News roundup, 1 July 2025

- Numerous nonprofits, including Amnesty International, Save the Children, and Oxfam, are calling for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a joint US-Israeli operation, to be shut down. They accuse the organization of putting people in harm's way by essentially serving as a honeypot for the IDF.

- The Carney government's move to cancel the digital services tax may have been short-sighted. The next thing in the Trump regime's sights is supply management, and getting rid of that would be a hard sell indeed. Fortunately, a recently passed piece of legislation, Bill C-202, explicitly prohibits trade negotiators from "making any commitment on behalf of the Government of Canada" that would impact supply management.

- Criminologists report that homicides in the US, after peaking dramatically in 2020-2021, have declined just as dramatically. It is believed that the spike was driven by the pandemic, and that the decline was driven by the return of jobs and services that had been disrupted.

- A church in Winnipeg's West End has just held its final service; the building will be donated to a nonprofit to serve as housing for seniors. 

- A man who had been assaulted by a crowd of people was taken to the drunk tank at the Main Street Project after being medically cleared by paramedics, and was again cleared on arrival, however he died shortly afterwards. The death is under investigation; if I had to guess it might be that he sustained a concussion in the assault and the symptoms were mistaken for signs of intoxication, but we'll have to see.

- British punk/rap act Bob Vylan, as well as Irish rap group Kneecap, are being investigated for possible "public order offenses" over things they said from the stage at the Glastonbury music festival. Bob Vylan chanted "death to the IDF" (the BBC is apologizing for not pulling the plug on the live broadcast) while Kneecap also made anti-Israeli chants as well as attacking UK prime minister Kier Starmer. The Trump regime has revoked Bob Vylan's visas for a planned US tour; Liberal MP Anthony Housefather and several Conservative MPs are calling for Canada to take similar measures. I do have to wonder if an artist who chanted "death to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps" would have been subject to the same scrutiny.

News roundup, 29 April 2025

- Mark Carney has retained power, but appears to have fallen short of the 172 seas needed for a majority; the Liberals show as leading or elected in 168 seats as of this morning. If these numbers hold, that could still give the much diminished NDP caucus the balance of power. With only 7 seats, though, the NDP loses party status; leader Jagmeet Singh has been soundly defeated in his own riding of Burnaby Central and has resigned as leader. As for the Greens, Elizabeth May held onto her seat in Saanich-Gulf Islands, but her colleague Mike Morrice is behind the Cons in Kitchener Centre, though the results aren't final as of this post. On a more positive note, Pierre Poilievre has been defeated in his riding of Carleton. Full country-wide results may be found here.

- Besides the designs Donald Trump has on the Panama Canal, he's also turning his attention to the Suez Canal. He thinks that American and American-registered ships should be exempt from canal tolls, because Americans are special or something.

- A small ferry in Clearwater, Florida was hit by another vessel which then left the scene of the accident. One person on board the ferry died and several more were injured. From the pictures in that article, the ferry is one of those catamaran ones with a tentlike canopy; it looks like it might be the topmost picture on the ferry company's page about their fleet, which seats 42. The AP story states that "police did not immediately provide any information about the boat that fled the scene", but one ferry passenger in this article described it as a "big yacht". What stands out more to me, though, is the statement that the U.S. Coast Guard and Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission will be investigating; isn't that supposed to be the NTSB's job?

- There has been a significant change in opinion among registered Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents as to how the party's leaders should be dealing with the Trump agenda. In 2017, 74% wanted Democrats in Congress to "work with Republicans" to overcome the divisions in society; now, however, 57% want to see congressional Democrats do their utmost to try to stop them. The party's leadership, though, has yet to figure out what to do about the situation.

- An Irish woman who had lived in the US since childhood has been detained at an ICE facility in Tacoma over past criminal convictions. She had been convicted of drug possession more than 20 years ago, but under the understanding that the convictions had been expunged, she had travelled back and forth between the US and Ireland numerous times without trouble - until now.

- A massive power outage affected the entire Iberian peninsula on Monday; Portuguese authorities are blaming the blackout on extreme temperature variations.

- A Northern Irish rap group, Kneecap, has raised eyebrows after footage emerged of a gig a year and a half ago in which one of the members said "The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP".