Winnipeg co-ops among models examined in film

We see theatre artist Debbie Patterson making her way toward the Old Grace Housing Co-operative’s entrance in her wheelchair, then settling inside for a steaming cup of tea. The co-op is her home.

“Well, I’ve always loved this neighbourhood and wanted to stay in this neighbourhood. I lived in a big, three-storey Wolseley house and then got MS and couldn’t do the stairs,” she says in a voiceover.

“Having a place I could move into that was completely accessible was just a godsend at a perfect time when I needed to stop living in my house, so I could stay in my neighbourhood and continue to be in a safe place.”

It’s one of the opening scenes of Meeting a Moment: The Art of Social Architecture, directed by Danielle Sturk and produced by Leslie Stafford, which appears on CBC Gem today and airs on CBC TV Saturday.

Heat catches Europe’s fashion industry unprepared as models face the sun in fur and wool

PARIS (AP) — The most coveted accessory at the Paris Fashion Week shows this week was not a bag, a sneaker or a watch. It was an ice pack.

As a historic heat wave gripped the French capital, fashion houses fought to keep guests cool with mist machines, chilled towels, parasols and iced Evian on silver platters.

It wasn’t enough. Historic venues sweltered, guests were packed in tight, air conditioning was absent or inadequate and water ran short — at one house, organizers weighed serving none at all, having found only plastic bottles to hand out.

That mattered because Paris Fashion Week is not a minor cultural event.

Greece bets on space technology to contain wildfires in a global first

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — In the searing Mediterranean summer, wildfires turn dangerous in minutes.

Greece has learned that at a terrible cost. In 2018, a blaze east of Athens moved with ferocious speed, killing more than 100 people. Five years later, a massive fire tore through a remote nature reserve; it was the largest wildfire ever recorded in the European Union.

Greece is looking to the heavens for help, with a dedicated satellite constellation that monitors for fires. It's a model for the continent as Europe races toward broader independence in space technology.

Four satellites, each smaller than a piece of carry-on luggage, were launched into low orbit in May. That made Greece the first nation in the world to integrate a dedicated satellite array into its national firefighting system.

National pride meets breathable mesh: A look at the design of World Cup uniforms

BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) — Heat. Moisture. National pride.

These were top of mind as Nike designed its uniform kits for this year’s World Cup, including for football powerhouses France and Brazil as well as the U.S. and Canada in their role as host nations.

In a tournament that has seen storm delays and temperatures hovering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) in some locations, the first step was to ensure players' performance and comfort.

Phil McCartney, chief innovation, design and product officer for Nike, said the company worked with athletes, coaches and football federations to understand how uniforms affect the game.

What to know about earthquake early warning systems

As earthquakes struck from California to Venezuela to Japan, millions of people received warnings on their mobile phones, providing critical seconds to seek protection.

Venezuela was struck with a pair of deadly earthquakes Wednesday evening and Thursday morning that brought significant shaking to the northern coast of Japan. Earlier in the week residents in the U.S. state of California experienced a moderate earthquake, and at the start of June, 37 people in the Philippines died in a quake near Mindanao.

Many nations have developed systems for alerting people seconds before shaking begins. Even in countries like Venezuela that do not have such systems, Google Android Earthquake Alerts can send warnings.

Here's what to know:

Data centres top Ottawa’s big power requests, placing pressure on local utility

Hydro Ottawa's CEO says the utility is under "extraordinary pressures" as energy-hungry data centres lead a historic surge in large-scale customers seeking to connect to the power grid.

Bryce Conrad says he expects by the end of the year total grid connection requests from large-scale projects in Ottawa will exceed the average power use of the entire city's homes and businesses.

As it stands, he says 34 large projects in the connection queue have cumulative demands equivalent to about 86 per cent of the utility's average load, or just over 1,000 MW.

About 60 per cent of that comes from data centres, the infrastructure backbone of the artificial intelligence boom.

Apple increases prices for Macs and iPads, blaming a shortage of memory chips

Apple on Thursday announced an increase in prices for Macs and iPads, citing a memory chip shortage brought on by the artificial intelligence boom.

The Cupertino, California-based company called the demand spike an “unprecedented challenge” for the consumer electronics industry.

“The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” the company said in a written statement.

The new, entry-level MacBook Neo will now cost $699, up from $599. The 512 gigabyte MacBook Air now costs $1,299, up from $1,099. The one terabyte MacBook Pro is $1,999, up from $1,699.

AI is helping gas stations collude to raise California fuel prices, lawsuit says

AI-powered software has allowed gas station operators across California to illegally collude and drive up prices at the pump, according to a federal lawsuit.

The proposed class action lawsuit, filed Monday, accuses gas station giants including Marathon and Circle K of violating California’s antitrust law through Kalibrate, a fuel-pricing software system used across the world. The plaintiffs describe Kalibrate as the “central nervous system for a conspiracy to extinguish retail price competition among gas stations.”

According to the lawsuit, Kalibrate helps “coordinate high prices” and even discourages its users from pricing their gas lower than competitors, saying that doing so would trigger a “downward spiral.”

“Kalibrate promises that if gas stations surrender their pricing decisions and competitively sensitive cost and volume data to Kalibrate Fuel Pricing, the software will enable them to avoid competing with other area stations and to charge higher prices to consumers,” the lawsuit said.

Hamilton data centre pause survives first council vote, exemption rejected

A proposed citywide moratorium on data centres in Hamilton survived its first test before city council on Wednesday, as local legislators rejected a bid to exempt smaller facilities.

Council voted 15-1 to advance the proposed moratorium, with a final vote expected at next month's council meeting.

The moratorium is framed as a chance for the city to develop guardrails around data centres powering the artificial intelligence boom.

The moratorium's sponsor, Coun. Nrinder Nann, said the plan would help ensure future data centre decisions prioritize public health, transparency and community-defined benefits over rapid industrial expansion.

AI is an energy and water hog, here’s what you can do to counter that

As the world tries to curb human-caused climate change and not run dry of water, every online query is increasing our environmental footprint and exacerbating the problem.

Parlour Coffee closes, clearing way for Passage

Two-and-a-half years after purchasing Parlour Coffee, Connor Vogt is closing the Exchange District business to make way for a new venture next door.

Tattoo artists beset by requests for unworkable AI pieces

As a professional tattooist with eight years of ink on her fingers, Justine Proulx is used to getting all sorts of requests from clients looking to decorate their bodies with memories, tributes and reminders. But over the past six months, the Winnipeg artist has noticed some troublesome trends.

Top developers are pivoting from chatbots to physical AI

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Computer scientist Louis Castricato was in his eighth year studying large language models — the artificial intelligence technology behind chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude — when he started to feel like he was hitting a dead end.

“We basically have passed the point of doing real fundamental LLM research," Castricato said. “Now it’s just applications.”

The researcher quit his doctoral studies at Brown University and started a new company, called Overworld. Its ambition is in its name: AI that can understand and navigate a world, not just words.

There's still plenty of money to be made from AI chatbots — investors are counting on it as they commit trillions of dollars to leading developers like Anthropic and OpenAI. But a growing number of AI entrepreneurs are dedicating themselves to what they see as the next frontier: “world models” that teach AI systems, and sometimes robots, how to react in a physical environment.

Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

BERLIN (AP) — A problem with a communications system forced Germany’s railway network to halt all trains late Tuesday, leaving passengers stranded across the country.

Trains were held at stations and would-be travelers stood in long lines at information desks as they tried to figure out how to get to their destinations.

The main national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, said shortly before 1 a.m. — nearly 2 1/2 hours after it first reported the outage — that the problem had been resolved and service was resuming “step by step.”

The company said there was a nationwide problem with the GSM-R digital communication system, which is used for internal communication on the railway network. It later said that the cause had been identified, but didn't specify what it was.

California intends to sue Trump administration over deal to end offshore wind project

California intends to sue the Trump administration over its deal to end an offshore wind project proposed off the state's central coast.

State officials said they are combating the administration's attacks on their offshore wind industry by sending a notice of their intention to sue to the Department of the Interior on Tuesday. Tuesday’s action is focused on the administration buying back the lease for Golden State Wind, a floating offshore wind project off California’s central coast.

California has made a major commitment to offshore wind because of its potential to generate vast amounts of clean electricity from strong, consistent winds off its coast. Its strategy calls for the state to develop 25 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2045, enough to power roughly 25 million homes and provide about 13% of the state’s electricity supply.

These energy and climate goals are now in jeopardy, and that's why California will fight vigorously, said California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild. He called the administration's strategy of buying back offshore wind leases “a strategic mistake of colossal proportions" that is especially stunning at a time when fossil fuel prices have been spiking due to the Iran war.

AI stock slump raises the question if investors are just taking profits or getting very nervous

Technology companies are spending big to incorporate artificial intelligence into their businesses and to build huge data centers. Investors who had jumped on the bandwagon appear to be having second thoughts.

Proponents of artificial intelligence see it as the next great revolution for the global economy. The revolution won't come cheap. Just four companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft — plan to spend up to $720 billion this year, primarily on AI data centers.

This week, investors are looking at the huge sums being spent and questioning whether AI can produce the profits and productivity necessary to make all the investment worth it. Critics have been talking about the possibility of a bubble in AI investment. On Monday, Amazon and Alphabet fell about 5%.

On Tuesday, several companies that make the chips needed for the data center buildup — Nvidia, Micron Technology, Broadcom and Lam Research — led the market lower.

40 mayors worldwide endorse a pact to shape data center development

Forty mayors from around the world have signed onto a pact announced Tuesday to try to shape how urban data centers are built and operated.

It's their vision for how urban data center development can be done sustainably — and not at the expense of their cities' natural resources, energy prices or climate targets. C40 Cities, an alliance of nearly 100 cities seeking to impact climate change, launched it during London Climate Action Week.

Many new data centers are coming to rural areas for cheap land. Experts at C40 say metropolitan areas are under tremendous pressure too, with about 1,700 data centers located in their network of cities so far. Development of data centers is expected to grow by over 40% in 50 of those cities.

C40 got involved because the mayors of Phoenix and Melbourne, Australia, came together over worries about data centers using a lot of their cities' electricity and water, and competing with housing developers for available land.

AI companies should release environmental impact, commit to clean energy, says UN chief

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday called on artificial intelligence companies to release information about the carbon pollution they create, along with the water and land used to power their operations.

While urging action in an address at London Climate Action Week, Guterres proposed the AI Environmental Transparency Initiative, arguing AI companies should measure and disclose the impact of their increasingly in-demand technology — impact which has been cited by opponents as reasons to curb the rapid growth of data centers. These companies have faced mounting pressure, both from governments and locally in areas with data centers that support AI, for increased transparency and more standardized reporting across the industry.

Guterres said AI companies should also commit to powering their facilities with electricity produced with renewable technologies, such as wind and solar, by 2030.

“No more hidden costs,” Guterres said at Europe’s largest independent climate conference. “No more shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it. It is time to come clean.”

AI chatbots hit the dating scene, becoming the lovelorn’s modern-day Cyrano

Marie Lansley recently started a new job in a new city while searching for a new partner. In her dating pursuits, the freshly minted San Franciscan said she’s been “trying everything”— including some help from artificial intelligence.

AI chatbots have become — for her and many others — de facto dating coaches and relationship experts.

Lansley, 36, consults AI chatbots for help in starting conversations, something she said she finds difficult on dating apps despite being comfortable doing so in person. Although she’s optimistic about the possibilities, she acknowledges the incongruency between the art of romance and the precision of technology.

“I am open to AI finding me the love of my life, but I’m also not fully convinced that it can,” Lansley said. “AI is great at making dating more efficient. But the chemistry — that’s always going to be analog.”

Ottawa tabs $21.6M for Sayisi Dene energy projects

A remote northern Manitoba community has solar panels stocked — and now, it’s creating the province’s first integrated renewable energy microgrid led by a First Nation.

Competition Bureau broadens probe into Sobeys for property control issue

GATINEAU - The Competition Bureau is widening its probe into Sobeys parent company Empire Co. Ltd. for its use of property controls across Canada.

The bureau previously received an initial court order in 2024 requiring the grocer to provide information focused on property controls in Halifax.

The competition watchdog said on Monday it had received a new Federal Court order to obtain company records, written information and oral testimony related to the probe.

The latest court order grants the bureau access to additional information at a national level, such as how the grocer negotiates property controls and their effects on competition.