News roundup, 25 June 2025

- The ceasefire in the Israel-Iran conflict seems to be holding for the time being. Meanwhile there are some doubts about whether the US strikes on Iran's nuclear sites were as effective as Trump claims.

- Heat warnings are in place for a large portion of North America, including the US Midwest and east coast as well as parts of Ontario, Quebec, and even Nova Scotia. Even overnight temperatures are hovering in the high twenties in some cities.

- Kat Cammack, a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Florida who serves as co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, found herself in a dangerous situation due to experiencing an ectopic pregnancy. It seems doctors were initially reluctant to treat her due to fears that new anti-abortion legislation could be used against them, although they eventually went ahead and saved her life. For her part, Cammack blames the messaging from Democrats and pro-choice activists for the doctors' fears, which she says are unfounded.

- A Norwegian tourist says he was denied entry into the US because a search of his phone revealed a meme that made fun of JD Vance. This is DPRK-level pettiness, and his handling while they were waiting for a flight to deport him on, while not yet in DPRK territory, certainly doesn't sound like how a well-functioning democracy is supposed to behave.

- Leftwing candidate Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, defeating former state governor Andrew Cuomo. In the general election he will be facing off against incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent, and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels vigilante organization. The possibility has also been raised of Cuomo also running as an independent. Meanwhile another Democratic primary, for a seat in Florida's state senate, featured two siblings facing off against each other. LaVon Bracy Davis defeated her brother Randolph Bracy in that contest.

- Flin Flon residents who were evacuated due to wildfires will be able to return home as of this morning. The city was spared direct damage from the fires, though residents fear smoke damage, not to mention the prospect of cleaning out the contents of freezers and the like.

News roundup, 4 June 2025

- The Manitoba government has announced that around 1,000 hotel rooms have been made available for evacuees from the north. Some of this is the result of the cancellation of a conference that was being held in Winnipeg for Manitoba and Saskatchewan courtroom staff. Some evacuees are still having to go further afield though; hundreds are now as far away as Niagara Falls. In other wildfire news, much of the the village of Denare Beach, Saskatchewan was destroyed on Monday. Flin Flon is still intact but faces potential threats from all directions. And the chief of Pimicikamak Cree Nation is calling for the RCMP to help round up residents who are refusing to leave.

- A lawsuit filed in a Calgary court alleges that the Red Deer Public School Division, upon hearing a report that a Czech exchange student attending one of their schools had sexually assaulted a teenage girl, got the suspect out of the country before police could investigate, and even destroyed evidence. One might hope that there would be pressure for criminal charges against school division officials for this, but the locals are no doubt too busy trying to keep the drag queens out of their city to deal with people who actually aided and abetted a sexual offender. And in this Reddit thread it is alleged that the chair of the school board is an ex-cop who describes herself as a "proud Conservative". Wonder why she's so soft on crime then?

- Alberta now has 710 cases of measles; of these, six are in the Edmonton region and 13 in Calgary. In other words, it's not that Albertans per se are backward and unenlightened, it's just that rural Albertans are backward and unenlightened. I suspect you could draw a pretty direct line to the increased political polarization in that province; a lot of people who are of a broadly conservative bent would previously have gone along with such things as vaccination because it's what you're supposed to do, but now defying any kind of measures for the common good is such a part of the conservative identity that they follow the blue shepherds all the way to the slaughterhouse.

- Elon Musk is now calling Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" an abomination due to its impact on the deficit. Some think this could motivate some Republican senators to vote against the bill, but that remains to be seen.

- An Idaho woman who was jailed for two months for her involvement in the Jan 6 putsch has apparently had a significant change of heart. She declined the presidential pardon she was offered, saying that she and her co-conspirators were guilty and that the pardons are just an attempt to push a false narrative about what happened on that day.

- The sheriff's office in Johnson County, Texas obtained data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reading cameras across the US in order to investigate whether a woman left the state to get an abortion.

- Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is suing interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba for false arrest and malicious prosecution following his arrest on a trespassing charge after he attempted to accompany three Democratic members of Congress for an oversight tour of an immigration detention facility.

- A number of US states have amended their building codes to require roofs on new builds to be reflective, in order to limit heating. This did not sit well with the manufacturers of the synthetic rubber traditionally used for making some kinds of roofs - and they successfully lobbied Tennessee to repeal the new rule. 

- Actor Jonathan Joss, best known for his voice role in the animated series King of the Hill, was shot dead in an apparent anti-gay hate crime on Saturday.  

News roundup, 3 June 2025

- Leaders of several First Nations in northern Manitoba who are experiencing large-scale evacuations are calling on the province to exercise emergency powers to free up hotel space. Meanwhile, several buildings in Lynn Lake have been destroyed, and 125 firefighters have been brought in from the US to help with the situation. On a more positive note, the fire threatening the city of Flin Flon seems to have been contained.

- Lisa Robinson, a notorious city councillor in Pickering, Ontario, has failed in her bid for compensation from the city after being disciplined and having her pay docked on numerous occasions, mostly for promoting hate, since she took office. Not only is she not getting the pay docking reversed, she was hit with an additional $30,000 in court costs. Robinson's story is rather interesting; she was a candidate for the federal Conservatives in the Toronto riding of Beaches-East York in 2021, until the party dropped her for social media posts that were far too extreme even for them (for her part, she claims that the posts were somehow faked). She also spoke at "Freedom Convoy" events, and was a candidate for the fringe Ontario Party in 2022. When she ran for city council later that year, she apparently managed to dial back the crazy for the duration of the campaign and focus on fiscal conservatism, but has been bringing hordes of brownshirts to council meetings and allegedly having them threaten and dox her political opponents. More info in this Reddit thread as well as this one.

- South Korea is electing a new president today. The election was necessitated after the incumbent president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was removed from office following his impeachment for his attempt to impose martial law. The front-runner is Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the opposition Democratic party, which already controls the country's parliament.

- Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders has withdrawn from the governing coalition, a move likely to force early elections. Whether this will shift votes in his favour, as he presumably hopes, remains to be seen.

- Israel opened fire on Palestinians lining up for food aid at a distribution site in Gaza. Not sure how this is supposed to help protect Israelis or fight antisemitism. Speaking of which, the suspect in the fire attack on a pro-Israel event in Boulder is entirely unapologetic about the attack, saying he'd do it again if he could. 

- Nick Clegg, who I'd lost track of after voters punished him for propping up David Cameron's government through some, er, interesting times, has resurfaced to declare that requiring AI researchers to obtain permission from artists before using their work to train an AI would "kill" the AI industry. Turns out Clegg spent much of the intervening time working at Meta.

News roundup, 13 May 2024

- People are being evacuated as a wildfire threatens homes and cottages near Flin Flon. The smoke is noticeable as far away as Winnipeg. The situation is worse in BC, where thousands have been evacuated from Fort Nelson and the adjacent First Nation.

- Joe Biden's reluctance to provide Israel with certain kinds of bombs while they're moving in on Rafah is being hailed by some as the first significant crack in the rock-solid alliance between the countries. Others, however, point out that plenty of other weapons shipments that are unaffected, suggesting that Biden's move is more for show than anything.

- The "Never Trump" Republicans are split on whether to actually do something about the Trump problem by voting for Joe Biden, or at least on whether to publicly admit a willingness to do so.

- Another pro-Palestinian encampment has been set up, this one at the University of Winnipeg. There has been no disruption to classes; the activists say they intend to stay until their demands, which include cutting "all academic and economic ties with Israeli institutions", are met.

- Some may recall the story of programmer Eugenia Kuyda who, after her best friend was killed in an accident, created a chatbot with all the texts he'd sent her over the years so that she could still have text conversations with him. A few years after that, Joshua Barbeau went a step further, creating a chatbot that actually spoke to him in the voice of his dead fiancee. Such "deadbots" are now commercially available, as are services that will do things like make an animated video from an old photo. Some in the mental health community are wondering if this is such a great idea.

- The village of Sainte-Pétronille, Quebec cut funding to the local newspaper, Autour de l’Île, and threatened to sue the paper in attempt to prevent the publication of a story about the municipality's general manager, who had been fired from her previous job for misconduct. Moreover, they also threatened to sue almost 100 of their residents who raised concerns about the hiring at a council meeting. An investigation has concluded that the village did nothing actually illegal but warned about the potential implications for press freedom.

- At a rally in New Jersey, Donald Trump stated his admiration for Hannibal Lecter (not for the first time, apparently). I'm not sure whether his inability to know the difference between reality and fiction, or his choice of a fictitious character to praise, is more disconcerting.