- 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.
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