New Star Wars sets to debut in September

Blue and Gold must win regular-season finale to punch post-season ticket

It’s now or never for the 2026 edition of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

For weeks, if not months, they’ve been talking about what they need to do to become a consistently good football team.

We’ve heard endless clichés — things like, “We just gotta look ourselves in the mirror” and “We just have to execute better” — but time and time again, nothing has changed. Now, the clock is about to hit zero, and they find themselves at serious risk of watching the playoffs from the couch.

“I didn’t think, obviously, we’d be in a situation like this,” admitted quarterback Zach Collaros after Monday’s practice at Fort Garry Lions Field. “But we are.”

Salvation Army calls on Winnipeggers to donate merchandise as sales soar

The Salvation Army is taking donated merchandise from other regions to stock its Winnipeg thrift stores as increasing sales outpace local donations.

Retail activity at the charity’s eight Winnipeg locations grew more than 10 per cent year over year during several months, from January through April, and again in June.

Although local donations remain strong, they haven’t kept pace with demand, prompting the organization to supplement inventory with merchandise from elsewhere.

Ted Troughton, managing director of the Salvation Army’s thrift store operations, said rising living costs are bringing in new customers.

Clay Stevenson credits therapeutic side of hockey in learning to live with mother’s suicide

Hockey has always been more than just a game to Clay Stevenson. That was especially true after he suffered the biggest loss of his life: his mother, Holly, died by suicide seven years ago.

Consumer apprehension grows as US retailers adopt AI-assisted pricing tools

U.S. consumers aren't just frustrated with high prices. They're angry and confused about the increasingly high-tech ways that restaurant chains and major retailers are setting those prices.

Digital price tags are rapidly replacing paper ones in grocery aisles. Artificial intelligence tools help businesses decide what to charge by predicting how customers might respond. Terms like “dynamic pricing” and “surveillance pricing” are stirring anxiety on social media, where users wonder if different people are getting different prices for the same product.

Americans have grown accustomed to changing prices when booking flights, hotel rooms and rides, but the prospect of everyday spending shaped by algorithms they don’t understand and personal data they may not realize they’re sharing has touched a nerve.

“There are major tensions happening right now between who’s really going to have the power with some of these algorithms and usage of bots and AI: the companies or the shopper,” said Katie Thomas, who leads an internal consumer behavior think tank at the management consulting firm Kearney.

New Star Wars sets to debut in September

The two Star Wars trilogies are making their Blu-ray debut in North America on Sept 16, as separate trilogy collections (Episodes I-III and Episodes IV-VI) and as one complete nine-disc collection: Star Wars: The Complete Saga.

Presented in high definition and 6.1 DTS Surround Sound, the film package will include more than 40 hours of extras, including never-before-seen content, according to a press release from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

The extras will include a 91-minute doc on Star Wars spoofs featuring snippets of parodies from Family Guy, The Simpsons, How I Met Your Mother and “Weird Al” Yankovic’s music video tribute to The Phantom Menace, sung to the tune of Don McLean’s American Pie.

Apparently, the Blu-ray edition will not feature the original trilogy (Episodes IV to VI) as they appeared theatrically, but the versions digitally “enhanced” by George Lucas following the release of Episodes I to III.

Disgraced ex-dean landed job at German university after fleeing Winnipeg

Before he was arrested in a posh Paris suburb, the disgraced dean of Manitoba’s only law school — who fled the country following a 2020 expense scandal — kept a low profile at a German university.