Cloudflare resolves outage that impacted thousands, ChatGPT, X and more

Culture minister’s pledge sends officials on hunt for money to fix Islamic centre after apparent hate crime

Government officials were left scrambling Friday to explain why the province is paying for repairs at a mosque recently targeted in a potential hate crime after a $1 million security enhancement fund was fully allocated in June.

On eve of Folklorama, Ghana pavilion scrambles to replace stolen outfits

Volunteers from Folklorama’s Ghana pavilion scrambled to replace cultural costumes for about 40 young dancers after the outfits were stolen in Winnipeg days before the annual festival begins.

Two plastic storage bins containing the costumes, to be worn by children and teenagers, were taken from the trunk of a parked car on Banning Street, near Notre Dame Avenue in the West End, likely late Wednesday or early Thursday.

“I felt sad that this has happened. I felt completely devastated for the mother who had them in her car,” said pavilion co-ordinator Abigail Larson. “The initial feeling of sadness changed to, ‘OK, how do we make this a positive?’”

The costumes belong to the Ghana Union of Manitoba Dancers, whose members have rehearsed for months for Folklorama, which begins Sunday.

Prepare to be … blutterbunged?

Are you not blutterbunged?

If Russell Crowe’s second-century gladiator character had uttered a 19th century equivalent of “Are you not entertained?” that fit the mood of today’s 21st century, that would be it.

Definitions first. Blutterbunged is an obscure regional dialect word from England that means everything from astonished to confounded to bemused or shocked into speechlessness. Its composition suggests something both more and less, namely blustering bloviation (that’s the more part) and empty words (that’s the empty part). These days we would more naturally punctuate our reaction to an event or statement with a profanity. But you get the drift.

Unearthed by lexicologist Susie Dent, it speaks volumes about our times that it fits now. That we need to reach back hundreds of years to find the right word to adequately capture a contemporary civic reaction to what the hell is going on in politics and the world today.

IG Wealth Management to sell longtime Portage Avenue HQ

The downtown IG Wealth Management building will soon be up for sale.

The Winnipeg-based financial services company is moving its headquarters after nearly 40 years at 447 Portage Ave., across from the former Hudson’s Bay flagship store.

By current timelines, staff will move into a newer downtown tower — 360 Main St. — in 2028.

Roughly 1,100 employees will make the transition, according to Nancy McCuaig, executive vice-president of IGM Financial, IG Wealth Management’s parent company.

Brandon laying groundwork for Arabian championship

BRANDON — It’s time to dish the dirt on what’s about to happen at Brandon’s Keystone Centre.

Hundreds of horses and hundreds more spectators are about to descend on the site for Canada’s National Arabian Championship Aug. 6 to 15, and before that happens, the staging surface has to be perfect.

“We have been working on this day in and day out,” said Devin Epp, sales manager in the Ag Centre at the Keystone Centre.

Since July 24, staff have been working on a 24-hour schedule to build the competition floor. Dirt was hauled into the arena and has since been worked into place with tractors and hand-pushed equipment.

Nemat’s novel chronicles grandmother’s harrowing life in Russia and Iran

Mistress of the Persian Boarding House is the most enjoyable book I have read in the more than 15 years since I began reviewing books for the Free Press.

Author Marina Nemat’s prose, inspired by her paternal grandmother’s life, flows smoothly, like a babbling brook down a mountain.

Nemat is an Iranian-born Canadian writer and human rights activist known for her bestselling memoirs Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed. Arrested at 16 for opposing Iran’s post-revolution regime, she endured torture and forced marriage in Evin Prison before emigrating to Canada in 1991.

Nemat’s grandmothers were both Russian, and she was brought up in a Russian Orthodox Christian family in Tehran. With their Iranian husbands, whom they had married before the Russian Revolution of 1917, both grandmothers fled from Russia to Iran as part of a massive wave of migration.