News roundup, 5 Oct 2026

- The first officer accused of attacking the captain of FlyDubai Flight 1073 was reportedly banned from flying commercially in his home country of Oman due to extremist views. Details about the specifics of these views have not been made public, and it is not known if Oman attempted to warn other countries about him. It appears that the weapon used in the attack was a crash axe of the sort carried in the cockpit of all airliners in case of an emergency; unfortunately in this case the axe was used to cause an emergency.

- Winnipeg mayoral candidates Mike Vogiatzakis and Kevin Klein are accusing each other of offering inducements to withdraw from the race. Vogiatzakis says that Tim Diack, a supporter of Klein, offered him a position at city hall, later stated by his campaign manager to be the chair of the police board. Diack says that he did call Vogiatzakis but did not make such an offer, and that Vogiatzakis is in fact ineligible for the position due to a criminal record (he has convictions for contempt of court as well as assault). Klein's campaign manager also says that Diack has no official position in the campaign team. Klein claims that Vogiatzakis offered him an inducement of his own, though no details were provided. Such inducements are of course prohibited. Meanwhile Klein is facing criticism after the Winnipeg Sun, of which he is CEO, called into question the significance of the deaths of indigenous children in residential schools.

- Far right candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, has come out on top in the first round of Brazil's presidential election, winning 47.1% of the vote compared to 45% for incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The election will now go to a runoff, but Bolsonaro is expected to win unless Lula is able to rally people who abstained in the first round.

- Spain's prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap election after his coalition partners Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) voted alongside rightwing parties to defeat two bills intended to increase tenants' rights.

- A 12 year old girl was killed in Baltimore and another person wounded in the crossfire as two men opened fire on each other in a dispute over a parking space.

News roundup, 20 Feb 2026

- The Andrew formerly known as Prince was arrested Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was released from custody and has not been formally charged but remains under investigation as police continue to search the Royal Lodge in Windsor. Unsurprisingly, this is related to his connection to Jeffrey Epstein, but surprisingly it's not related (directly at least) to sexual abuse allegations but rather to reports that he shared confidential material with Epstein while serving as the UK's trade envoy. Of course, assuming the allegations are true he was probably compensated for the material in some way, probably in a way that one doesn't want to think about.

- China has reportedly transformed its largest desert into a carbon sink by planting trees and shrubs in a belt along the desert's edges. They've been working on this "Great Green Wall" since 1978; its primary purpose was to keep the desert from expanding into farmland, but new research out of the US indicates that it is having a beneficial impact on the carbon cycle. Stuff like this isn't enough, of course (emissions cuts are still essential), but it's a big step in the right direction. Of course, the fact that this is in Xinjiang puts a bit of a pall on it; I suspect the consultations on this matter wouldn't meet with democratic standards.

- Brazil is having some success in protecting the Amazon rainforest. Satellite evidence shows that the deforestation rate is the lowest since 2014.

- The City of Winnipeg has released a development plan for Point Douglas that calls for more low- and mid-rise residential properties, with mixed use development along the planned route of a future rapid transit corridor. The plan also restricts heavy industrial development in the area. This is welcome news, though it will require some significant infrastructure upgrades (especially replacement of combined sewers with separated sanitary and storm sewers). Of course such upgrades would be welcome anyway.

- Manitoba Public Insurance is suing Ford to recover the costs of payouts for fires caused by faulty block heaters, most recently one in Pilot Mound that destroyed two vehicles insured by the corporation. These heaters are now the subject of a recall issued by Transport Canada earlier this year.

- Alberta will be putting several referendum questions on the ballot this coming fall; these questions relate to immigration as well as to constitutional matters. One of the questions would be to "require proof of citizenship" in order to cast a ballot; this would seem to be pointless given that under current rules any non-citizen who manages to vote should be identifiable and could be prosecuted easily. It also will likely not affect all citizens equally; the more affluent will be more likely to have passports and thus be easily able to prove their citizenship than the poor. I guess the real purpose of this question is to serve as a dog whistle for the folks outside Calgary and Edmonton (and a substantial minority of those in those cities as well). 

News roundup, 15 Sept 2025

- Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2022 presidential election. He is also barred from running for public office until eight years after the end of his sentence. Evidently Brazil has learned from America's failures; unsurprisingly the Trump regime is not happy, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling the sentence "unjust" and a "witch hunt". The regime had already imposed a 50% tariff on all goods from Brazil in July after the government refused to stop the trial.

- A suspect is in custody in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Tyler Robinson is a 22 year old resident of Utah with no previous convictions and from a "respectable" Mormon family; his parents are registered Republicans but he is registered as an independent. Despite previous bleatings from the MAGA crowd blaming the left and calling for "war", the slogans engraved on the shell casings left behind at the murder scene don't have a consistent leftwing message but rather betray a lot of influence from online culture with no clear political leanings. Utah Governor Spencer Cox said that he had prayed that it wouldn't turn out to be a native Utahan; I guess it's harder to whip up a lynchmob against one of your own than against the "other".

- People who have made online posts critical of Charlie Kirk in the wake of his death have come under heavy fire. Manitoba's Minister of Families, Nahanni Fontaine, shared a post on Instagram from US based activist @che_jim, which (not inaccurately) called Kirk "racist", "sexist", "transphobic", and a number of other bad things. Following this, many accused her of "celebrating" Kirk's assassination, and called for her removal. Premier Wab Kinew has refused to fire her, though he did ask her to apologize as a means of "taking the temperature down". One person who probably can be accused of celebrating Kirk's death is University of Victoria art history professor Melia Belli Bose, who posted this. It remains to be seen whether Bose's tenure will protect her.

- Those investigating the other shooting that occurred at a US educational institution last Wednesday say that the shooter had been radicalized by an online network of some sort, though they declined to provide specifics.

- Following an ICE raid on a Hyundai plant in which around 475 people, mostly South Koreans, were rounded up for deportation, the Trump regime attempted to reverse this, but only one of the workers accepted the offer. Hyundai had apparently been working in legal grey areas with their subcontractors, but at least one of the workers had a valid visa, adding to the outrage. Some think this could lead foreign companies to reconsider whether it's worth building a plant in the US.

News roundup, 9 Sept 2025

- An analysis by The Narwhal has found that the recent changes to Winnipeg Transit's network have disproportionately affected less affluent areas. Overall, there was a reduction in the number of stops from 11 per km² to 7 per km², but neighbourhoods in the North End and downtown lost 2-3 times as many stops as the city average, while suburban ones lost the fewest. Now admittedly, there's a kind of logic to that if you want to use Transit's limited budget to minimize the number of people who drive - more North End residents will continue to lump it, simply because they can't afford a car. Even more cynically, one might reason that reducing the number of stops in poorer neighbourhoods will reduce the number of people who use the bus as a shelter, thus making it more attractive to suburbanites. Urban planning professor Orly Linovski pretty much admits this when she says that Transit has two distinct goals - to better serve those who already use it and to encourage people with other options to take the bus, and that those two goals "can be in conflict"; nonetheless, she questions whether the approach taken is good social policy. There's also the fact that there's a tradeoff between fast service and having a lot of stops. And indeed, on the major routes with frequent service, there really has been an improvement - but this comes at a cost to people with mobility issues, and will also not seem so attractive when it's -30°C out, or if you have to walk through a sketchy neighbourhood to get to your bus stop. And the cuts to late night service have also disproportionately affected poorer areas.

- Winnipeg's city council is considering strict limits on where homeless encampments will be tolerated. Among the prohibited locations will be within 50 metres of schools or children's recreational facilities, which is fine, but it also includes anywhere within 30 metres of a transit shelter, bridges, docks or piers and within 50 metres of a rail line; those restrictions seem a lot harder to justify (prohibiting encampments in a transit shelter might be fair game, but near?) and when you combine all the restrictions it becomes an interesting question about where such people will still be allowed to exist. We'll have to see how the courts deal with it; an Ontario court has previously ruled that municipalities can't have blanket prohibitions if there isn't enough shelter space for all the encampment residents. Even site-specific restrictions have been struck down.

- Brazil's Supreme Court is set to rule today on the fate of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is being tried for his version of Jan 6 that occurred following his electoral defeat in 2022. Among the other accusations he faces is that he was aware of a plot to assassinate the legitimate president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Donald Trump has imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods and has imposed personal sanctions on Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, calling the trial "political persecution". The country, of course, is deeply divided over the issue.

- A WestJet Boeing 737-800 from Toronto was substantially damaged following a collapse of the right main landing gear upon landing at Princess Juliana International Airport in Sint Maarten. Passengers and crew escaped without major injury. Most of the news stories have described this as a "hard landing", which implicitly sounds like it's blaming the pilots (i.e. they landed too hard and broke the airplane), but according to Juan Browne (blancolirio) there's a history of similar failures in that aircraft type, including one involving an Alaska Airlines flight in 2023, and nothing about the WestJet flight's approach seemed to suggest that the crew were doing anything wrong.

- A man in Prince George, BC was pulled over while driving a child-size Barbie jeep along one of the city's major routes to go to the 7-11 for a Slurpee. He was arrested after failing a breathalyzer test and already had a suspended license. 

News roundup, 5 Aug 2025

- The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helped fund PBS, NPR, and various local stations, is shutting down after being defunded by Congress. This won't lead to an immediate shutdown of NPR and PBS, but much of their programming is expected to take a hit - notably, anything to do with music is likely to disappear unless new licensing agreements with music publishers can be negotiated, as CBP money was used to cover music licensing fees.

- A plan to rebuild the upscale Pacific Palisades neighbourhood in Los Angeles following the wildfires in January has been put on hold following opposition to provisions in the bill that would have allowed the construction of affordable housing on some lots in the neighbourhood.

- Brazilian far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, who is awaiting trial for plotting Brazil's version of Jan 6 after losing the 2022 presidential election, has been placed under house arrest for violating bail conditions by using his son's phone to post content attacking the judiciary.

- The former CAO of Gilbert Plains, Manitoba has pleaded guilty to stealing over half a million dollars from the municipality. When the discrepancies were originally found, she attributed the disappearance of the money to a cyberattack. I'm guessing she thought she was just borrowing the money until her lucky numbers came up at the local VLT lounge.

- The rules of Texas' legislature provide for a quorum of two thirds of the members of the lower house in order for the legislature to proceed. The Democratic opposition is taking advantage of this to shut down the legislature by leaving the state, as they have done in the past, to stop gerrymandering; the governor has ordered them to be arrested and brought back to the House. He has also threatened that if they accept donations to cover the fines for their boycott, they will be charged with accepting bribes.

- A Danish zoo is asking members of the public to donate their unwanted pets to feed to zoo animals. 

News roundup, 11 July 2025

- Manitoba has once again declared a provincewide state of emergency due to wildfires. Garden Hill First Nation (population 4,000) and the town of Snow Lake (population 1,000) are being evacuated, bringing the number of evacuated communities to nine. Thompson (population 13,000) is preparing for the possibility of evacuation as well; there is a fire near the city that is estimated at over 10,000 hectares. While there has been some favourable weather that has helped those trying to protect the city, officials are pre-registering residents just in case. Meanwhile several Republican members of Congress have sent a letter to Canada's ambassador in Washington, demanding that Canada stop ruining their summer by sending smoke their way. Wab Kinew is not amused.

- Donald Trump is threatening to hit Brazil with tariffs as high as 50%, accusing the country of a "witch hunt" against its former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is being prosecuted for a Jan 6-style putsch following his defeat in the 2022 election. Trump also accuses Brazil of unspecified "attacks" on American tech companies. He's also threatening Canada with 35% across the board tariffs, citing fentanyl as well as our supply management systems as the reasons.

- The Trump regime is imposing sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories. Trump accuses her of "political and economic warfare" against the US as well as Israel. The executive order essentially prohibits "US persons" (which includes corporations) from doing business with her. How this will impact her work remains to be seen.

- The Market Lands project, a mixed income housing project planned for the site of the former Public Safety Building in downtown Winnipeg, is running into opposition from heritage advocates. The plan calls for a 16 storey building to be constructed on part of the site; this would require an exemption from the standard height limit of 100 ft for the area. While the site is outside the limits of the heritage-protected area of the Exchange District, Heritage Winnipeg executive director Cindy Tugwell fears that it would set a precedent that could lead to other tall buildings being built in the area. Whether this is the actual reason, or whether said heritage advocates own condos in the area that they fear could be devalued by too much affordable rental housing in the area, is unclear. In any case, city council's property and development committee will be voting on the matter on Monday.

- While the recent changes to Winnipeg Transit are getting mixed reviews, some of the complaints are downright absurd. This person has gone full Karen about the fact that a bus route now goes down Waterfront Drive; she has half-baked arguments against it but given how much she has blathered on about homeless people in the past I suspect that the real reason has something to do with not wanting to live near the kind of people who take the bus.

- The citizen science database iNaturalist is a hugely useful resource for naturalists, but it has come under some scrutiny after Erin Patterson used it to locate the mushrooms that she used to kill her in-laws. Many entries on the site give the exact latitude and longitude where something has been found; some are advocating that the precise location should be obscured on the public portion of the website. Others question this, pointing to the extreme rarity of situations like this. 

News roundup, 23 May 2025

- A new study suggests that even if the increase in global temperatures is limited to 1.5°C (which seems increasingly unlikely), it's not going to be enough to prevent sea levels from rising by a centimetre per year by the end of the century. If the present course is maintained, it will be far worse - an eventual rise of up to 12 metres. For perspective, about 230 million people live no more than a metre above the current sea level, and a billion are within 10 metres. This would lead to a lot of migration, and the brutal truth of the matter is that if this migration can't be prevented by cutting emissions, it will be stopped with guns. That said, every fraction of a degree still matters, not least because it will mean fewer people getting shot at borders than there otherwise would be.

- On a somewhat more positive note, the deforestation rate in Brazil dropped by over 30% in 2024 compared to the previous year. Note, however, this only factors in intentional deforestation; losses due to wildfires reached record levels last year.

- The Trump regime is prohibiting international students from enrolling at Harvard University because the institution refuses to hand over information about some current students to the Department of Homeland Security.

- The US Senate's parliamentarian, a nonpartisan staffer tasked with the interpretation of Senate rules, has been overruled after advising that the revocation of California's waiver that gives it the power to regulate vehicle emissions was probably illegal. The last time the parliamentarian has been overruled was in 1975. Now I must admit to be a bit torn here, because the specific decision had to do with the body's filibuster rules, which I've generally thought should be scrapped as they often stop progressive initiatives. And seeing that these rules don't seem to be stopping reactionary initiatives, they should probably still be scrapped (or rather not re-adopted if and when the US becomes a functioning democracy again).

- TD's chief economist, Beata Caranci, is predicting that Canada will go into recession this year, and that some 100,000 jobs could be lost as a result.

- The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has opted for a work-to-rule campaign rather than a strike, for the time being. Significant service disruptions are expected to result simply as a result of workers refusing overtime.

- The Rural Municipality of Prairie Lakes in southern Manitoba has introduced a "one lake, one boat" policy, which will require visitors bringing boats to Pelican Lake to have the boats inspected for zebra mussels for a $40 fee. Naturally businesses are complaining, but such measures are sometimes necessary.

- Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, has started injecting its answers with propaganda about "white genocide" in South Africa - even when the question had nothing to do with South Africa or race. This certainly underscores the need for regulation of AI; unfortunately in the US the prospects for that have dimmed as legislation to prevent the regulation of AI for at least 10 years has cleared the House and moved on to the Senate.

- Recycling collection in Winnipeg was disrupted yesterday due to an unexpected closure of the material recovery facility where recyclables are taken. The plant was closed for a police investigation after plant staff found a dead guy on the premises.

More fun facts from SiteMeter

So the other day I was checking my hits and found this:












I'm curious as to how someone from Brazil even heard of Agile Like This, but they must have; the search terms are pretty unambiguous.