- The late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be succeeded by his son Mojtaba. According to some diplomatic cables that turned up on Wikileaks back in the noughties, the Americans seem to have thought he was pretty much running things anyway; meanwhile one member of the country's main religious body claims that the elder Khamenei apparently did not want his son as a successor, and in any case the current Iranian state was supposed to be a republic, not a monarchy, so this could prove divisive. Also divisive was the statement by the country's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who had apologized for the strikes on Gulf states but then withdrew the apology following criticism from hardliners who called his stance "unprofessional, weak and unacceptable".
- Oil prices have surged by more than 25% since the start of the war, due to the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz and damage to oil infrastructure. If a Democrat were in power when oil prices surged like that, no matter the reason, you can be sure that the MAGA crowd would not shut up about it. I'm not counting on this to make them worry about their Dear Leader's role in this now, though, since in the minds of many of those people the license he gives them to be mean and hateful is worth paying more for gas. In terms of the impact on the energy market, the impact could be mixed; on the one hand it could push people and countries to switch to renewables faster, but it could also lead to the use of more coal in place of natural gas.
- The Manitoba government has refused to allow the City of Winnipeg to change the default speed limit on residential streets to 40 km/h from 50. Premier Wab Kinew rationalizes the decision by saying that "they can do it on their own". Well technically it's true that they could put signs at the entrance to each and every residential street, but realistically that's not going to happen - the cost of the signs alone would be considerable. This is disappointing, but not all that surprising; for all of Kinew's virtues (and they are considerable) he has a populist streak to him that comes out at times like this. And maybe he still clings to hopes of winning back constituencies like Interlake and doesn't want to deal with the rage from people who come into the city from out in the sticks and don't pay attention to the changes to the "unless otherwise posted" signs at the city limit.
- A 45 year old woman who worked as a personal support worker was ambushed and stabbed to death outside a client's home in the Windsor suburb of LaSalle. Nancy Grewal was also a social media influencer in the Sikh community, and had been a vocal critic of the Khalistan independence movement, leading to suspicions that this was the motivation for her killing. It's certainly possible, but I was under the impression that stabbing tends to be more common when the motive is personal, rather than a professional job. It could be that this was one enraged individual rather than an arranged hit, but I do hope police are considering other possibilities (such as a stalker or an ex-partner).
- A white supremacist dating site called WhiteDate, described by some as "Tinder for Nazis", was hacked and had its data published. Some of the data was published on a website called OK Stupid, while more sensitive data was provided only to journalists and researchers; the CBC used some of the latter data to find information implicating current members of the Canadian military.
