News roundup, 10 Nov 2026

- Tech firm Nvidia has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in market value since the revelations that its CEO, Jensen Huang, had an affair with a woman suspected of being a spy for China. Huang, as well as the company, are now being sued by investors for covering up the affair and thus allegedly defrauding shareholders. I imagine Huang's wife has a few questions about the matter as well.

- A group of activists stormed a Microsoft data centre under construction in Amsterdam and hung banners related to the company's services to ICE and the IDF while another group of protesters, not directly connected to the raiders, remained outside; the latter group were part of a European wide campaign by a group called "Stop Dirty Data Centres" that also held protests in Bristol, Warsaw, and Zagreb.

- A Newfoundland man, Alex O'Driscoll, was visited by the RCMP after the US Secret Service flagged a Facebook comment that he had allegedly made on a thread about what Canadians should do if the US were to invade. O'Driscoll had allegedly written "Shoot him on sight", referring to Trump; he does not recall writing this but doesn't deny it either. He has since deleted his Facebook account. The RCMP told him that they do not believe that he is a threat but warned him that he may be banned from entering the US as a result, something that doesn't particularly bother him.

- A Brandon man was arrested after a Remembrance Day poppy donation box containing around $1,000 was stolen from a business. The man, who was reportedly intoxicated, was arrested nearby.

- A man who apparently fancied himself the Chinese version of Marvin Heemeyer was arrested after damaging a government building with an excavator. 

- A New York resident named Carole Blank Brown got a vanity plate that said "BLANK" in honour of her maiden name. Unfortunately, she ended up getting hit with $40,000 in outstanding parking tickets that had been issued to vehicles with no plates - with the parking officers writing "blank" in the relevant field. She eventually got the tickets thrown out and has surrendered the plate.

News roundup, 9 Nov 2026

- James Talarico received more votes during early voting than his Republican opponent did in total. Talarico received nearly 4.4 million advance votes, plus another million on Election Day. 

- Many left-leaning Democrats are calling for the party's congressional leaders to be replaced. This follows House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries' statement that he's not interested in impeachment proceedings against Trump and similar statements from Chuck Schumer.

- New Zealand's parliamentary election, held over the weekend, has ended inconclusively, with neither the incumbent rightwing coalition nor the opposition left-leaning parties having enough seats to form a majority. A new centrist party, Opportunity, appears to be a potential kingmaker. The situation is complicated by a quirk of New Zealand's mixed member proportional representation system, related to so called "overhang seats". This occurs in mixed member systems when a party receives more constituency seats than the total number of seats that its popular vote would entitle it to. Most of the time this would not be a big problem, but in Saturday's election both the centre-right National Party and Te Pāti Māori won several overhang seats. The situation may have been exacerbated by gamesmanship (though this is debated); several far-right organizations urged their supporters to vote for Act or NZ First for the list vote, but to cast a tactical vote for the Nationals for the constituency vote, with the result that the Nationals won six more seats than Labour despite coming narrowly behind them in the popular vote. Meanwhile Te Pāti Māori urged their supporters to vote for them for the constituency vote but to vote for prospective coalition partners for the list vote. This means that 11 leveling seats will need to be awarded to other parties to give proper proportionality, bringing the total size of the parliament to 131 members from the usual 120. There is still some uncertainty over the exact distribution of seats as some "special votes" (mail-in and the like) won't be counted until the end of the month, but the most realistic majority coalition would be the Nationals, Act, and NZ First forming a razor-thin majority.

- A man opened fire on a crowded market square in the Polish city of Krakow, killing six people and wounding 16 others. Three additional victims were found in the home of the shooter, who has since died in hospital. Authorities say that the shooter held far-right political views.

- Health researchers are concerned that new Canadian privacy legislation, Bill C-36, has a glaring hole in it - the legislation allows private sector companies to gather personal information without the person's consent so long as they have a "legitimate interest" that outweighs any "foreseeable harm" to the individual. The problem is, in practice it would left to the companies to decide whether they have such an interest.

- China's CO₂ emissions decreased by 3.1% in the third quarter of 2026, the largest decline since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. A decline in coal consumption for electricity generation and the rapid electrification of the country's vehicle fleet are major factors, although an economic slowdown also seems to be playing a role.

- Jensen Huang, the CEO of tech giant Nvidia, has admitted to an affair with a woman suspected of being a spy for the Chinese government.

News roundup, 6 Nov 2026

- Canada's federal budget, the second since Mark Carney became prime minister, was tabled in Parliament yesterday by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne. The budget will increase spending by about $142 billion over the next 5 years; the government is betting that this will be offset by oil and gas revenues as prices of those commodities continue to soar. There is a big focus on increasing investment in the country; there are also token moves on affordability (such as increases in the GST rebate) and investments in measures to counter homelessness. NDP leader Avi Lewis approves of the latter but says the budget doesn't go far enough to help people in need overall; meanwhile Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is predictably focused on deficits.

- A ballot measure called Proposition RTM passed in several Bay Area municipalities during the midterms will provide regional transit systems with a much-needed cash injection, funded by sales taxes that will expire in 14 years. Transit systems in the region, like elsewhere, had taken a severe beating from COVID-19, and there were fears that the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system as well as San Francisco's Muni system would have to make severe cuts if the measure didn't pass. 

- Meta is worried that the Democratic sweep in the midterms could make it harder to build data centres. Most of the ballot measures to restrict data centre construction have passed, and many candidates at the municipal and state level who favoured restrictions were elected. This has contributed to a large selloff of tech stocks, although those stocks were already taking a beating before the election as investors started to clue in that this AI stuff just might be overhyped a little.

- Elon Musk, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to elect Republicans in the midterms, could now face congressional investigations into the huge contracts awarded to him by the Trump regime. In the four months that he led DOGE, he received some $6.3 billion in contracts; he has received another $10 billion since.

- Aeyavarin "Aeya" Pradubyart, a 15 year old who was a rising star in the golf community in Thailand died over the weekend after she was struck by lightning during a tournament. A 35 year old caddy was also injured.

News roundup, 5 Nov 2026

- JD Vance said in a post on X that the Republicans' defeat in the midterms resulted from the war against Iran. There is speculation that Vance may be trying to distance himself, ever so carefully, from Trump in preparation for a presidential run in 2028.

- Mark Carney will be presenting his budget today, the second since he became prime minister. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne is hinting that affordability measures will be part of the budget, which will also contain immigration targets for the next two years. NDP leader Avi Lewis is calling on the government to invest more in healthcare, which could plausibly be part of the budget, as well as to create a wealth tax and open a chain of government-run grocery stores (the last two items are probably a bit much to hope for from this government).

- Pieces of the left elevator of the Learjet 60 that crashed in Florida on the weekend were found several kilometres from the crash site. This is consistent with stills from the dashcam video showing the crash, which appear to show that the aircraft was missing its entire horizontal stabilizer before impact. It is unclear if this was actually the cause of the crash, or if the tail broke apart due to an existing overspeed after the crew lost control for other reasons (such as icing or turbulence).

- Scott Gillingham has appointed a new executive policy committee, and the committee (which serves as a cabinet for the city) includes two newly elected councillors. Transcona councillor Lora Meseman will be in charge of the Community Services portfolio, while Sara MacArthur from River Heights-Fort Garry is in charge of Water, Waste, and Environment. The other three members include Jeff Browaty (who is staying on as Finance chair), Evan Duncan (taking over as Public Works chair) and Vivian Santos (taking Duncan's previous post as Planning, Property, and Development chair).

- Roger Stearns, the new reeve of the Rural Municipality of Rockwood, Manitoba, has a pending lawsuit against the municipality over the potential expansion of two quarries that he fears could impact the Manitoba Bear Rehabilitation Centre, a charitable organization that he operates along with his wife. No doubt he ran for the post in the hope of stopping the expansion, but University of Winnipeg political scientist Aaron Moore thinks that Stearns may need to recuse himself from any votes related to the quarries, due to conflict of interest legislation.

- People were swimming in the St. Lawrence River this week as temperatures hovered in the low twenties. This is not what is traditionally expected in Canada in November.

News roundup, 4 Nov 2026

- The Democrats have won control of Congress in yesterday's midterms. A number of seats in both houses have yet to be decided, but it appears that the Democrats have already secured majorities in both houses even in the worst case scenario. Even in the best case, though, they won't have a veto-proof supermajority, meaning they will likely have little opportunity to actually pass legislation. This will provide the opportunity for some investigations of the Trump regime's corruption, however. Among the highlights - James Talarico has won the Texas Senate seat that was up for grabs and Gina Hinojosa has won the governorship of that state, while Annie Andrews has won in South Carolina; few could have imagined those states going blue. New York representative Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become the first black Speaker of the House, while Abdul El-Sayed will become the first Muslim senator.

- A gigantic cyber heist last week, in which $6.3 billion was stolen from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, was pulled off by contacting an engineer with the company on a job-hunting platform and conducting a fake job interview. After an initial interview to build trust, they convinced the engineer that they were going to give him a second interview directly with the CEO of the fictitious company, and gave him an "assignment" to download to his work laptop. Of course the "assignment" was full of malware, which gave the hackers (suspected to be North Korean government operatives) high level access to Binance's systems. I suspect that engineer's need to find a new job has just increased significantly.

- A cyberattack has enabled hackers to remotely activate the defrost mode of internet-connected supermarket freezers in Europe, heating them to 50°C and ruining large amounts of food. The same thing happened a few weeks back. It's a fair question why a supermarket freezer needs to be controlled remotely anyway; it should be easy enough to have a switch you can flip to defrost the device, but I guess the stores were sold on the "internet of things" by fast-talking sales reps and convinced that putting their freezers online is necessary to stay competitive. The identities and motives of the attackers are not known.

- Police responded to a standoff at the University of Toronto's satellite campus in Mississauga in which a 19 year old man, who was not a student at the university, barricaded himself in a residence. The standoff ended when the suspect fatally shot himself. The suspect had also been wanted for a domestic violence incident earlier that day in which a woman was injured.

News roundup, 3 Nov 2026

- The US goes to the polls today in the midterm elections; stay tuned for the outcome. In addition to Congress, the midterms include referenda being held in various states, notably one in California on instituting a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires. 

- A Learjet 60 business jet dived almost vertically into the ground from over 30,000 ft in Palm Beach County, Florida on the weekend, killing the crew of two and all seven passengers and making a large crater in the ground. One person on the ground was injured as well. More information, including ATC audio, may be found here.

- The Ford government in Ontario has altered the province's building code to facilitate their plans to keep more prisoners detained on remand. Under the old rules, sleeping areas in provincial jails had to have a minimum of 4.7 m² of floor space per prisoner, but there is now no minimum. Even the old rules gave less space than is recommended by many; the UK-based National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders recommends a minimum of 5.4 m² per person. In Canadian federal prisons the minimum is 6.5 m².

- An apparent malfunction at a Winnipeg sewage treatment plant resulted in 9.8 million litres of raw sewage spilling into the Red River. Two automated bypass gates reportedly activated unexpectedly, and an alarm that was supposed to notify staff of this did not go off.

- A leader in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets sustained what are described as life-altering injuries after being assaulted in Hamilton on the weekend. Police say the man confronted a group of boys who blew an air horn at a group of cadets who were selling Remembrance Day poppies outside a restaurant, and followed them inside, only to be attacked by them along with a 48 year old woman. The woman and one of the boys, aged 12, have been charged with aggravated assault.

News roundup, 2 Nov 2026

- A major selloff rocked North America's stock markets on Friday, driven mostly by declines in tech stocks. This follows significant declines in similar stocks in China; it seems investors are beginning to second-guess whether the massive amounts of money spent on AI technology is going to pay off. 

- Haley Stevens, a Democratic member of Congress from Michigan, tried to make the leap to the Senate this year, but lost the primary to Abdul El-Sayed in August. She has responded by endorsing El-Sayed's Republican opponent, much to the chagrin of party officials.

- Some users of Google's AI mode found that they couldn't get a straight answer when asking who won the 2020 US presidential election. Google attributes this to a "technical gap" which they are working on fixing.

- Steinbach has elected its first person of colour to its city council. Greg Carlos emigrated to Canada with his family as a teenager and says the small southern Manitoba city has welcomed him, notwithstanding a racist banner that was hung on a nearby highway overpass during the campaign.

- A Manitoba Housing highrise in Winnipeg's North End was evacuated over the weekend following a fire, the third at the building in eight months. Most residents have been allowed back, though one floor remains evacuated. Disconcertingly, some residents are blaming the province's Your Way Home program, which provides housing for homeless people. There may be something to this; earlier this year the Winnipeg Regional health Authority suspended home care services in that building for a time due to fears for the safety of their staff. Although there have been security upgrades made at the building since, one resident suggested that people with a "drug related" past shouldn't be housed there; the problem with that attitude is that they still have to be housed somewhere, unless one thinks they should just be left to die.

- After a 30 year old woman died of cancer while owing $38,000 in student debt, TD tried to get the money out of her grieving mother. The mother was a cosigner, but life insurance had been purchased at the time. TD claims that the policy was automatically cancelled when she graduated from university and the student line of credit converted into a personal loan, but it's not clear if she or her mother were actually notified of the cancellation. In any case, the bank backed down after the CBC started asking questions.