News roundup, 1 Dec 2025

- The fire in Hong Kong, which is now known to have killed at least 151 people, is now being attributed to the use of substandard netting by construction crews.

- Apparently the folks at Time magazine don't realize that The Onion isn't the only satire game in town. The magazine recently cited a Beaverton article which has US ambassador Pete Hoekstra threatening to fire a Patriot missile at Parliament Hill.

- A botched launch at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan has damaged the only launch pad suitable for launching crewed spacecraft. This renders Russia unable to launch crewed missions for the first time since the early 1960s; repairs are expected to start shortly but there is no timeline for completion.

- American liquor that was removed from Manitoba shelves is being repurposed for a "managed alcohol program" to gradually wean addicts off the stuff. Nova Scotia, on the other hand, plans to sell it off and donate the proceeds to charity.

- Two men were arrested following a brawl over Pokémon cards at a Costco in Ottawa. Police were called to the store at around 7:15 last Monday after several people started fighting over a "high-demand item". Two people suffered minor injuries; video can be found here.

- A church in Winnipeg's North End requested a zoning variance to allow them to surround their facility with a 9 ft high barbed wire fence in order to keep the poors out. One wonders what Jesus would have thought of that. In any case, the city had qualms about this and denied the request, though as a compromise they're allowing the church to build fences along the sides and rear of the property higher than the usual standard - they just can't use barbed wire.

News roundup, 27 Nov 2025

- Two members of the West Virginia National Guard who were stationed in DC, ostensibly to address Donald Trump's concerns about the city's crime rate, found out the hard way that occupying forces are frequently not welcomed. The suspect, who was also wounded, is in custody; the suspect is an Afghan national who was admitted to the country under the Biden administration. Trump plans to milk this for all it's worth; he has suspended all processing of immigration requests from Afghanistan and will be reviewing the immigration status of everyone who was brought in during the withdrawal from the country. He is also sending an additional 500 National Guard troops to the city.

- The death toll in the Hong Kong highrise fire has jumped to 55 after numerous bodies were found in the ruins of the complex, with many others still unaccounted for. Three people, including two directors of a company as well as an engineering consultant, have been charged with manslaughter.

- A snowplow operator with one of Toronto's main plowing contractors drove a plow through a crowd of pro-Palestinian demonstrators last week. Nobody was injured; video of the incident may be found here. Police investigated and rather quickly declared that they saw no sign of criminal intent; others are questioning this, however, especially given that the driver's social media accounts were full of Islamophobic content. Her Facebook profile is here, for the curious. Her employer says that she was issued a one day suspension for the incident.

- The Rural Municipality of Alexander in eastern Manitoba is concerned about the safety of its staff after multiple incidents, the most serious of which involves a grader that was hit with a high power rifle bullet in a residential area where no hunting is allowed. Other incidents include a crosshair spraypainted on a municipal employee's personal vehicle and a resident being removed from a council meeting after harassing staff.

- A rubber duck museum in the town of Point Roberts, Washington, which is not directly connected to the US mainland, is moving to Delta, BC in order to survive as the trade war slashes visits to the town.

- A 65 year old woman in Thailand woke up in a coffin after being mistakenly declared dead. Fortunately people heard her knocking on the inside as she was being taken for cremation.