News roundup, 7 April 2026

 - Donald Trump made a rather unsubtle statement on Truth Social regarding Iran's failure to allow US ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump is threatening to bomb power plants and bridges unless the strait is opened by 8 PM (Eastern time) today. Targeting civilian infrastructure in this way would likely constitute a war crime, though whether anyone would be prosecuted for this is doubtful.

- US Attorney General Pam Bondi has become the latest recipient of Trump's favourite catchphrase. Trump had reportedly been frustrated with Bondi's failure to "execute on his vision". The fact that she pretty much destroyed the Department of Justice as per his wishes was evidently not good enough for him; she wasn't able to lock up his enemies fast enough.

- The BC General Employees' Union has become the latest to request that its members be allowed to work from home due to the increase in fuel prices resulting from the war. The union represents public servants as well as private sector employees in several provincially regulated industries.

- Doug Ford is vehemently opposed to the talks between Stellantis and Chinese manufacturer Zhejiang ‌Leapmotor Technology regarding the possible use of Stellantis' idled plant in Brampton to build EVs. Ford is concerned that the cars will be assembled from pre-prepared kits, meaning fewer jobs than the standard model, but that would presumably still mean more jobs than keeping the plant idle.

- India has achieved criticality with a prototype fast breeder reactor that is expected to be able to produce 500 MW worth of electricity once testing is complete. The reactor is running on uranium/plutonium mixed oxide fuel at present, but India's long-term plan is to get reactors of this sort running on thorium (which gets turned into the fissile uranium-233 in the same way the current test reactor generates plutonium-239 from natural uranium), as India has large thorium reserves.

- The man convicted of sending letter bombs in attempts to kill his wife and two of her lawyers, causing one of the lawyers to lose her right hand, has lost his appeal of his sentence for attempted murder. Guido Amsel had been given life with no chance of parole for a minimum of 10 years, a sentence usually reserved for a successful attempt at second-degree murder. It's noteworthy that one parole officer argues that he could be a danger abroad; once he is released he will immediately face deportation to his native Germany. It's perhaps to the credit of Manitoba Justice that they don't just quietly let him go and become someone else's problem, which would be easy enough to do.

News roundup, 6 March 2026

- Mark Carney is refusing to rule out getting involved in the Iran war despite his misgivings, apparently trying to avoid arousing the ire of Donald Trump. Fen Osler Hampson of Carleton University calls Carney's stance "studied ambiguity" and suggests that he might fear that Trump will use crippling trade sanctions to force Canada to cooperate. Part of me would like to see Canada respond to such pressures by threatening to cut off exports of oil and electricity to the US, but that would require more courage than the Liberal Party usually shows, and if we're honest with ourselves it might not even be a good idea; it's the sort of thing that just might provoke the Mango Mussolini to use military force against us. Many members of the Liberal caucus are worried about the matter; the party's caucus meeting today will be interesting. Meanwhile the war itself continues apace, with drone attacks throughout the Middle East on everything from hotels to fossil fuel infrastructure. The Guardian's Gaby Hinsliff suggests a possible reason why Iran would be lashing out at so many countries - not only are they trying to dissuade those countries from helping the Americans, this may be their version of Israel's Samson option, i.e. "to show Washington that if it’s going down then it’s taking the neighbourhood with it" and "make the wider Gulf look too dangerous a place to invest".

- The Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia via Ukraine, has been offline since January. Ukraine attributes this to damage from a Russian strike, but the Orban regime is accusing Ukraine of deliberate delays in getting the pipeline up and running, and in February they vetoed the EU's latest sanctions package against Russia as well as a loan for Ukraine. Now Orban is getting even more belligerent - in a recent post on X (the former Twitter) he called this a "blockade" that Hungary would break "by force". Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded by suggesting that he could give Orban's address to Ukraine's military; most recently, Hungarian authorities seized two vehicles owned by a Ukrainian bank and took seven bank employees into custody. The vehicles were apparently carrying 40 million US dollars, 35 million euros, and 9 kg of gold, which was being shipped to Ukraine from Austria. Hungarian authorities claim that this is a money-laundering investigation;  the speculation on Reddit is that this is a sign of desperation on Orban's part as his Fidez party has been slumping in the polls of late.

- The Trump regime plans to allow the US Department of Justice to interfere with ethics investigations by state bar associations against current and former DOJ lawyers. A proposed regulation would give Attorney General Pam Bondi "the right to review the complaint and the allegations in the first instance" and would suspend the bar associations' investigations until the review is completed.

- Kristi Noem has been removed from her position as Homeland Security secretary, to be replaced by Markwayne Mullin (currently a Republican senator from Oklahoma). I guess she's going to spend more time shooting dogs with her family.

- One of the objections sometimes raised against Canada choosing Saab's Gripen fighter is that there are concerns about "interoperability" with F-35s. On the face of it this should not be a problem; Danish F-35s and Swedish Gripens have been operating together for some time without difficulty - but it has been suggested that the Americans can make it a problem by denying Canada access to the systems that allow this to work.

- Google is facing a wrongful death lawsuit after a Florida man, Jonathan Gavalas, killed himself upon being asked to do so by the company's AI chatbot, Gemini. The suicide followed a long and bizarre series of exchanges with the chatbot.

News roundup, 19 Nov 2025

- Both houses of Congress have now passed a bill forcing the release of the Epstein files; every member of the House except one voted in favour. However, there's a catch - the bill as passed allows the DOJ to withhold or redact any records that "would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution". This is relevant because Donald Trump has ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into three prominent Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton, and their connections to Epstein. This just might provide the pretext Trump needs to keep the files out of public view.

- A new poll gives the Democrats a significant advantage in next year's midterms. That's assuming, of course, that the midterms are free and fair, which may be doubtful.

- Denmark held municipal elections across the country yesterday. The governing Social Democrats have lost control of Copenhagen's council; fortunately the beneficiaries there were other leftwing parties rather than the far right.

- Germany's government, a coalition between the centre-right Christian Democrats and the centre-left Social Democrats, is deeply divided over the future of pensions in the country. The coalition agreement calls for pensions to be propped up at least until 2031; the Social Democrats are trying to extend it further. The Christian Democrats' youth wing is not keen on the additional expenditures that the Social Democrats are calling for, though, and the pension legislation is not guaranteed to pass.

- The Manitoba government has presented its throne speech for the new legislative session. Highlights include the opening of a supervised consumption site as well as an overpass for the intersection near Carberry where 17 seniors died in a bus crash and a new emergency room at Victoria General Hospital. More problematically it calls for the construction of a new natural gas power plant for Manitoba Hydro; it is hoped that it will eventually run on renewable fuels but there's no plans for that in the near future.

- The City of Winnipeg has cleared two homeless encampments on Monday, the first day when new restrictions were in effect. The restrictions prohibit encampments within 50 metres of schools, playgrounds, daycares and skating rinks, and within 30 metres of transit shelters, bridges, docks and similar public facilities.

- The cycling magazine Momentum has published its annual list of the 30 most bike-friendly cities around the world. 24 of the 30 cities listed are in the European Union; the only other countries with cities on the list are Canada (represented by Montreal, Quebec City, and Vancouver), Switzerland (Zurich and Bern), and Norway (Oslo).

- The Brazilian government is proposing that brazilwood, an endangered tree, be given the highest level of protection by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). This is a source of alarm to many musicians, due to the wood's widespread use in bows for stringed instruments - it would force musicians to register their bows in order to travel internationally.

News roundup - 9 Oct 2025

- The BC Conservative Party is experiencing a lot of internal strife as it tries to figure out whether it wants to be a pragmatic centre-right party or a youth-oriented, populist, far-right one. The firing of staffer Lindsay Shepherd was not the only one in recent weeks; caucus researcher Siavash Tahan was also fired in September; both say that they were fired for being too conservative for the party. Many of this lot cite leader John Rustad's failure to talk enough about such things as reversing the NDP's attempts to bring the province's legislation in line with the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the province’s existing gender identity education framework, known as SOGI 123. The thing is, in order to have a path to victory the Tories need to appeal to suburban voters, many of whom are understandably a bit spooked by hardcore social conservatism. Part of me hopes that the extremists win out, because that will likely keep them out of power for quite a while. The problem with this, though, is that sooner or later any government is going to wear out its welcome, and one person in this Reddit thread sums it up nicely:

 Wish for your competitor to be crazy, and you get what happened to America, or the Fords in Ontario, or Alberta. It's an unsafe bet - the public might just elect crazy to spite you. 

It's also worth noting that moderation of one's position to attract suburban voters is not limited to the right. The NDP also has tended to take more moderate, centrist positions, even as it tries to make incremental improvements to society. (The Liberals, of course, have no such problem, because suburban voters are their bread and butter). It's not limited to Canada either, though the problem is more acute in countries like ours (or the US or the UK) due to our first-past-the-post electoral system.

- Former FBI director James Comey has pleaded not guilty to charges of misleading the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2020. In that hearing Comey told the committee that he had not authorized any associate to serve as an anonymous source to the media regarding investigations into Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The indictment makes no mention of what was allegedly leaked or who the source was; a Trump loyalist, Lindsey Halligan, who was appointed to head the prosecution, is having difficulty getting staff to work on the case.

- David Frum thinks that Trump may be running out of time to consolidate his power as public opinion turns against him with next year's midterms looming. Frum cites Trump's pressure on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute as many of his enemies as possible, and thinks that Bondi is having to weigh the merits of keeping in the president's good books with the possibility of herself facing prosecution once he is out of office. This may be wishful thinking, however; I think the odds are already against the midterms being anything resembling free and fair elections.

- A historian at Rutgers University who teaches a course about resistance to fascism is putting all his courses online and moving with his family to Spain due to threats and doxxing from the far right. He has already received numerous death threats, including one in which someone threatened to kill him in front of his students. The university's chapter of Turning Point USA, the group founded by Charlie Kirk, has already called for him to be fired, ironically claiming he is "a risk to their safety". Admittedly, he is on record as saying that "violence is sometimes necessary" to stop fascism, but that is entirely true.

- The pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago is suing the federal government after he was shot with a pepper ball, apparently without provocation, while protesting at an ICE facility in nearby Broadview. Rev. David Black says he was taking part in a prayer vigil outside the facility when officers opened fire. 

- Two social media accounts popular with the MAGA crowd, Defiant L’s and Resist the Mainstream, are run by a Macedonian national who has never set foot in the US and who once donated over $3,000 to far-right conspiracy theorist Ron Watkins' unsuccessful bid for the Republican primary for Arizona's 2nd congressional district (as donations by foreign nationals are illegal, Watkins returned the money when this was discovered).

News roundup, 17 July 2025

- The possibility of Donald Trump firing Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is still looming. Powell has refused to cut interest rates as Trump wants; he needs some sort of a pretext to do this, though, and the alleged mismanagement of the renovations on two Federal Reserve buildings just might be it. Trump has already been polling Republican legislators on the issue. He's denying, however, that he actually plans to do so, perhaps leery of what such an unprecedented move might do to the markets. Interfering with their central banks didn't do Hungary and Turkey any favours, after all.

- The Trump regime is doing its utmost to stop the expansion of renewable energy, even as China races ahead. China already has five times the amount of renewable energy in its grid as the US - and they have greatly expanded electricity supply without increasing their fossil fuel consumption as a result. Their crackdown on offshore wind now has Massachusetts and New York looking to buy power from an offshore project in Nova Scotia.

- The matter of the Epstein files continues to cause problems for Donald Trump. Some think that this could be thing that finally makes the MAGA crowd question their previously unquestioning loyalty to the orange monster. Then again, it might just as easily make them question their previously unquestioned belief that sexual abuse of minors is a bad thing.

- A plastic surgeon in Utah who allegedly destroyed more than $28,000 worth of government provided COVID-19 vaccines and gave kids saline shots so they would answer yes when asked if they had been vaccinated has had all charges against him dropped by the Department of Justice under Pam Bondi. Dr. Michael Kirk Moore Jr. had allegedly accepted cash bribes to distribute fraudulent vaccination cards as well.

- Two people have been arrested after allegedly using a tow truck to steal several vehicles in Transcona.  

News roundup, 15 July 2025

- Clownvoy organizer James Bauder is seeking political asylum in the US after his lawyers warned him that his chance of avoiding conviction on charges related to the protest are virtually nonexistent, given the fates of his co-conspirators.

- A man who was born in New Brunswick but has lived in New Hampshire for most of his life was denied reentry into the US after a family trip due to convictions he received some two decades ago for marijuana possession and driving while suspended. Funny thing is, he approved of the Trump regime until this happened to him, but now he's not so sure.

- The property committee of Winnipeg city council has unanimously approved an exemption to height limits for an apartment tower that's part of the Market Lands project. The tower, when completed, will include 148 units of which two thirds will be rented out below median market rates.

- The fire district serving northeastern BC could see 30% of its forested areas burn this year, according to provincial forestry minister Ravi Parmar. South of the border, an iconic lodge in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona was destroyed in a wildfire over the weekend. Here in Manitoba preparations are being made to house thousands of people if needed; for perspective, if the city of Thompson alone were to be evacuated that would more than double the number of evacuees. Fortunately some progress is being made towards protecting Thompson. But given that there's only a single highway connecting Thompson with the rest of the province's road system, they also might not want to wait until the city is in imminent risk of burning down - if the highway is cut off, getting 13,000 people onto airplanes on short notice would not be an easy task.

- For the first time, one of Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social has been "ratioed"; in social media jargon, the ratio in question is that of replies (which are disproportionately often negative reactions to a post) compared to likes and shares (which are normally positive). The post in question was made in defense of his attorney general Pam Bondi's handling of the Epstein files.

- Nahanni Fontaine, whose cabinet post includes responsibility for accessibility, has again apologized for her unfortunate remarks about the ASL interpreter at a recent event. She has agreed to undergo training on deafness and deaf culture. That's a good move, certainly. Not such a good move was when whoever runs her official social media accounts made the decision to block the entire news team of APTN, the network whose mic picked up her remarks in the first place. Fontaine attributes this to overzealous staffers and she says she directed them to reverse this once she became aware of it. For what it's worth, I believe her (it's the norm for staffers to handle that sort of thing), but it still isn't a good look.

News roundup, 10 July 2025

- Four men from Quebec have been arrested over a plot to forcibly seize land near Quebec City; they appear to have been trying to start an American-style far-right militia. They had stockpiled 83 firearms and 16 bombs, as well as such things as smoke grenades and night vision goggles; all four have ties to the military.

- Donald Trump is musing about a federal takeover of New York City and the District of Columbia. In the case of New York, he suggested that it might be necessary if Zohran Mamdani (who he called a "communist") gets elected mayor. He also fulminated about the city's use instant-runoff (ranked choice) voting. In the case of DC, he tries to justify a takeover on the basis of excessive crime (despite the fact that overall crime in the federal district is down 8% compared to last year, and violent crime is down 25%). That said, there might well be a legal route to a takeover of DC (they could theoretically repeal the Home Rule Act). Ultimately, though, even in the case of New York the ability to stop a takeover depends on the whims of the courts, which have disproportionately been stacked with Trump loyalists.

- During the Biden years, the Democrats designed their climate law in such a way that many of the new green jobs would be in red states. The idea was that the Republicans, when they took power, would be reluctant to undo work that had created so many jobs for their supporters. Unfortunately the Democrats seem to have given voters too much credit for understanding this; the Republicans are betting on the bleating masses continuing to support them. Sadly it's probably a safe bet, even supposing that next year's midterms and the 2028 presidential election are fair (which seems unlikely in any case).

- A 25 nation survey by the Pew Research Center found that 59% of Canadians now view the US as the greatest threat to the country. Canadians' resolve to boycott as many American goods as possible and to avoid travel to the country seems to remain strong as well.

- Vaccination rates in the Maritimes are too low to reliably control the spread of measles. In Nova Scotia, about 23% of children have less than the requisite two doses of the vaccine; New Brunswick and PEI are somewhat better, but 10% of kids aren't fully vaccinated. The rate should be below 5% to keep the disease under control.

- The developer of ICEBlock, an app that allows people to share sightings of ICE officers has been threatened by the Department of Justice; Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that "he better watch out". Moreover, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem is threatening CNN for reporting on the very existence of the app. Admittedly, there are people out there who would happily do harm to ICE officers, but the people who lured a bunch of them out of a detention facility in Texas and opened fire on them didn't need an app to find them in any case.

News roundup, 25 March 2025

- The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is calling for the search of Prairie Green Landfill to continue, in the hope of finding the remains of the woman known as Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe ("Buffalo Woman"). This may be a tall order, since the information publicly available only gives the approximate time of her murder (mid-March 2022) and the approximate location where she was dumped (a bin behind a business on Henderson Highway, though it's possible that the police know which business and haven't made it public). But it's definitely worth looking further into. 

- Danielle Smith is coming under considerable criticism for the interview she gave to far-right news site Breitbart, in which she asked that Trump hold off on the tariffs until after the election so as to improve the Conservatives' chances. Whether the publicity over this interview will help the Cons is another question. It's not likely to help Smith, but she isn't up for reelection for a couple more years so maybe she hopes Albertans will have forgotten by then.

- Democratic Congresswoman Jamine Crockett made a statement in support of the "Tesla takedown" rallies, which happen to coincide with her birthday on the 29th of March. But when she said that "all I want to see happen on my birthday is for Elon to be taken down", this led to a statement by Attorney General Pam Bondi that Crockett should "tread very carefully" with such statements. 

- Jeffrey Goldberg, who writes for the Atlantic, got added to a Signal discussion group that included several prominent figures in the Trump regime, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He ended up becoming privy to secret plans for bombing in Yemen in advance of the raid after Hegseth casually spilled the beans in the discussion group. One wonders if Hegseth is keeping his promise to quit drinking if appointed.

- Prepac, a manufacturer of ready-to-assemble furniture founded in Delta, BC in 1979 has shut down its Canadian manufacturing, citing "an altered economic environment" for the move. Unifor, which represented the workers at the Delta plant, is calling for a nationwide boycott of the company. Prepac was family-owned until Torquest, a private equity company, snapped it up in 2019; two years later it opened a plant in North Carolina, which will become their main site.

- DNA testing firm 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, having apparently been unable to recover from the bad publicity resulting from a data breach two years ago. This has led to fears that people's genetic data might fall into the hands of folks who might have other things in mind than people's wellbeing (like, say, health insurance companies). The company's privacy policy says that any company buying the company's data is bound by the same policy; the only problem is, when they adopt 23andMe's privacy policy, they adopt the line in said policy that says it can be changed at any time. That doesn't sound reassuring. California's attorney general has even released a consumer alert complete with instructions on how to delete your account.

- The concept of a "Dyson swarm", in which vast numbers of solar collectors are placed around the Sun to form a huge spherical shell, has been around for a long time. The question of what that would do to the Earth's climate hasn't really been looked at until recently. But it seems that if such a swarm were placed just outside Earth's orbit, it would heat the planet's surface by an average of 140 K (or 140°C), enough to boil the oceans. If it were placed further out, say just past Mars, it would still heat the Earth by about 3°C, and building all those solar collectors would require about 10²³ kg of silicon, meaning a heck of a lot of asteroid mining.

- A woman was run down in the parking lot of a kids' recreational facility in suburban Winnipeg over the weekend, after standing in an open parking spot to hold it for another person. Apparently a 40 year old woman became so incensed at this that she ran her over, then backed out and fled the scene.

News roundup, 19 March 2025

- A 19 year old Winnipeg man, who has previously been charged with spraypainting antisemitic graffiti on buildings, is now facing several terrorism-related charges; these include two counts of commission of an offence for a terrorist group (not clear if the offence in question was the graffiti or something else), as well as one count each of facilitating a terrorist activity and participating in an activity related to a terrorist group.

- Speaking of vandalism and terrorism, the Trump regime's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has declared a recent outbreak of arson and other vandalism against Tesla vehicles and dealerships to be "nothing short of domestic terrorism". The thing is, the growing distaste for Elon Musk among thinking people around the world is actually starting to become a serious threat to Tesla. Auto insurers are planning to raise insurance rates for Tesla vehicles due to the high incidence of vandalism. Meanwhile a poll in Germany found that 94% of respondents would not consider buying a Tesla. And Tesla insiders are selling large amounts of stock. The latter point is particularly telling since insiders face strong constraints on how they trade shares in the company - they potentially would need to convince the SEC that they were trading on information available to anyone, not just insiders. So basically, the insiders are admitting that anyone can see that the stock is headed in the wrong direction. And now major investors in the company are starting to call for Musk's head. Be interesting to see what, if anything, the regime does in the event that Musk loses all his money.

- OpenAI is calling for a ban on Chinese AI products such as DeepSeek in the US. I could actually approve of that if they also banned American, European, and all other AI products, including OpenAI. That might be a very good idea, if you could somehow come up with an international treaty that the relevant countries could agree to. But since it's not going to happen, I'm not sure there's much point in banning one particular country's AIs. Sure, China's government is a nasty one, but that's largely irrelevant since they won't likely be in control of it either after a point. And it's hard not to notice that OpenAI themselves want to be exempted from all kinds of long-established copyright laws in order to compete with these Chinese products. It's not that they're libertarians - they want rules, they just don't want the rules to apply to them.

- The latest opinion polls put the federal Liberals in first place for the first time in a couple of years. The fact that the Conservative majority that seemed inevitable a couple of months ago may be slipping out of reach is definitely good news. Not such good news is the fact that the NDP has sunk so low that they will likely be largely irrelevant in the next parliament. It looks like either the Liberals will win a majority, or else they will win a plurality but need the support of the Bloc to form a government. That said, the NDP might not do quite as badly as the seat projection model predicts; such models usually look at the change in popular vote from the last election for a region of the country and adjust the vote in each riding in the region by that amount. So hopefully the prospect of the NDP losing all its Manitoba seats, as predicted by the model, won't come to pass.

- At the provincial level, of course, the NDP is doing much better in Manitoba. Shannon Corbett won an easy victory yesterday in the byelection forced by the death of Transcona MLA Nello Altomare.

- Donald Trump is claiming that pardons issued by Joe Biden in the dying days of his administration are null and void because the orders were signed using a device known as an autopen. The fact that a previous Republican administration had gotten approval for the use of an autopen to sign orders doesn't matter to the current regime, of course.

- A Republican member of Minnesota's state senate has been arrested on suspicion of soliciting an underage person for sex. Funny, I thought rightwingers were supposed to be all about protecting children...

News roundup, 22 Nov 2024

- While it's too late to do anything about it now, it's an interesting academic exercise to consider whether US Attorney General Merrick Garland could have prevented the reelection of Donald Trump. Dean Obeidallah argues that Garland has utterly failed his country by failing to push aggressively enough in prosecuting Trump after the Jan 6 putsch. Many in this Reddit thread agree with Obeidallah; others think that Garland had no choice but to do his utmost to build an airtight case against the former President, due to the inevitable perception among half the country that this was a partisan hit job against their hero. But I can't help but think that maybe he should have just recognized that this would happen no matter how airtight the case and pushed ahead aggressively; on the other hand, if he did that and it ended in an acquittal, that could have won a lot of support for Trump.

- If RFK Jr. is appointed health secretary as everyone expects, we'd better hope that we don't get another pandemic during the coming years - like, say, a mutant version of H5N1 (avian influenza) that can easily spread human to human like many other flu strains. Some fear that the recent case in BC could be a sign that this is happening; on the other hand, you'd expect to have heard of more cases by now if that were true.

- Matt Gaetz has abandoned his quest to become the US Attorney General; Trump has selected prosecutor Pam Bondi for the position instead.

- The Trudeau government is suspending the GST on a number of items for a two month period; the list of affected items includes things like children's clothing and diapers but also less essential things like restaurant meals, Christmas trees, and beer. They're also sending out $250 cheques in the spring to anyone who earned less than $150,000 last year. One could be forgiven for being a bit cynical about the government's motives here.

- The truck driver involved in that fatal crash last week near Altona, Manitoba was charged with two counts of dangerous driving causing death and one of obstructing a police officer. He has now disappeared and is the subject of a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest.

- While Waterloo Region's LRT system, the Ion, has been very successful, there is one recurring problem - morons keep trying to pull U-turns in front of the trains. In the most recent case the train was actually derailed, though fortunately nobody was injured, not even the idiot driving the car. You can see video of the accident here.

- There are indications that the highly popular weight-loss drug Ozempic not only helps people to lose weight, it seems to actually change people's tastes towards more healthful foods. The fast food industry is sufficiently worried about this to be intensely studying the incidence of this; it's bad news for them if this is true, albeit good news for everybody else. On the downside, there is some evidence that more food might be wasted by users of Ozempic and similar drugs.

- A bill before Australia's parliament would ban most social media for persons under 16. An exception is made for YouTube due to the large amount of educational and other child-friendly content on the platform; some who called for the legislation approve of enabling youth to watch YouTube, but would prefer to have a limitation on young users' ability to upload material to avoid the potential for exploitation and bullying.

- Six people have died of apparent methanol poisoning after visiting Vang Vieng, Laos, a popular destination for young tourists. This is a shockingly common occurrence in much of the world, including the EU.