Monday, May 6, 2024

News roundup, 6 May 2024

- Three men, all Indian citizens, have been arrested in connection with the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey last year. Police are investigating links with three other homicides as well, including the death of an 11 year old boy in Edmonton.

- The Israeli government has shut down all of Al Jazeera's operations in the country and raided its offices. They accuse the broadcaster of "incitement" and "working with Hamas", which the broadcaster denies. Notably, the BBC was not allowed to film the raid. The UN's Human Rights office as well as the Committee to Protect Journalists are condemning the decision. In other Israel news, many Bedouin citizens of that country are unable to build bomb shelters to protect themselves from Hamas-launched missiles - because even though they live in villages that predate the founding of Israel, the communities have never been officially recognized, and thus do not have the ability to issue building permits. So the Israeli state considers any shelters they build to be unauthorized structures, and demolishes them. Then they cry a few crocodile tears at best, or smile smugly at worst, when Bedouin citizens die in the attacks. Meanwhile the Globe and Mail's Marsha Lederman warns supporters of both sides of the confllict against reducing the matter to simple slogans.

- It's increasingly apparent that one of the biggest barriers to effective climate action is the agricultural sector. In the European Union, rioting farmers have been doing their damnedest to undermine efforts to make Europe a leader in sustainable agriculture. No wonder farmers have been downgraded, in the minds of a lot of people, from "salt of the Earth" to "necessary evil". On a related note, Florida governor Ron DeSantis has just signed a bill outlawing the sale of cultured meat in the state. He also  spouted conspiracy nonsense about the supposed global elite's plans to force everyone to eat it, even as he signed legislation taking away his own citizens' freedom to eat it if they so choose.

- A federal appeals court in the US has ruled that a lawsuit by an organization called Our Children’s Trust on behalf of 21 young Americans lacks standing and must be dismissed by the US district judge hearing the case. The judges who made the ruling are Trump appointees, but this was an "emergency" petition filed by the Biden administration's Justice Department, who claimed that the government could be "irreparably harmed" if it were forced to waste resources litigating the case.

- The Manitoba government will be using funds from an out-of-court settlement with the tobacco companies to pay for the building of a new headquarters for CancerCare.

- Following the report of a woman being punched in a Winnipeg grocery store by an employee who suspected her of shoplifting, other members of the community say that this is not the first time something like this has happened at that store - nor even the second.

- Use of the "Community Connections" service in the lobby of Winnipeg's Millennium library are on the increase, even as the city prepares to shut it down so that Evan Duncan's constituents don't have to look at poor people when they use the library.

- In something worthy of the Piranha Brothers, a man in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland suffered potentially life-altering injuries after having his hands nailed to a fence. This has apparently happened before; there have been no official statements regarding responsibilty but many locals suspect Loyalist paramilitaries.

No comments: