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.

News roundup, 30 Oct 2026

- The primary Instagram account used by No Kings activists in the US was suspended earlier this month, just as the organization was busy rallying people in preparation for the midterm elections. Instagram's parent company Meta claims that this happened due to a technical glitch, but many think their "glitches" are happening too often, and disproportionately impacting opponents of rightwing extremism, both in the US and elsewhere.

- While 175 members of Congress, led by Pramila Jayapal of Washington, have signed a letter condemning the investigation of Ilhan Omar, 40 Democratic members are not among them, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi. While the article rightly acknowledges that not having signed the letter doesn't prove that someone supports the persecution of Omar, one can't help but wonder if a centrist like Pelosi would secretly be happy to see Omar denaturalized and removed from the country so she won't drag the Democrats to the left and/or say mean things about Israel.

- The drama surrounding Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton AG, continues with revelations that employees who urged caution in the use of AI (as in, testing AI-developed stuff before releasing it to the public) were subjected to a torrent of abuse from Yen, who called such caution "bullshit and loser thinking". The thing is, Proton is a nonprofit that has built its brand around privacy and security, and as the folks on Reddit point out, when your brand is built around that, and your own cybersecurity people are warning you to be careful, it shows extremely poor judgment not to listen to them. Proton, in fact, was founded specifically as a platform for private and secure communications. What makes this stranger is that Yen is not a product of Silicon Valley, where that "move fast and break things" mentality is endemic - his background is as a physicist. The only way his outburst makes any sense at all is if the company is planning change to a for-profit corporation (or spin off a for-profit subsidiary the way OpenAI did) and eventually have an IPO - because investors who don't know much about tech will just assume that the more AI queries a company makes, the more forward thinking and worthy of investment it is.

- A Winnipeg synagogue has revoked the memberships of a couple in their congregation and arranged for the police to visit them to inform them that they were barred from the premises. Emet Eviatar and David Hoult had attended services at Congregation Etz Chayim for many years, but the Eviatar's involvement in Standing Together, which has been highly critical of Israel's actions in Gaza, and Hoult's criticism of the institution's security measures, were evidently a bridge too far. 

- Actor Patrick Stewart, best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek, has died at the age of 86. 

News roundup, 29 Oct 2026

- Scott Gillingham has been easily reelected as mayor of Winnipeg, winning 39.8% of the vote. The second place contender, Kevin Klein, got 20.7%, barely ahead of the progressive candidate, Noah Redden, who got 19.8%. Happily, Mike Vogiatzakis was far behind at 9.7%; I guess many of the kind of people who would vote for a reactionary loudmouth like him already live outside the city like he does (he was only eligible to run because he owns a business in the city). Gillingham will be presiding over a significantly different council than last term; nine of the fifteen councillors will be new,  including four who managed to take out incumbents - Natalie Smith defeated Ross Eadie in Mynarski, Kelly Ryback took out Shawn Dobson in St James, Greg McFarlane ousted Devi Sharma in Old Kildonan, and Lora Meseman crushed sexual assault suspect Russ Wyatt in Transcona. Full results can be found here.

- The Ford government will be appointing chairs for the regional municipalities of Halton, Peel, York, Durham, Muskoka, Waterloo, and Niagara as well as the warden of Simcoe County. Previously, some of them (such as the chair of Waterloo Region) were elected by the public, while others were chosen by the regional council, but under new legislation (Bill 100, dubbed the "Better Regional Governance Act" by the government), the chairs are appointed by the province, and moreover will have powers similar to the "strong mayor" powers in some cities - they will not only be able to veto some council votes, but they will be able to force through changes with the support of only a third of the council. Presumably this is to make sure that regional governments do the bidding of Doug Ford.

- Flavio Bolsonaro, who fled Brazil following his defeat in that country's presidential election, has arrived in the US along with his family. He faced charges of tax evasion and money laundering; for his part he claims to be the rightful president-elect, claiming (without evidence) that the election was fraudulent (for their part, international observers have said that the election was fair, but Donald Trump, not surprisingly, says otherwise).

- The European Union is abandoning the term "associate membership" that had been mooted for Canada following opposition to the use of the term by some member states (notably Germany). The latest draft document calls for an "ever closer association" between Canada and the EU. Mark Carney is not concerned, saying this is merely a change in terminology.

- France is moving the entire town of Miquelon to higher ground on the eponymous island. The move will take place gradually over several decades; rising sea levels mean there is little choice in the matter, though.

News roundup, 28 Oct 2026

- Exit polls and partial results suggest that neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor Gadi Eisenkot will have enough seats to form a government without the support of MPs from the Joint List, an alliance of mostly Arab parties. Since both of the frontrunners have ruled out working with them, another election seems likely in the near future.

- Donald Trump has claimed, without citing evidence, that Brazil's latest presidential election was "rigged", though he has not threatened any immediate countermeasures. The US State Department says that far right opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro and his family will be granted visas to enter the US; Bolsonaro has been under investigation for tax evasion, money laundering, and other corrupt behaviour and had been ordered to surrender his passport.

- With the Republicans set to take a beating in the midterms, fears of election interference by the regime are greater than ever. A movement called the "Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association", which believes that sheriffs have ultimate authority in their counties regardless of what state laws might say, is encouraging its members to investigate claims by the Republicans of "voter fraud". One prominent member of the organization, sherrif Dar Leaf of Barry County, Michigan, has tried to seize voting machines in previous elections, while Riverside County, California sheriff Chad Bianco seized 650,000 ballots from the 2024 election in an attempt to prove malfeasance before a judge ruled the seizure illegal. Trump himself has raised the possibility of declaring a national emergency in order to oversee the counting of ballots.

- Municipal elections will be held across Manitoba today, except for the resort communities of Dunnottar, Victoria Beach, and Winnipeg Beach, which held their elections in the summer. In Winnipeg, a record number of votes have already been cast, with over 25,000 advance votes as of Sunday.

- Swiss tech company Proton AG, which provides privacy-focused services like the encrypted Proton Mail email service, has announced that it will "re-interview" staff about their use of AI in their jobs, saying the interviews will have an impact on "changes in roles, responsibilities, and continued employment". The company's CEO, Andy Yen, has been strongly pushing AI of late, despite fears about the implications for the privacy that Proton claims is its bread and butter. I suspect that this is a response to the demands of investors more than anything; the idea that companies are going to be "left behind" unless they fully embrace the newest and brightest is nothing new, and it's almost impossible to look at the internet these days without getting promotions for some AI product or other shoved in your face. One hopes the bubble will burst soon and that the techies will then be able to decide for themselves when using AI makes sense and when it doesn't, but until then the pressure is to be all-in, all the time.

News roundup, 27 Oct 2026

- Olivia Chow has been reelected as mayor of Toronto. The margin of victory was higher than the polls would have led one to expect; she won over 54% of the vote with Brad Bradford getting 41%. It appears that Bradford's plan to carve off Toronto Water in such a way that might facilitate future privatization (and which would limit council's ability to control whether the utility can be stopped from supplying water to data centres at the expense of the public) spooked enough voters to bury him. On the other hand, the mayors of Waterloo and Cambridge went down to defeat yesterday. In the case of Cambridge this may be a good thing, but Waterloo's mayor-elect apparently has donated to the Tories.

- In the Rural Municipality of St Clements, Manitoba, which votes for a new council tomorrow along with most other municipalities in the province, there are claims of "Trumpian" sniping between candidates. Perhaps the toxic culture seen in other small municipalities is taking hold there as well.

- Serbia's governing Serbian Progressive Party under Aleksandar Vucic was defeated in the weekend's parliamentary election, with an opposition group called the "Student List" apparently winning a majority of seats. This follows two years of student-led protests. It remains to be seen how the new group will govern.

- Israel is holding its parliamentary election today. Polls indicate an almost even split between Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and the new Yashar party, led by former IDF leader Gadi Eisenkot. Yashar is considered centrist (by Israeli standards); it's not like they're going to end the occupation, though.

- Police were called to a children's soccer game in Winter Park, Florida after a 3 year old child was removed from the game, allegedly for being too good, leading to a confrontation with the boy's mother.