News roundup, 24 July 2026

- Tens of thousands of people are being evacuated from several communities in southwestern France due to wildfires. The situation is not being helped by the weather, with temperatures as high as 37°C and winds of up to 50 km/h. Spain has also seen significant evacuations due to fires in the last few days. More disturbingly, several wildfires in southern Italy are being attributed to arson, sometimes committed by tying rags soaked with accelerants to the tails of cats and lighting them on fire. It's suspected that mobsters are hoping to buy land cheaply after fires go through.

- Mark Carney says that retaliatory measures are being considered if Trump's planned 50% tariffs on pretty much every Canadian export that the US can get elsewhere come into effect later in August. Predictably, Danielle Smith says she's opposed to using tariffs for this purpose. Carney isn't saying yet what measures are being considered.

- A high school student in Marin County, California was given an assignment for his journalism class, namely to tell a news story in the form of an Instagram slideshow. Living in an extremely wealthy area, he figured he'd search the Epstein files for references to his county and see what came up. He ended up making a lot of people very angry, much like the protagonist of the German film The Nasty Girl whose high school project shines unwanted light on her town's Nazi past. A modelling agent named Gisele Attias Bonnouvrier threatened to sue the school district for defamation after being named as having supplied models to Epstein; she didn't go ahead with her lawsuit, presumably because she actually was named in the files for this. Perhaps she'd never heard of the Streisand effect.

- A bar in Toronto just got caught buying stolen booze at a homeless encampment. The owner claimed that he was doing this to "keep the peace" because people from the encampment retaliated against his earlier refusals; a provincial tribunal didn't buy his explanation, though, and the bar's license has been revoked. None of this would have happened in Manitoba thanks to the MLCC's security measures; interestingly, the Ford government shot down a plan by the LCBO to introduce similar measures a couple of years ago. As I said at the time, the most likely reason for this is because Ford wants to sell more alcohol in convenience stores, who would probably not be able to compete with the LCBO on security and many would thus decide that selling it wasn't worth the risk.

- Orcas have been observed ganging up on ocean sunfish and ramming them so hard that they explode. Scientists are divided on the reason; some think it's simply practical to break them up into smaller pieces to be easier to eat, but others say it shows signs of being a sort of social game; orcas are among the few animals (alongside humans and cats) that will kill for fun.

News roundup, 23 July 2026

- The new tariffs threatened by the Trump regime do not hit all goods, and hence all provinces, equally. BC is expected to get the worst of it due to tariffs on wood and paper; meanwhile oil and potash aren't affected, meaning Alberta and Saskatchewan get off easy. This may be because US need for those goods is high, and/or maybe because they want to make things easier for the governments of those provinces due to their friendliness to the regime. At the Council of the Federation in Charlottetown, some premiers are suggesting that Canada should respond by blocking or taxing exports of those products, but that's a non-starter with Danielle Smith and Scott Moe. I don't think there's any reason, in principle, that the feds couldn't impose such restrictions anyway, but it might be politically difficult.

- Donald Trump is threatening to target Iran's bridges and power plants if that country attacks any more ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, meanwhile, has been hitting Amazon data centres in Bahrain and the UAE.

- The US has signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia that will allow that country to develop nuclear power capability, potentially including uranium enrichment (the exact details of the agreement haven't been made public.

- Prosecutors in the UK are going ahead with criminal contempt charges against a lawyer who represented pro-Palestinian protesters in court. Rajiv Menon is accused of "misleading the jury" and ignoring instructions from the judge by advising them of their right to "give their verdict according to their convictions". This led to the acquittal of several protestors, though they were later convicted in a retrial.

- The planning commission for the Bay Area city of Hayward approved a gigantic data centre without input from city council. This was entirely legal, as data centres aren't specifically named in the city's code and are thus treated as generic office buildings, which do not require approval from council. The city has now belatedly created a new land use category specifically for data centres, requiring more oversight than offices. Makes sense; if nothing else other cities could learn from their experience and take measures before it becomes a problem.

- The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts has just approved major reforms to land-use restrictions, in order to allow more housing to be built. It's naturally provoking a backlash from the NIMBY crowd, of course, but the city is undaunted so far. Meanwhile, across the border, the other Cambridge is rejecting a recommendation from its own staff to allow the construction of a 16 storey mixed-use building in the Preston area of the city (the original plans called for 40 storeys). It would make perfect sense to build there; as some people in this Reddit thread point out, this is right next to where the planned extension of the LRT would go - but then Cambridge's mayor isn't keen on the LRT either.

News roundup, 22 July 2026

- Donald Trump is lambasting the National Academies of Sciences over its role in the publication of a reference manual on science aimed at judges. It will surprise few that the reason for his outrage is a chapter about climate change.

- Clownvoy leader Pat King, already convicted on five criminal charges related to the protest/occupation, will be re-sentenced after the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned his acquittal on a charge of intimidation and obstructing police. The court found "overwhelming evidence" that King intended, even before the so-called "Freedom Convoy" arrived in Ottawa, to occupy the downtown core and cause distress to residents. This makes sense to everyone except supporters of the protest; it was pretty apparent to anyone who was paying attention that the clownvoy were practicing what Hunter S. Thompson so aptly called "an ethic of total retaliation".

- Gord Delbridge, the president of CUPE Local 500 representing the majority of City of Winnipeg staff, has died suddenly at the age of 55 following a medical emergency. Besides the obvious shock and sadness for his family and friends, this comes at a time when the union is trying to negotiate a new contract.

- The NDP's Jennifer Flett has won an overwhelming victory in yesterday's byelection in The Pas-Kameesak, winning nearly 75% of the vote. The byelection was necessitated by the death of Amanda Lathlin in March.

- Toronto mayor Olivia Chow has introduced a motion to investigate the city's ability to ban personalized algorithmic pricing for essentials such as groceries, including those delivered by companies like Save-On Foods or services like Instacart. The practice, also known as "surveillance pricing" or "predatory pricing", uses demographic information about you (harvested from your browser and smartphone history) to determine what you're going to be willing to pay for something so that the price can be adjusted accordingly. For his part, Doug Ford says he's opposed to such a ban; in contrast, the NDP government in Manitoba introduced a bill to outlaw the practice in March. Critics question how often this is happening (Loblaws, for instance, denies using it) but it seems to me that the best way to limit such a practice is to stop it before it becomes established.

- A physician at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children has been charged with what is described as "child abuse and exploitation material". Police say that they have "found no evidence that the child sexual abuse and exploitation material is connected to his practice as a physician", which presumably means that no photos of his actual patients have been found so far on the devices seized from him, but this is not particularly confidence-inspiring. Meanwhile a Winnipeg dermatologist has been ordered to stop most of his practice after admitting to misconduct including trying to start a relationship with a patient and continuing to message her after she turned him away.

News roundup, 21 July 2026

- The US and Iran continue to exchange fire for the tenth day since the breakdown of the ceasefire. Trump is in an awkward spot, since any course of action he takes is almost sure to at the very least look bad in the eyes of his supporters and at worst be a total disaster.

- Andrew Tate and his equally vile brother Tristan were arrested in Florida on a British extradition warrant. Both are wanted for multiple sexual assault and trafficking charges; Andrew also faces child pornography charges. This would seem to be good news, except that the US Secretary of State has the power to veto extraditions, and given how popular Andrew is with the MAGA base, plus the fact that Trump has previously bullied Romania into releasing the brothers, it seems unlikely that they'll be extradited.

- The Trump regime is threatening 50% tariffs against a wide range of Canadian exports. Energy, potash, critical minerals, fish, and auto parts are exempt; presumably the costs to the US would be too high if they weren't. The tariffs don't take effect until mid-August; Trump presumably hopes that Carney will capitulate in the ongoing CUSMA talks.

- Andy Burnham has now taken office as the UK's prime minister, and has selected his cabinet. There are 15 new faces in the cabinet, in addition to Burnham himself.

- Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has announced that his country will not be holding any more elections in order to keep the opposition out of power. It's a pity; in the 1980s Ortega was a hero to much of the left for standing up to the US, but he seems to have turned into just another tinpot dictator.

News roundup, 20 July 2026

- Dutch activists threw water balloons filled with vinegar, salt, hydrogen peroxide, and acrylic paint at the foundations of a data centre under construction in Amsterdam. The mixture is intended to degrade the concrete and speed up the corrosion of the rebar. How effective this will be remains to be seen. While the city has legislation to restrict "hyperscale" data centres, this one exploited a loophole in the legislation by building it as three smaller centres.

- The BC Conservative Party has hired a member of the separatist Republican Party of Alberta as their director of operations, as well as a writer who once worked for a website called Russia Insider as their caucus communications director. They aren't even trying to hide it, it seems; they're just counting on enough people to be sufficiently angry with the government that they don't pay attention who they vote for as long as they're voting against those in power.

- A 37 year old woman has been charged with assaulting another woman with her car in an Edmonton parking lot. The victim was wearing a hijab and the suspect allegedly subjected her to racist abuse before hitting her with the vehicle; fortunately it appears that the victim was not seriously injured.

- While homelessness is a crisis across North America (and probably in most places around the world), Denver has made some progress in threading the needle between helping people and satisfying other residents. The city has created around a thousand shelter spaces, which crucially provide support as well as housing. On the other hand, once an encampment is cleared from an area they take measures to ensure no new encampments set up in that location, which some activists aren't comfortable with. More substantively, there may be limits to the success of the program unless more permanent housing can be made available.

- L7 bassist Jennifer Finch has died at the age of 59. 

- A 72 year old Winnipeg man has been charged with theft and extortion after he allegedly stole his neighbour's cat and held it for ransom. The cat was recovered by police and returned safely.

- Country singer Charley Crockett had second thoughts about his choice of opening act for a couple of shows on his current tour. Twin Temple, described by Loudwire as an "openly satanic doo-wop revival act", were dropped from the tour, and Crockett has since deactivated most of his social media. It's not like Twin Temple are particularly subtle about the matter; anyone checking out their website or their songs should be able to tell. They don't seem to be suffering for it; in fact Jack White has just invited them to open for him in LA later this year. It's also something of a testament to the weirdness of our times that the phrase "openly satanic doo-wop revival act" actually refers to a real-world entity.

News roundup, 17 July 2026

- The Smith government in Alberta has launched a web portal where people can complain about bike lanes, which some people call a "snitch line". Municipal leaders in Calgary and Edmonton are pushing back, and you'd kind of expect that this ought to be a municipal matter, but as we've already seen with the Ford government in Ontario, provincial governments are happy to interfere if they think it will win them support from people who live in bedroom communities outside those cities who can't abide the fact that they're sitting in traffic in their $80,000 pickup trucks while people on $80 bicycles whiz by them on bike lanes. Looking at the actual site, it doesn't ask for any contact info, meaning that the same person could enter multiple complaints about the same bike lane. I'm sure that the aforementioned exurban commuters will be passing the link around telling their friends which bike lanes to complain about. On the positive side, it also means you can make multiple submissions that are full of gibberish to waste the government's time.

- Namaygoosisagagun First Nation in northern Ontario was destroyed by a wildfire on Monday; the community was evacuated with no fatalities and residents are now living in hotels in Thunder Bay. The wildfires are also seriously impacting air quality in significant parts of the US, including New England, New York, and the Midwest. 

- Donald Trump is once again raising doubts about the integrity of the electoral system in the US, even ordering law enforcement to investigate officials that he believes are "covering up" problems. No doubt Trump's definition of "covering up" would include failure to find any evidence of problems that the Fuhrer believes to be there. The fact that the midterms are right around the corner and the Republicans are concerned about the outcome of said midterms probably has something to do with this.

- China is having a conniption about the UK's renationalization of British Steel, saying that it harms the interests of the privately owned Chinese corporation Jingye Group that previously owned the company. I can't help thinking there's an irony in there somewhere.

- The Western Canada Lottery Corporation is apparently concerned about the fact that younger people are less inclined to buy lottery tickets than their parents. They're trying to get around this by hiring influencers to promote lotteries. This seems like a pretty questionable move on the part of a Crown corporation; the point of having such a corporation surely ought to be to control gambling, rather than to promote it.

- Corus Entertainment, which owns the Global TV network along with numerous radio stations (including Winnipeg's CJOB) is laying off dozens of people across the country; they say this is driven by declines in radio and TV ad revenue. The Winnipeg Free Press is also shuttering its weekly community papers; of the four people employed by that division, two will be given positions at the Free Press itself.

News roundup, 16 July 2026

- Ukraine's defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has been abruptly removed from office. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not yet provided an explanation for his removal, which sparked protests in Kyiv. Federov had only been in the position since January but was popular with citizens and was seen as making progress in the conflict with Russia. He'd also headed an anti-corruption drive in the ministry; if I had to guess I'd say he probably crossed the wrong people in the course of this.

- The hospital in Ste Anne, Manitoba has had to close due to a failure of the air conditioning system while temperatures were in the high 30s. Patients were evacuated a facility in Steinbach and another outside Winkler; the hospital is expected to reopen next week. In West St. Paul a long term care home suffered a similar failure, but instead of evacuating residents the province temporarily installed large portable air conditioning devices; the facility's system is also expected to be fixed soon.

- Wildfires in northern Ontario have forced the evacuations of several communities, with others on alert, and the crew of a train near Armstrong narrowly escaped being trapped by a fire. Further south, Toronto's air quality is currently the worst in the world due to smoke. This coincides with a heatwave with temperatures in the city exceeding 37°C.

- The US House of Representatives has voted to advance a bill that would mean permanent daylight saving time in that country. The bill, called the Sunshine Protection Act, is sponsored by two Republicans; notably, an attempt was made to do this in the 1970s but became unpopular when winter came along and the sun wasn't rising till 8 or 9 in the morning. This article shows when the earliest and latest sunrises would be in various Canadian locations under the present system, permanent standard time, and permanent daylight saving time; in Winnipeg the sun wouldn't rise until almost 9:30 in December. Actual sleep experts generally favour permanent standard time rather than DST.

- After Nova Scotia premier Tim Houston gave a speech for the Annapolis Valley Chamber of Commerce at Acadia University in Wolfville, his vehicle was surrounded by protesters and the windshield smashed. The protesters were affiliated with a number of causes; the premier was eventually escorted from the scene by police.

- A cyclist in northern New South Wales had a close call after running over a two metre long Eastern Brown Snake. The snake, considered to be among the deadliest in the world, somehow became entangled in the chain and bit her in the thigh; fortunately it was a "dry bite" and she was discharged from hospital shortly thereafter. The snake had to be euthanized due to injuries sustained in the accident.

News roundup, 15 July 2026

- The US-Iran conflict seems to be boiling over again, with Iran now threatening to again block all oil export through the Strait of Hormuz in response to the US blockading Iranian ports. The US also launched another wave of strikes; Iran retaliated with strikes on US bases in Bahrain, Jordan, and Kuwait.

- A passenger aboard a Ryanair Boeing 737 on a flight from Thessaloniki, Greece to Memmingen, Germany was partially sucked out of the aircraft after the No. 2 engine failed and a part struck the window next to his seat at around 20,000 ft; his wife clung to him for some five minutes before the plane descended to an altitude that enabled her to overcome the pressure differential and pull him back in with the aid of other passengers. He survived but remains in hospital with significant injuries.

- A car collided with an apartment building in Edmonton on Monday night, sparking a fire that left at least one person dead and two missing. The driver is in hospital. It's worth noting that this kind of thing is far, far more common in Canada and the US than it is in, say, the Netherlands; there are reasons for that.

- Some members of the Conservative Party of Canada is now concerned about something that they haven't worried about for a while - a slump in fundraising. The party has long been able to count on wealthy donors even when in opposition, but with the Liberals behaving more like moderate Conservatives, I suspect many of those donors are wondering why they need to prop up a party that's increasingly looking like the party of rednecks and extremists rather than captains of industry.

- Polling in the US by market research company Verasight found that 69% of respondents would be in favour of AI firms being required to transfer 50% of their stock to a sovereign wealth fund as proposed by Bernie Sanders. Seems like it could be a good idea depending on implementation, though I doubt Silicon Valley is going to roll over easily on this issue.

- The University of Chicago's law school is banning first year students from using laptops, phones, or tablets in class. Those who have disabilities that can be shown to require these devices for accommodation will be exempted.

- Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator from California, is begging Canadian provinces to reconsider their import bans on American alcoholic beverages. Ironically, most of the vineyards are located in parts of the state that vote heavily Republican, but I guess Schiff figures that as a representative of the state at large he still has to be seen to speak up for them, and maybe the industry is big enough that the impact on the state's revenue could be significant. In any case, it's not clear how much the market would recover even if provincial liquor boards agreed to start buying the stuff again; in its absence a lot of people are discovering that many Canadian wines aren't as bad as their reputation, and that's not even considering the wide range of excellent European, Chilean, Australian, and New Zealand wines available.

News roundup, 14 July 2026

- Hungary's parliament has voted to remove the country's president, Tamás Sulyok, from office. The Tisza party under Péter Magyar won a supermajority in April's election, ending the reign of prime minister Viktor Orbán, but a constitutional amendment was required to end the term of Sulvok, widely seen as an Orbán loyalist. Orbán's Fidesz party walked out in protest prior to the vote; notably Orbán himself has refused to take his seat in parliament and was in the US watching a World Cup game during the vote. Besides removing the president, the amendment includes numerous other measures to reverse the damage that Orbán and his party did to the country's political institutions.

- Alberta lawyer (and prominent separatist) Jeffrey Rath has had over $8.5 million in assets frozen by a court following accusations of fraud in his oversight of a trust belonging to Tallcree First Nation.

- Former Conservative MP Inky Mark was arrested last week at and charged with multiple offenses, including firearms trafficking and possession of a weapon with an altered serial number. The arrest followed an investigation into another Dauphin-area resident who was arrested earlier this year following the theft of a handgun at a gun show in Minnesota; Mark had allegedly purchased weapons from the suspect in that theft. The RCMP seized 439 firearms from his home along with various accessories, ammunition, and cash; among the items seized was an antique cannon. 

- Public health authorities in southern Ontario are urging 884 patients who had dental work done at a Brantford clinic between 2021 and 2025 to get tested for HIV and hepatitis. The clinic was shut down last November and the dentist stripped of his right to practice after a whistleblower reported inadequate sterilization of equipment.

- Over 2,000 workers in Manitoba suffered injuries or psychological harm due to workplace violence in 2025, more than triple the figure from ten years previously. Nearly 80% of these cases involved workers in only a handful of jobs, including nurses, bus drivers, daycare workers, and similar occupations. No cause for the increase is given in the article, but I suspect that the pandemic is a big part of the reason.

- Temperatures have been so high in Winnipeg and surrounding areas in the last few days (the mid to high thirties) that roads have buckled due to thermal expansion, sometimes enough to cause damage to vehicles. As hot as it's been here, though, it's not as hot as was in the hamlet of Armstrong, Ontario, north of Thunder Bay, where temperatures hit 40°C on Monday.

- Colombian soccer player Jaminton Campaz appears to be in hiding after missing the net in a crucial game against Switzerland last week, leading to his team's elimination from the World Cup. He did not join his teammates for the flight home, and still has not returned to Colombia due to death threats. No doubt the story of the hapless Andres Escobar, who was shot to death in 1994 after scoring an own goal in that year's World Cup, weighed heavily on his mind.

News roundup, 13 July 2026

- Reform UK is panicking about the possibility of Nigel Farage losing the byelection resulting from his resignation stunt. The party had been hoping to win the mayoralty of Greater Manchester, where polls showed them within striking distance after the position was vacated by Andy Burnham, but are now desperately shifting resources to Farage's riding of Clacton in the hope of avoiding the embarrassment of losing to Count Binface. Daniel Hannan at the Telegraph seems a bit worried too. Unfortunately it looks like the Official Monster Raving Looney Party is running a spoiler candidate. Kind of like one of the races in Monty Python's Election Night Special, except that this time it won't be the Sensible Party that benefits from the split.

- A recent poll of Canadian manufacturers found that 40% of them have either moved some of their operations to the US or are planning to do so in response to ongoing tariffs, while 11% plan to move their headquarters there. This isn't an exclusively Canadian problem, of course; Toyota is expanding its plant in Texas while reducing operations in Mexico, but voters tend not to care about such niceties - in fact they don't care if the people they vote in are worse than the people they vote out, because they're voting out of vengeance, not out of hope of improvement. So naturally this puts Carney in a tough spot. If he wanted to be really bold he could expropriate any plant closed in such a move at current market value, with the proviso that the compensation will not occur until relations are normalized with the US. I wouldn't count on him doing that, though; I don't think he's made of that kind of stuff (he is, ultimately, still a neoliberal at heart, even as he recognizes that neoliberalism doesn't seem to be working anymore). Maybe the NDP should start loudly pushing for that sort of thing; it's not like not being radical has done them much good at the federal level of late.

- South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham has died at the age of 71. On the other hand Mitch McConnell seems to be in better shape than many suspected, assuming of course that it was actually him that made the statement in question and not a staffer.

- A 37 year old man has been arrested after allegedly delivering a hateful and threat-filled tirade against two hijab-wearing women in a Costco in Halifax and assaulting someone who filmed his rant. He had to be Tasered after reportedly brandishing a weapon at police; he has been charged with assault, public incitement of hatred, and four counts of uttering threats to cause bodily harm or death.

- An economics professor at Brown University announced one year that one of his classes would use a take-home exam format. The class then had a surge of enrollments compared to previous years; when the midterms were marked, the average grade was 96% and 40 students got a 100% grade. Not surprisingly, the people who marked the exams found answers with a wording that was uncannily similar to the way ChatGPT answered the questions. At this point he decided to change the format for the final exam, making it an in-person test and warning the class that if the grade distribution was substantially different from the midterm, only the final would count towards the actual grade in the class. 27 students dropped out of the class by the time the final rolled around, of whom 22 had scored 100% in the midterm.

News roundup, 10 July 2026

- The ceasefire in the US-Iran war is in ruins after Donald Trump accused Iran of attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz and launched airstrikes on the country, killing at least 14 people and destroying a bridge on a key trade route with Russia and China. Iran in turn launched strikes on Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Iran admits to firing on the ships, which it says ignored warnings about taking a non-approved route through the strait.

- Andy Burnham appears set to be the UK's next prime minister after winning the support of 322 out of 403 sitting Labour MPs. If nobody steps up to oppose him he will be declared party leader next week and take office later this month.

- The "Water Not Coal" campaign, an initiative by country singer Corb Lund which sought to ban coal mining on the eastern slopes of the Rockies in Alberta (or force a referendum if the government wanted to push ahead), was deemed by Elections Alberta to have not gotten the necessary 177,732 signatures in order to be deemed valid. Lund's campaign had submitted over 200,000, but staff at the agency attempted to contact a small sample of the signatories in order to determine how many could be deemed valid and deemed enough of them illegitimate to cancel the initiative. A statistician at the University of Toronto, however, believes that Elections Alberta's methodology was suspect and that the initiative likely had enough legitimate signatures to proceed.

- The BC government is suing OpenAI for its role in the Tumbler Ridge shooting that left nine people dead. The government believes that there were plenty of warning signs in the shooter's interaction with the platform that could have prevented the tragedy; OpenAI had banned her but had not notified the police.

- A Texas woman who was fired by her employer after video of her unhinged rant at two Muslim women went viral has raised over $100,000 in donations on GiveSendGo (which is, as I've called it before, the GoFundMe for deplorables). The women she harassed were doxed and have faced death threats.

- Two teenagers in Greensboro, NC were arrested after allegedly using a device described as a "homemade plasma cannon" to break into a school. The term may be technically accurate but makes it sound way more sci-fi than it actually is; it's not that dissimilar to the potato cannons that teens have been making for decades.

- A student pilot in Argentina was forced to land the aircraft by herself after her flight instructor suddenly opened a door and jumped to his death. While shaken, the student landed the Cessna 150 without further incident. I suppose if nothing else it was a good test of the student's ability to handle an emergency.

News roundup, 9 July 2026

- Flooding as a result of recent storms has resulted in the evacuation of the Dauphin Regional Health Centre. The city got 115 millimetres of rain in a two day period, and the hospital's basement was flooded, knocking out power to the facility and causing substantial damage. Patients were sent to other hospitals across the province, the largest share being sent to Brandon. It may be months before full service is restored. Also in Dauphin, a huge commercial greenhouse was flooded, destroying vast amounts of crops. While the Parkland region, which includes Dauphin has gotten the worst of it, more than 50 municipalities across the province have declared local states of emergency due to recent storms.

- The federal government is cutting funding to a weather radar research group, even as the incidence of tornadoes is increasing in this country. More than a little short sighted, I'd have to say.

- Jesse Wheatland is accused of setting numerous fires across Winnipeg, including at the constituency offices of ministers Bernadette Smith and Nahanni Fontaine as well as several downtown businesses and an addictions treatment centre. He was reportedly in possession of a list of potential targets when he was arrested; these included the office of Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara and the CBC. Another list found following searches mentioned a proposed location for a supervised consumption site; he is also accused of having attempted to start a fire there as well. He had previously posted concerns about that site on a community Facebook group; other targets appear to have been former employers.

- The Rural Municipality of East St. Paul is refusing to publicize the names of registered candidates in this fall's municipal election until the deadline to register has passed in September. The policy has been in place since 2022; the practice is anomalous and the province has urged the municipality to be more transparent, but there is no legislation to actually prohibit such secrecy. The motivation for the policy has not been made public; none of the council members would address the matter with the CBC. I suspect it may have something to do with councillors and/or the mayor hoping to get in by acclamation and not wanting it to be known that they're running unopposed until it's too late to do anything about it. Certainly some community activists fear that this could be a consequence of the policy.

- Graham Platner, the winner of the Democratic primary for the Maine Senate seat that's up for grabs this fall, is withdrawing from the race following sexual assault allegations. Platner had been seen as a progressive compared to the establishment candidate Janet Mills who he'd defeated in the primary. The party must now select a new candidate by the 27th of July in order to contest the seat, which is critical in gaining control of the Senate.

- Mark Zuckerberg, whose company just laid off thousands of people to replace them with AI, admits that it isn't working as well as he had hoped. In his words, the "trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected". Other companies are facing similar issues; Ford has had to rehire many engineers and technicians. The company's VP of vehicle hardware engineering, Charles Poon, is trying to spin this as bad timing, saying that the experienced workers left before they could transfer their knowledge to the AIs. This comes as Ford had more recalls than any other US automaker so far this year. I have to assume all this folly is driven by investors.

News roundup, 8 July 2026

- A new bill before the US Congress would direct the US Trade Representative to investigate the bans on American alcohol by most Canadian provinces. In the modern American tradition of contrived backronyms, the bill is called the Combating Attacks on our National Alcoholic Drinks by Allies (CANADA) Act. It was introduced by Claudia Tenney, who represents a large part of rural and small-town New York State and who is a rabid Trump supporter. Curiously, the bill makes no mention of the annexation threats and tariffs that led to the bans in the first place.

- Markus Chambers has become the latest Winnipeg city councillor to announce that he will not be running again this fall. Chambers, who represents the suburban St. Norbert-Seine River ward, says that he wants to spend more time with his family, which is fair enough. However, the sheer number of veteran councillors who are quitting is significant - Janice Lukes, John Orlikow, and Brian Mayes are also not running again. One thing all those councillors have in common is that they represent suburban (or largely suburban) wards; I wouldn't be surprised if they know darn well that continuing to insist on car-centric design and exclusively single-family neighbourhoods is financially unviable (you just don't have enough taxpayers per kilometre of street, water main, etc to properly maintain the infrastructure) but for these councillors to acknowledge this in front of their constituents would be politically unviable.

- Mark Carney has appointed Conservative MP Richard Martel to the Senate. This creates a vacancy in the riding of Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, which Martel narrowly won in the last election.

- The leader of a rightwing fringe party, the Freedom Party of BC, has been charged with vandalizing a Pride crosswalk in Surrey. Amrit Birring, 58, was arrested along with a 67 year old man and charged with mischief over $5,000.

- Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has resigned his seat and announced that he will run for reelection in the resulting byelection. Some may remember when Canadian Liberal MP Sheila Copps did that in 1996; she had promised in the previous election campaign to resign if the GST wasn't abolished, but then ran again, winning without difficulty. In Farage's case, his critics believe this is a way of distracting the public from an investigation into his finances; all the other parties, from the Greens and Labour on the left, to the Liberal Dems in the centre, to the Conservatives and Restore Britain on the right are refusing to contest the seat and give him the attention he seems to crave. He won't be acclaimed, though; comedian Jon Harvey, aka Count Binface, has said that he will contest the seat.

News roundup, 7 June 2026

- Another severe storm hit southwestern Manitoba on Sunday night. No tornadoes have been confirmed, but strong winds and hail caused substantial damage to property and cut power to about 6,000 customers. Floodwaters also came dangerously close to breaching dikes in the community of St. Lazare.

- The mayor of St. Andrews, Manitoba is suing her own municipality to recover legal fees incurred during her ultimately successful fight to regain powers that the RM's council had stripped from her. The episode began within a year of her election in 2018, after she clashed with five council members over a wastewater treatment project.

- Several centrist Democrats (who, it should be noted, are only "centrist" in the American context; they'd be considered moderate rightwingers in most countries) are running scared at the success of left-leaning candidates in several recent Democratic primaries. In an open letter called "The Promise to America" they explicitly declare themselves "capitalist, not socialist" and talk about "extremes on right and left". Well, they're  half right there, I suppose, in that the present day right really is extreme. But to imply that people like recent primary winners are just as extreme as the MAGA crowd one has to be either disingenuous or delusional.

- Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has been in hospital since mid-June and very little information about his condition has been made public, at least at an official level. However, NBC has apparently gotten hold of a recording of EMS communications indicating that CPR was performed on a person at an address associated with McConnell on the day that the senator was hospitalized. The lack of information from his office since then has led some to speculate that he's being kept on life support to avoid forcing a special election (i.e. byelection); Kentucky law requires one if a vacancy occurs more than 3 months before the next election. Since McConnell's seat is one of those up for grabs in November, this would mean he'd have to be kept alive till August in order to avoid the kind of awkwardness that might result if, say, recently primaried representative Thomas Massie were to run for the seat. Speculative for sure, but not implausible.

- Far right fundamentalist Christian nationalist pastors/podcasters Wesley Todd and Joel Webbon called for churches that display Pride flags to be seized by the state and transferred to more pliant churches and their pastors defrocked and prosecuted. What's perhaps more interesting is that they warned allies who are running for political office to refrain from saying things like that out loud, because the voters aren't ready for such overtly totalitarian messaging. Webbon has said some other "interesting" things, such as telling parents that they're failing in their duty if they don't warn their kids to stay away from black people and that women shouldn't be allowed to vote.

- Donald Trump called FIFA president Gianni Infantino after Team USA striker Folarin Balogun was given a red card during the match against Bosnia-Herzgovina; subsequently, FIFA then reversed the suspension in time for the Americans' match against Belgium. It wasn't enough to stop Belgium from giving them a 4-1 thrashing and eliminating them from the World Cup, though.

News roundup, 6 July 2026

- Germany's Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (also known by the German acronym BSW) is a nominally leftwing party (it's a splinter group from Die Linke, and its leader/namesake was once a member of the East German Communist Party). So it's rather odd to see them publicly expressing a willingness to make a deal with the far-right AfD should they hold the balance of power following elections in the East German states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt. This violates a longstanding taboo in European politics. It's worth noting that while superficially leftwing on economic issues, BSW is quite socially conservative, and moreover opposes efforts to get Europe off of fossil fuels. Like AfD, BSW is also quite pro-Russian, which might provide an explanation for the latter position.

- A new poll from Nanos has found that Canadians are approximately evenly split on whether or not the proposed high speed rail link between Toronto and Quebec City should be a priority. Curiously, while the poll data is broken down by age, gender, and region, it does not differentiate between urban and rural respondents, which is probably where you'd find the biggest divide.

- Residents of Winnipeg's Whyte Ridge neighbourhood are concerned that they didn't get emergency alerts on their phones in advance of the tornado that struck last week. Environment Canada says that they had a lot less warning of tornado conditions than they did for the storm in early June, but residents would understandably like to see something done about that.

- Germany's centre-right chancellor Friedrich Merz has introduced legislation to tighten up sick note requirements for workers. Currently, employers can't require a note unless a person is off for at least three days, but under the proposed legislation they would be able to require one for even a single sick day. The measure is opposed not only by unions but by doctors; the German Association of Family Physicians predicts that they "would be flooded with patients who don’t need in-person care and would be better off in bed". Merz, though, claims that Germany "can no longer afford the competitive disadvantage caused by prolonged absences from work". Perhaps he believes that work will not only make you free, but also healthy.

- The cities of Steinbach and Winkler, in the heart of Manitoba's bible belt, will be holding plebiscites on whether to allow cannabis stores to open inside their boundaries. The councils of both cities had rejected a request for this to go on the ballot, but enough signatures were obtained from residents to override this. The vote (perhaps it should be called a "reeferendum") will coincide with this fall's municipal elections.

News roundup, 3 July 2026

- The Bank of England has announced that fossil fuel companies' debt will be downgraded from October onwards. Other central banks are taking similar measures; some 40 of them use a statistic called "weighted average climate intensity" (WACI); notably one of the easiest ways to improve that statistic is to sell US Treasuries. The fact that it's the Telegraph (aka the "Torygraph") reporting this is particularly interesting, given that paper's general hostility to things like renewable energy. Unfortunately, the changes that result probably won't happen in time to stop the collapse of the Thwaites glacier and the resulting sea level rise (possibly up to 2 metres by the end of this century), but it might buy some time to adapt to the rise.

- Spain has banned state-owned enterprises from entering into new contracts with Palantir on national security grounds. Other places are taking measures as well; London's mayor Sadiq Khan recently blocked a £50 million contract that the Metropolitan Police had negotiated with the company. Palantir intends to sue over the matter.

- Wally Daudrich, the former Manitoba Progressive Conservative leadership candidate who was disqualified from running in the Turtle Mountain constituency, has left the party in favour of the far right Keystone Party. He will be running for the latter party in the upcoming byelection in The Pas-Kameesak.

- Edmonton seems to be making excellent use of the land formerly occupied by the decommissioned City Centre Airport. The new neighbourhood, called Blatchford, is being developed with a lot of mixed use midrise buildings with retail on the main floor. This is something that many would see as simply good sense, but it's been difficult to build in much of North America for many decades due to archaic zoning laws. The buildings will be heated and cooled by a shared geothermal system and be well served by the city's LRT.

- A recent study in BC has found that life expectancies in the province are diverging. As of 2024, the provincial average has increased since 2004, and in most of Metro Vancouver (with the stark exception of the Downtown Eastside and vicinity) as well as the Victoria area, people can be expected to live substantially longer. A resident of Richmond born in 2024, for instance, should have an average life expectancy of 89.4 years. The Downtown Eastside itself, not surprisingly, has the lowest life expectancy in the province, but notably the province's interior is doing badly as well - and the farther inland you live, the worse your life expectancy is on average. It's not simply that the interior isn't gaining, it's actually retreating - the life expectancy there actually rose between 2000 and 2014 and has been declining since.

- Nine monks on a pilgrimage walk in Thailand were killed when they were hit by a pickup truck driven by an 11 year old boy. The child is in custody.

News roundup, 2 July 2026

- Russia, despite being one of the world's largest oil producers, is experiencing fuel supply issues as a result of the latest wave of Ukrainian strikes on refineries. The Putin regime has outlawed the export of gasoline and jet fuel and is considering importing these products from elsewhere. The impact on public opinion in Russia may be significant, but the extent to which this will matter is unclear. Even many critics of the regime remain in favour of the war, they just don't think Putin is doing a good enough job fighting it. Russia has, of course, retaliated on a large scale for the latest intrusions, killing 18 people and causing widespread damage in Kyiv.

- Still on the subject of great powers getting in over their heads, the US attack on Iran has led many of America's allies to question whether it's such a great idea to host bases that might become targets of counterattacks. This could significantly impact their ability to "project power".

- A tornado struck in the Rural Municipality of Rossburn in western Manitoba on Sunday night, destroying a house. The next day, another tornado struck in the affluent suburban Winnipeg neighbourhood of Whyte Ridge on Monday evening, also destroying one house and damaging several others. Torrential rain also caused some flooding in Brandon and Dauphin; the latter city has declared a state of emergency, as has the town of Swan River. No injuries have been reported, however.

- Brian Mayes, who has represented St. Vital on Winnipeg's city council since 2011, has announced that he is not running again this fall. He leaves behind a mixed legacy; he was progressive in some ways, and definitely very responsive to his constituents' wants, but that latter point is also part of what was wrong with him; whenever there was a tension between the desires of his NIMBY constituents and the needs of the city as a whole (e.g. on infill housing), the NIMBYs tended to win out.

- Establishment Democrats are less than pleased with the recent success of leftwingers in Democratic primaries. Letitia James, the attorney general of New York State, went so far as to claim that some of the candidates endorsed by NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani "do not understand the politics of New York City"; if that were true, though, you wouldn't expect them to have been as successful as they in fact have. Meanwhile Democratic House member Greg Meeks said that "if you’re a socialist, you’re not a Democrat". Ironically, people like James and Meeks are the first to get angry at third party campaigns (not without some cause given how badly locked in the two-party system is in that country), but in their mind such people should only work within the party so long as they don't actually succeed there. The most charitable interpretation of these bleatings is that they're scared that leftwing Democrats might gain a national profile that will scare off swing voters, but that seems like a stretch. More likely they're scared of what will become of AIPAC funds.

News roundup, 30 June 2026

- Federal heritage minister Marc Miller is bothered by the fact that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights' exhibit on the Nakba does not describe Hamas as a terrorist group. Perhaps he needs to do some brushing up on his history; the Nakba took place in 1948 and Hamas was not founded until 1987. I guess Miller is more concerned about virtue signalling to those who might donate to his campaign (or to his opponents) than actual history.

- Politicians in the US are starting to lose elections over their support of AI data centres. The president of Utah's state senate and a county commissioner were defeated in primaries; both believe that this resulted from their support of Stratos, a large data centre planned for near Great Salt Lake that was backed by Dragon's Den and Shark Tank investor (and former Conservative leadership candidate) Kevin O'Leary.

- The attorneys general of 17 Republican-dominated states are suing California over that state's Plastic Act. The legislation requires an immediate 25% reduction in single use plastics for packaging and requires all packaging to be recyclable or compostable by 2032. The Republican AGs claim that California's law will significantly increase product prices in their own states, and that this constitutes a violation of the US Constitution's "Commerce Clause".

- A data breach at Crime Stoppers has aroused fears that the lives of informants could be at risk. The breach occurred several months ago; the Canadian branch of the organization says that it's unsure if tipsters' info was part of the breach, but there are allegations that this information has been offered for sale on the dark web. Canadian Crime Stoppers Association president David Forster declined an interview and told board members across the country to do the same. Reports from the US say that decades worth of information was stolen, and Portland's police service is warning people not to submit tips using the organization's platform while the matter is being investigated.

- Manitoba's Hanover School Division, which covers Steinbach and surrounding area, has introduced a new policy on student activism that it claims is meant to support "age-appropriate activism". Given that the division keeps getting hauled into the minister's office over possible censorship, this bears close watching.

- Courts are seeing an increase in the use of phony, AI-generated case law. This happens most often with people representing themselves, but actual lawyers have been taken in by this as well.

News roundup, 29 June 2026

- A New York woman who shared an Instagram post naming Jonathan Ross as the ICE agent who killed Renee Good was visited at her workplace by the agency. She says the agents told her to remove the post or face prosecution, and attempted to get her to sign a document admitting to breaking federal law by naming him (she called their bluff and refused). And it's not like there's a publication ban or anything (which might be justified if there were a chance of Ross facing prosecution, but that's kind of moot right now).

- Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for New York State governor, is evidently not fond of Brad Lander, the winner of the Democratic primary for New York's 10th congressional district. In an interview with Newsmax he said that Lander, who like Blakeman is Jewish, "would be a camp guard in the concentration camp if he could". 

- The Carney government has entered into a partnership with David Eby's government in BC to buy unsold condos and convert them into affordable housing. Predictably, Pierre Poilievre called the plan a bailout for developers; Poilievre does have something of a point, given that if the governments were to simply wait for said developers to go broke, they could potentially buy the units much more cheaply. Of course, there's a problem with that; federal housing minister (and former Vancouver mayor) Gregor Robertson is decidedly uncomfortable with the idea that housing prices in general need to come down. This is no surprise given that the idea that housing is an investment (rather than, you know, somewhere to live) has been the mantra of governments for decades, and the people whose houses and condos are now worth many times what they paid for them don't want to see them devalued even slightly. This puts governments who want to make housing affordable in a bind, since people who own their own homes tend to skew older and are thus more likely to vote than those who would benefit from a drop in prices. So rather than deal with the fundamental issue, governments pursue suboptimal solutions like this one.

- A letter signed by medical directors of four Winnipeg hospitals in March warned that physicians are having to make grim decisions about who gets care first due to low staffing levels and that patient deaths are inevitable unless something changes. Health minister Uzoma Asagwara says that staffing has improved since then thanks to new incentives, however.

- Although southern Manitoba has gotten a lot of rain in recent weeks, the northern part of the province hasn't fared so well. The town of Lynn Lake and nearby Marcel Colomb First Nation are being evacuated due to wildfire threats.

- Valery Fabrikant, the former engineering instructor at Concordia University who killed four of his colleagues in 1992 after not getting tenure, has died in prison at the age of 86. 

News roundup, 26 June 2026

- Chinese automakers BYD, Chery, and Geely say they are "willing to explore" the possibilities of joint ventures to enable the production of their vehicles in Canada. This would enable them to sell cars far in excess of current import quotas, while creating jobs in this country. The devil is always in the details with such things, of course; the biggest question is whether they will actually hire locally, or if they'll just bring in workers from overseas who might not know what their labour rights are in this country. For instance, when HD Mining posted their job requirements for a mine in BC a number of years ago, one of them was fluency in Mandarin, and they used the temporary foreign worker program to import labour after not getting enough applicants meeting that requirement. It remains to be seen if that will happen here.

- China has introduced new "ethnic unity" legislation that creates a shared identity among different ethnic groups in the country. What is alarming about this is that it includes a clause saying that groups and individuals outside the country can be held legally accountable for "inciting ethnic separatism" or "undermining ethnic unity"; this is particularly concerning given the country's history of running covert overseas police stations. Of course China is far from the only country to claim the right to enforce their laws outside their borders (the US is guilty of that practice too, most famously in the Meng Wanzhou case).

- The captain of an Air Canada Q400 flying from Newark to Halifax experienced a medical emergency, apparently a seizure, while in command of the aircraft. The aircraft was safely landed in Boston by the first officer; passengers say that the captain was "kicking and flailing" as flight attendants dragged him out of the cockpit.

- The greenhouse emissions from City of Winnipeg operations rose last year; the biggest factor, interestingly, was not heating buildings or the city's substantial fleet of vehicles but methane emissions from the Brady Road landfill. The city hopes to have an organic waste composting program in place in a few years, but it would be nice to be able to do something about the stuff already in the landfill, such as using landfill gas to generate electricity (as Waterloo has been doing since 1999).

- An arrest warrant has been issued for a former correctional officer who was the case manager for a convicted murderer who escaped from a prison in Port Coquitlam, BC. Naila Sheikh is wanted for breach of trust; it's unclear if the charges are directly related to the escape.

- The former finance director for Jesuits in Canada has been ordered to repay $8.8 million after stealing from the organization for many years. I seem to recall there being something about that kind of behaviour in the Bible. No criminal charges have been filed, interestingly.

News roundup, 25 June 2026

- Oil prices have dropped back to the prewar baseline following the memorandum of understanding signed between the US and Iran that has led to a resumption in traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Wholesale prices of fertilizer are coming down as well, though many farmers say they have yet to see any real relief at the retail level.

- At least 164 people were killed and 971 injured after two earthquakes struck within a minute of each other in the Venezuelan capital Caracas.

- The Red River Co-op has plans for a badly needed downtown grocery store at Portage Place. The 22,500 ft² facility is expected to open in 2029.

- Winnipeg city councillor Janice Lukes, who represents the suburban Waverley West ward, has announced that she is not running again in this fall's election. Folks on the r/Winnipeg subreddit are mostly rejoicing, though some warn that you should be careful what you wish for. As one person says, "I wasn't a fan, but progressives/urbanists may need to face up to the fact that she was possibly the best we were going to get out of Waverley West." River Heights-Fort Garry councillor John Orlikow isn't running again either; to date Transcona councillor Russ Wyatt has not ruled out running again despite facing sexual assault charges.

- Calgary's chamber of commerce has released a report concluding that secession could cost Alberta's economy $62 billion a year. They also surveyed their members; as this was a self-selecting survey it isn't definitive, but among those who responded more than 75% thought that the very discussion around separation was negatively affecting the province's economy.

- The heatwave in Europe continues, with temperatures hitting the low forties in parts of France yesterday. Even in the normally moderate UK, the town of Gosport recorded a temperature of 36.1°C, and it could get even hotter today.

- A mosque in Regina that got approval from the city to play their call to prayer from a speaker atop the building over the noon hour is getting threats from members of the public. I'd bet you donuts to dinars that the people doing this do not make similar threats to churches that ring bells.

News roundup, 24 June 2026

- Donald Trump, having previously fulminated about the tolls that Iran had imposed on the Strait of Hormuz during the conflict, is now threatening to impose his own tolls on the strait unless a peace deal can be signed within 60 days. This worries many who fear this could set a precedent that could encourage other countries to impose tolls on what were previously accepted as international waterways, including the Malacca Strait in Indonesia and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait between Yemen and Djibouti. This comes as Marco Rubio says that "no country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway"; no doubt Rubio will be forced to clarify this and say that "no country but America is allowed to charge tolls or fees".

- The heatwave sweeping Europe continues. Highs of around 40°C are expected in western France today while Belgium and the Netherlands are getting temperatures in the high thirties. Even in Ireland temperatures may edge into the thirties, something almost unheard of there. Two children died after being left in a hot car in the French town of Carpentras; some 40 people have also drowned in France since the start of the heatwave.

- Several leftwing candidates have scored victories in Democratic primaries in New York. Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier had all been endorsed by NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani. Lander defeated congressman Dan Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune (and staunch Israel supporter); Lander, Valdez, and Chevalier have all accused Israel of genocide. The party's leadership have expressed concerns that this will be alienating to swing voters (but are probably more worried about donors than voters).

- The city of Waterloo is looking at allowing churches to build housing on their properties as a way of expanding the housing supply. Predictably, local NIMBYs are bleating about notions such as "neighbourhood character" (which generally means "keeping the poors out", of course).

- The Manitoba NDP has nominated Jennifer Flett as their candidate in the upcoming byelection in The Pas-Kameesak. The byelection was called after incumbent Amanda Lathlin died in March. Flett's background includes serving as a band councillor in OCN as well as working for the Correctional Service of Canada.

News roundup, 23 June 2026

- The Trump regime has turned its sights on the EU again, this time looking at Germany's regulation of pharmaceutical prices. Trump claims that this practice forces drug makers to charge higher prices in the US in order to make up the difference.

- The Manitoba government is still looking at Sio Silica's bid to open a sand mine in the Rural Municipality of Springfield, but Premier Wab Kinew has dropped hints that the mine will not be approved. In an interview with radio station CJOB, Kinew indicated that the fact that the company's last bid for this is the subject of an upcoming public inquiry into the previous government's actions could impact the decision.

- The Toronto Star has an interesting take on Carney's pipeline deal with Alberta - they suggest that the proposal is not economically viable and will likely never be built. If this is true, I have to give some credit to Carney for moving to placate Danielle Smith while not doing real damage to the climate. However, as the article points out, such a move could backfire if the idea collapses before this fall's referendum.

- A blind woman was apparently denied service by the Stella's restaurant chain in Winnipeg due to her guide dog. The chain has a long history of questionable practices (including sexual harassment and union busting) so this is entirely in character for the company. That said, the article does touch on an issue with the legislation surrounding service animals - there's no standard certification process for the animals, leaving the door wide open to abuse by the kind of people who claim their dog is an "emotional support" animal. If I were to guess, I'd say someone involved in drafting the legislation thought that requiring disabled people to prove the legitimacy of their service animals constituted a "microaggression" of some sort; while this was no doubt well-intentioned, it fails to take into account the realities of human behaviour.

- A Russian journalist who reported in 2008 that Putin planned to divorce his wife in favour of Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva has died. Grigory Nekhoroshev had been living in exile in Latvia for a number of years, and allegedly died from eating poisonous mushrooms foraged from his front yard. I guess that has more plausible deniability than polonium.

News roundup, 22 June 2026

- Keir Starmer is has announced that he will be resigning as the UK's prime minister. This follows Andy Burnham's byelection victory, as more than 50% of Labour's caucus now support Burnham for leader, making Starmer's position untenable. He will stay on until the party chooses a new leader this summer.

- A jury in Birmingham has refused to convict four activists who admitted breaking into a Wolverhampton factory owned by US manufacturer Moog Inc. Among other things, the company manufactures components used by the Israeli military, leading to the protest. The four had been charged with criminal damage over £5,000, having caused substantial damage to the facility. This contrasts with the fate of four other activists who broke into a plant in Filton, near Bristol, which is owned by Israeli company Elbit Systems. The latter company manufactures drones as well as land-based equipment for that country's military. Three of them were given sentences of around five years, while one of them, Samuel Corner, got seven (to be fair, he had also severely injured a cop with a sledgehammer as she attempted to arrest one of his colleagues). What's especially problematic here, though, is that a decision was made after the conviction to make a "terrorist connection" an aggravating factor in the sentencing, while the jury was only told that the activists other than Corner were on trial for criminal damage with no mention of terrorism. The judge in the Elbit case also tried to have one of the defense lawyers prosecuted for contempt of court for having the audacity to remind jurors in his closing speech of their right to acquit if they believed that the actions of the accused were moral, regardless of the letter of the law.

- An environmental activist who organized a team of volunteers to clean up a river in England is being threatened with prosecution by the UK's environment agency. The agency says that they are concerned that enough material may have been removed from the river to constitute dredging, which requires a permit from the agency, and that this could have potential flood impacts downstream. It's hard not to wonder, though, if the agency isn't also a bit embarrassed by the fact that a bunch of volunteers did what they'd been stalling on for years.

- Abelardo de la Espriella, the Trump-backed candidate in Colombia's presidential election, appears to have scored a narrow victory over left-leaning candidate Iván Cepeda. De la Espriella has vowed a military crackdown on armed groups, the construction of "mega-prisons" in the jungle, and to shrink the state (except for the military and those mega-prisons, presumably).

- Europe is enduring another severe heatwave, with temperatures expected to reach the mid-40s in parts of Spain and France. Even in the UK, an extreme heat warning has been issued for southern England and parts of Wales, with temperatures as high as 38°C expected.

News roundup, 19 June 2026

- Labour Party dissident Andy Burnham won a resounding victory in the byelection in the constituency of Makerfield, winning nearly 55% of the vote compared to 34% for the Reform UK candidate. His vote share was almost double that of Josh Simons, whose resignation triggered the byelection in the first place. Burnham, who until now served as the mayor of Greater Manchester, says that this represents Labour's final chance to reverse its current direction; it remains to be seen whether this will push the party to dump Kier Starmer, much less whether the party could win the next general election by doing so.

- NDP house leader Heather McPherson posted (I'd say tweeted but this was on Bluesky rather than Twitter/X) a quip that billionaires shouldn't exist and trillionaires should be put in jail. This has thrown the folks at Juno News into a tizzy, ranting about a "leftwing hate fest" and misrepresenting the post to boot (McPherson didn't actually call Musk a Nazi, she just reposted someone else's post calling him that, not that I could fault her if she had). Juno News is just a rebranding of the True North Centre for Public Policy, so they shouldn't be taken too seriously, but it's kind of amusing to see what snowflakes they are when you pick on one of their heroes.

- Ukraine launched a massive drone attack on Moscow and some other Russian targets on Thursday. Among the targets hit was the capital's main oil refinery; some 17 people were injured in the attacks, and Moscow's four airports were shut down for most of the day. Meanwhile the Kyiv Post alleges that authorities in a town near the capital refuse to disclose the location of civil defense shelters out of fear of causing panic, saying that this information will only be made public "during mobilization and in wartime". And of course, this conflict is officially just a "special military operation", and calling it a war can get you put in jail or thrown out a window, so...

- The board of directors of the South Winnipeg Community Centre has disbanded and handed control of the facility back to the city. The board had been accused of financial irregularities and other governance-related issues by some members of the community, but an independent audit found no evidence of financial wrongdoing, and the General Council of Winnipeg Community Centres' own investigation found similar results. Despite this, board members continued to receive online harassment, and when you're a volunteer you're only going to put up with so much of this. I haven't been able to find much background on this story, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort of culture war nonsense bubbling underneath all this.

- Selkirk has become the first city in Manitoba to take advantage of funding the province is offering to provide free bus passes to youth aged 12-21. They will need proof of enrollment to be eligible, however. The province is still working with other cities, including Winnipeg as well as Brandon, Winkler, and Flin Flon, to get the program in place in time for next fall; it would be nice if the program covered university and community college students as well, at least in Winnipeg and Brandon, as that would probably lead to a reduction in impaired driving.

- Researchers are reporting that some AI systems are really good at finding loopholes in rules. This should give pause to anyone who hopes that some kind of constraints like Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics could be made to work in the real world.

News roundup, 18 June 2026

- The White House says that the memorandum of understanding signed between the US and Iran is now in effect. Under the deal, Iran agrees never to develop a nuclear weapon, and a $300 billion fund is to be created for the "reconstruction and economic development" of Iran - though the US is not obligated to contribute to the fund. Iran also agrees to allow traffic through the Strait of Hormuz at no charge. It's also supposed to eventually end the sanctions against Iran, but no timeline is provided for this.

- The NAACP has filed a lawsuit to shut down natural gas-fired turbines that power Elon Musk's Grok AI, on the grounds that they not only lack the required permits under the Clean Air Act but will disproportionately harm residents of black communities. The Trump regime's Department of Justice is arguing that the move threatens national security and must be dismissed for that reason.

- The Bank of England is considering the introduction of a state-backed cryptocurrency called Britcoin. Nigel Farage, who until now has never seen a cryptocurrency that he didn't like, is vehemently opposed, and in fact has told a crowd of supporters that he's "prepared to go to prison" to stop it. Probably the fact that he's received donations from a huge crypto baron who stands to lose money if a state-backed cryptocurrency takes off has something to do with this.

- Liberal MP Ruby Sahota, who serves as the government's Secretary of State for Combatting Crime, claims that the people who fired shots at synagogues as well as the US consulate in Toronto were hired by a foreign entity. Toronto police have not confirmed the connection.

- A Conservative MP, Corey Tochor, has introduced a private member's bill to legalize psilocybin for the treatment of some psychiatric conditions. Tochor, who represents the riding of Saskatoon-University, says he was motivated to introduce the bill after one of his constituents was dropped from a pilot study allowing the drug to be prescribed on a limited basis. I have to say I can't fault Tochor on this, even if it is a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day.

- A new poll from Probe Research finds that nearly 50% of respondents do not want Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham to win another term. Confusingly, more than 90% also believe that electing someone else won't make a difference, and Dan Lett cites other polling that suggests that people actually understand that a lot of the problems the city is experiencing need to be solved by other levels of government - yet they want to reflexively vote out incumbents anyway. It all seems to suggest that people increasingly see voting as an act of spite rather than one of hope.

- Police in Senatobia, Mississippi killed a toddler when they opened fire on his mother's car, allegedly after someone in the vehicle was suspected of shoplifting. Notably, the boy's mother has not been charged with a crime, which you'd expect the cops to be quick to do if they had a leg to stand on.

 

News roundup, 17 June 2026

- Israel launched a series of new strikes on Lebanon, in defiance of Donald Trump's request. I think the real issue here is that the two leaders have different priorities - Trump wants the war to end in the hope that gas prices will come down in time for the midterms in November, while Netanyahu wants the war to continue until October to maximize his chances of winning the election and thus avoiding a corruption trial that could send him to prison.

- Savneet Talwar, a tenured professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), has been suspended and placed under investigation after giving students an assignment that made a passing reference to Palestine. The student who complained had a history of making similar complaints, and the school warned Talwar that the assignment could be seen as constituting "discrimination, harassment and/or retaliation".

- The yearbooks at two different Canadian high schools, one in Toronto and one in Bedford, NS, published quotes from students that appeared to question the Holocaust. Apparently it was worded in such a way as to question the number who died without making direct reference to the event; the exact wording isn't included in the article so it's hard to say how subtle it was. The Bedford school has asked students to return the yearbook for a reprint with the offending quote removed, while the Toronto school has offered to do the same. Interestingly, a school in the Pittsburgh area had a similar thing happen, but has not recalled the yearbook, saying it wasn't feasible to republish.

- A proposed mixed-use development called the Waters Urban Village would add nearly 3,000 housing units in a largely industrial area of east Winnipeg. The development would be a mix of multi-family and commercial. Seems pretty reasonable, but Transcona councillor (and sex assault suspect) Russ Wyatt is up in arms about the matter. Mayor Scott Gillingham called Wyatt a "desperate man", suggesting that he might be looking for a distraction from his legal issues.

- The town of Sundre in central Alberta has an annual rodeo, and normally there is an accompanying parade. This year, however, the parade was cancelled after organizers were subjected to severe harassment from Alberta separatists who were angered after being denied a float in the parade.