News roundup, 21 Sept 2026

- New polling gives Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham a significant lead for this fall's municipal election. Notably, however, 51% of voters say they are undecided; 20% said they would vote for Gillingham with Kevin Klein at 8% and 4% for Mike Vogiatzakis. 13% said that they would not vote at all. While it may be a reassuring sign that Klein and especially Vogiatzakis don't seem to be making much of an impact, there's a caveat in that the kind of person who would vote for Vogiatzakis might also the sort of person to not answer pollsters' questions about the matter.

- Kerry-Lynne Findlay has resigned as leader of the BC Conservative party, mere hours after Surrey-Serpentine River MLA Linda Hepner became the 14th MLA to resign or be expelled from the party's caucus since August. It is widely suspected that premier David Eby is considering a snap election call in order to take advantage of the Conservatives' disarray. 

- BC's efforts to improve rural healthcare by requiring foreign trained doctors to spend a few years working in remote areas before being able to practice in major cities was struck down by the province's top court.

- The far-right AfD has won the largest share of the vote in elections in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, winning 38% of votes cast. Fortunately the Social Democrats were a close second at 36% and are expected to gain the support of enough of the remaining parties to form a government; unfortunately AfD are not likely to go away anytime soon. In Berlin, which also held an election for its combined state/municipal government, the leftwing Die Linke (which has its roots in the East German Communist Party, though it is considered a democratic socialist party today) won a plurality and may be able to form a government with the support of the Greens and Social Democrats. The real losers in both elections were the centre-right Christian Democrats, who appear to have gotten less than the 5% threshold needed to win seats in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania legislature; they don't seem to have done very well in Berlin either.

- Donald Trump has announced in a caps-laden Truth Social post that he is banning reporters from CNN, Politico, and MS NOW (the former MSNBC) from the White House grounds.

- Sleep medicine experts continue to weigh in on Manitoba's move to permanent daylight saving time. The consensus among them continues to be that ending the time change is good, but leaving it on DST is the wrong way to go about it. The main concern has to do with the impact of a lack of morning sun on circadian rhythms, which they say teenagers in particular are susceptible to.

- The FBI has issued a warning to ICE agents that they should be wary of "tradwife" dating site profiles, saying that these could be honeypot accounts set up to dox the agents. Details about whether this has actually happened are sparse at best. Some posters in this Reddit thread thinks that the real purpose of this warning is to instill a general sense of paranoia and distrust of the agents among outsiders, and/or to make people forget about Kash Patel's rather embarrassing public statements of late. In any case, the story has spawned the best description I've seen of "tradwives" in this article - "conservative women who dress like the women in The Sound of Music, but without the opposition to the Anschluss".

News roundup, 18 Sept 2026

- Manitoba is the latest province to do away with semi-annual clock changes. The province will remain on daylight saving time rather than switching back to standard time in the fall. This follows a survey which found that 92% of respondents wanted to eliminate time changes; 58% preferred DST while 34% preferred standard time. Notably, health experts generally agree with permanent standard time rather than DST, though most of them also consider permanent DST to be preferable to changing twice a year as the time change itself leads to more sleep disruption, resulting in an increase in heart attacks and strokes as well as more accidents on the road and in the workplace.

- Tamara Lich, one of the leaders of the so-called "Freedom Convoy", has been stymied in her attempt to get an exemption to the house arrest she has been under since her conviction for mischief in other offenses as a result of her role in the protest. She has previously been granted exemptions to visit her grandchildren, and has also been allowed to travel to other provinces for the job she holds with the far-right Rebel News, but this time she was trying to get permission to leave the country in order to do several things she claims are related to the job; these included attending press conferences at the White House as well as going on a week long cruise. Evidently that was a bridge too far.

- The BC Conservative Party apparently hired a private investigator to spy on a number of people, including several sitting MLAs (current as well as former caucus members) as well as a former party president and an NDP staffer. This and other upheavals in the party has added to suspicions that Premier David Eby plans to call a snap election to take advantage of a divided opposition.

- Newly unsealed evidence has revealed details of an investigation into corruption in the Toronto Police Service. Besides drug trafficking, officers are alleged to have met with criminals to enable them to access secret databases; among other things this led to an attempted assassination of a corrections officer, apparently at the request of a man currently held at the Toronto South Detention Centre who has been linked to suspected drug lord (and former Olympian) Ryan Wedding.

- Australians appear to be going all-in on electric cars. Sales of electric vehicles there exceeded those of gas powered cars in August for the first time. The surge in fuel prices as a result of the US/Israeli war on Iran is a big factor, though if we're honest the fact that the country no longer has an auto industry of its own probably adds to their willingness to buy imports from China, since it won't cost them any jobs.

- Israeli communities near the border with Gaza are facing an invasion of rats from the territory. The devastation has created ideal conditions for rats to do well; they have bred prodigiously (as they are wont to do) and have caused significant damage to agriculture, with some locations losing 70% of their harvest to the animals.

- A 13 year old Maryland boy was hospitalized after being attacked by a rabid beaver while swimming. Besides needing rabies vaccinations he required surgery to repair nerve damage from the attack.

- FBI director Kash Patel is defending his agency's decision to relax some of its hiring restrictions. Notably, under the new rules, having committed bestiality is no longer an automatic disqualification. Perhaps they want to do a lot of recruiting in the rural South.

News roundup, 16 July 2026

- Ukraine's defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has been abruptly removed from office. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not yet provided an explanation for his removal, which sparked protests in Kyiv. Federov had only been in the position since January but was popular with citizens and was seen as making progress in the conflict with Russia. He'd also headed an anti-corruption drive in the ministry; if I had to guess I'd say he probably crossed the wrong people in the course of this.

- The hospital in Ste Anne, Manitoba has had to close due to a failure of the air conditioning system while temperatures were in the high 30s. Patients were evacuated a facility in Steinbach and another outside Winkler; the hospital is expected to reopen next week. In West St. Paul a long term care home suffered a similar failure, but instead of evacuating residents the province temporarily installed large portable air conditioning devices; the facility's system is also expected to be fixed soon.

- Wildfires in northern Ontario have forced the evacuations of several communities, with others on alert, and the crew of a train near Armstrong narrowly escaped being trapped by a fire. Further south, Toronto's air quality is currently the worst in the world due to smoke. This coincides with a heatwave with temperatures in the city exceeding 37°C.

- The US House of Representatives has voted to advance a bill that would mean permanent daylight saving time in that country. The bill, called the Sunshine Protection Act, is sponsored by two Republicans; notably, an attempt was made to do this in the 1970s but became unpopular when winter came along and the sun wasn't rising till 8 or 9 in the morning. This article shows when the earliest and latest sunrises would be in various Canadian locations under the present system, permanent standard time, and permanent daylight saving time; in Winnipeg the sun wouldn't rise until almost 9:30 in December. Actual sleep experts generally favour permanent standard time rather than DST.

- After Nova Scotia premier Tim Houston gave a speech for the Annapolis Valley Chamber of Commerce at Acadia University in Wolfville, his vehicle was surrounded by protesters and the windshield smashed. The protesters were affiliated with a number of causes; the premier was eventually escorted from the scene by police.

- A cyclist in northern New South Wales had a close call after running over a two metre long Eastern Brown Snake. The snake, considered to be among the deadliest in the world, somehow became entangled in the chain and bit her in the thigh; fortunately it was a "dry bite" and she was discharged from hospital shortly thereafter. The snake had to be euthanized due to injuries sustained in the accident.

News roundup, 21 May 2026

- An Air France flight from Paris to Detroit was forced to divert to Montreal after American authorities found that a person from the Democratic Republic of Congo was aboard. The US has prohibited non-citizens who have been to the DRC as well as Uganda and South Sudan in the last 21 days from entering their country. The hapless passenger, who did not have any symptoms of the disease, was removed from the flight and sent back to Europe; the flight was then allowed to continue on its way.

- Mark Carney is pressuring BC on pipelines, warning that if they keep delaying new pipeline plans, "we're going to be spending more time elsewhere in the country because we need to move forward". That sounds suspiciously similar to "Nice federal funding you've got, it would be a shame if something happened to it".

- The Manitoba government is conducting a survey on the biannual time changes. It's a voluntary survey, so it will be skewed in favour of those with strong opinions, which likely means either that we'll be adopting permanent daylight savings time or, if sleep experts succeed in convincing the government that it's a bad idea, that we'll stick with time changes. Those who wish to fill it out can do so here.

- Toronto is looking at the possibility of deploying automated cameras equipped with microphones in order to catch violators of the city's bylaw on vehicle noise. Unfortunately they have yet to receive permission from the province to do so, and given the Ford government's track record on these matters I doubt it will happen any time soon.

- Shots were fired at the Surrey, BC home of Cricket Canada's newly elected president, Arvinder Khosa. Nobody was hurt; police believe the attack was extortion-related.

- Police had to be summoned to an elementary school in Brandon, Manitoba after an 11 year old boy threw a temper tantrum so severe that he not only punched the principal but put a hole in a classroom wall clear through to the next room. Being under 12 he cannot be held criminally responsible; his mother was briefly taken into custody after interfering with police but was released without charges. Police arranged for him to meet with mental health professionals before releasing him into the custody of his father.

- In other western Manitoba news, a 46 year old man from the community of Russell has been convicted of uttering threats after repeatedly threatening police; the prosecution is not only calling for a two year jail term but for him to be banned from the community following his release. His defense lawyer argues that this would be harmful to his rehabilitation, as he has spent most of his life there and has no connections elsewhere.

News roundup, 4 March 2026

- Mark Carney says that his approval in principle of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is "not a blank cheque", and represents a "failure of the international order". He also acknowledges that "it appears that these actions ‌are ⁠inconsistent with international law" but says he'll leave the final determination to the experts. The most charitable interpretation of his rather confusing stance on the matter is that he's trying to keep Trump off his back, which while not especially admirable is understandable in light of such things as Trump's fury at Spain for not letting the US use bases on their territory for the attack. On the other hand, Keir Starmer is not getting rewarded for his reversal on the use of the Diego Garcia base for the attack, and I'm not sure that Carney will be either, so maybe he should have just taken a principled stance from the start.

- An Iranian ship sank off the coast of Sri Lanka, apparently following a submarine attack. One sailor has been confirmed dead and 78 injured; over a hundred are missing.

- Toronto police are investigating after shots were fired at a synagogue in North York on Monday night. Nobody was injured.

- The Green Party of England and Wales (Scotland has its own Green Party) has overtaken Labour and is only two points behind Reform UK in the latest poll. This is a big thing, because it might drive some tactical voters towards the Greens in the hope of stopping Reform. 

- Jake Lang, a participant in the Capitol riot who was pardoned by Donald Trump, turned up at a fifth anniversary event this year and screamed abuse at Metropolitan Police commander Jason Bagshaw, who he had confronted during the putsch. Among other things, Lang shouted that Bagshaw should be "put down like a dead dog". Besides mangling the metaphor, prosecutors say that this and other things he shouted at Bagshaw constituted threats, and he has been slapped with another charge as a result. It's worth noting that until he was pardoned he had been remanded in custody (he hadn't gotten to trial yet) upon the orders of a Trump-appointed judge who nonetheless couldn't ignore the "very strong" evidence against him.

- A security guard has been charged with assault with a weapon and possession of a prohibited weapon after allegedly using brass knuckles to subdue a shoplifter at a Dollarama in downtown Winnipeg. The victim has also been charged with robbery and uttering threats.

- BC has announced that once they switch to daylight saving time this weekend they will not be switching back in the fall. Actual sleep experts generally think that sticking with standard time rather than DST would be better, but their voices generally get drowned out by those who want more daylight in the evenings (such as retailers). The Manitoba government is deferring any decision on the matter for now.

- Owners of six "holistic spas" in Guelph, Ontario have been charged under a city bylaw with "failure to ensure no adult entertainment services were provided". The services were apparently advertised online.