Germany calls nuclear power ‘dangerous,’ rejects EU plan

The next Duff’s Ditch must be medical

A runaway rail trolley hurtles towards five people tied to the tracks. You stand at the switch lever. If you pull the lever, the trolley veers onto a sidetrack, where one person is tied down. Do nothing and five die. Pull the lever and one dies by your hand.

A health minister needs no introduction to the weight of that choice. Every budget season, governments confront this dilemma with one cruel modification — the lever switches between today and tomorrow. Down the near track sits this year’s emergency, a crowded emergency department, a surgical backlog, a crisis demanding a decision by Friday. Down the far track, in the distance, over the horizon, waits a geriatric demographic that has not arrived yet. Each year’s budget cannot simultaneously rescue both.

Philosophers treat the trolley scenario as a thought experiment. A health minister calls it Tuesday.

The actual choice is crueller, because both tracks hold real people. The stroke patient in today’s hallway deserves rescue, as do the patients down the line. Two scholars, Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbitt, analyzed such allocations as tragic choices — scarcity forces a society to preserve one value by sacrificing another. Their darker observation concerned method. Societies rarely make these choices in the open. The lever keeps directing traffic away from the immediate noise, toward the far track.

Curling great, broadcaster Don Duguid dead at age 90

Legendary Manitoba curler and broadcaster Don Duguid, a three-time Canadian men’s champion and two-time world champion, has died at the age of 90.

PCs cleared of election violation for ‘intimacy coach’ invoice

Manitoba’s elections commissioner has cleared the Progressive Conservatives of wrongdoing after a $3,800 expense for a car rental appeared on an invoice from a company offering “intimacy coach” services.

The findings from the commissioner bring an end to a complaint raised by the NDP in October 2024, when it was alleged the PCs violated the Election Financing Act by forging financial documents related to the previous year’s election campaign.

“I am satisfied that the expense was indeed for a car rental, as the invoice described,” Bill Bowles wrote in a letter addressed to both parties Wednesday.

Concerns over the invoice to Lucid Vitality were first raised by a former PC staffer, whose internal emails with party officials were published in the Winnipeg Sun.

Order of Manitoba awarded to 12 high-achievers

It was a full circle moment for a CFL superstar whose game included giving back.

Former Winnipeg Blue Bombers running back Andrew Harris was one of 12 Order of Manitoba recipients honoured at the Manitoba legislature on Thursday.

“It’s an indescribable feeling,” Harris said after the ceremony while holding one of his sons in his arms.

Harris joined Juno award-winning artist Chantal Kreviazuk, Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Joss Reimer, former premier Brian Pallister and others who have enriched the province, said Lt.-Gov. Anita Neville as she honoured the recipients.

Sheriff who died in train collision ‘loved everybody’

Brett Matheson-Maytwayashing was a loving father, hard-working sheriff and proud First Nations man who helped lead traditional ceremonies for a decade before he died in a collision with a train near Portage la Prairie.

Matheson-Maytwayashing, 27, died in the Tuesday morning crash, which occurred on a rural road west of Portage while he and another member of the sheriff’s service were on their way to attend court in Amaranth, his mother, Alissa Matheson-Maytwayashing, told the Free Press.

It was Matheson-Maytwayashing’s first day back at work after taking time off to participate in a sun dance ceremony in northern Saskatchewan last week, his mother said.

“Brett didn’t judge anybody, he would give people chances,” she said, her voice breaking. “He didn’t care what colour you were, he didn’t care your nationality — Brett just loved everybody.”