News roundup, 12 Aug 2026

- The Canadian Association of Professional Employees has confirmed what many of us have suspected for a while, saying they were told by a source in the federal government that officials were "very worried" about risks to the financial sector from remote work due to the decline in value of commercial real estate. The Bank of Canada had reported in 2024 that some pension funds and insurers had reduced their exposure to commercial real estate due to the high office vacancy rate. It sure looks like that governments were unprepared to deal with such a shift and decided to address the problem with return to office mandates.

- A working group led by former federal cabinet minister Lloyd Axworthy is examining the feasibility of relocating Winnipeg's rail yards to bypass the city. Such a move would take many years to implement, but would free up valuable land within the city and would also be beneficial to the railways in the long run, since it would remove the necessity for trains to slow to a crawl as they pass through built-up areas.

- Evacuees from the wildfires in northern Ontario have led to a severe shortage of hotel rooms in Thunder Bay, creating problems for people who have to visit the city for medical appointments.

- Spain is being bombarded with tourists in the midst of one of the worst wildfire seasons in living memory, due to a total solar eclipse that will be the first one visible from the Spanish mainland in more than a century.

- The war in Iran and the resulting spikes in fuel prices have led to a surge in sales of electric motorcycles in much of the world. Motorcycles are much more common than cars in less affluent countries, and improvements in electric vehicle technology have now made it cost-effective to make the switch. For instance, in Kenya at least 25% of new motorcycles sold are electric.

- Yolanda Olejniczak Marodi has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of her wife, Rebecca Marodi, in February of 2025. The victim, a decorated firefigher, was stabbed to death in her mother's home shortly after announcing her intention to file for divorce; Oleiniczak Marodi fled to Mexico but was captured after more than a month on the run. She had previously served nine years in prison for manslaughter in the death of her husband, James Olejniczak, who like Rebecca had planned to end the marriage.

News roundup, 10 July 2026

- The ceasefire in the US-Iran war is in ruins after Donald Trump accused Iran of attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz and launched airstrikes on the country, killing at least 14 people and destroying a bridge on a key trade route with Russia and China. Iran in turn launched strikes on Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Iran admits to firing on the ships, which it says ignored warnings about taking a non-approved route through the strait.

- Andy Burnham appears set to be the UK's next prime minister after winning the support of 322 out of 403 sitting Labour MPs. If nobody steps up to oppose him he will be declared party leader next week and take office later this month.

- The "Water Not Coal" campaign, an initiative by country singer Corb Lund which sought to ban coal mining on the eastern slopes of the Rockies in Alberta (or force a referendum if the government wanted to push ahead), was deemed by Elections Alberta to have not gotten the necessary 177,732 signatures in order to be deemed valid. Lund's campaign had submitted over 200,000, but staff at the agency attempted to contact a small sample of the signatories in order to determine how many could be deemed valid and deemed enough of them illegitimate to cancel the initiative. A statistician at the University of Toronto, however, believes that Elections Alberta's methodology was suspect and that the initiative likely had enough legitimate signatures to proceed.

- The BC government is suing OpenAI for its role in the Tumbler Ridge shooting that left nine people dead. The government believes that there were plenty of warning signs in the shooter's interaction with the platform that could have prevented the tragedy; OpenAI had banned her but had not notified the police.

- A Texas woman who was fired by her employer after video of her unhinged rant at two Muslim women went viral has raised over $100,000 in donations on GiveSendGo (which is, as I've called it before, the GoFundMe for deplorables). The women she harassed were doxed and have faced death threats.

- Two teenagers in Greensboro, NC were arrested after allegedly using a device described as a "homemade plasma cannon" to break into a school. The term may be technically accurate but makes it sound way more sci-fi than it actually is; it's not that dissimilar to the potato cannons that teens have been making for decades.

- A student pilot in Argentina was forced to land the aircraft by herself after her flight instructor suddenly opened a door and jumped to his death. While shaken, the student landed the Cessna 150 without further incident. I suppose if nothing else it was a good test of the student's ability to handle an emergency.

News roundup, 16 June 2026

- The Trump regime claims that the memorandum of understanding signed with Iran will see the Strait of Hormuz "open to all" by this coming Friday. The actual details of the MOU have yet to be released, however, so this claim should be taken with several kilograms of salt.

- The Carney government is suspending several certificates of citizenship that were sent out to people who applied after becoming eligible under the "lost Canadians" law. The suspensions are claimed to be justified based on the supporting documents not being original source material; those receiving the notice are being told that their applications may be reinstated if they provide satisfactory supporting evidence. Some 4,000 people around the world, around half of them American, had been sent certificates under the new legislation; it's not clear how many of these people are affected by this.

- Last week new regulations from Canada's telecommunications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), took effect, prohibiting telecoms from charging extra fees to activate, change, or cancel cellphone plans. Shortly before the regulations came into force, Bell Canada and Telus rebranded these fees as a "handling fee" in the case of Bell, and a "SIM card fee" in Telus' case. The CRTC sent stern letters to the companies suggesting that these new fees may still be illegal; whether they take more concrete action than this remains to be seen.

- A man suspected of murder in the death of a 61 year old woman in the township of Greater Madawaska, Ontario was arrested in Winnipeg after police investigating the killing discovered threats that the suspect had made to a local business here. When captured he was found in possession of a shotgun as well as three jerry cans full of gasoline.

- In 2022, it was claimed by Russia that several public health facilities in Ukraine, which had received funding from the US, were actually biological warfare research facilities. The official story is that facilities were working to secure Soviet-era bioweapons and then turned into general purpose public health labs once this had been done. Russia's claims were denied by the US at the time. Of course, one could reasonably ask whether the Americans can be trusted to tell the truth about this, but notably these claims have also been dismissed by the UN as well as by some actual Russian scientists (who had best keep a safe distance from windows for the foreseeable future). However, a Canadian blogger, Patrick Armstrong, now claims to have new evidence supporting Russia's assertions. The source for this information is Donald Trump's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who has released what she calls declassified information that allegedly supports the claim. Those convinced of Russia's righteousness in the conflict are naturally pleased with this report; whether information put out by the Trump regime can be trusted to be truthful on this matter (or any other) is left as an exercise for the reader.

News roundup, 15 May 2026

- Some municipalities in BC, including the City of Powell River, the Village of Pemberton, and the Resort Municipality of Whistler, are imposing their own campfire bans in response to the BC Wildfire Service lifting the general ban for the south coast for the Victoria Day weekend. The fact that the province lifted the ban when local officials don't think it's wet enough to lift the ban adds to my suspicions that the Eby government has been so spooked by recent polls that they're trying to avoid anything that populists might try to rally around. This is a fool's errand, of course; populists can always find something else, legitimate or otherwise, to rouse the rabble against the government.

- The student health clinic at McGill University has said that they will not prescribe gender transition hormones to American exchange students under the age of 19 for fear of repercussions from the Trump regime. They say they are doing this based on legal advice from the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA); the most credible fear they had was about difficulty crossing the border. That said, if you care more about being able to keep vacationing in Florida than about helping your patients, maybe you shouldn't be in the business.

- Energy ministers in every Australian state except one are calling for data centres to be forced to invest in enough wind and solar energy to completely cover their energy consumption. The exception, not surprisingly, is Queensland, which is kind of the Alberta of the southern hemisphere (in terms of political culture; the weather is nicer though).

- Hotels in the US are not seeing the expected rise in bookings for the World Cup that they were hoping for. This is not a big surprise; most Americans don't like soccer (they like to see bigger numbers on the scoreboard) and most foreigners don't want to visit the US right now.

- A recent survey of adults in the US found that 7.3% of respondents had thought about shooting somebody at some point in their lives, and 3.3% had experienced such thoughts in the last year. 

- A man has been arrested in Panama after more than three decades on the lam as the suspect in the murder of Rodney Barger, aka Rawn Beauty, lead singer of punk rock band Cold as Life. He is accused of shooting Barger in the head while he slept. The motive is unclear.

- Most strippers in Montreal depend entirely on tips for their income; strip clubs generally don't actually pay their dancers, and in fact some actually charge them for the "privilege" of working there. This may be about to change though; strippers and other sex workers in the city are planning to go on strike - and just in time for the Grand Prix. I imagine there will be a lot of disgruntled Formula 1 fans in the city that weekend.

News roundup, 1 May 2026

- New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, long a bogeyman for the political right and centre, is now taking some flak from left-identifying folks over plans to build a "climate innovation hub" on vacant city property. The concern seems to be that the area surrounding the site is a traditionally working-class area and that by bringing highly paid professional jobs into the area it will fuel gentrification. I can understand the concern to a degree, but this is New York we're talking about; the gentrification ship sailed long ago.

- Besides oil, among the most important commodities shipped through the Strait of Hormuz are fertilizers; around a third of the world's supply passes through the strait. If this goes on it will mean lower crop yields around the world. This is not expected to cause food shortages in rich countries, which will be able to outbid others, but the global cost could be up to 10 million meals per week.

- A use of force expert testifying at the inquest into the fatal police shooting of teenager Eisha Hudson says that the shooting was not justified. The officer who shot her claimed that the vehicle Hudson was driving was moving towards officers, however video taken by a witness appears to contradict this, with the shots being fired as the vehicle was reversing away from the cops.

- Winnipeg's Red River College Polytechnic is shutting down several programs, some of them permanently, and laying off 26 staff. Several other programs are having their capacity reduced. Both the Manitoba Government Employees' Union, which represents staff at the college, and the provincial government are blaming the caps placed on international student visas by the federal government.

- Winnipeg city council has removed Transcona councillor Russ Wyatt from all city committees following sexual assault allegations against him. 

- Intercity bus service is returning to Manitoba after an eight year absence, as the German company FlixBus (which purchased Greyhound in 2021) has announced a route between Winnipeg and Regina with a stop in Brandon.

- The Toronto suburb of Brampton leads the country in mortgage delinquencies among medium to large cities. The city was considerably below the national average only seven years ago; housing prices there surged in 2022 and some of those mortgages are now renewing at higher rates as a result of the Iran war.

- A man suspected in the murder of a five year old indigenous girl in the Australian city of Alice Springs was beaten unconscious by a mob; after he was taken to hospital a riot occurred outside the facility. Protesters were calling for traditional "payback"; the child's family have, however, appealed for calm.

News roundup, 28 April 2026

- The suspect in the White House Correspondents' Dinner incident has been charged with attempting to assassinate the president as well as several firearms offenses. People from his hometown, the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, seem for the most part not to know him very well, saying that he lived with his parents and didn't interact with very many people.

- Mark Carney has announced plans to create a sovereign wealth fund for Canada. Unlike the one so successfully operated by Norway over the decades, it doesn't sound like it will be filled up with oil royalties - under our federal system, these kind of resources fall largely under provincial jurisdiction (as frothing-at-the-mouth Albertans are all too keen to point out whenever any plans to federally manage that sector of the economy are made). Instead, it sounds like it's going to just be some kind of investment fund that you (as well as "the private sector and international partners") buy units of the way you would for a mutual fund or ETF. Ironically, Norway's own sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world (which does get much of its money from oil), was initially inspired by the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust fund as initially set up by Peter Lougheed (but sadly nerfed by Ralph Klein). Now, unfortunately, that sort of thing is anathema to that province.

- Water levels in Ontario's Lake Simcoe are at their highest level in decades, with the potential to cause flooding in parts of Barrie and Orillia as well as the towns of Innisfil and Georgina and the township of Ramara. This is threatening croplands in an area sometimes called the "salad bowl", a major producer of vegetable crops.

- State Farm Insurance is facing hundreds of lawsuits from people who were denied coverage for hail damage, including over 600 in Oklahoma alone. There are allegations of a "wide-ranging program" by the company to avoid claims for such damage, as well as for wildfires. Perhaps the company can see a rise in such claims coming due to climate change and wants to make sure they don't have to pay them. Meanwhile millions of properties in the US are uninsured because the owners can't afford the premiums.

- Tenants at a North End apartment building operated by the nonprofit Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corporation, are raising concerns after the organization began housing homeless people in vacant units in cooperation with social service agencies. Several longtime tenants report that they no longer feel safe; a representative of the nonprofit acknowledges the concerns, saying that while they have been working to house the homeless for several years the situation has worsened in the last year. In contrast to this, organizations in Steinbach are proposing a dedicated building for people in such situations, which would have onsite psychiatrists. This sounds like a better way of dealing with the situation; while I can see some having concerns about the segregating effect of this, that may be a necessary evil in order to maintain a satisfactory level of buy-in from the public.

- A man in his 70s has been arrested following the fatal shooting of a 62 year old man in Mississauga. Police believe the shooting was targeted; you'd think one would outgrow one's gangster phase by that age.

News roundup, 17 April 2026

- The continued war in Iran is causing serious concern for commercial aviation. Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency warns that Europe has "maybe six weeks or so [of] jet fuel left" and that flight cancellations may start to occur if the situation isn't resolved soon. And John Gradek of McGill University calls the situation the "worst crisis we've had in aviation, ever", pointing out that with 9/11 and the pandemic there was never an issue with supply.

- Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a 10 day ceasefire, with the possibility of extension if progress is made in the meantime. 

- Canada's federal government is considering acquiring more office space in order to accommodate the employees that they're forcing back to the office. Anything to prop up the commercial real estate sector I guess...

- Residents of Winnipeg's West Broadway neighbourhood are creating a community land trust which will buy up land and rent it out at affordable rates.

- The RCMP detachment in Thompson evidently did a rather substandard job of searching a teen they'd taken into custody in December 2024. It seems that they somehow overlooked the fact that he was carrying a gun; fortunately the firearm was not used and was later discovered hidden behind a toilet while the suspect was in court.

- Former Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax killed his wife and then himself on Wednesday night. The two were going through what was describe as a "complicated" divorce.

- Some residents of Peguis First Nation may need to evacuate as early as this weekend due to flooding.

- The singer D4vd has been charged with murder following an investigation into the discovery of the remains of a teenage girl in a car he owned. Why it took as long as it did to press charges is an interesting question.

News roundup, 17 March 2026

- Donald Trump appears to have admitted in an interview about Iran that "maybe we shouldn't even be there at all". This comes in the context of his increasing alarm about the fact that Europeans aren't keen to follow him into the war, and the fact that he seems not to have realized that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed by Iran in the event of a war. And of all of Trump's numerous shortcomings, failures, and out-and-out crimes, the thing most likely to do actual damage to his political fortunes (even more than the Epstein files) would be a failure to bring fuel prices back down.

- Israel has commenced a large ground invasion of Lebanon, ostensibly in response to Lebanon's failure to disarm the militant group Hezbollah. Around a million people have been displaced by the invasion.

- Palantir CEO Alex Karp recently declared that the AI revolution will disproportionately affect female Democratic voters. There is plenty of suspicion, far from unfounded, that this was meant not so much as a warning but a promise. There's another take, though, namely that this is a warning after all, and that what Karp is urging AI companies to do is not to slow down, but rather to make sure they don't alienate the US military, the implication being that Democratic voters, and especially women, are never going to be in AI's corner, so they have to make sure that the military is. And it seems to be particularly aimed at Anthropic, whose recent blacklisting by the Pentagon is causing Palantir concern due to the latter company's use of Anthropic's product Claude Opus.

- The US Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) has been unable to pay its staff since funding ran out for the Department of Homeland Security last month. A bill to restore funding to the department is being held up by Democrats until reforms to ICE and CBP are agreed to. Now that they're missing actual paycheques, TSA employees are starting to call in sick at higher rates, and staffing shortages are causing huge delays at many airports.

- The timeline for the opening of a supervised consumption site in Winnipeg has been pushed back indefinitely, with the Kinew government asking the organization that intends to run the site to address local concerns about safety before it is approved.

- Following the death of her husband, Kouri Richins published a book for children on how to deal with grief, called Are You With Me. However, she has now been convicted of poisoning him with fentanyl as well as with fraudulently claiming insurance benefits. To add to all that, it appears that the book was ghostwritten.

- German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has died at the age of 96.

News roundup, 16 March 2026

- Donald Trump seems to be trying to move the goalposts on the war on Iran; evidently even he can recognize that maybe getting into an endless war might not be a good idea. Unfortunately it's a bit late for that.

- FCC chair Brendan Carr is hinting that broadcasters who cause displeasure to the Dear Leader might have difficulties renewing their broadcast licenses unless they "correct course" before their renewal time comes up.

- Many Iranian dissidents understandably looked on the US/Israeli attack on their country with rose-coloured glasses before it happened, hoping that this might be the thing that finally liberates them from a regime that certainly is far from benevolent. However, disillusionment is starting to set in among those actually live in the country and are seeing huge amounts of destruction with no benefit. Opinions among the diaspora will doubtless lag somewhat, since they aren't face to face with the bombing, but it will probably come in due time.

- The Trump regime is having a hard time finding allies who will help keep the Strait of Hormuz open. France is willing to consider, but on their own terms; Trump seems to want countries to sign on to an open-ended commitment, which is naturally not an easy sell. He is responding in his usual fashion by hinting that for NATO allies to sit this one out would "be very bad for the future of NATO".

- While Waterloo's university district has often gotten rowdy on and around St. Patrick's Day, the regional police service shocked many, including the city's mayor, when they deployed a sniper to the district. Police have so far not explained their reasoning; the mayor has requested a meeting with the police chief.

- An 81 year old man has been charged with second degree murder following a shooting at a trailer park in Port Alberni, BC. 

News roundup, 9 March 2026

- The late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be succeeded by his son Mojtaba. According to some diplomatic cables that turned up on Wikileaks back in the noughties, the Americans seem to have thought he was pretty much running things anyway; meanwhile one member of the country's main religious body claims that the elder Khamenei apparently did not want his son as a successor, and in any case the current Iranian state was supposed to be a republic, not a monarchy, so this could prove divisive. Also divisive was the statement by the country's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who had apologized for the strikes on Gulf states but then withdrew the apology following criticism from hardliners who called his stance "unprofessional, weak and unacceptable".

- Oil prices have surged by more than 25% since the start of the war, due to the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz and damage to oil infrastructure. If a Democrat were in power when oil prices surged like that, no matter the reason, you can be sure that the MAGA crowd would not shut up about it. I'm not counting on this to make them worry about their Dear Leader's role in this now, though, since in the minds of many of those people the license he gives them to be mean and hateful is worth paying more for gas. In terms of the impact on the energy market, the impact could be mixed; on the one hand it could push people and countries to switch to renewables faster, but it could also lead to the use of more coal in place of natural gas.

- The Manitoba government has refused to allow the City of Winnipeg to change the default speed limit on residential streets to 40 km/h from 50. Premier Wab Kinew rationalizes the decision by saying that "they can do it on their own". Well technically it's true that they could put signs at the entrance to each and every residential street, but realistically that's not going to happen - the cost of the signs alone would be considerable. This is disappointing, but not all that surprising; for all of Kinew's virtues (and they are considerable) he has a populist streak to him that comes out at times like this. And maybe he still clings to hopes of winning back constituencies like Interlake and doesn't want to deal with the rage from people who come into the city from out in the sticks and don't pay attention to the changes to the "unless otherwise posted" signs at the city limit.

- A 45 year old woman who worked as a personal support worker was ambushed and stabbed to death outside a client's home in the Windsor suburb of LaSalle. Nancy Grewal was also a social media influencer in the Sikh community, and had been a vocal critic of the Khalistan independence movement, leading to suspicions that this was the motivation for her killing. It's certainly possible, but I was under the impression that stabbing tends to be more common when the motive is personal, rather than a professional job. It could be that this was one enraged individual rather than an arranged hit, but I do hope police are considering other possibilities (such as a stalker or an ex-partner).

- A white supremacist dating site called WhiteDate, described by some as "Tinder for Nazis", was hacked and had its data published. Some of the data was published on a website called OK Stupid, while more sensitive data was provided only to journalists and researchers; the CBC used some of the latter data to find information implicating current members of the Canadian military. 

News roundup, 24 Feb 2026

- Most folks associated with the Republicans will vehemently deny any Nazi sympathies. Maybe some of them are even telling the truth and are just extremely ignorant, but it's getting harder and harder to give them the benefit of the doubt. The Trump regime seems to be very clearly copying Nazi aesthetics and phrasing, for instance. It's getting to the point where thoughtful, reasonable conservatives like the author of this article - of whom there seem to be fewer and fewer these days - are leaving the Republican Party in disgust.

- The Conservatives have introduced several proposed amendments to the Carney government's budget implementation bill, which would impose limits on the government's proposed power to exempt corporations from some regulations. Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the Conservatives proposing something half-decent is the fact that the Liberals have accepted the amendments. Maybe politics in this country isn't quite as far gone as it is in the US.

- The would-be assassin who was killed by security at the Mar-a-Lago compound appears to have come from a family of Trump supporters in North Carolina, but left behind a bunch of writings expressing rage over the Epstein files. 

- The Macron government issued a summons to US ambassador Charlie Kushner (father of Jared) following comments regarding the killing of far-right activist Quentin Deranque in Lyon. Kushner, however, refused to attend and has had his access to French officials blocked in response.

- An 11 year old boy in Perry County, Pennsylvania apparently was displeased when his parents took away his Nintendo Switch. Police believe he was so displeased, in fact, that he shot his father to death. Interestingly, in Pennsylvania minors charged with murder are tried as an adult by default, though the case can be moved to juvenile court under some circumstances. In Canada he couldn't even be charged criminally, though one would hope other measures would be taken.

News roundup, 20 Aug 2025

- US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra called Canada's second thoughts about whether to go all in on Lockheed-Martin's F-35 fighter are "an irritant that makes it harder to get to a [trade] agreement". More ominously, there are suggestions that Saab, say, might not be able to sell aircraft to Canada if the US doesn't want them to - many of the components in the Gripen fighter are American in origin, so in theory all they'd have to say is "Nice export permits you've got. It would be a shame if something happened to them". If I were in Mark Carney's position I'd be calling their bluff on that. If the Yanks were forced to show their true colours, they'd quickly find that their defense contractors are getting fewer and fewer new foreign orders for components.

- Some AI experts fear that the US power grid, in contrast to China's, is not robust enough to handle the massive energy demands of artificial intelligence. Fortunately, most of the massive amount of new generating capacity in China is solar; unfortunately, there's still a great deal of existing fossil fuel infrastructure in the country. Even more unfortunately, the current American regime will probably try to make up the difference by building new coal and natural gas plants (or nuclear, if we're lucky).

- A 40 year old man in Vernon, Connecticut had to be rescued from a tubular slide in a playground after becoming stuck inside. Authorities had to cut through the slide in order to get him out.

- The commissioner of Greater London's Metropolitan Police has made a specific order that beat cops assigned to the Notting Hill Carnival are not allowed to dance while on duty at the event. The official reason is a fear that dancing officers won't be sufficiently alert to signs of trouble, but Guardian columnist Hugh Muir suspects that the real reason is that someone might take a picture of an officer dancing, and if the police look too friendly and human, the rightwing press would see them as woke. 

- A Florida man has been convicted of second-degree murder after fatally stabbing his friend in a dispute over Donald Trump's financial acumen. The victim and the attacker were at a gathering at a residence in the small city of Arcadia. The victim had apparently made a remark about Trump having gone bankrupt (which, spoiler alert, he's done a few times) and in the ensuing dispute the other chap stabbed him with a kitchen knife.

- In other Florida news, a 71 year old woman in Wakulla County has been charged with several crimes after holding a family at gunpoint because she didn't believe the kids belonged to the father. The article doesn't say anything about the victims other than saying it was a father with two daughters under 13, but I'd wager donuts to dollars that the father is black and the daughters are sufficiently light-skinned to pass as white.

News roundup, 16 June 2025

- Israel launched a series of attacks on Iran starting Friday; Iran has responded in kind. Iran reports at least 224 fatalities, most of them civilians; Israel has experienced a number of fatalities as well. Donald Trump has hinted at the possibility of the US joining the conflict.

- A Democratic member of the Minnesota legislature was shot to death along with her husband in their home in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park. The suspect is also accused of the attempted murders of another legislator and his wife; he was reportedly disguised as a police officer and left behind an SUV that had been equipped and painted like a police car. He remained at large until surrendering to police on Sunday. A hit list including several other politicians, as well as Planned Parenthood locations, was found in the vehicle; evidently this guy is so pro-life he'll kill you.

- A man showed up to a "No Kings" protest in Salt Lake City on Saturday and pointed an AR-15-type rifle at the protesters. It is believed that a member of the protesters' "peacekeeping team" opened fire with a handgun in response, wounding the attacker and killing a bystander. The attacker was only slightly wounded; he has been arrested on a murder charge. The person who opened fire has yet to be identified.

- The valedictorian at an Ottawa high school says that she was phoned by the principal and told not to come to school today after her speech made reference to the more than 17,000 children who have died in Gaza since the most recent conflict. Elizabeth Yao says that the principal told her that her statements had "caused harm"; the principal and the school board have declined a request for comment.

- Buzz Hargrove, who led the Canadian Auto Workers (now Unifor) from 1992 until his retirement in 2008, has died at the age of 81.

- An internal memo in Nigeria's agriculture ministry has called for all department staff to pray for food security. This has led some Nigerians to wonder how about the department's commitment to actually do something about the problem.

News roundup, 10 March 2025

- Mark Carney has won the leadership of the federal Liberals in a landslide, and will be sworn in as prime minister shortly. He will become the first person to hold the office of prime minister while not yet having a seat in the House of Commons.

- The Hudson Bay Company has filed for creditor protection. The company intends to restructure; they cite the trade issues with the US as one of the problems, but another one cited is "post-pandemic declines in downtown store traffic". This seems questionable, though; these days most of their stores aren't in downtown locations. The downtown store in Winnipeg closed early in the pandemic (and the writing had been on the wall well before); all remaining locations in the city are in suburban malls.

- Human remains found in the Prairie Green Landfill in Rosser, Manitoba have been identified as having been Morgan Harris, one of four women killed by a Winnipeg serial killer. Moreover, there appear to be remains from another, as yet unidentified person. That person could be Marcedes Myran, or the woman known provisionally as Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe (Buffalo Woman). Or it could be someone else entirely; time will tell.

- Mere hours after declaring another pause in the tariffs on Canada, Trump is now threatening new ones on lumber and dairy products. For her part, Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt openly declared that if Canada wants to avoid tariffs, it should accept American rule. And four different anonymous sources, apparently with insider knowledge of the recent discussions between Trump and Trudeau, report that Trump does not accept the legitimacy of the 1908 treaty that settles the boundary between Canada and the US. Trump also wants to eject Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement, presumably so that the US can spy on Canada with impunity, but other members of the agreement now want to limit what they share with the US. So do Saudi Arabia and Israel - and if those two countries don't fully trust the US with their intelligence secrets, I doubt anyone else will either.

- Trump is blaming "globalists" for the decline in stock markets in response to his erratic tariff behaviour. Of course that term tends to be a bit of a dog whistle among his ilk, kind of like "rootless cosmopolitans" was for an earlier generation.

- Investigators into the death of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, have concluded that Arakawa died of hantavirus, a disease carried by deer mice. Hackman, who was in an advanced state of dementia, may not even have realized that she was dead, much less been able to seek help, but lingered on for another week or so before dying of heart failure.

- A Florida man has been arrested after making multiple calls to 911 to ask them for assistance in assassinating Donald Trump. He also claimed to have hacked into a missile system that would enable him to destroy New York City, and that the missiles were "attracted" to Trump Tower. He reportedly has a history of mental health issues.

News roundup, 31 Jan 2025

- No survivors have been found in the midair collision near DC, and none are expected. For his part, Donald Trump is blaming diversity efforts at the FAA. I'm sure Germany's leaders probably cast a few similar aspersions about the blame for the Hindenburg disaster as well. In actual fact, the FAA may well deserve some of the blame, not because of diversity but because of short-staffing - there was only a single controller working that night in one of the busiest and most complicated airspaces in the country.

- Trump is accusing the Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome Powell, of causing inflation after the Fed decided to keep interest rates at their current level. On cue, he's also blaming DEI policies for the matter. No doubt Trump's supporters in Congress will be all too willing to pass the necessary legislation to weaken the independence of the central bank, assuming of course that Trump's attention span is long enough to keep him from moving on to something else before acting.

- One of Trump's executive orders mandates schools, among other things, to provide "patriotic education". The order even goes so far as to provide a definition:

(d)  “Patriotic education” means a presentation of the history of America grounded in:
(i)    an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles;
(ii)   a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history;
(iii)  the concept that commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified; and
(iv)   the concept that celebration of America’s greatness and history is proper.

Setting aside the fact that any characterizing of America's founding that is accurate and honest is almost certain not to be "unifying, inspiring, and ennobling", this whole thing sounds like it could have come straight out of the Chinese Communist Party.

- A bill before the Tennessee legislature would make make it illegal for legislators to vote in favour of immigration policies opposed by Trump, punishable by up to six years in prison and/or a $3,000 fine.

- Trump has purged the National Labor Relations Board; not only has he removed the board's general counsel (which is legal, since that is an "at pleasure" position), but he has also removed a board member who, according to legislation, has a fixed term. As a result, the board lacks a quorum and is unable to make rulings or certify union representation. Worse, since Trump is almost sure to get away with this, it is expected that he will take similar measures with other ostensibly independent government agencies.

- FCC chair Brendan Carr, appointed by Trump during his previous term (and notably not removed by the Biden administration) has ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS, with the ultimate goal of slashing funding for the broadcasters.

- A priest in an Anglican splinter group has been defrocked after giving a Nazi salute during a speech at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington. Worth noting is the fact that the church in question, the Anglican Catholic Church, had actually split from the main Anglican communion because the latter wasn't sufficiently socially conservative. I guess even they have standards, though.

- Hot on the heels of one of those Dec. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump dying in a confrontation with police, it turns out that another of them is wanted for soliciting sex with a minor.

- A woman who recently died in Taber, Alberta turned out to have been a longtime fugitive from American and Mexican authorities. She was suspected of killing two people in Missouri, then after fleeing to Mexico was jailed for killing a man in a botched robbery but escaped from prison in 1969 and remained at large for the rest of her life.

Details of accused gunman in Tucson rampage slowly emerge

Definitely some serious issues here:

Loughner lives with his parents about a five-minute drive from the shootings, in a middle-class neighbourhood lined with desert landscaping and palm trees. Sheriff’s deputies blocked off much of the street Sunday.

Neighbours said Loughner kept to himself and was often seen walking his dog, almost always wearing a hooded sweat shirt and listening to his iPod.

His high school friends said they fell out of touch with Loughner and last spoke to him around March, when one of them was going to set up some bottles in the desert for target practice and Loughner suggested he might come along. It was unusual — Loughner hadn’t expressed an interest in guns before — and his increasingly confrontational behaviour was pushing them apart. He would send nonsensical text messages, but also break off contact for weeks on end.

“We just started getting sketched out about him,” the friend said. It was the first time he’d felt that way.

Around the same time, Loughner’s behaviour also began to worry officials at Pima Community College, where Loughner began attending classes in 2005, the school said in a release.

Between February and September, Loughner “had five contacts with PCC police for classroom and library disruptions,” the statement said. He was suspended in September 2010 after college police discovered a YouTube video in which Loughner claimed the college was illegal according to the U.S. Constitution. He withdrew voluntarily the following month, and was told he could return only if, among other things, a mental health professional agreed he did not present a danger, the school said.

From the Star. Politically, he seems a bit confused as well:

Mistrust of government was Loughner’s defining conviction, the friends said. He believed the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and worried that governments were manoeuvring to create a unified monetary system (“a New World Order currency” one friend said) so that social elites and bureaucrats could control the rest of the world.

On his YouTube page, he listed among his favourite books “Animal Farm” and “Brave New World” — two novels about how authorities control the masses. Other books in the wide-ranging list included “Mein Kampf,” “The Communist Manifesto,” “Peter Pan” and Aesop’s Fables.

The mere fact that The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, and Animal Farm are all among his favourite books suggests that he doesn't fully understand any of those works. On the other hand, his views on monetary policy seem to be in line with a lot of the teabaggers. There are also suggestions that he thinks he's Earl Turner. And there are other odd things; he's an ardent atheist (a decidedly un-teabagger-like trait, incidentally), but evidently also a pro-lifer:

When other students, always seated, read their poems, Coorough said Loughner “would laugh at things that you wouldn’t laugh at.” After one woman read a poem about abortion, “he was turning all shades of red and laughing,” and said, “Wow, she’s just like a terrorist, she killed a baby,” Coorough said.

Given that one of the people he's accused of killing was a nine year old girl, there's more than a little irony in that.

Man on trial for son's massacre

A year and a half ago, a teenager in Germany took his father's handgun to school and killed 15 people before turning the gun on himself. So since he's dead, they're putting his father on trial for manslaughter:

Jörg K., a businessman, has been a gun fanatic and amateur marksman since his boyhood. He passed on his passion to his son, an adolescent he apparently didn't know well enough. As it turned out, Tim K. developed a hatred for the world and, using the weapon his father had hidden under his sweaters in a bedroom closet as protection against burglars, became a murderer. On March 11, 2009, the 17-year-old shot and killed 12 children and teachers at the Albertville secondary school in Winnenden, a small town located about 20 kilometers north of Stuttgart in southern Germany. He killed three more people and injured 13, some severely, while fleeing from the police. In the end the boy shot and killed himself.

From Der Spiegel. Now to be fair, he's also on trial for violation of Germany's gun control laws (the article doesn't make it entirely clear, but it sounds like careless storage of a firearm). Is that sufficient grounds to convict someone of manslaughter? Maybe, maybe not. But part of what bothers me is this:

The Kleischs could hardly imagine that K. didn't suffer in these moments. But the disturbing thing about it all is that he didn't seem to be suffering. Doris Kleisch says that she would have liked to shake him and "see if he felt anything at all."

A video that was shown in the courtroom shows how police in riot gear surrounded Jörg K.'s house on the day of the rampage. It looks like a scene from a war zone. Then K. appears in the video as he walks into the house with the officers, checks for the Beretta in a bedroom closet, just as he does every night before going to bed. "The weapon is gone," he says in a businesslike tone. Then he looks in the bedside table and says: "The ammunition is gone too."

"How did Mr. K. seem to you?" the chief judge asked the police officer who was at the scene. "Surprisingly calm," the policeman replied. "If it had been my house, I would have been more upset."

Now maybe he really doesn't care, but it seems more likely to me that he's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (after all, wouldn't you, if your kid did that?) And the families seem to be judging him as guilty based on what they see as failure to display sufficient emotion (if I recall correctly, that was believed by many to be a factor in the wrongful conviction of Lindy Chamberlain back in the 1980s).

But the biggest thing that bothers me about this is that the families, and the prosecution, seem to want to get their pound of flesh one way or another, and since the actual perpetrator is dead they have to pillory someone else. Is that their idea of justice?

The dark side of DNA

In a world where the average juror gets his or her information about DNA testing from sources like CSI, and thus tends to think it to be infallible, stuff like this is scary:

Gregory Turner feared he was bound for life in prison after an RCMP lab reported odds of 163 trillion to 1 that a tiny amount of DNA on his gold ring could have come from anybody but a 56-year-old woman found murdered in rural Newfoundland.

The only real evidence in a first-degree murder charge against Mr. Turner, the golden sheen of DNA appeared certain to become a silver bullet in the hands of the Crown.

"I told my lawyer, Jerome Kennedy, that there was no way in the world it was true," Mr. Turner recalled in an interview. "He believed me. He said that I was too stupid to commit that crime and leave no evidence."

A lucky hunch by Mr. Kennedy - now Newfoundland's Minister of Health - saved Mr. Turner from a life behind bars. He sought the name and DNA profile of every technician who had worked at the RCMP lab. It turned out that the technician who had tested the ring had also been working on the victim's fingernails a few inches away, creating a strong possibility of contamination.

The technician conceded at Mr. Turner's 2001 trial that she had also contaminated evidence in two previous cases. In another disturbing twist, it emerged that she had mistakenly contaminated Mr. Turner's ring with her own DNA, causing police to waste considerable time on a futile search for a presumed accomplice.

Mr. Turner still has nightmares. "I remember the judge saying that he was denying me bail based on the likelihood I'd be convicted based on a DNA match," he said. "I think DNA can be good, but its only as good as the people who perform it. I spent 27 months in jail for a crime I didn't do."

From the Globe. Among other things, advocates of capital punishment should take note of stuff like this.

O'Reilly's campaign against murdered doctor

Man, that O'Reilly character is a charmer:

When his show airs tomorrow, Bill O'Reilly will most certainly decry the death of Kansas doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday while attending church services with his wife. Tiller, O'Reilly will say, was a man who was guilty of barbaric acts, but a civilized society does not resort to lawless murder, even against its worst members. And O'Reilly, we can assume, will genuinely mean this.

But there's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller's name first appeared on "The Factor" on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O'Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as "Tiller the Baby Killer."

Tiller, O'Reilly likes to say, "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000." He's guilty of "Nazi stuff," said O'Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida, he suggested on March 15, 2006. "This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union," said O'Reilly on Nov. 9, 2006.

From Salon. Perhaps Mr. O'Reilly should consider the fate of the management of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines before he shoots his mouth off in the future.

Do you live in Vermont?

If you do, here's someone worth voting for:

Lots of political candidates make campaign promises. But not like Charlotte Dennett's.

Dennett, 61, the Progressive Party's candidate for Vermont Attorney General, said Thursday she will prosecute President Bush for murder if she's elected Nov. 4.

Dennett, an attorney and investigative journalist, says Bush must be held accountable for the deaths of thousands of people in Iraq — U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. She believes the Vermont attorney general would have jurisdiction to do so.

She also said she would appoint a special prosecutor and already knows who that should be: former Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, the author of "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder," a new book.

"Someone has to step forward," said Dennett, flanked by Bugliosi at a news conference announcing her plan. "Someone has to say we cannot put up with this lack of accountability any more."

Dennett and two others are challenging incumbent Attorney General William Sorrell, a Democrat, in the Nov. 4 election.

Bugliosi, 74, who gained fame as the prosecutor of killer Charles Manson, said any state attorney general would have jurisdiction since Bush committed "overt acts" including the military's recruitment of soldiers in Vermont and allegedly lying about the threat posed by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in speeches that were aired in Vermont and elsewhere.

I wish Ms. Dennett the best of luck. I know I'd vote for her...