News roundup, 21 Sept 2026

- New polling gives Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham a significant lead for this fall's municipal election. Notably, however, 51% of voters say they are undecided; 20% said they would vote for Gillingham with Kevin Klein at 8% and 4% for Mike Vogiatzakis. 13% said that they would not vote at all. While it may be a reassuring sign that Klein and especially Vogiatzakis don't seem to be making much of an impact, there's a caveat in that the kind of person who would vote for Vogiatzakis might also the sort of person to not answer pollsters' questions about the matter.

- Kerry-Lynne Findlay has resigned as leader of the BC Conservative party, mere hours after Surrey-Serpentine River MLA Linda Hepner became the 14th MLA to resign or be expelled from the party's caucus since August. It is widely suspected that premier David Eby is considering a snap election call in order to take advantage of the Conservatives' disarray. 

- BC's efforts to improve rural healthcare by requiring foreign trained doctors to spend a few years working in remote areas before being able to practice in major cities was struck down by the province's top court.

- The far-right AfD has won the largest share of the vote in elections in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, winning 38% of votes cast. Fortunately the Social Democrats were a close second at 36% and are expected to gain the support of enough of the remaining parties to form a government; unfortunately AfD are not likely to go away anytime soon. In Berlin, which also held an election for its combined state/municipal government, the leftwing Die Linke (which has its roots in the East German Communist Party, though it is considered a democratic socialist party today) won a plurality and may be able to form a government with the support of the Greens and Social Democrats. The real losers in both elections were the centre-right Christian Democrats, who appear to have gotten less than the 5% threshold needed to win seats in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania legislature; they don't seem to have done very well in Berlin either.

- Donald Trump has announced in a caps-laden Truth Social post that he is banning reporters from CNN, Politico, and MS NOW (the former MSNBC) from the White House grounds.

- Sleep medicine experts continue to weigh in on Manitoba's move to permanent daylight saving time. The consensus among them continues to be that ending the time change is good, but leaving it on DST is the wrong way to go about it. The main concern has to do with the impact of a lack of morning sun on circadian rhythms, which they say teenagers in particular are susceptible to.

- The FBI has issued a warning to ICE agents that they should be wary of "tradwife" dating site profiles, saying that these could be honeypot accounts set up to dox the agents. Details about whether this has actually happened are sparse at best. Some posters in this Reddit thread thinks that the real purpose of this warning is to instill a general sense of paranoia and distrust of the agents among outsiders, and/or to make people forget about Kash Patel's rather embarrassing public statements of late. In any case, the story has spawned the best description I've seen of "tradwives" in this article - "conservative women who dress like the women in The Sound of Music, but without the opposition to the Anschluss".

News roundup, 18 Sept 2026

- Manitoba is the latest province to do away with semi-annual clock changes. The province will remain on daylight saving time rather than switching back to standard time in the fall. This follows a survey which found that 92% of respondents wanted to eliminate time changes; 58% preferred DST while 34% preferred standard time. Notably, health experts generally agree with permanent standard time rather than DST, though most of them also consider permanent DST to be preferable to changing twice a year as the time change itself leads to more sleep disruption, resulting in an increase in heart attacks and strokes as well as more accidents on the road and in the workplace.

- Tamara Lich, one of the leaders of the so-called "Freedom Convoy", has been stymied in her attempt to get an exemption to the house arrest she has been under since her conviction for mischief in other offenses as a result of her role in the protest. She has previously been granted exemptions to visit her grandchildren, and has also been allowed to travel to other provinces for the job she holds with the far-right Rebel News, but this time she was trying to get permission to leave the country in order to do several things she claims are related to the job; these included attending press conferences at the White House as well as going on a week long cruise. Evidently that was a bridge too far.

- The BC Conservative Party apparently hired a private investigator to spy on a number of people, including several sitting MLAs (current as well as former caucus members) as well as a former party president and an NDP staffer. This and other upheavals in the party has added to suspicions that Premier David Eby plans to call a snap election to take advantage of a divided opposition.

- Newly unsealed evidence has revealed details of an investigation into corruption in the Toronto Police Service. Besides drug trafficking, officers are alleged to have met with criminals to enable them to access secret databases; among other things this led to an attempted assassination of a corrections officer, apparently at the request of a man currently held at the Toronto South Detention Centre who has been linked to suspected drug lord (and former Olympian) Ryan Wedding.

- Australians appear to be going all-in on electric cars. Sales of electric vehicles there exceeded those of gas powered cars in August for the first time. The surge in fuel prices as a result of the US/Israeli war on Iran is a big factor, though if we're honest the fact that the country no longer has an auto industry of its own probably adds to their willingness to buy imports from China, since it won't cost them any jobs.

- Israeli communities near the border with Gaza are facing an invasion of rats from the territory. The devastation has created ideal conditions for rats to do well; they have bred prodigiously (as they are wont to do) and have caused significant damage to agriculture, with some locations losing 70% of their harvest to the animals.

- A 13 year old Maryland boy was hospitalized after being attacked by a rabid beaver while swimming. Besides needing rabies vaccinations he required surgery to repair nerve damage from the attack.

- FBI director Kash Patel is defending his agency's decision to relax some of its hiring restrictions. Notably, under the new rules, having committed bestiality is no longer an automatic disqualification. Perhaps they want to do a lot of recruiting in the rural South.

News roundup, 20 March 2026

- Iran's retaliatory measures seem to have escalated. A strike on natural gas facilities in Qatar has reportedly wiped out 17% of the country's export capacity for at least three years. Whether the MAGAts will be able to draw a connection between their Dear Leader's war and the inevitable increase in the cost of home heating is an open question. While a handful of those people might actually change their ways, the best possible outcome for most of them would be for them to become sufficiently disillusioned that they don't bother to vote anymore. And some will stubbornly keep voting for Trump and his associates out of sheer spite, taking consolation in the fact that it's directly hurting people that they hate - assuming that there are even meaningful elections by then.

- Generally, in a functioning democracy law enforcement is supposed to get a warrant to access private information such as cellphone location data. But what if this data is already being sold by data brokers? The FBI under Kash Patel has been buying data from said brokers in order to track people; defenders of the practice argue that this is publicly available information and thus a warrant should not be necessary. Maybe the real question we should be asking is whether this sort of data should be allowed to be sold on the open market in the first place. For instance, if the authorities can buy this data, then presumably so can a stalker.

- London mayor Sadiq Khan is calling on Labour to campaign on rejoining the EU in the next general election. Certainly some recent polling suggests that this might be a good move; the extent to which this would translate into actual votes is far from clear, though.

- The war in Iran has helped to focus the minds of European leaders on renewable energy. Trump wants to export more American natural gas to Europe, but the spike in prices instead incentivized Europeans to try to replace natural gas with renewables.

- In some parts of the world, you can buy solar panels that just plug into a regular outlet and feed power back into your house's wiring. In some US states, electric utilities are trying to keep them out, claiming that it's a safety concern for their lineworkers (suggesting that it could still lead to power being supplied to a line that a worker thinks is dead because it's not being powered by the utility). Advocates say that this hasn't been a problem in other places and suspect that what the utilities are really concerned about is the "safety" of their shareholders' investments.

- Russia has issued new guidelines for physicians, calling on doctors to ask women how many children they want and to refer them to psychologists if they give "zero" as an answer. The country has already imposed restrictions on abortion and prohibited "childfree propaganda", but evidently those measures aren't doing the job in bringing the birth rate up to a level acceptable to Putin.

- Two Texas-based scientists have found a way to make usable soil from simulated lunar surface material, by combining it with vermicompost and certain fungi which are effective at sequestering heavy metals so they aren't taken up by plants so much. They've managed to grow chickpeas to the point of producing seed, though the success of those seeds in producing new plants remains to be seen.

News roundup, 10 Oct 2025

- The Israeli government has ratified a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, calling for a "suspension of hostilities" between the two regimes within 24 hours, and the release of 20 Israeli prisoners as well as the remains of 28 others. Of course, Gaza is pretty much uninhabitable now, which presumably suits the Israelis fine, since they'll probably just send in a bunch of settlers to rebuild the place for themselves. Trump is of course talking a lot about this, presumably hoping to convince the Nobel committee to give him the Nobel Peace Prize. Speaking of which, many Norwegian politicians and journalists are seriously concerned about how Trump will react to not receiving the prize, now that it's been awarded to someone else. One columnist and analyst doesn't even rule out the possibility of Trump declaring Norway an enemy.

- Mark Bray, the Rutgers University historian who is moving to Europe to escape death threats, showed up at Newark International Airport with his family on Wednesday night, only to be told at the boarding gate that their flight had been cancelled. They were able to rebook a flight for Thursday night, which suggests that this was not the action of the regime but of one of its overly enthusiastic supporters. No doubt the MAGA crowd would still like us to believe that they aren't fascists, but they aren't making a very good case for themselves.

- FBI director Kash Patel has disbanded a working group studying corruption and fired several agents, saying that they had "weaponized law enforcement against the American people". This comes after the group had placed several Republican senators under investigation.

- Vyacheslav Leontyev, a former editor of the Russian newspaper Pravda, has died after falling from his fifth floor apartment in Moscow. Authorities have ruled his death a suicide; as we know, depression is a very common affliction among those with insider knowledge of the Russian state.

- Elections BC has ruled that signs that billionaire Chip Wilson, founder of Lululemon, violated third-party advertising rules when he posted signs in front of his Vancouver mansion declaring the NDP to be "Communist" during the last election campaign. He was fined $600; for perspective, the signs themselves cost him over $1,600 and the maximum penalty for a violation is $10,000.

- A licensed counsellor in Colorado is challenging the state's ban on "conversion therapy" for LGBT* minors on "free speech" grounds. Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court is widely expected to rule in the counsellor's favour.

- Researchers in Switzerland are growing human neurons from stem cells in order to make artificial brains that can be integrated into computer systems.

- The mayor-elect of the German town of Herdecke suffered serious injuries in a stabbing on Tuesday. Given the current political climate around the world, an assassination attempt is the first thing that comes to mind, however she has apparently pointed the finger at her adopted daughter.

News roundup, 29 Sept 2025

- A man opened fire on parishioners at a Mormon church in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan on Sunday, and set fire to the building. Four people were killed before the suspect was shot to death by police. He was a veteran of the Iraq war, and social media pictures show him wearing a "Trump 2020" shirt, something that will doubtless be downplayed by the authorities.

- Russia launched a barrage of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least four people. The attack on Kyiv was one of the one of the biggest since the full-scale invasion began. Among the buildings hit was a cardiology clinic; one could be forgiven for questioning whether that constitutes a legitimate military target.

- Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham is asking Transit to look into the cost of extending late night bus service. Of the numerous complaints about the changes to Transit's network, many relate to reductions in service towards the end of the day, when some people still have to get home from work.

- US ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra is musing about doing away with preclearance at Canadian airports. Hoekstra says that the decline in tourism from Canada calls into question whether it's worth the expense; Canadian airlines and airport authorities are wondering what will happen to cross-border ticket sales if preclearance is eliminated. Some folks in this Reddit thread think that the real motivation is to boost the number of immigration-related detentions, either for propaganda purposes or to funnel money to the private companies who run the detention facilities. Viewed that way it kind of makes sense; if someone is deemed inadmissable during preclearance, they're still in Canada and can't be hauled off to Alligator Alcatraz or similar facilities.

- Several FBI agents who were photographed kneeling at a protest about the murder of George Floyd in 2020 have been fired by the agency. They say they did this as a deescalation tactic, but photos of this naturally drew the ire of the far right at the time. Their conduct had been reviewed by the agency and they had been cleared, but the new regime was evidently not satisfied with this and wanted them gone.

- Proposals for bail reform in Manitoba are running up against an awkward reality - the fact that the province's jails are already overcrowded and understaffed, and that about 75% of the people incarcerated in these institutions are on remand. Presumably what's really needed is to speed up the court process so people aren't on remand for so long, but that's easier said than done, given that the slow pace of justice in this country has been the subject of discussion for decades with no signs of progress. I'd think hiring more prosecutors would be a start, though.

News roundup, 28 April 2025

- Polls have already opened in Atlantic Canada. Information about where to watch the results once the polls close can be found here.

- Donald Trump will not shut up about his desire to take over Canada. He'd been a bit quiet about this lately, no doubt being advised about the risk of electing a less friendly government up here, but it seems he can't help himself.

- 11 people were killed and numerous others injured when someone drove an SUV into a crowd at a Filipino community festival in Vancouver on Saturday. The suspect was grabbed by bystanders and held until the police arrived; he has been charged with second-degree murder. The police have dismissed the idea that this was a terrorist attack, and Vancouver mayor Ken Sim stated that the suspect has a significant mental health history, but it's difficult to assess these claims because a publication ban prevents the details from being released.

- The FBI showed up at a Wisconsin courtroom to arrest a man who was in court for another matter. The judge hearing the case, Hannah Dugan, refused to cooperate with them due to the lack of a warrant, whereupon the FBI arrested her as well. Stuff like this does not bode well for judicial independence in America.

- CentreVenture Development Corporation has agreed to fund a study to evaluate the possibility of saving Holy Trinity Anglican Church, which faces possible demolition due to structural issues.

- China has successfully built a nuclear reactor that runs on thorium (more accurately, it runs on uranium-233 which is bred from thorium). It's a small facility, generating only two megawatts, but it's an important proof of concept. Notably, such reactors are much more difficult to weaponize, due to the difficulty of handling uranium-233 to shape it into the kind of structure that can be imploded to make a nuclear explosion.

- Manitoba's Progressive Conservative Party has chosen former CFL star turned MLA Obby Khan as its new leader. Khan will probably poll somewhat better in Winnipeg than opponent Wally Daudrich, though he still probably faces an uphill battle to win the next election.

- The MAGA crowd has created a website, Public Square, which bills itself as "the anti-woke online marketplace" to show Trump supporters which businesses they should be supporting. To their chagrin, the sane crowd discovered the site and has been using it to find out which businesses to boycott.

FBI raids homes of antiwar activists

Apparently they were searching for evidence of "material support of terrorism":

The homes of five Twin Cities activists, including three prominent leaders of the Twin Cities antiwar movement, were raided Friday by the FBI in what an agency spokesman described as an "investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism." The office of an antiwar organization also was reportedly raided.

An FBI spokesman Steve Warfield confirmed that warrants were issued on six Minneapolis addresses this morning.

Among the homes raided were the apartments of Jessica Sundin, who was a principal leader of the mass antiwar march of 10,000 on the opening day of the Republican National Convention two years ago, and Mick Kelly, who was prominent in that protest and among those who announced plans to march on the Democratic National Convention in Minneapolis, if the city is selected to host it in 2012. Neither has been arrested.

From the Star-Tribune (h/t bludstone at ontd_political, bold following bludstone's example). So there's nothing obvious to pin on these people, though they're doing their best to find something:

Dooley said the search warrants cited a federal law making it a violation to provide, attempt to provide or conspire to provide material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations.

In the search warrant on Kelly's apartment, Dooley said, "It appears they are looking into any connections, travel, etc., to Palestine and Colombia, also around the United States," he said. He said that in Kelly's case, the warrant mentions a political organization called Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Dooley said, "They are looking at any connection between him and 'FTO's,' foreign terrorist organizations, including but not limited to FARC, PFLP and Hezbollah," and any support, contact or association with those groups. FARC is a revolutionary peasant organization in Columbia, and PFLP is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Hezoballah is a political and paramilitary organization based in Lebanon.

Dooley said the search warrant mentions documents, files, books, photographs, videos, souvenirs, war relics, notebooks, address books diaries journals, maps or any other evidence in electronic for that shows Kelly's connections to those groups, and whether he supported or recruited people or talked to them. It also mentions potential co-conspirators, Dooley said.

Hmm. Would having communicated with a member of one of the aforementioned organizations be considered "material support of terrorism"? If not, what are they trying to do? I'm thinking the real reason is simply chill; they want activists to think twice about talking to people who support causes the US government disagrees with. For instance, if you were going to book a Palestinian activist to speak at an event, you might be a bit unnerved by thoughts like "what if s/he turns out to be a member of Hezbollah or somthing? Could I be convicted of supporting terrorism?" Indeed, you might well think twice about bringing in such a speaker, just in case there was something you didn't know. And most likely, that's what the authorities want.