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, 15 April 2024

- Iran launched a number of missiles and drones at Israel over the weekend, stating that this was retaliation for the attack on Iran's embassy in Damascus earlier this month. The attack had little effect owing to Israel's advanced air defense systems.

- Jury selection for Donald Trump's first actual criminal trial, regarding the hush money allegedly paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, begins on Monday. Finding twelve jurors who are sufficiently impartial about Mr. Trump will be a challenge, though. Some are hoping that the details that come out during the trial will be "mortifying" for Trump, but that makes the questionable assumption that he is capable of feeling shame. In other Trump news, shares in Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, are down by about 20% for the week and over 47% so far this month.

- Six people were killed and several others wounded in a stabbing attack in a mall in a suburb of Sydney before the attacker was shot to death by police. The attacker was known to police and wasn't a well fellow by the sound of it.

- Despite the fact that pretty much everyone in a position of authority knows better, new coal plants continue to be built and places that are phasing them out aren't doing it near fast enough. I hate to advocate for geoengineering given all the risks, but they're making it harder and harder to avoid that.

- Four out of the five councillors in the Rural Municipality of Armstrong, in Manitoba's Interlake region, have resigned citing a "toxic work environment" and leadership problems. Details of these issues have not been made public so far, but rural and small town politics can be a pretty nasty business (see for instance the case of St Andrews mayor Joy Sul).

- Danielle Smith hopes that Red Deer will grow tenfold from its current population of 106,000. Many locals aren't so keen. Setting that aside, one wonders if Smith is really thinking things through on this matter, since the rise of a third huge city in the province would probably require a lot of people to move there from outside the province, and this would probably not favour the UCP electorally.

- Former Thunder Bay police chief Sylvie Hauth has been charged with obstruction and breach of trust, becoming the third employee of the force to face criminal charges in the last few months. Meanwhile in Durham Region the police force there released personal information about a woman who had complained about being threatened by cyberstalkers directly to said cyberstalkers in response to a freedom of information request.

- A new law in Florida, just signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, effectively prevents civilian boards from investigating police misconduct.