A mop, a broom and a calmer mind. Why some find mental health benefits in everyday tasks

NEW YORK (AP) — It's spring cleaning season, and for some people that can mean drudgery or anxiety.

But experts from Zen monks to psychologists say there are mental health benefits to be found in such manual chores as sweeping, mopping and clearing away clutter. These tasks can encourage mindfulness or permit the mind to wander, all while producing a concrete sense of achievement in accomplishing the basic tasks of daily life.

As one famous Zen saying goes:

“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

A new Swatch model is introduced, and a case study in overexcited ‘drop culture’ plays out

LONDON (AP) — In Paris, police deployed tear gas. In Milan, Italy, a fistfight erupted. In London, Singapore and New York, all-night queues snaked from the doors of Swatch stores — the latest examples of status-symbol “drop culture” to flash across the globe when status symbols and resale value collide.

The company at the center of it all, Swatch, no stranger to over-the-top retail outbreaks, said it was time to chill. The Swiss watchmaker said Monday that there's no shortage of its Royal Pop pocket watch, a collaboration with Audemars Piguet's luxury timepieces.

All for a "bioceramic" timekeeper that retails for around $400 — but perhaps more to the point, resells for thousands of dollars. By Monday, the candy-colored flex objects proliferated on eBay, with one boasting: “IN HAND!!! Swatch x AP Royal Pop,” for 3,055.58 British pounds ($4,092.31) “or Best Offer.”

It was the latest eruption in a generation-long trail of consumerist frenzy — both online and in the physical world — that has touched companies from Nike to Walmart to Apple as human beings race, sometimes frantically, to keep pace with buying trends and the potential for resale.

Coming up roses: City gardeners put ‘petal’ to the metal every spring to help Winnipeg blossom

They get little recognition, but the work they do every summer is admired by thousands across Winnipeg.

As the overnight frost clears for the season, flower beds and pots across the city will be filled and refreshed. Behind the effort is a team of 40 gardeners, injecting splashes of purple, gold, yellow and red into the cityscape.

David Domke, the city’s manager of parks and open space, said like the gardens they tend to, the team of green thumbs is diverse.

“It’s really a mixture of experienced and inexperienced people. A lot of the time, we’ve got some pretty serious gardeners,” he said. “We get them all over the place really, but they all have one thing in common; and that’s a real love of plants.”

Alain Boucher: insuffler l’espoir au coeur du traitement

Pour Alain Boucher, rien n’est plus essentiel à la guérison qu’un grand sourire et un cœur léger. Au cours des six dernières années comme bénévole chez Action Cancer Manitoba, il a mis cette philosophie en pratique. Et avec beaucoup de succès!

Au moins deux fois par semaine, il apporte ce sourire, son attitude positive, sa sensibilité et sa capacité de bien connecter à travers le dialogue avec les clients de l’organisme.

Il affirme que c’est, avant tout, son engagement à reconnaître l’humanité de chacun de ses clients qui le rend fier du travail qu’il accomplit.

“Apporter une touche humaine à leur situation, je vois que ça fait une énorme différence. Puis ça, c’est bien la meilleure récompense. Pas besoin de salaire pour ça,” dit-il en souriant.

$61-M investment in high-speed Internet planned for northern First Nations

More homes on remote Manitoba First Nations will have access to high-speed Internet that most Canadians take for granted thanks to $61 million in new federal funding.

“Your communities have been living way too long without internet,” federal Northern and Arctic Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand told a gathering at Wasagamack Anisininew Nation Thursday. The MP for northern Manitoba said the four projects will deliver modern, reliable internet to 2,309 households.

“This really is a public safety issue and an equity issue,” Chartrand said in the community 600 kilometres north of Winnipeg that’s accessible by air, water and winter road.

“The lack of broadband has been a public safety failure. When families can’t call for help or nurses can’t access files or lives are at risk when you’re travelling roads without phone service, without internet,” she said.

Moose Hide Campaign against gender-based violence starts national conversations

This week marked the 15th annual Indigenous-led Moose Hide Campaign aimed at stopping gender-based violence.

While the campaign is recognized by official observances in British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, this was the first time the movement went national, including a launch in front of a large crowd in Toronto and an online audience of 150,000.

Full disclosure: I was one of the speakers.

Regardless of my participation, the campaign has become one of the most important Indigenous-led movements in Canada – as well-known as Orange Shirt Day.

Province has to untie Winnipeg’s hands in fight against vacant, boarded-up properties

Mayor Scott Gillingham deserves credit for at least trying to tackle one of Winnipeg’s most stubborn urban problems: derelict, boarded-up houses that sit vacant for years, rot into neighbourhood eyesores and too often become fire traps.

Supreme Court recognizes intimate partner violence as a legal basis for civil damages

OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized intimate partner violence as a distinct legal basis for pursuing civil damages.

The top court's ruling Friday came in the case of a woman who was subjected to physical and emotional abuse by her husband during a 16-year marriage.

"Intimate partner violence is a social ill and a deep affront to one's dignity," Justice Nicholas Kasirer wrote on behalf of a majority of the court.

The court said the torts of assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress — existing legal avenues for seeking financial damages — fail to remedy the specific harms to dignity, autonomy and equality caused by intimate partner violence.

City working to reduce number of vacant buildings but can do more, mayor says

After several blazes ripped through vacant homes earlier this week, Winnipeg’s mayor is highlighting efforts to seize dozens of empty properties and reduce that risk.

The city has started the process to seize 48 properties through a “taking title without compensation process” since mid-December.

That’s when city council called on staff to use the process more often.

“I think there’s more we can do, and I want to see us use this tool of taking title more frequently,” said Mayor Scott Gillingham.

Kinew says watchdog could enforce proposed social media ban

Premier Wab Kinew floated the possibility of using a regulator or commissioner to enforce his proposed ban on social media and artificial intelligence chatbot use for kids.

Saskatchewan seeding delayed by cold temperatures, wet soil but farmers undeterred

When you ask Brett Halstead what challenges he expects to see with seeding at his farm in Saskatchewan, his answer is simple.

"Everything."

Seeding in Saskatchewan has been delayed because of cold temperatures and stubborn spring snow, particularly in the north and east of the province.

On top of the common issue of moisture, farmers in Canada's breadbasket are dealing with war-driven commodity pricing.

A Florida lawsuit and AI’s complicity in killing

Readers following the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., will know that Open AI’s CEO, Sam Altman, has apologized for not notifying police about corporate concerns raised internally about ChatGPT’s chatbot interactions with the killer before the attack.

Some Japanese snack packages are turning black-and-white as Iran war depletes ink supply

TOKYO (AP) — The packaging on some snacks in Japan is turning a somber black-and-white, as the war in Iran disrupts the supply of an ingredient used in colored ink.

Tokyo-based Calbee Inc., which makes potato chips and cereal, said what’s inside remains the same. Calbee's popular snacks are available in Japan's ubiquitous convenience stores and shipped to the United States, China and Australia.

“This measure is intended to help maintain a stable supply of products,” it said in a statement this week.

The change on 14 products in its lineup will start May 25, limiting ink colors to just two, the company said, noting it was necessary to respond flexibly to changing geopolitical conditions.

Health officials working to control hepatitis A outbreak in province

Public health officials are battling a hepatitis A outbreak in Manitoba not seen in decades.

Canada well positioned to face food inflation risks from fertilizer shortages: report

TORONTO - As shipping constraints in the Middle East disrupt global fertilizer supply and drive up prices, a new TD report says Canada is better positioned to face any inflationary pressures on its food production — at least in the short run.

Canada's fertilizer imports from the Gulf region are less than five per cent, limiting its exposure to the ongoing war in Iran. That's lower than Mexico and the United States, which import roughly 30-to-40 per cent of their nitrogen-rich urea from that region.

While high global oil prices have been in the spotlight since the effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the war in Iran has choked more than just oil supply.

Other essential commodities, such as fertilizers and aluminum, are also facing shortages and higher prices as tanker traffic remains halted. Roughly one-third of global seaborne fertilizer shipments of nitrogen and phosphate products pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the TD report. Demand for replacement fertilizer from alternative providers has gone up, raising prices globally.

MPs amend bill criminalizing sexual deepfakes to include ‘nearly nude’ images

OTTAWA - A House of Commons committee has amended a proposed bill that would criminalize sexual deepfakes to ensure it covers "nearly nude" images.

The change to Bill C-16 comes after experts warned the original version of the bill likely would not cover many of the images created by Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot which proliferated on his X platform at the beginning of this year.

The original version of the bill would have criminalized the non-consensual sharing of images which show the subject nude, exposing their sexual organs or engaged in explicit sexual activity. The images created by Grok — such as edits of photos of women to depict them wearing see-through bikinis — may not meet that standard.

MPs on the justice committee voted in favour of amendments put forward by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton to change the wording of the legislation to address images in which the subject is nude or "nearly nude."

The barista is human but an AI agent runs this experimental Swedish cafe

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The coffee might be poured by a human hand, but behind the counter something far less traditional is calling the shots at an experimental cafe in Stockholm.

San Francisco-based startup Andon Labs has put an artificial intelligence agent nicknamed “Mona” in charge at the eponymous Andon Café in the Swedish capital. While human baristas still brew the coffee and serve the orders, the AI agent — powered by Google’s Gemini — oversees almost every other aspect of the business, from hiring staff to managing inventory.

It is not clear how long the experiment will last, but the AI agent appears to be struggling to turn a profit in Stockholm’s competitive coffee trade. The cafe has made more than $5,700 in sales since it opened in mid-April, but less than $5,000 remains from its original budget of $21,000-plus. Much of the cash was spent on one-time setup costs, and the hope is that it eventually levels out and makes money.

Many cafe patrons have found it amusing to visit a business that's run by AI. Customers can pick up a telephone inside the cafe and ask the agent questions.

Health advice is all over social media. Here’s how to vet claims

Health and wellness advice is available in abundance on social media — from trendy to informative to straight-up disinformation — and you're far from alone in seeing it.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults — and around half of those under 50 — get health information from social media or podcasts.

Researchers also looked at the social media profiles of 6,828 health and wellness influencers with at least 100,000 followers. Only about 4 in 10 list a background as a health professional. About one-third called themselves coaches, about 3 in 10 described themselves as entrepreneurs and about 1 in 10 cited their own life experience, like being a parent.

Despite the wide range of expertise, about half of people who get health and wellness information from influencers said the influencers help them better understand their own health, while about one-third said it hasn't made much difference. About 1 in 10 said it made them more confused.

New craft exhibition gives artists licence to lighten up

Textile artist and Manitoba Craft Council program co-ordinator Katrina Craig had a simple brief for the artists taking part in her curatorial debut, Serious Play, at C2 Centre for Craft: each person was asked to investigate the radical potential of play when making pieces for the show.

The four local interdisciplinary artists — Charlotte Sigurdson, Candace Neumann, Maureen Winnicki Lyons and Miriam Delos Santos — took her playful instructions seriously.

“Culturally, we think of play as frivolous or irrelevant. It’s a low priority,” Craig, 35, says. “But I think of play as an essential part of creating new things and of problem-solving. I’ve found that when I lean into that not-so-serious side of myself, good things tend to come about.”

The theme is especially pertinent in the field of craft, which can often be more intensely focused on rigorous skill-building and technical mastery. Sometimes playfulness can fall to the wayside in the pursuit of excellence