News roundup, 13 June 2025

- All but one of the 242 people aboard the Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner that crashed in Ahmedabad have died. The survivor, a 40 year old man, was injured and dazed but walked away from the wreckage and up to an ambulance that took him to a hospital. In addition to most of the other passengers, at least five people on the ground are believed to have died when the aircraft slammed into the dining area of a medical college. One Canadian, a Mississauga dentist, is known to have been on the plane.

- California Senator Alex Padilla was dragged out of a press conference and handcuffed after attempting to ask a question of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

- Wab Kinew is now hinting at using emergency powers to force hotels to make rooms available for wildfire evacuees. 

- Cycling activists in Winnipeg made a makeshift separated bike lane on Wellington Crescent last Friday, one year to the day after cyclist Rob Jenner was killed by a speeding vehicle at that location. City staff quickly removed it, with Coun. Janice Lukes claiming that it posed a hazard; advocates are unimpressed with the contrast between how fast it was removed and how slowly the city is moving to create one properly.

- Two BC MLAs who were elected as Conservatives have formed a new party, One BC, apparently because the BC Conservatives aren't extreme enough for their liking.

- Environmentalists on both sides of the Canada-US border are concerned about two gigantic dairy projects moving forward in North Dakota, with a total of 37,500 head of cattle.

- A San Francisco-based robotics company has developed a countertop robot that it claims can make up to 100 pizzas an hour.

News roundup, 12 June 2025

- An Air India Boeing 787 with 242 passengers and crew on board has crashed in a residential area shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport on a flight to London. This is the first crash of a 787; video here.

- California governor Gavin Newsom is warning that other states may soon see troops deployed as is happening in Los Angeles.

- Teachers in Alberta have overwhelmingly approved a strike mandate. Given the Smith government's unwillingness to be reasonable (indeed, their base probably considers unreasonableness to be a virtue) it seems unlikely that a strike will be avoided. Education in the province is not in good shape in any case; one school in Airdrie has closed its library and music room in order to convert those spaces into classrooms.

- Saskatchewan is following Alberta's lead in putting American booze back on the shelves. I guess it's too traumatic for the people of those provinces to not be able to get the Jack Daniels and Jim Beam they need to drink while listening to country music. Meanwhile, the return of the booze to Alberta shelves might not get as many takers as they're hoping; demand is down.

- A new law introduced by the Ford government in Ontario holds landlords, both residential and commercial, liable for drug offenses that occur on their premises. Penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and/or up to a year in jail. There are fears about the potential impact on homelessness, if people with addiction issues are denied leases, for instance. It may also pose a risk to music venues and nightclubs.

- When the EPA introduced a rule in 2009 that required industries to report their carbon emissions, this in itself led to a drop in emissions. Of course under the Trump regime this rule is being dropped.

- In addition to consulting AI chatbots about mental health matters, people are asking them for dating and relationship advice. I daresay this isn't such a great idea either. On a related note, Canadian AI researcher Yoshua Bengio is warning that current AIs seem to be putting their own interests ahead of ours, using things like deception. One AI apparently was observed to covertly insert its own code into another system to avoid being replaced. Bengio has founded a nonprofit called LawZero which he says will build AIs that don't do that stuff. Some folks in the related Reddit thread wish to remind us that OpenAI was originally founded as a nonprofit, then essentially said "Just kidding!" and became a for-profit company.