- Desperate Palestinians stormed several UN food warehouses in search of basic foods. The death toll in Gaza now reportedly exceeds 8,000, though of course the Israelis and Americans dispute that. The left around the world continues to be badly divided on the issue, as does the Jewish community (the latter mostly on generational lines).
- A hurricane has killed at least 39 people in Acapulco and surrounding areas.
- The UAW has tentative settlements with Ford and Stellantis, but still has not reached a deal with GM.
- Term limits have populist appeal, especially in the US, but most experts are skeptical about their actual merits. They won't solve a lot of the real problems (gerrymandering, polarization, and the power of wealth to sway politicians) and in fact they have the effect of removing people from office just when they're actually learning how to do their job, leaving staffers and lobbyists as the people with the actual institutional knowledge. The real solution would not be term limits but campaign spending limits, but of course that would be un-American.
- 97% of Manitoba's electricity generation is already from renewable sources. The remainder comes from a natural gas plant in Brandon; the Kinew government hopes to close it by 2035. That sounds like a pretty modest goal, but the Tories are already making worried noises about that being too fast.
- People in the know think Danielle Smith's plan to pull Alberta out of the CPP is foolhardy. But like any good populist, Smith has staked her career on not listening to people in the know, so she's pushing ahead regardless.
- The long-anticipated collapse of the ubiquitous Cavendish variety of the banana may be on its way thanks to a fungal disease that is sweeping through plantations worldwide. The problem is that this variety (the only one most of us have ever known) is seedless, and is propagated by clones, thus there is virtually no genetic diversity. A similar fate befell the previous world-dominating variety, the Gros Michel, in the late 1950s.
- A man in Saskatchewan has been charged with unauthorized possession of zebras.
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