News roundup, 6 Aug 2026

- Much of the UK, including over half of England and all of Wales, is officially in a state of drought. England received only 7% of its average July rainfall last month.

- Even if the war in Iran were to end immediately, experts think that it is unlikely that fuel prices will drop significantly before this fall's midterm elections in the US. That might be a problem for the Trump regime given that much of the public seems to actually recognize the president's role in the recent price spike. Whether this will impact the outcome of the elections remains to be seen, though; it's safe to assume that the regime will do their darnedest to suppress the Democratic vote.

- Abdul El-Sayed has won the Democratic primary for the Michigan Senate seat up for grabs this fall, defeating his AIPAC-backed opponent Haley Stevens by a narrow margin. El-Sayed is actually moderate compared to some of the people who backed him; he does not identify as a socialist, though he supports many policies favoured by those who do and was backed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Also in Michigan, Donavan McKinney (who does call himself a democratic socialist) won the primary for the state's 13th congressional district, defeating incumbent Shri Thanedar. While Thanedar was considered something of a progressive himself on many issues, they strongly differed on the Israel question. How they will fare in November remains to be seen, of course; McKinney probably won't have a problem, but El-Sayed will face a tough fight. Notably, polling predicted a considerably higher margin of victory than he actually got, and some think this may reflect rural voters being less willing to participate in opinion polls. And should he win, he'll probably need an extra security detail any time he leaves the Detroit/Dearborn area.

- The Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will vote today on whether Anthony Fauci is in contempt of Congress after he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering questions in a hearing last week. Fauci believes that the hearing was a setup, intended to trick him into saying something false so that he could be found guilty of lying under oath, hence his refusal/

- Manitoba's Hanover School Division, which serves the city of Steinbach and surrounding areas, attempted to introduce a policy ordering staff to ignore a longstanding provincial law that entitles "mature minors" to confidential healthcare. Education Minister Tracy Schmidt has overruled the board, and has warned that she is willing to dissolve the board and appoint a provincial trustee to oversee the division if they continue to flout the law.

News roundup, 21 Jan 2024

- Well, it's now official - Donald Trump is President of the United States once again. In preparation for this, Joe Biden issued last-minute preemptive pardons to public health physician Anthony Fauci and former Joint Chiefs of Staff director Mark Milley, as well as all of the members of Congress who served on the Jan. 6 committee, some staff of said members of Congress, and some DC police officers who testified at committee hearings. He also pardoned members of his own family, suspecting (probably rightly) that there's no limit to how low the Trump administration will go to exact revenge on their perceived enemies. In addition he has commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier to house arrest, much to the annoyance of outgoing FBI director Christopher Wray.

- Trump, for his part, seems to be following through on his promise to be a dictator; he has a huge number of executive orders lined up already. Among these are withdrawing (again) from the Paris climate agreement, declaring a "national energy emergency" in order to get around environmental legislation, an attempt to find a workaround for the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in order to end birthright citizenship for those born in the US to undocumented parents, and cancelling the TikTok ban. This last order evidently did not come soon enough for one teen in Wisconsin, who is accused of torching the office of a congressman who voted for the ban. In so doing the lad inadvertently made one of the best arguments in favour of the ban.

- One executive order that Trump did not issue on the first day was his threatened 25% tariff on Canadian goods. He's still saying, though, that tariffs could come shortly.

- Elon Musk was not subtle in how he expressed his enthusiasm in the leadup to Trump's inauguration. The crowd were evidently unfazed by this - to the contrary, they seem to have been swept up in his enthusiasm. The ADL, usually the first to fulminate about the slightest whiff of antisemitism, seem strangely reluctant to condemn him for this; perhaps they hope the Trump administration will be useful to them in their efforts to defend the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. On the other hand, maybe they (like so many others) just terrified of what will happen if they cross him.

- Scientists are calling for the United Nations to take on the space junk problem, as it is a matter of critical importance to humanity as a whole. Of course, you can be sure that Elon Musk will resist this by any means necessary, and acting against the perceived interests of their biggest source of funding has not historically been one of the UN's strengths.

- The International Criminal Court fears an intensive sanctions regime by the new administration, possibly including a prohibition for American companies to do business with the court. This could include banking, but also IT - and like most large organizations, the ICC is highly dependent on Microsoft software. In an ideal world, of course, this would be resolved by a comprehensive switchover to open-source software, but (as recent events make apparent) this is not an ideal world. Such a shift is not the sort of thing that can be done overnight, and depending on the whims of Trump, "overnight" could well be what is needed to keep the court functioning. Of course existing software would continue to work, but security updates might well not be forthcoming - and without security updates, state-sponsored hackers (whether from the US, China, Israel, Russia, or goodness knows where) would have a much easier time at, say, finding the identity of witnesses.

- Donald and Melania Trump each launched their own cryptocurrencies, a day apart. The website of the company that has the largest holdings in these products has an interesting bit of fine print saying that they are not an investment or security but "an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol '$TRUMP'." Of course, it's a safe bet that most of the rubes who buy these products don't read this, and moreover that they will believe Trump when he inevitably says that the only reason they're losing value is because the evil globalists are shorting them. Interestingly, this is a source of alarm to serious crypto enthusiasts, who fear that the reputation of cryptocurrencies in general could suffer; if that does come to pass I'll file it under "silver linings", though.

- American activists are seriously wondering if mass protest has any future as a tactic against the Trump regime. As one activist wondered, "Is the goal to demonstrate you are an activist and to self-actualize, or is the goal to actually effect change?" Many are seeing the need to "get creative" and work on a smaller scale. Not sure what "getting creative" might entail, but given that this is the US we're talking about there's a good chance that at least some of these measures will involve violence.

News roundup, 6 Dec 2024

- Police continue to search for the suspect in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Many people definitely understand the anger towards such companies, even if they wouldn't advocate such a drastic solution to the problem.

- A storm bearing down on the UK may subject parts of Wales and southwestern England to hurricane-force winds, and may be potentially damaging as far away as Scotland and Northern Ireland.

- Joe Biden is considering preemptive pardons for some critics of Donald Trump, in the hope of shielding them from the revenge that Trump has vowed to take against them. Potential recipients including former Chief Medical Advisor Dr Anthony Fauci as well as Democrats involved in the impeachment proceedings against Trump. California representative turned Senator-elect Adam Schiff, who has been cited as a possible recipient, questions the need for this, saying that he is confident that the courts are robust enough to deal with Trump and throw out spurious cases, but I'm not sure I share his confidence given Trump's stacking of federal courts during his first term. Maybe Schiff is afraid to admit just how broken his country's democracy is.

- Winnipeg appears poised to announce the largest property tax hike since 1990, according to unnamed sources who say a preliminary draft of the budget includes a 5.95% increase. This is probably necessary but will come as a shock to some.

- A bill before the Manitoba legislature will amend the Highway Traffic Act to allow for lifetime suspensions to be given to drivers convicted of impaired driving causing death or bodily harm for a second time within a 10 year period (currently the maximum suspension is 10 years). The bill would also require that anyone whose license is reinstated after their first conviction for such offenses have a zero BAC for driving for a seven year period.

- A plea deal in which Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a single count of criminal fraud related to what it failed to tell regulators about the MCAS system used on the Boeing 737 Max which killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019 has been rejected by a judge, who said that the deal gave the court too little power to monitor Boeing's compliance with its side of the deal.

- The Grand Chief of the Southern Chiefs Association was beaten up in front of a bar in Ottawa ahead of an Assembly of First Nations conference. Someone in this Reddit thread alleges that the assailants were councillors from Lake Manitoba First Nation but this is unconfirmed.

- Hongchi Xiao, an "alternative healer" who practiced "slap therapy" has been convicted of manslaughter in the UK after a 71 year old client with Type 1 diabetes to stop taking her insulin in favour of his treatments, with fatal results. This is actually his second conviction for this; he was convicted by an Australian court in the death of a six year old boy whose parents stopped giving him insulin on Xiao's advice.