Peru fitness coach for Copa America tests positive for COVID

Positive anticipation is growing about major housing developments underway in Winnipeg’s downtown

If traffic is light and the wind is down, Somia Sadiq is able to hear the roar of Winnipeg Jets fans twice: first through her window, then on TV.

From her apartment view high above downtown, she can look out at Graham Avenue’s painted pedestrian landscape, see construction cranes and hear the heavy equipment at work as massive housing projects take shape at The Forks, at what used to be Portage Place shopping centre and at the former Hudson’s Bay building.

Sadiq has lived at 300 Main for 2 1/2 years, a few steps from the city’s famous, windy and reopened-to-pedestrians Portage Avenue intersection. At 42 storeys, it’s the tallest building in Winnipeg.

She is among 18,000 downtown residents who will soon be joined by thousands of others attracted to the city’s core by the new wave of major construction projects.

Bison kicker Turner named captain, shows she belongs

Even on nights like this, Maya Turner can appreciate how far she’s come.

Though it feels like yesterday that the Manitoba Bisons kicker arrived on the scene with an unheralded right leg and a point to prove, these days the fifth-year student-athlete is lining up to split the uprights with a veteran boot and the added responsibility of being a team captain.

Getting to this point wasn’t easy, though.

It’s now four years ago that Turner ditched her NCAA Division 1 soccer career at Loyola University in Chicago to kick a different ball on the gridiron and signed with the Bisons, who were one of more than one hundred programs across North America that she sent tape to in hopes of realizing a new dream.

Discrediting independent media is the game plan

United States President Donald Trump’s decision to bar several news organizations from White House briefings is, thanks to a court decision, teetering on the edge of collapse.

Will this defeat send the president into a rage? There is actually evidence that Trump knew this was going to be the outcome when he ordered the ban.

A federal court judge in Washington (and a Trump appointee, for the record) issued an injunction on Thursday arguing the swift decision to bar CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White House was likely unconstitutional. The judge ordered the White House to restore credentials to the three news organizations immediately.

Was this just the latest in a string of judicial defeats suffered by the Trump administration as it seeks to undermine, unravel and otherwise work around long-standing legal and administrative canons of the American government? No, not really.

Respectful separation: an obvious oxymoron

“We want a fair and respectful relationship with Canada,” Alberta separatist leader Keith Wilson told the CBC commentator. He paused. Briefly. “On our terms.”

He followed up with a poorly-veiled threat. Trade goods moving east or west across Canada, especially to and from Vancouver, must pass through Alberta, he mused, so…

Wilson and his ilk are blackmailing Canada. If they win this referendum vote, he intends — with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s acquiescence — to pull the pin on a genuine separation referendum grenade. The separatists’ transition plan has been largely anonymously authored — much like Trump’s blueprint Project 2025.

Smith claims Albertans will vote against separation. She’s bluffing. Her precarious personal political survival tightrope as she tries to balance atop the UCP could easily carry Canada down a potentially disastrous road. All it will take is for separatists to turn out en masse (about 25 per cent of Albertans, if you believe the polls), and those supporting Canada to stay home because they think it’s in the bag for them.

Is a better Winnipeg on the horizon?

Four Free Press columnists weigh in on the challenges ahead and how the city can become better.