News roundup, 14 Oct 2025

- The price of gold has topped $US4,000/oz t last week for the first time in history, as investors price in uncertainties about the US economy. Actual inflation hasn't been all that high, but the Federal Reserve has signalled that interest rates will likely decrease again later this year. Not mentioned in the article are concerns about the future independence of the Federal Reserve itself; presumably CBS' new owners don't want us thinking about that.

- A Bell 222SP helicopter went out of control and crashed while participating in a "Cars 'N' Copters" event in Huntington Beach, California on Saturday. The aircraft is shown from multiple video angles going into a spin, and the entire tail rotor gearbox was ejected from the tail before impact. The two people on board survived but with significant injuries; three people on the ground were injured as well. Juan Browne (blancolirio) has some preliminary analysis here.

- The Carney government has announced that they will be moving forward with plans for income taxes for some lower income Canadians to be filed automatically starting in 2027 and expanding over the next couple of years. This sort of thing has been the norm in many countries for a long time; no doubt the tax software companies are vehemently opposed, though. Politically, it's a smart move because when people have to do their own taxes they're reminded of the fact that they're paying taxes, making it easier to whip up populist anger about them. The government is also expanding a national school meals program.

- China is now outright offering to remove the punishing tariffs on Canadian canola if Canada is willing to remove the equally punishing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Prairie premiers, including both Wab Kinew and Scott Moe, have been calling for this for some time, while Doug Ford is vehemently opposed. If this does happen I will be pleasantly surprised; while the Canadian auto sector is probably doomed anyway, I doubt that Carney will be willing to be seen to be admitting that, since the ridings with a lot of auto plants are mostly competitive, while the rural folks in the prairies who would benefit from opening up the canola market aren't going to vote Liberal no matter what (because Jesus, Trudeau, and freedumb).

- The Canadian Union of Postal Workers is backing away from their across-the-board strike, moving to rotating strikes instead. I guess that the union's leadership knows deep down that regardless of the merits of their position they're not going to win in the court of public opinion if people can't get their Amazon orders.

- BC Conservatives leader John Rusdad has ordered the cellphones of all his MLAs to be searched after it was leaked to the media that there had been a push for his leadership to be reviewed. Rustad denies being paranoid and claims that it was actually caucus members who pushed for this. Notably, the search extended not only to phones issued by the legislature but MLAs' private phones as well (at least the ones Rustad knows about). 

- The head of Oregon's National Guard told a Senate subcommittee that if his troops are deployed, they will consider protecting the public from ICE to be part of their mandate. Of course, this just means that the regime will use NG troops from a more pliant state, but it will be interesting if this protection extends to the actions of out-of-state troops. Things could get very interesting if, say, the governor decides to deploy the Oregon NG to protect the state's people from them (or from out-of-state NG troops). It's worth noting that ICE has already accidentally teargassed cops in Chicago.

News roundup, 26 Sept 2025

- Former FBI director James Comey has been indicted on charges of making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The basis of the indictment is a claim by his former deputy Andrew McCabe that Comey authorized a leak of information about the FBI's investigations into Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, something Comey denied in hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The indictment comes just days after Trump publicly called for it. 

- Tech billionaire Peter Thiel allegedly gave a lecture in San Francisco in which he warned that regulating AI could hasten the arrival of the Antichrist. His reasoning is not entirely clear, except that he apparently said that people's fear of existential threats could give them an appetite for the kind of leadership the Antichrist would provide. A curious side note from the article - apparently the UK office of Thiel's company Palantir is headed by Louis Mosley, grandson of 1930s British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley.

- Hundreds of senior American military officers have been ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to attend a meeting in Quantico, Virginia next Tuesday. The subject of the meeting has not been disclosed, leading some to speculate that a mass firing is in the works, especially given Hegseth's disdain for much of the current leadership of the military.

- The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has gone on strike in response to the federal government's proposed reforms to Canada Post, which include the elimination of home delivery and the closure of a number of post offices.

- An RBC employee has been charged with gaining unauthorized access to the accounts of Mark Carney and someone named Justin Trudeau - though in the latter case it turned out not to be the former prime minister but someone else with the same name. He allegedly told police that he was lured into the scheme by someone on the social media platform Telegram. Police believe organized crime is behind this, though I have to wonder if it was "regular" organized crime, or some kind of "gotcha" attempt sort of like when lawyers with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms hired a private investigator to spy on a judge hearing their case in the hope of catching him being hypocritical about the laws he was enforcing.

- Marchers in Fredericton's Take Back The Night rally were harassed by several young men on motor scooters on Friday. Police are investigating but no charges have been laid so far.

- The Kinew government is considering changes to the Intoxicated Persons Act to allow people to be detained for more than 24 hours if intoxicated. While 24 hours might be enough to come down off most drugs, including alcohol, it sometimes isn't enough for meth, leading to situations in which people have to be released when they're in no condition to be out on the street. The Main Street Project is not opposed to this so long as adequate supports and medical supervision are provided, something the government is looking at.

- Doug Ford has announced the intention to ban municipalities in the province from using speed cameras, for which he uses the usual populist slogan "cash grab". Setting aside the fact that there's a very simple way to avoid getting your cash grabbed (namely, pay attention to your speed and the signs on the road, both things you should be doing anyway), one might think that if people in the cities that use such cameras were sufficiently bothered by them, they could decide at the municipal level not to use them. Of course, the people Ford is serving here are people in the suburbs and exurbs around big cities, who refuse to live in an actual urban centre but need to go there for work and are always running late.

- The owners of a house outside St. Thomas, Ontario with a swastika mowed into its front lawn have been charged with criminal harassment and other offenses.

News roundup, 28 Aug 2025

- Someone opened fire on parishioners at a Catholic church attached to a school in Minneapolis Wednesday morning; the attacker died of a self-inflicted gunshot. The incident is being investigated by the FBI as an anti-Catholic hate crime; the shooter appears to have been a transwoman. Given the church's hardline stance on LGBT* issues, being angry is quite understandable, though I have to say that shooting kids is not a good way of expressing one's grievance with the institution. This, by the way, is apparently unrelated to another incident in the same city the previous day when a man opened fire on a group people on a sidewalk in front of a school, killing one.

- The legality of Donald Trump's sacking of Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook is almost certain to be decided by the Supreme Court sooner or later. I don't think I'd bet money on Cook winning her case. So far markets seem surprisingly unperturbed by the matter; presumably no investor wants to sell off too soon, for fear of sparking a downturn that causes securities to devalue faster than they can sell them off.

- At least 12 people have died in Kiev in the latest barrage launched by Russia against Ukraine. Despite this, Ukraine is understandably not willing to reward the Russians with land in order to end the war; unfortunately by the time this is all over there probably won't be much left of the country.

- Canadian Union of Postal Workers Local 856, which represents letter carriers in Winnipeg, is calling for Canada Post to provide self-defense training for its employees after a drastic spike in attacks on carriers. In the last 12 months there have been an average of one attack per month on carriers; most recently an unprovoked one in Waverley Heights. This is compared to one or two per year before now. 

-  East St. Paul mayor Carla Devlin had a "hot mic" incident in a council meeting in which people were raising objections to a proposal to allow multi-family housing in a neighbourhood just outside the Perimeter. She suggested that people "don't want to hear the truth"; my first reaction to this was "she's not wrong, even if it was a bad idea to say that where the public can hear you". After all, more dense housing is exactly what is needed. Reading the associated Reddit thread forces me to reconsider; folks there pointed out that sewer infrastructure in the municipality might not be up to snuff. Conceivably, such a development might need to be served by Winnipeg's sewer system, adding to infrastructure costs while not paying city taxes; in any case it's not served by transit, so pretty near everyone commuting into the city from this development would be driving. Throw in the fact that Devlin is the founder and president of a company that builds exactly that kind of housing, and things do start to look a bit dubious. 

- The Lunenburg Marine Museum Society, owners of the famous Bluenose II schooner, have withdrawn the vessel from the upcoming Gloucester Schooner Festival in Massachusetts, saying that "plans involving cross-border travel come with more uncertainties this year". Yeah, you don't want your volunteers getting hauled off to El Salvador over something they posted about Trump on social media. Heck, I wouldn't put it past Trump to find some pretext to seize the ship itself, to be redecorated in his distinctive style much like he's doing with the White House.

News roundup, 22 May 2025

- US sanctions against the International Criminal Court for daring to issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu are severely hampering the organization's work. The court's chief prosecutor has lost access to his email because Microsoft is prohibited from working with them, and his bank accounts in the UK have been frozen (presumably the banks don't want to be shut out of the US market). And Americans working for the court have been warned not to return home to visit family due to the risk of being arrested.

- The IDF fired shots at a diplomatic delegation in the West Bank. The delegation, which included two Canadians, were part of a tour of the city of Jenin. The Carney government has called Israel's move "unacceptable"; for their part the Israelis claim that the tour group "deviated" from the approved route and that the IDF fired warning shots in response.

- Two staffers at the Israeli embassy in Washington were shot to death outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. The suspect allegedly shouted pro-Palestinian slogans during and after his arrest.

- Manitoba's conflict of interest commissioner has wrapped up an investigation into former premier Heather Stefanson and two members of her cabinet (Cliff Cullen and Jeff Wharton). The investigation has concluded that the three violated the Conflict of Interest Act when they attempted to rush through an approval of a sand mining operation in Springfield during the "caretaker period" between the election and the actual change of government.

- The City of Winnipeg plans to remove all parking paystations from city streets, saying that the paystations are outdated (they depend on 3G networks which will soon disappear) and that replacement would cost some $3.6 million. In any case, they say that 80% of parking payments are already done using the PayByPhone app. Those who are unable to use this can purchase booklets of prepaid passes at the Winnipeg Parking Authority office; unfortunately for them, that location does not have free parking. In theory this could provide people with more of an incentive to take the bus; in practice it will probably just make them crankier.

- CUPW offered to defer the impending strike for 2 weeks in order to evaluate the latest offer from Canada Post, but the corporation refused to go along with it. I suspect that deep down the union's executives know how poor their bargaining position is and are looking for a way out. As far as what Canada Post hopes to gain by pushing workers to strike soon (or locking them out), I'm not sure; perhaps they hope to wear down their resistance.

- A cottage formerly owned by Peter Nygard went up in flames in Falcon Lake; police consider arson to be a "strong possibility". If so it was a very reckless move given the risks of it spreading; it was also misdirected, since the cottage hasn't been owned by Nygard since 2021.

News roundup, 21 May 2025

- The bond-rating agency Moody's has stripped the US of it's triple-A rating, becoming the last of the three major agencies to do so.

- The UK has suspended trade talks with Israel, condemning the latter country's cutting off food aid to Gaza and accusing them, in effect, of planning to ethnically cleanse the territory. Maybe Kier Starmer isn't quite the American puppet that I initially thought.

- Cases of measles continue to show up, with warnings that an infected person or persons were at two locations in Winnipeg (the Franco-Manitoban Cultural Centre and a diner in Southdale) on the 11th of May. I guess it's better that they notify us late than never, but given that anyone exposed on that day is potentially in their pre-symptomatic but still infectious state...

- Five years ago, the Ontario government lifted the cap on the number of cannabis stores, and in some places this has led to a huge proliferation of stores, such as the six in just over a kilometre of Danforth Avenue in Toronto. The thing is, a whole bunch of them are expected to have signed five-year leases that will all be coming due over the course of the next few months, so it will be interesting to see how many of those leases get renewed.

- Canada Post's very mandate may be putting it in an untenable situation. It is required to provide service to every address in the country at a set price - but since 2006 it has had to service some 3 million new addresses, while the number of letters mailed in the country has been reduced by more than 50%. In January the federal government had to bail the corporation out to the tune of a billion dollars. CUPW points out that the Canada Post executives still seem to be getting their bonuses (something ignored entirely in the CBC story). This certainly isn't a good look, although it sounds like the elimination of those bonuses would be a drop in the bucket as far as addressing the situation.

- According to folks in this Reddit thread, several Alberta cabinet ministers were invited to the National Prayer Breakfast in the US in February. And in a softball question lobbed at Donald Trump, it appears that rightwing journalist Brian Glenn mentioned meeting with "two government officials from Canada" who told him that there was a path to annexation. Just curious, when was the last time we had a treason trial in this country?

- Andrii Portnov, a Ukrainian lawyer who once served as an adviser to onetime president Viktor Yanukovych, has been shot dead in Madrid after dropping off his kids at school. Portnov was under investigation in his homeland for corruption, and at one point had been investigated for treason for his alleged involvement in the annexation of Crimea, though the latter investigation was eventually dropped.

- The man who blew himself up in front of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs has been described as holding "nihilistic views" as well as having "antinatalist leanings". The thing is, if you're an antinatalist, doesn't that mean that you actually believe in something? Surely a true nihilist wouldn't care whether other people reproduce or not.

News roundup, 20 May 2025

- Canada Post's negotiations with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers have broken down; a strike could occur as soon as Friday. Meanwhile a commission tasked with looking at the corporation's finances claims that it is "effectively insolvent" and is calling for an end to door-to-door delivery to residences.

- Canada, the UK, and France are threatening action, including targeted sanctions, if Israel doesn't allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

- Three NDP MPs (Jenny Kwan, Lori Idlout, and Leah Gazan) are criticizing what they say was inadequate consultation with caucus before the party's national council appointed Don Davies as interim leader.

- A car bomb detonated outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California on Saturday morning. The One person inside the vehicle died; nobody else was injured and the clinic is expected to reopen shortly. The FBI has not stated whether the person who died is a suspect in the case, however they did say they "had a person of interest" and were "not actively searching for a suspect".

- A sail training ship with the Mexican navy, the Cuauhtémoc, collided with the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday night, apparently after losing power. The bridge suffered little or no damage, but the ship's masts broke and fell onto the deck, killing at least 2 crew members and injuring around 20.

- The first officer of a Lufthansa Airbus A321 was incapacitated by a medical condition while the captain was using the washroom. The captain was eventually able to get back into the cockpit and the flight landed safely. The airline had, for a time, required that another crew member be in the cockpit before anyone leaves, following the dramatic mass murder/suicide by a first officer on the airline's subsidiary Germanwings, but the airline eventually abandoned the practice after concluding that it didn't improve safety (and apparently because crews found it inconvenient).

- Kingston police are using drones to spot people using their phones while driving. This has drawn the ire of an organization called the "Canadian Constitutional Foundation"; the same organization is vocal in its opposition to the BC government's bill to give them the power to respond quickly to American tariffs and has previously freaked over COVID-19 travel restrictions and vaccine mandates, which should give you an idea of the kind of people they are.

- The University of Manitoba's medical school will not be holding a valedictory speech at their convocation. This is likely an attempt to avoid controversy such as what happened when last year's valedictorian, Dr. Gem Newman, had the audacity to suggest that Israel shouldn't be bombing hospitals in Gaza and one of the school's big donors went into conniptions in response.

- Bruce Springsteen delivered a scathing rebuke of the Trump regime at a show in Manchester, England last week, calling the president "corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous". In response, Trump is calling for Springsteen, along with several other celebrities, to be investigated for their support of Kamala Harris' campaign.

News roundup, 16 Dec 2024

- Undeterred by the failure of the previous attempt, South Korea's National Assembly has impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol for his short-lived attempt to impose martial law. The president is now suspended from his role pending a hearing from the country's Constitutional Court; the prime minister, Han Duck-soo, will serve as interim president until the matter is resolved.

- Federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon has referred the dispute between Canada Post and its workers to the Canada Industrial Relations Board. He has further directed the board to order striking employees back to work if it determines the dispute is at an impasse. No doubt this is an attempt to be seen as helping to save Christmas, but it probably won't sit well with a lot of unionized federal employees. Conceivably this could create some opportunities for the NDP in places like Ottawa, since the current state of the Liberals is such that tactical voting to stop the Conservatives is probably futile, and in light of that civil servants might just decide to throw their vote behind a party that continues to stand up for them.

- The City of Winnipeg's decision to defer the full electrification of Winnipeg Transit's fleet is drawing negative reviews from some. Tom Brodbeck points out that while it is indeed true that the initial purchase costs of diesel buses are lower than electric buses, the actual operating costs (including maintenance) are higher, and suggests that the overall cost difference is pretty much a wash. He could also have pointed out that in many cases the service problems seen at Transit have more to do with the availability of drivers than buses, and that it will be a lot easier to get federal funding for electric buses now than it will be in another year. On a somewhat related note, the Amalgamated Transit Union is calling for fare evasion enforcement, ideally by community safety officers. They point out that most of the acts of violence against drivers and passengers come from fare evaders.

- Two women who are trying to sue a youth leader at a Winnipeg church for sexually assaulting them as well as the church for their alleged complicity have been ordered to front $50,000 each because they live outside the province and the court doesn't want any trouble collecting court costs if they lose.

- A whistleblower who alleged that OpenAI's use of copyright material goes beyond fair use has died in an apparent suicide. Naturally this has led to speculation that it wasn't really a suicide, though others have pointed out that it's quite possible for tech industry folks to make your life hell without taking any direct action to kill you; "you'll never work in this town again" applies to Palo Alto just as much as to Hollywood. In other OpenAI-related news, the company's CEO, Sam Altman, is donating a million dollars to Donald Trump's inauguration fund.

- Trump's transition team seeks to discard a policy of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which requires vehicle manufacturers to report report crashes if advanced driver-assistance or autonomous-driving technologies were engaged within 30 seconds of impact. Elon Musk vehemently opposes the policy, perhaps because 40 out of 45 fatal crashes reported under the policy have involved his company's vehicles.

- A 19 year old conscript in the Russian military was reportedly shot to death by his commander after refusing to sign a contract to fight in Ukraine, after attempts at persuasion using a whip failed to deliver the desired results.

- The Southern Chiefs' Organization has announced that their grand chief Jerry Daniels will be taking a leave of absence for "health reasons" following an incident in which he was hospitalized following a fight outside an Ottawa bar.

News roundup, 11 Dec 2024

- Not surprisingly, it appears that Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the death of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, had suffered some medical issues, including a back injury that required spinal fusion surgery; he had also experienced "brain fog" and suspected that he might have irritable bowel syndrome. He came from a very wealthy background; family and friends report that he suddenly stopped communicating with them about 6 months ago, and his mother reported him missing in November. Many have pointed out that Mangione is 26, which just happens to be the age when people are typically removed from their parents' health insurance coverage. His social media accounts seem to have been shut down, though one Redditor seems to have found his old Reddit posts and summarized them before they could be removed. One thing that's clear in any case - an awful lot of Americans think that the CEO got what was coming to him. Some people have been selling merchandise with the words "deny", "defend", and "depose" (words which were written on shell casings found at the murder scene), though Amazon removed them from sale as soon as they clued into what it was about.

- The Canadian Union of Postal Workers says it met with Canada Post for the first time in two weeks, submitting their latest proposal on Friday. The corporation says it is "extremely disappointed" with the proposal, suggesting that it may be quite some time before the dispute is settled.

- The BC Conservative caucus is in turmoil over the aftermath of the resignation of the vice-chair of the Vancouver Police Board. The board member, Comfort Sakoma-Fadugba, had made worrying remarks on social media about immigration and LBGT* issues; after Surrey-Cloverdale MLA Elenore Sturko (a former RCMP officer) told the media that she agreed with the resignation, much of the caucus turned on her. Then she defied a request from party leader John Rustad that she meet with Sakoma-Fadugba. I guess after losing an election that they think they should have won they're taking out their anger on each other, which is more than fine by me.

- A new solar farm and energy storage facility in California combines 384 MW of solar generation with 600 MWh worth of battery storage; this will increase to 758 MW of generation and 1,200 MWh of energy storage when the second phase is completed next year.

- I know nobody wants to hear this, but current levels of air travel are not sustainable. Emissions from tourism have surged in the last decade and now account for 9% of the global total. To be fair, on a per capita basis the owners of private jets are considerably worse, but people need to get it through their heads that you don't have to fly down to Mexico or Cuba every year. On a somewhat more promising note, researchers in Sweden are looking at ways to replace coal with hydrogen as the reducing agent in steel production.

News roundup, 15 Nov 2024

- Canada Post has been shut down by a strike as 55,000 CUPW workers walked off the job this morning.

- As expected, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been selected by Donald Trump for the key cabinet position of Secretary of Health and Human Services. Critics are calling Kennedy a "clear and present danger" to public health; I don't disagree, though it's a safe bet that anyone appointed by Trump is a clear and present danger to something important.

- As with several recent elections, polls in the 2024 US election underestimated Donald Trump's support by about 3%. This was the case across all the swing states. One possible explanation, of course, is that the kind of people who vote for Trump are also the kind of people who think pollsters are part of the Deep State or similar nonsense. Based on exit polls, it is also apparent that Trump did especially well among the "late deciders". Exit polling has also revealed that white voters to represent a larger share of the vote than in recent elections. This might mean that Trump was uniquely successful in bringing out low-propensity voters, or else that nonwhite voters are becoming disillusioned and not turning out for the Democrats the way they have in the past.

- The Manitoba government has announced that the crackdown on retail theft will be made permanent by providing funding for 12 new police officers. Probably a necessary move; hopefully other equally necessary but less visible measures to address the underlying social conditions will not be forgotten, though.

- The Alberta government has purged the leadership of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo). Finance minister Nate Horner attempts to justify this based on efficiency, but this is disputed by others, and the fact that the corporation had been exploring the possibility of creating a fund focused on the transition to a carbon-neutral economy probably had something to do with the matter.

- The RCMP are investigating after hateful letters were sent to staff at an elementary school in Vanderhoof, BC. Authorities are keeping tight-lipped about the content of the letters, but I'd wager that it had something to do with sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) lessons in classes.

News roundup, 12 Nov 2024

- The FBI is investigating after numerous black Americans report receiving racist text messages in the wake of last week's election, telling them to report to a plantation to pick cotton. Alarmingly, many of the texts addressed the recipients by name.

- The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has given notice that they will be in a legal strike position as of Friday, though they have not formally set a date to actually walk out.

- An addictions treatment centre that had purchased numerous units in a condo complex in Winnipeg's Lindenwoods neighbourhood as transitional housing has received a cease and desist order after the condo association took them to court. The complex had a policy against using units for "business purposes", and while acting as a regular landlord was exempt, the court has ruled that this was not and is forcing the centre's clients to leave. Because "property values" or something. Some of the clients had apparently been followed by other residents and had their pictures taken. Well, that's Lindenwoods for you I guess...

- A poll has found that none of the potential candidates for the leadership of the federal Liberals is particularly popular with the Canadian public. Mark Carney scored highest, with 18% of those polled approving of him, but "none of the above" was the choice of 26% of respondents.

- Gwynne Dyer attempts to put last week's US election results in perspective, saying for instance that while the plan to push ahead with oil exploration is worrisome, the global demand for oil is declining, which might limit the severity of such moves. On the other hand Dyer thinks it likely that Ukraine will be thrown under the bus and that Gaza is pretty much finished (then again, Gaza's prospects were dim regardless of the outcome of the election).

- Century-old weather records are tumbling; last Thursday it was almost 23°C in Sainte-Clotilde, Quebec. Slightly more promising is the fact that deforestation in the Amazon has dropped by over 30% compared to the previous year. However, reading the fine print it becomes apparent that it's not as good as it sounds; fire damage is classified as "degradation" rather than deforestation, and there have been a lot of fires.