Exploding toilet at a Dunkin’ store in Florida left a customer filthy and injured, lawsuit claims

Is a better Winnipeg on the horizon?

Four Free Press columnists weigh in on the challenges ahead and how the city can become better.

Perfecting profitability

More jaded of investors may roll their eyes at another book offering up a formula for the “perfect portfolio.”

Veteran portfolio manager Peter Lazaroff, based in St. Louis, and host of the Long Term Investor podcast understands the scepticism around his recently published book The Perfect Portfolio: a Proven Guide to Smart Investing for Long-Term Success.

Yet the chief investment officer at Plancorp Wealth Management, which has about US$10.2 billion in assets under management, has a caveat to the notion of the perfect portfolio.

“The perfect portfolio on paper is probably a lot different than the perfect portfolio for you in real life because what’s ‘perfect’ is a formula you can stick with for decades on end.”

Happy email debt forgiveness day

There are few things more capable of producing an immediate feeling of guilt than opening your inbox and seeing an email you have not answered.

You know the one. It has been sitting there for three days or three months or perhaps long enough that responding now feels less like answering an email and more like reopening a historical case. You read it, think, “I really need to deal with that,” and then close it again.

The next week you see it, feel slightly worse and tell yourself you will answer it when you have more time. A month later, you are considering whether it would be less embarrassing to change your name and move to another province.

Fortunately, there is a solution: Sept. 30 is Email Debt Forgiveness Day, and I think it may be one of the most compassionate holidays we have invented.

Jets’ brass warming up to El Nino?

Decisions, decisions.

The Winnipeg Jets held their final dress rehearsal Friday night before the curtain rises next week on the new NHL season.

Unlike their first three exhibitions, this one in Denver featured competitive lineups that looked an awful lot like what we’ll see when the games start counting, with plenty of star power and veteran presence on both sides.

So what are we to make of the Jets’ 5-2 loss to the mighty Colorado Avalanche, who captured the Presidents’ Trophy last year and are once again a legitimate Stanley Cup contender?

WSO kicks off season pairing Beethoven, Tchaikovsky

French fries and milkshake, watermelon and feta cheese … Beethoven’s Fifth and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth?

Few events mark the beginning of the classical concert season like the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s season-opener and this year they kick things off with an unusual but satisfying pairing.

“I think that for me, the combination of these two pieces is, first of all, a celebration of great masterworks that have withstood 100 years of being probed by time for their relevancy,” says conductor Daniel Raiskin, the WSO’s music director. “It’s the quality of music, it’s the quality of narrative that attracts us to these masterworks again and again.”

Both symphonies are so hefty and canonical, one might have expected half of the concert would be devoted to a concerto, tone poem or something smaller or lesser known.