Halifax’s beloved 104-year-old tortoise is recovering after a successful surgery

Katie Zacharia and the telling of lies

U.S. President Donald Trump’s new press secretary made her debut last week and was almost universally panned and parodied, lasting just five days before being fired.

Henderson crosswalk has glaring safety gap, say researchers months after pedestrian killed

Six months after a fatal collision at a crosswalk on Henderson Highway, two traffic safety researchers question why the intersection remains an outlier that is missing key flashing lights.

The City of Winnipeg is being urged to install “backflashers” to better protect road users moving in all directions at the intersection where a 32-year-old father died in the spring.

“It’s these little, mundane, non-sexy engineering problems that can cause everything right up to fatality,” said Curt Pankratz, an associate professor at the University of Winnipeg who studies traffic engineering and policymaking.

On April 19, shortly before sunrise, Gabe Beardy was struck when he was crossing the six-lane thoroughfare at Neil Avenue.

‘Big win’ kept ag tariffs off table: trade rep

Retaliatory tariffs on American agriculture was a possibility earlier this year, according to Manitoba’s U.S. trade representative.

Richard Madan says he banded together with various groups — Manitoba Pork, Keystone Agricultural Producers, cattle representatives — to rally against the move.

“We mobilized quickly,” Madan said during a trip to Winnipeg on Thursday.

Madan said he’d heard tariffs on agriculture were “on the table” upon speaking to Janice Charette, Canada’s chief trade negotiator to the U.S., in Washington.

Klein, Gillingham trade jabs over megaproject

Two of Winnipeg’s mayoral candidates wasted no time trading barbs over who bears responsibility for the skyrocketing cost of overhauling the North End sewage treatment plant, during a televised debate Wednesday.

Scott Gillingham and Kevin Klein pointed the finger at each other for the rising cost of the massive project, which had a cost estimate of $795 million in 2015 and had ballooned to $3.2 billion as of the latest estimate.

“We need to be able to understand how that amount tripled in that short a time,” Klein said at the event held at CBC’s downtown Winnipeg headquarters. He pointed out the first estimate was given when Gillingham was chairman of the city’s finance committee. He questioned what the incumbent did to garner funding for the project.

Gillingham shot back by noting Klein was Manitoba’s environment minister in 2023. He accused his opponent of failing to make a dent on the cost.

Outbreak should never have happened

The headline offered a vague sense that something had been accomplished, but it most certainly did not describe anything worth celebrating:

“Manitoba declares measles outbreak over.”

The news item in the Oct. 17 Free Press noted provincial public health officials had confirmed Manitoba’s last laboratory-confirmed case of measles was identified in August, and that the absence of any new cases since had allowed for the aforementioned declaration.

The end of the outbreak — which began in February 2025 and included a significant stretch this year during which Manitoba experienced more measles cases than any other province — is certainly worth noting. But it bears reminding that the real story here is that this province, and others across Canada, experienced a resurgence of this highly communicable but successfully eradicated disease in the first place.

Reynolds exerts ‘maximum effort’ to boost Winnipeg after quick meet with mayor

Ryan Reynolds wasn’t wearing his Deadpool suit, but that didn’t stop Mayor Scott Gillingham from wanting to talk about films with the Vancouver-born Hollywood movie star.

Reynolds, who appeared at IG Wealth Management's 100th anniversary celebration Wednesday at the RBC Convention Centre, took to social media afterward, sharing a photo of himself with Gillingham and trumpeting the province’s tax incentives.

“An incredible place to shoot,” the Instagram post read.

On Thursday, Gillingham said the actor, best known for portraying an irreverent, erratic anti-hero on the big screen, is a “really nice gentleman.”