News roundup, 12 June 2025

- An Air India Boeing 787 with 242 passengers and crew on board has crashed in a residential area shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport on a flight to London. This is the first crash of a 787; video here.

- California governor Gavin Newsom is warning that other states may soon see troops deployed as is happening in Los Angeles.

- Teachers in Alberta have overwhelmingly approved a strike mandate. Given the Smith government's unwillingness to be reasonable (indeed, their base probably considers unreasonableness to be a virtue) it seems unlikely that a strike will be avoided. Education in the province is not in good shape in any case; one school in Airdrie has closed its library and music room in order to convert those spaces into classrooms.

- Saskatchewan is following Alberta's lead in putting American booze back on the shelves. I guess it's too traumatic for the people of those provinces to not be able to get the Jack Daniels and Jim Beam they need to drink while listening to country music. Meanwhile, the return of the booze to Alberta shelves might not get as many takers as they're hoping; demand is down.

- A new law introduced by the Ford government in Ontario holds landlords, both residential and commercial, liable for drug offenses that occur on their premises. Penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and/or up to a year in jail. There are fears about the potential impact on homelessness, if people with addiction issues are denied leases, for instance. It may also pose a risk to music venues and nightclubs.

- When the EPA introduced a rule in 2009 that required industries to report their carbon emissions, this in itself led to a drop in emissions. Of course under the Trump regime this rule is being dropped.

- In addition to consulting AI chatbots about mental health matters, people are asking them for dating and relationship advice. I daresay this isn't such a great idea either. On a related note, Canadian AI researcher Yoshua Bengio is warning that current AIs seem to be putting their own interests ahead of ours, using things like deception. One AI apparently was observed to covertly insert its own code into another system to avoid being replaced. Bengio has founded a nonprofit called LawZero which he says will build AIs that don't do that stuff. Some folks in the related Reddit thread wish to remind us that OpenAI was originally founded as a nonprofit, then essentially said "Just kidding!" and became a for-profit company.

News roundup, 31 Jan 2025

- No survivors have been found in the midair collision near DC, and none are expected. For his part, Donald Trump is blaming diversity efforts at the FAA. I'm sure Germany's leaders probably cast a few similar aspersions about the blame for the Hindenburg disaster as well. In actual fact, the FAA may well deserve some of the blame, not because of diversity but because of short-staffing - there was only a single controller working that night in one of the busiest and most complicated airspaces in the country.

- Trump is accusing the Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome Powell, of causing inflation after the Fed decided to keep interest rates at their current level. On cue, he's also blaming DEI policies for the matter. No doubt Trump's supporters in Congress will be all too willing to pass the necessary legislation to weaken the independence of the central bank, assuming of course that Trump's attention span is long enough to keep him from moving on to something else before acting.

- One of Trump's executive orders mandates schools, among other things, to provide "patriotic education". The order even goes so far as to provide a definition:

(d)  “Patriotic education” means a presentation of the history of America grounded in:
(i)    an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles;
(ii)   a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history;
(iii)  the concept that commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified; and
(iv)   the concept that celebration of America’s greatness and history is proper.

Setting aside the fact that any characterizing of America's founding that is accurate and honest is almost certain not to be "unifying, inspiring, and ennobling", this whole thing sounds like it could have come straight out of the Chinese Communist Party.

- A bill before the Tennessee legislature would make make it illegal for legislators to vote in favour of immigration policies opposed by Trump, punishable by up to six years in prison and/or a $3,000 fine.

- Trump has purged the National Labor Relations Board; not only has he removed the board's general counsel (which is legal, since that is an "at pleasure" position), but he has also removed a board member who, according to legislation, has a fixed term. As a result, the board lacks a quorum and is unable to make rulings or certify union representation. Worse, since Trump is almost sure to get away with this, it is expected that he will take similar measures with other ostensibly independent government agencies.

- FCC chair Brendan Carr, appointed by Trump during his previous term (and notably not removed by the Biden administration) has ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS, with the ultimate goal of slashing funding for the broadcasters.

- A priest in an Anglican splinter group has been defrocked after giving a Nazi salute during a speech at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington. Worth noting is the fact that the church in question, the Anglican Catholic Church, had actually split from the main Anglican communion because the latter wasn't sufficiently socially conservative. I guess even they have standards, though.

- Hot on the heels of one of those Dec. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump dying in a confrontation with police, it turns out that another of them is wanted for soliciting sex with a minor.

- A woman who recently died in Taber, Alberta turned out to have been a longtime fugitive from American and Mexican authorities. She was suspected of killing two people in Missouri, then after fleeing to Mexico was jailed for killing a man in a botched robbery but escaped from prison in 1969 and remained at large for the rest of her life.

News roundup, 14 Nov 2024

- Tom Homan, selected by Donald Trump to be his "border czar", has cited the Canadian border as an "extreme national security vulnerability" and says that there will be "tough conversations" with Ottawa about security. Andrew Coyne, in yet another grim prognostication, predicts that Trump's plans for mass deportations may lead to numerous undocumented residents in the US trying to flee to Canada - and as Coyne points out, "whatever our leaders may say, we have neither the capacity to accommodate them all nor to refuse them – not with a nearly 9,000-kilometre border we have never had to defend until now."

- A strange fact - a significant number of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's constituents voted for her, but voted for Trump for president. To her credit, AOC did not sweep this fact under the rug, but instead went to her Instagram page to ask what they had to say. Their answers may hold a fair bit of significance for the Democratic Party, assuming that they have another chance in 2028. On the subject of counterintuitive voting decisions, it's worth noting that despite often using highly racist rhetoric, Trump actually won 46% of the Latino vote, and 55% of the Latino male vote. Juan Williams thinks that the reason is painfully simple - a lot of Latino men did not want a woman as president and were willing to overlook Trump's racism for that reason. Plenty of discussion in this Reddit thread.

- A Dutch appeals court has struck down a 2021 order from a lower court that would have forced Shell to cut emissions by 45% over 2019 levels by 2030. The court ruled, essentially, that while Shell does have a responsibility to cut emissions, and that developing new oil and gas fields are at odds with this, courts are not empowered to make any specific order (such as an end to new exploration).

- A Tory candidate in Nova Scotia's provincial election, which is being held later this month, is being accused by the Liberals of illegally bribing voters after her campaign handed out Tim Hortons gift cards to citizens.

- The controversy over math requirements for education students in Manitoba is being debated in the pages of the Winnipeg Free Press, with mathematician Anna Stokke facing off against education professor Martha Koch. Koch argues that such decisions should be based on research, which she says supports the changes being brought in by the government. That is all very well except that what we're talking about here is social science research, which is usually a lot less rigourous than the term "research" would suggest to the layperson. That said, keeping the requirements more stringent could have the disadvantage of reducing the number of people going into teaching; maybe we're stuck with a tradeoff between quantity and quality of teachers here.

- Wab Kinew has conducted a cabinet shuffle, splitting some department responsibilities and adding Nellie Kennedy, Mike Moroz, and Mintu Sandhu to the cabinet. Moroz will head the new Department of Innovation and New Technology. Kennedy is the first Muslim woman to serve in the province's cabinet.

- Delays in Ontario's court system are now so bad that the majority of criminal cases are now ending before trial, in order to comply with the 2016 R v Jordan ruling. This includes not just petty crimes but serious ones like sexual assault. The situation is being attributed to a shortage of judges, prosecutors, and actual courtrooms.

News roundup, 8 Nov 2024

- Manitoba premier Wab Kinew is trying to be optimistic about the province's prospects for dealing with the incoming Trump administration, including the proposed 10% tariffs that Trump wants to impose on all imports. Disconcertingly, the best thing he could come up with was to point out that we have a lot of minerals critical to the American defense industry. Also disconcertingly, I can't think of anything better to shelter the province's economy. Meanwhile, Quebec premier François Legault is calling on the federal government to "act quickly" to secure Canada's borders, as he expects migrants fearing deportation from the US to attempt to cross the Canadian border in large numbers. And south of the border, California governor Gavin Newsom has convened a special session of the state legislature to call for increased funding for legal defenses against the anticipated actions of the incoming administration.

- Manitoba's legislative session has wrapped up for the year. The government successfully passed several significant pieces of legislation, including landmark changes to labour law (a ban on replacement workers and changes to make it easier to certify a union) as well as rules restricting the sale of machetes. Controversially, the labour provisions were included in the omnibus budget bill, something often done by governments of all stripes but seen by many as a way of avoiding scrutiny.

- One move by the Kinew government has to do with changes to the certification of teachers. Most controversial is the removal of the requirement for education students to have a minimum of six credit hours in mathematics. The Tories are opposed, of course, but more notably, University of Winnipeg mathematics professor Anna Stokke, who was among those who petitioned for the requirement to be introduced in the first place in 2015. University of Manitoba professor Martha Koch disagrees with Stokke, claiming that better math education in teachers sometimes leads to worse outcomes; it's worth noting, though, that Koch is a professor of education, not mathematics; I'm more inclined to believe what Stokke says about the actual level of math knowledge that she sees in her students than whatever pet education theory Koch is drawing on. Having said that, loosening the requirements might be helpful in alleviating the shortage of teachers; nonetheless, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and this might be one of those occasions where the Tories are right about something.

- The Quebec government is considering legislation to force medical graduates to reimburse the government for the cost of their education unless they practice in the province for a yet-to-be-determined period of time. The government has expressed a willingness to use the notwithstanding clause in order to avoid constitutional challenges; one constitutional lawyer thinks this would not work, though, since mobility rights are guaranteed in a section of the Charter not covered by the clause.

Texas education board wants to limit mentions of Islam in world history textbooks

Just heard about this on As It Happens a minute ago:

The Texas State Board of Education adopted a resolution Friday that seeks to curtail references to Islam in Texas textbooks, as social-conservative board members warned of what they describe as a creeping Middle Eastern influence in the nation's publishing industry.

The board approved the one-page nonbinding resolution, which urges textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam in world history books, by a 7-5 vote.

Critics say it's another example of the ideologically focused board trying to politicize public education in the Lone Star State. Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for religious freedom, questioned why the resolution came at a time when "anti-Muslim rhetoric in this country has reached fever pitch."

From the Los Angeles Times. The radio interview was with a guy named Dan Quinn, also of the Texas Freedom Network; he points out that while the resolution is not binding, it is likely to have a chilling effect on publishers (especially given that Texas is a very large market). He also points out the amount of hyperbole (or rather, utter nonsense) being trotted out in support of the idea that Christianity is under threat from Islam in Texas. For instance, apparently they're claiming that Muslim investors from the Middle East are buying publishing companies so as to manipulate the minds of American youth. The fact that they can say something like this, and get taken seriously, is deeply worrisome.