Life processes

Hurricane Simon pounds resorts and vulnerable towns along Mexico’s Pacific coast

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico (AP) — Hurricane Simon pounded Mexico’s Pacific coast as a Category 3 storm on Sunday, its eye remaining just offshore as its most powerful winds and rain slammed people living between the Sierra Madre and the ocean.

The hurricane's center swirled parallel to the coast, closing in on the Puerto Vallarta area, where its most damaging winds and rain were expected to hit around midnight and continue through Monday morning. Its maximum sustained winds weakened late Sunday to 115 mph (185 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, but it was still expected to remain a dangerous hurricane.

That’s not good news for people in and around Puerto Vallarta, a popular tourist destination in the state of Jalisco. Just inland and uphill from the resort areas, many Mexicans live in communities where housing might not stand up to the storm.

By late Sunday, Simon's eye was moving northwest about 45 miles (75 kilometers) south of Cabo Corrientes at about 5 mph (7 kph). A senior hurricane center specialist, Philippe Papin, said this westernmost tip of mainland Mexico is the area most likely to get a direct hit from the system. Cabo Corrientes is at the southern tip of Bahia de Banderas, the wide bay where Puerto Vallarta looks out to the Pacific.

Gang member who shot rival, bystander back in prison after release revoked

A Winnipeg man who shot a rival teenage gangster and an innocent 11-year-old bystander at the crowded Red River Exhibition more than four years ago has been sent back to prison.

Mocree Chuck Scatch-Dubour, now in his early 20s, left prison in April on statutory release on his 5 1/2-year federal sentence for the 2022 shooting. Scatch-Dubour was sentenced to the prison term as an adult in the spring of 2023 after pleading guilty to discharge of a firearm with intent to wound, aggravated assault and possession of a restricted firearm.

By law, most federal inmates automatically receive statutory release after two-thirds of their sentence, if they have not already been paroled.

Parole Board of Canada officials formally revoked Scatch-Dubour’s release this month after he unlawfully left his halfway house in June.

Celebrated Manitoba glass artist works through fears of unchecked technology in evocative installation

Ione Thorkelsson is hardly alone in worrying about the pace of biotechnological research, though I don’t exactly share those fears myself. To Thorkelsson’s dismay, neither did her friends.

Back in 2010, the Roseisle resident and Governor General’s Award-winning glass artist was rattled by news that the American biochemist and entrepreneur Craig Venter’s lab had produced what they were calling “synthetic life.” The team had “transfected” a living cell with a modified bacterial genome, producing a viable new organism, Mycoplasma laboratorium.

Similarly engineered strains could have applications in everything from medicine to energy production and carbon capture, but for Thorkelsson the announcement had shaken her “innate understanding of what was fundamental and unchanging in the natural world.” What’s worse, others didn’t seem to feel the same. “Where was the debate? Where was the tell-tale (sic) involuntary shudder?”

A brooding installation of blown- and cast-glass forms, natural materials, faintly glowing LEDs and fibre-optic strands, Synthia’s Closet opened last week at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art Gallery. The work came out of Thorkelsson’s efforts to sit with her misgivings, to understand her fears and give them form. I underwent something similar in my own shifting response to the work.

Letters, Oct. 13

The major assumption Manitoba Hydro undertakes is the weather. Hydro projected a $214 million profit for the 2025-26 fiscal year. On Sept. 29, it reported a $446 million loss. It took on additional debt due to $751 million in operating losses. In addition, Hydro stated the fiscal results for 2025-26 were “significantly influenced by circumstances largely beyond Hydro’s control.”