Police: Motorcycle backfiring causes panic in Times Square

Emergency rooms and health-care bottlenecks

Manitoba’s emergency rooms are being crushed under the weight of a health-care problem that cannot be fixed inside emergency departments.

Bombers give would-be boo birds their marching orders

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are being criticized by some fans online for booking the University of North Dakota’s marching band for Friday’s game against Montreal.

Dolly Parton, music star, actor and beloved figure who spanned generations, dies at 80 of cancer

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Dolly Parton, the country music icon whose soaring vibrato vocals, poignant songwriting and sparkling costumes defined her rise from a log cabin in the Tennessee mountains to the height of stardom and acclaim, has died in Nashville. She was 80 years old.

“After bravely facing a brief battle with cancer, Dolly departed her Earthly life today at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center surrounded by loved ones,” her publicist, Marcel Pariseau, said in a statement Tuesday.

Known for her curvy physique, massive blond wigs and skin-tight outfits that served her self-deprecating wit, she was among the most beloved personalities in music and beyond — the rare celebrity whose appeal transcended generations, geography and politics.

She wrote hundreds of songs, including classics like “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” and “I Will Always Love You,” that totaled more than 100 million worldwide sales and more than 1 billion online streams. Parton, who plucked bejeweled banjos, guitars and dulcimers with her long fingernails during performances, was a generous philanthropist and successful businesswoman whose projects included a theme park in the Smoky Mountain foothills near her birthplace.

Fear and loathing in bedbug-infested seniors building

Years of living in a regularly infested suite in an always-infested building have given Lewie Gwyllt nightmares in which he’s wrestling giant bedbugs.

The 64-year-old has lived at 529 Country Club Blvd., a 107-unit seniors’ home run by Manitoba Housing, for nearly eight years. Much of his tenancy has been marked by monthly, but futile, bedbug-eradication treatments.

Gwyllt’s routine is set in stone: he bags his laundry, steams his clothes, and buys covers for any piece of furniture he buys. He has a physical disability and struggles to move things when the pest-control people arrive to spray for the bugs, but he knows the nooks and crannies of his baseboards are a problem spot.

The mental toll has weighed heavily on him. He takes anti-anxiety medication to deal with the stress and despair when the treatments don’t work.

Cryopreservation — now that’s playing the long game

What if the promise of some future scientific breakthrough offered the possibility that you could be revived many years after your demise? Would you be willing to pay your money and take your chances?