Calm barking neighbours with apology

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: Caution! Avoid shopping (except food and gas) and major decisions all day until 7:30 p.m. After that, the moon moves from Virgo into Libra.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Be careful, because most of this day is a moon alert, which can promote creative, outside-of-the-box thinking. However, it can also promote unrealistic, crazy decisions. Write down your imaginative ideas. Don’t act until the moon alert is over. (See above.)

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

U of M students call for ban on far-right group

Some University of Manitoba students are calling on their school to ban a far-right group from campus after posters promoting mass deportations were found during the summer break.

More than 50 people rallied on Wednesday, the first day of classes, to make known their concerns about a group called the Dominion Society of Canada.

The protest was organized after a supporter of the self-described nationalist group posted a video over the Labour Day weekend that shows him putting up flyers in Fort Garry.

“Canada is a really beautiful country and I have been welcomed here by a lot of beautiful people and it’s been amazing, but when I see harmful rhetoric online and now, on campus, it gives me a lot of anxiety,” said Ela Ancheta, an arts major at U of M.

Assisted living could alleviate ‘bed block’

There is a severe shortage of public and non-profit rent-geared-to-income/services-geared-to-income assisted-living housing for older adults in Manitoba. Seniors assisted living is a form of housing that includes rent, food, laundry and cleaning services.

Presently, the provincial government almost exclusively relies on the private market to provide assisted-living housing for seniors. Monthly private-market assisted-living housing rent for seniors ranges from $3,000 to $6,000 per month. The total income for an individual older adult receiving old age security (OAS) and guaranteed income supplement (GIS) pensions is less than $2,000 per month.

It is clear that low- and fixed-income seniors are not able to afford private-market assisted-living housing, resulting in the premature entry of these older adults into long-term care homes because seniors assisted-living housing is not publicly subsidized, whereas long-term care facilities do provide income-based subsidies.

Low- and fixed-income seniors are also experiencing a food affordability crisis which is negatively impacting their health and well-being. An enhanced assisted-living housing program that includes congregate meals would play an important role in addressing this growing affordability problem, along with reducing social isolation and loneliness.

Ferraro, Skinner getting lay of the land before training camp starts

They’ve both been around the NHL block a bit, but make no mistake, Stuart Skinner and Mario Ferraro are experiencing some “new kid at school” type jitters this week.

The pair were prized July 1 free agent signings by the Winnipeg Jets and are now quickly trying to get the lay of the land — from teammates and systems and structure to restaurants, schools and the best routes to the rink — in what is a frantic time on both a professional and personal level.

“It’s a big change, right?” Ferraro said Wednesday following a pre-training camp skate at the Hockey For All Centre.

“Like moving cities, getting settled somewhere else, with my family, my wife, my daughter, our two dogs. But I think it’s gone really well and smooth. We found a great place here, and we’re really happy with where we’re living.”

Is ‘tornado alley’ moving north?

There’s a famous fictional story in which a ruby-slippered, tornado-tossed traveller takes a wide-eyed look around and declares, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

There are probably some residents of south River Heights, on the other hand, who looked out their windows last Sunday and felt as if Kansas — the U.S. state that lies smack-dab in the middle of meteorological maps outlining the area known as “tornado alley” — was exactly where they’d somehow ended up.

There is now confirmation of a tornado touching down within Winnipeg, after several residents reported seeing funnel-shaped clouds during the intense thunderstorm, and the magnitude and extremely localized nature of the damage — including felled trees, snapped hydro poles, scattered fences and the deposit of a random automobile on one resident’s front lawn — certainly shows forces more formidable than strong wind gusts were at play.

As Manitoba Hydro and City of Winnipeg crews continued the days-long effort to clean up the mess and restore power to thousands of homes affected by the long-weekend weather blast, some of the conversation related to the storm focused on how extreme events such as this have become more commonplace in a region where tornadoes were long considered a rarity.

The plane truth about a dangerous president

U.S. President Donald Trump has crossed firmly into cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face territory.