News roundup, 30 Sept 2025

- The Trump regime is revoking the visa of Columbian president Gustavo Petro, essentially making him persona non grata in the US, after he spoke at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York City on Friday and urged American soldiers to disobey the orders of Trump.

- A special election (i.e. what's known as a byelection in most other English-speaking countries) was held in Arizona's 7th congressional district last Tuesday. The election was necessitated by the death of incumbent Democrat Raúl Grijalva in March. His daughter Adelita Grijalva won the race handily; what makes this potentially significant is that this could give the necessary 218 signatures to force the House to vote on the release of the Epstein files. Of course, in the long run this likely won't have the effect many hope for; even if a few more Republicans defect in the actual vote, it will face a bigger hurdle in the Senate - and even if it passes there, Trump could easily veto it and say "what are you going to do about it?" About the only positive would be that Republican members of Congress would be forced to publicly declare their willingness to conceal the files, and that only really matters if next year's midterms are something approaching fair. That might be a tall order, unfortunately.

- The Alberta government is considering legislation that would allow it to ignore international agreements signed by the federal government. While it's easy to dismiss this as more nonsense from Danielle Smith and the UCP, this may actually be an example of a stopped clock telling the right time (though the example her press secretary gave, the World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement, is certainly not an example I would use). When one considers the impact of the Canada China FIPA on provincial (and First Nations) rights, for instance, it becomes a lot easier to question the merits of the feds being able to sign an agreement on things outside their jurisdiction.

- The BC government has announced that two involuntary care facilities will be built, one in Surrey and one in Prince George. The goal is to avoid tying up regular hospital beds and put the detainees in what is described as a "home-like" setting; municipal leaders are pleased with the move but advocates for the homeless are understandably uncomfortable with the idea. One thing is clear - this isn't a solution to homelessness, though given that actual solutions are extremely difficult it might be a necessary evil as a stopgap measure. Involuntary commitment is certainly not something that should be taken lightly, though.

- A pilot study that allows emergency vehicles to preempt traffic signals has been deemed a success by the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service. Response times in the area covered by the study (in and around Osborne Village) were reduced by 15-20%; there are plans to expand the program to around 70% of the signalized intersections in the city. Of course, expect searches for "chrome box" from Winnipeg-based IP addresses to skyrocket if that happens.

News roundup, 29 Sept 2025

- A man opened fire on parishioners at a Mormon church in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan on Sunday, and set fire to the building. Four people were killed before the suspect was shot to death by police. He was a veteran of the Iraq war, and social media pictures show him wearing a "Trump 2020" shirt, something that will doubtless be downplayed by the authorities.

- Russia launched a barrage of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least four people. The attack on Kyiv was one of the one of the biggest since the full-scale invasion began. Among the buildings hit was a cardiology clinic; one could be forgiven for questioning whether that constitutes a legitimate military target.

- Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham is asking Transit to look into the cost of extending late night bus service. Of the numerous complaints about the changes to Transit's network, many relate to reductions in service towards the end of the day, when some people still have to get home from work.

- US ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra is musing about doing away with preclearance at Canadian airports. Hoekstra says that the decline in tourism from Canada calls into question whether it's worth the expense; Canadian airlines and airport authorities are wondering what will happen to cross-border ticket sales if preclearance is eliminated. Some folks in this Reddit thread think that the real motivation is to boost the number of immigration-related detentions, either for propaganda purposes or to funnel money to the private companies who run the detention facilities. Viewed that way it kind of makes sense; if someone is deemed inadmissable during preclearance, they're still in Canada and can't be hauled off to Alligator Alcatraz or similar facilities.

- Several FBI agents who were photographed kneeling at a protest about the murder of George Floyd in 2020 have been fired by the agency. They say they did this as a deescalation tactic, but photos of this naturally drew the ire of the far right at the time. Their conduct had been reviewed by the agency and they had been cleared, but the new regime was evidently not satisfied with this and wanted them gone.

- Proposals for bail reform in Manitoba are running up against an awkward reality - the fact that the province's jails are already overcrowded and understaffed, and that about 75% of the people incarcerated in these institutions are on remand. Presumably what's really needed is to speed up the court process so people aren't on remand for so long, but that's easier said than done, given that the slow pace of justice in this country has been the subject of discussion for decades with no signs of progress. I'd think hiring more prosecutors would be a start, though.

News roundup, 26 Sept 2025

- Former FBI director James Comey has been indicted on charges of making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The basis of the indictment is a claim by his former deputy Andrew McCabe that Comey authorized a leak of information about the FBI's investigations into Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, something Comey denied in hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The indictment comes just days after Trump publicly called for it. 

- Tech billionaire Peter Thiel allegedly gave a lecture in San Francisco in which he warned that regulating AI could hasten the arrival of the Antichrist. His reasoning is not entirely clear, except that he apparently said that people's fear of existential threats could give them an appetite for the kind of leadership the Antichrist would provide. A curious side note from the article - apparently the UK office of Thiel's company Palantir is headed by Louis Mosley, grandson of 1930s British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley.

- Hundreds of senior American military officers have been ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to attend a meeting in Quantico, Virginia next Tuesday. The subject of the meeting has not been disclosed, leading some to speculate that a mass firing is in the works, especially given Hegseth's disdain for much of the current leadership of the military.

- The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has gone on strike in response to the federal government's proposed reforms to Canada Post, which include the elimination of home delivery and the closure of a number of post offices.

- An RBC employee has been charged with gaining unauthorized access to the accounts of Mark Carney and someone named Justin Trudeau - though in the latter case it turned out not to be the former prime minister but someone else with the same name. He allegedly told police that he was lured into the scheme by someone on the social media platform Telegram. Police believe organized crime is behind this, though I have to wonder if it was "regular" organized crime, or some kind of "gotcha" attempt sort of like when lawyers with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms hired a private investigator to spy on a judge hearing their case in the hope of catching him being hypocritical about the laws he was enforcing.

- Marchers in Fredericton's Take Back The Night rally were harassed by several young men on motor scooters on Friday. Police are investigating but no charges have been laid so far.

- The Kinew government is considering changes to the Intoxicated Persons Act to allow people to be detained for more than 24 hours if intoxicated. While 24 hours might be enough to come down off most drugs, including alcohol, it sometimes isn't enough for meth, leading to situations in which people have to be released when they're in no condition to be out on the street. The Main Street Project is not opposed to this so long as adequate supports and medical supervision are provided, something the government is looking at.

- Doug Ford has announced the intention to ban municipalities in the province from using speed cameras, for which he uses the usual populist slogan "cash grab". Setting aside the fact that there's a very simple way to avoid getting your cash grabbed (namely, pay attention to your speed and the signs on the road, both things you should be doing anyway), one might think that if people in the cities that use such cameras were sufficiently bothered by them, they could decide at the municipal level not to use them. Of course, the people Ford is serving here are people in the suburbs and exurbs around big cities, who refuse to live in an actual urban centre but need to go there for work and are always running late.

- The owners of a house outside St. Thomas, Ontario with a swastika mowed into its front lawn have been charged with criminal harassment and other offenses.

News roundup, 25 Sept 2025

- A man opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas, killing one person and wounding two others before turning the gun on himself. Authorities say that anti-ICE slogans were engraved on bullet casings found at the scene; ironically the deceased and at least one of the wounded were not ICE agents but detainees.

- Copenhagen's main airport was shut down on Monday after a mass incursion of drones; two other airports in the country were shut down on Wednesday for the same reason. The Danish government says that "professional actors" were behind the attacks; they say they have found no evidence of Russian involvement but the fact that they bothered to mention that suggests that they still have their suspicions.

- The Trump regime has retroactively cancelled grants made to municipalities as far back as a year ago for street safety and bike and pedestrian infrastructure, on the grounds that the projects are "hostile to cars".

- Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem says that the "safe haven" status of the US dollar is coming into question due to fears about the policies of the current regime, including fears about the continued independence of the Federal Reserve. Nonetheless, Macklem says that the greenback will likely continue to be the world's reserve currency due to a lack of alternatives. No explanation is given in the article about why the euro or the yuan couldn't replace the dollar in that role; perhaps it's as much a matter of nobody wanting to make the first move as anything.

- Wasagamack First Nation in northern Manitoba has ordered all of its employees to be tested for illegal drugs, including cocaine and meth. They say that this is intended to connect residents with addictions resources rather than to punish.

- A body was found just outside a schoolyard in St. Boniface. Police say that the death is not criminal in nature.

News roundup, 23 July 2025

- A Nouvelair Airbus A320-200 attempted to land on the wrong runway at Nice on Sunday and was forced to execute a last-minute missed approach, coming within three metres of another A320 operated by Easyjet that was lined up on the runway. The Easyjet flight returned to the gate because the pilots were too shaken to continue; passengers reported that the captain was crying and his hands were shaking as he exited the cockpit.

- ABC is walking back their cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and FCC chair Brendan Carr is denying that any threats were made to the licenses of ABC stations. I guess he didn't explicitly threaten to pull licenses, though when he said things like "These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead", it's hard not to interpret this as a threat. Nonetheless, the show is set to return to the airwaves tonight.

- The US Supreme Court has issued an "emergency order" allowing Donald Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, the last remaining Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission. The agency, like many federal agencies, was designed to be bipartisan, and a unanimous 1935 ruling of the Supreme Court forbade then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt from firing commissioners, but that precedent seems to be of no merit to the MAGA-dominated court. The court has so far indicated that the Federal Reserve will be handled differently, but it remains to be seen if this will be the case.

- Not satisfied with the existing sanctions against the International Criminal Court in the wake of their call for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump regime reportedly has a bunch more coming up the pipeline. Possible sanctions could include prohibiting banks that do business with the ICC from doing business with the US. The court has responded by paying the remainder of their staff's 2025 salaries in advance, which if nothing else gives the staff time to make alternative plans for their livelyhoods. Perhaps the court should follow the lead of New South Wales premier Jack Lang, who in 1932 withdrew the state's assets from the bank and stored it in cash at the Sydney Trades Hall in response to a threat to seize the state's bank accounts in order to move forward with their deflationary plans. Lang's government was dismissed by Governor Philip Game soon after, but Trump can't do that to the ICC, much as he'd like to.

- In other ICC-related news, the court has issued an indictment against former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity, including murder.

- Winnipeg police are investigating after fires were set on four different occasions since August at the constituency office of housing minister Bernadette Smith. Damage in all cases was relatively minor and the office remains open. Police say they do not know if the fires were random or targeted. Tellingly, however, there were no signs of similar attempts on nearby buildings.

- The noted American shock-rock band GWAR beheaded Elon Musk in effigy on stage at Riot Fest in Chicago. Of course, stuff like this is nothing new to GWAR, who have previously pulled the same stunt with effigies of other people (including both Donald Trump and Joe Biden). The stunt is getting a bit more scrutiny in the present political climate, though.

- A 47 year old math teacher at a middle school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was arrested after a drug-sniffing dog brought into the school by police took an unusual interest in her purse. Police searched and found cocaine inside a wallet, and subsequently found marijuana and pipes in her car.

News roundup, 22 Sept 2025

- A federal prosecutor in New York has been ousted after failing to find any basis to charge the state's attorney general, Letitia James, with mortgage fraud. James has been Trump's crosshairs ever since she won a civil fraud case against him on behalf of the state; Trump has appointed a new (and presumably more compliant) prosecutor to proceed with the case.

- A Democratic congressional candidate was roughed up by an ICE agent at a protest outside an ICE facility in Chicago. The candidate, Kat Abughazaleh, also says that agents fired pepper balls into the ground, then shouted "Your First Amendment rights are on the sidewalk".

- The Northern Irish rap group Kneecap has been barred from entering Canada, ostensibly because of their "support" for Hezbollah and Hamas. The group, who were set to perform in Toronto and Vancouver next month, deny supporting the organizations or condoning violence.

- Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles survived her leadership review, a week after Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie chose to resign after getting a lackluster review. Stiles accepts that the party will have to change if it is to defeat Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives in the next election; unfortunately I fear that the people of Ontario will have to change as well.

- Two people in Nipigon, Ontario were injured when a black bear forced its way into their house. Their dog, who was also injured, kept the animal at bay until police arrived to shoot the bear; the couple and their dog are expected to recover.

- One of Australia's major telecom providers suffered a significant outage last week, resulting in more than 600 calls to 000 (the country's equivalent of 911) not getting through. Three deaths are being blamed on the outage.

News roundup, 19 Sept 2025

- Denmark held a large military exercise in Greenland this week, the largest in the territory's history. They invited several NATO allies, but pointedly left the US off the invite list.

- Alberta premier Danielle Smith's approval rating has declined to 46%. Despite this, other polling indicates that Smith and her United Conservative Party would win handily over Naheed Nenshi's NDP if an election were held today.

- The New York Times reports that the Trump regime approved the export of advanced computer technology to the United Arab Emirates only two weeks after the UAE invested $2 billion in World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency startup founded by Trump, his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, and their families.

- Elon Musk spoke at the gigantic anti-immigration rally held in the UK by far-right activist Tommy Robinson over the weekend, and declared that "violence is coming" to the country. This brings to mind the notorious "rivers of blood" speech given by MP Enoch Powell in 1968. Musk also called for a change of government, and it's a safe bet that he will do his utmost to ensure that happens.

- Insiders reporting on the executive meetings following the Jimmy Kimmel episode that got the show cancelled say that multiple executives acknowledged that Kimmel hadn't said anything that crosses a line, but that senior execs feared retaliation from Trump. The fears may not have been unfounded; FCC chair Brendan Carr had hinted in an interview that ABC affiliates might have difficulty renewing their broadcast licenses if something wasn't done to "take action" on Kimmel.

- Two Utah men were arrested after an incendiary device was placed under a vehicle owned by a media outlet in Salt Lake City. The device did not go off. And a Texas man was arrested for making threats against New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. I guess they're all counting on getting a presidential pardon.

News roundup, 18 Sept 2025

- The US network ABC has cancelled Jimmy Kimmel Live in response to pressure from the Trump-controlled Federal Communications Commission. This follows Kimmel's comments regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Trump is also demanding that NBC cancel Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.

- Israel's government has threatened to withhold funding for the Ophir Awards, the country's national film awards, after the top award went to a movie about a Palestinian boy. Culture minister Miki Zohar said that the award "spits in the faces of our heroic soldiers".

- Trump's Justice Department is taking Maine and Oregon to court over access to those states' voter registration lists. The states, quite understandably, don't trust the feds to keep voter information secure, but the feds claim it is necessary to limit voter fraud.

- The Winnipeg Police Service has announced that police officers, both uniformed and plainclothes, will be patrolling bus stop areas and riding on buses to deal with a rise in violent behaviour on Winnipeg Transit.

- Doug Ford is calling on the federal government to keep the 100% tariff on Chinese EVs in place, saying that he fears the impact on the auto sector as well as on trade negotiations with the US if the tariff is removed.

- A cheating scandal has rocked the World Stone Skimming Championships, held on the Scottish island of Easdale, after it was discovered that stones used in the competition appeared to have been altered to make them skip more effectively.

News roundup, 17 Sept 2025

- Chrystia Freeland is reportedly stepping down from her cabinet post in favour of a role as an envoy to Ukraine.

- The American far right is experiencing internal divisions over the killing of Charlie Kirk. Some figures in the movement, including Steve Bannon and Candace Owens, are working on new conspiracy theories. Owens went so far as to accuse the Trump regime of withholding information, and suggested that Israel might be to blame, claiming that Kirk had taken a more critical stance against that country shortly before his death. Maybe a civil war in the far right movement is exactly what the rest of humanity needs, though.

- Radio-Canada has suspended journalist Elisa Serret for making on-air statements that were perceived as antisemitic. Now hearing something like that arouses suspicion, since there are all kinds of things that are being called "antisemitic" that just aren't. However, if the reports are accurate, Serret made allegations that big cities and Hollywood are "run by Jews", which certainly sounds like just a wee bit more than simply criticizing Israel or Zionism.

- Donald Trump has filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times for reporting on the birthday letter that Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. He has previously launched a suit against the Wall Street Journal for covering the same story.

- The Washington Post has fired longtime editor and columnist Karen Attiah for her social media activity. Attiah had reposted an old tweet from the late Charlie Kirk that apparently revealed a bit too much about his character for owner Jeff Bezos' liking. Meanwhile JD Vance is calling for a mass doxing of people who have posted negative things about Kirk.

- Surrey, BC has such a problem with extortion that they have announced a $250,000 reward fund for tips leading to convictions. There has been a large increase in crimes of this nature recently, mostly affecting the city's large south Asian community. Perhaps Winnipeg should follow their lead, given how many similar occurrences there have been here of late.

- Blumenort School in Hanover, Manitoba was placed under lockdown last Wednesday after an irate 43 year old father threw a tantrum and assaulted staff members. When police arrived he threatened to assault them as well. He was charged with assault and uttering threats. As far as what set him off in the first place, we'll have to wait and see to know for sure, but I'm going to hazard a guess that it was something he saw on social media.

- In addition to their failed protest in Toronto, the far-right movement also attempted to hold one in Thunder Bay, according to this Reddit thread. Apparently only one or two people actually showed up to that one. This is certainly good news, but we shouldn't get too complacent given that there's been a dramatic decline in support for immigration in this country in the last few years. And take note that across the pond, far-right activist Tommy Robinson drew a crowd comparable to Thunder Bay's entire population. Things are pretty much certain to get worse in that regard as climate change drives more migration, as Gwynne Dyer starkly reminded us in 2018.

- Russ Wyatt, who represents Transcona on Winnipeg's city council, has endorsed Braydon Mazurkiewich in the Elmwood-East Kildonan byelection, which will be held on the 25th of October. If I lived in that ward I don't think Mazurkeiwich would have been my choice anyway (I'd most likely support Emma Durand-Wood, or maybe Carmen Prefontaine) but this pretty much seals the deal.

News roundup, 16 Sept 2025

- The US is threatening "serious consequences" if a review of the decision to purchase the F-35 fighter doesn't go their way. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra warns that a decision not to buy the product cold threaten the viability of NORAD, claiming that the alliance will somehow not work if the two countries use different aircraft. This comes just as the US Government Accountability Office revealed that the F-35 program is facing even more delays and cost overruns than it already was. The fact that the US controls the supply of parts and software upgrades ought to be considered by Ottawa, however; you don't want a potentially hostile foreign power being able to limit your ability to defend yourself.

- An Ottawa man has been charged with "threatening communications" against a Catholic high school in Manotick, apparently in response to a post by one of the school's teachers concerning the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Meanwhile in Toronto Dr. Ruth Marshall, a professor of religious studies and political science at the U of T, has been placed on leave after posting a rather inflammatory tweet in the wake of Kirk's death; subsequent threats made to the university in response to the tweet led to the temporary closure of a building on campus. Marshall says that the tweet was not actually about Kirk but about "atrocity denial in Gaza".

- The Chinese automaker Xpeng is now building electric cars in Europe. In Canada, meanwhile, some are predicting that Chinese vehicles will "flood" into the country, under the assumption that the Carney government will lift the prohibitive tariffs on these vehicles in the hope of regaining access to the country's huge canola market. I'm not so sure; based purely on electoral considerations, it seems improbable that the Liberals will sacrifice votes in Windsor, St. Catharines, and Oshawa (which are electoral battlegrounds) in order to satisfy Prairie farmers (who would sooner pull their own heads off than vote Liberal). The fact that the Trump regime is trying to pressure all NATO members into imposing even more stringent tariffs on China does not make such a move any easier.

- Far-right activists held an anti-immigration rally in Toronto's Christie Pits Park (site of a notorious antisemitic riot in 1933) on Saturday, but were outnumbered around 10 to 1 by counterprotesters. Someone who was there said they looked "shell-shocked", perhaps unprepared for the amount of support there is for immigration in one of the most multicultural cities on Earth.

- The Pride parade in Steinbach, Manitoba has been postponed after organizers were warned of "credible safety threats connected to far-right extremism". Details of the threats are vague but indicate that they were motivated out of revenge for the death of Charlie Kirk.

- Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie is stepping down following a leadership review vote. She had received the support of 57% of voters in the party convention, but decided that this wasn't good enough. The party now commences its third leadership race since 2018

- Toronto police have charged two people, including a 12 year old boy, after a vicious hammer attack on a homeless man who subsequently died. Several other people had been attacked as well, though not fatally. The deceased had been released from hospital but was subsequently found dead, and his death was attributed to the initial attack, so it sounds like those who made the decision to release him deserve a share of the blame.

- Four people from St. Theresa Point First Nation, Manitoba have died after a de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver float plane crashed just short of its destination in Makepeace Lake. The pilot, the sole survivor, suffered serious but non-life threatening injuries.

News roundup, 15 Sept 2025

- Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2022 presidential election. He is also barred from running for public office until eight years after the end of his sentence. Evidently Brazil has learned from America's failures; unsurprisingly the Trump regime is not happy, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling the sentence "unjust" and a "witch hunt". The regime had already imposed a 50% tariff on all goods from Brazil in July after the government refused to stop the trial.

- A suspect is in custody in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Tyler Robinson is a 22 year old resident of Utah with no previous convictions and from a "respectable" Mormon family; his parents are registered Republicans but he is registered as an independent. Despite previous bleatings from the MAGA crowd blaming the left and calling for "war", the slogans engraved on the shell casings left behind at the murder scene don't have a consistent leftwing message but rather betray a lot of influence from online culture with no clear political leanings. Utah Governor Spencer Cox said that he had prayed that it wouldn't turn out to be a native Utahan; I guess it's harder to whip up a lynchmob against one of your own than against the "other".

- People who have made online posts critical of Charlie Kirk in the wake of his death have come under heavy fire. Manitoba's Minister of Families, Nahanni Fontaine, shared a post on Instagram from US based activist @che_jim, which (not inaccurately) called Kirk "racist", "sexist", "transphobic", and a number of other bad things. Following this, many accused her of "celebrating" Kirk's assassination, and called for her removal. Premier Wab Kinew has refused to fire her, though he did ask her to apologize as a means of "taking the temperature down". One person who probably can be accused of celebrating Kirk's death is University of Victoria art history professor Melia Belli Bose, who posted this. It remains to be seen whether Bose's tenure will protect her.

- Those investigating the other shooting that occurred at a US educational institution last Wednesday say that the shooter had been radicalized by an online network of some sort, though they declined to provide specifics.

- Following an ICE raid on a Hyundai plant in which around 475 people, mostly South Koreans, were rounded up for deportation, the Trump regime attempted to reverse this, but only one of the workers accepted the offer. Hyundai had apparently been working in legal grey areas with their subcontractors, but at least one of the workers had a valid visa, adding to the outrage. Some think this could lead foreign companies to reconsider whether it's worth building a plant in the US.

News roundup, 12 Sept 2025

- The FBI has released photos of a "person of interest" in the murder of Charlie Kirk; the suspect remains at large. A retired banker in Toronto was falsely identified in numerous social media posts as a suspect in Kirk's death. One thing that's clear - the way things are going in that country, Kirk's assassination probably won't be the last; this sort of thing tends to drive revenge killings as well as copycats.

- Two days before Kirk's death, the feminist-oriented news and opinion site Jezebel published a satirical piece entitled "We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk". After the killing they removed it, fearing that keeping it up would not be helpful to the political climate. You can still find the original at archive.org if you're interested.

- The new owners of CBS' parent company Paramount have been actively working to shift the network's news coverage to the right. This follows a $16 million settlement made by the company's previous owner over the way an interview with Kamala Harris was edited. Skydance founder, film producer David Ellison, is a vocal Trump supporter. The company apparently also has its eyes on Warner Bros Discovery, which owns CNN.

- Across the Atlantic, the BBC is coming under fire for the amount of coverage that they're giving to Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage, and how little actual scrutiny they're giving the party for the amount of coverage. The broadcaster denies that they're trying to ingratiate themselves with Farage in anticipation of a possible Reform victory in the next election, but given that the party is doing frighteningly well in the polls, it's hard not to wonder.

- An Asiana Airlines flight from Seoul to New York City was diverted to Winnipeg on Wednesday morning after a passenger fell ill; the passengers and crew were quarantined in the aircraft on the tarmac for four hours owing to fears that the illness was highly contagious. Fortunately those fears appear to have been unfounded.

- A Calgary man has been charged with multiple offenses after tunnelling from his apartment into that of his upstairs neighbour, who had been staying elsewhere after he had harassed her numerous times. 

News roundup, 11 Sept 2025

- American far-right commentator/activist Charlie Kirk was killed in spectacular fashion at a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University in Orem. A man was detained, then released without charges; the suspect remains at large. Many have remarked on the fact that Kirk once said that his country's enormous number of gun-related deaths (such as the school shooting in Colorado that happened on the same day as Kirk's death) are "worth it" to ensure that people (well, his kind of people at least) have unfettered access to firearms. The far right, of course, is screaming for vengeance. One thing seems clear - political violence is now firmly embedded in the culture of present-day America and isn't going away any time soon.

- An Ottawa man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for promoting antisemitic violence and helping to recruit members for the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division (AWD).

- European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is calling for suspension of trade between the EU and Israel in response to the catastrophe in Gaza. Whether such a move will win enough support from EU member states to pass is another question.

- A security guard at Winnipeg City Hall was attacked with pepper spray on Monday afternoon. The assailant allegedly made "racial comments" about city hall security in the course of the attack.

- A private contractor providing security at aid distribution sites in Gaza appears to have hired a lot of members of the Infidels, a motorcycle gang formed by veterans of the Iraq war that is overtly hostile to Islam.

- A Grade 9 student at Winnipeg's College Jeanne-Sauve was assaulted on Tuesday while participating in an outdoor gym class. The class had been taken from the school to the nearby Dakota Park; when a group of students walked by a tent, the resident of the tent apparently ran out and attacked the group, causing minor injuries to the student. At least, that's how it was reported in the article; in the related Reddit thread several people reported that the students had been harassing the homeless guy for some time, and throwing stuff at him. Nonetheless, this will doubtless add ammunition to arguments in favour of restricting where homeless encampments will be allowed, even as housing advocates question whether the city's proposal is such a good idea.

- An Oregon man who won what he was led to believe would be "$5,000 a week for life" back in 2012 got a nasty surprise when the cheques suddenly stopped. Turns out Publishers Clearing House, the company that ran the contest, had declared bankruptcy. It doesn't help his situation that he hasn't worked since the win and thus is not a prime candidate for employment now.

News roundup, 10 Sept 2025

- The US and the EU have tentatively agreed on a "Framework Agreement" on trade; what's disconcerting is what Europe seems prepared to give up in order to continue their trade relationship with the Americans. Buried in the document is a statement that the countries "intend to accept and provide mutual recognition to each other’s standards" with regard to motor vehicles; in other words, the EU is prepared to accept gigantic hulking American trucks and SUVs on their streets in order to satisfy the current US regime. The European Transport Safety Council has issued a statement condemning the move; whether it can be reversed, though, is a good question. I suspect that most European leaders know that it really isn't a good idea but are preparing to move forward due to fears about the economic impact of tariffs. Unfortunately they're in a tight spot, because much of the voting public takes a very short-sighted, immediate view of such matters and are willing to accept a worse future in order to avoid a pay cut in the present.

- Israel bombed Doha on Tuesday, attempting to justify the attack by saying that they were targeting Hamas leaders who were in the Qatari capital for peace negotiations. The Israelis were at one point claiming that the attack was greenlighted by the Trump regime, but later retracted the statement, saying that they had acted alone. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the attack "an intolerable expansion of violence"; even Trump seems to think it may not have been a good idea. It's definitely not good for the peace negotiations. Presumably that was Netanyahu's goal, since what he seems to want is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza so he can just annex it to Israel, and that would be a hard thing to justify even to his own people if the negotiations were still active.

- Poland says that they have shot down Russian drones that had strayed into their airspace in the course of a Russian attack on Ukraine. 

- The Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles caused a stir with an Instagram post that read "Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews". There was an instant backlash as the museum's social media followers thought about who else the post might be referring to, and the post was removed with a grovelling apology.

- Manitoba's Minister of Health, Uzoma Asagwara, has announced that two police officers will be stationed at the emergency ward of Health Sciences Centre at all times, and weapon detection equipment will be installed at all entrances. This follows the "greylisting" of HSC, the province's largest hospital, by the Manitoba Nurses' Union. The union's president isn't sure this is the best way to do it, favouring more funding for specialized safety officers rather than tying up police resources. It might be a necessary evil, though.

- Federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald, encouragingly, has not ruled out lifting the tariffs on Chinese EVs in the hope of getting Chinese restrictions on Canadian canola lifted. On the other hand, he also says that the government wants to "ensure any changes wouldn't jeopardize other industries or sectors"; that suggests that we shouldn't get our hopes up, though, since those autoworker votes are important.

- The mayor of Barrie, Ontario, Alex Nuttall, has declared a state of emergency in the city in order to address concerns about homeless encampments. Ontario's emergency management law empowers the city to create a new task force to oversee the response to encampments, as well as hiring contractors and consultants to assist them in the matter.

-Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm warns that the Trump regime has "basically destroyed what capacity we had to respond to a pandemic" since taking office the second time around. On the bright side, if we get a big enough pandemic it will do wonders for the fight against climate change.

News roundup, 9 Sept 2025

- An analysis by The Narwhal has found that the recent changes to Winnipeg Transit's network have disproportionately affected less affluent areas. Overall, there was a reduction in the number of stops from 11 per km² to 7 per km², but neighbourhoods in the North End and downtown lost 2-3 times as many stops as the city average, while suburban ones lost the fewest. Now admittedly, there's a kind of logic to that if you want to use Transit's limited budget to minimize the number of people who drive - more North End residents will continue to lump it, simply because they can't afford a car. Even more cynically, one might reason that reducing the number of stops in poorer neighbourhoods will reduce the number of people who use the bus as a shelter, thus making it more attractive to suburbanites. Urban planning professor Orly Linovski pretty much admits this when she says that Transit has two distinct goals - to better serve those who already use it and to encourage people with other options to take the bus, and that those two goals "can be in conflict"; nonetheless, she questions whether the approach taken is good social policy. There's also the fact that there's a tradeoff between fast service and having a lot of stops. And indeed, on the major routes with frequent service, there really has been an improvement - but this comes at a cost to people with mobility issues, and will also not seem so attractive when it's -30°C out, or if you have to walk through a sketchy neighbourhood to get to your bus stop. And the cuts to late night service have also disproportionately affected poorer areas.

- Winnipeg's city council is considering strict limits on where homeless encampments will be tolerated. Among the prohibited locations will be within 50 metres of schools or children's recreational facilities, which is fine, but it also includes anywhere within 30 metres of a transit shelter, bridges, docks or piers and within 50 metres of a rail line; those restrictions seem a lot harder to justify (prohibiting encampments in a transit shelter might be fair game, but near?) and when you combine all the restrictions it becomes an interesting question about where such people will still be allowed to exist. We'll have to see how the courts deal with it; an Ontario court has previously ruled that municipalities can't have blanket prohibitions if there isn't enough shelter space for all the encampment residents. Even site-specific restrictions have been struck down.

- Brazil's Supreme Court is set to rule today on the fate of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is being tried for his version of Jan 6 that occurred following his electoral defeat in 2022. Among the other accusations he faces is that he was aware of a plot to assassinate the legitimate president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Donald Trump has imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods and has imposed personal sanctions on Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, calling the trial "political persecution". The country, of course, is deeply divided over the issue.

- A WestJet Boeing 737-800 from Toronto was substantially damaged following a collapse of the right main landing gear upon landing at Princess Juliana International Airport in Sint Maarten. Passengers and crew escaped without major injury. Most of the news stories have described this as a "hard landing", which implicitly sounds like it's blaming the pilots (i.e. they landed too hard and broke the airplane), but according to Juan Browne (blancolirio) there's a history of similar failures in that aircraft type, including one involving an Alaska Airlines flight in 2023, and nothing about the WestJet flight's approach seemed to suggest that the crew were doing anything wrong.

- A man in Prince George, BC was pulled over while driving a child-size Barbie jeep along one of the city's major routes to go to the 7-11 for a Slurpee. He was arrested after failing a breathalyzer test and already had a suspended license. 

News roundup, 8 Sept 2025

- The agriculture sector in both Canada and the US is taking a beating due to the ongoing trade dispute with China. In the US, corn and soybean prices have collapsed; in Canada there's a similar situation with canola. In both countries, governments are trying to pick up the slack by incentivizing more biofuel production. Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe is calling for the removal of tariffs on Chinese EVs as these tariffs are widely seen as being part of the reason China has sanctioned our canola in the first place. I hate to agree with Moe on anything, but he's right about this. Unfortunately there's no way in hell that the federal government will throw auto workers under the bus.

- Suicide is now the number one cause of death in the EU for people between the ages of 15 and 29, accounting for nearly 19% of all deaths in that age group. This represents a reversal of a previous downward trend for suicide.

- Air Canada's flight attendants have rejected the latest wage offer from their employer. The union argues that even with the increase offered, flight attendants would still effectively be making less than the minimum wage for federally regulated industries.

- A consumer advocacy group in Australia has found that 16 out of 20 brands of sunscreen don't provide the level of protection claimed on the label. This in the country with the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world.

- Former Winnipeg Blue Bombers running back Willard Reaves is running for the leadership of the Manitoba Liberal Party. I guess he figures that if Obby Khan can lead a party, so can he.

- In France, the government led by prime minister François Bayrou is expected to lose a non-confidence vote. Bayrou had called the vote himself, hoping to "shock" politicians into getting their act together, but it doesn't seem to be working. Meanwhile the bleating masses are lining up behind Jordan Bardella, leader of the far-right National Rally, because he seems like "someone you could get a drink with". You'd hope that a democracy could choose its leaders based on something more substantial than that, but I guess not.

- Erin Patterson, who poisoned several of her husband's relatives with death cap mushrooms, killing three, has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 33 years.

News roundup, 5 Sept 2025

- At least 16 people were killed on Wednesday and 21 injured, five seriously, when one of Lisbon's funicular trams went out of control and derailed, colliding with a building. Two Canadians are among the dead. Initial reports suggest a problem with the cable; a full investigation of an accident like this can take quite some time, however. As an odd side note - in the course of browsing Wikipedia about funicular railways, I learned that the classic Italian song "Funiculì, Funiculà" was written to celebrate the opening of such a railway in 1880.

- A stabbing rampage and ensuing police chase in Hollow Water First Nation has left two people dead, including the suspect, and eight people, including an RCMP officer, with serious injuries.

- The Norwegian government, along with a consortium of oil companies, has launched the world's first large scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) operation, injecting CO₂ into the seabed 2,600 metres beneath the North Sea. I'm not opposed in principle, but even if it works as well as advertised it's a stopgap, not a solution; the storage capacity may well run out before fossil fuels do.

- While condos are a good idea in principle, a disproportionate number of condos built in Canada in recent decades were built as something to invest in more than something to live in. As a result, many of them aren't really good to live in for the long haul, and sales have cratered recently to the point where many investors are now underwater on their mortgages. Not mentioned in the article, but suggested by folks in this Reddit thread, is the role of the short-term rental industry in the whole matter; apparently many condos built since the advent of Airbnb were built more like hotel rooms than actual apartments.

- Donald Trump intends to sign an executive order that will rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War. To be fair, there was a time when most countries gave their defense ministries such a name, but that was mostly before WWII, after which it became less fashionable to treat war as if it were some kind of goal (or at least to advertise yourself as doing so by naming an entire government department after it). For a while, at least; now that the Americans are going back that way we'll have to see if the rest of the world follows their lead.

- Self-styled "Queen of Canada" Romana Didulo was released without charges on Wednesday, only to be rearrested on Thursday for violating conditions of her release. The owner of the decommissioned school where she and her followers were based was also rearrested; the two had been ordered not to communicate with each other.

- Human remains found in Algonquin Provincial Park in 1980 have been identified using genetic genealogy as being from a Cleveland man who disappeared in 1973. Eric Singer had fled the US after being drafted.

News roundup, 4 Sept 2025

- The RCMP raided the compound of self-proclaimed "Queen of Canada" Romana Didulo in Richmound, Saskatchewan on Wednesday. Didulo and 15 others were arrested following a firearms investigation; charges are pending.

- Calgary lawyers John Carpay and Jay Cameron, of the so-called "Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms", have been disbarred by the Law Society of Alberta after hiring a private investigator to put Manitoba judge Glenn Joyal, who was presiding over their case against pandemic restrictions, under surveillance.

- The Manitoba government is backing away from a plan to open a supervised consumption site near the Disraeli overpass. The government still plans to open a site, but strident opposition from local residents is forcing them to reconsider the location.

- A proposal to build supportive housing in Winnipeg's Grant Park neighbourhood is getting a lot of pushback from residents in neighbouring River Heights. An unsigned leaflet is being distributed to stoke fear of crime and mental illness.

- The Quebec government has rejected an offer of federal money that would have helped address systemic racism in the justice system. Presumably they feared that accepting the money would be an admission that the province has a problem with racism.

- The states of Washington, Oregon, and California are creating a new public health agency in response to the Trump regime's takeover of federal agencies. They will be issuing their own public health recommendations with regards to vaccines and the like.

- A long-lost painting, Giuseppe Ghislandi's "Portrait of a Lady", painted in 1710, has been recovered in Argentina, some 80 years after it was stolen by the Nazis. The painting was discovered by accident in photos on a real estate agent's website; it was hanging on the wall of a house being sold by the daughter of the late Friedrich Kadgien, an advisor to Hermann Goring.

News roundup, 3 Sept 2025

- Berlin police are investigating after a pro-Palestine demonstrator was beaten up by an officer last Thursday. Another activist was quoted as saying that German police are particularly brutal in dealing with such activists. Germany is also apparently standing in the way of the EU imposing sanctions on Israel. It seems that the Germans are trying to atone for the Holocaust by giving the Israeli leadership whatever they want.

- Russian opposition activists are urging Canada to give asylum to several hundred dissidents who applied for asylum in the US but now are at risk of being sent back to Russia 

- The City of Winnipeg is running out of deltamethrin, the insecticide that it has used to fog for mosquitoes approval for malathion fogging was withdrawn some years back. As a result, they're looking at expanding their larviciding program; this would require an expansion of the city's helicopter base in Elmwood (or an entirely new facility). In truth, larviciding (much of which is done with a bacterial agent) is not only safer from a health and environmental point of view, it's much more effective; fogging is what they do to show the public that they're doing something to control mosquitoes more than anything.

- Winnipeg police took out a search warrant to investigate a suspected bicycle chop shop at a homeless encampment by the Red River along Waterfront Drive. Legal experts are calling this a smart move to maximize the chance that charges stick; on the other hand the local residents' association is worried about the precedent that this could set by treating the encampments as legitimate housing.

- The fourth floor of Winnipeg's Millennium Library has been reopened to the public following the installation of construction fences as a temporary measure to stop people from jumping. Many are saying that what's really needed is the restoration of the Community Connections services on the main floor; as one witness to last month's suicide pointed out, if the service had been available at the time, the unfortunate chap might have gotten help before it was too late.

- Online clothing retailer Shein is investigating after an image used by one of the vendors listing on their platform showed Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, wearing one of their shirts. The image, thought to have been AI generated, has been removed.

News roundup, 2 Sept 2025

- Donald Trump's pretext for deploying the National Guard in the District of Columbia was to deal with rampant crime. In actual fact, though, the troops have mostly been deployed in tourist areas and metro stations, not high crime neighbourhoods. There have, however, been a number of what locals believe to be police from out of town sent to those places, often making a big show of arresting people for petty offenses such as smoking pot or fare evasion.

- The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has identified 12 instances in which large supermarket chains have mislabeled foreign produce as Canadian. The CFIA has the power to levy fines of $15,000 per offense, however so far they have elected to simply say "please do not do this again".

- Yves Veggie Cuisine, a popular Canadian-founded brand of meat substitutes, is being shut down by its American owner, Hain Celestial Group. Hain claims that the sector has been declining for several years; it's possible that they want to take Linda McCartney Foods (which they also own) across the Atlantic and don't want Yves to compete with it. It also has to be admitted that while their veggie dogs are excellent, many of their other products such as veggie burgers are mediocre at best, especially when compared with things like Beyond Meat.

- The hamlet of Fort Providence, Northwest Territories is the latest to be evacuated as a result of wildfires, after a fire came within a kilometre of the community. Evacuees are being sent to the town of Hay River.

- Postal services of 25 countries have suspended outbound postal service to the US in response to tariffs. 

- US Customs and Border Patrol searched almost 15,000 cellphones at the Canadian border between April and June. In many cases the data from the phones was downloaded and archived for reasons unknown. One cybersecurity expert suggests that while you can always take a "burner phone", the very absence of data on the phone could itself be seen as a red flag. I guess the best choice would be a flip phone that you couldn't put apps on at all; maybe don't try that if you're young, though. Actually better still - don't visit the US at all.

- Two years ago, Taco Bell introduced AI-driven drive-thrus at over 500 US locations. They're now rethinking things after it failed to reduce errors or speed up service. Many report that their requests have confused the system; one guy managed to crash the entire system by ordering 18,000 cups of water.

- A teacher in Idaho has been forced to resign after refusing to remove a poster from her classroom. The poster had the slogan "Everyone is welcome" with outlines of hands of different skin tone; she was explicitly told that while the slogan itself would have been tolerable, showing the hands was not. Talk about saying the quiet part out loud...

- Residents of a trailer park on the outskirts of Winnipeg have been targeted with graffiti and with an anonymous letter sent to the trailer park's office warning residents of the park to stay out of the adjacent suburban neighbourhood.