News roundup, 16 April 2026

- Donald Trump is once again threatening to fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for refusing to lower interest rates, even though it's far from clear that he has the authority to do that unilaterally. The regime is also pursuing a criminal investigation regarding alleged cost overruns for renovations at the central bank's headquarters; a judge has already given the legal opinion that the overruns are a mere pretext and that the government wants to intimidate the bank. The strange thing is, Powell's term is set to expire in May, although he would stay on until a successor is found. 

- Hospitalization rates for vaccine-preventable respiratory infections, including flu and RSV as well as COVID-19 and other conditions, have doubled since the start of the pandemic. Evidently enough people went down the antivax rabbit hole that they stopped getting the vaccinations that they previously went along with.

- To the surprise of nobody with any sense, speeding has increased in Ottawa school zones since the Ford government banned municipalities from using speed cameras.

- More information has emerged about Jeremy Frimer, the psychology professor who is suing the University of Winnipeg for allegedly giving him complex PTSD and the faculty union for not backing him up. It seems that Frimer made some highly questionable claims about race, intelligence, and crime; despite his protestations, the general consensus among most scientists is that human races are so ill-defined that it's pretty safe to assume that such claims are nonsense. As to what could have motivated to make such claims, well...

- Travis Patron, a Saskatchewan man who once served as the leader of a now defunct far right fringe party, has been charged with wilful promotion of hatred for some online posts. He has previous convictions for the same offense, as well as for assault, harassment, and impersonating a police officer.

- Remember the story a few years back about the programmer whose best friend was killed by a hit-and-run driver, so she trained a chatbot on all the texts he'd sent to her so she could still feel like she was talking to him? Whatever you think about whether that's psychologically healthy or not, at least she knew what was going on. A more recent case, though, is a bit more problematic. After a man died in a car accident last year, his family decided to keep the news from his mother, fearing that the shock would harm her health. So they got together all the audio and video they could find of him and trained an AI on it. The AI has brief conversations with her on screen but then apologizes saying that he has to go back to work because he's very busy, and that he will be sure to move back to her city to be with her once he has earned enough money. As some folks in this Reddit thread have remarked, this might be justifiable if she had severe dementia (the only thing worse than having to tell her that he'd died would be having to tell her that over and over again), but there's no mention of this in the article, and I can't see things going too well if the AI has some sort of glitch that reveals its true nature or if she finds out the truth in some other way.

News roundup, 12 Nov 2025

- There are signs that the record-setting government shutdown in the US may be moving towards resolution. Eight centrist Democrats in the Senate voted with the Republicans in return for a vote on enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies at some unspecified time in the future, with no guarantees of Republican support for the subsidies. The House of Representatives is expected to approve this today. This does not sit well with the more left-leaning Democrats, though, who see it as a capitulation. Probably the fact that over 10,000 flights have been cancelled in the country due to the shortage of air traffic controllers is a factor; the US Thanksgiving holiday is just around the corner, and presumably nobody wants to be the one blamed for ruining that.

- The European Union has proposed legislation that would, among other things, require satellite operators to address the space junk problem. The Americans are foaming at the mouth about this, saying that it would place "unacceptable regulatory burdens" on US companies and could threaten threaten technological advancement in space. Even if that last point is true, though, the threat to technological advancement from this is trivial compared to that posed by "Kessler syndrome"; hopefully the Europeans will stand their ground.

- Canada's top public servant, the Clerk of the Privy Council, met with the CEO of Saab recently. Now, a delegation including Sweden's king and numerous members of the country's business community are scheduled to visit next week, including a tour of aerospace plants. This is leading to speculation that the government may be considering a purchase of Gripen fighters. That would be a very interesting development; stay tuned.

- Canada has lost its status as a country free of measles transmission following over 5,000 recent cases. Of course the decline in vaccination is the reason. Meanwhile there are fears of a mismatch between the current flu vaccine and the strains spreading across the country, which could make for a very bad flu season this year.

- An event held at UC Berkeley by Turning Point USA, the organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk, was met with over 100 protesters, and there was at least one violent altercation between protesters and supporters. The US Department of Justice is investigating the university's preparations for the event.

- The US Travel Association is forecasting a 3.2% decline in tourism for this year, driven mostly by a decline in visits by Canadians. This is expected to cost the travel sector some $5.7 billion.

- Arizona representative-elect Adelita Grijalva is finally expected to be sworn in, potentially tipping the balance towards forcing a vote on the release of the Epstein files. 

WHO boosts pandemic alert level to 4

The stakes are getting higher:

The World Health Organization raised its global pandemic alert to Level 4 from Level 3 on Monday, meaning the global health body feels the virus causing the swine flu outbreak can easily transmit between people.

Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director general, confirmed the change during a briefing from Geneva following an emergency meeting of the organization.

Countries should focus their efforts on mitigating the effects of the virus — which the WHO has confirmed has spread to Mexico, Canada, the United States and Spain — because containment is impossible, he said.

However, Fukuda added: "A pandemic is not considered inevitable at this time."

Fukuda said the WHO doesn't recommend closing borders or restricting travel but is encouraging people who are ill to delay travel.

"The deliberations of the emergency committee and the decisions of the director general really reflect a lot of very careful and sober discussion and a number of important considerations," said Fukuda.

Despite the WHO's comments, the European Union and the U.S. have advised against non-essential travel to Mexico because of the outbreak of the virus believed to have killed dozens in Mexico. Canada was expected to issue a similar advisory.

From here. Actually, my view is that the travel advisories don't go far enough; if I were in charge I'd be advising against all non-essential travel period, including domestic travel. The travel industry would shit, of course, but if you want to seriously tackle the issue, you need to take the bull by the horns.

Flu update...

Well, it seems that that British flight attendant does not have swine flu. On the other hand, there are some suspected cases in New Zealand, and a possible one in Israel. (On a side note, can you imagine the conclusions folks might have jumped to, and the consequences, if Israel -- or Iran or Pakistan, for that matter -- had been the site of the initial outbreak?) The news from this country is contradictory; this CBC story reports possible cases in Nova Scotia, but the most recent flu story in the Chronicle-Herald says otherwise. In any case, the CBC story quotes one specialist as saying fears are overblown:

A Toronto infection control specialist said it's important to keep the outbreak in perspective.

"This sounds like a pandemic — while it's not trivial — that is less severe. And less severe is something that we spent a lot of time planning for and a lot of time working on," Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Mount Sinai Hospital told CBC News.

Reassuring... maybe. Also interesting, and perhaps reassuring, is this:

A big question is: Just how deadly is the virus in Mexico?

The seasonal flu tends to kill just a fraction of 1 percent of those infected.

In Mexico, about 70 deaths out of roughly 1,000 cases represents a fatality rate of about 7 percent. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, which killed an estimated 50 million worldwide, had a fatality rate of about 2.5 percent.

The Mexican rate sounds terrifying. But it’s possible that far more than 1,000 people have been infected with the virus and that many had few if any symptoms, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a prominent pandemic expert at the University of Minnesota. U.S. health officials echoed him.

“In Mexico, they were looking for severe diseases and they found some. They may not have been looking as widely for the milder cases,” said Schuchat of the CDC.

That actually makes a lot of sense. I know I freak out easily; maybe it's all the books I've read (The Stand, The Last Canadian, Earth Abides, etc).