News roundup, 2 April 2026

- Donald Trump claims that the US has just about finished the job in Iran. Nobody with any sense believes him, of course.

- Chrysler's parent company, Stellantis, is reportedly in talks with Chinese automaker Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology Co to build EVs at a closed plant in Brampton. If this goes ahead, there might still be hope for an auto industry in Ontario.

- UCP MLA Jason Stephan, who represents the constituency of Red Deer South in Alberta's legislature, has written a column endorsing the idea of a referendum on Alberta separating from Canada. The actual column can be seen here if you're curious; he seems to be working from the same style guide as a certain prominent politician to the south. Yet Danielle Smith seems to think that disloyalty to Canada is not a reason to take disciplinary measures against a caucus member.

- The US Supreme Court has ruled that Colorado's law banning "conversion therapy" for LGBT* kids is unconstitutional. The court believes that prohibiting therapists from telling kids that they need the devil prayed or beaten out of them is a violation of said therapists' free speech rights.

- A Toronto doctor has had her licence revoked after writing nearly 1,500 letters purporting to exempt the bearers from mask and vaccine mandates during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (and incidentally charging the rubes up to $300 per letter). Dr. Celeste Thirlwell was found guilty of "dishonourable and unprofessional" conduct. Don't feel too bad for her, though; I'm sure she'll make a comfortable living off a GiveSendGo campaign and maybe a speaking tour or two.

- Canada Post plans to end home delivery for households that still get it (it ended for many households during the Harper era, of course).  

- Following a 2023 court ruling, millions of Americans may now be eligible for Canadian citizenship by descent. No doubt a number will take advantage of this in order to escape from the current regime down there.

- The Artemis II mission successfully launched from Cape Canaveral yesterday, marking the first time in more than half a century that humans have gone beyond low earth orbit. The mission is scheduled to last 10 days.

- Anthropic AI is using copyright takedown requests to try to suppress the circulation of the source code for their Claude chatbot, which was inadvertently leaked to the internet. Given AI companies' rather cavalier attitude towards other people's intellectual property, it's hard not to see an irony here.

News roundup, 4 Feb 2026

- Bill Blair has resigned his seat as the MP for Scarborough Southwest in order to take up a new position as Canada's high commissioner to the UK. Doly Begum, who has represented the seat for the NDP at the provincial level since 2018, has announced that she will be running for the Liberals to replace Blair, sparking condemnation from the federal party.

- The seven states that depend on the Colorado River basin are at an impasse about how to manage the long-term drought the area is experiencing. The upstream states - Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming - are refusing to cut their own consumption, saying that the problem lies with the other three states in the basin (Nevada, California, and Arizona), which consume far more water but which, on the other hand, have taken some measures to cut their consumption. The New York Times article on the matter takes the position that this is entirely the fault of the upper basin states. I'm not so sure; while those states should doubtless be making cuts, one has to question whether growing alfalfa in a desert for the Saudis is a wise or sustainable industry.

- Colorado is challenging the Trump regime's order to keep an aging coal-fired power plant open. Even the state's power utilities want to close the plant, but Trump can't tolerate any kind of move away from coal, so...

- Thousands of Epstein-related documents have been removed from the Department of Justice website after some of his victims said that they were identified in the documents.

- At least 17 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in response to an Israeli soldier being wounded by gunfire. Israel seems to take "one of ours, all of yours" seriously.

- The federal government is considering amending the Canadian Migratory Birds Regulations to allow the hunting of Tundra Swans in the prairie provinces. This has raised concerns among some that this will lead to collateral damage to the more vulnerable Trumpeter Swan, which looks very similar and could easily be mistaken for the more common species.

News roundup, 14 Aug 2024

- The City of Winnipeg is joining with 17 other municipalities in the metro area to come up with a loose plan for what the region will look like in 2050. Of course, whenever you talk about collective planning for a metro area, you trigger something in the reptilian brains of some of the simpler folk out in the sticks, resulting in people showing up at public meetings utterly convinced that they're going to be restricted to their own neighbourhoods because that's what some far-out unbathed basement dwellers have told them in the TikTok videos they make from their cars.

- The former clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, a Republican who claimed that the 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump, has been found guilty of... trying to rig the election in favour of Donald Trump. It's sometimes said that "every accusation is a confession" with these people; in this case that adage applies perfectly.

- The Israelis bombed another school that was being used as a shelter for displaced people in Gaza, killing over 100 of them. Predictably, they claimed they were after Hamas operatives, but almost as predictably there is nothing to confirm the truth of this claim.

- Earlier this summer, independent videographer Samuel Seligson accompanied a group of pro-Palestinian protesters in New York City and filmed some of their actions. The protesters hurled red paint at the homes of several directors of the Brooklyn Museum as well as some other targets. While targeting their homes does seem to be crossing a line, the fact that Seligson has been accused of complicity with them and charged with felony hate crimes would seem to cross a line of its own.

- Ilhan Omar, the left-leaning member of Congress from Minnesota, has won her primary despite the efforts of the pro-Israel crowd to get rid of her. Two other left-leaning Democrats, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, were not so fortunate; both were defeated in their respective primaries after millions of dollars were poured into their opponents' campaigns.

- Ukraine is claiming success in their recent cross-border raid into the Kursk region of Russia. They say they now control over 1,000 km² of territory, though this is viewed with skepticism by some - but if nothing else they seem to be getting a badly needed morale boost as well as causing difficulties for Russia's activities in Ukraine.

- A Ukrainian refugee mother and son were viciously attacked with a baseball bat in an apparent robbery.

- A Texas judge who was set to hear a lawsuit from Elon Musk's X/Twitter against advertisers who pulled out of the platform has recused himself following revelations that he owns stock in Tesla as well as in Unilever, one of the defendants. I guess while having a conflict of interest is no big deal, having a conflict between your conflicts of interest is too much even for a Texas judge.

Decline of pollinators having an effect

Notwithstanding the potential breakthrough on colony collapse disorder, it's worth noting that even if that turns out to be successful, there are a lot of other problems facing pollinators in many parts of the world. Given this, it shouldn't be surprising that it's having an effect:

A decline in bees and global warming are having a damaging effect on the pollination of plants, new research claims.

Researchers have found that pollination levels of some plants have dropped by up to 50 per cent in the last two decades.

The "pollination deficit" could see a dramatic reduction in the yield from crops.

The research, carried out in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, is the first to show that the effect is real and serves as a "warning" to Britain which if anything has seen an even greater decline in bees and pollinators.

"This serves as a warning to other countries," said Professor James Thomson at the University of Toronto, who carried out the research.

"For quite some time people have been suggesting that pollinators are in decline and that this could have an effect on pollination.

"I believe that this is the first real demonstration that pollination levels are getting worse. I believe it is a significant decline. I believe the pollination levels have dropped by as much as 50 per cent.

This is serious, as it could significantly affect the world's food supply if it happens in a lot of places. Interesting too is the explanation Thomson offers for the decline:

"Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more important factor."

Interesting. So for instance if the bees come out of hibernation based on temperature, while the flowers opened based on some internal clock, any significant climate change could cause the bees to emerge too early to pollinate the flowers. Similar concerns have been raised about possible mismatches between emergences of boreal forest insects and the migrations of songbirds that prey on them. This could cause a decline in the birds and/or an increase in insect damage to the forest, with unpredictable results. Just another example of what a messy experiment we're conducting with the biosphere...