Google hits setback in bid to overturn multibillion EU antitrust fine in Android case

‘Unsafe for children’: Mayoral candidate Vogiatzakis promises to ramp up security in public parks

A mayoral candidate is vowing to have security teams monitor parks and remove people doing drugs at the green spaces, if elected.

Mike Vogiatzakis held a news conference at city hall Friday, where he shared some initial promises.

“People (who) are not supposed to be in those parks, who are bringing drugs to those parks, who are injecting needles in their bodies, they will be removed (from) those parks immediately and their needles will go with them,” said Vogiatzakis.

He vowed to release a new pledge each week for the rest of the campaign.

Elders bless, open city’s first urban all-season sweat lodge

Indigenous Winnipeggers now have access to sweat lodge ceremonies all year long.

On Friday Ka Ni Kanichihk unveiled Winnipeg’s first urban, all-seasons sweat lodge. The organization will hold ceremonies throughout the year, giving people who live in the city equitable access to the sacred ritual.

“We’re now going to be able to offer ceremony for relatives that can’t access a sweat ceremony outside the city because of financial restraint or that kind of thing,” said Wally Chartrand, a cultural advisor for Ka Ni Kanichihk.

The sweat lodge itself is enclosed in a cedar-panelled building equipped with washrooms and benches. Outside the building is a fire pit enclosed with a seating area and plants which are used as traditional Indigenous medicine during the ceremonies.

City blames bad weather for creating new sinkhole on Sturgeon Creek path

After a massive water-filled hole on a Sturgeon Creek active-transportation pathway took more than a year to fix, a new sinkhole has opened nearby.

In June 2023, the Free Press reported on a gaping depression stretching seven metres long, three metres wide and up to a metre deep that opened on a pathway leading to a playground on Amarynth Crescent near the Sturgeon Creek active-transportation route. The city finally made repairs in October 2024.

Now, about 12 metres away from that spot, a new crater has appeared.

The hole, about three metres long and 2.5 metres wide, has been blocked off using metal rods and plastic netting, but resident Philip Kaban said the opening is getting larger.

Judge decries ‘senseless acts’ during sentencing for killers in Berens River manslaughter

Two men have admitted their guilt in the beating death of a 45-year-old father in Berens River First Nation last winter.

Michael Oliver Franklin, 32, and Thomas Bryton Goosehead, 24, pleaded guilty to manslaughter Thursday in the Feb. 13, 2025 killing of Leslie Neil Mason.

“These types of senseless acts happen far too often in Berens River and every other small community in Manitoba, including here in Winnipeg,” Court of King’s Bench Justice Kenneth Champagne said.

The men had been charged with second-degree murder, but admitted to the lesser offence as part of a plea bargain struck between their defence lawyers and Crown prosecutor Thomas Boult, largely due to concerns with the strength of the case Boult developed after meeting with witnesses in Berens River.

NDP touts health-care gains, but critics question impact on ER wait times

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara doesn’t mince words when describing how bad things are in the province’s emergency departments and urgent-care centres.

“The wait times that we are seeing in Manitoba are unacceptable,” said Asagwara in an interview with the Free Press.

“I hear from families, I hear from providers, I hear from Manitobans who are concerned about the wait times that they’re seeing, that they’re experiencing, and those concerns are valid — I share those concerns.”

So what is the NDP, who promised voters nearly three years ago it had the answers to bring down wait times, doing about it?

Winnipeg’s postwar architecture well-documented by online archive

We live in a city rich with Chicago School high rises, mid-century modernism and much more. And, for the past three decades, Paul Clerkin has amassed arguably the most comprehensive archive of this architecture.