News roundup, 24 Dec 2025

 Just a note that I plan on this being the last blog post until the new year. That may change if something happens that seems worthy of interrupting the break, but otherwise I will resume posting in January. For now, though, here's the latest:

- A Perimeter Airlines Dash 8 preparing to take off from Winnipeg on a flight to Thompson via Manto Sipi and Shamattawa was stopped on a taxiway and evacuated on Monday after a flight attendant and ground control reported that the aircraft was on fire. There were no injuries in the evacuation, and the fire was limited to the right main landing gear assembly.

- The executive of Winnipeg's Granite Curling Club is requesting a judicial review of the city's plans to fight the ruling of the Manitoba Municipal Board regarding an affordable housing project planned for an adjacent city-owned parking lot. The city has received advice suggesting that the board's ruling can be ignored; the executive wants this reviewed by the courts. Notably, a substantial minority of the club's members are in favour of the housing project. If I had to guess, the members in support of the development probably live mostly in Wolseley, West Broadway, and Osborne Village and see homelessness every day as they walk or bike through their neighbourhoods, while those in opposition live in the suburbs and thus find homelessness less inconvenient for them than having to take the bus to the curling club.

- The waters around southwestern England are seeing a huge surge in the octopus population. The Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) accounts for most of the surge; this species is not unknown in British waters but has historically been more common in the Mediterranean. Since they prey on other molluscs as well as crustaceans, this may have implications for the shellfish industry if the "bloom" persists. Warmer winters due to climate change are the suspected reason, though maybe they're just the advance party for the Cthulhu as he gets ready to come out of the seabed and ravage the world. We'll have to see.

- The FBI and a New York prosecutor sought to interview the Andrew formerly known as Prince over possible connections to Peter Nygard. It's like all the rich scumbags out their know each other or something.

- A raid on a house in Winnipeg's North Point Douglas neighbourhood last Friday resulted in arrests and the seizure of two crossbows and a grenade as well as more conventional weapons including several firearms, brass knuckles, and a canister of bear spray. Two people are facing multiple charges for the weapons as well as methamphetamine, fentanyl, and lockpicks. Meanwhile in the suburban neighbourhood of Westwood, a cop apparently managed to lose their service weapon with 17 rounds of ammunition in it.

- Far right influencers Andrew Tate and Jake Paul both got soundly beaten in separate boxing matches. It's almost as if hypermasculine macho nonsense isn't enough to actually win a fight.

- A mall Santa in the Edmonton suburb of Sherwood Park was fired after allegedly slapping the hand of a child who tugged at his beard. I could certainly see the temptation, but really, all he needed to say was "No presents for you!"

- A driver in Salmon Arm, BC cut off a vehicle at high speed, flipping the bird while doing so. Unfortunately for him and his passengers, the vehicle turned out to be an unmarked police car, and when they were pulled over the police noticed some unstamped (i.e. black market) cigarettes in their car. Upon further investigation they found cannabis that was also from non-approved sources; they also found 29 grams of cocaine and a wad of cash.

News roundup, 18 Nov 2025

- Mark Carney's first budget passed by a margin of 170 to 168, averting an election, after two NDP MPs and two Conservatives abstained.

- The UN Security Council has approved the Trump regime's plan for an international "stabilization force" for Gaza; Russia and China abstained. A lot of the details still have to be worked out, of course, but it almost certainly won't do the Palestinians any good in the long run (it wouldn't have passed otherwise).

- The Palestinian flag was raised at the Manitoba legislature for the first time in history, on the anniversary of Palestine's declaration of independence in 1988. This is consistent with flag-raisings held on national days of more established countries, but of course the rabidly pro-Israel B'nai Brith was not pleased.

- Several former officers in the Canadian air force are urging the government to go ahead with F-35 purchases and not get sidetracked by Sweden's Gripen. I can't help wonder, though, if they're stuck in a past when the US was thought of as a reliable ally. They do argue that the F-35 has better technology, but one has to ask, better for what? Its much-touted stealth capabilities are more important for attack than for defense, for instance; meanwhile its limited range and single engine make it less suited for Arctic operations. Even its communications are ill-suited to the task. Perhaps it's better at attacking people in their own countries than the Gripen, but should that be what we want in a fighter? I guess that has to be weighed against American threats about what will happen if we don't buy it though.

- The Manitoba Municipal Board has given the Granite Curling Club everything they wanted in terms of stopping an affordable housing project if it's going to cost the club even a single parking space. The fact that the club operates out of a building on city-owned land, and that the parking spaces they'd lose are also on city-owned land, seems not to matter. Premier Kinew says he's "open to looking at" the ruling, but is also a bit leery about interfering in a heavy-handed way. 

- Prosecutors in Milan are investigating reports that wealthy Italians paid large amounts of money (around £70,000 each) to participate in "human safaris" run by the Bosnian Serbs in which they would get to shoot at Bosnian civilians from rooftops during the siege of Sarajevo. Not surprisingly, many of these tourists had ties to the far right.

News roundup, 21 Aug 2025

- Winnipeg's Granite Curling Club is appealing the City of Winnipeg's decision to develop a city-owned surface parking lot into affordable housing to the Manitoba Municipal Board. The building, if built, will be a mixed income facility, with 55 market rent units and 56 at various reduced rates. The club's management fear that reducing the amount of available parking will devastate them; perhaps they think that curlers aren't proper athletes and would thus balk at having to walk a couple of hundred metres. 

- The CEO of Target, Brian Cornell, is stepping down after several bad years for the company. This year has been especially bad; one factor seems to be that the company had jumped on the anti-DEI bandwagon despite previously having taken DEI policies more seriously than most chains. As a result, the chain's customers, who have tended to be politically more progressive on average than those of other retailers due to those former policies, found themselves with a lot less reason to choose them over another company.

- China's carbon emissions in the first half of this year have declined compared to the year before. US emissions, however, have increased in the same time period.

- A Chinese company claims to have developed a robot with an artificial womb. The product, billed as "a pregnancy alternative for those who wish to avoid the burdens of human gestation", is supposed to come out next year at a cost of only 100,000 yuan (around $US 13,900).

- A daycare in Brantford, Ontario was closed for several days after a dead bat found on the premises tested positive for rabies. A case was also detected in a bat in Centre Wellington; one person is undergoing precautionary treatment due to the possibility of exposure to the deadly disease. 

- A man in Kawartha Lakes, Ontario has been charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon after attacking a home invader. Given that the intruder has also been charged with possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes, I do have to wonder why the police didn't think the resident's response was "proportionate to the threat faced" as required by law, though the details definitely matter in a case like this (if, for instance, the intruder was attacked from behind while fleeing, or beaten after he was no longer a threat, charging the resident might be legitimate). Rightwing populists aren't waiting for the facts to come in before shooting their mouths off, of course.

- The family of a man who died after a suicidal jumper landed on the car in which he was riding are suing the City of Toronto for failing to install suicide barriers on the Leaside Bridge, from which the other man jumped.