News roundup, 9 July 2026

- Flooding as a result of recent storms has resulted in the evacuation of the Dauphin Regional Health Centre. The city got 115 millimetres of rain in a two day period, and the hospital's basement was flooded, knocking out power to the facility and causing substantial damage. Patients were sent to other hospitals across the province, the largest share being sent to Brandon. It may be months before full service is restored. Also in Dauphin, a huge commercial greenhouse was flooded, destroying vast amounts of crops. While the Parkland region, which includes Dauphin has gotten the worst of it, more than 50 municipalities across the province have declared local states of emergency due to recent storms.

- The federal government is cutting funding to a weather radar research group, even as the incidence of tornadoes is increasing in this country. More than a little short sighted, I'd have to say.

- Jesse Wheatland is accused of setting numerous fires across Winnipeg, including at the constituency offices of ministers Bernadette Smith and Nahanni Fontaine as well as several downtown businesses and an addictions treatment centre. He was reportedly in possession of a list of potential targets when he was arrested; these included the office of Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara and the CBC. Another list found following searches mentioned a proposed location for a supervised consumption site; he is also accused of having attempted to start a fire there as well. He had previously posted concerns about that site on a community Facebook group; other targets appear to have been former employers.

- The Rural Municipality of East St. Paul is refusing to publicize the names of registered candidates in this fall's municipal election until the deadline to register has passed in September. The policy has been in place since 2022; the practice is anomalous and the province has urged the municipality to be more transparent, but there is no legislation to actually prohibit such secrecy. The motivation for the policy has not been made public; none of the council members would address the matter with the CBC. I suspect it may have something to do with councillors and/or the mayor hoping to get in by acclamation and not wanting it to be known that they're running unopposed until it's too late to do anything about it. Certainly some community activists fear that this could be a consequence of the policy.

- Graham Platner, the winner of the Democratic primary for the Maine Senate seat that's up for grabs this fall, is withdrawing from the race following sexual assault allegations. Platner had been seen as a progressive compared to the establishment candidate Janet Mills who he'd defeated in the primary. The party must now select a new candidate by the 27th of July in order to contest the seat, which is critical in gaining control of the Senate.

- Mark Zuckerberg, whose company just laid off thousands of people to replace them with AI, admits that it isn't working as well as he had hoped. In his words, the "trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected". Other companies are facing similar issues; Ford has had to rehire many engineers and technicians. The company's VP of vehicle hardware engineering, Charles Poon, is trying to spin this as bad timing, saying that the experienced workers left before they could transfer their knowledge to the AIs. This comes as Ford had more recalls than any other US automaker so far this year. I have to assume all this folly is driven by investors.

News roundup, 10 April 2026

- Several anonymous sources interviewed for an upcoming book report that in a series of Situation Room meetings earlier this year, various Trump advisors dropped hints that going to war with Iran would be a bad idea - but none of them except JD Vance pressed the issue. You know it's a mess when JD freaking Vance is the voice of reason.

- The American Automotive Policy Council, which represents the US automakers, is concerned about new EU vehicle safety standards that could limit the importation of gigantic pickup trucks. Andrew Puzder, the US ambassador to the EU, suggests that this could breach the spirit of a trade deal with the US that the EU has signed but has not yet ratified.

- People who have worked with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman say that he barely knows how to code and has a "surprisingly shallow" knowledge of how AI actually works. Then again, to do what he does you don't have to know how it works. You don't even have to know if it works, so long as you have plausible deniability about what you know or don't know when you issue an IPO. You just have to know how to sell stuff, and evidently Altman is very good at that.

- Conservative-turned-Liberal MP Marilyn Gladu was welcomed with open arms at the Liberal party convention in Montreal. When Mark Carney was asked about her rather sketchy past (which includes opposition to abortion, opposition to bans on conversion therapy, and support for the Freedom Convoy and other antivaxxers), he stated that Gladu has agreed to vote with the government on those issues. I guess she's flexible, if nothing else. Perhaps Gladu believed, rightly or wrongly, that she had to take such positions to run for office in a place like Sarnia even if she didn't actually believe in them. I'm guessing that she doesn't intend to run again and wants to end her career on the winning side. 

- Solar farms in the UK generated a record 14.1 gigawatts of power on Monday. That's pretty impressive for a country that's not exactly known for being sunny.

- Representatives of 85 countries will be meeting in Colombia at the end of this month for the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. Unlike UN-run climate summits, this will be governed by majority vote rather than consensus, preventing a small number of countries from sabotaging plans like Saudi Arabia and other petrostates did at COP30. The countries plan on putting together a workable plan for the transition; what could be promising is the fact that put together, the countries participating have enough economic heft to force investors to reconsider whether it's still worth investing in new fossil fuel reserves.

News roundup, 20 Feb 2026

- The Andrew formerly known as Prince was arrested Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was released from custody and has not been formally charged but remains under investigation as police continue to search the Royal Lodge in Windsor. Unsurprisingly, this is related to his connection to Jeffrey Epstein, but surprisingly it's not related (directly at least) to sexual abuse allegations but rather to reports that he shared confidential material with Epstein while serving as the UK's trade envoy. Of course, assuming the allegations are true he was probably compensated for the material in some way, probably in a way that one doesn't want to think about.

- China has reportedly transformed its largest desert into a carbon sink by planting trees and shrubs in a belt along the desert's edges. They've been working on this "Great Green Wall" since 1978; its primary purpose was to keep the desert from expanding into farmland, but new research out of the US indicates that it is having a beneficial impact on the carbon cycle. Stuff like this isn't enough, of course (emissions cuts are still essential), but it's a big step in the right direction. Of course, the fact that this is in Xinjiang puts a bit of a pall on it; I suspect the consultations on this matter wouldn't meet with democratic standards.

- Brazil is having some success in protecting the Amazon rainforest. Satellite evidence shows that the deforestation rate is the lowest since 2014.

- The City of Winnipeg has released a development plan for Point Douglas that calls for more low- and mid-rise residential properties, with mixed use development along the planned route of a future rapid transit corridor. The plan also restricts heavy industrial development in the area. This is welcome news, though it will require some significant infrastructure upgrades (especially replacement of combined sewers with separated sanitary and storm sewers). Of course such upgrades would be welcome anyway.

- Manitoba Public Insurance is suing Ford to recover the costs of payouts for fires caused by faulty block heaters, most recently one in Pilot Mound that destroyed two vehicles insured by the corporation. These heaters are now the subject of a recall issued by Transport Canada earlier this year.

- Alberta will be putting several referendum questions on the ballot this coming fall; these questions relate to immigration as well as to constitutional matters. One of the questions would be to "require proof of citizenship" in order to cast a ballot; this would seem to be pointless given that under current rules any non-citizen who manages to vote should be identifiable and could be prosecuted easily. It also will likely not affect all citizens equally; the more affluent will be more likely to have passports and thus be easily able to prove their citizenship than the poor. I guess the real purpose of this question is to serve as a dog whistle for the folks outside Calgary and Edmonton (and a substantial minority of those in those cities as well). 

News roundup, 12 Feb 2025

- Recent polling suggests that Mark Carney winning the leadership of the Liberal Party could dramatically improve the party's fortunes in both Ontario and Quebec. If these results hold, then I really hope the news cameras focus on the faces of Scott Moe and Danielle Smith as they watch the results come in.

- Jim Farley, CEO of the Ford Motor Company, is expressing concerns about the possible impact of Trump's tariffs on his company, and indeed the entire American auto industry. In addition to manufactured auto parts, the 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum could greatly increase costs for the industry. GM CEO Mary Barra is optimistic about her company's ability to adapt, but that could be just an attempt to put on a brave face - especially since Japan and South Korea, home to the US automakers' main competitors, have so far not been hit with the same tariffs as Canada and Mexico.

- The Archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan, was fired on Friday. The agency she headed is generally considered apolitical, but happens to have played a key role in the legal proceedings against Trump regarding those boxes of classified records that somehow ended up in a washroom at Mar-a-Lago. One hopes that pure spite is the only reason for the dismissal, but it also raises the possibility that her replacement will assist the president in throwing records he doesn't like down the memory hole. Even more alarming, the archivist has a role in verifying the vote count in the Electoral College.

- Two security chiefs at USAID have been put on leave after attempting to stop the Muskrats from accessing classified information. The agency used intelligence reports in planning how to distribute aid; while the use of intelligence for this purpose could be problematic in itself, it's most definitely problematic for a bunch of unvetted teenagers to be going through the data. Oh, and one of them, the 19 year old who has now been appointed as a "senior adviser" at the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Technology as well as FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, was fired a couple of years back from an internship with a cybersecurity firm for leaking company data to a competitor.

- Luigi Mangione has had over $300,000 crowdsourced for his legal defense for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The company, meanwhile, has hired a law firm specializing in defamation to go through social media posts looking for anything someone might say that could be actionable. No mention of any plans to investigate why Mangione might be so popular in the first place, though; that level of self-reflection is uncommon in the corporate world.

- The German Club of Regina is taking heat for renting their facility for a fundraising event for the Buffalo Party of Saskatchewan. Given that the party is a far-right party that advocates secession from Canada, and that the fundraiser itself will see a discussion of whether to join Trump's America, you'd think somebody, somebody at the club would have thought about the optics of a German club renting space to fascist traitors.

A couple of auto industry stories

As we know, Ford is the only American automaker that didn't need a bailout. Why might that be? Well, maybe it's because they don't suck:

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. has secured its position as the only domestic automaker with world-class reliability, according to a report released last week by Consumer Reports.

The findings for the trusted magazine's 2009 Annual Car Reliability Survey are from 1.4 million consumer surveys combined with its own performance testing.

Of the 51 Ford, Mercury and Lincoln cars and trucks surveyed by Consumer Reports, 90 per cent were average or better.

The Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan midsized sedans ranked higher than any other family sedan, except for the Toyota Prius hybrid car.

That's noteworthy because the Ford Fusion, which is the 10th best-selling vehicle in America so far this year, outperformed the better-selling Toyota Camry (No. 2) and Honda Accord (No. 4).

Interesting; so much for "found on road dead". Maybe GM and Chrysler are being held back by their unions... Oh, wait. Our friends on the Kitco and iTulip boards will be a bit nonplussed by that, but maybe there's another reason? Like, say, that the management at GM and Chrysler don't know what the hell they're doing, while those at Ford do?

But there's good news for Wilmington, Delaware, whose GM plant closed this year. Fisker Automotive is buying the plant to build electric cars:

NEW YORK -- Electric-car start-up Fisker Automotive said Tuesday that it will invest nearly $200 million to buy and retool a former General Motors plant in Wilmington, Del., facing off against Honda Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and other big manufacturers in the nascent market for electric vehicles.

Topped off by an appearance from U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden at the plant in Delaware, Fisker Automotive said it hopes to support 2,000 factory jobs and more than 3,000 vendor and supplier jobs by 2014 at the site, with a production target of 75,000 to 100,000 vehicles per year.

The Irvine, Calif.-based company will spend about $18 million to buy the plant from Motors Liquidation Co. and then spend an additional $175 million to retool the plant to begin production in 2012. "This is a major step toward establishing America as a leader of advanced vehicle technology," said Henrik Fisker, the firm's chief executive.

Fisker Automotive received $529 million in government-loan guarantees in September to develop plug-in vehicles, after breaking into the business as the maker of a luxurious, $80,000 electric car with a range of up to 483 kilometres. That car, called the Karma, is expected to go on sale in 2010.

Given the need to reduce our greenhouse emissions, this could be the best news of all in the long run, if the cars work as advertised. I am curious, though, as to whether Fisker will hire laid off workers from the plant, or if they'll hire kids straight out of school? The former would probably be better for the community, but it remains to be seen whether Fisker will choose that route. After all, many companies don't like to hire people who have worked for other companies in the same industry. The Toyota plant in Cambridge has a reputation for this, for instance. I suppose this could be rationalized in terms of differing corporate cultures, and preferring to train a worker who is, relatively speaking, a tabula rasa than one who's already habituated to a different corporate culture. I suspect, though, that these companies' real fear is that people who have worked in a unionized environment might have traits that they might not want in their company -- like, say, knowing what their rights are.

And speaking of car crashes...

... or rather, car manufacturer crashes:

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Credit markets weathered an uneasy Wednesday punctuated by word that beleaguered General Motors Corp. (GM) won't make a scheduled $1 billion interest payment.

From the Wall Street Journal, via Sapiens in this iTulip thread. More details here.

So what does this mean? Bankruptcy seems almost certain now; and they've announced that they're closing their US plants for 9 weeks this summer. Meanwhile, Ford seems to be doing a lot better:

April 22 (Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co. rose 13 percent in New York trading after Goldman, Sachs & Co. advised buying the shares, citing likely bankruptcy filings for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

Ford will gain U.S. market share from GM and Chrysler, and the stock may climb 58 percent to $6 within 6 months, Patrick Archambault, a New York-based analyst, wrote in a research report. Goldman previously had a “neutral” rating on the second-largest U.S. automaker.

“The stage is set for a sea change in the structure of the U.S. auto industry,” Archambault wrote. “We do not foresee bankruptcy at Ford, which we believe has sufficient liquidity to make it through to 2010 without additional funding.”

As for Chrysler, the question is probably better not asked. Ford may well end up being the last US automaker standing. If nothing else, there might be some huge bargains on houses in Windsor, St. Catharines, and Oshawa pretty soon...

11th hour salvation for automakers?

Maybe:

It would be "irresponsible" to hurt the economy by letting the Detroit Big Three automakers fall, a White House spokeswoman said Friday following the Senate's rejection of a massive auto industry bailout.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, press secretary Dana Perino said the White House is considering using money from the $700-billion US Wall Street rescue fund to support the domestic automakers.

Perino said the administration would not typically make such a move, but said the White House would consider the option due to the economic distress confronting the United States.

"While the federal government may need to step in to prevent an immediate failure, the auto companies, their labour unions and all other stakeholders must be prepared to make the meaningful concessions necessary to become viable," Perino said.

From the CBC. Whether this will help in the long run is hard to say; some are saying it's too late for GM. One thing is clear, though, the unions are getting a disproportionate amount of the blame for the automakers' troubles. For instance, ever hear that "$73 an hour" figure, about how much money the auto workers supposedly make? Well, it's misleading to say the least, according to no less authority than the New York Times:

Seventy-three dollars an hour.

That figure — repeated on television and in newspapers as the average pay of a Big Three autoworker — has become a big symbol in the fight over what should happen to Detroit. To critics, it is a neat encapsulation of everything that’s wrong with bloated car companies and their entitled workers.

To the Big Three’s defenders, meanwhile, the number has become proof positive that autoworkers are being unfairly blamed for Detroit’s decline. “We’ve heard this garbage about 73 bucks an hour,” Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said last week. “It’s a total lie. I think some people have perpetrated that deliberately, in a calculated way, to mislead the American people about what we’re doing here.”

So what is the reality behind the number? Detroit’s defenders are right that the number is basically wrong. Big Three workers aren’t making anything close to $73 an hour (which would translate to about $150,000 a year).

But the defenders are not right to suggest, as many have, that Detroit has solved its wage problem. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler workers make significantly more than their counterparts at Toyota, Honda and Nissan plants in this country. Last year’s concessions by the United Automobile Workers, which mostly apply to new workers, will not change that anytime soon.

And yet the main problem facing Detroit, overwhelmingly, is not the pay gap. That’s unfortunate because fixing the pay gap would be fairly straightforward.

The real problem is that many people don’t want to buy the cars that Detroit makes. Fixing this problem won’t be nearly so easy.

Get it? It's not because the Detroit Three are being bled dry by the unions. It's because too many of their cars suck.

But now for some good news. Not all vehicle manufacturers are doing badly:

New Flyer Industries has racked up more than $1 billion in orders over the last three months, driven by the recent spike in fuel prices and concerns about the economy.

It is the first time the Winnipeg bus maker has reached the $1-billion sales milestone during a quarter. The value of its order backlog has ballooned by 50 per cent this year.

The company said Thursday it is further evidence of the recession-resistant nature of the business.

Glen Asham, New Flyer's CEO, said the strong sales are a result of increased ridership throughout North America, spurred on at the beginning of the year by sky-high fuel prices and more recently by economic concerns.

"I would suggest the current recessionary environment we are in is causing people to watch their cash flow," Asham said.

The largest of the new orders was from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) which is purchasing up to 900 60-foot diesel-electric hybrid buses. Since 2002, CTA has ordered a total of 1,258 buses from New Flyer.

From the Winnipeg Free Press. Let's hope this last trend continues; maybe New Flyer could buy up some of those shuttered auto plants in southern Ontario and put some of the people back to work making vehicles for the 21st century rather than for the 20th.

Insurers pull cover from suppliers to GM, Ford

This is not good news for the US auto industry:

Three big European credit insurers have removed cover from suppliers of troubled U.S. carmakers General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the Financial Times reported on Friday.

The withdrawal of credit insurance, which covers suppliers against the risk of the car companies failing, was undertaken by Euler Hermes, Atradius and Coface, which control more than 80 per cent of the world's credit insurance market, the newspaper said.

The three are refusing to write policies for suppliers trading with GM or Ford on credit, it reported, without citing sources.

From the Globe. If this is true (and in the absence of sources it's hard to separate facts from mere rumours) this is really big. Either a bailout or a nationalization seems inevitable; the US will not likely allow those companies to fail, and probably won't allow them to be taken over by Toyota or Honda either (assuming that those companies even want to make such a risky investment in this climate).