Indonesia lets Elon Musk’s Grok back online under tight supervision

Klein’s entrance adds spark to ho-hum mayoral race

Until this week, Winnipeg’s mayoral race looked less like a democratic contest and more like a coronation.

Dynacare strike could lead to lab test logjam

DOCTORS and health-care advocates are raising concerns about patient care if a Sept. 8 strike goes ahead at the private company that provides nearly all medical lab services in Manitoba.

There is no essential services agreement in place with Dynacare, so if its lab techs are off the job, patients who need blood tests and urinalysis will be directed to hospitals and public clinics for those services.

“There’s only so many of those workers and I’m sure that the public folks are bracing for big crunch of additional patients if the strike really goes ahead,” Noah Schulz of the Manitoba Health Coalition said Monday.

Dynacare serves 1.2 million Manitoba patients a year at 23 community lab locations.

Church-run event shows risks, difficult choices faced by those fleeing persecution

I recently went on a fictional journey when I participated in “Explore the Refugee Highway,” a choose-your-own-adventure-style game that was set up in Kildonan Park on Aug. 29 to give Winnipeggers a taste of the terror, risks, challenges and occasional breakthroughs faced by refugees.

Docudrama reveals lives of harem’s wilful women

A stable of admiring women centred on a domineering patriarch, a secretive world of sexual oppression — the connotations of the word “harem” are not especially positive or progressive.

But there are famous examples of women who navigated this coercive hierarchy not merely to survive but ultimately to command vast influence, some rising from slavery.

The Sultan’s Women — a docudrama written, produced and directed by Emmy- and Peabody-winning, Morden-born filmmaker David Rabinovitch which has recently become available on Tubi, among other platforms — depicts this world in the turbulent final years of the Ottoman Empire, whose collapse also ended the institution.

Told with a Game of Thrones-like relish for elite intrigues, the film opens in the 1870s, with liberal-minded sultan Murad V and his sprawling harem. Ultimately placed under “house arrest” for nearly three decades in Çırağan Palace in what was then called Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), Murad’s harem had women stronger in will, if not formal position, than the unstable, deposed sultan.

Designer building following making models of everyone from celebs to ordinary Winnipeggers

Kevin Takatch was getting groceries in Los Angeles when he stumbled into an art sale celebrating 25 years of Jackass.

The Winnipeg designer behind BeLove suddenly found himself surrounded by famous faces, carrying one of his own jackets and wondering who he could get to wear it.

Then he spotted comedian Eric André, who appears as himself in the reality stunt/prank franchise, and asked him to model the jacket.

“I knew I couldn’t (wimp) out, like I did with the first celebrity I saw,” says Takatch, who declined to give his age.

Officers, not technology, stop huge drug drop into Stony prison

Stony Mountain Institution officers intercepted $1.8 million worth of drugs and other banned items Sunday in one of the largest reported seizures in recent years at Manitoba’s only federal prison.

Jake Suelzle, president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers’ prairie region, said employees spotted a drone while it delivered packages containing contraband.

“What marks this one a little bit unique is the (Correctional Service of Canada) just invested a significant amount of money into a drone detector, and this drone detector sure showed its worth when it didn’t detect at all,” he said Tuesday. “No alarm was raised when this package was dropped.”

In a news release that offered limited details, the correctional service said the items, including THC concentrate, were found in packages thanks to the “vigilance” of employees.