Severe storms in the Southeast US leave 1 dead and cause widespread power outages

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I came home alone in my own car after a first date with a great new guy I met through my work. Unfortunately, I found my ex-boyfriend in the driveway of my new rental house. He’d fallen asleep in his car, waiting there.

I just lost it! I banged on his window, and yelled, “What are you doing here? Get out of here, and go home!”

He finally sat up, rubbed his eyes and two minutes later he backed out, yelling crude names at me out the window. Then he took off like a shot!

I found out today that somebody we both know told him I was out on a date. That’s why he was drunk and jealous! I want to get rid of him for good, but now he’s not taking my calls, so I can’t even tell him that and re-ditch him!

Several masked and armed suspects forced their way into a home on Lake Ridge Road in Winnipeg’s west suburbs late on Monday, terrorizing the elderly residents as they robbed the place.

Winnipeg Police Service major crimes investigators, who are asking the public for assistance, are trying to identify the suspects and learn about their movements in the area before and after the robbery, said police spokesman Const. Stephen Spencer.

“It would definitely help to have some more information as to who the individuals are. It would be great if somebody had video of the individuals prior to arriving at this location, when they weren’t wearing face coverings, or after,” said Spencer.

“If neighbours in the area maybe noticed something suspicious, around the Lakeridge Park area… around that time of night, if they did see something suspicious, definitely come forward — it could be helpful with solving this case.”

Manitoba Hydro has cancelled a planned River Heights neighbourhood outage after a miscommunication led to area businesses fearing unexpected closure.

Hydro had planned to shut down power along Lanark and Renfrew streets between Corydon Avenue and John Brebeuf Place on Friday.

Overhead electrical maintenance work can only be done with the power off, during the day, for safety reasons, Hydro spokesman Peter Chura said. It chose Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. because St. John Brebeuf School had an in-service day.

However, the affected area houses a strip of businesses including a Royal Bank of Canada, eateries, shops, services such as physiotherapy and a medical centre.

When Canada’s health ministers left Winnipeg on Oct. 16, they took with them a promise to keep talking. The federal health minister did not commit to long-term funding. She offered one-year extensions for programs that were about to run out, and asked officials to begin work on “the next 10 years.”

The provinces, in the words of Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara, wanted to avoid “fiscal cliffs” and needed “predictable, stable, sustainable funding.”

Both sides have a point. And both are talking almost entirely about money — how much, for how long, under what formula.

Missing from the conversation is the question that decides whether any of it works — once the money flows, who must answer for what it does, or does not, achieve? We have been here before. In 2002, a Senate committee chaired by Michael Kirby warned that new federal money “must be used to buy change, not merely to support the system as it is presently structured.” It proposed an independent national health care commissioner, reporting every year to the public on how the system and the health of Canadians were faring.