Poet Yusef Komunyakaa to receive honorary Anisfeld-Wolf Award

Katie Zacharia and the telling of lies

U.S. President Donald Trump’s new press secretary made her debut last week and was almost universally panned and parodied, lasting just five days before being fired.

No surprise there — it’s one of the most glaring spotlights on the planet and Katie Zacharia had a tough act to follow in Karoline Leavitt, who — as I noted in an earlier column — truly put the “pro” in propaganda.

Even Leavitt — skilled as she is — couldn’t persuade the public that she was leaving the high-pressure post on Aug. 27 to spend more time with her family. She’ll be back hammering Trump’s message home through Fox News as an on-air contributor starting Nov. 1. Fox, of course, is Zacharia’s old stomping grounds, where she often offered her views as an attorney, which she is not, though she played one many times on TV.

Predictably, since she’s a woman, the parodists on social media — both professional and amateur — were quick to mock Zacharia’s appearance (flawless hair, teeth, clothing) and delivery during her excruciating, 14-minute inaugural press briefing on Oct. 13.

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.

Katz ‘violated public trust,’ Sheegl lacked ‘moral compass,’ police HQ inquiry commissioner concludes

The final report from the public inquiry into the scandal-plagued Winnipeg Police Service headquarters construction project concludes that former mayor Sam Katz and former city CAO Phil Sheegl broke public trust and engaged in unethical conduct.

And the report, released Monday by inquiry commissioner Garth Smorang, says the cost of the project — transforming a downtown Canada Post office tower and warehouse into the police HQ — soared, in part, because main contractor Caspian Projects overcharged the city by more than $40 million in expenses.

The project’s initial $135-million initial price tag rose to about $209 million in the end. The city purchased the complex in 2009; construction was completed in 2016.

Smorang’s report concludes Katz “violated the public trust” and council code of conduct, and Sheegl suffered from a “complete lack of a moral compass.”

MPI gambles with low rate request

It sounds a bit like a gamble from a player in an industry that is almost pathologically averse to gambling.

Manitoba Public Insurance is currently going through the Public Utilities Board process to set car insurance rates for 2027-28, and it’s asking the PUB to approve a 2.38 rate hike.

As a provincially-run insurance business, MPI is already a bit of an outlier, because, through its government masters, it’s answerable to the Manitoba public in a way that private insurers aren’t.

Private insurers spend a fortune calculating risk, offsetting that risk with reinsurance to spread it out across the insurance spectrum, and always finding a way to ensure there’s a profit margin built in.

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.