News roundup, 9 May 2024

- Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Donald Trump's trial in the classified documents case, has delayed the start of the trial indefinitely, probably until after the November election. And guess who was President when Cannon was appointed to the bench? 

- A Republican representative from Nebraska, Don Bacon, has introduced a motion to censure Ilhan Omar; this was ironically motivated by a statement that Omar made against antisemitism, albeit one which had a little jab thrown in. When asked by a news outlet about antisemitism at the protests on university campuses, she said "We should not have to tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they are pro-genocide or anti-genocide." I guess insinuating that some of those students are pro-genocide was too much for Bacon.

- Doctors have removed a dead parasite from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s brain. Whether this will restore him to rationality, though, is doubtful.

- Police say that the three men charged in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar are members of a prominent Indian organized crime group known as the Bishnoi gang. Maybe this is true, and the gang was doing the work of the Indian government. However, since proving such a link will be very difficult, this could be a convenient way for Canadian authorities to rationalize maintaining relations with India.

- Italy's far-right government is imposing restrictions on the deployment of solar panels on agricultural land. They're also putting the military to work shooting wild boars; perhaps the latter is necessary but it does seem quite consistent with the style of that government.

- Former Tory MLA Shannon Martin, who lost his McPhillips seat in last fall's election, is seeking the party's nomination for the byelection in Tuxedo, whenever it occurs. 

- This past January was the worst month in recorded history for overdose deaths in Manitoba, at 56. The previous record was held by December 2023, with 54. Some of this may be attributable to the use of benzodiazepines, including a new designer drug called desalkylgidazepam, to cut opioids; the standard treatment for opioid overdose, Naloxone, does not work on these drugs.

- Venezuela's last glacier has been reduced to an ice field. While not as dependent on glaciers as some of its neighbours, this is not a good sign.

- Analysis of sperm whale communication with the help of AI has concluded that there is a lexicon of sound patterns that function like an alphabet, suggesting that they are using a bona fide language.

News roundup, 2 April 2024

- A bill recently passed by Florida's legislature, and now awaiting Governor Ron DeSantis' signature, will ban offshore wind turbines in state waters, and will furthermore purge virtually all references to climate change from existing legislation. On the other coast, the city of Berkeley, California has agreed to repeal its recent ban on natural gas for new builds, following a court decision. Oh, and despite their constant bleating about "freedom" and "liberty", Republicans in numerous states want to take away people's freedom to buy and sell lab-grown meat. There has been the odd bit of good news too (such as the closure of the last two coal plants in the New England states) but on balance the situation is not looking good, and Gwynne Dyer is probably right in saying that we will need to resort to geoengineering, with all the risks that entails, in order to keep temperatures within acceptable limits. Or maybe someone should just release Captain Trips and hope that the survivors build a better civilization than the one we have now.

- A federal appeal court has cancelled a ban on takeout containers contaminated with PFAS (the so-called "forever chemicals"). Interestingly, the court did not deny the health concerns about these chemicals, but ruled that the EPA did not have the authority to use the legislation they did.

- The European Union subsidizes farms based on area cultivated, which means that livestock farms get far more subsidies than crop farms do. More than 80% of the subsidies in the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) program went to make meat cheaper.

- Judge Aileen Cannon, who is scheduled to hear Trump's criminal trial for retaining classified national security documents, has apparently still not decided when the hearing will happen, almost certainly meaning that he will not be tried in this case before this fall's election. According to Wikipedia this judge was appointed in 2020 by Trump, but I guess we're supposed to assume that this is a coincidence.

- The lower house of France's parliament has passed a bill that imposes penalties on the manufacturers of "fast fashion".

- Doctors working in Gaza are accusing Israeli snipers of deliberately targeting young children.