News roundup, 10 June 2025

- California is taking the Trump regime to court over their unilateral decision to deploy the National Guard against protesters. Governor Gavin Newsom argues that it is "illegal and immoral" for the federal government to take such a measure without consulting the governor of the state in question. And a second journalist has been shot with a rubber bullet while covering the protests.

- Israeli authorities have deported Greta Thunberg and several other activists who were captured from a vessel delivering aid to Gaza. Several others from the same boat are contesting their deportation, and have been detained pending a hearing. The Israelis seem also to be continuing their policy of shooting people lining up for aid, which is not a good look.

- In addition to the infant who died of measles after being infected in utero, five other newborns in southern Ontario have been infected in the same manner.

- The Manitoba government is urging people to avoid non-essential travel in order to keep hotel rooms free for evacuees, whose numbers have now reached 21,000 people. This currently falls short of being an actual order, though.

- Winnipeg Transit is considering upgrading the shields that protect bus drivers from unruly passengers. Currently, they do not completely enclose the driver, making attacks still possible if a bit more difficult. A full upgrade of the fleet could be costly, but it seems more than worthwhile, and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents drivers, agrees.

- Mark Carney is promising to meet NATO's military spending target of 2% of GDP by next March. 

- Researchers at Anthropic, an AI startup, are predicting that white-collar jobs are going to go into serious decline, with more than half of entry-level office jobs disappearing. Others predict that it won't be the entry-level jobs that take the worst hit; those jobs tend to be lower pay, and new graduates with knowledge of AI should do OK, while people who have been in their jobs for a long time (especially if not unionized) might be more vulnerable.

- The Trump regime has issued an executive order lifting the longstanding ban on civilian overland supersonic flights. One company claims to have broken the sound barrier (just barely mind you, at Mach 1.1) without making a boom that was audible on the ground - but this is a small experimental aircraft that will need to be scaled up considerably in order to be economical, so there's no guarantee that the production aircraft will be tolerably quiet. And let's not get started on the potential emissions. But here's the thing - I don't think that there's any reason Canada should have to endure potential sonic booms over our own territory, as would be the case for, say, flights from the Midwest to New England or from the east coast to Asia. What if we simply refused to allow such flights over our territory?

- A school shooting in the Austrian city of Graz has killed eight people, including the perpetrator, and injured several more. 

News roundup, 9 June 2025

- Following clashes earlier this week in Los Angeles when protesters apparently interfered ICE agents' attempts at enforcing deportation orders, the Trump regime ordered the mobilization of 2,000 National Guard troops (the first time in decades that this has happened without the request of the governor of the state in question) and warned that the Marines could be next if order isn't restored soon. The legality of this is very much in question, but that question is a purely academic one unless Trump and/or his minions somehow eventually see the inside of a courtroom. In any case, the short-term effect of the move has been to intensify the protests, with thousands of people taking to the streets. A correspondent with Australia's Nine News Network was shot by police with a rubber bullet while covering the confrontations; she was not seriously hurt.

- A construction crew working at Sandy Bay First Nation in northwestern Ontario had to take shelter in a shipping container from a wildfire that swept through their work site. 

- The UK's largest water and sewer utility, Thames Water, is in financial trouble and looking for a buyer. Bidders are demanding that the government grant the company and its management immunity from prosecution for environmental offenses as a condition of buying it; if a buyer is not found it is likely to fall into administration by the government, something the Treasury wants to avoid if possible.

- The IDF stopped an aid vessel bringing food and medical supplies to Gaza and detained its crew, who included climate activist Greta Thunberg.

- Numerous people report having their Facebook accounts shut down without a satisfactory explanation. This is not limited to individual users either - the English town of North Tawton had its official page shut down. There are suspicions that this is the result of the process of scanning for inappropriate content being outsourced to artificial intelligence instead of using human moderators (which, to be fair, has a few problems of its own).

News roundup, 6 June 2025

- It will come as a surprise to few that there are limits to how long two enormous egos can continue to work together. It seems those limits have been reached for Donald Trump and Elon Musk; following Musk's criticism of Trump's "one big beautiful bill", Trump hinted that he might cancel government contracts with Musk's companies, and then Musk replied favourably to someone's tweet calling for Trump's impeachment.

- Russia has responded to Ukraine's daring drone attack on their military aircraft by launching drone and missile attacks against cities; at least 4 people were killed in the attacks. 

- Mark Carney's new Minister of Northern and Arctic Affairs, Rebecca Chartrand, is coming under fire over allegations that she subjected an employee to bullying and harassment while serving as Red River College's Executive Director of Indigenous Strategy.

- A newborn infant in southwestern Ontario has died after being infected with measles in utero (the mother was unvaccinated, of course). This was in the Southwestern Public Health region, which includes Elgin and Oxford Counties. There are now over 1,700 known cases of measles in Ontario, the vast majority of them in Mennonite and Amish communities in the southwest.

- Manitoba has launched a campaign to recruit healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, and other professionals, from the US. The campaign focuses on the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Michigan; I'm not sure why Minnesota was included except for its proximity, because I always thought it was a relatively progressive state.

- Four First Nations in the Island Lake region of Manitoba are evacuating vulnerable residents; the communities are not directly threatened but the smoke is causing serious problems for some. In related news, there are concerns that organized crime is targeting evacuees, trying to sell them drugs or worse.

- A school trustee in the Hanover School Division in southern Manitoba has been suspended without pay for six weeks. This appears to be for violation of policies requiring trustees to "support the legitimacy and authority of Board decisions" and to "treat Board colleagues, divisional and school staff, students and community members in a respectful and courteous manner". The exact nature of her violations has not been made public, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar to the case of Francine Champagne.

- Ispace, the Japanese company that tried to land a probe on the Moon two years ago, has tried again but appears to have failed for a second time. The company has ambitious plans to have a permanent human settlement on the Moon by 2040, but it seems they have a ways to go before they're ready for that.

- A Winnipeg man has been hit with a $1,680 fine for using a drone to harass wildlife in Riding Mountain National Park. Probably a wannabe influencer...

News roundup, 5 June 2025

- The northern Manitoba town of Snow Lake has issued a voluntary evacuation alert due to wildfires; those who leave now can pull trailers behind them, but if the alert is upgraded this will no longer be permitted. 

- The Trump regime has banned travel to the US for residents of a dozen countries; seven more countries not facing an outright ban have been hit with new visa restrictions. 

- Schools in Denmark hold annual mock elections in order to teach kids about democracy, complete with debates This year, however, the government is ordering that the Palestine question not be discussed in these debates; they justify this by saying that it is "too explosive" and could put children from some minority groups in awkward positions.

- Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is replacing the people who evaluate potential risks of new features with AIs. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that, right?

- The Carney government has introduced a bill which imposes more border security measures in response to complaints and threats from the Trump regime about border security. However, the bill also makes it considerably harder to claim asylum in Canada, which alarms refugee advocates. It furthermore worries some privacy advocates, due to provisions that make it easier for warrantless access to information about people from ISPs and similar services.

- Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space (and subsequently a Liberal cabinet minister), has died at the age of 76. 

News roundup, 4 June 2025

- The Manitoba government has announced that around 1,000 hotel rooms have been made available for evacuees from the north. Some of this is the result of the cancellation of a conference that was being held in Winnipeg for Manitoba and Saskatchewan courtroom staff. Some evacuees are still having to go further afield though; hundreds are now as far away as Niagara Falls. In other wildfire news, much of the the village of Denare Beach, Saskatchewan was destroyed on Monday. Flin Flon is still intact but faces potential threats from all directions. And the chief of Pimicikamak Cree Nation is calling for the RCMP to help round up residents who are refusing to leave.

- A lawsuit filed in a Calgary court alleges that the Red Deer Public School Division, upon hearing a report that a Czech exchange student attending one of their schools had sexually assaulted a teenage girl, got the suspect out of the country before police could investigate, and even destroyed evidence. One might hope that there would be pressure for criminal charges against school division officials for this, but the locals are no doubt too busy trying to keep the drag queens out of their city to deal with people who actually aided and abetted a sexual offender. And in this Reddit thread it is alleged that the chair of the school board is an ex-cop who describes herself as a "proud Conservative". Wonder why she's so soft on crime then?

- Alberta now has 710 cases of measles; of these, six are in the Edmonton region and 13 in Calgary. In other words, it's not that Albertans per se are backward and unenlightened, it's just that rural Albertans are backward and unenlightened. I suspect you could draw a pretty direct line to the increased political polarization in that province; a lot of people who are of a broadly conservative bent would previously have gone along with such things as vaccination because it's what you're supposed to do, but now defying any kind of measures for the common good is such a part of the conservative identity that they follow the blue shepherds all the way to the slaughterhouse.

- Elon Musk is now calling Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" an abomination due to its impact on the deficit. Some think this could motivate some Republican senators to vote against the bill, but that remains to be seen.

- An Idaho woman who was jailed for two months for her involvement in the Jan 6 putsch has apparently had a significant change of heart. She declined the presidential pardon she was offered, saying that she and her co-conspirators were guilty and that the pardons are just an attempt to push a false narrative about what happened on that day.

- The sheriff's office in Johnson County, Texas obtained data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reading cameras across the US in order to investigate whether a woman left the state to get an abortion.

- Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is suing interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba for false arrest and malicious prosecution following his arrest on a trespassing charge after he attempted to accompany three Democratic members of Congress for an oversight tour of an immigration detention facility.

- A number of US states have amended their building codes to require roofs on new builds to be reflective, in order to limit heating. This did not sit well with the manufacturers of the synthetic rubber traditionally used for making some kinds of roofs - and they successfully lobbied Tennessee to repeal the new rule. 

- Actor Jonathan Joss, best known for his voice role in the animated series King of the Hill, was shot dead in an apparent anti-gay hate crime on Saturday.  

News roundup, 3 June 2025

- Leaders of several First Nations in northern Manitoba who are experiencing large-scale evacuations are calling on the province to exercise emergency powers to free up hotel space. Meanwhile, several buildings in Lynn Lake have been destroyed, and 125 firefighters have been brought in from the US to help with the situation. On a more positive note, the fire threatening the city of Flin Flon seems to have been contained.

- Lisa Robinson, a notorious city councillor in Pickering, Ontario, has failed in her bid for compensation from the city after being disciplined and having her pay docked on numerous occasions, mostly for promoting hate, since she took office. Not only is she not getting the pay docking reversed, she was hit with an additional $30,000 in court costs. Robinson's story is rather interesting; she was a candidate for the federal Conservatives in the Toronto riding of Beaches-East York in 2021, until the party dropped her for social media posts that were far too extreme even for them (for her part, she claims that the posts were somehow faked). She also spoke at "Freedom Convoy" events, and was a candidate for the fringe Ontario Party in 2022. When she ran for city council later that year, she apparently managed to dial back the crazy for the duration of the campaign and focus on fiscal conservatism, but has been bringing hordes of brownshirts to council meetings and allegedly having them threaten and dox her political opponents. More info in this Reddit thread as well as this one.

- South Korea is electing a new president today. The election was necessitated after the incumbent president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was removed from office following his impeachment for his attempt to impose martial law. The front-runner is Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the opposition Democratic party, which already controls the country's parliament.

- Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders has withdrawn from the governing coalition, a move likely to force early elections. Whether this will shift votes in his favour, as he presumably hopes, remains to be seen.

- Israel opened fire on Palestinians lining up for food aid at a distribution site in Gaza. Not sure how this is supposed to help protect Israelis or fight antisemitism. Speaking of which, the suspect in the fire attack on a pro-Israel event in Boulder is entirely unapologetic about the attack, saying he'd do it again if he could. 

- Nick Clegg, who I'd lost track of after voters punished him for propping up David Cameron's government through some, er, interesting times, has resurfaced to declare that requiring AI researchers to obtain permission from artists before using their work to train an AI would "kill" the AI industry. Turns out Clegg spent much of the intervening time working at Meta.

News roundup, 2 June 2025

- The tensions between India and Pakistan continue to seethe, though there at least has been a lull in the shooting. Pakistan is accusing India of violating international law by suspending the Indus Waters Treaty, which governs how much water India can take from the river system. India, for their part, are claiming that Pakistan has already violated the treaty by virtue of the terrorist attacks that India accuses Pakistan of being responsible for. Meanwhile China is threatening to give India a taste of its own medicine by holding back the headwaters of the Brahmaputra River in Tibet. This is all rather disconcerting given that all three countries are nuclear powers.

- Ukraine says that they have destroyed more than 40 Russian military aircraft in a drone attack. Russia is also reporting that two derailments in the border zone near Ukraine, which killed a total of seven people, were the result of sabotage. This is something the Americans should consider before they attempt to annex a country that's right next to them and filled with people who look like them.

- Rightwing historian Karol Nawrocki has won Poland's presidential runoff election by a margin of 50.9 to 49.1% over Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski. Nawrocki is expected to use the presidential veto power to block the pro-EU policies of prime minister Donald Tusk.

- A coal-fired power plant in Michigan was slated to close this past weekend but a new executive order from Donald Trump forces it to stay open, ostensibly to mitigate the risk of blackouts but no doubt actually to mitigate the risk of coal mining losing its economic relevance.

- A man armed with a makeshift flamethrower as well as several Molotov cocktails attacked a pro-Israel gathering in Boulder, Colorado; eight people were injured in the attack.

- The Manitoba government has rejected the City of Winnipeg's application to use a sulfur-based rodenticide to kill ground squirrels in city parks.