News roundup, 22 July 2024

- Joe Biden has abandoned his bid for reelection and endorsed Kamala Harris. European leaders are praising him for his decision (even if it comes a bit late in the game) as well as for his actions as President. One thing is clear - you likely won't see much talk about the candidates' ages coming from the Republicans anymore.

- Many Republican strategists fear that their legislative agenda will alienate women. Many Democrats hope for that very thing; certainly if Harris becomes the candidate as expected she is expected to put this front and centre. And there are promising signs that the Republicans may have peaked too early; hopefully a relatively fresh and young candidate will be able to take advantage of this.

- While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly made statements about the need for caution with AI, whistleblowers from his company say that in actual practice he is using the traditional Silicon Valley "move fast and break things" approach.

- Over half of Turkey's power grid is now supplied by renewables, though they have a long way to go to catch up with places like the EU. The shift has been recent, and seems to be primarily motivated by a desire to reduce dependence on Russia, who supplies most of their fossil fuels.

- The zebra mussel situation at Clear Lake in Riding Mountain National Park is not looking good. Parks Canada is still looking at what measures they can take, but this ship may well have sailed. In other invasive species-related news, some lakes in Manitoba seem to have been illegally stocked with largemouth bass (a popular species with sport anglers). This is a potential problem for native trout and pickerel species.

- Manitoba's Residential Tenancies Branch has ordered the owners of that North End apartment block to reverse the eviction of all their tenants. Still not a good look, especially given that the landlord threw out some tenants' possessions without warning. The province warns that additional orders, and charges, may be pending. In other somewhat promising Winnipeg housing news, a long-vacant block in the Riverview neighbourhood has been purchased by Fisher River Cree Nation and may well be up and running by next year.

- CO₂ levels are now comparable to what they are thought to have been in the middle of the Pliocene epoch, around 3 million years ago. At that time the mean global temperature is estimated to have been about 3°C above present levels; this can be expected to happen over the next few decades unless dramatic changes are made right quick (and possibly even then). Much of Greenland was ice-free at the time; sea level may have been close to 10 metres above current levels. For an idea of what that might look like, check out this site.

- It's so hot in parts of the US that pop cans are under significantly more pressure than usual. When carried in airplanes, they're sometimes bursting as a result. In 20 cases, injuries have resulted.

- A former Ukrainian MP was fatally shot on Friday. She had been a member of an ultranationalist party and had drawn criticism for not considering Russian-speaking Ukrainians to be properly Ukrainian; nonetheless, this is not the optimal way of dealing with people with problematic views.

- Thefts of catalytic converters have dropped significantly in the past year. Some of this may be attributable to legislation that makes it harder for thieves to sell them, but a big part of it is simply that the precious metals in them aren't worth as much as they were before.

- At least 12 Russian soldiers died after eating poisoned watermelons in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

News roundup, 28 May 2024

- The IDF bombed a refugee camp in Rafah, killing at least 45 people. They then followed it up by hitting the city's hospitals. The camp was not in one of the places where civilians had been ordered to evacuate, and was full of people who had been forced out of other parts of Gaza. One has to say that when you herd people into a small part of their homeland, and then bomb that area, the optics are very bad.

- The US House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce has requested a briefing from their National Intelligence Director Avril Haines regarding the firing of two Chinese-born scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

- Parks Canada is sticking to their guns regarding the recreational watercraft ban at Clear Lake in the hope of nipping an outbreak of zebra mussels in the bud. I have to respectfully disagree with the provincial government here; while a unilateral decision might seem heavy handed, you need to be heavy handed when dealing with something like this if you want any chance of stopping the spread. I do agree that measures should be taken to help businesses harmed by the decision, though.

- A Canadian senator has introduced a bill, known as the Climate-Aligned Finance Act, which would force financial institutions as well as pension funds to move their investments out of emissions-intensive sectors of the economy. In addition it would require lending to fossil fuel companies to be treated as higher risk. The bill is not expected to pass; nonetheless, the mere fact that it's being discussed is sending the likes of the Canadian Bankers' Association into conniptions. Now what did Ken Livingstone say about bankers again?

- The troubles at the Food Fare on Portage Avenue seem to be escalating, as cars belonging to the store's co-owner and a relative were torched in the store parking lot. The people seen lighting the fire in the surveillance video had apparently been kicked out of the store for shoplifting the previous day.

- The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), the provincial police watchdog, recommended that three Lethbridge police officers involved in spying on an NDP MLA should face criminal charges, however provincial prosecutors have declined to take up the case.

- A company run by former Tory cabinet minister Kevin Klein is buying three newspapers, including the Winnipeg Sun, from Postmedia.

- The Beautiful Plains School Division in southwestern Manitoba is suing a Carberry woman for defamation after the woman made multiple allegations on social media about teachers at the schools her children attend.

- Upon seeing a distraught man walking along Highway 407 in Brampton, two drivers for Purolator put on their four-ways and drove slowly behind him to keep him from getting run over. Hopefully he'll eventually be thankful rather than angry that they foiled his apparent suicide attempt. 

News roundup, 10 May 2024

- Solar and wind power are the fastest growing electricity sources in history. Renewables now represent 30% of global electricity production. Meanwhile Danielle Smith continues to make a fool of herself on this issue (and numerous others).

- Drought conditions have resulted in Lake Winnipeg's water level being the lowest it's been in 35 years, and the second lowest since Manitoba Hydro's Jenpeg control structure began regulating the lake level.

- Police moved in to forcibly clear a protest camp from the University of Calgary yesterday, using flashbangs (they claim that this was a response to aggressive behaviour by the protesters). The encampment at the University of Manitoba remains and has stayed peaceful, though the university has cited the existence of the encampment as a reason to cancel a public event on campus.

- Parks Canada has banned watercraft from Clear Lake in Riding Mountain National Park in the hope of containing a potential zebra mussel outbreak. Interestingly, there has been some speculation among cottagers that the appearance of zebra mussels may have been a deliberate attempt at sabotage; on this Reddit thread a poster attempts to draw a link to an activist who was accused of planning an armed blockade in the park in 2022, though no actual evidence is presented and it's hard to say if this is something real, or just an attempt to poison the proverbial well.

- Legislation introduced in Ontario in 2022 which changed the fees paid to municipalities by developers led to a backlash from several municipalities. In response, the provincial government launched audits to determine the impact - only to cancel them (presumably because they had the potential to make the government look bad).

- Tim Hortons is testing new fibre coffee cup lids at some locations. Conservative MP Lianne Rood is up in arms about the new lids, which she considers to be "woke" because they aren't made of plastic.

- The town of Oakville, Ontario has voted to turn down money from the federal government because they don't want to densify their neighbourhoods. Some important context - despite officially continuing to call itself a "town", Oakville is larger than many cities in the province, at over 213,000 people. Apparently the residents want to continue to delude themselves into thinking that they're simple, small-town folk who don't want none of that big city stuff, and certainly nothing like apartments or fourplexes that might bring those darned poors to town. They also famously banned clotheslines until a previous government prohibited municipalities from banning them.

- The former CAO of the Rural Municipality of North Cypress-Langford has pleaded guilty to diverting about $30,000 to the Carberry Curling Club to replace money she'd stolen from the club while serving as their treasurer. I'm guessing that a gambling problem was involved; that seems to be how this sort of thing usually happens.

- Rex Murphy (or "Nervous Rex", as the good folks at CODCO called him) has died, though not before spouting a lot of rightwing propaganda in recent years.