News roundup, 12 March 2026

- Israel bombed a residential neighbourhood in Beiruit, claiming that an apartment building they hit was "used" by an organization called Jama’a Islamiye (Islamic Group). The organization says none of its members were impacted by the attack. Israeli ground troops are also pushing into border areas in Lebanon, and there are fears that a wider invasion is planned. Meanwhile Iran has announced a full closure of the Strait of Hormuz (except for China apparently), causing a dramatic increase in oil prices. Air New Zealand is cancelling around 1,100 flights as the price of jet fuel spikes due to the war. Oil barons in Canada are salivating of course, as are those in Russia.

- The Manitoba government has announced that their proposed supervised consumption site, planned for a former industrial site on Henry Avenue, may open sooner than expected. This has led nearby homeowners to argue for reduced assessed values for their properties. In other provincial government news, Mintu Sandhu, the minister responsible for consumer protection, has introduced a "right to repair" bill modeled after similar legislation recently passed in Quebec.

- A Swiss man in his 60s set him self on fire on a bus in the town of Kerzers, killing himself and five other people. Police have ruled out a terrorist motive, describing the perpetrator as a "marginalised and disturbed individual" who had recently been reported missing by his family.

- Matthew Chorney, a paramedic in West St. Paul, Manitoba, received a call about an emergency in his immediate vicinity ten minutes before the end of his shift. He declined the call and left it to another paramedic who was almost 20 minutes away. Fortunately the patient did not die, but Chorney has been convicted of multiple charges by a disciplinary panel of the College of Paramedics of Manitoba. The charges include professional misconduct; his registration has been suspended for three months and he is being ordered to pay the college for the $25,000 cost of the investigation.

- Kenyan authorities arrested a man who they say was attempting to smuggle over 2,000 queen ants back to his native China. The ants are sold for the pet trade in that country; there are fears that they are being harvested at a rate that could have significant impacts on ecosystems.

News roundup, 11 March 2026

- The US consulate in Toronto was hit by gunfire early Tuesday morning. Nobody was hurt; police are looking for two suspects in what they are calling a "national security incident". As someone on this Reddit thread remarked:

So have your pick of suspects : Canadian angry at the tariffs? Iranian angry at the attack? Muslim supporting other Muslims? Indian, Brazilian, Mexican, European, Chinese angry at tariffs? Venezuelan angry at Maduro's ousting? Russian angry at America? Palestinian?

There are 195 sovereign countries on Earth, Trump managed to piss off most of them.

Others have pointed out the fact that the shots appear to have fired from a handgun, meaning that there's an excellent chance that the gun was originally smuggled into the country from the States, bringing things full circle.

- The US is reportedly putting pressure on Sri Lanka not to repatriate the survivors from the Iranian ship sunk by an American submarine last week, as well as the crew of a second Iranian vessel that became stranded near the island nation. A State Department cable indicates that the US ambassador to Sri Lanka has urged the country to "minimize Iranian attempts to use the detainees for propaganda".

- Nunavut's Lori Idlout has become the latest MP to to defect to the Liberals, this time from the NDP. This defection, along with 3 recent Conservative MPs who defected recently, brings the Liberals up to 170 seats, two short of a majority. The motive for Idlout's decision is unclear. Meanwhile at the provincial level in Manitoba, Conservative MLA Bob Lagassé has left his party to sit as an independent, saying that the last straw was the party's failure to eject Jeff Wharton after he was implicated and fined in the Sio Silica scandal.

- A recall campaign against Alberta premier Danielle Smith has failed after activists only managed to get 2,300 of the 12,000 signatures needed to force a byelection in her constituency of Brooks-Medicine Hat.

- French authorities are investigating an apparent foreign disinformation campaign against two members of the leftwing France Unbowed party who are running for municipal office. One of the candidates, Sebastien Delogu, who is running for mayor of Marseille, was the subject of a blog posting by an anonymous person who claims that he ruined their life; posters with a QR code linking to the blog were posted around the city. The blog, which has since been removed, appears to be connected with a network of accounts linked to the pro-Israeli ELNET organization, a registered lobby group in the country. The group had also targeted Francois Piquemal, who is running for the mayoral office in Toulouse. Both Delogu and Piquemal have been vocal critics of Israel.

- Hungary's parliament has passed a resolution opposing the admission of Ukraine to the EU. Hungary has also adopted a special resolution to permit the cash and gold that was seized while being transported through the country by Ukrainian financial institution Oschadbank to be held for the duration of their investigation into what they claim may be linked to organized crime. Strangely, in light of Hungary's claims, they have released the bank employees that they arrested during the seizure; perhaps they don't want the inconvenience of a trial that might undermine their case for taking the assets. And Slovak prime minister Robert Fico is vowing to "take up the baton from Hungary" and block EU funds to Ukraine even if Hungary's Viktor Orbán is defeated in the upcoming election.

- Lou Callaghan, a captain with the Canadian Coast Guard has been fired after he ignored a distress call from a fishing boat that had run aground. Callaghan claimed to have initially not heard the first call; crew members on his vessel claimed that he turned down the radio after the call came through. Fortunately he was eventually persuaded to attend and the crew of the fishing boat were rescued.

News roundup, 10 March 2026

- The bombing of a girls' school, killing 150 students, during the first salvo of attacks on Iran may have resulted from the US military's use of AI to select targets. I daresay that the use of a poorly tested technology for something so consequential is not a good idea.

- Republican senator Lindsey Graham has warned Saudi Arabia of unspecified "consequences" if the Saudis don't join the US/Israel attack on Iran. Graham was reportedly one of the biggest proponents of the attack in the first place, having been pushing Trump on the issue for months.

- An autonomous vehicle owned by Waymo blocked a street and delayed the arrival of an ambulance at an emergency scene in Austin until a cop was able to gain access and move the vehicle. Although this particular incident probably didn't make a difference in anyone's survival, stuff like this has understandably made people question the wisdom of letting the company operate; unfortunately Texas banned municipalities from regulating such vehicles back in 2017.

- A plan to build what would be Canada's largest data centre in Olds, Alberta has run into a snag - due to its enormous energy requirements (equal to the entire city of Edmonton), the centre would need its own dedicated natural gas power plant. The Alberta Utilities Commission, which among other things regulates power plants in the province, has rejected the proposal due to a lack of consultation and general secrecy. I assume the next step will be for the Smith government to pass legislation to overrule the commission.

- The spike in oil prices resulting from the attack on Iran has led to a significant increase in interest in electric cars in the US. It's too soon to tell how permanent this is going to be, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise buy an EV will get one as a second car and then discover that they work better than the talking heads on Fox say. Once that happens, they might not be eager to go back to gas.

- The Game Developers Conference, a huge week long convention, is being held this week in San Francisco as it has been every year since 1988 (except 2020 of course), but many developers from outside the US are planning to skip the event, saying that they don't feel safe entering the country right now. International attendance had declined since 2020 anyway, with one developer remarking that the value of in-person events had declined anyhow due to the workarounds developed for the pandemic, and with the current political situation in that country many just don't want to risk it.

- School divisions in Alberta have pulled dozens of graphic novels from their shelves, including graphic novel adaptations of 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale and a historical work about the Trojan War as well as the more expected ones (e.g. the stuff with LGBT* content). Possibly the school boards just want to err on the side of caution, though there may be an element of malicious compliance here as well.

News roundup, 9 March 2026

- The late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be succeeded by his son Mojtaba. According to some diplomatic cables that turned up on Wikileaks back in the noughties, the Americans seem to have thought he was pretty much running things anyway; meanwhile one member of the country's main religious body claims that the elder Khamenei apparently did not want his son as a successor, and in any case the current Iranian state was supposed to be a republic, not a monarchy, so this could prove divisive. Also divisive was the statement by the country's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who had apologized for the strikes on Gulf states but then withdrew the apology following criticism from hardliners who called his stance "unprofessional, weak and unacceptable".

- Oil prices have surged by more than 25% since the start of the war, due to the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz and damage to oil infrastructure. If a Democrat were in power when oil prices surged like that, no matter the reason, you can be sure that the MAGA crowd would not shut up about it. I'm not counting on this to make them worry about their Dear Leader's role in this now, though, since in the minds of many of those people the license he gives them to be mean and hateful is worth paying more for gas. In terms of the impact on the energy market, the impact could be mixed; on the one hand it could push people and countries to switch to renewables faster, but it could also lead to the use of more coal in place of natural gas.

- The Manitoba government has refused to allow the City of Winnipeg to change the default speed limit on residential streets to 40 km/h from 50. Premier Wab Kinew rationalizes the decision by saying that "they can do it on their own". Well technically it's true that they could put signs at the entrance to each and every residential street, but realistically that's not going to happen - the cost of the signs alone would be considerable. This is disappointing, but not all that surprising; for all of Kinew's virtues (and they are considerable) he has a populist streak to him that comes out at times like this. And maybe he still clings to hopes of winning back constituencies like Interlake and doesn't want to deal with the rage from people who come into the city from out in the sticks and don't pay attention to the changes to the "unless otherwise posted" signs at the city limit.

- A 45 year old woman who worked as a personal support worker was ambushed and stabbed to death outside a client's home in the Windsor suburb of LaSalle. Nancy Grewal was also a social media influencer in the Sikh community, and had been a vocal critic of the Khalistan independence movement, leading to suspicions that this was the motivation for her killing. It's certainly possible, but I was under the impression that stabbing tends to be more common when the motive is personal, rather than a professional job. It could be that this was one enraged individual rather than an arranged hit, but I do hope police are considering other possibilities (such as a stalker or an ex-partner).

- A white supremacist dating site called WhiteDate, described by some as "Tinder for Nazis", was hacked and had its data published. Some of the data was published on a website called OK Stupid, while more sensitive data was provided only to journalists and researchers; the CBC used some of the latter data to find information implicating current members of the Canadian military. 

News roundup, 6 March 2026

- Mark Carney is refusing to rule out getting involved in the Iran war despite his misgivings, apparently trying to avoid arousing the ire of Donald Trump. Fen Osler Hampson of Carleton University calls Carney's stance "studied ambiguity" and suggests that he might fear that Trump will use crippling trade sanctions to force Canada to cooperate. Part of me would like to see Canada respond to such pressures by threatening to cut off exports of oil and electricity to the US, but that would require more courage than the Liberal Party usually shows, and if we're honest with ourselves it might not even be a good idea; it's the sort of thing that just might provoke the Mango Mussolini to use military force against us. Many members of the Liberal caucus are worried about the matter; the party's caucus meeting today will be interesting. Meanwhile the war itself continues apace, with drone attacks throughout the Middle East on everything from hotels to fossil fuel infrastructure. The Guardian's Gaby Hinsliff suggests a possible reason why Iran would be lashing out at so many countries - not only are they trying to dissuade those countries from helping the Americans, this may be their version of Israel's Samson option, i.e. "to show Washington that if it’s going down then it’s taking the neighbourhood with it" and "make the wider Gulf look too dangerous a place to invest".

- The Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia via Ukraine, has been offline since January. Ukraine attributes this to damage from a Russian strike, but the Orban regime is accusing Ukraine of deliberate delays in getting the pipeline up and running, and in February they vetoed the EU's latest sanctions package against Russia as well as a loan for Ukraine. Now Orban is getting even more belligerent - in a recent post on X (the former Twitter) he called this a "blockade" that Hungary would break "by force". Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded by suggesting that he could give Orban's address to Ukraine's military; most recently, Hungarian authorities seized two vehicles owned by a Ukrainian bank and took seven bank employees into custody. The vehicles were apparently carrying 40 million US dollars, 35 million euros, and 9 kg of gold, which was being shipped to Ukraine from Austria. Hungarian authorities claim that this is a money-laundering investigation;  the speculation on Reddit is that this is a sign of desperation on Orban's part as his Fidez party has been slumping in the polls of late.

- The Trump regime plans to allow the US Department of Justice to interfere with ethics investigations by state bar associations against current and former DOJ lawyers. A proposed regulation would give Attorney General Pam Bondi "the right to review the complaint and the allegations in the first instance" and would suspend the bar associations' investigations until the review is completed.

- Kristi Noem has been removed from her position as Homeland Security secretary, to be replaced by Markwayne Mullin (currently a Republican senator from Oklahoma). I guess she's going to spend more time shooting dogs with her family.

- One of the objections sometimes raised against Canada choosing Saab's Gripen fighter is that there are concerns about "interoperability" with F-35s. On the face of it this should not be a problem; Danish F-35s and Swedish Gripens have been operating together for some time without difficulty - but it has been suggested that the Americans can make it a problem by denying Canada access to the systems that allow this to work.

- Google is facing a wrongful death lawsuit after a Florida man, Jonathan Gavalas, killed himself upon being asked to do so by the company's AI chatbot, Gemini. The suicide followed a long and bizarre series of exchanges with the chatbot.

News roundup, 5 March 2026

- A LNG tanker suspected of being part of Russia's "shadow fleet" has exploded in the Mediterranean between Malta and Libya. The crew were rescued; there are indications that a drone attack may have been the cause. Russia blames Ukraine for the attack.

- While the MAGA movement was pretty solidly opposed to renewable energy until recently, the matter is now getting more complicated as its merits become harder to ignore. While Trump continues to ramble about how awful it is, rightwing influencer Katie Miller (who is married to Trump's domestic policy chief) has lately started to talk about the virtues of solar. So have Kellyanne Conway, Newt Gingrich, and other prominent figures. And solar and related technologies continue to move ahead, even in the US, despite Trump's efforts - for instance, nearly 58 GWh of battery storage was installed in the country last year. The war with Iran could make renewables even more attractive, especially if a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure in the Middle East is damaged. And there are fears that the major US automakers could find themselves reduced to making niche vehicles that hardly sell outside the US.

- The Manitoba government will be introducing legislation in the upcoming session to make it harder to use the notwithstanding clause from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The bill will compel any future government using the clause to explain its reasoning to an appeals court judge, who would then advise on whether the proposed use of the clause would violate certain sections of the Charter. While the judge's ruling would be nonbinding, it would also be public, which would hopefully force the government to explain its move to the public at election time.

- Winnipeg-based bus manufacturer New Flyer has expanded its Winnipeg facility and is once again manufacturing entire buses in the city for the first time in 15 years. The company's practice of late has been to manufacture the shells here but complete the buses in the US to meet American content rules, and this will continue for the US export market, but it will no longer be necessary to ship the shells to the States and then ship the completed product back here for the domestic market.

- The European Union is moving forward with plans to require companies that receive public money to meet minimum thresholds for EU-made parts and require a minimum number of European workers for foreign investors.

News roundup, 4 March 2026

- Mark Carney says that his approval in principle of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is "not a blank cheque", and represents a "failure of the international order". He also acknowledges that "it appears that these actions ‌are ⁠inconsistent with international law" but says he'll leave the final determination to the experts. The most charitable interpretation of his rather confusing stance on the matter is that he's trying to keep Trump off his back, which while not especially admirable is understandable in light of such things as Trump's fury at Spain for not letting the US use bases on their territory for the attack. On the other hand, Keir Starmer is not getting rewarded for his reversal on the use of the Diego Garcia base for the attack, and I'm not sure that Carney will be either, so maybe he should have just taken a principled stance from the start.

- An Iranian ship sank off the coast of Sri Lanka, apparently following a submarine attack. One sailor has been confirmed dead and 78 injured; over a hundred are missing.

- Toronto police are investigating after shots were fired at a synagogue in North York on Monday night. Nobody was injured.

- The Green Party of England and Wales (Scotland has its own Green Party) has overtaken Labour and is only two points behind Reform UK in the latest poll. This is a big thing, because it might drive some tactical voters towards the Greens in the hope of stopping Reform. 

- Jake Lang, a participant in the Capitol riot who was pardoned by Donald Trump, turned up at a fifth anniversary event this year and screamed abuse at Metropolitan Police commander Jason Bagshaw, who he had confronted during the putsch. Among other things, Lang shouted that Bagshaw should be "put down like a dead dog". Besides mangling the metaphor, prosecutors say that this and other things he shouted at Bagshaw constituted threats, and he has been slapped with another charge as a result. It's worth noting that until he was pardoned he had been remanded in custody (he hadn't gotten to trial yet) upon the orders of a Trump-appointed judge who nonetheless couldn't ignore the "very strong" evidence against him.

- A security guard has been charged with assault with a weapon and possession of a prohibited weapon after allegedly using brass knuckles to subdue a shoplifter at a Dollarama in downtown Winnipeg. The victim has also been charged with robbery and uttering threats.

- BC has announced that once they switch to daylight saving time this weekend they will not be switching back in the fall. Actual sleep experts generally think that sticking with standard time rather than DST would be better, but their voices generally get drowned out by those who want more daylight in the evenings (such as retailers). The Manitoba government is deferring any decision on the matter for now.

- Owners of six "holistic spas" in Guelph, Ontario have been charged under a city bylaw with "failure to ensure no adult entertainment services were provided". The services were apparently advertised online.