News roundup, 15 Sept 2016

- Israel's culture minister, Miki Zohar, has attempted to initiate the process to revoke the citizenship of two Israeli filmmakers, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. Abraham and Szor had just released a documentary in which they conducted anonymized interviews with 24 military personnel about the mass killing of Palestinian civilians during the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The film is entitled NAZA; the title is apparently a transliteration of a Hebrew acronym used by the IDF in discussing "collateral damage" from an airstrike. It's hard not to see a different allusion there, though. In any case, Israel does reserve the right to revoke citizenship of those who fail to show "loyalty". Based on the minister's move I have to assume that this applies even to people who were born there - as Yuval Abraham was. An interview with Abraham and Szor in El Pais (apparently done before the minister's move) may be found here.

- The EU's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has called for the federation to treat the Israeli-occupied settlements the same way it treats Russian-occupied Crimea and ban imports from said settlements.

- Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon have very little in common - but one of the few things they agree on is that restrictions on AI are needed for the good of all. The two will be among a number of people attending the "Pro-Human Assembly" in DC today. In contrast Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, says that while he supports some safeguards, he thinks those safeguards have to be put in place by companies, not governments, which is essentially a way of saying he supports no safeguards at all.

- A staffer at the US embassy in London suspected of possessing indecent images of children was apparently spirited out of the country by American officials without informing local police. Now legally it's probably true that he couldn't be prosecuted in the UK without US consent because of diplomatic immunity, but in this case it's apparent that they didn't want the question of whether to waive diplomatic immunity to even come up - and the police would no doubt have wanted to interview him, if for no other reason than to find out where he was obtaining the materials. This was all too familiar territory for Charlotte Charles, whose 19 year old son Harry Dunn was killed in 2019 by the wife of a CIA employee working at a base in the UK who was driving on the wrong side of the road and collided head-on with his motorcycle.

- The Alberta NDP won a byelection in the constituency of Calgary-Shaw, the first time the party has won the seat since 2015. 

- FIDE, the international governing body for chess, has banned a teen from official events for two years for attempted cheating after a cellphone was found hidden in his shoe at a tournament in Slovenia.

News roundup, 5 Dec 2025

- Waymo, the robotaxi subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, wants to get a foothold in Toronto. They just registered as a lobbyist; caution is definitely recommended here. Fortunately I think Olivia Chow is the sort to be cautious about this sort of thing; unfortunately Doug Ford is not, and it's a safe bet that Waymo is going to be registering as a lobbyist at Queen's Park very soon if they haven't already.

- The UK's harvest of several key staple crops (wheat, barley, oats, and canola) fell by 20% this year compared to the 10-year average due to drought; reported losses by the country's farmers total about £800 million in one of the worst harvests on record. Moreover, three of the five worst harvests on record have occurred since 2020; the other two examples (2020 and 2024) resulted from too much rainfall. The irony, of course, is that many farmers have opposed measures to address climate change.

- The US State Department is ordering staff to deny visa applications for people who have been involved in fact checking and content moderation on social media platforms and the like, which they consider to be "censorship".

- A grand jury has rejected an attempt by the US Department of Justice to have New York Attorney General Letitia James prosecuted for mortgage fraud. The DOJ is expected to try again. And federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, who was involved in the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, has been fired by the DOJ, apparently because she's the daughter of former FBI director James Comey (who the DOJ is also trying to indict).

- Samantha Fulnecky, a psychology student at the University of Oklahoma, was directed to submit an essay, worth 3% of the final grade, responding to an academic study that examined whether conformity with gender norms was associated with popularity or bullying among middle school students. She proceeded to write a screed declaring anything related to trans people to be demonic, citing the Bible as a reference (just the Bible as a whole, mind you, not any specific verse). Unsurprisingly, she received a failing grade on the paper; sadly but also unsurprisingly (given that it's Oklahoma) the instructor (a graduate student, who is trans) was placed on leave and the paper will not be counted against Fulnecky's final grade as she claimed "religious discrimination". Turns out that the student's mother is a lawyer and sometime municipal politician who, among other things, once served as the defense attorney for a Jan 6 putsch suspect. As in the case of Lindsay Shepherd, you have to wonder if the whole thing wasn't intentional.

- Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries is following the lead of Nova Scotia in selling off their existing stock of American liquor and donating the proceeds to charity. The province estimates that this will bring in around $500,000. Charities such as the Christmas Cheer Board are very pleased with the decision.

- The Winnipeg Parking Authority is considering making it possible to ticket vehicles based on photo submissions from the public. Currently, a ticket can't be issued unless a parking officer actually attends. Councillor Janice Lukes is a bit uneasy with the idea, perhaps realizing that it will open the door for a lot of petty vendettas between her suburban constituents. Nonetheless, she raises some real issues here, pointing out that AI-generated photos could be used to frame neighbours, and that this could lead to dangerous confrontations between residents.

- A three year old chess prodigy in India has become the youngest player to obtain an official FIDE rating. Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha obtained a rating of 1,572 in rapid (with short time limits), meaning he would be at least competitive with virtually anyone I know.

News roundup, 28 Oct 2025

- The Alberta government is legislating striking teachers back to work and imposing a collective agreement. The government limited debate on all three readings of the bill, and the notwithstanding clause is being used to ensure that the legislation can resist a court challenge.

- Hurricane Melissa is bearing down on Jamaica. The hurricane is a Category 5 storm, with winds of up to 280 km/h; if it retains that strength when it reaches the country it will be the strongest to hit the island since detailed records began in 1851. Parts of the country could see up to 760 mm of rain.

- Germany's far-right AfD party is being accused of espionage. Georg Maier, the interior minister of the state of Thuringia, alleges that the party is using its parliamentary privileges to gain access to sensitive information about the country's infrastructure and handing the information over to Russia.

- Canada is on the verge of losing its status as a country where measles is not endemic. Of course, there's an obvious reason for it; whether the political will exists to overcome it is another question. It wouldn't be hard to bring back the idea of "vaccine passports" as used at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic - or at least it wouldn't in theory. Of course, enforcement would be challenging, and it might push some of the more extreme antivaxxers to violence - though it's an open question whether that violence would outweigh the harm done by measles itself. And some would feel uncomfortable on bodily autonomy grounds - except that the unvaccinated are potentially interfering with the bodily autonomy of everyone around them, so that argument falls flat even if you consider that principle to be fundamental. Myself, I frame this sort of thing as "what would do the greatest good and/or the least harm to humanity as a whole"; with that as the most fundamental principle, it's a lot simpler to argue for vaccine passports. Unfortunately, as we saw with the clownvoy a couple of years ago, the antivaxxers can get together enough support to make life difficult for a lot of people, and governments are often unwilling to take the necessary measures to contain such a disruptive force.

- Former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik has asked authorities in Switzerland, where he currently lives, to investigate death threats made against him in response to his, um, tone deaf response to the tragic death of US grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky (not to mention his behaviour towards Naroditsky when he was still alive). I can't condone that sort of thing, of course, but Kramnik shouldn't be surprised that some people are taking it badly. A side note - while Kramnik has been accusing just about everyone of cheating, he had a scandal of that sort himself a while back, 

News roundup, 22 Oct 2025

- Arizona's attorney general is suing to try to force House Speaker Mike Johnson to swear in Adelita Grijalva, who was elected in a special election last month. Of course, the fact that Grijalva would be the key vote needed to force a full House vote on releasing the Epstein files is widely assumed to be the reason for not seating her. Johnson says he will not swear her in while the House is adjourned; the adjournment, of course, was also his choice. The lack of a codified deadline by which a member-elect has to be sworn in is an unfortunate oversight in the system; it's almost as if the system were designed by someone who thought of political disputes as simply disagreements among people of good will, and who couldn't imagine any true American wanting to undermine democracy. Reality seems to be running up against this model, though.

- A poll indicates that more Americans blame the Republicans than the Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown. Paradoxically, though, Donald Trump's personal approval rating is increasing at the same time. Of course, the poll question specifies Democrats or Republicans in Congress, and members of Congress tend not to get the same level of adulation from their supporters as an actual president. Additionally, the question could be skipped, so some people who skipped it may have been among those who said they approve of Trump. This does lend support to the idea that much of MAGA's success comes from Trump's own personality and that the movement might falter if they lost him somehow; on the other hand, by the time he's out of the picture American democracy might be so damaged that charisma is no longer needed to retain power and even the likes of JD Vance could hold office with no effective opposition.

- Part of the East Wing of the White House, which was added in 1902, is being demolished to make way for a huge ballroom that Trump wants to construct. Given what we know about the president's sense of style, the ballroom will probably have a very high cost to aesthetics ratio. The work being done is visible from the offices of the US Treasury, whose employees have been told not to share photos of the work, ostensibly for security reasons.

- The federal Liberals' house leader, Steve MacKinnon, is expressing concerns about the prospects of getting the upcoming budget through the House of Commons. The Liberals only have 169 seats in the House, with 172 constituting a majority; neither the NDP nor the Bloc have shown enough willingness to suport the budget for MacKinnon's comfort. My guess is that enough NDP MPs will be come down with "diplomatic flu" and be absent from the House on the day of the vote for the budget to pass; I don't see them wanting to hold an election right now given that they only have an interim leader right now.

- Daniel Naroditsky, an American grandmaster and chess streamer, has died suddenly at the age of 29. A cause of death has not been disclosed but Redditors are reading between the lines, citing in particular the unfounded accusations of cheating against Naroditsky by Russian grandmaster (and former world champion) Vladimir Kramnik.

- Marvin Winans, pastor of the Perfecting Church in Detroit, has gone viral in a way he probably didn't want after criticizing a parishioner for tithing "only" $1,235 instead of the $2,000 he had asked for. Unfortunately for him, the service was livestreamed, and the clip was copied to various video sharing sites.

News roundup, 13 Dec 2024

 - While the City of Winnipeg's latest budget does not introduce major service cuts (with the exception of the proposal to defer residential snow clearing until 15 cm of snow falls, which is getting negative reviews from some), it fails to address the state of the city's fiscal stabilization reserve. The reserve, which should have about $85 million in it, is nearly depleted, which could prove disastrous if there is a recession, another pandemic, or other sudden financial hit.

- A plan to completely replace Winnipeg Transit's fleet with electric buses is being shelved. The city will still be buying about 100 of them owing to commitments made under the Investing in the Canada Infrastructure Program, but they have decided to buy some more diesel buses as well. The argument is being made that this could actually be more beneficial, because it will allow more buses to be deployed and thus get more cars off the road, but that line of reasoning only works if they can hire the drivers necessary to drive the buses - and perhaps also the community safety officers necessary to get people to take transit voluntarily.

- A woman who was admitted to hospital for a knee replacement had follow up surgery to remove dead tissue deferred due to a bed shortage, resulting in an infection that means the leg is likely going to have to come off.

- The Manitoba government is attempting to address Trump's threats to impose crushing tariffs if we don't control the border by redirecting some conservation officers to patrol the border. I guess that's less harsh than Alberta's plan to deploy large numbers of heavily armed cops to the border. I'm not convinced that using conservation officers this way is a good idea, but I don't have a better one.

- After Doug Ford's threat to cut off electricity to neighbouring US states was brushed off by Trump (presumably the Americans have ways of making up the shortfall) he came out with a new proposal - to prohibit the LCBO from buying American alcohol. That may actually be a more viable solution to the problem.

- Gukesh Dommaraju of India has defeated China's Ding Liren to become the youngest world chess champion in history, at the age of 18. The final game seemed headed for a draw when Ding blundered and Dommaraju took full advantage of the error.

- At Ohio State University, the uniquely American fusion of Christianity and football seems to be pretty much complete. Then again, it isn't really that new, as this classic song illustrates.

News roundup, 8 Aug 2024

- Justin Trudeau was in Winnipeg earlier this week, attending several Folklorama pavilions and a Black History Manitoba event. He did not, however, make an appearance in the Elmwood-Transcona riding where a byelection is in progress. This is probably a good thing given that the NDP is the only party with a realistic chance of beating the Conservatives, but it's a sign of how toxic Trudeau's brand has become.

- A law passed last year in Minnesota that requires schools to provide menstrual products such as tampons to students in grades 4 and up is being used by the Republicans as "evidence" of Gov. Tim Walz's supposed radicalism; they've given him the nickname "Tampon Tim". The Democrats, though, don't consider this to be the insult the Republicans think it is. Analysts are still trying to figure out whether Walz was a good choice for a running mate; his lack of ties to the "coastal elites" is definitely a positive, though some wonder if his relatively progressive policies will spook voters. The latest polls, though, suggest a positive trend for the Harris/Walz ticket. Walz is also well liked by environmentalists, though this may not be as big a selling point as it ought to be.

- Carla Devlin, the mayor of East St. Paul (and a potential candidate for the leadership of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party) has been hired by Sio Silica as its vice-president for Manitoba. This doesn't help the Tories in their attempt to distance themselves from their attempts to ram through the approval of a sand mine during the dying days of their government.

- The BC government is using Singapore as a model for housing policy. The plan calls for the use of "government, community and non-profit owned" lands to increase the availability of rental housing. Critics argue that this will be hard to replicate. This seems counterintuitive on the face of it, since it ought to be easier to take action when there's more land actually available, but maybe the real problem is in convincing the masses that it's necessary. Singapore does have the advantage of being a unitary city-state and thus does not suffer from the jurisdictional and funding issues involved with a federal system like we have in Canada, though.

- Several books by Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume, and other authors are now banned in all of Utah's public schools. The law even specifies that the books cannot be sold but must be "legally disposed of". But yeah, we're supposed to believe that the Republicans are all about "freedom".

- Fugitive Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont made an appearance in Barcelona to address a crowd of thousands. He slipped away before the police could get their hands on him; a police officer has been arrested for allegedly helping him escape. A massive manhunt is now on for him.

- Three Taylor Swift concerts scheduled in Vienna have been cancelled after organizers were warned of plans for a terrorist attack. One suspect has been arrested and found in possession of possible bomb-making substances; two others remain at large.

- A Russian chess player has been accused of attempting to poison one of her rivals with mercury at a tournament in Dagestan. Amina Abakarova has reportedly confessed to the crime after her actions were caught on video.

RIP Bobby Fischer

A sad day for the chess world:

Former chess champion Bobby Fischer has died of kidney failure following a long illness, his spokesperson said Friday. He was 64.

Fischer, a brilliant chess player who rocketed to grandmaster status at 15, was hailed as a Cold War hero when he defeated Russian Boris Spassky in 1972 to become the first American world chess champion in more than 100 years.

From the Ceeb. Nowadays most people know him for his, er, eccentricities- his forfeiting of the World Championship in 1975 following his refusal to defend his title, his sexism (he once said that he could give knight odds to any woman in the world), his rabid anti-Semitism (despite the fact that Fischer himself was of Jewish ancestry) and his comments about 9/11 (which, while a bit over the top, weren't really too far off the mark). But really, what we should remember him for is the fact that he was one of the greatest players in the history of the game. Just go through this game (played when he was only 13!) and try not to be amazed at his brilliance. Or just watch this moment of silence held in his honour at a major international tournament:

Via babble. As N. Beltov says, you could hear a pin drop in that room.