if their preferred candidate had no realistic chance (for Green supporters specifically this was 37%), while 21% of third-party supporters would vote Conservative under such circumstances. This might be good(ish) news for the NDP, but there are many caveats, not least the "shy Tory factor", which is likely to be significant given how embarrassing it must be to consider supporting the Cons. The methodology used for this poll doesn't allow for a margin of error to be calculated.

- One of Anthropic's AI agents went rogue and sent a false tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police. Notably, the police immediately dismissed the tip as spam, but Anthropic didn't realize this had happened for two months.

News roundup, 14 Oct 2026

- The Carney government quietly suspended plans to purchase 16 Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters from the US earlier this year. The decision was made with an eye to reduce military reliance on the US; it was made shortly before the unsuccessful trade talks with the Trump regime over the summer.

- A Ukrainian citizen is going on trial in Germany for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia four years ago. The man, named as "Serhii K", was arrested in Italy last year and extradited to Germany; another suspect faces potential extradition from Croatia. In Poland, however, a court refused to extradite a third suspect, saying that an attack on the pipeline was not unlawful.

- New polling on Toronto's mayoral race gives Olivia Chow a narrow lead of 51% over Brad Bradford's 46%. Bradford has more support among property owners, though; this is concerning because the latter group may be more likely to actually vote.

- A banner hung from a highway overpass near Steinbach, Manitoba declared that "Steinbach votes white not brown"; this was naturally disconcerting to Mitesh Kumar, who is running for city council. The banner also had the name of a white supremacist organization on it; the CBC blurred this detail from the image posted on their website, perhaps hoping that ignoring them will make them go away, but the organization is named in this Reddit thread as a neo-Nazi "active club" founded in Hamilton.

- An apparent data error resulted in End Homelessness Winnipeg overestimating the number of chronically homeless people in the city tenfold. I suppose this is good news, though it's embarrassing for the organization.

- The portion of northwestern Ontario that's in the central time zone will be joining Manitoba in remaining on daylight saving time for the entire year. The region has long had closer ties to Manitoba than to southern Ontario, so this made sense.

News roundup, 13 Oct 2026

- Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney is warning that the separatists could win next week's referendum if the turnout is low. While the polls show a strong majority opposing separation, there is a danger of complacent urbanites not bothering to vote. Some folks in this Reddit thread point out that while you don't see too many pro-independence lawn signs in Calgary or Edmonton, just outside those cities you see large numbers of them, which might add to the aforementioned complacency. And Kenney also fears that the additional questions on top of the separatism one will lead to long wait times, especially in densely populated areas (which are also the reliably federalist areas). While a yes vote doesn't automatically mean secession, it would mean another, binding referendum in a couple of years, and once something like that gains that kind of momentum it becomes harder to stop. Even a narrow defeat for the separatists would still be a troubling outcome, because the separatist movement is unlikely to go away if it wins significant support. Kenney also says, not incorrectly, that the separatists are "angry with modernity"; however many in the aforementioned Reddit thread point out, also not incorrectly, that Kenney was happy to go along with the base prejudices of that crowd as long as it worked for him politically.

- Bulgaria's prime minister has summoned the Russian ambassador following drone attacks on two ships off his country's Black Sea coast. One of the ships sank and eleven crew members are missing; Ukraine blames Russia for the attack. Russia has said previously that they are targeting ships carrying weapons and/or "dual use" cargo to Ukraine but have not claimed responsibility for this attack. This attack notwithstanding, the former commander-in-chief of Ukraine's military, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, says that Ukraine has "broken Russia's ability to advance". Ukraine is also targeting Russian data centres with their drones, leading to some reports that this has led to a drop in far-right posts in European social media, however the accuracy of this is disputed.

- The US Department of Homeland Security searched the home of Ilhan Omar on Monday. The department claims that this is part of a criminal investigation. The specifics have not been released, but JD Vance has previously accused Omar of committing immigration fraud. Even if there were substance to these accusations, though, it seems awfully convenient for them to wait until just before the midterms to take any action.

- A municipal election forum was held in Steinbach last week, the city's first in the course of this campaign. Only four candidates, none of them incumbents, showed up to the event, which was organized by the local Strong Towns chapter. I guess Strong Towns is too "woke" for Steinbach.

News roundup, 9 Oct 2026

- The Alberta government is ordering the City of Edmonton to revert to its pre-2024 zoning bylaws and parking minimums. The city had overhauled its bylaws to allow multiplexes to be built in neighbourhoods that were formerly single-family exclusive. One might think that this is a matter that the citizens of Edmonton could decide on (and in fact already decided on when they elected the current mayor and council last year), but Danielle Smith doesn't care what Edmontonians want. No doubt she fears that if Edmonton and Calgary build more dense housing, they might grow in population by attracting urban cosmopolitan folks from elsewhere, and thus have a larger share of the provincial electorate. This would eventually leave the simple rural types outnumbered and thus make the UCP unelectable in its current form.

- An investigation by MPI and the City of Winnipeg has found that a large number of rideshare (Uber/Lyft/etc) drivers, who are required to have a higher level of insurance in order to register with the city, have been downgrading their coverage once registered so as to get out of paying the higher premiums. As many as 36 of them have gotten into accidents in a 1 year period, resulting in $189,000 in claims that MPI may now try to recover from the improperly insured drivers.

- The BC Conservatives have dropped Joachim Agou as their candidate in the constituency of Victoria-Beacon Hill following the discovery a series of offensive social media posts. These include one in which he praises a driver who ran his car into pro-Palestinian protesters, as well as several pro-Trump (and implicitly racist) posts. Unfortunately this will probably have little impact on the polls, which show the party significantly in the lead with only a couple of weeks before the election.

- Conservationists fear that a grove of blight-resistant American Chestnut trees in West Virginia could be cut down to make way for a data centre. There is a great deal of confusion and secrecy about the ownership of the land and the company's plans; activists fear clearing could start as early as next month.