News roundup, 2 Sept 2026

- Solar has overtaken coal as China's largest source of installed power capacity. Its overall contribution to power generation is still lower than coal due to its intermittent nature, though.

- The death toll in flash flooding that struck Nepal last week has risen to more than 1,100 confirmed fatalities, with nearly 4,000 still missing. The flood resulted from the collapse of a glacier on the Nepal-Tibet border; China reports an additional 16 dead and 546 missing on the Tibet side.

- The BC Conservative Party has lost yet another caucus member after Chilliwack-Cultus Lake MLA Áʼa꞉líya Warbus announced that she cannot serve under leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay. Warbus is the seventh MLA to leave the party in a month.

- The renewed fighting in Iran has led to a spike in yields of government bonds, indicating a decline in confidence. This has impacted not only US bonds but those of other countries, including the UK, Germany, and Japan. In related news, central bankers are worried at rising pressure on governments to weaken central bank independence.

- MapQuest, which had long fallen behind Google Maps as the preferred online mapping platform, has seen a surge in downloads of its app after it refused to fall in line and rename Lake Ontario in response to Trump's declaration.

- Instagram has closed the account of a Vancouver strip club after the club posted a photo of their marquee with the slogan "Can't handle a pool, but wants our lake?" The Penthouse Night Club had previously had its account on X suspended last year when they posted a a photo with the slogan "Forever Neighbours Never Neighbors"; X had called this out as "hate speech" (while ignoring the large amounts of actual hate speech on that platform) but subsequently reversed their decision.

News roundup, 9 June 2026

- Around 150 people in the Swan Valley area of western Manitoba were evacuated due to flash flooding after the area got 72 millimetres of rain in only a few hours on Sunday night. 

- A BC man could be facing up to 20 years in a Georgian prison after a border search turned up a bottle of Adderall. Simon Rovensky had been prescribed the amphetamine cocktail to treat ADHD, and had brought along a receipt from when he had purchased the drug, but that wasn't enough for the authorities, and his family apparently weren't given enough time to send supporting documentation before a court hearing. He is set to be sentenced later this month.

- A Palau-flagged oil tanker, the MT Marivex, was attacked by an American fighter off the coast of Oman. Fortunately the crew, all Indian nationals, were successfully rescued by Omani forces, and there was no oil in the ship's tanks at the time of the attack. The US says the ship was attacked for attempting to sail to an Iranian port.

- China has built an undersea data centre off the coast of Shanghai. Besides using wind power to generate the 24 megawatts of power it consumes, it is cooled by seawater. If you're going to have AI data centres that's probably the least bad way of doing it, but I suspect the heat it generates will be considerable and could have a significant effect on the local ecology.

- A former Air Canada pilot is facing fraud charges after it was discovered that he did not have the proper license to serve as a captain, which he did for several months before getting caught.

- Over 300 migrants attempting to make their way to the UK were kidnapped in Libya last summer and threatened with having kidneys harvested if their families didn't pay up. Apparently some of them did end up having a kidney removed, and at least one has died.

- A Somali soccer referee who was set to officiate at the World Cup has been dropped after the US denied him entry. Omar Artan had been honoured as Referee of the Year by the Confederation of African Football last year, but we all know what Donald Trump thinks of Somalis.