News roundup, 23 Feb 2026

- Iran's air defense systems have shot down three Israeli F-35s in Iranian airspace since last summer. Setting aside the question of what those fighters were even doing in Iranian airspace, it ought to be another nail in the coffin for Canadian plans to purchase more of the darned things. Whether it will be remains to be seen of course.

- New polling from Politico shows the severity of Canadians' alienation from the US. Among the findings, 48% of Canadians consider the US to be the biggest threat to peace, with Russia a distant second at 29%, and 57% consider China to be a more reliable partner than America under Donald Trump. Perhaps even more telling are the results by political inclination - a plurality, though not a majority, of Conservative supporters doubt their ability to depend on the US.

- An outbreak of violence in the Mexican state of Jalisco has led to the closure of schools and public transit. The violence follows the death of drug lord Oseguera Cervantes at the hands of Mexican authorities. The decapitation of his organization seems to have sparked a power vacuum in the world of organized crime; Global Affairs Canada has issued a travel advisory and airlines are cancelling flights to and from the state.

-  Manitoba's Southern Health Region, which includes the cities of Winkler and Morden, has seen over 50 measles cases so far this year, but a reporter sent there found that people aren't expressing much concern - when they are willing to talk to reporters about the matter at all. Winkler's deputy mayor Andrew Froese claims to have heard little about the matter from his citizens, and also claims that the townspeople "follow public health guidelines" (except the ones that recommend vaccination, presumably). Morden's mayor Nancy Penner declined to comment on the matter at all.

- The city of Powell River, BC is named after the province's first superintendent of Indian Affairs, Israel Powell. Given that Powell was a big supporter of the residential school system, the neighbouring Tla’amin First Nation has urged that the city's name be changed. The proposal was defeated in a vote last fall, and the council has deferred any discussion on the matter until after the next election. What's interesting, though, is that a lot of the pressure to keep the old name seems to come from outside the area; the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (a major player in the anti-public health movement, among other things) has been involved, and this organization appears to get a lot of money from the Atlas Network, an American organization of rightwing think tanks. It's almost as if these foreign influencers are trying to stir up rage against anything that can be called "woke". Most likely they want to tip the balance in favour of the Conservative Party.

- An armed intruder was shot to death after breaching the security perimeter around Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida.

News roundup, 5 Feb 2026

- Jeff Bezos has ordered massive layoffs at the Washington Post, affecting a third of the newspaper's workforce. Among other things, the entire Middle East desk will be gone, as will be the paper's Ukraine bureau chief and correspondent. Former Executive Editor Marty Baron condemns this and previous decisions by Bezos, which he calls "ill-conceived". The thing is, though, they're only "ill-conceived" if you're thinking in terms of the greater good; if you're thinking in terms of Bezos' personal interests they aren't ill-conceived at all, especially in light of how Donald Trump is making new threats regarding the broadcast licenses of major networks in the US.

- The Trump regime appears to be issuing selective exemptions to tariffs for companies with which he has a good relationship. Nothing suspicious about that at all...

- Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi is warning federal leadership candidates to treat Alberta with kid gloves so that he has a chance of defeating Danielle Smith next year. Meanwhile, leadership candidate Rob Ashton singled out Avi Lewis for "turning New Democrats against each other".

- The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority is taking over the Golden Door Geriatric Centre, a personal care home in the Fort Garry district of the city whose private owners had announced plans to close the facility. Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara says that the province is working to fill the numerous beds that the owners had been leaving vacant in order to prepare for the closure.

- A little known fact - ICE actually has offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Their agents don't have the power of arrest in this country; they claim that these agents (who are not armed) assist in the investigation of international crimes. NDP MP Heather McPherson is calling on the Carney government to close those offices "until the human rights crisis is resolved"; whether the government will do so remains to be seen.

- Manitoba Hydro is hiring institutional safety officers for its downtown office tower following a seemingly random attack by a methed up teenager with a knife. Manitoba Housing is also hiring such officers for its downtown office. Unlike run-of-the-mill security guards, these officers have specialized training; they are equipped with handcuffs and pepper gel and are empowered to make arrests. CUPE, which represents Hydro employees, is calling for the officers to be deployed as soon as possible.

- Manitoba currently has the highest incidence of measles in Canada. To the surprise of few, these cases are concentrated mostly in the Southern Health Region, and in particular a church in Winkler, though some people were infected in Winnipeg after people from the province's Bible Belt were hospitalized at HSC. 51 confirmed and three probable cases have been reported in the province as of the 24th of January. This compares to 319 confirmed cases of measles and 29 probable cases last year, and only 18 cases between 2000 and 2024. At least 86% of the cases were in unvaccinated people; another 6.2% were in people of unknown vaccination status.

- Following the drowning death of a 12 year old student at a scuba school in Texas, her family sued the school. One thing that has come up in court is the fact that the school's owner had been caught on video bragging about the number of fatalities he'd gotten away with, which does not inspire confidence.

News roundup, 20 Oct 2025

- Mark Carney is remaining tight-lipped about whether he is willing to lower or eliminate the prohibitive tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in return for China dropping the equally prohibitive tariffs on canola and other Canadian exports. Doug Ford, not surprisingly, is vehemently opposed, and I suspect that he'll get what he wants. As I've remarked before, the beneficiaries from such a move are mostly farmers who aren't going to vote Liberal no matter what, while the places dependent on the auto industry are more in play in an election. In addition to that, Carney seems to be clinging to the hope that it will be possible to make a deal with Trump, and going against Trump's wishes on the China file would be another nail in the coffin of that hope.

- Canadians continue to boycott the US in significant numbers. CNN has come out with a hand-wringing headline about how the boycott is harming "innocent bystanders", but as folks in this Reddit thread point out, the sort of small businesspeople that are affected by this voted for Trump in large numbers, so it's a bit of a stretch to call them "innocent".

- The Chinese government has expelled nine top generals from its military. The government says that they were expelled for corruption; others suspect the motivation to be political. Either or both of these things could be true, of course.

- A man who planned to visit his native South Sudan had brought along supplies for people in his hometown. Among the supplies were a few sets of walkie-talkies that he'd bought off of Amazon. Unfortunately, he was hoping to access the country via Ethiopia, and walkie-talkies are considered "military equipment" in that country and illegal for civilians to import. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

- An actor who was fired by a Disney subsidiary for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 has had his lawsuit for unfair dismissal thrown out by a court. Rockmond Dunbar had claimed that he needed an accommodation for religions reasons due to his membership in a church called the "Congregation of Universal Wisdom"; among his arguments he said that "Man created the COVID-19 vaccine to separate you from God" (though for some strange reason he felt the compulsion to also say that he is "not an anti-vaxxer" notwithstanding all the anti-vax things he said). In any case, he came out looking rather foolish when it was shown that he'd been taking synthetic testosterone and other drugs of which the church disapproves; he was forced to acknowledge on the witness stand that he is "not perfect".

News roundup, 10 July 2025

- Four men from Quebec have been arrested over a plot to forcibly seize land near Quebec City; they appear to have been trying to start an American-style far-right militia. They had stockpiled 83 firearms and 16 bombs, as well as such things as smoke grenades and night vision goggles; all four have ties to the military.

- Donald Trump is musing about a federal takeover of New York City and the District of Columbia. In the case of New York, he suggested that it might be necessary if Zohran Mamdani (who he called a "communist") gets elected mayor. He also fulminated about the city's use instant-runoff (ranked choice) voting. In the case of DC, he tries to justify a takeover on the basis of excessive crime (despite the fact that overall crime in the federal district is down 8% compared to last year, and violent crime is down 25%). That said, there might well be a legal route to a takeover of DC (they could theoretically repeal the Home Rule Act). Ultimately, though, even in the case of New York the ability to stop a takeover depends on the whims of the courts, which have disproportionately been stacked with Trump loyalists.

- During the Biden years, the Democrats designed their climate law in such a way that many of the new green jobs would be in red states. The idea was that the Republicans, when they took power, would be reluctant to undo work that had created so many jobs for their supporters. Unfortunately the Democrats seem to have given voters too much credit for understanding this; the Republicans are betting on the bleating masses continuing to support them. Sadly it's probably a safe bet, even supposing that next year's midterms and the 2028 presidential election are fair (which seems unlikely in any case).

- A 25 nation survey by the Pew Research Center found that 59% of Canadians now view the US as the greatest threat to the country. Canadians' resolve to boycott as many American goods as possible and to avoid travel to the country seems to remain strong as well.

- Vaccination rates in the Maritimes are too low to reliably control the spread of measles. In Nova Scotia, about 23% of children have less than the requisite two doses of the vaccine; New Brunswick and PEI are somewhat better, but 10% of kids aren't fully vaccinated. The rate should be below 5% to keep the disease under control.

- The developer of ICEBlock, an app that allows people to share sightings of ICE officers has been threatened by the Department of Justice; Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that "he better watch out". Moreover, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem is threatening CNN for reporting on the very existence of the app. Admittedly, there are people out there who would happily do harm to ICE officers, but the people who lured a bunch of them out of a detention facility in Texas and opened fire on them didn't need an app to find them in any case.

News roundup, 23 Jan 2024

- A Republican member of the House of Representatives, Andy Biggs, admitted in a TV interview that despite their majority, House Republicans have no actual achievements to point to. And their counterparts in the Senate are worried that enthusiasm for Donald Trump seems to be on the wane, as evidenced by a fairly low turnout for the Iowa caucuses. There has, however, been no loss of enthusiasm on the part of Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Jimmy Patronis, who has proposed that state funds should be used to pay Trump's legal bills.

- An Israeli biotechnology company has, in cooperation with a Japanese chef, developed lab grown eel meat for the table. This is important, since populations of freshwater eels have been in serious decline due to overfishing and other factors.

- Protesters in Jerusalem blockaded Israel's parliament, the Knesset, calling for Benjamin Netanyahu's resignation and new elections. The protest had initially been allowed by police but was cracked down upon when it turned into a blockade.

- Climate scientist Michael Mann has filed defamation suits against Rand Simberg of the rightwing thinktank Competitive Enterprise Institute and Mark Steyn of the National Review for, among other things, comparing him to a serial child molester.

- A bill currently being debated in the Kentucky legislature would, among other things, allow property owners to use lethal force against residentially challenged folks who they find camping on their property.

- Cameroon has commenced the world's first mass vaccination campaign to combat malaria.

- Researchers at a Google-backed firm, Anthropic, decided to try to train an AI to be evil. They say they succeeded, but were not so successful in then training the AI to change its ways. There has been research done in this field before; a couple of years ago one researcher thought it would be a good idea to use 4chan to train an AI, with disturbingly predictable results. I have to say that this stuff is a far cry from the Three Laws of Robotics.

- Golriz Ghahraman, a Green Party MP in the New Zealand parliament, has resigned after being charged with shoplifting.

News roundup, 11 Jan 2024

- Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent has died at the age of 87.

- South African delegates to the International Court of Justice in The Hague have presented their opening arguments in a case accusing Israel of genocidal acts. Meanwhile, Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar has expressed discomfort with the idea, based on past crimes against Jews in Europe. Varadkar has, in fact, articulated what is probably the main reason a lot of people in the West want to handle Israel with kid gloves; probably there's a certain amount of guilt mixed in even on the part of countries that fought against Nazi Germany, given that many of them (including Canada) were not keen on accepting Jewish refugees from there back when it was really needed. And for their part, many Israelis are questioning what the war will achieve.

- Toronto police have charged a protester with public incitement of hatred for waving what is described as a "terrorist flag" at a demonstration. Police have declined to identify the specific flag that was waved; if it was an ISIS flag that would be one thing, but if it was a Palestine flag that would be quite another.

- A bomb threat was made against the home of the judge hearing Donald Trump's civil fraud trial. This follows the judge's ruling that Trump cannot make his own final arguments because he would not agree to stick to "relevant" issues.

- The National Review has published an editorial urging Republicans to select anyone except Trump for the nomination, on the grounds that it's the only reliable way to beat Biden. Encouragingly, a poll indicates that Biden now has a three point lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, so maybe the editors' fears are justified. In any case, whoever might beat Trump, it's not going to be Chris Christie.

- The US Food and Drug Administration is warning that vaccination rates, not only for COVID-19 but for numerous other diseases, are low enough that herd immunity is now at risk. Unfortunately the prospects for fixing this any time soon are poor, especially when even the Democrats don't want to talk about the subject, even as some 1,500 Americans a week are still dying from COVID. And some reports indicate that, in the case of COVID, that which does not kill you might make you weaker.

- At a Fox News town hall session, Trump was asked about a congressional report that found that he was paid almost $8 million from multiple foreign governments while president. His reply was that he was "doing services" for those governments, and that it was "a small amount" of money anyway.

- The Conservative Party of Canada's entire strategy under Pierre Poilievre is centred around framing the next election as a referendum on Justin Trudeau. Given Trudeau's dismal standing in the polls, that is understandable, and it may well work, but it's interesting to note that Deveryn Ross, a columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press and the Brandon Sun who tends to lean right, is not comfortable with this, fearing that it could backfire. Jagmeet Singh's NDP is not mentioned in the article at all, but a situation like this would seem to be ripe for exploitation for them, if they are both bold and lucky. Maybe that's what Ross is really afraid of.

- Worldwide renewable energy production is growing at a remarkable rate, which is very good news (in a "the future may not be very good, but at least there probably is going to be a future" kind of way. In Europe, wind has overtaken coal for electricity production, for instance.

- The Max 9 variant of the Boeing 737 remains grounded in the US following Alaska Airlines' little misadventure with one last week. In the course of inspections of their fleet, as well as that of United Airlines (the only other North American carrier to operate the type) several other aircraft were found to have loose bolts that would have the potential to cause a similar failure; it appears that the aircraft may have been delivered to the airlines in that condition. Boeing CEO David Calhoun admitted the existence of the loose bolts; when asked how something like this could have happened, he replied "Because a quality escape occurred". Have to remember that one, "quality escape". If you want the really geeky details of what is known about the incident so far, check this video out.

- It appears that China isn't the only place where they actively harvest the organs of people who die in custody. Several families in Alabama say that their deceased relatives have been returned to them with organs missing.

- In Florida, the Escambia County School District, serving Pensacola and vicinity off in the western panhandle, has apparently gone above and beyond in their effort to keep forbidden thoughts from impressionable minds - they've removed dictionaries and encyclopedias from school libraries.