Funding to boost early childhood educators’ pay helps some, not others, longtime workers in field lament

Although the federal and provincial governments are boosting early childhood educator wages by more than $14 million this year, some who’ve been working in the field a long time are feeling somewhat overlooked.

West Kildonan 7-Eleven latest to close in city; crime the issue, area councillor says

Crime is again being blamed as another Winnipeg 7-Eleven convenience store has been shut down, adding to a growing list of closures across the city.

Lots of accolades, little details in Kinew’s proposed social media ban

Premier Wab Kinew made national news headlines on the weekend when he promised to institute a ban on social media use by youth. Although Ottawa and several other provinces have promised similar efforts, the industrious Manitoba premier beat them to the punch and the accolades.

Manitoba education minister says social media ban could start in schools

WINNIPEG - Manitoba could turn to classrooms as the first place to ban children from using social media and artificial intelligence chatbots, and one young advocate is urging the province to work with those it's aiming to protect.

Tracy Schmidt, the province's education minister, says Manitobans can expect to see the ban's first phase rolled out in schools, likening it to when the government first banned cellphones in classrooms in 2024.

"This is very early days. A step like this is going to certainly take legislative and regulatory processes," Schmidt said at an unrelated event Monday.

"But I know that something we're talking about right away is how we can roll this out in schools as soon as possible."

Prime Minister Mark Carney announces Canada’s 1st sovereign wealth fund

OTTAWA -

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the country's first national sovereign wealth fund on Monday, pitching it as a way for Canadians to invest in nation-building projects.

Carney said the Canada Strong Fund will invest in major Canadian industrial projects in areas such as energy, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and technology.

The prime minister said the federal government will put up funds starting at $25 billion to invest alongside private investors. He said individual Canadians can also put money into the fund and suggested it would be similar to purchasing a government bond, where the initial investment is protected.

Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman head to court in high-stakes showdown over AI

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Technology tycoons Elon Musk and Sam Altman are poised to face off in a high-stakes trial revolving around the alleged betrayal, deceit and unbridled ambition that blurred the bickering billionaires' once-shared vision for the development of artificial intelligence.

The trial, which started Monday with jury selection, centers on the 2015 birth of ChatGPT maker OpenAI as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk before evolving into a capitalistic venture now valued at $852 billion.

The trial's outcome could sway the balance of power in AI — breakthrough technology that is increasingly being feared as a potential job killer and an existential threat to humanity's survival.

Those perceived risks are among the reasons that Musk, the world's richest person, cites for filing an August 2024 lawsuit that will now be decided by a jury and U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California.

Court rules against Manitoba First Nation in barge battle with Crown corporation

A Manitoba judge has dismissed a request from Poplar River First Nation asking a federal Crown corporation be ordered to continue operating a barge on Lake Winnipeg, ruling the Court of King’s Bench does not have jurisdiction in the matter.

The federal government has been looking to divest itself of the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corp., which held a monopoly on fish marketing and sales in the country upon its creation in 1969. It has since lost economic power as provinces, including Manitoba, have opted out.

A government-appointed advisory council, established in 2018, recommended several years ago that regional fishing groups and processors, or an Indigenous economic development corporation, take the reins as a private, user-owned operation.

Poplar River is concerned the divestment will end the community’s use of the MV Poplar River barge, owned by the Crown corporation. The remote First Nation on the east shore of Lake Winnipeg relies on the barge to drive its economy through fishing.

Show your local independent bookstore some love

For avid readers and independent booksellers, Saturday might feel a bit like Christmas.

Winnipeg to host three-day World Indigenous Business Forum in late October, delegates can expect ‘Manitoba experience’

After playing host to the World Indigenous Business Forum around the world, founder Rosa Walker is bringing the annual conference to her home city for the first time.

Winnipeg will host this year’s event Oct. 26-28. The conference will bring together Indigenous entrepreneurs, leaders, innovators and allies from across the globe to share knowledge, build relationships and explore opportunities for economic growth and collaboration.

Since launching the conference in 2010 in New York City, Walker has held the event in places such as Namibia, Guatemala and New Zealand. This year marks the third time a Canadian city has hosted.

Indigenous Leadership Development Institute, Inc., Walker’s non-profit company, is hosting the conference in collaboration with Winnipeg Economic Development & Tourism.

Meta slashes 8,000 jobs, or 10% of its workforce, as Microsoft offers buyouts

Meta is laying off about 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, the company said Thursday as it continues to ramp up spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and highly paid AI-expert hires.

The company said it was making the cuts for the sake of efficiency and to allow new investments in parts of its business, as first reported by Bloomberg, which also said the company will leave about 6,000 jobs unfilled.

Also Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its U.S. employees.

The software giant plans to make the offers in early May to about 8,750 people, or 7% of its U.S. workforce, according to two people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

City failed to read the room before ditching Sals

If ever there were a moment to rethink how governments award contracts, this would be it.

Manitoba crypto companies say provincial plans would put them out of business

WINNIPEG - Manitoba's plan to charge cryptocurrency operations higher electricity rates and curtail power at peak times will drive businesses under, officials with two companies told a legislature committee.

"If this goes through, our business goes bankrupt and a lot of families will be impacted," Guildo Theriault, co-founder and chief executive officer of Gator Mining, told a committee hearing Wednesday night.

The government has introduced two bills in the legislature that are aimed at controlling the growing demand on Crown-owned Manitoba Hydro's electrical grid.

One bill would charge cryptocurrency operations and data centres up to 100 per cent higher rates for electricity. The other would allow Manitoba Hydro to temporarily reduce power to cryptocurrency operators at peak times in order to ensure stability of the grid.

High fuel prices driving up shipping costs for northern grocers

Whether it's Florida oranges, Colombian coffee or even homegrown items from another province, food has often travelled a long way before it reaches grocery stores in Canada.

The supply chain gets even longer for communities in the Far North.

Typically, groceries are loaded onto a truck and taken to a launch point in cities like Ottawa or Winnipeg. They're then flown, or shipped by sea, to finally reach the shelves of remote northern grocery stores.

It's an expensive journey. By the time groceries reach northern communities, the added transport costs mean items are priced significantly higher than what most Canadians pay at the grocery store — and even more for fresh and perishable produce.

After facing the death of its dominant newspaper, Pittsburgh’s media has a surprising turnaround

PITTSBURGH (AP) — In the space of a couple of weeks this spring, Pittsburgh media has lived through a near-death experience and a resurrection.

Owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week announced the newspaper's sale to a nonprofit foundation that said it was committed to keeping it open. A news outlet that predates the U.S. Constitution was due to close on May 3, which would have made the Steel City the nation's largest community without a city-based paper.

Weeks earlier, the alternative Pittsburgh City Paper, whose staff learned on New Year's Day that it was closing after 34 years, roared back to life under new ownership.

They were rare positive developments for a local news industry that has seen its share of the opposite over the past two decades — newsrooms shuttered or thinned out, journalists thrown out of work, consumers drifting away. No one is pretending that a true turnaround will be easy in Pittsburgh. One thing that may help is that the city faced a news abyss and was forced to prepare for it.

Boeing commits $36M for Winnipeg projects

Canada’s next Air Force planes will be built with the help of a burgeoning workforce: robots.

Dozens protest outside legislature over expiring federal work permits

For three days, Harpreet Singh Sandhu has stood outside the Manitoba Legislative Building, calling for an extension of soon-to-expire federal work permits.

Gatorade, inventor of the sports drink, is getting a rebrand targeting non-athletes

Sixty years after it invented sports drinks, Gatorade is making a surprising pivot: It’s no longer focusing primarily on athletes.

PepsiCo, Gatorade’s parent company, said Thursday that the brand wants to broaden its reach to non-athletes who are looking for ways to hydrate, whether they’re on a long flight, going for a walk or nursing a hangover. New packaging highlights the specific ways Gatorade’s various drinks and powders work and the research behind them.

The change reflects U.S. consumers’ booming interest in beverages with perceived health benefits. Jack Doggett, a food and drink analyst with the consulting firm Mintel, said his research indicates 60% of consumers who buy sports drinks aren’t athletes but want the functional ingredients those drinks provide, like electrolytes for hydration and carbohydrates for energy.

“People are using these drinks more for wellness and daily maintenance,” Doggett said. “It’s easy to say that the wellness consumer is the young consumer, but older generations are also drinking these drinks for hydration.”

AI-rendered Val Kilmer debuts in ‘As Deep as the Grave’ trailer

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The filmmakers behind “As Deep as the Grave,” the indie film that is using an artificial intelligence-rendered version of Val Kilmer in a prominent role, debuted a first look at the recreated actor Wednesday at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

“Don’t fear the dead and don’t fear me,” Kilmer’s character, Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, says at the end of the trailer.

The actor died last year at 65, of pneumonia. The use of generative AI to recreate Kilmer for the historical drama based on archaeologists Ann and Earl Morris became a hot button topic when the filmmakers announced it last month. The trailer shows Kilmer’s character at various ages.

Writer-director Coerte Voorhees, along with his brother John, spoke on a panel Wednesday about the controversial decision to use technology to create a performance from a deceased actor and explained why they feel they've done it ethically by working with Kilmer's children and the actors union. Coerte Voorhees stopped short of calling it a Val Kilmer performance, however.

Tesla leader believes Shanghai factory operations will play a role in robot mass production

SHANGHAI (AP) — A Tesla Inc. leader said Tuesday he believes its Shanghai factory operations will help resolve the challenges in achieving mass production of the company's humanoid robots as the U.S. electric vehicle giant pivots to robotics.

Wang Hao, Tesla's vice president, said the Shanghai facilities, like other Tesla factories, will contribute after the company enters an era of robots.

Wang, who also serves as president of Tesla China, told reporters on a government-organized tour of one of its Shanghai factories that CEO Elon Musk once noted having production at scale is a critical challenge in manufacturing humanoid robots.

Wang said he believes the Shanghai manufacturing arm “is a golden key to solving this challenge," but did not specify how the operation will support the company's robotic business.

Northern trade corridor top of mind as Manitoba premier plans meeting with PM

WINNIPEG - Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew is planning to go to Ottawa next week for a meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Kinew says it's part of a plan the two men have to meet roughly every three months, primarily to discuss the possibility of a northern trade corridor through the Port of Churchill on Hudson Bay.

The project recently made a list of projects being considered as “transformative” by the federal government.

Studies are underway to gauge private-sector interest and examine the use of icebreakers to extend the port's short shipping season.

Rent control killing jobs: landlords

Companies are laying off staff and pausing major investments ahead of changes to Manitoba’s rental market.

One Manitoba company that works primarily on apartment buildings has had four projects put on hold and had to lay off roughly a dozen staff.

“That’s been a common theme with my peers… They’re all having to do the same,” said Con-Restor Technologies owner Stephane Phaneuf.

The Manitoba government plans to change how rental property managers can apply for above-guideline increases this spring. If implemented, landlords won’t recoup renovation costs through rent as quickly.