News roundup, 10 April 2026

- Several anonymous sources interviewed for an upcoming book report that in a series of Situation Room meetings earlier this year, various Trump advisors dropped hints that going to war with Iran would be a bad idea - but none of them except JD Vance pressed the issue. You know it's a mess when JD freaking Vance is the voice of reason.

- The American Automotive Policy Council, which represents the US automakers, is concerned about new EU vehicle safety standards that could limit the importation of gigantic pickup trucks. Andrew Puzder, the US ambassador to the EU, suggests that this could breach the spirit of a trade deal with the US that the EU has signed but has not yet ratified.

- People who have worked with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman say that he barely knows how to code and has a "surprisingly shallow" knowledge of how AI actually works. Then again, to do what he does you don't have to know how it works. You don't even have to know if it works, so long as you have plausible deniability about what you know or don't know when you issue an IPO. You just have to know how to sell stuff, and evidently Altman is very good at that.

- Conservative-turned-Liberal MP Marilyn Gladu was welcomed with open arms at the Liberal party convention in Montreal. When Mark Carney was asked about her rather sketchy past (which includes opposition to abortion, opposition to bans on conversion therapy, and support for the Freedom Convoy and other antivaxxers), he stated that Gladu has agreed to vote with the government on those issues. I guess she's flexible, if nothing else. Perhaps Gladu believed, rightly or wrongly, that she had to take such positions to run for office in a place like Sarnia even if she didn't actually believe in them. I'm guessing that she doesn't intend to run again and wants to end her career on the winning side. 

- Solar farms in the UK generated a record 14.1 gigawatts of power on Monday. That's pretty impressive for a country that's not exactly known for being sunny.

- Representatives of 85 countries will be meeting in Colombia at the end of this month for the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. Unlike UN-run climate summits, this will be governed by majority vote rather than consensus, preventing a small number of countries from sabotaging plans like Saudi Arabia and other petrostates did at COP30. The countries plan on putting together a workable plan for the transition; what could be promising is the fact that put together, the countries participating have enough economic heft to force investors to reconsider whether it's still worth investing in new fossil fuel reserves.

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, 2 April 2026

- Donald Trump claims that the US has just about finished the job in Iran. Nobody with any sense believes him, of course.

- Chrysler's parent company, Stellantis, is reportedly in talks with Chinese automaker Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology Co to build EVs at a closed plant in Brampton. If this goes ahead, there might still be hope for an auto industry in Ontario.

- UCP MLA Jason Stephan, who represents the constituency of Red Deer South in Alberta's legislature, has written a column endorsing the idea of a referendum on Alberta separating from Canada. The actual column can be seen here if you're curious; he seems to be working from the same style guide as a certain prominent politician to the south. Yet Danielle Smith seems to think that disloyalty to Canada is not a reason to take disciplinary measures against a caucus member.

- The US Supreme Court has ruled that Colorado's law banning "conversion therapy" for LGBT* kids is unconstitutional. The court believes that prohibiting therapists from telling kids that they need the devil prayed or beaten out of them is a violation of said therapists' free speech rights.

- A Toronto doctor has had her licence revoked after writing nearly 1,500 letters purporting to exempt the bearers from mask and vaccine mandates during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (and incidentally charging the rubes up to $300 per letter). Dr. Celeste Thirlwell was found guilty of "dishonourable and unprofessional" conduct. Don't feel too bad for her, though; I'm sure she'll make a comfortable living off a GiveSendGo campaign and maybe a speaking tour or two.

- Canada Post plans to end home delivery for households that still get it (it ended for many households during the Harper era, of course).  

- Following a 2023 court ruling, millions of Americans may now be eligible for Canadian citizenship by descent. No doubt a number will take advantage of this in order to escape from the current regime down there.

- The Artemis II mission successfully launched from Cape Canaveral yesterday, marking the first time in more than half a century that humans have gone beyond low earth orbit. The mission is scheduled to last 10 days.

- Anthropic AI is using copyright takedown requests to try to suppress the circulation of the source code for their Claude chatbot, which was inadvertently leaked to the internet. Given AI companies' rather cavalier attitude towards other people's intellectual property, it's hard not to see an irony here.

News roundup, 4 Nov 2025

- The Carney government is initiating a dispute resolution process with Stellantis after the company, which had received subsidies for the retooling of its plants in Brampton and Windsor, announced that they will be moving production of the Jeep Compass to a plant in Belvidere, Illinois. Stellantis claims that no jobs are being lost as a result of the move, and that the plant is "paused" rather than closed.

- Zohran Mamdani remains the front runner in today's municipal election in New York City. Donald Trump has endorsed former governor (and suspected sexual harrasser) Andrew Cuomo in the race and is threatening to withhold federal funding to the city if Mamdani wins, calling him a "communist".

- Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, is also the seventh largest shareholder in Tesla. The fund plans to vote against a pay package for Elon Musk that could make him the world's first trillionaire. Several other large shareholders, including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CALPERS) and the American Federation of Teachers, also plan to vote against the package. The company's chair claims that the package is necessary to retain Musk as CEO, and that the share price could drop significantly if he leaves.

- A Ukrainian citizen awaiting extradition to Germany on charges of sabotaging the Nord Stream pipeline is now on a hunger strike in Italy. Poland, meanwhile, has blocked the extradition of another suspect and ordered his release.

- The display of municipal politicians hanged in effigy in the RM of Tache has been removed; no charges are expected. 

- Doug Ford claims that Mark Carney asked him to pull the anti-tariff ad that ran in the US during the World Series. The Prime Minister's office has not commented directly on the matter.

- A police car hit a suspect and arresting officer in Toronto on the weekend after the driver apparently neglected to put it in park. Neither was seriously injured.

News roundup, 16 Oct 2025

- A man who pleaded guilty to attempted murder after setting fire to the official residence of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro has been handed a sentence of 25 to 50 years. This is a state charge, so a presidential pardon is not in the cards, assuming that the President obeys the Constitution of course...

- Donald Trump is vowing to pressure FIFA to move World Cup games scheduled for Boston next year, claiming that the city is unsafe due to a recent "street takeover" by car enthusiasts in which a cop car was set on fire. Of course Trump is ignoring the fact that these "takeovers" have been a fairly widespread phenomenon for several years and don't show any signs of political motivations. Trump is also threatening to pressure the IOC into moving the 2028 Olympics from Los Angeles, ostensibly due to the "safety concerns" from wildfires.

- Chrysler's parent company, Stellantis, has announced that it will be moving production of the Jeep Compass from Brampton, Ontario to Belvidere, Illinois. This is especially galling given that the federal and provincial governments had offered millions of dollars in funding to upgrade the Brampton assembly plant. Doug Ford claims that none of this money has flowed yet, but Brampton mayor Patrick Brown says that the province had already invested huge amounts of money to retool that plant and others to manufacture EVs. Federal Industry Minister Melanie Joly is hinting at legal action, saying that she will consider Stellantis to be "in default" due to provisions in the agreement requiring the company to "maintain its full Canadian footprint". Of course, if the feds really want to send Stellantis a message, they could seize the plant itself, then lease it to a Japanese, South Korean, European, or even Chinese automaker at a favourable rate. That would probably be a bridge too far for the Carney government, though.

- The European Union is considering imposing strict conditions on foreign investors in certain industries, requiring them to hand over technology as well as do a significant amount of manufacture in the EU using European labour if they sell products there. While this would apply to all such investors, it is widely assumed that China is the main target. For his part, French economist Thomas Piketty is calling for Europe to tax the full costs of CO₂ emissions from imports.

- A high school principal in Carman, Manitoba is suing a local activist Raelyn Fox, who made social media posts alleging that she, her school, and the Prairie Rose School Division are "grooming" children and promoting child pornography. The basis for these claims seems to be that the school's library has books that Fox disapproves of, notably Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake as well as Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Based on what folks on this Reddit thread are saying, this sort of stuff is entirely on brand for Fox. I'm predicting that she loses in court, but offsets that by asking for money on GiveSendGo.

- A Saskatchewan woman had a bizarre close call when a fish fell from the sky and smashed her windshield near Turtle Lake. The most plausible explanation is that the fish was dropped by an eagle or osprey.

- An Austrian neurosurgeon is facing criminal charges after she allegedly allowed her 12 year old daughter to help with an operation by drilling a hole in the patient's skull. The patient was not harmed, but nonetheless there are reasons why you're not supposed to let your kid help you at work if you're a surgeon (or if you're a pilot for that matter).

News roundup, 13 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump is now threatening to impose a tariff of up to 100% on cars manufactured in Canada. People with actual knowledge of the auto industry are warning that such a move could shut down the entire auto industry in the US as well as Canada. Tesla might be an exception to the rule, which would make such a move that much more explicable.

- China is creating a planetary defense agency in response to the discovery of an asteroid that is thought to pose a risk in 2032. The asteroid is about 100 metres in diameter, and if it were to hit Earth it would be the equivalent of a large nuclear weapon going off - not enough to destroy the biosphere, but definitely enough to destroy a city in a direct hit. The ESA has estimated that the probability of an impact is about 1.2%, which while not high is high enough to worry about. So it's good that China is taking it seriously, especially given that NASA is not likely to be in any condition to properly deal with it given the chaos of the Trump regime.

- Elon Musk is apparently in favour of having former Texas Republican congressman Ron Paul appointed as chair of the Federal Reserve. Given that Paul is the author of a book entitled End The Fed, this has spooked a lot of people; notably, the price of gold as well as bitcoin have spiked dramatically in recent days.

- Germany's federal intelligence service, the BND, fears that climate change could threaten the stability of the European Union due to its likely effects on food prices, migration, and conflict. All of this is, of course, stuff some have been warning about for years. Gwynne Dyer, for instance, predicted almost a decade ago that climate-induced migration could be a threat to the union if its leaders don't prepare for it.

- Cambridge, Massachusetts has eliminated exclusive single-family zoning across the entire city, allowing buildings up to six stories in any neighbourhood. This is expected to create over 4,800 units over the next quarter century. A bold step in the right direction (and a rare one for North America).

- Buyers of new Jeeps are incensed at the fact that the vehicles' infotainment systems are force-feeding ads to the occupants every time the vehicle comes to a stop. So much for your nice uninterrupted stream of music or podcasts. Besides being annoying, this is raising privacy concerns, as the vehicles are also gathering data about drivers' behaviour in order to curate the ads.