Tuesday, November 28, 2023

News roundup, 28 Nov 2023

- A leaked memo from Bell Media (owner of CTV) orders journalists to avoid the use of the word "Palestine" in coverage of the situation in the Middle East. It appears that the CBC has a similar rule; Duncan McCue was forced to issue an apology after saying the P-word in an interview. They also edited the podcast version of the broadcast to remove the offending word. Funny thing is, I don't think those broadcasters prohibit their journalists from talking about Taiwan as if it were a country (nor should they) but I guess this is different for some reason.

- The pause in the fighting in Gaza seems to be mostly holding, and talks are on for another extension of the truce.

- A Saudi scheme to push African and Asian countries to consume more fossil fuels has been uncovered, just days before the start of COP28 in the UAE. Meanwhile some former world leaders, including Ban Ki-moon, Gordon Brown, Helen Clark, and Joyce Banda, are calling for oil producing states to be subjected to a $25 billion levy to help pay for the damage by the world's most vulnerable people from climate change. One can just imagine what Danielle Smith and her ilk are saying about these evil globalists coming after the money of hard-working Albertans.

- While boomers are often rightly ridiculed for blaming the difficulties of millennials on their supposed habit of blowing money on things like avocado toast rather than, say, the fact that wages aren't keeping up with inflation, there are actually good reasons for avoiding avocado toast, or indeed anything containing avocado - production at the current scale is leading to the destruction of Mexico's forests.

- Marianna Budanova, wife of Ukraine's military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, has been hospitalized for heavy metal poisoning. The specific heavy metal or metals don't seem to have been made public, but sources from the agency have stated that they're not the sort of thing found in "ordinary civilian or military life".

- Finland has closed their entire border with Russia, accusing Russia of deliberately flooding the country with refugees in order to destabilize it.

- Americans for Prosperity, the super-PAC funded by the notorious Koch brothers, is endorsing Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination, saying she has the best chance of beating Biden in next year's presidential election.

- Canada's life expectancy has decreased for the third year in a row, with COVID-19 overtaking accidents and unintentional injuries for the first time since the the start of the pandemic in 2020, according to Statistics Canada.

- A nationwide poll has concluded that Alberta is Canada's angriest province. I can't say I'm surprised by that conclusion.

- Danielle Smith is invoking Alberta's new "sovereignty act" to fight against new federal rules designed to help decarbonize the power grid. Interestingly, Smith admits that she doesn't think she actually needs the new legislation to do this, but she's doing it anyway for symbolic reasons.

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