- A suspect is in custody in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Luigi Mangione was picked up at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania; more information about the suspect may be found here. He seems to be an avid reader; he left reviews on Goodreads of a number of interesting books, including Ted Kaczynski's manifesto Industrial Society and its Future. This comes despite the general public not having much enthusiasm for the manhunt, with the shooter approaching folk hero status. Even many prominent "internet sleuths" wanted nothing to do with the search, and the McDonald's location in question has been flooded with one-star reviews due to the staff ratting Mangione out. This probably has something to do with the nature of the private health insurance business; such companies are notorious for denying coverage under questionable circumstances. Thompson's own company has been accused of using unreliable AI systems to screen claims, for instance. For his part, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare's parent company, UnitedHealth, thinks it's "offensive" for the media to be talking about this right now. Insurers are responding to this by taking down biographical info about their executives from their websites (hey, it's a lot cheaper than actually paying out claims).
- The fall of the Syrian regime seems to have resulted from the actions of many disparate forces. The largest of these is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Levant Liberation Union); others include a Kurdish group (the Syrian Democratic Forces) as well as others, which disconcertingly include ISIS/Daesh. Given that several of these groups (especially Daesh) are likely to be unwilling to work with the others, we can expect a fair bit of instability for the foreseeable future.
- The European Commission, the EU's executive, has delayed the implementation of their deforestation law by a year, but fortunately has refused to water down the legislation despite the efforts of some EU parliamentarians.
- The proposed property tax increase in Winnipeg has led to a lot of whining from some homeowners; the CBC quoted one resident of the Crescentwood neighbourhood as saying "it hurts". I dunno, I figure if you own a house in Crescentwood you aren't really too hard done by.
- Vancouver mayor Ken Sim wants to create a bitcoin reserve for the city; experts who haven't drunk the crypto Kool-Aid think this is a bad idea due to the volatility of the product.
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