Thursday, April 25, 2024

News roundup, 25 April 2024

- The US Supreme Court is set to hear a case that could shut down all of the criminal proceedings against Donald Trump. The argument is that a former president is immune from prosecution unless they are first successfully impeached and removed from office. Thing is, if he wins the case, couldn't Biden use the same immunity to order the Secret Service to rub him out?

- Russian deputy minister of defense Timur Ivanov has been arrested on bribery charges. Ukraine is claiming that this followed the discovery of this bribery by their own intelligence agencies, which they say embarrassed the Russian authorities into acting. Because it's not bribery that's the major crime, but embarrassing the Russian state.

- Pierre Poilievre met with an extremist group at the NB-NS border yesterday. The group originally formed to protest against public health orders, but since those orders are long gone they had to find something else to justify their continued existence, so they say they're protesting the carbon tax now. Sadly, this probably won't significantly hurt Poilievre electorally; he seems virtually invincible.

- In 2022, Global News filed a freedom of information request in order to get information about staffing shortages at heathcare facilities in Ontario, which was being kept under wraps by the Ford government. The province's privacy agency has just ruled in the government's favour, on the grounds that revealing the data could inform labour negotiations and could thus be "economically damaging".

- The city of Merritt, BC, which is experiencing a severe drought, has imposed severe restrictions on water consumption. Previously, people who used too much water would be fined, but would then continue to do it anyway. Now, though, repeat violators will have their water turned off.

- 875 steel hoops were stolen from a Guelph business on two separate days. The steel is estimated to be worth around $10,000; I guess you could get a lot of meth with that.

- An Ohio-based company is selling a robot dog equipped with a flamethrower. Interestingly, only two American states (California and Maryland) have any legislation specific to flamethrowers, meaning that this robot is entirely legal in the other 48 states.

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