- A Russian drone hit a train in Ukraine near the border with Poland, only minutes after another train passed through the area carrying several dignitaries from the EU and UK returning from a conference in Kyiv. Nobody was injured, but some Ukrainian officials think the diplomatic train was the intended target, which if true would mark a significant escalation on Russia's part.
- New polling on the Alberta referendum on moving towards independence suggests that while 64% of respondents would vote to remain in Canada, when asked to predict the outcome of the referendum, those who would vote to separate think that their side will get nearly 60% of the vote. And only 6% of them expect a defeat would settle the issue. Also interesting is that while rural parts have higher support for separation than Calgary and Edmonton, the highest rate of support for separation is among people living in exurbs around those cities. Presumably these are "white flight" types who work in the big cities but can't bring themselves to live amongst people different from themselves.
- Sweden appears to have swung to the left in yesterday's election. A coalition led by the Social Democrats is thought to be headed for a three-seat majority, though it is still too close to call at present even with over 90% of the votes counted. The incumbent prime minister Ulf Kristersson, who leads the Moderate Party, had courted controversy by allowing the far-right Sweden Democrats into his governing coalition; perhaps that was a bridge too far for the public. Let's hope so.
- Amazon's Prime Air division has suspended its relationship with leasing company 21 Air following the fatal crash in Miami last week.
- A 49 year old man was arrested after a confrontation with another man in a Calgary grocery store in which he allegedly threatened to shoot him in front of his family. The other man had been shopping in the store with his wife and child when the suspect apparently started ranting about tariffs and shouting anti-Canadian and pro-American remarks, eventually escalating to the threats. Police who attended the suspect's home found him in possession of a loaded 12-gauge shotgun; he has been charged with uttering threats, possession of a firearm without a license, and careless storage of a firearm.
- A Surrey man has been awarded $275,000 in a defamation suit after daily protests occurred for months in front of his home. Bing Chen Gao is a journalist and had written critically about Guo Wenghui, a Chinese dissident who has since been imprisoned for fraud in the US; Guo's supporters had accused Gao of being in the pay of the Chinese communist party. In fact Gao has been a longtime critic of the CCP as well, but good luck convincing Guo's supporters of this.
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