Kinew stands by cabinet minister dogged by controversy

Premier Wab Kinew says he won’t remove a cabinet minister over a social-media post she shared that slammed American right-wing activist Charlie Kirk following his assassination on a university campus Wednesday.

Nahanni Fontaine, who recently had to apologize over her criticism that an ASL interpreter had shared a stage with her and blocked her view of the audience, will remain families minister, the premier said Friday.

“It would be too easy to show her the door,” Kinew said, adding he doesn’t believe in cancel culture. “People need to be brought along and shown… we need to be showing empathy and compassion to people even when we don’t agree with them.”

Kinew said he spoke to Fontaine earlier in the day and asked her to apologize after she shared another person’s post on Instagram one day earlier that said: “Charlie Kirk was a racist, xenophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, sexist, white nationalist mouthpiece who made millions of dollars inciting hatred in this country.”

Bewildered and ‘in horror,’ Toronto man fights fake news that he shot U.S. influencer Charlie Kirk

TORONTO - Michael Mallinson had never met Charlie Kirk, nor had he ever heard the name of the American right-wing commentator who was shot dead in broad daylight at a Utah college event on Wednesday.

But the retired Torontonian has done some research about him after his death.

"I gather that he appeals to young conservatives. I'm an old socialist. I guess that's the best way I could put it," Mallinson said in a phone interview.

They would never have come across each other, but a piece of viral online misinformation has tied Mallinson to Kirk's story. Now the former banker, 77, is fighting to make the truth understood: he is decidedly not the person who put a bullet in the controversial commentator's neck.

Federal government says emails, phone numbers accessed in cyberattack

OTTAWA - The federal government says individuals' email addresses and phone numbers associated with Canada Revenue Agency, Employment and Social Development Canada and Canada Border Services Agency accounts were accessed in a cyberattack.

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat says the government was alerted to the cyber incident on Aug. 17 by 2Keys Corporation, the provider of a multi-factor authentication application used for the accounts.

The government says 2Keys Corporation discovered the incident, promptly informed the government and launched an investigation, which is being conducted with external cybersecurity experts.

Treasury Board says a routine software update caused a "vulnerability" that allowed a malicious actor to access phone numbers associated with CRA and ESDC accounts, and email addresses associated with CBSA accounts, linked to people who used the authentication service between Aug. 3 and Aug. 15.

Building trust key as companies pivot to chatbots for customer service: experts

TORONTO - Mohammed Halabi has spent countless hours negotiating with customer service agents over the past 20 years.

Halabi is the director of MyBillsAreHigh.com, a company that finds savings on telecom and internet costs for both businesses and individuals. That means seeking out the best deals to fit clients' circumstances, plus taking the lead when problems arise requiring the attention of their provider.

These days, there's just one problem. He can't seem to get anyone on the phone.

"I've never seen customer service this bad," said Halabi.

Collective encourages BIPOC networking

It’s a warm weekday morning and Saintuary Café is filled with strangers chatting about their work and passion projects over lattes and croissants.

This has become a regular scene for the co-working café club hosted by the Value Able, a growing grassroots community designed to help BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of colour) creatives in Winnipeg meet and collaborate.

The idea started percolating when founders Star Tactay and Daezerae Gil met at a networking event in February.

Tactay — a marketing professional and software development student from the Philippines — had recently moved to the city from Texas and was looking to meet other people of colour working in creative fields. Gil, a Winnipeg-born photographer, realized she was looking for the same thing.

Attorneys general warn OpenAI and other tech companies to improve chatbot safety

The attorneys general of California and Delaware on Friday warned OpenAI they have “serious concerns” about the safety of its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, especially for children and teens.

The two state officials, who have unique powers to regulate nonprofits such as OpenAI, sent the letter to the company after a meeting with its legal team earlier this week in Wilmington, Delaware.

California AG Rob Bonta and Delaware AG Kathleen Jennings have spent months reviewing OpenAI's plans to restructure its business, with an eye on “ensuring rigorous and robust oversight of OpenAI’s safety mission.”

But they said they were concerned by “deeply troubling reports of dangerous interactions between" chatbots and their users, including the "heartbreaking death by suicide of one young Californian after he had prolonged interactions with an OpenAI chatbot, as well as a similarly disturbing murder-suicide in Connecticut. Whatever safeguards were in place did not work.”

The RCMP and TikTok

A trend on TikTok has Canadians “challenging” RCMP officers to fake foot pursuits.

Eight docs recruited to work in western Manitoba

Eight doctors from around the world have signed on to work in clinics across the Prairie Mountain Health region through a provincial program.

Six doctors have set up practice in Swan River, Neepawa, Roblin and Virden, while two physicians are scheduled to begin in Souris and Swan River in mid-September. All were recruited by the Medical Licensure Program for International Medical Graduates, which helps physicians gain Canadian citizenship or permanent residency in exchange for working in communities in desperate need of doctors.

The physicians are from Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, the Philippines and Bangladesh. In exchange for assisting foreign-trained doctors to become fully licensed to practise in Manitoba, they’ve agreed to practise in those communities for at least four years.

While the program has been used since 2001 to recruit doctors to the underserved Westman area , the local health authority has ramped up efforts in the past two years to improve the chance that internationally trained doctors establish roots in rural Manitoba. The hope is that they’ll stay more than four years.

Increasing restrictions could silence culture critics

It’s getting harder to see where reviews and other forms of cultural criticism fit in the current media ecosystem. Arts writing positions are being axed at outlets all over North America — but a landscape of all influencers and no critics means all promotion and no journalism.

The new ‘too normal’ — AI’s band plays on

AI does not produce new ideas; it rummages about on the internet and finds whatever is out there, neatly repackaging it for the unwitting (or dimwitted) consumer by an algorithm designed in secret for what we hope are good reasons.

Not just Big Bird: Things to know about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its funding cuts

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps pay for PBS, NPR, 1,500 local radio and television stations as well as programs like “Sesame Street” and “Finding Your Roots,” said Friday that it would close after the U.S. government withdrew funding.

The organization told employees that most staff positions will end with the fiscal year on Sept. 30. A small transition team will stay until January to finish any remaining work.

The private, nonprofit corporation was founded in 1968 shortly after Congress authorized its formation. It now ends nearly six decades of fueling the production of renowned educational programming, cultural content and emergency alerts about natural disasters.

Here's what to know:

Google loses appeal in antitrust battle with Fortnite maker

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld a jury verdict condemning Google's Android app store as an illegal monopoly, clearing the way for a federal judge to enforce a potentially disruptive shakeup that's designed to give consumers more choices.

The unanimous ruling issued Thursday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivers a double-barreled legal blow for Google, which has been waylaid in three separate antitrust trials that resulted in different pillars of its internet empire being declared as domineering scofflaws monopolies since late 2023.

The unsuccessful appeal represents a major victory for video game maker Epic Games, which launched a legal crusade targeting Google’s Play Store for Android apps and Apple’s iPhone app store nearly five years ago in an attempt to bypass exclusive payment processing systems that charged 15% to 30% commissions on in-app transactions.

The jury's December 2023 rebuke of Google's app store for Android-powered smartphones began a cascade of setbacks that includes monopoly judgements against the company's ubiquitous search engine last year and the technology underlying its digital ad network earlier this year.

Weekend Muslim conference attracts young adults from across Canada

Muslim youth from across Canada gathered in Winnipeg on the weekend for a conference, the first of its kind in the country.

About 60 young adults travelled here for the event, which was sponsored by the Islamic Social Services Association of Winnipeg, to discuss a variety of issues, including legal and civil rights when dealing with the police, gender diversity, finding allies in the fight against Islamophobia and dealing with trauma and mental-health concerns.

Association board member and conference moderator Jamie Carnegie said there was a discussion about understanding how the media reports about Islam, and how to find reliable sources of information online.

“Muslim youth, like other youth, have many sources of information today,” Carnegie said. “Our goal was to help them find trusted sources and to understand what is being reported.”

Musk’s xAI scrubs inappropriate posts after Grok chatbot makes antisemitic comments

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company said Wednesday that it's taking down “inappropriate posts" made by its Grok chatbot, which appeared to include antisemitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler.

Grok was developed by Musk’s xAI and pitched as alternative to “woke AI” interactions from rival chatbots like Google’s Gemini, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Musk said Friday that Grok has been improved significantly, and users “should notice a difference.”

Since then, Grok has shared several antisemitic posts, including the trope that Jews run Hollywood, and denied that such a stance could be described as Nazism.

Long-awaited Winnipeg Transit network overhaul goes live Sunday

Winnipeg’s bus network will undergo a massive one-day transformation on Sunday that alters virtually every route.

Gordon Bell students make history as first team from outside Quebec to win national finals at inter-school cooking competition

A group of local high schoolers are savouring the sweet taste of victory.

Earlier this month, five student chefs from Gordon Bell High School made history as the first team from outside Quebec to win the national finals of La Tablée des Chefs Canadian Culinary Competition, an inter-school cooking contest now in its 12th year.

“It’s a great honour,” says Matea Thiessen-Unger, who shares the win with her Grade 10 and 11 classmates Sebastian Salter, Avery Van Solkema, Yevhen Zinchenco and Cailyn Olshevski.

The competition is the grand finale of Kitchen Brigades, an extracurricular program designed by La Tablée des Chefs to foster an interest in cooking and healthy eating among secondary students across the country.

Humane society treats evacuees to free pet food, supplies

Evacuees preparing to return home alongside their four-legged companions were given some much-needed pet supplies on Monday.

Toys, leashes, blankets, and dog food were among the free items the Winnipeg Humane Society was giving out to those displaced from their homes. Dozens stopped by the Hurst Way building Monday to treat their furry friends.

“It’s absolutely amazing,” said Valerie Hershmiller, an evacuee from Bakers Narrows. “People don’t realize how expensive it is being out of your home, let alone feeding kids and feeding cats. The stress that has been on our pets alone has been crazy, so being able to have litter and food for them is awesome.”

Two years ago, Hershmiller, a teacher, discovered a fluffy kitten lying alone in a school playground. She couldn’t bear to leave the animal outside with no place else to go, so she took him home to her husband, two sons and cat, Minnie. The new feline was named Oliver.

Racing in her blood: Rookie rider knows she has ‘big shoes to fill’ as she follows in jockey dad’s footsteps

Ciera Pruitt had pictured the scene since she was a little girl running wild on the grounds of Assiniboia Downs — her backyard, really — while her parents were hard at work nearby. Back then, she was the wide-eyed Winnipeg kid peering over the paddock railing, watching the colourful parade of jockeys from faraway places like Bermuda, Venezuela and Mexico leading majestic thoroughbreds toward the track while the bugle call to the post played over the loudspeakers.

‘Elio’ is an intergalactic tale — but for Toronto’s Domee Shi, it hits close to home

TORONTO - For Domee Shi, making a movie about an introverted kid getting abducted by aliens felt oddly familiar.

Not because she’s had any close encounters, but because she remembers being a teenager longing to be taken away to a world where her weirdness was understood.

The Toronto native co-directs “Elio,” a Pixar animated sci-fi film about an 11-year-old orphan who yearns to be snatched by extraterrestrials to escape his loneliness — and gets his wish when an interplanetary organization mistakes him for Earth’s ambassador.

“He's this lonely artsy kid who just wants to belong somewhere. I definitely felt that way growing up,” says the Oscar-winning animator behind 2022’s coming-of-age Toronto-set hit “Turning Red.”

Graduates far from home ‘grateful’ for honour at school powwow

Grade 12 Tataskweyak Cree Nation student Jonah Wavey was among several wildfire evacuees honoured Monday during a special celebration of Indigenous graduates at the University of Winnipeg’s Duckworth Centre.

How the humble water gun became the symbol of Barcelona’s anti-tourism movement

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A group of tourists were sitting at an outdoor table in the Spanish city of Barcelona, trying to enjoy their drinks, when a woman raised a cheap plastic water gun and shot an arc of water at them.

Her weapon of choice — the cheap, squirt-squirt variety — is an increasingly common fixture at anti-tourism protests in the southern European country, where many locals fear that an overload of visitors is driving them from their cherished neighborhoods.

How did the humble water gun become a symbol of discontent?

From refreshing to revolutionary

Community groups join forces to help the hungry

A handful of community groups are coming together this week for a campaign to benefit hungry Manitobans.

The food drive in south Winnipeg kicks off Monday and runs until Saturday. People are invited to drop off donations of non-perishable food items at Align, a student housing building at 2537 Pembina Hwy.

All donations will go to Harvest Manitoba, the non-profit charitable organization committed to ensuring no one in the province goes hungry.

Participating in the food drive is a way for the Winnipeg Chinese Senior Association to turn its values into action, says Songyan Liu.

Your generosity can make a kid’s summer

In a few short weeks, children will be able to trade school books and assignments for the possibility of jumping in a kayak, getting on a horse, or racing down a zip line.

That means it’s also time to help needy families give their kids a camping experience they will never forget.

For the 45th summer, the annual Free Press Sunshine Fund is kicking off with the hope that thousands of generous readers will help children who deserve a break from their studies in an outing that normally would be out of reach financially for their families.

“The Free Press is again counting on our readers to help make the Sunshine Fund a reality for as many children in our province as possible,” Free Press editor Paul Samyn said.