News roundup, 16 Jan 2026

- Donald Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, which would enable him to send regular military into the state to maintain order. This follows widespread protests against the killing of Renee Good and the wounding of another person. Some protesters (and/or agents provocateurs, and/or straight-up nihilists) apparently threw stones at law enforcement, and tear gas and flashbangs were used by police. Meanwhile governor Tim Walz is calling on citizens to film ICE agents operating in their communities, stating that this footage may be useful for future prosecutions. A bold move for sure; Walz had better stay well away from upstairs windows for the next while. And someone in this Reddit thread made this comment:

Firearms for liberals is like abortion for Republicans. We have them too, we just don't talk about it.

 All in all, things could get rather interesting down there.

- Mark Carney has made a major breakthrough on tariffs after meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping. China will drop tariffs on canola and other products, and in return Canada will allow the import of 49,000 electric cars at a tariff rate of 6.1%. It's the right move I think, but a politically dangerous one given the importance of the auto industry.

- Winnipeg Centre MP Leah Gazan has endorsed Avi Lewis for the federal NDP leadership. She is the first sitting member to issue an endorsement for this race; former MP Charlie Angus has endorsed Alberta MP Heather McPherson. 

- A former Winnipegger who now heads the Anhart Community Housing Society, a BC-based housing nonprofit. is interested in redeveloping the site of the destroyed Manwin Hotel. They hope to work with the Main Street Project to build affordable housing on the site. The organization is also interested in redeveloping the site of the Sutherland Hotel which burned last year. A snag has arisen already, however - the cleanup of the Manwin site has been delayed due to concerns about asbestos.

- The Manitoba government will not be participating in the federal government's buyback program for firearms that were banned in legislation passed in 2020. Justice Minister Matt Wiebe has expressed concerns about the cost and effectiveness of the program, especially given that a pilot of the buyback in Cape Breton that was expected to collect some 200 firearms netted only 25.

- A construction crane fell onto a passenger train in Thailand, killing at least 32 people and putting another 64 in hospital, seven of them in serious condition. The accident is under investigation.

- UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has removed MP Robert Jenrick from her shadow cabinet and suspended him from caucus after being presented with what she calls "irrefutable evidence" that he was planning to defect to another party, which other sources identified as the far-right Reform UK.

- As of the new year, all margarine and dairy milk sold in Canada is required to be fortified with vitamin D. This is a good idea, but it will be interesting to see how the antivax/anti-flouridation crowd will react. I suspect they won't like it; anything done by the government that improves people's health goes against their libertarian individualist spirit.

News roundup, 15 Jan 2025

- Several NATO countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, are sending troops to Greenland as a message to Donald Trump. Subsequently, France announced that they'll be sending troops as well. This follows an unsuccessful attempt by Danish diplomats to talk sense into the orange monster. There is talk of Canada sending troops as well, though Defense Minister David McGuinty says that no decision has been made on the matter.

- Unions and community organizations in Minnesota are calling for a general strike on the 23rd of January. Meanwhile, ICE is being accused of using private information, of the sort that's not supposed to be readily accessible to them, to intimidate people keeping an eye on them. Under Minnesota law, license plate readers and car registration data is only supposed to be accessible to law enforcement during a criminal investigation, but ICE seems to be getting around the safeguards. ICE has also shot another person, this one non-fatally.

- The FBI searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson on Wednesday and seized several devices, apparently in an attempt to find the source of a leak about a defense contractor that Natanson had covered in one of her articles.

- Trump is backing away from threats to strike Iran, saying that the government has reassured him that the killing has stopped. This is good news for international stability, unless of course it's happening because he thinks he needs to focus on Greenland. The least bad possibility (still very bad though) is that he wants his troops close at hand to use at home.

- Quebec premier François Legault has announced his resignation, just under nine months prior to the scheduled election. Legault's Coalition Avenir Québec is being clobbered in the polls; only 18% of eligible voters plan to support them. If an election were held today, the CAQ would come third in the popular vote, and fifth in seat count. Also resigning is Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie, who fared poorly in a post-election leadership review.

- Winnipeg's infamous Manwin Hotel, which had been vacant since last year when it was declared unfit for habitation, was destroyed by fire yesterday morning. The fire forced the evacuation of the Main Street Project next door, and it may be several days before the facility is able to reopen. Nobody died, which is more than can be said for rather a lot of days when the hotel was actually open. Housing advocate Marion Willis of St. Boniface Street Links calls the fire a "predictable outcome" of the city's lax approach towards vacant buildings. To their credit, the city seems to be moving towards potential seizure of such buildings; we'll have to wait and see how well they follow through with that.

News roundup, 6 Nov 2025

- The death toll in the UPS plane crash in Louisville has risen to 12, and may rise further as the search for victims continues. One of the dead was a child who had accompanied a parent to the auto parts business where the parent worked. In other aviation-related news, the FAA is reducing air traffic by 10% at numerous high traffic airports, as they struggle to deal with the number of sick calls by air traffic controllers (who still aren't getting paid thanks to the government shutdown).

- The US Department of Justice has been firing immigration judges before their probationary period ends, including an entire incoming class of newly trained judges. NPR reports that a disproportionate number of the judges who were fired had previously represented immigrants in their past legal careers.

- Manitoba's legislature has passed Bill 48, the Protective Detention and Care of Intoxicated Persons Act, which extends the time that such persons can be detained to 72 hours. The entire legislature, except independent MLA Mark Wasyliw, voted in favour of the bill. This is intended to address the long-lasting nature of the psychosis resulting from meth. A facility, to be run by the Main Street Project, will be set up on the fringes of the city centre. The medical community is divided on the issue; while several doctors signed a letter in support of the change, others question the merits of doing so. One of the points made by the critics is more relevant for opioids than for meth - the fear is that their tolerance could decline enough during the detention period to put them at increased risk of overdose when released.

- Waterloo Regional Council has voted to extend the Ion LRT line to Cambridge. The only council member to vote against the extension was Cambridge's mayor, Jann Liggett. Liggett claims her opposition is because the extension doesn't cover enough of the city, but that doesn't make a lot of sense; you have to start somewhere, and people who don't live right by the line will still benefit from being able to catch a short bus ride to a station. Of course, Cambridge's biggest employer is an auto plant, so...

- A trustee with the River East Transcona School Division has been censured for the third time since 2023 for breaching the board's code of conduct. Rod Giesbrecht has a history of discussing confidential internal board matters with outsiders.

- A Winnipeg veterinarian with a lengthy disciplinary history has been ordered to wind down his practice by June of next year following his most recent transgression, a botched surgery that resulted in a cat's leg being amputated. For his part, the vet claims to have been singled out due to his ethnicity, though he offered no evidence.

- A former nurse at a German hospital has received a life sentence after being convicted of murdering 10 patients and attempting to kill 27 others. He had apparently singled out elderly patients who required more intense care, and desired to reduce his workload.

News roundup, 29 July 2025

- The Manitoba government says that 59 people have been housed through the "Your Way Home" program since it launched in January. According to housing minister Bernadette Smith, all 59 are still housed; nonetheless, some are concerned about the slow pace of getting people into housing. The City of Winnipeg's move to shut St. Boniface Street Links out of the process and give the Main Street Project an exclusive contract is also getting poor reviews from some; city councillor Ross Eadie says that he will be calling for the city to review this decision. For her part, Street Links' executive director, Marion Willis, says that her organization has housed 28 people this month; it would be interesting to know more about the difference in the organization's approach compared to MSP.

- Elections Canada says that they will be using write-in ballots in order to make balloting for the Battle River-Crowfoot byelection manageable. The best thing to be hoped for would be if one of the 209 candidates has a similar name to Pierre Poilievre; that could lead to some interesting results.

- Donald Trump is now saying that a trade deal with Canada to avoid the planned increase in tariffs may not be in the cards. Of course, given that Trump said months ago that he wants to use economic force to compel Canada to join the US, this is not surprising. Probably the negotiations were set up by Trump to fail from the beginning. Meanwhile, the EU has agreed to a deal with the US that will set baseline tariffs at 15%; this is lower than the 30% threatened but considerably higher than the 4.8% tariffs in place now. German chancellor Friedrich Merz says that this was the best deal that could be hoped for, while French prime minister François Bayrou called it a capitulation.

- Two prominent Israeli human rights organizations are now accusing their country of genocidal acts in Gaza. Of course this is old news to anyone who's been paying attention to organizations outside that country, but it makes it a bit harder for the Netanyahu regime to deny it when their own people are saying it.

- A British judge has ordered the last will and testament of Freddie Scappaticci, widely suspected of being a mole in the Provisional IRA for the government, to be sealed for 70 years. A representative of the estate had requested this to protect his heirs from possible retribution in case someone considers them guilty by association.

- The city of Vaughan is the latest to deny MAGA rocker Sean Feucht a permit to perform in one of its parks. Instead, he will performed in a church in Etobicoke. It's worth noting how nearly all of his performances seem to have been initially booked for venues that are owned by public entities. I'm pretty sure he's not doing that as a way of showing solidarity with the public sector; more likely he's hoping for this very result so he can play the victim.

News roundup, 27 May 2025

- While residents in Lac du Bonnet and nearby areas have been allowed to return home following wildfires, several more northern communities are not so fortunate. Pimicikamak Cree Nation has evacuated vulnerable residents, and the entire town of Sherridon is being evacuated; meanwhile the community of Bissett is on alert due to the fires that continue in Nopiming Provincial Park.

- The federal NDP's leadership is drawing fire for devoting a lot of party resources to a last-ditch effort at salvaging Jagmeet Singh's seat in Burnaby Central, possibly at the expense of other, more winnable ridings.

- Members of the Point Douglas Residents' Association are accusing the Main Street Project of helping people to set up a new encampment. The province says the people in question have since been housed and have asked the organization not do do that in the future. One complainer says the MSP told him that the relocation was due to flooding risks at another encampment, but he's upset that the people had to be put somewhere that he can see them.

- A 53 year old man has been arrested after driving a car into a crowd of soccer fans in Liverpool. More than 20 people were injured, several of them seriously; police insist that this is "not terror-related" (perhaps because the suspect is white).

- Less than 5% of Gaza's cropland remains undamaged and accessible to Palestinians.

- When a Winnipeg-area man man named Jaswinder Singh Brar defaulted on a loan for a semi truck, the financing company put liens on all properties in the city owned under that name. Problem is, there are several people by that name who own properties here. One of them managed to get the lien removed after he contacted the financing company and submitted evidence that he wasn't the same guy; the fate of others is unclear.

News roundup, 14 March 2024

- A large number of staff at the Republican National Committee are being pushed out as Donald Trump seemingly tries to remake the committee in his image. How that will turn out remains to be seen; some speculate that this will turn out badly for a lot of down-ballot candidates, as increasingly limited RNC money is diverted to Trump's own campaign at the expense of the party at large. Then again, you can't count on billionaires not to pony up for them.

- Transport for London, and indeed pretty much every public facility in the UK, has long had huge numbers of CCTV cameras installed; the biggest limitation is not how many cameras you can install but how frequently you can monitor them. Never fear; they're now experimenting with AI to monitor the cameras. Some of the things they've done have actually been useful (e.g. preventing suicides and helping people in difficulties) but it's hard not to wonder what else this could be used for. That said, the biggest problem with AI may not be this, but rather the stupendous amounts of energy that are required to run it and the water needed to keep the hardware cool. And all the minerals needed to make that hardware could be put to better use in greening up the grid.

- A bill working its way through the New York State legislature would force companies to reduce single-use plastic packaging by 50%, as well as prohibiting certain toxic materials entirely from use in packaging. Lobbyists from the petrochemical industry are, of course, pulling out all the stops to try to prevent its passage.

- The organization providing services to troubled folks in the lobby of Winnipeg's Millennium Library is not having its funding renewed. Councillor Evan Duncan, who chairs council's Community Services Committee, says this is because he thinks it should be funded by the province, and that the lobby of the library is "not the best place" for these services. I'm guessing his suburban constituents have been telling him they don't want to have to look at those poors as they go to check out their books.

- In response to the Main Street Project's lawsuit against the neighbouring Manwin Hotel, which alleges that runoff from the hotel roof is causing damage to their building, the hotel's owners, in their statement of defense, not only denied wrongdoing but claim that the MSP's services harm the hotel's bottom line. They are seeking $10 million in punitive damages, and an injunction stopping MSP from operating their shelter at that location. I guess if your business model depends on a steady stream of broken people, having an agency that helps to fix said people is bad for business, but it takes a fair amount of chutzpah to actually admit that.