News roundup, 6 Nov 2026

- Canada's federal budget, the second since Mark Carney became prime minister, was tabled in Parliament yesterday by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne. The budget will increase spending by about $142 billion over the next 5 years; the government is betting that this will be offset by oil and gas revenues as prices of those commodities continue to soar. There is a big focus on increasing investment in the country; there are also token moves on affordability (such as increases in the GST rebate) and investments in measures to counter homelessness. NDP leader Avi Lewis approves of the latter but says the budget doesn't go far enough to help people in need overall; meanwhile Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is predictably focused on deficits.

- A ballot measure called Proposition RTM passed in several Bay Area municipalities during the midterms will provide regional transit systems with a much-needed cash injection, funded by sales taxes that will expire in 14 years. Transit systems in the region, like elsewhere, had taken a severe beating from COVID-19, and there were fears that the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system as well as San Francisco's Muni system would have to make severe cuts if the measure didn't pass. 

- Meta is worried that the Democratic sweep in the midterms could make it harder to build data centres. Most of the ballot measures to restrict data centre construction have passed, and many candidates at the municipal and state level who favoured restrictions were elected. This has contributed to a large selloff of tech stocks, although those stocks were already taking a beating before the election as investors started to clue in that this AI stuff just might be overhyped a little.

- Elon Musk, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to elect Republicans in the midterms, could now face congressional investigations into the huge contracts awarded to him by the Trump regime. In the four months that he led DOGE, he received some $6.3 billion in contracts; he has received another $10 billion since.

- Aeyavarin "Aeya" Pradubyart, a 15 year old who was a rising star in the golf community in Thailand died over the weekend after she was struck by lightning during a tournament. A 35 year old caddy was also injured.

News roundup, 5 Nov 2026

- JD Vance said in a post on X that the Republicans' defeat in the midterms resulted from the war against Iran. There is speculation that Vance may be trying to distance himself, ever so carefully, from Trump in preparation for a presidential run in 2028.

- Mark Carney will be presenting his budget today, the second since he became prime minister. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne is hinting that affordability measures will be part of the budget, which will also contain immigration targets for the next two years. NDP leader Avi Lewis is calling on the government to invest more in healthcare, which could plausibly be part of the budget, as well as to create a wealth tax and open a chain of government-run grocery stores (the last two items are probably a bit much to hope for from this government).

- Pieces of the left elevator of the Learjet 60 that crashed in Florida on the weekend were found several kilometres from the crash site. This is consistent with stills from the dashcam video showing the crash, which appear to show that the aircraft was missing its entire horizontal stabilizer before impact. It is unclear if this was actually the cause of the crash, or if the tail broke apart due to an existing overspeed after the crew lost control for other reasons (such as icing or turbulence).

- Scott Gillingham has appointed a new executive policy committee, and the committee (which serves as a cabinet for the city) includes two newly elected councillors. Transcona councillor Lora Meseman will be in charge of the Community Services portfolio, while Sara MacArthur from River Heights-Fort Garry is in charge of Water, Waste, and Environment. The other three members include Jeff Browaty (who is staying on as Finance chair), Evan Duncan (taking over as Public Works chair) and Vivian Santos (taking Duncan's previous post as Planning, Property, and Development chair).

- Roger Stearns, the new reeve of the Rural Municipality of Rockwood, Manitoba, has a pending lawsuit against the municipality over the potential expansion of two quarries that he fears could impact the Manitoba Bear Rehabilitation Centre, a charitable organization that he operates along with his wife. No doubt he ran for the post in the hope of stopping the expansion, but University of Winnipeg political scientist Aaron Moore thinks that Stearns may need to recuse himself from any votes related to the quarries, due to conflict of interest legislation.

- People were swimming in the St. Lawrence River this week as temperatures hovered in the low twenties. This is not what is traditionally expected in Canada in November.

News roundup, 4 Nov 2026

- The Democrats have won control of Congress in yesterday's midterms. A number of seats in both houses have yet to be decided, but it appears that the Democrats have already secured majorities in both houses even in the worst case scenario. Even in the best case, though, they won't have a veto-proof supermajority, meaning they will likely have little opportunity to actually pass legislation. This will provide the opportunity for some investigations of the Trump regime's corruption, however. Among the highlights - James Talarico has won the Texas Senate seat that was up for grabs and Gina Hinojosa has won the governorship of that state, while Annie Andrews has won in South Carolina; few could have imagined those states going blue. New York representative Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become the first black Speaker of the House, while Abdul El-Sayed will become the first Muslim senator.

- A gigantic cyber heist last week, in which $6.3 billion was stolen from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, was pulled off by contacting an engineer with the company on a job-hunting platform and conducting a fake job interview. After an initial interview to build trust, they convinced the engineer that they were going to give him a second interview directly with the CEO of the fictitious company, and gave him an "assignment" to download to his work laptop. Of course the "assignment" was full of malware, which gave the hackers (suspected to be North Korean government operatives) high level access to Binance's systems. I suspect that engineer's need to find a new job has just increased significantly.

- A cyberattack has enabled hackers to remotely activate the defrost mode of internet-connected supermarket freezers in Europe, heating them to 50°C and ruining large amounts of food. The same thing happened a few weeks back. It's a fair question why a supermarket freezer needs to be controlled remotely anyway; it should be easy enough to have a switch you can flip to defrost the device, but I guess the stores were sold on the "internet of things" by fast-talking sales reps and convinced that putting their freezers online is necessary to stay competitive. The identities and motives of the attackers are not known.

- Police responded to a standoff at the University of Toronto's satellite campus in Mississauga in which a 19 year old man, who was not a student at the university, barricaded himself in a residence. The standoff ended when the suspect fatally shot himself. The suspect had also been wanted for a domestic violence incident earlier that day in which a woman was injured.

News roundup, 3 Nov 2026

- The US goes to the polls today in the midterm elections; stay tuned for the outcome. In addition to Congress, the midterms include referenda being held in various states, notably one in California on instituting a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires. 

- A Learjet 60 business jet dived almost vertically into the ground from over 30,000 ft in Palm Beach County, Florida on the weekend, killing the crew of two and all seven passengers and making a large crater in the ground. One person on the ground was injured as well. More information, including ATC audio, may be found here.

- The Ford government in Ontario has altered the province's building code to facilitate their plans to keep more prisoners detained on remand. Under the old rules, sleeping areas in provincial jails had to have a minimum of 4.7 m² of floor space per prisoner, but there is now no minimum. Even the old rules gave less space than is recommended by many; the UK-based National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders recommends a minimum of 5.4 m² per person. In Canadian federal prisons the minimum is 6.5 m².

- An apparent malfunction at a Winnipeg sewage treatment plant resulted in 9.8 million litres of raw sewage spilling into the Red River. Two automated bypass gates reportedly activated unexpectedly, and an alarm that was supposed to notify staff of this did not go off.

- A leader in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets sustained what are described as life-altering injuries after being assaulted in Hamilton on the weekend. Police say the man confronted a group of boys who blew an air horn at a group of cadets who were selling Remembrance Day poppies outside a restaurant, and followed them inside, only to be attacked by them along with a 48 year old woman. The woman and one of the boys, aged 12, have been charged with aggravated assault.

News roundup, 2 Nov 2026

- A major selloff rocked North America's stock markets on Friday, driven mostly by declines in tech stocks. This follows significant declines in similar stocks in China; it seems investors are beginning to second-guess whether the massive amounts of money spent on AI technology is going to pay off. 

- Haley Stevens, a Democratic member of Congress from Michigan, tried to make the leap to the Senate this year, but lost the primary to Abdul El-Sayed in August. She has responded by endorsing El-Sayed's Republican opponent, much to the chagrin of party officials.

- Some users of Google's AI mode found that they couldn't get a straight answer when asking who won the 2020 US presidential election. Google attributes this to a "technical gap" which they are working on fixing.

- Steinbach has elected its first person of colour to its city council. Greg Carlos emigrated to Canada with his family as a teenager and says the small southern Manitoba city has welcomed him, notwithstanding a racist banner that was hung on a nearby highway overpass during the campaign.

- A Manitoba Housing highrise in Winnipeg's North End was evacuated over the weekend following a fire, the third at the building in eight months. Most residents have been allowed back, though one floor remains evacuated. Disconcertingly, some residents are blaming the province's Your Way Home program, which provides housing for homeless people. There may be something to this; earlier this year the Winnipeg Regional health Authority suspended home care services in that building for a time due to fears for the safety of their staff. Although there have been security upgrades made at the building since, one resident suggested that people with a "drug related" past shouldn't be housed there; the problem with that attitude is that they still have to be housed somewhere, unless one thinks they should just be left to die.

- After a 30 year old woman died of cancer while owing $38,000 in student debt, TD tried to get the money out of her grieving mother. The mother was a cosigner, but life insurance had been purchased at the time. TD claims that the policy was automatically cancelled when she graduated from university and the student line of credit converted into a personal loan, but it's not clear if she or her mother were actually notified of the cancellation. In any case, the bank backed down after the CBC started asking questions.

News roundup, 30 Oct 2026

- The primary Instagram account used by No Kings activists in the US was suspended earlier this month, just as the organization was busy rallying people in preparation for the midterm elections. Instagram's parent company Meta claims that this happened due to a technical glitch, but many think their "glitches" are happening too often, and disproportionately impacting opponents of rightwing extremism, both in the US and elsewhere.

- While 175 members of Congress, led by Pramila Jayapal of Washington, have signed a letter condemning the investigation of Ilhan Omar, 40 Democratic members are not among them, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi. While the article rightly acknowledges that not having signed the letter doesn't prove that someone supports the persecution of Omar, one can't help but wonder if a centrist like Pelosi would secretly be happy to see Omar denaturalized and removed from the country so she won't drag the Democrats to the left and/or say mean things about Israel.

- The drama surrounding Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton AG, continues with revelations that employees who urged caution in the use of AI (as in, testing AI-developed stuff before releasing it to the public) were subjected to a torrent of abuse from Yen, who called such caution "bullshit and loser thinking". The thing is, Proton is a nonprofit that has built its brand around privacy and security, and as the folks on Reddit point out, when your brand is built around that, and your own cybersecurity people are warning you to be careful, it shows extremely poor judgment not to listen to them. Proton, in fact, was founded specifically as a platform for private and secure communications. What makes this stranger is that Yen is not a product of Silicon Valley, where that "move fast and break things" mentality is endemic - his background is as a physicist. The only way his outburst makes any sense at all is if the company is planning change to a for-profit corporation (or spin off a for-profit subsidiary the way OpenAI did) and eventually have an IPO - because investors who don't know much about tech will just assume that the more AI queries a company makes, the more forward thinking and worthy of investment it is.

- A Winnipeg synagogue has revoked the memberships of a couple in their congregation and arranged for the police to visit them to inform them that they were barred from the premises. Emet Eviatar and David Hoult had attended services at Congregation Etz Chayim for many years, but the Eviatar's involvement in Standing Together, which has been highly critical of Israel's actions in Gaza, and Hoult's criticism of the institution's security measures, were evidently a bridge too far. 

- Actor Patrick Stewart, best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek, has died at the age of 86. 

News roundup, 29 Oct 2026

- Scott Gillingham has been easily reelected as mayor of Winnipeg, winning 39.8% of the vote. The second place contender, Kevin Klein, got 20.7%, barely ahead of the progressive candidate, Noah Redden, who got 19.8%. Happily, Mike Vogiatzakis was far behind at 9.7%; I guess many of the kind of people who would vote for a reactionary loudmouth like him already live outside the city like he does (he was only eligible to run because he owns a business in the city). Gillingham will be presiding over a significantly different council than last term; nine of the fifteen councillors will be new,  including four who managed to take out incumbents - Natalie Smith defeated Ross Eadie in Mynarski, Kelly Ryback took out Shawn Dobson in St James, Greg McFarlane ousted Devi Sharma in Old Kildonan, and Lora Meseman crushed sexual assault suspect Russ Wyatt in Transcona. Full results can be found here.

- The Ford government will be appointing chairs for the regional municipalities of Halton, Peel, York, Durham, Muskoka, Waterloo, and Niagara as well as the warden of Simcoe County. Previously, some of them (such as the chair of Waterloo Region) were elected by the public, while others were chosen by the regional council, but under new legislation (Bill 100, dubbed the "Better Regional Governance Act" by the government), the chairs are appointed by the province, and moreover will have powers similar to the "strong mayor" powers in some cities - they will not only be able to veto some council votes, but they will be able to force through changes with the support of only a third of the council. Presumably this is to make sure that regional governments do the bidding of Doug Ford.

- Flavio Bolsonaro, who fled Brazil following his defeat in that country's presidential election, has arrived in the US along with his family. He faced charges of tax evasion and money laundering; for his part he claims to be the rightful president-elect, claiming (without evidence) that the election was fraudulent (for their part, international observers have said that the election was fair, but Donald Trump, not surprisingly, says otherwise).

- The European Union is abandoning the term "associate membership" that had been mooted for Canada following opposition to the use of the term by some member states (notably Germany). The latest draft document calls for an "ever closer association" between Canada and the EU. Mark Carney is not concerned, saying this is merely a change in terminology.

- France is moving the entire town of Miquelon to higher ground on the eponymous island. The move will take place gradually over several decades; rising sea levels mean there is little choice in the matter, though.

News roundup, 28 Oct 2026

- Exit polls and partial results suggest that neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor Gadi Eisenkot will have enough seats to form a government without the support of MPs from the Joint List, an alliance of mostly Arab parties. Since both of the frontrunners have ruled out working with them, another election seems likely in the near future.

- Donald Trump has claimed, without citing evidence, that Brazil's latest presidential election was "rigged", though he has not threatened any immediate countermeasures. The US State Department says that far right opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro and his family will be granted visas to enter the US; Bolsonaro has been under investigation for tax evasion, money laundering, and other corrupt behaviour and had been ordered to surrender his passport.

- With the Republicans set to take a beating in the midterms, fears of election interference by the regime are greater than ever. A movement called the "Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association", which believes that sheriffs have ultimate authority in their counties regardless of what state laws might say, is encouraging its members to investigate claims by the Republicans of "voter fraud". One prominent member of the organization, sherrif Dar Leaf of Barry County, Michigan, has tried to seize voting machines in previous elections, while Riverside County, California sheriff Chad Bianco seized 650,000 ballots from the 2024 election in an attempt to prove malfeasance before a judge ruled the seizure illegal. Trump himself has raised the possibility of declaring a national emergency in order to oversee the counting of ballots.

- Municipal elections will be held across Manitoba today, except for the resort communities of Dunnottar, Victoria Beach, and Winnipeg Beach, which held their elections in the summer. In Winnipeg, a record number of votes have already been cast, with over 25,000 advance votes as of Sunday.

- Swiss tech company Proton AG, which provides privacy-focused services like the encrypted Proton Mail email service, has announced that it will "re-interview" staff about their use of AI in their jobs, saying the interviews will have an impact on "changes in roles, responsibilities, and continued employment". The company's CEO, Andy Yen, has been strongly pushing AI of late, despite fears about the implications for the privacy that Proton claims is its bread and butter. I suspect that this is a response to the demands of investors more than anything; the idea that companies are going to be "left behind" unless they fully embrace the newest and brightest is nothing new, and it's almost impossible to look at the internet these days without getting promotions for some AI product or other shoved in your face. One hopes the bubble will burst soon and that the techies will then be able to decide for themselves when using AI makes sense and when it doesn't, but until then the pressure is to be all-in, all the time.

News roundup, 27 Oct 2026

- Olivia Chow has been reelected as mayor of Toronto. The margin of victory was higher than the polls would have led one to expect; she won over 54% of the vote with Brad Bradford getting 41%. It appears that Bradford's plan to carve off Toronto Water in such a way that might facilitate future privatization (and which would limit council's ability to control whether the utility can be stopped from supplying water to data centres at the expense of the public) spooked enough voters to bury him. On the other hand, the mayors of Waterloo and Cambridge went down to defeat yesterday. In the case of Cambridge this may be a good thing, but Waterloo's mayor-elect apparently has donated to the Tories.

- In the Rural Municipality of St Clements, Manitoba, which votes for a new council tomorrow along with most other municipalities in the province, there are claims of "Trumpian" sniping between candidates. Perhaps the toxic culture seen in other small municipalities is taking hold there as well.

- Serbia's governing Serbian Progressive Party under Aleksandar Vucic was defeated in the weekend's parliamentary election, with an opposition group called the "Student List" apparently winning a majority of seats. This follows two years of student-led protests. It remains to be seen how the new group will govern.

- Israel is holding its parliamentary election today. Polls indicate an almost even split between Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and the new Yashar party, led by former IDF leader Gadi Eisenkot. Yashar is considered centrist (by Israeli standards); it's not like they're going to end the occupation, though.

- Police were called to a children's soccer game in Winter Park, Florida after a 3 year old child was removed from the game, allegedly for being too good, leading to a confrontation with the boy's mother.

News roundup, 26 Oct 2026

- Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won his runoff against far-right challenger Flavio Bolsonaro by a narrow margin. Bolsonaro is refusing to accept the results, citing an extension of voting hours (despite the fact that his own campaign as well as Lula's had requested the extension). Whether he'll be stupid enough to try to stage a coup like his father did remains to be seen; presumably he doesn't want to go to jail. Unless of course he's able to gain meaningful backing from the Trump regime, in which case all bets are off.

- David Eby's gamble in calling a snap election has backfired in the worst way possible.The BC Conservatives, whose disarray Eby was trying to take advantage of, won a majority government under interim leader Lorne Doerkson (with some 48% of the popular vote). Turnout was lower than the 2020 election, despite the former having been held while numerous pandemic restrictions were in place; it is suspected that a lot of prospective NDP voters didn't bother to show up. The thing is, Eby was born and raised in Kitchener, and you'd think a young fellow growing up in Ontario would have known of David Peterson. One wonders why Eby thought he was somehow different.

- A "fact sheet" circulated by the US embassy in Ottawa uses quotes from MPs Melanie Joly, and Anthony Housefather, Ontario premier Doug Ford, and Canada's consol in Boston, Bernadette Jordan to argue that Canada is trying to influence the US midterms. The fact that Donald Trump himself is not shy about endorsing candidates in other countries doesn't seem to matter. The document has been dismissed as "not credible at all" by a political scientist at the U of T; nonetheless, the government is trying to avoid further accusations of this sort by ordering Canadian diplomats to avoid contact with candidates.

- A new poll from Abacus Data indicates that incumbent Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham has the support of 36% of respondents. Kevin Klein is in second place at 19%, while Noah Redden and Mike Vogiatzakis are tied for third at 14%. The election will be decided on Wednesday. Meanwhile in Toronto, which along with the rest of Ontario will be holding its municipal election today, a poll from Pollara puts Olivia Chow in the lead once again, with 55% support compared to 44% for Brad Bradford among decided voters. This poll seems to be an outlier, though, as other polls put the race as too close to call.

- Air Canada appears to have been trying to game the system to avoid paying compensation that would be owed to passengers for cancelled flights. The Air Passenger Protection Regulations exempt airlines from the need to compensate beyond the cost of the ticket if a flight needs to be cancelled due to safety-related maintenance. The airline, however, seems to have avoided the need to cancel lucrative flights when the plane goes out of service by reassigning planes from less lucrative ones, then telling the passengers on the latter flight that it's a "maintenance related" cancellation.

News roundup, 23 Oct 2026

- Elon Musk is threatening unspecified retribution if the Democrats win control of Congress and open investigations into his activities (such as the recent throttling of Starlink in Ukraine and the actions of DOGE). In a recent tweet he declared, "Those who pick fights with me should understand that I will find out who is really pulling the strings and come for them, not just their puppets".

- Environmentalist David Suzuki is joining Olivia Chow and 15 incumbent councillors to condemn Brad Bradford's plan for Toronto Water. Bradford, for his part, denies that the plan will lead to privatization, but CUPE local 416, which represents most of Toronto's municipal staff, has a legal opinion that separating it from city operations could enable a future provincial government to privatize it, and there are fears that since the utility will be allowed to use debt to finance its operations, this will lead to higher bills in the long run. There is also some speculation on Reddit that this could be tied to Bradford's support of building AI data centres in the city; even if the utility isn't actually privatized, removing it from the direct control of council could potentially make it easier for water to be diverted to them for cooling. Disturbingly, recent polls have Bradford within striking distance of winning.

- Google has been ordered to stop work on the construction of two data centres in Finland following revelations that they cut down 330 hectares of forest without getting the required environmental assessment. Silicon Valley people definitely still like to "move fast and break things", even if "don't be evil" is now passé.

- Police suspect arson in a series of fires at construction sites in Winnipeg. Builder Rupinder Brar, whose company was working at one of these sites is hiring extra security to prevent recurrence. It's unclear whether these fires were set by squatters trying to keep warm, or if they were cases of true arson (i.e. intentional destruction of property). Notably, these fires have occurred in parts of town where there has been a great deal of agitation against infill housing, and at least one of the sites destroyed was a sixplex under construction; I do hope this is properly investigated.

News roundup, 22 Oct 2026

- A post-referendum press conference by Danielle Smith opened with a question from Rebel "News" that insinuates that the Forever Canadian campaign was funded by the far right's favourite bogeyman, George Soros. Smith actually handled the question relatively well under the circumstances, but this is to be expected when she treats the outlet as a legitimate news source that's invited to press conferences. Meanwhile seppie leader Mitch Sylvestre is also trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the vote due to the large number of mail-in ballots; this should not be a serious consideration but it's been one of Donald Trump's favourite talking points any time an election doesn't go his way. Speaking of Trump, it remains to be seen what he has to say about this one.

- Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, is running an ad featuring his opponent's estranged mother. Democrat Amy Acton was removed from her mother's custody as a child after her stepfather was convicted of raping her; her mother evidently can't accept the truth about the guy she took up with and is accusing her of being a serial liar. Even some Republicans think the ad goes to far, but Ramaswamy's campaign is doubling down and plans to run the ad on TV (it has previously only been seen online). The thing is, with many Republicans cruelty is seen as not only OK but as a virtue so long as it's directed at the enemy. Whether Ohio voters will agree remains to be seen.

- A bill before Parliament would put limits on gambling ads. This follows revelations that problem gambling has skyrocketed since restrictions on online casinos were lifted in 2022; in Ontario the incidence of gambling-related suicide has tripled since then. All too predictably, the governments of Alberta and Ontario oppose the bill.

- Several people have been attacked by a rabid skunk in Vancouver. Public health officials are warning that anyone who had contact with a skunk that was behaving abnormally or appeared to be sick over a period of several weeks to seek immediate medical attention.

- An acupuncturist in Dawson Creek, BC has been suspended for two months by the College of Complementary Health Professionals of BC after prescribing ivermectin and another livestock medication to her patients.

News roundup, 21 Oct 2026

- Alberta separatists are turning their guns on Danielle Smith following their defeat in Monday's referendum. Jeffrey Rath is accusing her of being "in bed with Naheed Nenshi, Mark Carney, Rachel Notley and the rest of the socialists and globalists". He now says Alberta will never be independent as long as Smith remains premier, implying that the seppies are going to try staging a coup in the UCP to get rid of her.

- 35 soldiers remain in hospital following the disastrous fire at CFB Wainwright on the weekend. Defence Minister David McGuinty has declined to provide details on the specifics of their injuries for privacy reasons; the cause of the fire is still being investigated. Satellite images show that the fire burned roughly 10 km² of land.

- Australian MP Helen Haynes has lost both legs as a result of the vehicle attack outside her constituency office in Wangaratta, Victoria. Meanwhile, a man has been arrested in the Perth suburb of Victoria Park after making threats at the office of Hannah Beazley, a Labor member of the Western Australia legislature, while armed with nunchucks.

- Polling for Toronto's mayoral election next week is inconsistent. A poll from Pollara gives Olivia Chow a 7 point lead over rightwing insurgent Brad Bradford, but Nanos gives Chow a lead of only three points, which is within the margin of error for the poll. The Pollara poll also asked respondents what they think of Bradford's plan to privatize Toronto Water; 62% of respondents are concerned about the proposal; this includes 57% of undecided voters and, curiously, 27% of Bradford supporters. I guess they're weighing that concern against their desire to put a white dude back in the mayor's office, though, and the latter desire is more important to them.

- A hack at Crime Stoppers has resulted in the leaking of over 1.5 million tips made by Canadians to the organization over the last 25 years. Not surprisingly, this is a source of considerable alarm for those whose identities were exposed.

- Winnipeg mayoral candidate Kevin Klein recently ran an ad for his campaign on social media. The problem is, the stock footage in the ad is of the wrong city; numerous well-known Edmonton landmarks were spotted in the video. Colin Fast, a member of incumbent mayor Scott Gillingham's campaign team, remarked "We know Kevin Klein hasn’t spent much time downtown, but we didn’t realize it had been so long that he’s forgotten what it looks like".

News roundup, 20 Oct 2026

- The separatist referendum in Alberta appears to have been soundly defeated, with around 76% of voters voting to remain in Canada. This is good news for everyone except the seppies, who probably won't get to become Septics in the near future. The margin of victory for sanity is especially good news (and higher than I expected); a narrow victory would have been almost as bad as a defeat, since not only would it likely have resulted in a surge in domestic violence across rural Alberta (not that there probably hasn't been some as a result of this vote) but a close vote would potentially be easier to discredit as rigged, not only in the eyes of the public but, much more ominously, in the eyes of the Trump regime. Unfortunately, it's not impossible that another referendum could happen soon - while Danielle Smith has rejected the idea, it's possible that it could happen anyway if the people behind a previous attempt to hold a referendum are successful in their appeal of a court decision that struck down their plans.

- Australian MP Helen Haines is in critical condition after being hit by a vehicle. Authorities are saying that this was not an accident but an intentional attack, though they are still trying to determine the exact motive. Haines, an environmentalist and public health expert, was elected as an independent in 2019 and reelected in 2022. A 43 year old man is in custody for the attack. In some ways the suspect doesn't fit the typical profile for such attackers, having been an anti-logging activist prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, but maybe he went down a far-right rabbit hole during the lockdowns. Time will tell I guess.

- Meta is being accused of interfering in the Brazilian presidential election by suppressing accounts that are supportive of incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, allegedly at the request of far-right opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro.

- Activists are calling on Winnipeg to bring in a bylaw to restrict the removal of mature trees on private property. The proposal from Trees Winnipeg would control the removal of trees more than 15 cm in diameter, while still allowing removal under certain circumstances (e.g. if they're diseased or if their removal is truly necessary for development). A number of cities in Canada already have such a bylaw, including Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Surrey. Trees Winnipeg says that 75% of council candidates have signed onto the pledge, though incumbent mayor Scott Gillingham is not among them.

- While tourism is tanking in Las Vegas, some Canadians still have no compunction about going there or elsewhere in the US. It's increasingly limited to the kind of person who would drunkenly steal and injure a flamingo, though.

News roundup, 19 Oct 2026

- An explosion and fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in Alberta has killed at least four people and injured numerous others, 19 of them critically. There were some rumours that this resulted from oil and gas infrastructure being hit during an exercise, but the DND says there is no evidence to support this; they also say there is no evidence that this was a terrorist incident. Alberta separatist leader Jeffrey Rath made allegations, entirely unsubstantiated, of a "cover up", and suggested that "DEI programs" and "gender fluid soldiers" were to blame for the disaster.

- Albertans are voting today on ten referendum questions, including one on moving towards separation from Canada. Polls suggest that the separatist movement has lost some momentum recently; that said, they could still win if the turnout is sufficiently low, as separatists tend to be more highly motivated to actually vote. Reassuringly there are signs that turnout will be high; more than 700,000 people had voted in advance as of Saturday. I suspect that reason will prevail, but probably not by as big a margin as the polls would predict.

- Green Party member Pete Fry has been elected mayor of Vancouver, defeating right-leaning incumbent Ken Sim. 

- The Trump regime is apparently looking for means to strip Ilhan Omar of her citizenship, according to reports following the DHS raid on her home last week. During the raid her passport was among the items seized; the regime appears to be trying to claim that her age was misrepresented and that she was actually an adult when her late father applied for citizenship, meaning she would have had to apply separately. What's remarkable is that none other than Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn't agree with Omar on much of anything, is coming to her defense.

- A federal judge in the US has ruled that the Trump regime likely acted illegally when it banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico journalists from the White House, and has reinstated access for them pending a final judgment on the legality of the move. 

- Nick Adams, the Trump regime's "Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism, and Values" (yes, that's actually his title) expressed outrage at travel boycotts aimed at the US. He called the failure of foreigners to spend money in his country "theft". This comes as travel to the US is facing drastic declines in tourism - they had a 5.5% drop in international visitors last year (and a decline of almost 21% from Canada).

News roundup, 16 Oct 2026

- A woman who showed up at a Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Release the Epstein Files" was attacked by at least two men before police intervened. The police, however, just escorted her off the premises; according to the local sheriff the cops didn't see the actual attack and the victim didn't file a report. I'd be curious to know what kind of persuasion was used by the police to deter her from doing so. Incidentally, while the attack was real, one widely circulated image purporting to be of the attack was actually generated using AI.

- Trump's new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, has admitted that she failed her bar exam, but this did not deter her from repeatedly describing herself as a lawyer. To be fair, that's probably not the biggest lie she'll be telling in her present career.

- A school shooting in Bend, Oregon has killed three children and a teacher. The 16 year old suspect is also dead.

- The works of Irish author Sally Rooney are being banned from sale in the UK after she announced that she would be donating money to Palestine Action, an organization that the UK government considers a "terrorist" group despite the fact that it hasn't been linked to any actual violence, just vandalism and disruption.

- Three people are dead and 16 injured after a collision involving multiple vehicles, including two transit buses, in the Calgary neighbourhood of Saddle Ridge. One of the buses, which was powered by compressed natural gas, caught fire; one of the injured is in life-threatening condition. Meanwhile another fiery multi-vehicle crash has killed at least one person in Southwold Township, Ontario, just outside of London. The fire in that accident was so intense that the police have yet to determine the number of people represented by the remains found.

News roundup, 15 Oct 2026

- The Trump regime says that it is monitoring Canada for signs of election interference related to the upcoming midterms. US ambassador Pete Hoekstra cites a speech by former prime minister Justin Trudeau at Brown University last month in which he criticized the regime, as well as Industry Minister Mélanie Joly's remarks about retaliatory tariffs that target exports from "politically sensitive states". The fact that fuel prices show no sign of going down is probably bringing the regime close to panic.

- Federal NDP leader Avi Lewis is calling on the federal government to nationalize Stelco after its parent company shut down operations in Hamilton. Lewis pointed out that there is a precedent for this in the UK's nationalization of British Steel earlier this year, though it's worth noting that the latter move was not simply to save jobs but to ensure a secure supply of steel. Nonetheless, it's worth considering; sadly, it seems unlikely that the Carney government will do this given that they're busy making plans to privatize airports.

- The Ford government in Ontario is moving ahead with the forced removal of bike lanes from several Toronto streets, even as activists are requesting the Supreme Court to rule on the matter. Protesters obstructed removal efforts on Wednesday, but a large number of police moved in; two people were arrested. What's notable is that several compromise proposals from the City of Toronto that would have restored motor vehicle lanes while keeping the bike lanes were rejected by the province last month. One is left with the impression that Ford knows deep down that adding a lane won't solve congestion, and that his slackjawed supporters won't be satisfied by anything that allows cyclists on $80 bikes to overtake them while they sit in traffic in their $80,000 pickup trucks.

- New polling in BC suggests that the race is tightening; although the BC Conservatives still show as being in the lead with 42%, the NDP is at 40%. The Greens are at 9%. Among supporters of other parties, 29% said that they would consider supporting the NDP if their preferred candidate had no realistic chance (for Green supporters specifically this was 37%), while 21% of third-party supporters would vote Conservative under such circumstances. This might be good(ish) news for the NDP, but there are many caveats, not least the "shy Tory factor", which is likely to be significant given how embarrassing it must be to consider supporting the Cons. The methodology used for this poll doesn't allow for a margin of error to be calculated.

- One of Anthropic's AI agents went rogue and sent a false tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police. Notably, the police immediately dismissed the tip as spam, but Anthropic didn't realize this had happened for two months.

News roundup, 14 Oct 2026

- The Carney government quietly suspended plans to purchase 16 Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters from the US earlier this year. The decision was made with an eye to reduce military reliance on the US; it was made shortly before the unsuccessful trade talks with the Trump regime over the summer.

- A Ukrainian citizen is going on trial in Germany for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia four years ago. The man, named as "Serhii K", was arrested in Italy last year and extradited to Germany; another suspect faces potential extradition from Croatia. In Poland, however, a court refused to extradite a third suspect, saying that an attack on the pipeline was not unlawful.

- New polling on Toronto's mayoral race gives Olivia Chow a narrow lead of 51% over Brad Bradford's 46%. Bradford has more support among property owners, though; this is concerning because the latter group may be more likely to actually vote.

- A banner hung from a highway overpass near Steinbach, Manitoba declared that "Steinbach votes white not brown"; this was naturally disconcerting to Mitesh Kumar, who is running for city council. The banner also had the name of a white supremacist organization on it; the CBC blurred this detail from the image posted on their website, perhaps hoping that ignoring them will make them go away, but the organization is named in this Reddit thread as a neo-Nazi "active club" founded in Hamilton.

- An apparent data error resulted in End Homelessness Winnipeg overestimating the number of chronically homeless people in the city tenfold. I suppose this is good news, though it's embarrassing for the organization.

- The portion of northwestern Ontario that's in the central time zone will be joining Manitoba in remaining on daylight saving time for the entire year. The region has long had closer ties to Manitoba than to southern Ontario, so this made sense.

News roundup, 13 Oct 2026

- Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney is warning that the separatists could win next week's referendum if the turnout is low. While the polls show a strong majority opposing separation, there is a danger of complacent urbanites not bothering to vote. Some folks in this Reddit thread point out that while you don't see too many pro-independence lawn signs in Calgary or Edmonton, just outside those cities you see large numbers of them, which might add to the aforementioned complacency. And Kenney also fears that the additional questions on top of the separatism one will lead to long wait times, especially in densely populated areas (which are also the reliably federalist areas). While a yes vote doesn't automatically mean secession, it would mean another, binding referendum in a couple of years, and once something like that gains that kind of momentum it becomes harder to stop. Even a narrow defeat for the separatists would still be a troubling outcome, because the separatist movement is unlikely to go away if it wins significant support. Kenney also says, not incorrectly, that the separatists are "angry with modernity"; however many in the aforementioned Reddit thread point out, also not incorrectly, that Kenney was happy to go along with the base prejudices of that crowd as long as it worked for him politically.

- Bulgaria's prime minister has summoned the Russian ambassador following drone attacks on two ships off his country's Black Sea coast. One of the ships sank and eleven crew members are missing; Ukraine blames Russia for the attack. Russia has said previously that they are targeting ships carrying weapons and/or "dual use" cargo to Ukraine but have not claimed responsibility for this attack. This attack notwithstanding, the former commander-in-chief of Ukraine's military, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, says that Ukraine has "broken Russia's ability to advance". Ukraine is also targeting Russian data centres with their drones, leading to some reports that this has led to a drop in far-right posts in European social media, however the accuracy of this is disputed.

- The US Department of Homeland Security searched the home of Ilhan Omar on Monday. The department claims that this is part of a criminal investigation. The specifics have not been released, but JD Vance has previously accused Omar of committing immigration fraud. Even if there were substance to these accusations, though, it seems awfully convenient for them to wait until just before the midterms to take any action.

- A municipal election forum was held in Steinbach last week, the city's first in the course of this campaign. Only four candidates, none of them incumbents, showed up to the event, which was organized by the local Strong Towns chapter. I guess Strong Towns is too "woke" for Steinbach.

News roundup, 9 Oct 2026

- The Alberta government is ordering the City of Edmonton to revert to its pre-2024 zoning bylaws and parking minimums. The city had overhauled its bylaws to allow multiplexes to be built in neighbourhoods that were formerly single-family exclusive. One might think that this is a matter that the citizens of Edmonton could decide on (and in fact already decided on when they elected the current mayor and council last year), but Danielle Smith doesn't care what Edmontonians want. No doubt she fears that if Edmonton and Calgary build more dense housing, they might grow in population by attracting urban cosmopolitan folks from elsewhere, and thus have a larger share of the provincial electorate. This would eventually leave the simple rural types outnumbered and thus make the UCP unelectable in its current form.

- An investigation by MPI and the City of Winnipeg has found that a large number of rideshare (Uber/Lyft/etc) drivers, who are required to have a higher level of insurance in order to register with the city, have been downgrading their coverage once registered so as to get out of paying the higher premiums. As many as 36 of them have gotten into accidents in a 1 year period, resulting in $189,000 in claims that MPI may now try to recover from the improperly insured drivers.

- The BC Conservatives have dropped Joachim Agou as their candidate in the constituency of Victoria-Beacon Hill following the discovery a series of offensive social media posts. These include one in which he praises a driver who ran his car into pro-Palestinian protesters, as well as several pro-Trump (and implicitly racist) posts. Unfortunately this will probably have little impact on the polls, which show the party significantly in the lead with only a couple of weeks before the election.

- Conservationists fear that a grove of blight-resistant American Chestnut trees in West Virginia could be cut down to make way for a data centre. There is a great deal of confusion and secrecy about the ownership of the land and the company's plans; activists fear clearing could start as early as next month.

News roundup, 8 Oct 2026

- The latest polling for the US midterm elections suggests that the Republicans are heading for a severe beating, and that more than 60% of the electorate now disapproves of Donald Trump's performance as president. Even the billion dollars available to the campaign might not be enough if the midterms are run fairly, which is far from a given. And if they do lose the midterms, that's not going to stop Trump from issuing all kinds of executive orders, some of which might be vindictively directed against us.

- One of the numerous candidates on Toronto's mayoral ballot is someone named Braeden Chow. He claims that incumbent mayor Olivia Chow is his aunt, something denied by the mayor's campaign. More interesting (and disconcerting) - someone on this Reddit thread reported that his Instagram page was full of "Ford Nation" hashtags, but most of those posts now seem to have been removed. He claims to be entirely independent, and perhaps he is - but it sure looks like an attempt to sabotage Olivia Chow's reelection chances to me.

- Ukraine accuses Russia of deliberately targeting civilians in its latest round of attacks, which have killed at least 30 people and injured 18. One of the targets hit was a transit bus; I'm sure the Russians will claim it's somehow justified though.

- The Chalmers neighbourhood in the Elmwood district of Winnipeg has long been something of a food desert. The local neighbourhood association, however, is trying to change that by opening a low-cost grocery store. It remains to be seen if this will succeed; Neechi Commons in North Point Douglas failed a number of years ago, and the failure has been attributed to widespread theft.

- Five suspects have been arrested in the art heist at the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France. The missing paintings have yet to be located, however.

News roundup, 7 Oct 2026

 - Manitoba premier Wab Kinew has been answering all opposition questions in French for the last couple of days. Konrad Narth, the Tory interim leader, considered this to be a "basic lack of respect". It's worth noting that Narth represents the constituency of La Verendrye, which has the second largest Francophone population in the province after St. Boniface. I suspect Kinew is trying to smoke out the bigots in the Conservative Party, perhaps in the hope of winning that constituency next year (it was held by the NDP's Ron Lemieux from 1999 until 2011 when redistribution put Lemieux in a different constituency). This does not sit well with Raymond Hébert, an emeritus professor of political science at the Université de Saint-Boniface; he fears that this may be counterproductive to the expansion of bilingual services in the province.

- Former Conservative MP Chris Alexander has withdrawn from the Toronto mayoral race. This leaves Brad Bradford as the main rightwing candidate running against incumbent mayor Olivia Chow. One thing that might help save Chow, however, is the fact that it's too late to remove Alexander from the ballots, meaning he will still draw votes himself.

- A Bellingham, Washington resident has been charged with conspiring with the shooter responsible for the massacre at a school in Tumbler Ridge, BC in February. James Cody Bryant had allegedly been in contact with shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar for months prior to the attack, and provided funding as well as advice on how to pull it off, even down to stickers to decorate the weapons with in order to make the livestream of the attack more visually appealing.

- France has suspended the use of stun grenades after a 15 year old student had his hand blown off by one during the wave of student protests that has swept across the country. The protests, which began in mid-September in response to poor conditions and maintenance at school buildings, have disrupted almost a quarter of all high schools in the country; the centrist government as well as the far right blame the leftwing France Unbowed party and its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

- The RCMP has seized 13 firearms, two of which were sawed off, and some 20,000 rounds of ammunition during searches of two homes in the RM of West St. Paul just north of Winnipeg. 

News roundup, 6 Oct 2026

- The Parti Québécois has won a plurality, though not a majority, of seats in the Quebec provincial election yesterday, despite getting less than 30% of the vote province-wide. The party held only three seats in the previous legislature but now has 59, and is expected to form a minority government. The Liberals jumped from 19 seats to around 40, while the governing Coalition Avenir Québec failed to win a single seat; the Conservatives went in the opposite direction, jumping from zero seats to 19. PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has promised a referendum on sovereignty once Donald Trump is safely out of power in the US, but will need the support of Québec Solidaire in order to get the measure on the ballot. Also interesting is the fact that St-Pierre Plamondon has promised electoral reform; we'll have to see how that goes, but both Québec Solidaire and the Conservatives are in favour, so maybe it will happen.

- A lab worker at Russia's Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute has died of a pneumonia-like illness and dozens of people have been quarantined. It is widely suspected that the worker may have been infected with the pneumonic form of plague; the governor of a neighbouring region initially posted on Telegram that the woman had died from that disease, but later altered his comment to say "maybe" (perhaps fearing a fall from a window). In any case, it's worth noting that despite its fearsome reputation, plague (even in the pneumonic form) is far less contagious than COVID-19 or flu.

- August Hanning, the former head of Germany's main intelligence service BND, has been arrested on suspicion of treason and espionage on behalf of a foreign power. Two of his former employees have also been charged. It has not been disclosed which foreign power or powers were involved here.

- A referendum question in California, to be voted on in this fall's midterms, would impose a one time tax of 5% of the net worth of billionaires in the state. Google's cofounder Sergey Brin has spent $102 million to fight the measure. Unfortunately, it looks like stuff like this is working; recent polling suggests that the measure is in danger of not passing. I guess all those baristas, network administrators, and film extras are somehow still convinced that they're going to be billionaires someday and don't want a precedent like this.

- New legislation in Manitoba will allow cannabis shops to take down their window coverings. The industry has long warned that the previous requirement made them more vulnerable to robberies. Besides the product, it seems likely that such shops will have more cash on hand than the average store of that size; many people are reluctant to use something traceable like a credit or debit card to buy a product that is still illegal in much of the world, and in fact Canada's privacy commissioner recommended in 2018 that people use cash for this purpose.

News roundup, 5 Oct 2026

- The first officer accused of attacking the captain of FlyDubai Flight 1073 was reportedly banned from flying commercially in his home country of Oman due to extremist views. Details about the specifics of these views have not been made public, and it is not known if Oman attempted to warn other countries about him. It appears that the weapon used in the attack was a crash axe of the sort carried in the cockpit of all airliners in case of an emergency; unfortunately in this case the axe was used to cause an emergency.

- Winnipeg mayoral candidates Mike Vogiatzakis and Kevin Klein are accusing each other of offering inducements to withdraw from the race. Vogiatzakis says that Tim Diack, a supporter of Klein, offered him a position at city hall, later stated by his campaign manager to be the chair of the police board. Diack says that he did call Vogiatzakis but did not make such an offer, and that Vogiatzakis is in fact ineligible for the position due to a criminal record (he has convictions for contempt of court as well as assault). Klein's campaign manager also says that Diack has no official position in the campaign team. Klein claims that Vogiatzakis offered him an inducement of his own, though no details were provided. Such inducements are of course prohibited. Meanwhile Klein is facing criticism after the Winnipeg Sun, of which he is CEO, called into question the significance of the deaths of indigenous children in residential schools.

- Far right candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, has come out on top in the first round of Brazil's presidential election, winning 47.1% of the vote compared to 45% for incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The election will now go to a runoff, but Bolsonaro is expected to win unless Lula is able to rally people who abstained in the first round.

- Spain's prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap election after his coalition partners Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) voted alongside rightwing parties to defeat two bills intended to increase tenants' rights.

- A 12 year old girl was killed in Baltimore and another person wounded in the crossfire as two men opened fire on each other in a dispute over a parking space.

News roundup, 2 Oct 2026

- Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now spinning the attempt to crash FlyDubai flight 1073 as a terrorist attack aimed at Israelis, saying that the first officer had undergone "Islamist radical indoctrination". While it's entirely possible that this is true, and the UAE is considering this in their investigation, opposition leader Yair Lapid says that nothing of the sort was mentioned in the security briefing he was given. It seems that Netanyahu is trying to turn this into a boost for him in the upcoming parliamentary election, which recent polling suggests that Netanyahu may be at risk of losing. And given that as soon as he's no longer prime minister he'll be in danger of going to jail for past corruption, he's naturally pulling out all the stops to win. Happily Captain Smit Machchhar, who was instrumental in saving the aircraft by getting the cockpit door open, is recovering in hospital in Abu Dhabi.

- A proposed pipeline from Alberta to the BC coast, now officially named the Pacific Link, has become the first project designated to be a matter of "national interest". Under the Building Canada Act this means that the approval process will be fast-tracked, although its approval and construction is still not guaranteed. The government claims that the pipeline will reduce Canada's "emissions intensity" (i.e. emissions per unit volume of oil produced), but environmentalists warn that it will mean more oil in total will actually be extracted and burned, outweighing the benefits from a reduction in intensity.

- The Manitoba Labour Board has ruled that the work done by workers at Dynacare labs constitute an essential service and that limits must thus be placed on their right to strike. A strike might still be legal under some circumstances, but an essential services agreement must be made beforehand that sets minimum staffing levels. The company and the union had previously agreed on treating their work as non-essential because there are also public labs that do the work, but the province intervened in this, most likely because a widespread strike and the resulting slowdown in medical tests would be politically difficult for the government.

- In most jurisdictions, e-bikes and e-scooters are supposed to be speed limited, generally to 32 km/h (some provinces limit the scooters and lightweight e-bikes to 25 km/h). However, the motors in the bikes are generally capable of more than that and the limits are put in afterwards; these are often quite easily hacked to allow much higher speeds. A CBC Marketplace investigation has found that some stores, including big box stores like Best Buy, Canadian Tire, and Costco as well as specialty bike shops, have been selling the bikes with the limiters disabled and/or telling buyers how to hack them to go faster than they're supposed to. An employee at one shop in Richmond Hill told an undercover reporter that their bikes are capable of 120 km/h. Some have also marketed them as suitable for children younger than the legal age limits.

News roundup, 1 Oct 2026

- A FlyDubai Boeing 737 Max on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv had a very close call after the first officer apparently stabbed the captain and tried to crash the plane. The aircraft lost around 14,000 feet of altitude in about 30 seconds before the wounded captain managed to open the cockpit door, enabling passengers  to overpower the first officer, and one of the passengers managed to pull the aircraft out of its dive. He later said that while he wasn't a trained pilot he knew something about aviation from watching a lot of Mayday episodes (you really can't make this stuff up). Then two deadheading pilots, reportedly a Russian and a Ukrainian, took over and flew the plane to a safe emergency landing at the Saudi city of Tabuk. One noteworthy fact - since 9/11 more passengers have been killed by pilot suicide than by terrorism (though this incident is still under investigation and may turn out to have been both of those things). More info in this video.

- Beyond destroying whatever trust potential allies had in the US, the Trump regime is eroding the one thing that America still has above all other countries - its military might. The war against Iran has caused serious damage to US military facilities across the Middle East - some of which might not even be worth fixing due to their continued vulnerability. They also have had to move assets from other areas - such as the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, normally based in Japan, which was sent to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Persian Gulf. And many of their consumable assets, like missiles, have been depleted.

- Environmentalists are concerned that the Carney government's Bill C-39, an omnibus bill dubbed the Building Canada Strong Act, will excessively weaken environmental protections. The bill could allow the government to grant permits for preliminary work before an impact assessment is complete if the work is deemed to be sufficiently in the public interest; while the work could theoretically be stopped if a serious concern is found, many have doubts that such a power would be exercised in time. The bill also appears to dilute provisions of the Species at Risk Act.

- Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries got a boost from increased cannabis sales as well as casino revenue, but this was not enough to make up for a decline in alcohol sales. The Crown corporation still made an overall profit of $724.1 million in the last fiscal year, but this represents a drop of $6 million from the previous year.

- Scott Aitchison, the Conservative MP for the central Ontario riding of Parry Sound-Muskoka, has announced that he will be stepping down once the fall sitting of Parliament ends. I have my doubts that anyone other than another Conservative will win the ensuing byelection, but that remains to be seen.

- The only road access to New Brunswick's Campobello Island is by a bridge connecting the island to Lubec, Maine. This is becoming a problem due to the US ban on imports of certain goods from Canada - a truck delivering supplies to the island was turned back at the border despite being tagged as being destined for the community. Given that dairy products are part of the Trump regime's import ban, this is causing considerable concern for community members. I suppose if we wanted to be really mean and petty we could do the same to the Northwest Angle, Minnesota and Point Roberts, Washington, but given that those two places have less than 1,500 people between them it wouldn't have much effect.

News roundup, 30 Sept 2026

- A group of 20-30 masked members of the far right Second Sons Canada showed up on the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc reserve outside Kamloops, BC over the weekend, until they were ordered to leave by the RCMP. The organization is what is referred to as an "active club", many of which are recruitment tools for white nationalist movements. After they were moved on by the police, they hung a banner from a nearby overpass that appeared to call into question the numerous deaths in the residential school system.

- The Manitoba government and the City of Brandon have purchased a campground on the outskirts of the city that once served as a cemetery for deceased students of a residential school until 1912. The city had taken over the cemetery and unceremoniously removed the gravestones and turned it into a park, eventually selling the land to a private operator in 2001.

- The Manitoba Progressive Conservatives have chosen La Verendrye MLA Konrad Narth as interim leader in the wake of Obby Khan's resignation. Narth insists that the party is "not fractured" and that the party will move ahead to choose a semi-permanent leader in due time. He says he will not run for the position. For his part, Khan has not held back in attacking caucus members who opposed him. He accused MLAs Jodie Byram (Agassiz), Kathleen Cook (Roblin), Richard Perchotte (Selkirk), and Lauren Stone (Midland) of planning to meet in secret to plot against him on Monday following the confidence vote which he had won earlier that day.

- Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, is asking interesting questions about the sudden appearance of a migrant caravan headed towards the US just in time for the midterms. In a post on X (the former Twitter), Greene asks, "We have not seen a caravan headed to the U.S. southern border in several years, why now?" One wonders if this is something analogous to the sudden surge into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta earlier this year, which was heavily organized over social media. One of the things about the social media era is that it no longer requires a large conspiracy to create sudden shifts in public opinion and behaviour; only a small number of accounts can cause a post or idea to go viral, if it's carefully prepared. Rebecca Watson (aka Skepchick) discusses how celebrities' PR agencies do that sort of thing here; it's not hard to imagine strategists for the Republican Party (or their European equivalents like AfD and National Rally in the Ceuta case) doing something similar to get migrants moving at a convenient time to scare people into voting for their party.

- A jury in New Mexico has found Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, liable for over 43 million violations of consumer protection laws. The ruling could cost the company over $200 billion in penalties, unless of course a Trump-appointed judge hears their appeal.

News roundup, 29 Sept 2026

- Manitoba Progressive Conservative leader Obby Khan has resigned, not only as party leader but from the caucus; he will sit as an independent for the remainder of his term. Khan had recently survived a confidence vote by his caucus, winning the vote 13-6, and had initially planned to stay on but learned over the weekend that a "small group of MLAs" intended to continue to push for his removal.

- Donald Trump's threatened import bans on several Canadian products, including motorcycles, alcoholic beverages, dairy byproducts, and molasses, have taken effect. The impact of these bans may not be very significant, though the alcohol will hit a bit harder than the others. Nonetheless, Trump is convinced that Canada will back down any day now.

- Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally has just gained enough seats in the French senate to have party status in that assembly. Senators in France are indirectly elected by municipal and regional representatives.

- South Africa's ambassador to the US, who is white, is rejecting the claim by the US that there is a campaign of genocide against people like him. That hasn't stopped the US from accepting nearly 13,000 white South Africans as refugees, at a time when they are quick to dismiss most refugee claims. Of course, the people claiming that there is a genocide are mostly far right racist types - in other words, exactly the kind of people that Trump and his supporters want in their country. Pastor Rudi Swanepoel, who is also white, believes (probably correctly) that the real thing many white South Africans fear is not persecution but loss of privilege (mind you, to people who have grown up with privilege the two might appear to be the same thing).

- Chinese researchers say they are making progress towards proton-boron fusion, which has the potential to be much more useful than the deuterium-tritium fusion being focused on by most other researchers. Besides not requiring scarce isotopes, proton-boron fusion is aneutronic whereas D-T fusion produces high energy neutrons that would gradually make the containment materials radioactive. Getting the reaction to scale, though, is expected to be much more difficult than with D-T fusion.

News roundup, 28 Sept 2026

- Germany now plans to phase out fossil fuels by 2045. The fact that these fuels have skyrocketed in price thanks to the US/Israeli war on Iran is a major factor, of course; I hate to have to say anything good about Trump or Netanyahu but if enough other countries follow Germany's lead those awful humans may actually have a net positive impact on humanity.

- While several executives at AI companies, including Open AI Sam Altman, have paid lip service to the need to contain the technology, one researcher at Altman's company thinks that the proposed solutions, described as "pacing the frontier", won't be enough and that progress on it must be slowed down.

- The campaign director of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party, Stephen Carter, has resigned after only nine months in the position, and a year before the next election is scheduled to occur. Both Carter and party leader Obby Khan are being tight-lipped about the reason for his departure.

- The council of the East German town of Heidenau has approved a motion to ban future installation of memorial plaques ‌commemorating Holocaust victims. The motion was introduced by an AfD councillor but was supported not only by that party but also by the Christian Democrats, who you'd hope would know better.

- A cybersecurity researcher has published a detailed map of the locations of what he says are 300,000 Flock surveillance devices (cameras and related hardware) across the US. The company wants the website taken down, claiming that the use of their name on the website is a trademark infringement.

- Researchers have tested for various illegal drugs in the wastewater of eight Canadian cities. They found that of the cities studied, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan had the highest concentration of methamphetamine as well as cocaine, while Metro Vancouver was the worst for fentanyl; Toronto and Montreal were lower in all these drugs but higher for MDMA (aka ecstasy or molly). Winnipeg was not among the cities studied; not sure if the researchers didn't ask, or if the city's administration had suspicions what the results would be and didn't want them publicized.

News roundup, 25 Sept 2026

- Mark Carney said in an interview with the New York Times that he has investigated the possibility of a US invasion of Canada. Carney says that while he does not consider this to be a high probability event (so far at least) it would be irresponsible not to look into the matter given the consequences, given that Trump has repeatedly mused about annexing the country. For obvious reasons he did not reveal what exactly had been investigated in terms of countermeasures.

- A new poll suggests that support for Alberta independence has declined. With less than a month before the referendum, only 23% of respondents said they supported separation, with only 4% unsure. This is down from 27% support for secession in the spring. This is definitely good news, but it should be noted that these people aren't going to go away, and if anything rural Alberta will likely become an even more hostile environment for reasonable people than it already is.

- The suspect in the shooting at the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario has died. It appears he was a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, serving from 2017 to 2022. A childhood friend of his reports that he had alluded to antisemitic violence before; he'd created the username "kitekiller" for an online video game after his initial version, which had a K where the T is in that word, was rejected.

- The nominations for this fall's municipal elections in Manitoba have closed. A substantial number of positions, including the mayors of the cities of Portage La Prairie and Winkler and the town of Niverville, are getting in by acclamation since no opponents have registered to run. In the RMs of Argyle and Cartwright-Roblin, entire councils are getting in unopposed. Niverville mayor Myron Dyck expressed concern over the lack of willingness among citizens to run. This is a valid concern, though he does not come out and say that the toxic nature of municipal politics in rural and small-town Manitoba might be a factor.

- Toronto police are investigating a suspected arson at a store that sold Hells Angels merchandise. And in neighbouring Mississauga, two flatbed tow trucks were torched; while there is no indication of a direct connection between the incidents, it's reasonable to suspect that organized crime was involved in both cases (the towing industry in this country has long had a problem with that).