News roundup, 2 Feb 2026

- Former CNN journalist Don Lemon was arrested on civil rights charges after he covered an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a church service last month. The prosecutor accuses him of "knowingly joining" the protest.

- Two Customs and Border Protection agents have been identified as having fired the fatal shots in the killing of Alex Pretti. An investigation has apparently been opened, though it's a safe bet it won't go anywhere.

- Pierre Poilievre easily passed his leadership review at the Conservatives' convention, winning the support of over 87% of the delegates. This might seem strange given his poor performance in the last election and continuing unpopularity with the general public, but as others have pointed out, no matter how unhinged the opposition is, people will eventually tend to elect them once the government falls out of favour, and most current members of that party want an extreme leader like Poilievre.

- The federal government will be accepting delivery today of the first of 12 F-35s that it has already ordered, even as doubts are being raised about whether to buy another 72 as originally planned.

- Even as the major US automakers are scaling back their operations in Ontario, Toyota's plants in Cambridge and Woodstock and Honda's in Alliston are still going strong, though there are some clouds on the horizon due to tariffs. The Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing in London attributes this to cultural factors - the Japanese manufacturers take a more long-term view than the American ones who are laser-focused on the next quarter.

- Despite low birthrates, demographers did not expect the population of the US to start declining until 2081 due to immigration. Then Donald Trump happened and the country suddenly started to look a lot less attractive to immigrants; some now believe a decline could begin as soon as this year.

- Canadian actor Catherine O'Hara has died at the age of 71. 

News roundup, 20 June 2025

- Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now over budget by as much as a billion dollars and could run out of funds as early as July. This would run afoul of the law and raises obvious concerns about the sustainability of the current crackdown. Trump's "big beautiful bill" includes an additional $75 billion for the agency over the next five years, and the current situation may add to the pressure on Republicans to pass the bill. In related news, Florida's Attorney General, James Uthmeier, has called for ICE to build a detention centre in the middle of the Everglades, so that escapees would have to contend with alligators. It sounds like something inspired by the children's prison in Jacob Two-Two Meets The Hooded Fang that's surrounded by a moat full of sharks and crocodiles.

- The American Chestnut was driven to near extinction over a century ago by a fungal disease. Now, selective breeding (including hybridizing with a Chinese species) has produced blight-resistant trees, giving some hope for the reintroduction of the species to the wild.

- A Dutch environmental consulting firm has concluded that a tax on air travel could raise over €100 billion a year, which would hopefully be allocated towards efforts to limit climate change and its effects. It might be a hard sell, though; even many people who are otherwise progressive and well-informed seem to be in a state of denial about just how bad air travel is for the climate.

- Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change, has called for disinformation about climate change to be criminalized. Some might feel uncomfortable about this, but it's worth considering that Holocaust denial is already criminalized in many countries, and climate change has the potential to make the Holocaust look like a picnic in comparison, so it seems justifiable.

- Honda has successfully tested a reusable rocket. Given that SpaceX's latest efforts on this front have not gone so well, it's probably a good thing for the space industry that another player is entering the field.

- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is accusing the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II, of fathering a child, in contravention of his vows. Pashinyan has also accused one archbishop of having an affair with his uncle's wife. This is just the latest chapter in the feud between Pashinyan and the Church, who have been calling for his resignation since the country's defeat in the 2020 conflict with Azerbaijan. Things like this probably will not help restore unity to a deeply divided country.

News roundup, 24 Dec 2024

- The outgoing Biden administration is trying to push through a new regulation that will require natural gas utilities to address leakage from distribution networks. There are already requirements for them to address large leaks (big enough to cause an explosion) but the administration wants them to take into account the climate impact of leakage. Of course, it's questionable whether the incoming administration will let such a regulation survive. On a positive note, though, the gas industry does seem to be losing the war in the long term; the total installed renewal energy capacity in the US is expected to exceed that of natural gas within a few years. And the owners of a coal-fired plant in Texas have received federal funding to convert the facility to a solar farm.

- The judge who will be hearing Luigi Mangione's murder trial is married to a former Pfizer executive. This has led to skepticism among some as to whether he will receive a fair trial. Meanwhile, someone claiming to represent United Healthcare is submitting takedown requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to suppress the sales of merchandise depicting Mangione's face and related materials. No explanation why United Healthcare has any copyright in such images, but they're not letting that stop them. And a poll has found that 41% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 consider Mangione's actions "acceptable".

- Donald Trump wants to take back the Panama Canal from Panama, saying that shippers are charged "ridiculous" fees to use the canal. Perhaps we'll soon be hearing accusations of drug trafficking against Panama's president; it's not like stuff like that hasn't happened before.

- Honda and Nissan are in merger talks in the hope of becoming the world's third largest automaker and thus increase their competitiveness against Toyota and Volkswagen, not to mention Tesla and Chinese upstart BYD.

- The gas tax will be returning to Manitoba in the new year, albeit at a lower rate than before the tax holiday brought in by the government. I still think a reduction in the PST would be a more equitable, not to mention more environmentally friendly, way of providing tax relief, but that's just me.

- A Flin Flon man has had his charges of possessing child pornography thrown out due to excessive delays in the case. This is in keeping with a 2016 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada that limits the time to prosecute to 18 months in most cases. A major factor in the delay was the RCMP's failure to hand over evidence in a timely manner.