- The International Court of Justice is now hearing South Africa's genocide case against Israel, calling the evidence "overwhelming and incontrovertible". Naturally Israel does not agree; nor does Germany, who are warning against "political instrumentalisation" of the genocide convention.
- Brazil's environment ministry says that deforestation in the Amazon fell by nearly half in 2023 from the previous year, having been at a 12 year high under Bolsonaro. In other promising climate-related news, grid energy storage (very important to maximize the usefulness of renewables) has been growing by leaps and bounds in the US, and Spain is looking to raise power utilities' investment limits to facilitate the greening of the grid. And a Massachusetts startup claims to have found a way to produce carbon-neutral cement.
- Donald Trump is flailing helplessly and contradicting himself trying to evade criminal responsibility for the Capitol riot. Three years ago, when trying to get the courts to overturn the election result, he claimed, in the US Supreme Court no less, that he "seeks to intervene in this matter in his personal capacity as a candidate for reelection", but now he's saying he was acting in his capacity as president to ensure the election was fair. Doubtless the MAGA crowd will not notice the contradiction (or care), but hopefully swing voters will. Meanwhile even some evangelical leaders admit to having qualms about him, but they seem to be losing control of their flock on the matter.
- Hot on the heels of reports of Alabama prisons harvesting the organs of their deceased inmates, 215 bodies have been found in unmarked graves behind a jail outside Jackson, Mississippi.
- Vienna was recently declared the world's most livable city by The Economist, and part of the reason is that it's far more affordable than otherwise similar cities. One of the reasons? Public housing. There's a lesson there, if our own federal, provincial, and municipal leaders are willing to listen.
- The Manitoba NDP's caucus chair, Mike Moyes, is filing an ethics complaint against Heather Stefanson and Jeff Wharton over the attempts to ram through the Sio Silica mining deal during the transition period.
- Security cameras on a business in Regina showed a man by the side of the road after getting off a bus at about 8 PM, waving feebly for help, for several hours as motorists drove by without stopping while the temperature dropped to -8°C. Eventually, at about 3:30 in the morning, a cyclist noticed his plight, stopped, and called emergency services, but it was too late; he was already dead.
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