News roundup, 8 Oct 2025

- The growth in renewable energy has been so strong that despite growing demand for electricity, all of the additional demand has been met by renewables based on global averages. This has not been spread evenly, however; in the US and even the EU renewables haven't been enough and those countries have increased their fossil fuel consumption. Meanwhile China, despite building some new coal plants, has reduced its overall emissions from electricity production by 2% even as demand for electricity has skyrocketed. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, sees some reason for optimism, although emissions are still increasing from other sources. One thing remains clear, though; change isn't going to come soon enough for hundreds of millions if not billions of people. There's going to be a lot more migration in the near future, even if many of the affected people will probably die in place.

- Adelita Grijalva, elected in September to serve as the representative in Congress for Arizona's 7th congressional district, has still not been sworn in. She is hinting at what many others have also suggested - that Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to delay her taking office until the couple of Republican holdouts on the Epstein files can be browbeaten into changing their minds. If nothing changes, once she takes her seat she will be the crucial 218th signature needed to force a vote in the House to release the files. It has also emerged that Johnson's recent adjournment of the House (roughly equivalent to a prorogation in Westminster systems) came mere hours after the House received Epstein-related financial records from the US Treasury. The adjournment, combined with the government shutdown, also has the convenient effect of preventing the Treasury from delivering any more records.

- Former Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson has been fined $18,000 for violation of the province's conflict of interest law. This follows Stefanson's use of the "caretaker period" between the Tories' electoral defeat and the new government being sworn in to make efforts to get a mining project approved. The fine had to be voted on by the legislature, and it's telling that even the Tories voted with the government to impose the fine. I do have to question the propriety of having to decide something like this by a vote in the House rather than by a court, though in this case the penalty seems more than warranted.

- Doug Ford's plan to ban Ontario municipalities from using speed cameras looks kinda fishy in light of the fact that several of his ministers have gotten tickets recently, and that one of the Tories' political staffers got nailed for using a government vehicle to drive at speeds up to 162 km/h in a 100 km/h zone. The staffer has apparently been allowed to keep their job after promising not to do it again (at least until the speed camera ban is in place, presumably). To be fair, at least Ford doesn't want the cameras going to waste - he's musing about repurposing them for crime surveillance.

- Clownvoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber were both given conditional sentences on top of time served following their convictions for public mischief and counselling others to disobey a court order. The prosecution had called for severe sentences (8 years for Barber and 7 years for Lich) while the defense had called for an absolute discharge.

- Ted Cruz is demanding that the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, provide documentation to show how they assess the merit of sources. Cruz considers Wikipedia to have a leftwing bias, citing that the site's "reliable sources" list which describes CNN and MSNBC as "generally reliable" sources for science and politics while deprecating Fox News.

News roundup, 19 June 2025

- The Trump regime plans to deploy another 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to anti-ICE protests. Governor Gavin Newsom points out that these troops are being diverted from critical roles in managing wildfires and, ironically enough, patrolling the border; evidently Trump considers sticking it to California to please his base more important though.

- An Iranian missile hit the main hospital in the Israeli city of Beersheba this morning; no deaths are reported but a number of people were injured. The Israelis are outraged; evidently they can dish it out but can't take it themselves (not that anyone should be targeting hospitals, of course). Donald Trump is apparently still not sure whether he wants to join Israel in the war on Iran. I guess Netanyahu is pushing him one way, and Putin is pushing him the other way. Meanwhile Ted Cruz got a grilling from none other than Tucker Carlson over his hawkish stance towards Iran.

- The Trump regime wants Canada to increase its tariffs on China in return for the US lowering its tariffs on Canada. While Melanie Joly was open to this idea earlier this year, a recent poll finds that a plurality of Canadians are opposed.

- Conservative MP Damien Kurek, who represents the Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot, has resigned his seat to allow Pierre Poilievre to run in the resulting byelection and thus reenter Parliament. This will not stop a leadership review from occurring at the next Conservative Party convention, scheduled to occur in Calgary next January, but he seems unlikely to be removed unless he somehow loses the byelection, which is highly improbable unless an even more extreme candidate (like, say, Maxime Bernier) is able to capture the attention of the voters in that riding.

- Norway has introduced new regulations for cruise ships, prohibiting them from coming closer than 500 metres away from polar bears in order to minimize interference with the bears. Predictably, the cruise industry is up in arms, with one expedition leader saying ships are sailing "empty" as a result and calling the policy "conservation fascism". Doesn't really look like fascism to me; I must have missed the part where tour operators get put into concentration camps. The remark seems especially tone-deaf given what looks very much like the rise of actual fascism in places like the US.

- Czech authorities have charged three people with running a fake dental office in which an unqualified, self-taught individual conducted root canals, extracted teeth, and even used anesthesia.

News roundup, 16 April 2025

- For a time it seemed like Donald Trump's ramblings about annexing Canada were a passing phase; after Mark Carney met with him last month he seemed to tone down his talk on the subject. However, when asked about this the other day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that the president's position on Canada has not changed.

- Two ICE agents showed up to arrest a few Venezuelan refugees in New York City on suspicion of gang ties. According to Wilmer Gutiérrez, the father of one of these people, one of the agents said "No, he's not the one", but the other said "Take him anyway". The hapless 19 year old, Merwil Gutiérrez, was subsequently sent to the Trump regime's overseas penal colony in El Salvador. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, has dismissed the idea of returning another wrongfully deported man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the regime has said they wouldn't accept him even if Bukele sent him. This despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that his deportation was illegal. Meaning that even the likes of Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas think that the regime is going too far. And the regime's response is, essentially, "Whatcha gonna do about it?"

- The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, warns that the rare earth metals upon which China is imposing export restrictions could be difficult for the US to replace and that this could lead to supply chain disruptions. China has a virtual monopoly on the processing of those elements.

- The Trump regime plans to demand that the EU distance itself from China as a condition of avoiding tariffs from the US. The thing is, the more they pull this stuff on countries, the more most other countries are going to say "to heck with you then, we'll just deal with each other and leave you out of it".

- Canada's climate limits what can be grown in this country, but vertical farming may well help to make us more self-sufficient in food. And now that the US can't be relied on for this, there's an extra incentive to move in that direction.

- Unlike Columbia University, which caved to the regime's demands regarding protests and the curriculum of its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department in order to secure $400 million in funding, Harvard is standing firm. The regime is now withholding $2.3 billion in funding in response. All I can say is, fight fiercely, Harvard.

- Texas Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn have introduced a bill called the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act", which would order the removal of the space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian and for it to be shipped back to Texas to be displayed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.