News roundup, 5 Sept 2025

- At least 16 people were killed on Wednesday and 21 injured, five seriously, when one of Lisbon's funicular trams went out of control and derailed, colliding with a building. Two Canadians are among the dead. Initial reports suggest a problem with the cable; a full investigation of an accident like this can take quite some time, however. As an odd side note - in the course of browsing Wikipedia about funicular railways, I learned that the classic Italian song "Funiculì, Funiculà" was written to celebrate the opening of such a railway in 1880.

- A stabbing rampage and ensuing police chase in Hollow Water First Nation has left two people dead, including the suspect, and eight people, including an RCMP officer, with serious injuries.

- The Norwegian government, along with a consortium of oil companies, has launched the world's first large scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) operation, injecting CO₂ into the seabed 2,600 metres beneath the North Sea. I'm not opposed in principle, but even if it works as well as advertised it's a stopgap, not a solution; the storage capacity may well run out before fossil fuels do.

- While condos are a good idea in principle, a disproportionate number of condos built in Canada in recent decades were built as something to invest in more than something to live in. As a result, many of them aren't really good to live in for the long haul, and sales have cratered recently to the point where many investors are now underwater on their mortgages. Not mentioned in the article, but suggested by folks in this Reddit thread, is the role of the short-term rental industry in the whole matter; apparently many condos built since the advent of Airbnb were built more like hotel rooms than actual apartments.

- Donald Trump intends to sign an executive order that will rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War. To be fair, there was a time when most countries gave their defense ministries such a name, but that was mostly before WWII, after which it became less fashionable to treat war as if it were some kind of goal (or at least to advertise yourself as doing so by naming an entire government department after it). For a while, at least; now that the Americans are going back that way we'll have to see if the rest of the world follows their lead.

- Self-styled "Queen of Canada" Romana Didulo was released without charges on Wednesday, only to be rearrested on Thursday for violating conditions of her release. The owner of the decommissioned school where she and her followers were based was also rearrested; the two had been ordered not to communicate with each other.

- Human remains found in Algonquin Provincial Park in 1980 have been identified using genetic genealogy as being from a Cleveland man who disappeared in 1973. Eric Singer had fled the US after being drafted.

News roundup, 3 April 2024

- An earthquake measured at between 7.2 and 7.4 on the Richter scale has caused significant damage in Taiwan, including at least 9 fatalities and hundreds of injuries.

- The new provincial budget presented by the Kinew government includes money for major healthcare projects, including a new ER at Victoria General Hospital and one in Ericksdale. Perhaps more important, it includes funding for a thousand sorely needed healthcare workers, including 100 doctors, 90 paramedics and 600 healthcare aides. It also includes funding for a supervised consumption site in the North End. The 50% education property tax rebate is being replaced with a flat $1,500 for all homeowners (the profiteers are predicting apocalyptic results from this, of course). I'm less keen on the fact that they're extending the gas tax holiday until September, although to be fair they're taking other more positive measures on climate as well. The full document is here.

- The City of Winnipeg will be considering several apartment projects planned for vacant properties, including one the Norwood East neighbourhood of St Boniface, one in West Broadway, and one in East Elmwood. The West Broadway one is drawing some local opposition despite the underused nature of the affected land. This has led to a fair bit of skepticism about the opposition to the project on this Reddit thread. Perhaps the best summary there was this:

Winnipeg needs to densify if it's ever going to get in front of its annual operating cost. Poverty is a larger and complicated issue that I certainly don't have all the answers to but preventing this development doesn't solve it.

- Doug Ford wants to get international students out of Ontario universities, even as the universities need their money more than ever thanks to inadequate funding from... Doug Ford and his government.

- A bill expected to pass the Vermont legislature shortly will require fossil fuel companies to contribute to the cost of damage resulting from increasing natural disasters as a result of climate change. Several other states have similar bills, albeit not as advanced as this one. Vermont's governor, a Republican, is expressing concerns about the bill, but given that this is Vermont he has to try not to sound crazy, so he's arguing that a small state shouldn't be the one to go first because whoever does will face a fierce legal battle from the affected companies. His opposition is probably moot, though; the Democrats have the supermajority needed to override his veto should that occur.

- ExxonMobil has an ad campaign in the UK where they talk a lot about carbon capture, but there's no sign that the project they refer to will ever get off the ground, leading to accusations of greenwashing.

- The Israelis are apparently using AI to select targets in Gaza. Not everyone is reassured by this.

- Germany is considering a ban on the import of hunting "trophies". This does not sit at all well with the president of Botswana; his country gets a lot of revenue from that trade, and he's threatening to send 20,000 elephants to Germany if they go ahead. How he plans to accomplish this is not clear.

- Police in Fontana, California managed to fatally shoot the kidnapped teen they were trying to rescue as she ran towards what she thought was safety.