News roundup, 5 Feb 2026

- Jeff Bezos has ordered massive layoffs at the Washington Post, affecting a third of the newspaper's workforce. Among other things, the entire Middle East desk will be gone, as will be the paper's Ukraine bureau chief and correspondent. Former Executive Editor Marty Baron condemns this and previous decisions by Bezos, which he calls "ill-conceived". The thing is, though, they're only "ill-conceived" if you're thinking in terms of the greater good; if you're thinking in terms of Bezos' personal interests they aren't ill-conceived at all, especially in light of how Donald Trump is making new threats regarding the broadcast licenses of major networks in the US.

- The Trump regime appears to be issuing selective exemptions to tariffs for companies with which he has a good relationship. Nothing suspicious about that at all...

- Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi is warning federal leadership candidates to treat Alberta with kid gloves so that he has a chance of defeating Danielle Smith next year. Meanwhile, leadership candidate Rob Ashton singled out Avi Lewis for "turning New Democrats against each other".

- The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority is taking over the Golden Door Geriatric Centre, a personal care home in the Fort Garry district of the city whose private owners had announced plans to close the facility. Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara says that the province is working to fill the numerous beds that the owners had been leaving vacant in order to prepare for the closure.

- A little known fact - ICE actually has offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Their agents don't have the power of arrest in this country; they claim that these agents (who are not armed) assist in the investigation of international crimes. NDP MP Heather McPherson is calling on the Carney government to close those offices "until the human rights crisis is resolved"; whether the government will do so remains to be seen.

- Manitoba Hydro is hiring institutional safety officers for its downtown office tower following a seemingly random attack by a methed up teenager with a knife. Manitoba Housing is also hiring such officers for its downtown office. Unlike run-of-the-mill security guards, these officers have specialized training; they are equipped with handcuffs and pepper gel and are empowered to make arrests. CUPE, which represents Hydro employees, is calling for the officers to be deployed as soon as possible.

- Manitoba currently has the highest incidence of measles in Canada. To the surprise of few, these cases are concentrated mostly in the Southern Health Region, and in particular a church in Winkler, though some people were infected in Winnipeg after people from the province's Bible Belt were hospitalized at HSC. 51 confirmed and three probable cases have been reported in the province as of the 24th of January. This compares to 319 confirmed cases of measles and 29 probable cases last year, and only 18 cases between 2000 and 2024. At least 86% of the cases were in unvaccinated people; another 6.2% were in people of unknown vaccination status.

- Following the drowning death of a 12 year old student at a scuba school in Texas, her family sued the school. One thing that has come up in court is the fact that the school's owner had been caught on video bragging about the number of fatalities he'd gotten away with, which does not inspire confidence.

News roundup, 4 Feb 2026

- Bill Blair has resigned his seat as the MP for Scarborough Southwest in order to take up a new position as Canada's high commissioner to the UK. Doly Begum, who has represented the seat for the NDP at the provincial level since 2018, has announced that she will be running for the Liberals to replace Blair, sparking condemnation from the federal party.

- The seven states that depend on the Colorado River basin are at an impasse about how to manage the long-term drought the area is experiencing. The upstream states - Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming - are refusing to cut their own consumption, saying that the problem lies with the other three states in the basin (Nevada, California, and Arizona), which consume far more water but which, on the other hand, have taken some measures to cut their consumption. The New York Times article on the matter takes the position that this is entirely the fault of the upper basin states. I'm not so sure; while those states should doubtless be making cuts, one has to question whether growing alfalfa in a desert for the Saudis is a wise or sustainable industry.

- Colorado is challenging the Trump regime's order to keep an aging coal-fired power plant open. Even the state's power utilities want to close the plant, but Trump can't tolerate any kind of move away from coal, so...

- Thousands of Epstein-related documents have been removed from the Department of Justice website after some of his victims said that they were identified in the documents.

- At least 17 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in response to an Israeli soldier being wounded by gunfire. Israel seems to take "one of ours, all of yours" seriously.

- The federal government is considering amending the Canadian Migratory Birds Regulations to allow the hunting of Tundra Swans in the prairie provinces. This has raised concerns among some that this will lead to collateral damage to the more vulnerable Trumpeter Swan, which looks very similar and could easily be mistaken for the more common species.

News roundup, 3 Feb 2026

- Much of the world is trying to distance itself from American tech companies. This is easier said than done, of course, but France has banned its public officials from using Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet in favour of their homegrown product, Visio. The Ford government in Ontario has yet to get on board with this, despite the premier's bleating - they've been storing cabinet records, which are supposed to stay secret for decades - on Google Docs, leading to fears about security.

- French authorities have raided X's offices in the country over allegations of complicity in the distribution of child pornography, deepfakes, and other illegal materials.

- The Mozilla Foundation is adding AI features to their Firefox web browser, but unlike other browsers you'll be able to turn said features off. That's the difference between a nonprofit like Mozilla and the more typical tech companies - they don't have the same need to dazzle investors.

- FAA administrator Bryan Bedford is refusing to say whether the agency is going to pull the airworthiness certificates of Canadian-made aircraft. I have to assume this means he thinks it would be absurd to do so but is unwilling to say so publicly for fear of incurring the wrath of Donald Trump.

- The number of unclaimed bodies in Ontario has more than tripled since 2019. One cemetery manager suggests that there are probably "socio-economic issues" involved here but doesn't speculate further. I wouldn't be surprised if some people just became more alienated from friends and family due to the pandemic and the political polarization around measures to contain it.

News roundup, 2 Feb 2026

- Former CNN journalist Don Lemon was arrested on civil rights charges after he covered an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a church service last month. The prosecutor accuses him of "knowingly joining" the protest.

- Two Customs and Border Protection agents have been identified as having fired the fatal shots in the killing of Alex Pretti. An investigation has apparently been opened, though it's a safe bet it won't go anywhere.

- Pierre Poilievre easily passed his leadership review at the Conservatives' convention, winning the support of over 87% of the delegates. This might seem strange given his poor performance in the last election and continuing unpopularity with the general public, but as others have pointed out, no matter how unhinged the opposition is, people will eventually tend to elect them once the government falls out of favour, and most current members of that party want an extreme leader like Poilievre.

- The federal government will be accepting delivery today of the first of 12 F-35s that it has already ordered, even as doubts are being raised about whether to buy another 72 as originally planned.

- Even as the major US automakers are scaling back their operations in Ontario, Toyota's plants in Cambridge and Woodstock and Honda's in Alliston are still going strong, though there are some clouds on the horizon due to tariffs. The Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing in London attributes this to cultural factors - the Japanese manufacturers take a more long-term view than the American ones who are laser-focused on the next quarter.

- Despite low birthrates, demographers did not expect the population of the US to start declining until 2081 due to immigration. Then Donald Trump happened and the country suddenly started to look a lot less attractive to immigrants; some now believe a decline could begin as soon as this year.

- Canadian actor Catherine O'Hara has died at the age of 71. 

News roundup, 30 Jan 2026

- Sources who spoke to the Financial Times allege that leaders of the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project held secret meetings with officials from the Trump regime, and are trying to negotiate $500 billion in credit in the event that the province votes to separate. BC premier David Eby did not hold back on what he thinks about that. Whether it meets the legal definition of treason is debatable, of course, but I have little doubt that those people would commit literal treason or even high treason (specifically the part about assisting an enemy at war with Canada) if it were to come to that. It's also notable that this is being reported in Ukrainian media, and the very fact that they have taken note of that given all the other stuff they're dealing with should be taken as a serious warning.

- The Ontario Progressive Conservative party has banned reporters from its convention in Toronto this weekend. I have to assume they're worried about what moderate voters would think about the kind of thing delegates might be recorded saying.

- Donald Trump is threatening to decertify Canadian-made aircraft in the US, specifically naming Bombardier's business jets, in response to Transport Canada's reluctance to certify certain models made by the competitor Gulfstream. The models in question had been exempted from certain rules about fuel system icing by the FAA, and EASA went along with the exemption shortly thereafter.

- Ontario's Conestoga College is now looking to rent out space at its newly opened satellite campus in Stratford. Like many postsecondary institutions in this country, the college has taken a big hit from the caps on international students, though it's big enough that it probably won't go the way of the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology.

- A scientist with Echoes Ecology, which surveys populations of endangered species, had been off work on mental health leave due to severe social anxiety. Accordingly, she was not invited to the company's Christmas party; this led her to sue for discrimination. She lost; the court ruled that while it may have constituted discrimination, this was justified by her mental health at the time.

News roundup, 29 Jan 2026

- Some fear that the next round of "reapportionment" of the US House of Representatives will make things more difficult for the Democrats after 2030. I think this could be a hard problem to solve. The thing is, urban areas - and by extension, more urbanized states - are becoming more expensive to live in (this is of course a worldwide problem). And the kind of places where young people traditionally lived after moving out of their parents' houses are increasingly seen as desirable places to live even if you aren't young, which makes them harder for young people to afford them. So many of them move to less desirable cities in less desirable states - and many of those states are red states. On the other hand, this may well be academic given that we can't count on this year's midterms being free and fair elections anyway, much less those a few years down the line.

- Pierre Poilievre faces a leadership review at the Conservative Party's convention in Calgary on Friday. He seems likely to prevail given the lack of coherent opposition and his popularity among the party's base.

- The Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology is shutting down following a loss of over 55% of their enrollment after the federal government put a cap on international students. Renee Cable, the province's minister of Advanced Education and Training, says that students will be able to complete their programs at other institutions such as Red River College.

 - A pilot project being launched in Winnipeg  will see properties that have been seized by the city transferred to Manitoba Housing, renovated by the nonprofit social enterprise Purpose Construction, and sold to people leaving social housing.

- Research has found that self-service terminals at restaurants increase sales. This might seem counterintuitive to those who hope that a personal touch would seem friendlier, but the actual evidence suggests people are more likely to accept an upsell from a robot than from a person who they might imagine to be judging them for eating too much. 

- A court ruling in Colombia will outlaw cockfighting following a three year transition period to give those whose income depends on the sport time to find alternative livelihoods.

News roundup, 28 Jan 2026

- Over 97% of all new cars registered in Norway last November have been electric. The government is now removing some of the initiatives it introduced to encourage people to buy them, as they seem not to be needed anymore.

- US ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra is warning that more American aircraft will need to enter Canada's airspace to address perceived threats if Canada goes ahead and buys planes from those dirty Swedes instead of from Lockheed-Martin. Denmark, on the other hand, is warning us not to listen to the Americans; they're in the position of having previously done what they were told and replaced their entire fleet with F-35s, and now fear that the US could cut off access to replacement parts if the Greenland crisis reescalates.

- Ilhan Omar was sprayed with an unknown substance at a town hall meeting in Minneapolis. The assailant was removed by security; Omar refused to end the meeting and continued, not wanting to give the enemy a success.

- The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight in response to increasing risks of war as well as climate change and artificial intelligence. Particularly concerning is the increasing breakdown of international cooperation which, as flawed as it is, has managed to prevent nuclear war since 1945. Meanwhile, in the UK a national security assessment released following a freedom of information request paints a pretty dismal picture, warning of possible threats to the country's food security unless there are major dietary shifts away from meat, and of growing risks of international conflict. The version initially released had some redactions, including fears that the loss of glaciers in the Himalayas could lead to conflict between the nuclear powers of India, Pakistan, and China. Evidently the government wanted the report suppressed because it was overly negative, and because it calls attention to the government's own failures.

- A lawyer says she was viciously assaulted by Durham Regional Police while finishing up some post-trial work in an interview room at the Oshawa court house. Apparently they thought a black woman in a hijab didn't look like she belonged there, and expressed their displeasure in the way that cops so often do.