CBSA self-service kiosks outage causing delays at customs in some airports

Play ponders realities of interfaith marriages

Jordi Mand isn’t scared to talk about circumcision — she doesn’t bristle at the mention of a bris.

But the playwright born Jordan Mandlowitz understands that the importance of the rite of passage — a foundational covenant between God and the Jewish people — isn’t so cut and dry to the uninitiated.

And in interfaith marriages such as her own, the concept of brit mila isn’t as easily welcomed as lighting the Friday night candles to greet Shabbat.

“It was something that I knew growing up, that if you were Jewish, and if you were a boy, then you were circumcised,” says Mand, who was raised in a tight-knit Jewish community in Richmond Hill, Ont.

Database issues cloud city homeless numbers

The head of End Homelessness Winnipeg says she has no confidence in data about the city’s homeless population due to problems with the federal system that tracks those numbers.

Jennifer Rattray, the organization’s chief executive officer, told the Free Press Thursday it continues to work with the federal government to resolve problems with the Homeless Individuals and Families Information System, which keeps tabs on people who access homelessness services.

CBC has reported it obtained an internal memo from EHW that shows that as of the end of March, the number of chronically homeless Winnipeggers had fallen to 436 from about 4,400, as a result of efforts to correct the database.

Earlier this year, the organization had reported more than 8,000 people were accessing services.

‘We know we’re not going to beat Mother Nature’: Ice prep begins at Princess Auto Stadium for Heritage Classic

Derek King typically has ice in his veins.

But the Manitoban admits there may be a few more butterflies than usual as he prepares for the ultimate home game — the 2026 Heritage Classic between the Winnipeg Jets and Montreal Canadiens.

“This is so exciting to be back,” King, the NHL’s vice-president of hockey operations and facilities operations, said Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s definitely going to be a fun event to be part of.”

NDP expects crypto, data centre electricity levy to shave about $50 annually off residential Hydro bills

Revenue from the province’s new electricity levy on cryptocurrency businesses and large AI data centres will go toward offsetting residential bills, rather than the coffers of cash-strapped Manitoba Hydro.

Capital punishment as macabre theatre

There was already enough to write about the question of capital punishment when the State of Tennessee attempted to execute Christa Pike.

Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, but her execution on Sept. 30 did not go as planned — she survived, despite two lethal injections of pentobarbital, and was taken to hospital in critical condition.

Pike was released from hospital and sent back to the same prison where she has been incarcerated for the last 30 years, ever since she was convicted — as an 18-year-old — of the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995.

Pike faces a long recovery, and an uncertain one. Tennessee assistant attorney general Will Ayers has not said if the state will attempt to execute Pike again, but Gov. Bill Lee has halted all executions this year and ordered an independent review of what went wrong.