Kinew threatens billion-dollar fines for tech giants ignoring social-media ban for youths

Manitoba may impose billion-dollar fines on tech companies that violate a proposed ban on social media and AI chatbots for youths under the age 16.

Ottawa outlines plans to tackle financial crime, ban crypto ATMs

OTTAWA - The federal government plans to ban cryptocurrency ATMs as part of a suite of measures in its spring economic statement targeting financial crimes.

The government says scammers use the ATMs to defraud victims, while criminals use them to convert the proceeds of crime.

There are currently just under 4,000 cryptocurrency ATMs in Canada — the most per capita in the world, finance officials speaking on background said. The document says Canadians will still be able to buy cryptocurrencies from "brick-and-mortar" businesses.

The financial update outlined other measures to tackle criminal use of businesses that provide services like currency exchanges and digital payments. They include new powers around ministerial directives, stricter rules on registration and more criminal record checks for those businesses.

Canada is getting a sovereign wealth fund. What does that mean and how do they work?

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the creation of the country's first-ever sovereign wealth fund on Monday, called the Canada Strong Fund.

Carney pitched the new fund as a way for Canadians to invest in nation-building projects in areas that include energy, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and technology.

Here's what you need to know about sovereign wealth funds and how they operate.

What is a sovereign wealth fund?

Antisemitism on the rise, becoming normalized, B’nai Brith warns

Canada is in the throes of a national antisemitism crisis, says B’nai Brith Canada.

The organization’s annual audit of antisemitic incidents reports 6,800 in 2025, 6,248 of which involved online hate.

That is a 9.3 per cent increase over 2024, when the total was 6,219, and it represents the highest total since 1995, said B’nai Brith, the country’s oldest human rights organization dedicated to eradicating racism, antisemitism and hatred.

The biggest spike in antisemitism occurred in 2023, when the number of incidents rose from 2,769 in 2022 to 5,791 following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

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."

Child advocates call for online harms bill covering AI chatbots, gaming

OTTAWA -

Ottawa can't afford to wait any longer to introduce new online harms legislation that covers AI chatbots and video games, children’s advocates and about a dozen kids told a press conference on Parliament Hill Monday.

They urged the government to move quickly to introduce its promised online harms bill.

"This is a David and Goliath battle — kids and parents up against a multi-billion dollar tech industry that is profiting off of harming our children," Sara Austin, founder and CEO of Children First Canada, told reporters.

Advocates praise move to ban social media use among youths

Child advocates are praising the Manitoba government for announcing its intention to ban the use of social media and artificial intelligence chatbots for youths.

Premier Wab Kinew told a crowd at a party event Saturday night the NDP government will move to restrict children from using social media accounts and artificial intelligence chatbots. The proposal is intended to protect kids from technology platforms that he says hurt their development.

Details on the plan are scant, like the age limit he is considering or how a ban would be enforced. He did not speak to reporters after his speech and was not available for comment Sunday.

Kinew’s director of communications, Amy Tuckett-McGimpsey, said the premier will likely speak more about the idea in the coming days.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ‘deeply sorry’ over Tumbler Ridge shooting where 8 were killed

The head of an artificial intelligence company that admitted it knew of the troubling behaviour of a woman before she killed eight and wounded dozens more in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., has apologized for not going to police.

A letter from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, shared Friday on B.C. Premier David Eby's social media, said that while he knows words can never be enough, he believes "an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreplaceable loss the community has suffered."

He said in the letter addressed to the community of Tumbler Ridge that the pain it has endured is unimaginable and he has thought about them often.

“I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June," his letter says.

‘We finished the foundation’: Northern Soccer League looks to build on first season

For those at the forefront of Canada's first women's professional soccer league, the goalposts are shifting heading into the second season.

Season one was all about launching the Northern Super League, said Diana Matheson, the league's founder and chief growth officer.

Now, on the cusp of season two, the focus shifts from making history to creating a legacy.

“From our perspective at the league and all the clubs, it just feels really, really stable," Matheson said.

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.

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.

Former minister Catherine McKenna blasts the heads of Canadian oil companies

MONTRÉAL - Former environment minister Catherine McKenna says the leaders of Canada's oil industry are figures close to American President Donald Trump who are "taking us for fools" and putting both the economy and environment at risk.

Canada's official greenhouse gas inventory was published last week. It showed that in 2024, oil and gas production was the only sector in the country to have increased its greenhouse gas emissions.

"In Canada, we expect, Canadians expect everyone to step up and do their parts. But instead, we have oil and gas, which is largely foreign-owned, largely U.S.-owned, who aren't doing their part. All they're doing is increasing our emissions and demanding subsidies," McKenna said in an interview while at Montreal's climate summit last week.

She adds that oil companies are "demanding that Canadian taxpayers pay the bill for cleaning up the pollution they cause and building pipelines they won’t risk their own money on."

AI content should be labelled, heritage committee says

OTTAWA - The government should require that content generated by artificial intelligence be clearly labelled, a House of Commons committee said in a new report.

The members of Parliament on the committee are calling for standardized labels for AI content that are visible and that the public can understand. They say the requirement should apply to all relevant sectors, including digital platforms and broadcasters.

This would "promote transparency, maintain public trust and preserve the integrity of Canada’s information and cultural ecosystem," the report said.

It called on the government to establish "a framework governing the systematic and easily identifiable labelling of content created with the assistance of artificial intelligence, including through the use of metadata, digital watermarks or other robust technical solutions."

U.S. leads spike in applications for Canadian citizenship by descent

OTTAWA - Interest in Canadian citizenship by descent among citizens in a handful of countries — especially the United States — surged after the federal government passed a new law clarifying the rules.

C-3, which took effect on Dec. 15, 2025, allows someone born outside Canada before that date to a Canadian parent who also was born outside Canada to file a citizenship claim. Anyone born or adopted on or after Dec. 15, 2025 can make a claim as long as the parent, who was also born or adopted abroad, spent at least three years in Canada before their child's birth or adoption.

The law was drafted and passed in response to a 2023 Ontario Superior Court order that found a law on citizenship by descent passed by Stephen Harper's government was unconstitutional.

That Harper-era law said Canadians who were born abroad could only pass down their citizenship if their children were born in Canada.

EPA may ease regulation of chemical plastic recycling, and environmentalists worry

The Environmental Protection Agency is reconsidering whether facilities that recycle plastic chemically should be held to the same strict air pollution standards as incinerators.

The possible change is alarming environmental advocates who say it would lead to more dangerous pollution spewing into communities, with fewer or no checks at the federal level. The plastics industry disputes that, saying it would clear up confusion while still controlling emissions.

The world is pumping millions of tons of plastic pollution into the environment every year. While dozens of countries and many environmental groups have urged caps on production, industry and several big oil-producing countries have resisted, arguing instead for improvements in reuse and recycling.

Chemical recycling uses heat or chemicals to break down plastics. The main method, a process known as pyrolysis, has long been regulated as incineration by the Clean Air Act. The EPA limits emissions from incinerators of nine air pollutants, including toxic particulates, heavy metals and dioxins.

Holocaust survivors, family members mark solemn day by remembering not to forget

Rob Berkowits carries a black and white photo in his wallet — of his father, Alex, and fellow prisoners in a Nazi Germany concentration camp — as a constant reminder the challenges in his life are small.

From chants on trams to a parliament rave, young Hungarians provided a soundtrack for Orbán’s defeat

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Many of the young Hungarians who came of age during Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power have never known life outside his political system. Yet it was they that were at the forefront of Sunday's earthquake election that ejected him from office.

As hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to celebrate the historic win by pro-European candidate Péter Magyar, music from some of Hungary's most popular — and most Orbán-critical — performers filled the air. Teenagers scaled Budapest’s iconic Chain Bridge and blasted revolutionary anthems by artists whose songs captured young people’s frustrations with the regime.

On the city’s trams, buses and subway cars, young people led chants and played AI-generated fan music dedicated to Magyar.

In front of Hungary's neo-Gothic parliament building, a group called “More Techno to Parliament!” celebrated Orbán's defeat with a rave.

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.

‘Desperately missed’ victims honoured as B.C. marks 10 years of toxic drug emergency

VICTORIA -

Paula Beardy said her grandson Sheldon Beardy was a good kid.

He would have turned 28 on Monday. But his mother died last year, and after attending her memorial service in August, Sheldon also died of a drug overdose.

Paula Beardy said Sheldon used to stay with her a lot and she misses his happy smile.

Liberals adopt policy to restrict kids from social media

MONTREAL - Federal Liberals voted in favour of setting 16 as the age of majority for Canadians to be able to use social media accounts.

Party grassroots passed a non-binding resolution Saturday morning for the restriction and to place the onus on social media companies to enforce it.

Quebec MP Rachel Bendayan, who presented the idea to her caucus and championed it at the convention, said prolonged social media use can be harmful to the mental health of young Canadians.

She said social media companies need to be more accountable and stop allowing young children to use technologies designed to be addictive.