News roundup, 19 May 2026

- Two armed teenagers attacked a mosque in San Diego on Monday, killing three people before turning their weapons on themselves. This is being investigated as a hate crime; the mother of one of the shooters found a note that he had left behind, though the content of the note has not been made public.

- Global Affairs Canada is warning Canadians to be wary about travelling overseas this summer, due to the possibility of flight cancellations as a result of skyrocketing prices of jet fuel due to the war in Iran. They also warn that fuel shortages could disrupt access to products and services at some popular destinations. 

- A Canadian who was a passenger on the plague ship MV Hondius has tested positive for hantavirus. Three others are in isolation after showing symptoms consistent with the virus.

-  An outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed at least 131 people and may be spreading faster than originally thought.

- Manitoba is temporarily suspending the ban on sale of certain American alcoholic beverages, in order to sell off stock that expires in the fall.

- Keir Starmer is facing a direct challenge of his leadership of the Labour Party from Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester. Burnham is running in a byelection in the constituency of Makerfield, which was vacated by incumbent Josh Simons in order to make way for him.

- Thomas Massie, a Republican member of Congress from Kentucky, is facing a tough primary today as Donald Trump has aggressively endorsed his opponent. Massie drew the ire of Trump after pushing a bill to force the release of the Epstein files.

- A car crashed into a fireworks store in Toronto on Monday, starting what became a five-alarm fire. Nobody was in the vehicle by the time fire crews arrived.

News roundup, 13 May 2026

- A man walked onto an active runway at Denver International Airport and into the path of a Frontier Airlines Airbus A321 on its takeoff roll in an apparent suicide. Unfortunately he was sucked into one of the engines. The cockpit and cabin immediately filled with smoke, and the pilots successfully aborted the takeoff. The ensuing evacuation of the 231 passengers and crew, however, was chaotic; not only were passengers wasting time trying to get their stuff, but three passengers jumped onto a slide before it had properly inflated, putting it out of commission (and hopefully injuring themselves in the process). Juan Browne (blancolirio), besides praising the pilots and strongly condemning the behaviour of the passengers, reports that the entire fan on the front of that engine was gone, and raises the possibility that this might have released oil that could have gone into the bleed air system, causing the smoke issue. If so it's fortunate that the crew were able to abort the takeoff; exposure to that stuff is potentially fatal.

- Another passenger from that Dutch plague ship in the Atlantic appears to be close to death. The passenger, a French woman, is said to be in the "final stage of supportive care"; the outbreak has already killed three people. The ship has now been fully evacuated and is on its way back to the Netherlands to be disinfected.

- A report the from International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) concludes that the cost of battery storage has dropped by 90% since 2010, making solar and wind cost competitive with fossil fuels. Parts of Europe are already seeing drops in their electricity prices as a result.

- Residents of the Rural Municipality of Ritchot, Manitoba are up in arms about plans from a Las Vegas based company, Jet.AI, in collaboration with Vancouver-based Consensus Core, to build a data centre north of the community of Île des Chênes. The provincial government is aware of the plan but has not yet made a decision on the matter.

- A 35 year old fugitive from Greenbriar, Tennessee was arrested in Winnipeg on child sex abuse charges. The man had somehow slipped across the border, possibly through farm fields, and potentially carrying several firearms, although the guns weren't in his possession when he was caught. He was captured after getting caught speeding.

- A Winnipeg funeral home owner, who has announced his intention to run for mayor, has been accused of sexual harassment by a former employee. Mike Vogiatzakis of Voyage Funeral Homes claims that this was a disgruntled employee who only made the allegations after being fired, but then he would, wouldn't he. More info about the allegations may be found here. Even if the claims are false, he's someone that thoughtful voters will hopefully stay far away from; he's already been spreading far-right conspiracy theories about the "15 minute city", and folks here allege that he has gang connections as well.

- South Korea's military is looking at using robots in some non-combat roles (e.g. reconnaissance and logistics) to make up for declining enlistment due to the country's low birthrate. 

News roundup, 11 May 2026

- Municipal elections were held across the England on Thursday; Scotland and Wales held their parliamentary elections on the same day. The results show crushing defeats for Labour across much of the country. The blogger behind Council Estates Media seems to think Starmer's unwavering support of Israel has something to do with it; I'd say it's a stretch to say that's a big factor in the defeat, but it definitely says something about the way the party has gone when they tried to play the antisemitism card against Green leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish. Ironically, while the Greens did respectably well in the elections, the main beneficiary was Reform UK, which has a fair number of actual antisemites. While it's fair to say the swing away from Labour is an indictment of that party, the fact that a plurality of those voters chose Reform is an indictment of the English people. The Scots and Welsh did a better job in their parliamentary elections, though.

- Three more passengers on board that Dutch plague ship now moored in the Canary Islands have tested positive for hantavirus, all after flying home. The incubation period for this virus is substantial; four Canadians who were on the ship have been ordered to isolate for 21 days.

- An Edmonton couple on vacation in Mexico got notifications from WestJet saying that their flight home from Los Angeles was cancelled; they had to be rerouted through Victoria and got home some 16 hours late. Under Canadian legislation this is a long enough delay to trigger compensation as per the Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) - but the airline claims to be exempt because the cancellation was due to an unexpected safety-related issue with the aircraft. The problem is, the aircraft in question had been grounded several days previously; WestJet apparently switched which aircraft was to be used for the flight immediately before cancelling it in the hope of getting around paying compensation to passengers.

- Jana Ronne, a high school teacher in BC, got in hot water after confronting a student for the use of the word "pussy" as an insult. She responded by saying "Do you think women are weak? Women can be stronger than men"; somehow the discussion got steered into religion, and she responded to this by disputing the validity of religion (not clear how she got there; I suspect the kid cited the Bible/Koran/whatever). Subsequently she appears to have brought up the incident in class, unprompted. Apparently this made students who witnessed the interaction feel "uncomfortable", and they complained to the vice principal; the BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation has given her a one day suspension of her teaching certificate and forced her to take courses on "creating a positive classroom" and "intercultural dialogue".

- A motorcyclist was seriously injured in a collision with a car on Scott Road, which forms the boundary between the cities of Surrey and Delta, BC. What is remarkable about this case, though, is that the motorcycle somehow ended up hanging from a traffic signal standard.

News roundup, 7 May 2026

- The Trump regime is once again claiming that the war they helped start in Iran will be "over quickly"; they have offered another ceasefire proposal, which Iran says it is "considering". 

- The MV Hondius, that Dutch cruise ship with the hantavirus outbreak, has left Cape Verde en route to the Canary Islands after Spain granted the ship permission to dock there. This was done after three more infected people, two passengers and a crew member (reportedly the ship's doctor), were removed from the ship prior to setting sail to be flown to hospitals in Europe. And a flight attendant with KLM, who was briefly in contact with one of the patients who was flown to Johannesburg (and who later died) has now been hospitalized due to suspected hantavirus infection.

- Recent polling has the Ontario Liberals and PCs at a statistical tie in the wake of Doug Ford's incautious purchase of a private jet (nicknamed the "gravy plane" by critics). This marks the first time in quite a while that the Tories have looked vulnerable. The extent to which polls can be trusted is unclear, mind you; the "shy Tory factor" has been known for decades, and given that contemporary rightwing politics is full of paranoid conspiracy theorists, many people who might be inclined to vote for such parties would be too paranoid to answer a poll at all. Meanwhile in BC, support for David Eby's NDP has cratered in spite of any shy Tory factor (and in spite of the fact that the BC Tories are a party that any sensible person ought to be pretty shy about admitting a desire to vote for). As in Ontario, this seems to be driven largely by a single issue, in this case the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which the Eby government has also partially backed away from after a couple of court rulings spooked some people about the possible impact on their property rights.

- A teenager has been charged with firing shots at two synagogues in Toronto and Vaughan in March. The shootings took place late at night and nobody was hurt. The suspect, reportedly of no fixed address, has not been publicly named because he was a minor at the time of the attacks.

- The resort community of Winnipeg Beach has been placed under provincial administration after the town's council, already short two members, lost quorum after the resignation of a councillor.

- The hospital in the town of Carman, Manitoba has cancelled all surgeries until further notice due to an infestation of ants. Southern Health, the regional health authority responsible for the hospital, insists that there is no threat to the health of patients or staff, or to the integrity of the building, but says that the facility does not meet the sterility standards for surgery. Meanwhile another hospital in southern Manitoba, this time in Morris, activated safety protocols after someone was threatened with what turned out to be a replica handgun. The suspects fled but crashed their vehicle into a road sign and were quickly tracked down.

News roundup, 6 May 2026

- Longtime Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour has been appointed as Canada's next governor general. Hard not to approve of the choice, not only because of her competence but because it's something of a statement in this geopolitical context to choose someone who served as an international war crimes prosecutor.

- Governments of numerous countries including Brazil, Canada, Germany, and Nigeria are sending representatives to discuss how to go about actually phasing out fossil fuels rather than setting warming targets by consensus and letting everyone figure out on their own how to do it, which has been the standard approach by the UN. Now it's easy to be a bit cynical about a bunch of elite types flying down to Colombia, mostly in gas-guzzling business jets, to discuss climate solutions, but such are the realities of diplomacy for the time being. Notably absent from the conference are the US, China, and the Gulf states, which is a positive development on all counts.

- A new paper suggests that even in the best-case scenario, New Orleans is not going to be one of those places that survives climate change. One of the authors says that "Even if you stopped climate change today, New Orleans’s days are still numbered". The city may find itself surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico by 2100; the paper's authors recommend that efforts be made to start relocating its residents now. This concept, known as "managed retreat", has come up a lot in the last while. Naturally, a lot of people are not comfortable with the idea for a lot of reasons, but I don't see how it will be possible to avoid some kind of retreat, managed or otherwise, in a lot of places around the world.

- Reform UK has vowed to put migrant detention centres in ridings that elect Green MPs if they win the next general election. This is kind of ironic given that the kind of climate policy advocated by that lot (i.e. "let it burn" in every sense of the phrase) will inevitably lead to huge amounts of migration.

- The US National Transportation Safety Board has released the findings from their part of the investigation into the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 in 2022 which killed 132 people. The NTSB was involved in the investigation as the home country of the manufacturer; they reported that the engines were suddenly shut down, and that this looked like a deliberate act of murder-suicide by one of the pilots. If so it would be far from the first time that something like this has happened - see for example this, this, and this, and probably also this. China's own Civil Aviation Administration has yet to make a ruling on the cause of the crash, which makes me wonder if they suspect a political motive, or if they just don't want their citizens thinking too much about why a highly skilled professional would just decide to kill himself and take a planeload of people with him.

- Health officials now suspect human-to-human transmission of hantavirus in the fatal outbreak on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, but are quick to say (perhaps at the urging of the cruise industry) that they don't think it's a big concern.

- A Toronto woman is seeking an exemption to the restrictions in MAID legislation in order to get herself put to sleep for mental health disorders; the legislation specifically disqualifies patients whose only major health issues are psychiatric. This is a highly contentious issue; on the one hand, organizations like Dying With Dignity Canada are calling for it to be allowed, while on the other side some argue that the very conditions often complicate the matter of informed consent.

- A new viral fad has groups of young people arranging a time to get out of their mums' basements and conduct what twenty years ago would probably have been called a flash mob but is now called a speedrun (named, of course, after a term from the video game community) in which they try to get into Scientology facilities and film themselves. Most recently this happened in Vancouver on the weekend; up to 300 people apparently showed up. A 16 year old was arrested at the scene but later released with no charges. Some people say they know more about the motives for this stunt/protest, but are reluctant to speak on the record due to Scientology's famously litigious nature.

News roundup, 4 May 2026

- An outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship has killed three people so far and sickened at least three others, one of whom is now in intensive care in a South African hospital. There are plans to evacuate the other infected people as well.

- The US is withdrawing around 5,000 troops from bases in Germany; this follows a remark by German chancellor Friedrich Merz that the US was being "humiliated" in Iran. The Trump regime has also announced another round of tariffs on European vehicles, a move which will hit Germany hard. Despite all this, Merz says he is "not giving up" on working with Trump. Merz, of course, is in the awkward position of any non-crazy right-of-centre leader - it's so deeply embedded in the minds of such people that the Americans are the good guys that they have no idea what to do when it becomes blatantly obvious that this isn't true anymore (if indeed it ever was).

- A United Airlines Boeing 767 clipped a pole and a truck after coming a bit too low on its final approach to the runway at Newark. Nobody on board the aircraft was hurt; the driver of the truck was treated for minor injuries.

- Support among Albertans for secession from Canada continues to languish, with 27% saying that they would vote yes to separation (only 6% say they're undecided on the matter). Among admitted UCP supporters, however, 57% say they would vote for independence. The strongest predictor of someone being a separatist seems to be someone whose income is high but who is nonetheless having trouble meeting expenses (perhaps because they were a bit too free with credit over the last couple of decades).

- A Nova Scotia woman booked a flight to Toronto for herself and her daughter, to see a Sabrina Carpenter concert. After her daughter died, she faced a months-long fight with Air Canada to get a refund for her ticket. The airline quickly reversed their position after the CBC started asking questions, though, saying the bereavement policy was not applied correctly.