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, 28 Oct 2025

- The Alberta government is legislating striking teachers back to work and imposing a collective agreement. The government limited debate on all three readings of the bill, and the notwithstanding clause is being used to ensure that the legislation can resist a court challenge.

- Hurricane Melissa is bearing down on Jamaica. The hurricane is a Category 5 storm, with winds of up to 280 km/h; if it retains that strength when it reaches the country it will be the strongest to hit the island since detailed records began in 1851. Parts of the country could see up to 760 mm of rain.

- Germany's far-right AfD party is being accused of espionage. Georg Maier, the interior minister of the state of Thuringia, alleges that the party is using its parliamentary privileges to gain access to sensitive information about the country's infrastructure and handing the information over to Russia.

- Canada is on the verge of losing its status as a country where measles is not endemic. Of course, there's an obvious reason for it; whether the political will exists to overcome it is another question. It wouldn't be hard to bring back the idea of "vaccine passports" as used at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic - or at least it wouldn't in theory. Of course, enforcement would be challenging, and it might push some of the more extreme antivaxxers to violence - though it's an open question whether that violence would outweigh the harm done by measles itself. And some would feel uncomfortable on bodily autonomy grounds - except that the unvaccinated are potentially interfering with the bodily autonomy of everyone around them, so that argument falls flat even if you consider that principle to be fundamental. Myself, I frame this sort of thing as "what would do the greatest good and/or the least harm to humanity as a whole"; with that as the most fundamental principle, it's a lot simpler to argue for vaccine passports. Unfortunately, as we saw with the clownvoy a couple of years ago, the antivaxxers can get together enough support to make life difficult for a lot of people, and governments are often unwilling to take the necessary measures to contain such a disruptive force.

- Former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik has asked authorities in Switzerland, where he currently lives, to investigate death threats made against him in response to his, um, tone deaf response to the tragic death of US grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky (not to mention his behaviour towards Naroditsky when he was still alive). I can't condone that sort of thing, of course, but Kramnik shouldn't be surprised that some people are taking it badly. A side note - while Kramnik has been accusing just about everyone of cheating, he had a scandal of that sort himself a while back, 

News roundup, 6 Oct 2025

 - Israel captured the flotilla attempting to deliver aid to Gaza on Friday, and took the 437 participants, including climate activist Greta Thunberg, into custody. Many of them, including Thunberg, have now been released; she has reported mistreatment by Israeli authorities during her detention.

- Israel has ordered all Palestinian civilians to leave Gaza City, saying that those who do not leave will be considered "militants" (i.e. fair game for IDF target practice). I guess we're not supposed to call this "ethnic cleansing" when the Israelis do it, but I'm not sure what else you can call that.

- A study using data from the reinsurance giant Munich Re has confirmed what most of us already know - that wildfires are getting worse, presumably due to climate change. Of the 43 wildfires between 1980 and 2023 that did over a billion dollars in damage, half occurred in the last decade.

- The Trump regime has extended a $20 billion lifeline to Argentina, apparently with no strings attached. The reason seems to be to prop up an economy that Argentine president Javier Milei is trying to operate on the principles favoured by Trump's backers, including widespread austerity and promoting a strong currency even at the expense of exporters. The IMF and the OECD seemed satisfied with the numbers, but the Argentine people are not, and the ruling party suffered a crushing defeat in the provincial elections in Buenos Aires in September. Fearing that the country could move back to the left in upcoming elections, they acted - only for Argentina to respond by slashing their export tariffs on grains and making a big soybean sale to China. This naturally does not sit well with American farmers, who are struggling to sell their crops, but it's probably not enough to make them oppose Trump so long as he continues to hurt the people they want to see suffer.

- Teachers in Alberta have walked off the job after negotiations with the Smith government broke down. The strike affects all regular public schools as well as francophone and Catholic schools. The government, unwilling to give the teachers anything, is now offering parents $150 a week to cover childcare costs.

- US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra says that he takes "great offence" to Canadians saying that his Dear Leader President is uninformed and untrustworthy.

- The director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas has been ousted, apparently after refusing to give Trump a historic sword once owned by Eisenhower. Trump had wanted to give the sword to King Charles III on a recent state visit.

 - After a Republican representative in Homer, Alaska objected to an article in the Homer News about a vigil for Charlie Kirk, the newspaper revised the article to satisfy the representative. This sparked mass resignations at the paper and an affiliate. The original version of the article is archived here.