News roundup, 23 March 2026

- An Air Canada CRJ-900 collided with a vehicle on the runway while landing at New York's LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night. The pilots were killed while 41 people were injured, nine of them seriously enough to remain in hospital as of this morning. There are reports that a controller cleared the vehicle to cross the runway, then abruptly tried to cancel the clearance before the collision.

- Iran is warning that if the US goes ahead with threats to target the country's power plants, there will be retaliatory strikes on water and energy infrastructure across the Middle East and that the Strait of Hormuz will be completely closed until Iran's power plants are rebuilt.

- South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham is calling on Donald Trump to close bases in countries that won't allow them to be used in the attack on Iran.

- The International Energy Agency is recommending several measures for governments to take in order to deal with potential fuel shortages as a result of the war in Iran. These measures include lowering highway speed limits, allowing people to work from home where possible, and encouraging public transit use. The UK government is considering several of these measures, including reducing speed limits and even limiting where and when people can drive. Notably, there seems to be particular resistance to reinstating work from home; a representative of large British companies cited COVID-related "workplace friction between shopfloor staff and white-collar colleagues who could work remotely" as a reason for not wanting to allow it. Meanwhile China is expecting fewer disruptions than most countries, thanks to years of efforts to electrify transportation and build up strategic fuel reserves.

- Alberta separatists gathering signatures for an independence referendum have reportedly been claiming to be affiliated with Elections Alberta. They've also been accused of using food and family entertainment to induce people to attend signature-gathering events, which is illegal.

- The Socialist Party's Emmanuel Grégoire has won Paris' mayoralty race, beating rightwing candidate Rachida Dati in a runoff. Grégoire previously served as deputy mayor under outgoing mayor Anne Hidalgo. This is reassuring news to those who want to see Paris' recent transformation continue. The left also scored wins in other major cities but lost out to the far right in smaller communities. The right's failure to gain traction in big cities despite the best efforts of a billionaire donor is reassuring.

- A Georgia woman has been charged with murder after taking abortion drugs to terminate her pregnancy.

- A Polish court has ruled that the country must recognize the union between two Polish men who married in Germany. The rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) is apoplectic at the ruling, with the party's parliamentary leader Mariusz Błaszczak calling it "an attack on the family". The party will be filing an appeal with the country's Constitutional Tribunal.

News roundup, 17 Nov 2025

- Mark Carney's budget is expected to pass today, as while none of the opposition parties are expected to vote in favour of the budget, none of them are election-ready either, so enough abstentions are expected for the budget to pass.

- Donald Trump is now saying House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files. Presumably he's hoping that it will be blocked in the Senate and wants to repair divisions in the Republican Party over the issue (including a high-profile spat with Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene). Whether this will get people to move on from the issue is a fair question, but one should never discount the stubbornness and pig-headedness of the MAGA crowd.

- Chile held the first round of their presidential election yesterday. With nobody winning a majority, it will come down to a runoff between the far left and the far right as Jeannette Jara, a Communist Party member who served as labour minister in a centre-left coalition under the incumbent president, faces off against José Antonio Kast, a rabid opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage. The second round will be held on 14 Dec. Unfortunately Kast is thought to have the edge there as he is expected to win support from several other rightwing candidates who got around 30% of the vote.

- Former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who is currently living in exile in India, has been sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity related to a crackdown on anti-government protesters last year.

- A Polish rail line which is used to transport military supplies to Ukraine was damaged by an explosion on the weekend; Polish authorities suspect sabotage.

- Liberal-minded folks, people of colour, and LGBT* people in the US have been buying guns in record numbers as the political climate in the country grows more hostile towards them. The Liberal Gun Club says that requests for firearms training have quintupled since Trump's reelection last year.

- A Winnipeg couple have pleaded guilty to numerous counts of animal cruelty after torturing and killing over 90 animals and selling footage on the dark web. Their victims included 67 cats as well as seven birds, six rabbits, six hamsters, three goldfish, a frog, and an axolotl; they were apparently paid a total of around $2,800 via PayPal for the videos. Their pleas mean that several other charges, including accessing child pornography and some bestiality-related offenses, will not go ahead. This is significant because the maximum penalty for animal cruelty in Canada is 5 years in prison.

News roundup, 10 Sept 2025

- The US and the EU have tentatively agreed on a "Framework Agreement" on trade; what's disconcerting is what Europe seems prepared to give up in order to continue their trade relationship with the Americans. Buried in the document is a statement that the countries "intend to accept and provide mutual recognition to each other’s standards" with regard to motor vehicles; in other words, the EU is prepared to accept gigantic hulking American trucks and SUVs on their streets in order to satisfy the current US regime. The European Transport Safety Council has issued a statement condemning the move; whether it can be reversed, though, is a good question. I suspect that most European leaders know that it really isn't a good idea but are preparing to move forward due to fears about the economic impact of tariffs. Unfortunately they're in a tight spot, because much of the voting public takes a very short-sighted, immediate view of such matters and are willing to accept a worse future in order to avoid a pay cut in the present.

- Israel bombed Doha on Tuesday, attempting to justify the attack by saying that they were targeting Hamas leaders who were in the Qatari capital for peace negotiations. The Israelis were at one point claiming that the attack was greenlighted by the Trump regime, but later retracted the statement, saying that they had acted alone. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the attack "an intolerable expansion of violence"; even Trump seems to think it may not have been a good idea. It's definitely not good for the peace negotiations. Presumably that was Netanyahu's goal, since what he seems to want is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza so he can just annex it to Israel, and that would be a hard thing to justify even to his own people if the negotiations were still active.

- Poland says that they have shot down Russian drones that had strayed into their airspace in the course of a Russian attack on Ukraine. 

- The Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles caused a stir with an Instagram post that read "Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews". There was an instant backlash as the museum's social media followers thought about who else the post might be referring to, and the post was removed with a grovelling apology.

- Manitoba's Minister of Health, Uzoma Asagwara, has announced that two police officers will be stationed at the emergency ward of Health Sciences Centre at all times, and weapon detection equipment will be installed at all entrances. This follows the "greylisting" of HSC, the province's largest hospital, by the Manitoba Nurses' Union. The union's president isn't sure this is the best way to do it, favouring more funding for specialized safety officers rather than tying up police resources. It might be a necessary evil, though.

- Federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald, encouragingly, has not ruled out lifting the tariffs on Chinese EVs in the hope of getting Chinese restrictions on Canadian canola lifted. On the other hand, he also says that the government wants to "ensure any changes wouldn't jeopardize other industries or sectors"; that suggests that we shouldn't get our hopes up, though, since those autoworker votes are important.

- The mayor of Barrie, Ontario, Alex Nuttall, has declared a state of emergency in the city in order to address concerns about homeless encampments. Ontario's emergency management law empowers the city to create a new task force to oversee the response to encampments, as well as hiring contractors and consultants to assist them in the matter.

-Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm warns that the Trump regime has "basically destroyed what capacity we had to respond to a pandemic" since taking office the second time around. On the bright side, if we get a big enough pandemic it will do wonders for the fight against climate change.

News roundup, 24 June 2025

- Iran has launched attacks on American bases in Iraq and Qatar in retaliation for the US attacks on their nuclear sites. They now say they want to avoid further escalation. There is speculation, however, that they could close off the Strait of Hormuz, which would have significant effects on the availability and price of fossil fuels as about 20% of oil and gas globally is sent through that strait. There were some reports indicating that there might be a ceasefire in the works but this remains in doubt and the two countries continue to exchange attacks despite Trump's admonitions not to.

- Ukrainian and Polish authorities say that they have uncovered a plot to assassinate Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a state visit to Poland. The plot allegedly involved a "deep cover" agent who was recruited decades ago. This follows the discovery of another such plot last year, which apparently involved insiders in Ukraine's State Guard Department.

- The state of emergency issued in Manitoba at the end of May due to wildfires has been lifted due to improvements in conditions and success in containing the fires; however the situation remains volatile with several uncontained fires still burning in the north.

- Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi will be entering the legislature after winning a seat in the constituency of Edmonton-Strathcona in one of three byelections held in the province yesterday. Gurtej Singh Brar also appears to have won Edmonton-Ellerslie for the NDP, while the UCP's Tara Sawyer has been elected in Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills.

- Following the police-involved death of a Saulteax teenager, Neil Stonechild in 1990, someone named Candis McLean self-published a book entitled When Police Become Prey which disputed the findings of an inquiry into Stonechild's death. McLean has just won a defamation lawsuit against University of Regina professor Michelle Stewart who called the book "racist garbage". The judge may have been bound by some sort of legal precedent to make that finding, however it's worth noting that instead of the $165,642 in damages sought by McLean, he awarded her only $6,450.

News roundup, 2 June 2025

- The tensions between India and Pakistan continue to seethe, though there at least has been a lull in the shooting. Pakistan is accusing India of violating international law by suspending the Indus Waters Treaty, which governs how much water India can take from the river system. India, for their part, are claiming that Pakistan has already violated the treaty by virtue of the terrorist attacks that India accuses Pakistan of being responsible for. Meanwhile China is threatening to give India a taste of its own medicine by holding back the headwaters of the Brahmaputra River in Tibet. This is all rather disconcerting given that all three countries are nuclear powers.

- Ukraine says that they have destroyed more than 40 Russian military aircraft in a drone attack. Russia is also reporting that two derailments in the border zone near Ukraine, which killed a total of seven people, were the result of sabotage. This is something the Americans should consider before they attempt to annex a country that's right next to them and filled with people who look like them.

- Rightwing historian Karol Nawrocki has won Poland's presidential runoff election by a margin of 50.9 to 49.1% over Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski. Nawrocki is expected to use the presidential veto power to block the pro-EU policies of prime minister Donald Tusk.

- A coal-fired power plant in Michigan was slated to close this past weekend but a new executive order from Donald Trump forces it to stay open, ostensibly to mitigate the risk of blackouts but no doubt actually to mitigate the risk of coal mining losing its economic relevance.

- A man armed with a makeshift flamethrower as well as several Molotov cocktails attacked a pro-Israel gathering in Boulder, Colorado; eight people were injured in the attack.

- The Manitoba government has rejected the City of Winnipeg's application to use a sulfur-based rodenticide to kill ground squirrels in city parks.