‘Fly WestJet, see a UFO’

The truth is out there — or at least it could be outside the cockpit of a WestJet flight.

In an incident reported by NAV Canada to Transport Canada on Friday, WestJet pilots had reported they had flown by “a basketball-sized object at 13,000 feet” during a flight from Winnipeg to Calgary on Jan. 19.

The pilots, of flight WJA485, were flying just northwest of Canmore at the time and descending to land in Calgary when the incident occurred.

NAV Canada has classified the incident, under occurrence event information, as a “weather balloon, meteor, rocket, CIRVIS/UFO.” CIRVIS stands for Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings.

Gimli’s Einarson a step closer to women’s world curling championship gold

CALGARY - Canada's Kerri Einarson will play for gold at the women's world curling championship.

Einarson's team out of Manitoba's Gimli Curling Club defeated Japan 11-3 in Saturday's semifinal. Japan conceded after eight ends.

Canada faces Switzerland's Xenia Schwaller for gold Sunday.

After losing semifinals in two previous appearances and taking the bronze medal, Einarson and company took a step closer to the coveted gold.

NDP announce death of long-time northern MLA

Manitoba NDP on Saturday announced that Amanda Lathlin, MLA for The Pas-Kameesak has died.

First elected in 2015, Lathlin made history as the first First Nations woman elected to the Manitoba Legislative Assembly.

“Amanda led with strength, humility, and heart,” said Premier Wab Kinew in a press release. “Her voice in the legislature and her presence in her community will be deeply missed.”

The release went on to state that during her time in office, Amanda was a tireless advocate for families and for northern Manitobans. She played a key role in advancing legislation to extend paid leave for mothers recovering from miscarriages and worked to improve access to quality sexual assault care in northern communities.

Leading the charge

Jocelyne Larocque recognized she was serving a greater purpose this weekend.

One of the faces of Canadian women’s hockey for the last 15 years, Larocque has made an impact on the ice for a long time. But as the Professional Women’s Hockey League touched down in Winnipeg for the first time, the Ste. Anne product’s influence could be seen better in the faces of young fans off the ice.

Larocque says she’s felt her responsibility as a role model for young players has only grown with age. Now 37, she is in the late stages of her career, but knows how significant it can be for someone to see her play or spend a few moments with her away from the rink.

“It’s definitely a responsibility, but it’s one that all of us take with so much honour and excitement, and we think of ourselves as young girls who — it was really hard to see girls hockey, women’s hockey at any level, even on TV,” Larocque told the Free Press. “It’d be like once every four years. I didn’t even know it existed until it became an Olympic sport. So now little girls can watch us play almost every night.”

Judge sides with New York Times in challenge to policy limiting reporters’ access to Pentagon

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge agreed Friday to block the Trump administration from enforcing a policy limiting news reporters’ access to the Pentagon, agreeing with The New York Times that key portions of the new rules are unlawful.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., sided with the newspaper and ruled that the Pentagon policy illegally restricts the press credentials of reporters who walked out of the building rather than agree to the new rules.

The Times sued the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in December, claiming the credentialing policy violates the journalists’ constitutional rights to free speech and due process.

The current Pentagon press corps is comprised mostly of conservative outlets that agreed to the policy. Reporters from outlets that refused to consent to the new rules, including from The Associated Press, have continued reporting on the military.

Province relents by extending deadline on city’s $3-B sewer plant to 2032

The Manitoba government will grant the city’s request to move the deadline for the three-phase, nearly $3.1-billion North End sewage treatment plant upgrade to 2032 from 2030.

Gas pains: soaring prices due to Mideast conflict could lead to energy turning point in Canada

Veteran actor Billy Bob Thornton may seem like an unlikely source of wisdom about the world’s relentless dependence on oil. Then again, it would be hard to find a better, more poignant description of the global addiction than a diatribe he delivered in a recent episode of Landman, a melodrama set in the Texas oil industry.

Thornton’s character, Tommy Norris, a crisis manager for a large oil company, is walking through a wind turbine farm that generates electricity to power remote oil rigs. Norris notes that over a wind turbine’s 20-year lifespan, the “clean” energy it produces won’t offset the carbon emitted in the manufacturing of its components or its installation. The same economics, Norris says, can be applied to solar panels and batteries for electric vehicles.

Then, the punchline.

“Our whole lives depend on (oil). And hell, it’s in everything — that road we came in on, the wheels on every car ever made, including yours. It’s in tennis rackets and lipstick and refrigerators and antihistamines. Pretty much anything plastic: your cellphone case, artificial heart valves, any kind of clothing that’s not made with animal or plant fibers. Soap, f—king hand lotion, garbage bags, fishing boats. You name it, every f—king thing. And you know what the kicker is?

For vintage sewing-machine aficionado, it’s all about seeing them stitch again

Dave Johnson, a semi-retired snowplow operator who also worked as a homebuilder, collects, repairs and uses vintage sewing machines.

Free Press journalists recognized among country’s best

The Free Press has been nominated for five National Newspaper Awards.

The newspaper’s coverage of the mass stabbing in Hollow Water First Nation that killed one and injured seven was nominated in the breaking news category, led by reporters Scott Billeck, Nicole Buffie and Chris Kitching, as well as photographers Mikaela MacKenzie and Mike Deal. A Mountie was also injured when the 26-year-old suspect crashed his vehicle into an RCMP cruiser north of Powerview-Pine Falls in the September incident.

Investigative reporter Marsha McLeod was nominated in two categories. She was nominated in the explanatory category for her work on the origins of the second-generation cutoff in Canada’s Indian Act. She was also nominated in the long feature category for her investigation into the RCMP’s fatal shooting of 18-year-old Conor Rae and the probe by the province’s police oversight agency.

Ben Waldman is nominated in the arts and entertainment category for his feature on comic book superhero Captain Canuck, the creation of a Winnipeg illustrator/writer 50 years ago, finding new audiences and relevance today.