New graphic images are rolling out on cigarette packs in Canada. Could more be done?

TORONTO - A baby swarmed by smoke. A toilet of bloody urine. A cancerous colon.

These are among the new series of 13 graphic images that are required to be printed on cigarette packages across Canada by Aug. 1.

This is the fourth set of warnings mandated by Health Canada since 2000, aiming to reduce tobacco use to less than 5 per cent by 2035.

According to the federal health agency’s latest projections, Canada appears on track to reach that goal. Tobacco use was down to an estimated 13 per cent in 2024, compared to 29 per cent in 2001. Approximately 300,000 Canadians who smoked in 2023 quit in 2024.

Landlord miffed after city orders cleanup of riverside homeless camp

A West Broadway landlord is angry the City of Winnipeg has ordered him to clear away a homeless encampment from his riverfront property or have the cleanup cost added to his property tax bill.

Marvin Sharp, CEO of Astroid Management Ltd., which manages the Pen-Eve Apartments at 35 Balmoral St., said the city is forcing private property owners to deal with a problem they didn’t create.

“This is kind of like the neighbours throwing their garbage over the fence, every single day, and the city’s saying, ‘You have to go clean this up, but we’re not going to go tell the neighbour to stop doing that,’” Sharp said. “What do you want me to do here? You’ve got a serious problem here. We’re not talking about someone throwing garbage on the ground. We’re talking about encampments.”

Sharp said he received a city compliance order dated July 10, which was viewed by the Free Press. It says a bylaw officer observed “an accumulation of garbage” on the property, including abandoned goods of manufacture, tents and unattended shopping carts.

Nearly one in four watercraft fail inspection during roadside blitz to prevent aquatic pests

More than 120 watercraft failed a roadside inspection over the weekend aimed at slowing the spread of aquatic invasive species, including zebra mussels.

Judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over pirated books used to train the Claude chatbot

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.

District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers.

About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment.

Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was "the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”

Court orders Alberta prison to take steps to protect inmates from extreme heat

OTTAWA - As the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal prepares to hear a separate case about extreme heat in prisons, the Federal Court has directed an Alberta prison to take steps to install air conditioning to protect inmates.

The court said Correctional Service Canada has failed to put an effective solution in place at the Edmonton Institution for Women's secure unit, despite complaints about extreme heat that go back two decades.

"The excessively high temperatures have caused inmates to suffer panic attacks, psychological distress, and sleep deprivation. It is a long-standing problem: CSC has known of design problems with the temperature regulation equipment in Secure since as early as 2012," Justice Meaghan Conroy wrote in the July 16 decision.

One affidavit from an inmate housed in 2018 in a corner cell nicknamed "the oven" said a maintenance worker recorded a temperature of over 40 C in her cell.

A whack-a-mole approach to a complex problem

The Winnipeg Police Service has produced a report that details the results of a recent 10-day crackdown on open drug use and trafficking. Unfortunately, and to the detriment of both the community and police service, they just won’t show it to anyone.

This week, a WPS spokeswoman confirmed no decision has been made “regarding reporting, future activities or the release of results” from the drug sweep. As the operation was ongoing, WPS did say that it “interacted” with more than 100 people and arrested 25, with most of those related to warrants and breaches of court orders, not open drug use or trafficking.

These very preliminary results prompted criticism that the WPS had failed to adequately collaborate with social service agencies that help the homeless and those suffering from addictions and mental health.

A detailed report on the results of the sweep, along with commentary from the police about lessons learned, is essential if police are to engage in this kind of initiative again. In fact, it would be hard to see how police could ever unleash a similar operation without some sort of accounting of the impacts — both good and bad — of the first effort.

Drug court helps break addiction’s bleak cycle

BRANDON — Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta often finds herself scanning the court docket to see who could be a candidate for the Westman drug treatment court.

“We have quite a revolving door in terms of substance abuse and addiction, criminal behaviour, incarceration and then the cycle repeats,” she said.

The drug treatment court aims to break that cycle.

“The best chance of long-term protection of the public is the rehabilitation of offenders, and at the end of the day, I think that’s what this is all about — trying to get down to those root causes of crime and hopefully, helping people break the cycle,” she said.

Manitoba chiefs behind renewed effort to criminalize residential school denialism

First Nations chiefs from across the country have unanimously passed an emergency resolution that calls on the federal government to criminalize residential school denialism as hate speech.

The resolution was adopted Tuesday at the Assembly of First Nations annual general assembly in Ottawa. It was introduced by David Monias, chief of Pimicikamak Cree Nation in Manitoba and seconded by Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee.

“We must honour the survivors and we must honour every child who never came home,” Monias said Wednesday. “We must also support every person who was left behind and those children who never returned home. We are left to mourn those children. They would have been our grandfathers today, our grandparents.”

The federal government estimates about 150,000 Indigenous children attended residential schools.

Alberta First Nation sues Ottawa over $5 treaty annuity, argues amount stuck in 1899

EDMONTON - A northern Alberta First Nation is suing the federal government to increase its annual treaty annuity payments.

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam says the $5 his members receive every year is an amount that's stuck in 1899, when Treaty 8 was signed.

The payments date back to the signing of treaties across the country more than a century ago and were meant to provide assistance to First Nations members.

Depending on the treaty, annuity payments made to First Nations members across Canada total either $4 or $5, and have never increased.

Chiefs call on feds to criminalize residential school denialism as hate speech

OTTAWA - First Nations chiefs say the federal government is enabling residential school denialism by failing to make it a crime.

The chiefs passed an emergency resolution at the Assembly of First Nations general meeting in Ottawa on Tuesday calling on the feds to criminalize residential school denialism as hate speech.

"Truth is not optional and reconciliation cannot exist without truth," said Chief David Monias of Pimicikamak Cree Nation.

"We must honour the survivors and we must honour every child who never came home."

Home residents turn to agency after operator lays off 70 staff who unionized

Residents of a Winnipeg retirement home have taken matters into their own hands after the majority of the facility’s home-care aides were laid off following their unionization.

A committee of residents have banded together to work with a private agency to staff Shaftesbury Park Retirement Residence after many of its existing aides complete their final shift on Monday.

“It is heartbreaking because there are a lot of vulnerable people here who are not capable of advocating for themselves,” said Joelle Robinson, who has lived at the home since 2023 after she suffered a brain aneurysm. “We’re trying very hard to make it so that our residents aren’t completely up the creek.”

Robinson, a retired lawyer, joined Terry Hopkinson and several other residents of the South Tuxedo home to create a committee and send out a request for proposal to eight companies that specialized in seniors care.

Canada’s Senate: A glimpse at the operations of the upper chamber

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Mark Carney made his first appointments to the Senate on Tuesday, naming four new senators to the upper chamber. They include Carney's principal secretary Tom Pitfield and Conservative MP Richard Martel, who will both fill seats from Quebec.

He also announced he is dropping the non-partisan criteria for appointments to the upper chamber, and plans to rejig the independent appointments advisory committee established by former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Those were just some of the changes Trudeau made to the Senate, which had been dogged by accusations of cronyism and spending scandals.

Here's a look at the role the Senate plays, and how the Senate has changed in the last 10 years.

Ottawa mum on joining legal case against Trump’s sanctioning of Canadian ICC judge

OTTAWA - Ottawa won't say whether it will intervene in support of a Winnipeg-born global judge who is asking a U.S. court to reverse sanctions ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, which have left her unable to use a credit card or most major online vendors.

Washington sanctioned International Criminal Court judge Kimberly Prost nearly a year ago, over her work on a case involving American troops in Afghanistan. Unlike France, Canada has never criticized that decision.

"We haven't said anything about that," said Sabine Nolke, a former senior Canadian diplomat whose career focused on international law.

"We do have fairly solid human rights credentials, but we can certainly stand (to be) speaking out more about them."

Apple files lawsuit accusing ChatGPT maker OpenAI of stealing trade secrets

Apple on Friday accused OpenAI of stealing trade secrets as it seeks to build its own hardware for ChatGPT, a major rupture in a partnership between the iPhone maker and the artificial intelligence company.

Apple said in the lawsuit filed in a California federal court that OpenAI encouraged Apple employees it was recruiting to share confidential information, even guiding how to avoid scrutiny when taking jobs at the other company.

“This case is about Apple’s former employees stealing Apple’s trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAI,” the filing says. “Apple brings this suit to put a stop to it.”

Two former Apple employees who now work for OpenAI are also named as defendants. One is Tang Tan, who helped design the iPhone, Apple Watch and iPod and is now OpenAI’s chief hardware officer. The other is Chang Liu, a former electrical engineer Apple says it entrusted with some of its most sensitive product development efforts before Liu left Apple to join OpenAI earlier this year.

Court rules confidentiality clause for air travel complaints violates Charter

An Ontario Superior Court judge has struck down a rule that blocks travellers from sharing the outcome of passenger complaints made to the country’s transport regulator.

The ruling Wednesday found that federal regulations barring travellers from disclosing the result of complaints on matters ranging from refunds to accessibility violate Canadians' Charter right to freedom of expression.

The Canadian Transportation Agency's complaint resolution process, in place since 2023, had prevented consumers and airlines from publicly disclosing such information unless both parties agreed to waive confidentiality.

Canada’s biggest airlines, including Air Canada, WestJet, Air Transat, Jazz Aviation and the industry group that represents them, had opposed the court challenge.

News outlets urge a judge to sanction OpenAI in a high-stakes AI copyright fight

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Times, the Daily News and other media outlets are asking a federal judge to impose sanctions on OpenAI, escalating a fight over artificial intelligence and copyright that could shape the future of a struggling news industry.

The newspapers allege the ChatGPT maker is hiding evidence important to what could be a landmark copyright infringement trial over how OpenAI and its business partner, Microsoft, built their AI technologies using millions of news articles. At issue is whether AI chatbots are unfairly competing as an information source, siphoning off web traffic without doing the journalistic work involved in gathering the news.

A filing Thursday in a Manhattan federal courthouse alleges OpenAI “chose obstruction” over releasing datasets and ChatGPT logs that could show how the AI system used copyrighted news content. The plaintiffs are asking the judge to penalize the company for "discovery misconduct” that could distort evidence, saying the recent deposition of an OpenAI employee contradicts the company's earlier claims.

New York Daily News attorney Steven Lieberman said OpenAI has been "making misrepresentations" for two years about its ability to search for copyrighted content in its AI training datasets and logs.

John Deere owners will get the right to repair their own equipment under a new FTC settlement

It looks like John Deere owners can soon feel free to fix their own machines.

The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from several states secured a right-to-repair settlement Wednesday with agriculture equipment giant Deere & Co. — commonly known as John Deere — that requires the company to let farmers and independent shops fix their own equipment.

The Illinois-based manufacturer has faced complaints for years for withholding the software needed for repairs and forcing customers to use authorized dealers instead of independent ones.

This marks the second right-to-repair settlement Deere has reached this year, following a separate $99 million class-action settlement with farmers in April. Though the class-action compensated consumers, the FTC's settlement instead requires Deere to make its repair services available to equipment owners and independent shops.

Winnipeg high school football coach subject of hazing investigation

Manitoba’s independent teacher commissioner is investigating the head coach of the Grant Park Pirates football program amid allegations of team hazing.

The AAAA varsity team is at the centre of a probe into allegations student-athletes who played for Doug Kovacs during the 2025-26 school year drew blood while carrying out a locker room ritual.

Multiple sources confirmed Kovacs was put on leave from Grant Park High School in the spring in response to a complaint about his coaching style.

“There’s a lot of different red flags here,” said one parent of a football player who was recently contacted about the case by the office of commissioner Noni Classen.

Work permits extended to 2027 for international grads

The federal government is offering a reprieve for international graduates who found work and settled in Manitoba, giving the province more time to process a backlog of provincial nominee applications.

Chief justice’s last act ‘revolutionary’ step forward

Weeks before being nominated to the Supreme Court of Canada, Manitoba Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal rendered one of the most remarkable decisions in this province’s history.

Anti-coal mining petition led by musician Corb Lund fails in Alberta

EDMONTON - A petition led by country musician Corb Lund to ban new coal mining on the eastern slopes of the Rockies has failed.

Alberta's election agency announced Friday that Lund's petition didn't gain enough verified signatures to move it forward.

Lund, in a statement, said it appears roughly 35,000 signatures were rejected by Elections Alberta, and he has "grave concerns" about the fairness of the process.

"We are simultaneously shocked by this outcome, yet, unfortunately, not surprised, given the continual government rule changes and roadblocks we have faced throughout this campaign," he said.