Sweet, smart Smuckers is eager to please

MOON ALERT: Avoid shopping (except food and gas) and important decisions after 5:45 a.m. The moon is in Virgo.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

This is an excellent day to make plans about your domestic needs as well as social occasions, vacations and matters related to kids. You can accomplish a lot at work because you have the mental energy to get things done. This is a work-hard/party-hard day.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Concerns about status-quo literacy curriculum and website terms-of-service were repeatedly raised at a public consultation on how the provincial government can better protect internet users.

Roughly 50 people gathered in Winnipeg to weigh-in on how local governments should regulate personal data collection and artificial intelligence on Wednesday.

“The average person that selects ‘cookies’ has no idea what that means,” said Alan Campbell, a father of two and longtime school trustee who attended the evening event at St. Vital’s Norberry-Glenlee Community Centre.

Manitoba’s innovation and new technology department has hired KPMG to collect feedback and compile a report on recommendations for future AI use and cybersecurity incident reporting in the public sector.

Kudos to David Driedger for modelling a more appropriate and constructive role for religion in politics than the one that has become commonplace today (“Take care of them; there is enough”, Think Tank, July 27).

Resisting the temptation to preach, coerce and control, he has chosen to remind, persuade and challenge. It could hardly more different to what we are witnessing everyday to the south of us. I thank him for his humility, courage and sense of responsibility to humanity.

Our recent experiences with religion’s forays into the political realm, both in the U.S. and parts of Canada have done little to endear us to either one. Religious fundamentalism, in its many forms, has wrought untold havoc on governments across the globe, with some of the most toxic iterations being right on our doorsteps — we might even call it a form of domestic terrorism.

In the U.S., Christian nationalism, represented by MAGA, has contaminated government and ordinary lives like a hazardous toxin escaping containment — corroding and poisoning the presidency, the legislature, the court system and law enforcement, and in the process threatening the very relationships which make a civilized society possible. Simply put, the positive ideal of godliness in the American constitution, which emphasized tolerance for, acceptance of and upheld the equal worth of all peoples is in peril.

The series opener of the Canadian Elite Basketball League Finals between the Winnipeg Sea Bears and Brampton Honey Badgers in Brampton, Ont. has been cancelled in the first quarter due to the court being deemed unsafe for play.

Game 1 of the best-of-three series inside the CAA Centre was one minute and 46 seconds old when officials delayed the contest briefly, then ended it. The game was tied 6-6.

It is unclear whether Game 1 will be rescheduled. Games 2 and 3 (if necessary), were scheduled to take place in Winnipeg on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

More to come on this story.