Mystery ingredient — coconut vinegar

BRANDON — A 29-year-old man has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for sexually abusing and impregnating a 14-year-old girl in 2024.

“Sexual abuse of a child is inherently a grave violation of the child’s bodily integrity, dignity, and security, and in this case, the consequences were compounded by the victim’s pregnancy and the need to undergo a termination,” Brandon provincial court Judge Patrick Sullivan said on Tuesday.

The accused had pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual interference and two counts of breaching a court order banning him from contacting anyone under 18.

A publication ban prohibits the publication of information that could identify the 14-year-old, who is from a western Manitoba First Nation, and two other minors with whom he communicated.

Technology respecting electricity generation, storage and grid management is rapidly advancing and displacing gas-fired peaker plants. New battery storage systems are more efficient and less costly, smooth grid flow and are non-polluting. Texas, California and Australia are replacing gas turbine peaker plants with more effective storage batteries.

Solar and wind energy generation combined with battery storage at both the grid and home/business level is the most efficient way to meet peak demand. Building expensive, outdated, polluting American gas turbines, as Manitoba Hydro is proposing, is not in Manitoba’s interest.

Premier Wab Kinew noted that a final decision to build a new turbine power plant in Brandon has not been made. I hope he’s correct, for if Manitoba Hydro already made the decision and entered binding financial obligations with GE Vernova, the PUB’s role was superfluous.

In 2025/26 Nova Scotia Power installed 3 x 50 MW Lithium-ion grid batteries with the storage capacity of over 600 MWh. Installed by Kitchener/Waterloo based Canadian Solar’s subsidiary e-Storage who have operations around the world, they accomplished this in less than two years from the approval date in June 2024. Two were operational within 18 months, the third in 24. The cost was $237 million. At Nova Scotia’s cost per MW, a 750 MW battery peaker facility would cost Hydro $1.185 billion, just 40 per cent of the proposed $3 billion gas peaker plant.