Meta pauses teen access to AI characters

Gym, health pilot program rolls out as Manitoba children go back to school

There were tears and cheers on an elementary school playground in Rossmere as students arrived for the first day of classes Wednesday.

Seven-year-old Ethan Minski is among tens of thousands of Manitoba students who have officially started a new school year.

Before entering King Edward School, Minski said he was most looking forward to phys-ed class.

“Everybody loves gym. It’s just fun!” the Grade 2 student said.

Carney warns of tough times ahead in national address as retaliatory tariffs begin

OTTAWA - Canada's pivot away from the United States will "come at a cost" but the alternative would be far worse, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday.

Carney made the remarks in a video released just hours after his government made good on a promise to implement retaliatory tariffs on the United States. Those tariffs respond to American duties imposed last month by U.S. President Donald Trump, after the two countries could not come to an agreement to settle some outstanding trade irritants.

Carney spent much of the video laying out Canada's response to Trump's protectionist trade policies, including expanding trade with other countries and building more capacity domestically.

But he said it "won't be easy."

Meta pauses teen access to AI characters

Meta is halting teens' access to artificial intelligence characters, at least temporarily, the company said in a blog post Friday.

Meta Platforms Inc., which own Instagram and WhatsApp, said that starting in the “coming weeks,” teens will no longer be able to access AI characters “until the updated experience is ready”

This applies to anyone who gave Meta a birthday that makes them a minor, as well as “people who claim to be adults but who we suspect are teens based on our age prediction technology.”

The move comes the week before Meta — along with TikTok and Google's YouTube — is scheduled to stand trial in Los Angeles over its apps' harms to children.

Pointing fingers at Tories three years after election tiresome, accomplishes nothing

There is a point in every government’s life when blaming the previous government stops being an explanation and starts becoming an excuse.

For Manitoba’s NDP government, that point has arrived.

Justice Minister Matt Wiebe was asked last week about a grievance filed by Crown attorneys over excessive workloads and a government attempt to keep a report documenting those workloads out of an upcoming arbitration hearing.

Wiebe said he couldn’t discuss the arbitration case.

Grieving families, local leaders want review of Interlake intersection after teens die in crash

A two-vehicle crash that killed four teenage friends in the Interlake Sunday night prompted outpourings of grief in several communities and calls for safety improvements at the intersection, which was also the site of a death in July.

Recent high school graduates Maya Borsa and Chloe Vermette, both 18, were identified by their families as victims of the collision at Highway 8 and Provincial Road 229, just west of Winnipeg Beach.

“(Chloe) was a very bubbly, loving personality. Always giving, always caring. Her friends meant the world to her,” said her mother, Veronique Vermette, who struggled to comprehend the tragedy when she went to the scene Monday. “We sat in the rain for hours, and it blew my mind that four lives were taken.”

The teens’ parents are waiting for RCMP to provide more information about the cause of the crash. Chloe, who graduated from Windsor Park Collegiate in Winnipeg in July, was driving one of the vehicles, her mother said.

Councillors say Main Street Project scuttles other agency’s efforts to house homeless

A Winnipeg outreach agency that’s been largely shut out of government funding says it has found housing for more people in the last five months than Manitoba’s homeless strategy that began last year.