News roundup, 5 Feb 2026

- Jeff Bezos has ordered massive layoffs at the Washington Post, affecting a third of the newspaper's workforce. Among other things, the entire Middle East desk will be gone, as will be the paper's Ukraine bureau chief and correspondent. Former Executive Editor Marty Baron condemns this and previous decisions by Bezos, which he calls "ill-conceived". The thing is, though, they're only "ill-conceived" if you're thinking in terms of the greater good; if you're thinking in terms of Bezos' personal interests they aren't ill-conceived at all, especially in light of how Donald Trump is making new threats regarding the broadcast licenses of major networks in the US.

- The Trump regime appears to be issuing selective exemptions to tariffs for companies with which he has a good relationship. Nothing suspicious about that at all...

- Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi is warning federal leadership candidates to treat Alberta with kid gloves so that he has a chance of defeating Danielle Smith next year. Meanwhile, leadership candidate Rob Ashton singled out Avi Lewis for "turning New Democrats against each other".

- The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority is taking over the Golden Door Geriatric Centre, a personal care home in the Fort Garry district of the city whose private owners had announced plans to close the facility. Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara says that the province is working to fill the numerous beds that the owners had been leaving vacant in order to prepare for the closure.

- A little known fact - ICE actually has offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Their agents don't have the power of arrest in this country; they claim that these agents (who are not armed) assist in the investigation of international crimes. NDP MP Heather McPherson is calling on the Carney government to close those offices "until the human rights crisis is resolved"; whether the government will do so remains to be seen.

- Manitoba Hydro is hiring institutional safety officers for its downtown office tower following a seemingly random attack by a methed up teenager with a knife. Manitoba Housing is also hiring such officers for its downtown office. Unlike run-of-the-mill security guards, these officers have specialized training; they are equipped with handcuffs and pepper gel and are empowered to make arrests. CUPE, which represents Hydro employees, is calling for the officers to be deployed as soon as possible.

- Manitoba currently has the highest incidence of measles in Canada. To the surprise of few, these cases are concentrated mostly in the Southern Health Region, and in particular a church in Winkler, though some people were infected in Winnipeg after people from the province's Bible Belt were hospitalized at HSC. 51 confirmed and three probable cases have been reported in the province as of the 24th of January. This compares to 319 confirmed cases of measles and 29 probable cases last year, and only 18 cases between 2000 and 2024. At least 86% of the cases were in unvaccinated people; another 6.2% were in people of unknown vaccination status.

- Following the drowning death of a 12 year old student at a scuba school in Texas, her family sued the school. One thing that has come up in court is the fact that the school's owner had been caught on video bragging about the number of fatalities he'd gotten away with, which does not inspire confidence.

News roundup, 17 Sept 2025

- Chrystia Freeland is reportedly stepping down from her cabinet post in favour of a role as an envoy to Ukraine.

- The American far right is experiencing internal divisions over the killing of Charlie Kirk. Some figures in the movement, including Steve Bannon and Candace Owens, are working on new conspiracy theories. Owens went so far as to accuse the Trump regime of withholding information, and suggested that Israel might be to blame, claiming that Kirk had taken a more critical stance against that country shortly before his death. Maybe a civil war in the far right movement is exactly what the rest of humanity needs, though.

- Radio-Canada has suspended journalist Elisa Serret for making on-air statements that were perceived as antisemitic. Now hearing something like that arouses suspicion, since there are all kinds of things that are being called "antisemitic" that just aren't. However, if the reports are accurate, Serret made allegations that big cities and Hollywood are "run by Jews", which certainly sounds like just a wee bit more than simply criticizing Israel or Zionism.

- Donald Trump has filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times for reporting on the birthday letter that Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. He has previously launched a suit against the Wall Street Journal for covering the same story.

- The Washington Post has fired longtime editor and columnist Karen Attiah for her social media activity. Attiah had reposted an old tweet from the late Charlie Kirk that apparently revealed a bit too much about his character for owner Jeff Bezos' liking. Meanwhile JD Vance is calling for a mass doxing of people who have posted negative things about Kirk.

- Surrey, BC has such a problem with extortion that they have announced a $250,000 reward fund for tips leading to convictions. There has been a large increase in crimes of this nature recently, mostly affecting the city's large south Asian community. Perhaps Winnipeg should follow their lead, given how many similar occurrences there have been here of late.

- Blumenort School in Hanover, Manitoba was placed under lockdown last Wednesday after an irate 43 year old father threw a tantrum and assaulted staff members. When police arrived he threatened to assault them as well. He was charged with assault and uttering threats. As far as what set him off in the first place, we'll have to wait and see to know for sure, but I'm going to hazard a guess that it was something he saw on social media.

- In addition to their failed protest in Toronto, the far-right movement also attempted to hold one in Thunder Bay, according to this Reddit thread. Apparently only one or two people actually showed up to that one. This is certainly good news, but we shouldn't get too complacent given that there's been a dramatic decline in support for immigration in this country in the last few years. And take note that across the pond, far-right activist Tommy Robinson drew a crowd comparable to Thunder Bay's entire population. Things are pretty much certain to get worse in that regard as climate change drives more migration, as Gwynne Dyer starkly reminded us in 2018.

- Russ Wyatt, who represents Transcona on Winnipeg's city council, has endorsed Braydon Mazurkiewich in the Elmwood-East Kildonan byelection, which will be held on the 25th of October. If I lived in that ward I don't think Mazurkeiwich would have been my choice anyway (I'd most likely support Emma Durand-Wood, or maybe Carmen Prefontaine) but this pretty much seals the deal.

News roundup, 1 May 2025

- Winnipeg city councillor Jason Schreyer has died suddenly at the age of 57. No cause of death has been reported.

- Alberta premier Danielle Smith is promising to protect the province from "future hostile acts" by the federal government. She accuses the feds of "overtly attacking" the province's economy, and claims (without evidence) that the NDP and Liberals "demeaned and demonized Albertans" during the campaign. What really needs to be watched, though, is what Smith is doing with the province's election laws - new legislation was tabled the day after the federal election (presumably in the hope that it would go unnoticed as people focused on federal matters). The bill restores corporate donations to campaigns, eliminates the process to vouch for a voter's identity at a polling station, and lowers the threshold necessary to initiate recall proceedings against an MLA.

- The Trump regime is doing their utmost to try to convince Europeans that switching from Russian gas to clean energy, instead of to American fossil fuels, is "harmful and dangerous" and leaves Europe open to "concessions to or coercion from China". Happily, Europeans don't seem to be sold on the matter.

- When protests erupted at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn over their hosting of a speech by Israeli far-right extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, clashes arose between protesters and the Orthodox Jewish community. One bystander who was mistaken for a protester says she was assaulted and threatened with rape by a large mob of men as a result.

- A Canada-wide poll by Leger found that only 16% of respondents consider Canada to have a good relationship with the US. That's only one percentage point better than Russia; in contrast, 36% of respondents think Canada's relationship with China is good.

- The Trump tariffs could cost Ontario over 68,000 jobs this year, mostly in Windsor, Guelph, Brantford, Waterloo, and London. Next year could see almost twice that many jobs lost.

- Following a report that Amazon was planning to start showing consumers how much tariffs contribute to prices, Donald Trump placed a call to Jeff Bezos, and Amazon then announced that it wasn't going to happen. Perhaps Trump asked Bezos if he wanted Jones back.

- Japanese authorities rescued an international student from Mount Fuji after he experienced altitude sickness. A few days later, they had to rescue him again because he went back for his cellphone.

News roundup, 27 Feb 2025

- A new poll from Nanos puts the Liberals at 34% and the Conservatives at 38%, with the NDP at 16%, and the Bloc at 8%, with the Greens and People's Party bringing up the rear at 4% and 2% respectively. The gap between the Cons and Liberals is not much more than the poll's margin of error.

- A major measles outbreak is spreading across Canada, with 95 cases reported in several provinces since the start of the year. Last year there were 147 cases total across the country; the disease was considered eradicated in Canada in 1998, but that was the year that Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent paper alleging a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism was published, and the rest is grim history.

- A Southwest Airlines flight attempting to land at Chicago's Midway Airport was forced to make a last-minute go-around in order to avoid colliding with a business jet that had strayed onto the runway. Fortunately, the crew's reflexes were faster than they would have been if they'd carried on like another Southwest pilot last month. Video of the incident, as well as some analysis, can be found here. And now there are reports that American Airlines had a similar close call on the same day at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

- Searchers at the Prairie Green Landfill in Rosser, Manitoba have found possible human remains. Families of serial killer Jeremy Skibiki's victims have been notified but the identity of the remains has not yet been confirmed.

- A parkade in Ottawa partially collapsed on Wednesday morning; fortunately nobody was hurt, in contrast to a similar accident at the Algo Centre Mall in Elliot Lake in 2012 which killed two people and injured over 20.

- David Shipley, the Washington Post's opinion editor, has resigned rather than preside over Jeff Bezos' new vision for the newspaper's opinion section. Bezos wants the paper to have a consistent rightwing libertarian stance and has declared that opposing views will no longer be published.

- Toronto's Pride festival is facing a substantial shortfall and is scaling back events for 2025 after several corporate sponsors pulled out. Evidently the sponsors decided, after reading the public mood, that they had more to lose than to gain by associating themselves with anything that might be connected to diversity. Organizers have not named the sponsors who pulled out, apparently hoping to avoid antagonizing them so as to win them back. If I were to guess, though, I'd assume that they're American, or at least do a lot of business in the US, and are more afraid of the MAGA crowd than they are of LGBT* folks.

News roundup, 17 Jan 2024

- The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas (which both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are trying to take credit for) has experienced a last-minute hiccup after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu delayed the cabinet meeting where this was supposed to be ratified. Netanyahu claims that Hamas made demands for a "last minute concession"; Hamas denies this, and Netanyahu refuses to discuss what part of the agreement Hamas has reneged on. Extremist members of his cabinet had allegedly threatened to resign if the agreement is ratified, which would bring down the government and possibly end Netanyahu's premiership - and with it the protection from prosecution that he has enjoyed until now. In any case, these issues seem to have been contained; Netanyahu now expects the deal to be approved today.

- South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol, who is suspended pending his impeachment trial in the country's Constitutional Court, has been arrested following a lengthy standoff, something that has never previously happened to a sitting president in the country.

- Residents of the Ukrainian city of Kherson are accusing Russian drone pilots of using civilians for target practice. Local officials say that at least 16 people have been killed and 144 injured in this way.

- The City of Winnipeg has cancelled a plan to save money for the snow clearing budget by deferring residential plowing until 15 cm of snow have fallen, instead of the current 10 cm. Mayor Scott Gillingham says that his office received more complaints about this proposal than about a planned tax increase.

- China's demand for oil seems to have peaked in 2023; an increase in aviation fuel consumption was more than offset by a decrease in other fuel use, as surface transportation has been increasingly electrified. This is good news for the climate, though nowhere near good enough to prevent an awful lot of bad stuff in the coming decades. I suspect it's got the Russians worried too.

- A Donald Trump campaign rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota last summer has left the city wondering how to collect on a $209,000 bill for measures taken to accommodate the rally. Trump's campaign says the costs are the responsibility of the Secret Service; the SS, for their part, claim that the agency "lacks a mechanism" to reimburse states or municipalities for these costs.

- Trump wants to stop the impending TikTok ban, presumably because no other social media platform is as effective at rallying the sheeple for him.

- A SpaceX rocket disintegrated shortly after launch, forcing several flights to alter their courses to avoid falling debris. In response Elon Musk, trying to put the best possible face on the situation, tweeted that "Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!"

- The Washington Post has scrapped the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness" in favour of a new one, "Riveting Storytelling for All of America". Because journalism is just storytelling, right? I guess in Trump's America, Jeff Bezos doesn't want it to be more than that - certainly not any journalism that the administration can associate with him, lest he fall out a window or something. One is also reminded of Google's abandonment of their old motto "don't be evil" a few years back.

- An employee of a flight training school in St. Andrews, Manitoba was severely injured after attempting to hand-prop an aircraft and getting hit by the propeller.

News roundup, 27 Nov 2024

- Justin Trudeau has agreed to an urgent meeting with provincial and territorial leaders to discuss the looming tariffs that Donald Trump has vowed to impose on Canada, though it's not clear what they're going to be able to do about the situation. Doug Ford is particularly worried, given Ontario's dependence on the American export market. Ford described the proposed tariffs as "like a family member stabbing you right in the heart"; it's kind of telling that Ford thinks of Trump as being like a family member.

- The Ford government has passed Bill 212, the legislation best known for limiting the ability of cities to build bike lanes. Other provisions in the bill have not received as much scrutiny - notably the fact that it removes environmental and other safeguards that might stand in the way of building a new freeway the government is planning.

- The Manitoba Nurses Union is hoping for a return of the weapon detection system that was tested in the emergency room at Health Sciences Centre this past summer, and is calling for it to be used at all entrances to all hospitals. The union's president, Darlene Jackson, says that nurses are reporting "escalating violence" in ERs around the city, and that this is driving people out of the profession.

- Brazil's former rightwing populist president Jair Bolsonaro has been charged with plotting a coup d’état following his electoral defeat in 2022. We'll have to see if the Brazilians do a better job of dealing with this situation than the Americans have.

- Farmers in Arizona are suffering the effects of subsidence as a result of excessive groundwater pumping, but they sure as heck aren't going to accept any kind of rules to manage the problem. Because rules are for dem big city libtard ay-leets, I guess.

- Anger over Jeff Bezos' interference in the editorial policy of the Washington Post in order to block the publication of an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris has led some book lovers to seek an alternative to Amazon-owned Goodreads. One beneficiary of this is a site called The StoryGraph.

- With the pending closure of supervised consumption sites in Ontario, someone has gone around putting up these posters that purport to be from the provincial health department, pointing out where the drug consumption will be relocated to by this move.

News roundup, 29 Oct 2024

- The BC NDP appears to have the narrowest of majorities after the absentee ballots were counted in the hotly contested constituency of Surrey-Guildford. However, because their margin of victory was only 27 votes (less than 1/500 of the total votes cast) a judicial recount is automatic. Meanwhile Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe has secured a majority in yesterday's election in that province.

- Several incidents have occurred recently in the US in which ballot drop boxes were set on fire - most recently a couple of cases in the Portland metro area (one in Portland proper, the other in Vancouver, Washington). A superficially similar sounding case in Phoenix is being blamed on someone who set fire to a mailbox in order to get locked up so he'd have somewhere to stay and was thus apparently not politically motivated.

- The two back to back hurricanes that hit Florida earlier this month are motivating some voters, though it remains to be seen if it will be enough to turn the state blue. A promising sign is that young and first-time voters are voting early in large numbers compared to previous years.

- New research on human ability to withstand heat has concluded that the "wet bulb temperature" above which the human body gains more heat from the environment than it loses is more like 31°C, rather than the 35°C that was previously assumed to be the limit. If the global temperature average exceeds 2°C above preindustrial levels, significant parts of sub-Saharan Africa, India, and even China could see mass deaths in heat waves. Note that the 31°C limit is for normal healthy adults; for the elderly the limit could be as low as 22°C.

- The decision by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos to overrule the paper's editorial board and not endorse any candidate has led to a significant backlash, with over a quarter of a million people (representing about 8% of subscribers) cancelling their subscriptions since the announcement.

- There have definitely been some unsettling attacks in Winnipeg in the last few days. From the university student attacked in her dorm room, to a daylight carjacking in which the victim was hit with her own car, to robbery with a machete, to attacking someone with a machete for the hell of it, or doing the same with a BB gun, we've seen rather a lot of nastiness of late - and, more worrisome, seemingly random nastiness.