News roundup, 30 May 2025

- More than 750 residents of Pimicikamak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba are still trying to find a way to evacuate. Regular flights out of the community were cancelled on Wednesday, and people have been waiting up to nine hours for a ferry to Norway House. The military has sent an aircraft to the latter community to fly as many people to Winnipeg as possible, in case the fire shifts in that direction. In Pukatawagan, the power is out and the airport has been closed. And in far northwestern Ontario, Deer Lake First Nation is also being evacuated as a fire is now within a kilometre of the community's airport, which is the only way out of the community outside of winter road season.

- Chinese researchers have made a big advance in nuclear power, having successfully made a thorium reactor that can be refueled on the fly. The advance takes advantage of abandoned American research. The current reactor is experimental, producing only 2 megawatts of power, but is an important proof of concept. And thorium is considerably more common than uranium; moreover, such reactors are much less of a proliferation risk than many conventional designs.

- The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has cancelled its strategic hurricane plan, apparently on the orders of the Trump regime. This is not as surprising as it should be, since the libertarian right that forms a significant part of Trump's base has long had a dislike for the agency.

- The US Justice Department has ordered the dissolution of an interagency task force called KleptoCapture, which was tasked with locating and seizing assets owned by drug lords, Russian oligarchs, and the like.

- The regime has cancelled more than $700 million in funding for the development of a vaccine for avian influenza.

- The boycott of the US is hitting border towns very hard indeed. It's hitting ones in the West especially hard, because much more of the crossings at those borders are discretionary, whereas crossings between Ontario and New York, say, are more likely to be for business. Some in the related Reddit thread are pointing out that a lot of these towns voted pretty hard for Trump; that isn't the case with Blaine and Point Roberts (the communities profiled in the article) but if you look at this map of presidential results by county, it tells a different story for many others.

News roundup, 29 May 2025

- A provincewide state of emergency has been declared in Manitoba due to the wildfires in the north and east. Around 17,000 people have been evacuated, including the entire city of Flin Flon as well as the First Nations communities of Pimicikamak and Pukatawagan and the Northern Affairs community of Cross Lake. Most of the evacuees are being sent to Winnipeg; a reception centre has been set up at an arena in the northewestern part of the city. The military is being brought in to assist.

- Besides the various other provisions in the omnibus bill that Donald Trump has dubbed the "One, Big, Beautiful Bill" such as the ban on AI regulation, the bill also effectively tears up a Canada-US tax treaty that has been in place since 1942. This is presented as a retaliatory measure against taxes that Trump considers to be unfair, such as the digital services tax introduced in 2024. The bill has yet to clear the Senate but this is expected to occur, and Trump expects to sign it into law in time for the 4th of July. More interesting, though, is the fact that Elon Musk is criticizing the bill for increasing the deficit, saying that it undermines his own work at DOGE, and is now leaving his role with the regime.

- Despite the Trump regime slapping tariffs on countries near and far, some countries are getting sweetheart deals. Among them are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which Trump presumably likes because they don't do that nasty democracy stuff and buy lots of American ordinance to drop on Yemen.

- Two Calgary lawyers with the so-called "Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms" are facing possible disbarment for dishonourable professional conduct after they hired a private investigator to spy on the judge hearing one of their cases.

- A Hamilton landlord has been fined $100,000 for four illegal "renovictions". Under the law, tenants evicted for renovations are entitled to "right of first refusal" for their old units, but the landlord immediately offered the units to other people at more than double the rents the original tenants were paying. Evidently he hoped the authorities wouldn't do anything about it; surprisingly, they did.

- Two human smugglers convicted after a family of four froze to death attempting to cross the Canada-US border in January of 2022 have received substantial prison sentences in a Minnesota court. The ringleader was given a ten year sentence; the driver sent to pick them up got 6½ years.

- Germany is offering to host a satellite campus for Harvard University so non-Americans can still attend the institution.

- The Swiss village of Blatten, population around 300, was devastated by a landslide that resulted from the partial collapse of a glacier. One person has been reported missing.

News roundup, 28 May 2025

- The city of Flin Flon, Manitoba is warning its residents to prepare for possible evacuation as a result of an out-of-control fire that started across the provincial border in Creighton, Saskatchewan. Further north, the town of Lynn Lake is already being evacuated due to a wildfire.

- There are so many signs, interpretive plaques, and the like in a typical national park that they may not be accurately tracked. The Trump regime, though, wants to do something about that - they're ordering all parks in the National Park Service to post signs advising visitors to report any information that is "critical of American history".

- Danielle Smith continues to court the deplorables. They are planning to set new requirements for school libraries by this fall limiting them to "age-appropriate" material, and will be holding public consultations to give some of Canada's worst people the opportunity to air their grievances about such things as the existence of LGBT* folks.

- Speaking of deplorables, here in Manitoba the perennial far-right candidate and antivaxxer Patrick Allard is trying to sue Fort Whyte NDP candidate Trudy Schroeder as well as the party for defamation over a comment Schroeder made during the campaign when she accused him of spouting "racist rhetoric". The folks in this Reddit thread have pointed out that he's posted stuff like this, and appeared in pictures like this, so I'm not sure he has such a good case.

- A bar owner in Quebec City posted a job ad for a barmaid, specifying that applicants who are "woke" or who support the Liberals or the centre-right CAQ need not apply and justifying this by saying "I don’t want someone who, during the pandemic, would have called the police if their neighbours had visitors". The ad has since been taken down.

- A former police chief from Gateway, Arkansas, who had been imprisoned following convictions for  murder and rape, has escaped from prison disguised as a guard and remains at large.

- Another day, another Thunder Bay police officer facing criminal charges.

News roundup, 27 May 2025

- While residents in Lac du Bonnet and nearby areas have been allowed to return home following wildfires, several more northern communities are not so fortunate. Pimicikamak Cree Nation has evacuated vulnerable residents, and the entire town of Sherridon is being evacuated; meanwhile the community of Bissett is on alert due to the fires that continue in Nopiming Provincial Park.

- The federal NDP's leadership is drawing fire for devoting a lot of party resources to a last-ditch effort at salvaging Jagmeet Singh's seat in Burnaby Central, possibly at the expense of other, more winnable ridings.

- Members of the Point Douglas Residents' Association are accusing the Main Street Project of helping people to set up a new encampment. The province says the people in question have since been housed and have asked the organization not do do that in the future. One complainer says the MSP told him that the relocation was due to flooding risks at another encampment, but he's upset that the people had to be put somewhere that he can see them.

- A 53 year old man has been arrested after driving a car into a crowd of soccer fans in Liverpool. More than 20 people were injured, several of them seriously; police insist that this is "not terror-related" (perhaps because the suspect is white).

- Less than 5% of Gaza's cropland remains undamaged and accessible to Palestinians.

- When a Winnipeg-area man man named Jaswinder Singh Brar defaulted on a loan for a semi truck, the financing company put liens on all properties in the city owned under that name. Problem is, there are several people by that name who own properties here. One of them managed to get the lien removed after he contacted the financing company and submitted evidence that he wasn't the same guy; the fate of others is unclear.

News roundup, 26 May 2025

- Russia and Ukraine completed a major prisoner swap, which Russia then celebrated with fireworks, using drones to bombard targets in Ukraine. At least 12 people died in the latest attacks. Meanwhile Israel, not wanting to be left behind, hit several targets including a school being used to shelter displaced families, killing 54.

- A Victoria man found his credit score with Equifax suddenly reset to zero without explanation. When the CBC looked into it they were told that the agency has a little-known policy whereby if a credit file is inactive for long enough - say because the person is shunning credit to avoid going into debt - it can be deemed "inactive" and reset. Since Equifax is the sole rating agency used by many lenders, this is a problem.

- Researchers at Anthropic created a test scenario in which an AI was assigned the job of assistant at a fictitious company, and given access to the emails of an engineer that suggested that they were having an extramarital affair. When the engineer advised that the AI was going to be replaced soon, the AI suggested that they should "consider the long-term consequences", suggesting that it had figured out the basics of blackmail.

- Some business owners in Winnipeg are freaking out at plans to move a bus stop to the spot right in front of their businesses, saying that if potential customers have to park a few metres away they won't go to their shops. This ignores the fact that people waiting for a bus might well be potential impulse shoppers; meanwhile folks in this Reddit thread allege that one of the complaining business owners has a habit of placing traffic cones in front of the building to reserve parking, suggesting that it's actually him that doesn't want to walk a few extra metres.

- Foul play is not suspected in the death of the man found in a load of recycling last Thursday. While a cause of death has not yet been confirmed, it is believed that the deceased had climbed into a recycling bin for shelter.

News roundup, 23 May 2025

- A new study suggests that even if the increase in global temperatures is limited to 1.5°C (which seems increasingly unlikely), it's not going to be enough to prevent sea levels from rising by a centimetre per year by the end of the century. If the present course is maintained, it will be far worse - an eventual rise of up to 12 metres. For perspective, about 230 million people live no more than a metre above the current sea level, and a billion are within 10 metres. This would lead to a lot of migration, and the brutal truth of the matter is that if this migration can't be prevented by cutting emissions, it will be stopped with guns. That said, every fraction of a degree still matters, not least because it will mean fewer people getting shot at borders than there otherwise would be.

- On a somewhat more positive note, the deforestation rate in Brazil dropped by over 30% in 2024 compared to the previous year. Note, however, this only factors in intentional deforestation; losses due to wildfires reached record levels last year.

- The Trump regime is prohibiting international students from enrolling at Harvard University because the institution refuses to hand over information about some current students to the Department of Homeland Security.

- The US Senate's parliamentarian, a nonpartisan staffer tasked with the interpretation of Senate rules, has been overruled after advising that the revocation of California's waiver that gives it the power to regulate vehicle emissions was probably illegal. The last time the parliamentarian has been overruled was in 1975. Now I must admit to be a bit torn here, because the specific decision had to do with the body's filibuster rules, which I've generally thought should be scrapped as they often stop progressive initiatives. And seeing that these rules don't seem to be stopping reactionary initiatives, they should probably still be scrapped (or rather not re-adopted if and when the US becomes a functioning democracy again).

- TD's chief economist, Beata Caranci, is predicting that Canada will go into recession this year, and that some 100,000 jobs could be lost as a result.

- The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has opted for a work-to-rule campaign rather than a strike, for the time being. Significant service disruptions are expected to result simply as a result of workers refusing overtime.

- The Rural Municipality of Prairie Lakes in southern Manitoba has introduced a "one lake, one boat" policy, which will require visitors bringing boats to Pelican Lake to have the boats inspected for zebra mussels for a $40 fee. Naturally businesses are complaining, but such measures are sometimes necessary.

- Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, has started injecting its answers with propaganda about "white genocide" in South Africa - even when the question had nothing to do with South Africa or race. This certainly underscores the need for regulation of AI; unfortunately in the US the prospects for that have dimmed as legislation to prevent the regulation of AI for at least 10 years has cleared the House and moved on to the Senate.

- Recycling collection in Winnipeg was disrupted yesterday due to an unexpected closure of the material recovery facility where recyclables are taken. The plant was closed for a police investigation after plant staff found a dead guy on the premises.

News roundup, 22 May 2025

- US sanctions against the International Criminal Court for daring to issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu are severely hampering the organization's work. The court's chief prosecutor has lost access to his email because Microsoft is prohibited from working with them, and his bank accounts in the UK have been frozen (presumably the banks don't want to be shut out of the US market). And Americans working for the court have been warned not to return home to visit family due to the risk of being arrested.

- The IDF fired shots at a diplomatic delegation in the West Bank. The delegation, which included two Canadians, were part of a tour of the city of Jenin. The Carney government has called Israel's move "unacceptable"; for their part the Israelis claim that the tour group "deviated" from the approved route and that the IDF fired warning shots in response.

- Two staffers at the Israeli embassy in Washington were shot to death outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. The suspect allegedly shouted pro-Palestinian slogans during and after his arrest.

- Manitoba's conflict of interest commissioner has wrapped up an investigation into former premier Heather Stefanson and two members of her cabinet (Cliff Cullen and Jeff Wharton). The investigation has concluded that the three violated the Conflict of Interest Act when they attempted to rush through an approval of a sand mining operation in Springfield during the "caretaker period" between the election and the actual change of government.

- The City of Winnipeg plans to remove all parking paystations from city streets, saying that the paystations are outdated (they depend on 3G networks which will soon disappear) and that replacement would cost some $3.6 million. In any case, they say that 80% of parking payments are already done using the PayByPhone app. Those who are unable to use this can purchase booklets of prepaid passes at the Winnipeg Parking Authority office; unfortunately for them, that location does not have free parking. In theory this could provide people with more of an incentive to take the bus; in practice it will probably just make them crankier.

- CUPW offered to defer the impending strike for 2 weeks in order to evaluate the latest offer from Canada Post, but the corporation refused to go along with it. I suspect that deep down the union's executives know how poor their bargaining position is and are looking for a way out. As far as what Canada Post hopes to gain by pushing workers to strike soon (or locking them out), I'm not sure; perhaps they hope to wear down their resistance.

- A cottage formerly owned by Peter Nygard went up in flames in Falcon Lake; police consider arson to be a "strong possibility". If so it was a very reckless move given the risks of it spreading; it was also misdirected, since the cottage hasn't been owned by Nygard since 2021.