Spartacus actor Whitfield dies of cancer at 39

Spartacus actor Whitfield dies of cancer at 39

LOS ANGELES -- Andy Whitfield, who played the title role in the hit cable series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, has died at age 39, according to representatives and family.

Whitfield died Sunday in Sydney, Australia, 18 months after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, manager Sam Maydew told the Associated Press.

"On a beautiful sunny Sydney spring morning, surrounded by his family, in the arms of his loving wife, our beautiful young warrior Andy Whitfield lost his 18-month battle with lymphoma cancer," Whitfield's wife Vashti said in a statement. "He passed peacefully surrounded by love. Thank you to all his fans whose love and support have help carry him to this point. He will be remembered as the inspiring, courageous and gentle man, father and husband he was."

Andy Whitfield -- who was born in Wales and moved to Australia in 1999 -- was a virtual unknown when he was cast as the legendary Thracian slave in Spartacus, a role made famous by Kirk Douglas in the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film.

Potential Jets backup options include two possible netminder reunions

Kevin Cheveldayoff couldn’t help but make light of the situation.

Near the end of the press conference to discuss where things stand with training camp holdout Connor Hellebuyck, the general manager of the Jets was asked if he felt comfortable with the five goalies who were in training camp.

“You know I can’t have five on the roster,” Cheveldayoff quipped.

Only Cheveldayoff knows for sure how he feels about the organizational depth at the position and whether he’s planning to open the campaign with either Dom DiVincentiis or Thomas Milic in the backup role behind Stuart Skinner.

Jets land state-of-the-art dressing room after off-season of renovations

It’s not just the on-ice product that’s getting an overhaul this season for the Winnipeg Jets.

The hockey club has also undergone an extreme makeover when it comes to player facilities, including a new state-of-the-art dressing room that now rivals any around the league.

And if you don’t think that matters, you haven’t been paying attention.

“We’ve talked about doing everything first class,” head coach Scott Arniel told the Free Press on Tuesday. “We can’t do anything about the weather, but when people come here, we want them to know we look after them and we look after their families.”

Concrete doc befits brutalist Winnipeg

Moviegoers across North America are pounding the pavement and lining up around the block to see The History of Concrete, small-screen documentarian John Wilson’s feature-length debut.

The truth, the hyperbolic truth and nothing but the public accounts truth

The Manitoba public accounts — the final and definitive tabulation of government expenditures and revenues — have always been a difficult story to cover.

Difficult because the public accounts are complex, and explaining what the numbers mean and how they differ (but yet illuminate) the provincial budget is a gargantuan task.

However, the thing that really complicates the job of reporting the public accounts is the hyperbolic claims the government of the day makes about the numbers and what they mean.

In pursuit of the truth, let’s look at the numbers from the 2025-26 public accounts released this week, and some of the claims made by Premier Wab Kinew and Finance Minister Adrien Sala.

Manitoba’s small oil, gas sector lists 31 ownerless sites — far cry from thousands in Alberta, Saskatchewan

As other western provinces struggle to address the environmental and economic fallout from an accumulation of thousands of orphan oil and gas wells, only a tiny portion of Manitoba’s petroleum infrastructure is sitting idle and unclaimed.

But it’s unclear if the province’s small roster of orphan wells is the byproduct of effective regulation — or an historic lack of departmental oversight.

Manitoba’s oil and gas industry is relatively small and generally opaque. None of the experts contacted for this story had direct knowledge of the province’s orphan well landscape.

“My lab has probably measured the most non-producing wells in the country. I don’t think anybody I know is working on it (in Manitoba) who are in the academic realm,” says Mary Kang, an associate professor in civil engineering at McGill University in Montreal.