- Rochelle Squires has become the second former minister in the Stefanson government has corroborated the Kinew government's claim that the Tories tried to ram through a sand mining deal during the "caretaker period" between the election and the transfer of power. Of course, this isn't the first time she's said something negative about the government she was part of; the first time was right after the election in which she lost her seat, so it could be sour grapes. Nonetheless, her own article on the matter is worth a read.
- Premier Kinew has been advised by the ethics commissioner not to attempt to publish any more books while serving as premier. Kinew, for his part, welcomes the advice, saying that he's too busy serving as premier to write books right now anyway.
- A man shot dead by police during a hostage taking in West Broadway was also the prime suspect in the death of a trucker a short distance away.
- A middle-aged couple from India visiting their children in Caledon, Ontario were shot to death and their daughter wounded back in November. It has come out that the Peel Regional Police visited a few days before their deaths and interviewed them, using a family friend to translate as they were alone at the time and did not speak English. Interestingly, even though Caledon is part of Peel Region their regular policing is done by the OPP, so it's not clear what the Peel cops were interested in. Needless to say, their son and severely wounded daughter would like to know more.
- Winnipeg Transit is consulting with experts from St. Louis about how to handle crime on public transit. They do say that they're "taking a social justice, human rights approach and trying to be collaborative", but the devil is in the details with that sort of thing. Some will undoubtedly feel uncomfortable with uniformed peace officers (even if they're not "cops" per se) riding on buses, especially since there's no denying that some ethnic communities are overpoliced, and this will inevitably make the bus less welcoming to those communities. On the other hand, there's also no denying that, as the author of the article says, "the perception of safety is nearly as important as safety itself" in terms of getting people to use transit - and the brutal truth is that the people who feel comfortable with more security, rather than less, tend to be the people who actually have a choice whether to drive or use transit. And if you want to actually reduce the number of cars on the road, those are the people you have to satisfy.
- Maine has followed the lead of Colorado by invoking the 14th amendment to keep Trump off the ballot. Of course this is going to be appealed (as is already happening in Colorado) and the Supreme Court is conservative dominated. You'd hope they'd at least have the self-respect to be consistent on the doctrine of "originalism", which these kind of conservatives claim to swear by, but you certainly can't count on that. Even so, this may still be beneficial if the Republican Party's resources are stretched as thinly as some people claim, since every dollar spent on lawyers is a dollar that can't be spent on TV ads. We'll have to see.
- The French city of Montpelier is making public transit free for residents, though non-residents still have to pay €1.60 (still cheaper than most Canadian cities).
- Many fear that Benjamin Netanyahu will be best served by endless war. This is uncomfortably plausible given that Netanyahu is still facing possible corruption charges, and being at war is a disincentive to prosecute your prime minister. And if you're a prime minister facing criminal charges the moment the conflict ends, having a go at Iran might seem just the ticket to him and his lot.
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