- Trudeau has accused "agents of the Indian government" of involvement in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey this past June. A senior Indian diplomat has been expelled, however details remain to be seen. Meanwhile Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has previously accused Canada of harbouring terrorists (a designation they had given to Nijjar, by the way) and accused protesters in Canada of "inciting violence against Indian diplomats".
- Trudeau's remarks on the housing issue sound uncomfortably similar to Stefanson's "coulda, woulda, shoulda" comment on her own government's mishandling of the pandemic.
- The CBC and Probe Research conducted a focus group of residents from five rural Manitoba constituencies and one small-city one, and found that four of the nine were considering changing their vote, with a fifth saying that she would stick with the Tories this time around but would have voted for the Keystone Party had they run a candidate. Now a big caveat - a focus group is a very small sample, not enough to get anything statistically useful. As they say, "the plural of anecdote is not data". That said, anecdotes can sometimes give us an idea of where to look for data.
- Meanwhile, in the US, where even federal elections have fifty different sets of rules, there's a fierce debate over so called "open primaries" (which for practical purposes could be thought of as a two round system by other means), to the point where Colorado Republicans are suing the state to force it to re-close its open primaries (which were opened by statewide referendum).
- A bill has been introduced in the Massachusetts legislature prohibiting attaching weapons to robots... with a couple of caveats. Firstly, the US military is exempt (probably unavoidable, since presumably states don't have jurisdiction over it); secondly, it does not apply to "law enforcement officials disposing of explosives" (seems reasonable) and private companies testing "anti-weaponization technologies". Notably, Boston Dynamics state that they are in support of the bill (well, they'd have to say that, wouldn't they). What I'd like to know is what it says about a Massachusetts-based company making robots that could readily be retrofitted with weapons by buyers in other jurisdictions, or operating plants in other places where they did add guns. From my (admittedly nonexpert) reading of the actual bill, it would appear not.
- Ukraine is suing Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary at the WTO for blocking the sale of Ukrainian agricultural products. Those countries say Ukrainian grain threatens their domestic markets.
- The Chechen president is rumoured to be seriously ill. What that means for Chechnya's future in Russia remains to be seen.
- Not surprisingly, people who work from home tend to be responsible for less in the way of emissions than those who work in the office, although the trend is partly offset by increased emissions from social activities.
- Trump has been making remarks about Biden's age for a long time. He's not wrong, but he shouldn't be one to talk (but who are we kidding expecting Trump not to talk). And then there's McConnell, Feinstein... the list goes on.
- I don't envy this pilot having to explain to his superior officers how he managed to just lose a hundred million dollar airplane.
- Activists in France want to ban cruise ships. An ambitious goal, and not an easy one, but a desirable one.
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