News roundup, 8 July 2024

 - French voters in the second round of parliamentary elections have largely rejected the far right; Marine Le Pen's National Rally came third after the left alliance and Macron's centrists. The party's parliamentary leader Jordan Bardella, who hoped to become prime minister, declared that "alliances of dishonor" were responsible for the outcome; perhaps he's learned something from the late Jacques Parizeau. Building a viable coalition may take some time; they don't have a lot of experience with hung parliaments there.

- Joe Biden says he's still not quitting. Unless something happens soon, the Democrats are going to be stuck with him for the fall. This is ungood.

- California has imposed permanent restrictions on water utilities across the state, requiring the utilities to reduce their total consumption by around 40%. How the goal is to be met is up to the individual utilities. There are also efforts by the WWF to encourage other places to grow the crops that California has traditionally supplied. Meanwhile in Florida, where the citrus industry has been decimated by disease, efforts are being made to get farmers to grow pongamia trees, potentially a valuable source of biofuel. Getting farmers to switch away from crops they've been growing for years isn't easy, but it's going to be increasingly necessary in the coming years.

- Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to fraud in connection to the 737 Max disasters in 2018 and 2019, following revelations that the company violated a settlement related to the accidents.

- Solar power is growing so fast that it may be the biggest source of energy on the planet in a decade or so. Growth that experts had predicted could take 20 years happened in only 6. And various industries, notably data centres, are moving to "behind the meter" projects that produce electricity in their own microgrids without having to worry about such matters as feed-in tariffs.

- Canada's new anti-greenwashing law is already spooking energy companies into removing claims from their websites about how environmentally friendly they are, even as they try to claim that the sites they've taken down aren't greenwashing.

- 21 species are being removed from the US Endangered Species list; unfortunately the reason is that they are thought to be extinct.

- Ukraine's largest pediatric facility was severely damaged in a Russian missile strike. At least two people were killed there, in addition to 34 others killed in strikes in other locations.

News roundup, 21 June 2024

- Chris Skidmore, who served as the UK's energy minister under Theresa May, has vowed to vote Labour for the first time in his life in protest against the current Tory government turning climate into a "culture war" issue.

- Many Liberal MPs think it's time for Justin Trudeau to move on if there's to be any chance in salvaging the party's chances for the election. One unnamed MP said that "if we saw Justin Trudeau jump into a river to save two children being chased by a crocodile, people would say it was his fault", and like it or not, that is probably the case.

- A bill recently passed by Parliament, and now awaiting royal assent, will require companies who make claims about their environmental policies in advertising to provide evidence to back up their claims. Seems reasonable to most, but the Alberta government is up in arms about this; presumably they fear that the oil industry will collapse if they aren't allowed to lie to the public about what they're doing. An oilsands alliance has already removed all content from their website in anticipation of the bill becoming law.

- A search of the Prairie Green Landfill for at least two of Jeremy Skibicki's victims will commence in the fall, once a "targeted zone" where the remains are most likely buried can be identified.

- A man is suing Loblaws and the City of Winnipeg after an incident in 2022 in which he says that two police officers serving as security at the Superstore on Gateway Road made racially offensive comments, apparently under the impression that he was indigenous (he isn't) and then roughed him up when he tried to take photos.

- A strip club in Guelph, which was built in 1891, has been granted a heritage designation.

- Longtime Winnipeg broadcaster Larry Updike has died.

News roundup, 3 April 2024

- An earthquake measured at between 7.2 and 7.4 on the Richter scale has caused significant damage in Taiwan, including at least 9 fatalities and hundreds of injuries.

- The new provincial budget presented by the Kinew government includes money for major healthcare projects, including a new ER at Victoria General Hospital and one in Ericksdale. Perhaps more important, it includes funding for a thousand sorely needed healthcare workers, including 100 doctors, 90 paramedics and 600 healthcare aides. It also includes funding for a supervised consumption site in the North End. The 50% education property tax rebate is being replaced with a flat $1,500 for all homeowners (the profiteers are predicting apocalyptic results from this, of course). I'm less keen on the fact that they're extending the gas tax holiday until September, although to be fair they're taking other more positive measures on climate as well. The full document is here.

- The City of Winnipeg will be considering several apartment projects planned for vacant properties, including one the Norwood East neighbourhood of St Boniface, one in West Broadway, and one in East Elmwood. The West Broadway one is drawing some local opposition despite the underused nature of the affected land. This has led to a fair bit of skepticism about the opposition to the project on this Reddit thread. Perhaps the best summary there was this:

Winnipeg needs to densify if it's ever going to get in front of its annual operating cost. Poverty is a larger and complicated issue that I certainly don't have all the answers to but preventing this development doesn't solve it.

- Doug Ford wants to get international students out of Ontario universities, even as the universities need their money more than ever thanks to inadequate funding from... Doug Ford and his government.

- A bill expected to pass the Vermont legislature shortly will require fossil fuel companies to contribute to the cost of damage resulting from increasing natural disasters as a result of climate change. Several other states have similar bills, albeit not as advanced as this one. Vermont's governor, a Republican, is expressing concerns about the bill, but given that this is Vermont he has to try not to sound crazy, so he's arguing that a small state shouldn't be the one to go first because whoever does will face a fierce legal battle from the affected companies. His opposition is probably moot, though; the Democrats have the supermajority needed to override his veto should that occur.

- ExxonMobil has an ad campaign in the UK where they talk a lot about carbon capture, but there's no sign that the project they refer to will ever get off the ground, leading to accusations of greenwashing.

- The Israelis are apparently using AI to select targets in Gaza. Not everyone is reassured by this.

- Germany is considering a ban on the import of hunting "trophies". This does not sit at all well with the president of Botswana; his country gets a lot of revenue from that trade, and he's threatening to send 20,000 elephants to Germany if they go ahead. How he plans to accomplish this is not clear.

- Police in Fontana, California managed to fatally shoot the kidnapped teen they were trying to rescue as she ran towards what she thought was safety.