News roundup, 27 Feb 2026

- The Trump regime has ordered its diplomats to lobby against efforts by other countries to regulate American tech companies' handling of people's personal information. Secretary of State Marco Rubio singled out the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as an example of the "unnecessarily burdensome" legislation that needs to be stopped. Rubio has previously condemned Europe's Digital Services Act for its requirement that social media firms remove illegal content such as child pornography and extremist materials. The US is also developing an online portal that's intended to allow people to get around such restrictions.

- Pakistan has launched airstrikes against Afghanistan after the latter country launched an offensive against Pakistani bases near the border. A representative of Pakistan's government says that 133 Afghan troops had been killed and over 200 wounded. The regime in Afghanistan denies any provocation, but also claims to have inflicted heavy losses, something Pakistan denies. Pakistan has launched strikes in the country previously, but this time government facilities have been hit. Their defense minister now describes the country as being in a state of "open war" with their neighbour. I guess the good part is that while they're fighting with Afghanistan they're less likely to enter hostilities with nuclear-armed India.

- Iceland's government, which had previously promised a referendum on entering talks to join the European Union by 2027, now hopes to move up the date to as soon as this August. Given that the country has essentially no military and the country to which it has outsourced most of its defense keeps threatening to invade neighbouring Greenland, this is quite understandable.

- The Green Party's Hannah Spencer has been elected to the UK parliament in a byelection in the constituency of Gorton and Denton, in Greater Manchester. Spencer, a plumber by profession, had previously led her party in the council of the Manchester suburb of Trafford.

- A new law in Kansas declares trans people's driver's licenses to be invalid if the licence does not correspond with their sex at birth. The state's governor, Laura Kelly, had vetoed the bill but her veto was overridden by the legislature.

- Vancouver's rightwing mayor, Ken Sim, has accused an opposition councillor, without evidence, of distributing illegal drugs. Sim claimed that Coun. Sean Orr of the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) was "handing out illegal drugs on Christmas Day to people on the streets". COPE calls Sim's claim "a clear violation of the city's code of conduct" and suggests that it may constitute defamation.

News roundup, 13 Feb 2026

- While the American labour movement had what was considered a breakthrough year in 2024, with over 1,600 workplaces holding unionization votes, this is far short of the movement's successes even two decades previously, much less the mid 20th century. Worse, overall union density in the private sector remains at an abysmal 5.9% of the workforce, compared to around a third in the 1950s. There are fears that this could lead to a "death spiral" where weakening unions are less able to score wins, making them less relevant to the needs of workers, and so forth. Unless a great deal changes the left in the US - and perhaps a lot of other countries - is going to face the unthinkable prospect of having to move ahead without the labour movement.

- Gallup will no longer track the approval ratings of the president, something they've tracked for nearly a century. When asked if pressure from the White House had anything to do with it, a company representative simply said "this is a strategic shift solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities". Of course, this is probably not false; their research goals and priorities probably include still being allowed to conduct research, albeit maybe not on the president's popularity.

- To the surprise of few, there has been a torrent of disinformation about trans people following the Tumbler Ridge massacre. Far-right pundits, and even supposed news outlets, have been claiming that there's an "epidemic" of violence by trans folks - and once those stories are out there, debunking them can be hard. In the words of Jonathan Swift, "falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it".

- A proposed bylaw in Winnipeg would prohibit protests within 100 metres of schools, hospitals, and cultural centres in the city. There would be an exemption for "legal labour activities related to a dispute or collective bargaining", however activists are naturally wary. Councillor Evan Duncan, who introduced the proposal, says it's to protect "potentially vulnerable populations" served by those locations; it's widely suspected that this comes in response to pro-Palestinian protests that were held near synagogues. On the one hand, conflating Jewish worship with the policies of Israel is problematic; on the other hand, I've seen allegations that at least one such protest was in response to a synagogue hosting someone who was promoting the sale of seized Palestinian land in the West Bank, which if true sounds like fair game for protesters (I'd like to see confirmation of that claim, though, since while it sounds believable it could also be disinformation).

- Jeffrey Epstein apparently purchased 330 gallons of sulfuric acid in 2018, about a year before his last arrest. 

News roundup, 12 Feb 2026

- More information is being released about the Tumbler Ridge shooting. The RCMP has identified the suspect as an 18 year old transwoman who killed her mother and stepbrother before going to the school to kill others; no motive has yet been revealed but it's a safe bet that the far right is going to use this as an excuse to opportunity up the transphobia (while being very quiet about the question of whether this might have been less likely to happen in a more accepting society, of course).

- The FAA closed the airspace over El Paso, Texas to all civil aircraft on Wednesday morning, initially saying flights were grounded for a ten day period but later reversing that position, all the while saying that there was no threat to commercial aircraft. Some reports say that this was for the testing of top secret anti-drone technology, which might be the truth, or not. As regards initially saying ten days and then reversing that (perhaps after the test was completed) maybe they thought they'd give the public the sense that they're not as bad as they seemed. And given where we're talking about, it might well work.

- The crisis now developing in the Colorado River system stands to be worsened - or at least happen sooner - thanks to the poor design of the Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back the waters of Lake Powell. The dam was designed for a narrow range of water levels - which would be problematic even in the absence of human-induced climate change. In fact, it very nearly led to disaster in 1983 when the waters of the reservoir came dangerously close to washing over the top of the dam. Now it has the opposite problem - the lowest outlets of the dam are some 240 ft above the lake bed, and water levels are getting dangerously close to that point, meaning that the lake could face "dead pool" in the near future. At that point, no more water could even reach downstream locations, and a lot of people would be leaving the American southwest and not returning. And the lake itself would become a deep, stagnant, stinking mess. Even before that point, the levels will fall too low to use the dam for hydroelectric power.

- The Winnipeg couple convicted of torturing and killing numerous animals and selling the videos online have both been sentenced to 12 years in prison following a joint recommendation of the prosecution and the defense. 

- A Ukrainian Olympian has been disqualified for wearing a helmet with pictures of Ukrainian athletes who have died in the war with Russia. Had he honoured friends who died in a car crash in the same way he'd have been fine, but the IOC considers honouring war dead to constitute political messaging, which is prohibited at the Olympics.

- Switzerland will be holding a referendum this summer on imposing a hard cap on the country's population. If passed, this would oblige the government to close the country to all immigration (including refugees and relatives of foreign residents) in the event that the population comes to exceed 9.5 million (it is currently 9.1 million). The initiative comes from the rightwing Swiss People's Party; opponents fear that if passed this move could violate agreements with the EU and harm the economy.