Saturday, April 20, 2024

News roundup, 20 April 2024

-  Jury selection is now complete for Donald Trump's trial on the Stormy Daniels case. In other trial-related news, the New York Times has obtained information about where the jurors and alternates get their news; looking at juror #2, I have to wonder why the prosecution allowed that one. Meanwhile a man has died after setting himself on fire in front of the courthouse yesterday.

- Mike Pence accuses Trump of "betraying the pro-life movement" by moderating his stance on abortion. Division of this sort is good news for the Democrats.

- The US Forest Service is losing firefighters, even as the wildfire situation gets worse.

- Mayoral candidates in two different Mexican cities were found dead on the same day. Some 15 other candidates have been killed in the campaign period leading up to the elections scheduled for June; drug cartels are the most likely suspects.

- Assiniboine Credit Union is seeking to absorb two more institutions, Westoba Credit Union and Caisse Financial Group; if approved by the membership of the three entities this will be the only bilingual credit union in the province.

- While you can hardly throw a stone in Winnipeg without hitting a dope store, the province currently prohibits people from growing their own. This may be about to change, however; the government is expected to announce that Manitoba will be joining most other provinces in allowing it.

- Apparently they've developed an algorithm that tries to assign a risk score indicating how likely a person is to become addicted to opioids. Since this is a proprietary algorithm, though, it can't be easily scrutinized for accuracy, and it could leave a mark on patients' records that could be very hard to remove.

- Researchers are trying to selectively breed corals for heat tolerance in the hope of saving some coral reefs.

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