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, 24 Jan 2024

- Donald Trump has won the New Hampshire primary by an 11 point margin; Nikki Haley is not giving up, however, and this is sending Trump into conniptions. Meanwhile Hawaii has joined the ranks of states planning to keep him off the ballot.

- A Federal Court judge has handed the Freedom Convoy (or as some have called them, the "Flu Trux Klan") a significant legal victory by ruling that the use of the Emergencies Act did not meet the standards of reasonableness. The judge in question, Richard Mosley, was appointed to the court in 2003, thus it would have been the Chrétien government that appointed him. One person commenting on this Reddit thread remarked that while the invocation of the Emergencies Act would indeed have been unnecessary if the police had done their jobs, they did not; perhaps the judge was unwilling to open that can of worms though. In any case, the decision is being appealed.

- Ken McDonald, the Liberal MP for Avalon in Newfoundland, is calling for a leadership review, though he stopped short of calling for Justin Trudeau's resignation. It's worth noting that McDonald voted against his own government on the carbon tax issue on two occasions. Nonetheless, Trudeau's brand has become sufficiently toxic that McDonald has a point, though the question of who could replace him looms large. On a related note, a recent poll suggests that most Canadians who plan on voting Liberal would do it to stop Pierre Poilievre rather than out of enthusiasm for Trudeau and the Liberals.

- The City of Winnipeg is suing the owners of two vacant buildings over unpaid inspection bills and other  fees. The provincial government is looking at further measures, so that such buildings could be expropriated and turned into social housing, though this will take some time. No doubt something needs to be done for housing, in any case, and more than just a few expropriations. The Free Press' Brent Bellamy has some ideas for other measures.

- A long-serving and high profile Winnipeg city councillor, Janice Lukes, is considering a run for the federal Conservatives, despite some possible qualms about Poilievre.

- The City of Calgary is planning to turn one of the parking lots at an LRT station into social housing, though this is getting pushback from park-and-ride users. The city says that there will still be enough parking for this, however, while adding an estimated 200 to 300 housing units.

- A man entered Edmonton's city hall and opened fire with a firearm described by police as a long gun capable of firing multiple rounds, then threw a Molotov cocktail. Evidently he's not a very good shot; nobody was injured. The suspect has not been identified publicly as of this post, but given that he was captured alive I'm guessing he's probably white. Whether this was politically motivated, the actions of a disgruntled employee, or a failed attempt at suicide by cop remains to be seen.

- Democrats in Minnesota plan to introduce legislation prohibiting municipalities from introducing mandatory parking minimums, something widely recognized as necessary to facilitate the construction of more housing.

- The cap on student visas announced by the federal government is raising concerns at universities and other postsecondary institutions; these institutions get a lot of revenue from international students, and that needs to be replaced somehow.

- Pro-Palestinian protesters were attacked with an unknown foul-smelling substance at Columbia University in New York City last Friday. Some protesters sought medical treatment; police are investigating.

- A Russian IL-76 military transport plane has crashed in the Belgorod region of Russia; 74 people, including 65 Ukrainian POWs being transported for a prisoner exchange, have been reported killed. Russia claims that the aircraft was shot down by the Ukrainian military; Ukraine has not yet commented on these allegations.

- Pastor Dwayne Waden of Elevated Life International Ministries in High Point, North Carolina received a complaint from his wife, a manager-in-training at a McDonald's, that her employees were "disrespecting" her. In response, he apparently showed up at the restaurant, punched a cook in the face, and shoved the man's head in the direction of the deep fryer. I guess he interpreted "turn the other cheek" as "turn the enemy's cheeks towards the hot oil".