Your forecast
A mix of sun and cloud, with wind becoming northeast 20 km/h gusting to 40 early this afternoon. High 13 C, UV index 6 or high. Tonight, a rainfall warning is in effect for Winnipeg, with rain expected to begin around midnight and continue through Saturday afternoon. Total rainfall amounts of 50 to 60 mm.
What’s happening today
Billy-Ray Belcourt comes to town to launch his new fiction collection Coexistence: Stories, which explores the lives of characters on the Prairies and West Coast yearning for some sort of connection. Belcourt will connect for a chat with Winnipeg author katherena vermette. McNally Robinson, Grant Park location, 7 p.m.
Today’s must-read
Food Fare co-owner Munther Zeid wants to set the record straight about a recent attack at the Portage Avenue and Burnell Street store, in which five intruders wearing hoodies and medical masks, armed with bats and a baton, entered the West End store. They immediately confronted and shoved a male employee, but quickly zeroed in on a staff member wearing Food Fare’s signature red apron.
“They came after him mostly — the supervisor in charge,” Zeid said Wednesday, inviting the Free Press to review surveillance video on his phone of the May 14 attack that sent the supervisor and two other employees to hospital. Carol Sanders has the story.

Owner Munther Zeid checks the store’s security monitoring system at the Food Fare at 2295 Portage Ave. (Mike Sudoma / Free Press)
On the bright side
In a lush greenhouse high in the Alps, butterflies of various species and colours flutter freely while butterfly pupae are suspended in a structure as they grow into adult insects.
This is the Butterfly Forest in the tropical mountain greenhouse in Trento, Italy, a project by the Museo delle Scienze (MUSE), an Italian science museum. It’s modelled on Udzungwa Mountains, a mountain range and rainforest area in south-central Tanzania that’s one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. The Butterfly Forest features plant species endemic to the region, as well as birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates from different parts of the world, all inside 600 square metres of forest with cliffs, inclinations and a waterfall.
The Butterfly Forest was created this spring to create public awareness on some of the research that MUSE is doing in Udzungwa Mountains to study and protect the world’s biodiversity against threats such as deforestation and climate change. The Associated Press reports.

Morpho Helenor chrysalises, center, and others species of butterflies hang in the nursery at the greenhouse of the Museo delle Scienze (MUSE), a science museum in Trento, Italy. (Luca Bruno / The Associated Press files)
On this date
On May 23, 1953: The Winnipeg Free Press reported with the nomination deadline fast approaching, candidates for the Manitoba legislature numbered 158, including eight women; the newspaper noted only two women had served as MLAs in the province’s history. The timetable of events for the Queen’s June 2 coronation in England, including both GMT and Central times, was revealed. Read the rest of this day’s paper here. Search our archives for more here.

Today’s front page
Get the full story: Read today’s e-edition of the Free Press.

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