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 Jan 2026

- Philadelphia's sheriff, Rochelle Bilal, has called ICE "fake, made-up law enforcement" and warns that members who commit crimes will be prosecuted. Acting ICE director Todd Lyons was not impressed with Bilal's warning, replying "try it. Try [and] arrest my folks and see what happens". I kind of hope she does; this could get interesting.

- A clinic in Gaza started by Médecins Sans Frontières is in danger of shutting down after Israel banned the organization from sending new staff and supplies as of the new year. Israel claims MSF as well as around 40 other organizations including Oxfam and Save The Children were banned because they allegedly "failed to meet new security and transparency standards".

- Eight people were arrested on Saturday following an anti-immigration protest in Toronto's Nathan Phillips Square. The protesters were met with counter-protesters from Community Solidarity Toronto and other organizations. Police allege that following confrontations between the two groups, some attendees assaulted their opponents and then police officers; the Toronto Police Association says that its members were pelted with eggs, used toilet paper, and bags of urine. It is not stated in the article who started the confrontation or which group those arrested came from; a Toronto Sun article points the finger at the counterprotesters, though.

- The death rate from motor vehicle accidents in Toronto in 2025 was the lowest it's been in a decade. Coincidentally (or not), the number of speed cameras in the city doubled last year, until the provincial government banned municipalities from using the cameras at all. Doug Ford, of course, refuses to consider the possibility that the two are connected.

- Texas has eliminated American Bar Association oversight of its law schools, the first state to do so. I guess if you're worried about your graduates leaving the state, making it difficult for them to get jobs anywhere else might help...

News roundup, 8 Oct 2025

- The growth in renewable energy has been so strong that despite growing demand for electricity, all of the additional demand has been met by renewables based on global averages. This has not been spread evenly, however; in the US and even the EU renewables haven't been enough and those countries have increased their fossil fuel consumption. Meanwhile China, despite building some new coal plants, has reduced its overall emissions from electricity production by 2% even as demand for electricity has skyrocketed. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, sees some reason for optimism, although emissions are still increasing from other sources. One thing remains clear, though; change isn't going to come soon enough for hundreds of millions if not billions of people. There's going to be a lot more migration in the near future, even if many of the affected people will probably die in place.

- Adelita Grijalva, elected in September to serve as the representative in Congress for Arizona's 7th congressional district, has still not been sworn in. She is hinting at what many others have also suggested - that Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to delay her taking office until the couple of Republican holdouts on the Epstein files can be browbeaten into changing their minds. If nothing changes, once she takes her seat she will be the crucial 218th signature needed to force a vote in the House to release the files. It has also emerged that Johnson's recent adjournment of the House (roughly equivalent to a prorogation in Westminster systems) came mere hours after the House received Epstein-related financial records from the US Treasury. The adjournment, combined with the government shutdown, also has the convenient effect of preventing the Treasury from delivering any more records.

- Former Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson has been fined $18,000 for violation of the province's conflict of interest law. This follows Stefanson's use of the "caretaker period" between the Tories' electoral defeat and the new government being sworn in to make efforts to get a mining project approved. The fine had to be voted on by the legislature, and it's telling that even the Tories voted with the government to impose the fine. I do have to question the propriety of having to decide something like this by a vote in the House rather than by a court, though in this case the penalty seems more than warranted.

- Doug Ford's plan to ban Ontario municipalities from using speed cameras looks kinda fishy in light of the fact that several of his ministers have gotten tickets recently, and that one of the Tories' political staffers got nailed for using a government vehicle to drive at speeds up to 162 km/h in a 100 km/h zone. The staffer has apparently been allowed to keep their job after promising not to do it again (at least until the speed camera ban is in place, presumably). To be fair, at least Ford doesn't want the cameras going to waste - he's musing about repurposing them for crime surveillance.

- Clownvoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber were both given conditional sentences on top of time served following their convictions for public mischief and counselling others to disobey a court order. The prosecution had called for severe sentences (8 years for Barber and 7 years for Lich) while the defense had called for an absolute discharge.

- Ted Cruz is demanding that the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, provide documentation to show how they assess the merit of sources. Cruz considers Wikipedia to have a leftwing bias, citing that the site's "reliable sources" list which describes CNN and MSNBC as "generally reliable" sources for science and politics while deprecating Fox News.

News roundup, 8 May 2024

- A report prepared for the City of Winnipeg's Standing Policy Committee on Property and Development is recommends against the planned sale of two historic city-owned buildings, a fire hall and the building that served as the city hall for the former City of St. Boniface. Instead, it recommends retaining ownership but entering into long-term leases with community organizations. I'd have to agree; the city hall in particular is a gem, and the only surviving example in this city of that style.

- An inconvenient truth for people who hate speed cameras - they work. In Guelph, average speeds in school zones have decreased from 42 to 33 km/h since the introduction of cameras. Of course, some people immediately bleat "CASH GRAB!" whenever the topic of speed cameras comes up, but there's a very simple way to avoid getting your cash grabbed - don't drive so bloody fast.

- Tom Heehler argues that one of the failings of the mainstream centrist or "liberal" media is that it gives too little coverage of non-crazy conservatives. There's something to that; simply put, Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene are a far better source of lurid stories than, say, Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney. For that matter, on this side of the border, when was the last time you heard Michael Chong mentioned in the news? I think Heehler is going a bit too far in calling Cheney and Romney "good", but they're rational and have a basic sense of integrity, which is more than can be said for the people who get all the coverage.

- A pro-Palestinian encampment has been set up at the University of Manitoba. Unlike many such encampments, the university and the protesters both seem to be acting reasonably, so far at least.

- The biggest barrier to installing heat pumps? There aren't enough trained workers to meet the demand.

- While honey bees get all the coverage, many species of bumble bee are in much more dire straits. A recent study has found that the optimal temperature range for a bumble bee nest is 28–32°C. Temperatures above 35°C are lethal; before that point, it leads to developmental issues, with larvae developing into smaller workers.

- A Newfoundland trucker went missing in Ontario two weeks ago. A big search was organized; strangely, nobody seems to have thought to properly search his truck until it was returned to Newfoundland, whereupon his body was found in the trailer. Strangely, the OPP seem a bit reluctant to answer questions on the matter.

- A 3 year old boy found something at home that he thought would be interesting to bring to his Richmond, Virginia preschool - a loaded handgun. Fortunately it didn't get fired and thus nobody was hurt, though a family member has been arrested; even in America they draw the line at letting three year olds play with guns.

A history lesson for Hugh McFadyen

Some astute readers may remember the name Roger Bilodeau. In the early 1980s he successfully fought a traffic ticket on the grounds that the law behind it (along with virtually all other Manitoba laws) was invalid on a technicality, namely that the law had not been translated into French. Of course, the laws continued to be enforced, subject to the condition that the province had to translate them within a certain period of time. Presumably McFadyen, and Kelvin Goertzen, Bonnie Mitchelson, and the rest, would say that anyone who had ever been convicted of a provincial offense in the province before that point should have their fines refunded. Heck, maybe we should be paying the estates of people who paid fines in the distant past. Adjusted for inflation, even.

Needless to say, I'm not holding my breath waiting for the Tories to advocate this.