Pioneering female NFL official sues league over her treatment and firing

NEW YORK (AP) — In a new lawsuit, one of the first three women to officiate an NFL game describes her three years at the pinnacle of her profession as a descent into the grip of a sexist institution unable to treat a woman as an equal.

Robin DeLorenzo cited gender-based scrutiny, humiliation and open hostility among the indignities she suffered from 2022 to 2025 as a league official.

The lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, filed Friday, sought reinstatement along with unspecified damages.

Brian McCarthy, an NFL spokesperson, said in an email that DeLorenzo was terminated after three seasons of documented underperformance.

The hazards of cherry blossom crowds prompt warnings from police in Richmond, B.C.

RICHMOND - Joanna Yue, dressed in a billowing pink, layer-cake dress, struggled to capture a sense of movement among the clouds of cherry blossoms that have transformed Larry Berg Flight Path Park on the main road to Vancouver International Airport.

Posing for selfies in front of her phone mounted on a tripod, Yue, from Calgary, struck various poses, flouncing in her sparkly dress. But she knew to keep her hands off the blossoms.

"I don't know if you noticed, but as I was swinging, I'm the one moving, not the tree," said Yue, a former Vancouver resident who was in town to visit family.

The park, directly in line with the airport's south runway, is a favourite with plane spotters, but in recent days it has been taken over by crowds of cherry blossom fanciers.

Manitoba Hydro reduces remote work; decision raises fears among employees at other Crown corporations

Manitoba Hydro’s decision to cut remote workdays from two to one per week for eligible employees is causing concern for other public-sector workers who worry hybrid arrangements will be eroded.

Brandon resident‘s volunteer journey grounded in giving kids sport opportunities

Brandon resident Scott Kirk’s volunteering journey with Sport Manitoba started in 2019 when he applied to serve as mission staff for the Western Canada Summer Games.

Since then Kirk has volunteered in multiple provincial and national competitions in summer and winter, taking on various essential roles.

“Mission staff are the conduit between host society and the teams,” he explains. “We make sure the games run as smoothly as they can. Our goal is to make sure coaches, managers and athletes can focus on the sport while we deal with everything else that may pop up along the way.”

“Everything else” ranges from logistics to problem-solving. Last summer Kirk found himself co-ordinating meals when scheduling conflicts left athletes without their lunches.

Five Manitoba bowlers named to Team Canada, including back-to-back Marinelli champ Naylor-McCall

In the final frame of her semifinal match, bowler Marissa Naylor-McCall needed to strike and mark to advance and defend her title as Winnipeg’s tenpin champion.

‘This is people’s lives’: Canadian soccer star Quinn continues trans advocacy

VANCOUVER -

A Canadian soccer star is speaking out about the need to make sports safe for trans athletes — and the world safer for trans people — as restrictive laws come into effect across North America.

“This is people's lives," said Quinn, a midfielder for the Vancouver Rise of the Northern Super League. "Like, this isn't something to take lightly."

It's been more than five years since Quinn, 30, publicly came out as nonbinary.

Verdicts against Meta, YouTube validate concerns long raised by parents, child safety advocates

For years, parents, teenagers, pediatricians, educators and whistleblowers have pushed the idea that social media is detrimental to young people's mental health and can lead to addiction, eating disorders, sexual exploitation and suicide.

For the first time, juries in two states took their side.

In Los Angeles on Wednesday, a jury found both Meta and YouTube liable for harms to children using their services. In New Mexico, a jury determined that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

Tech watchdog groups, families and children’s advocates cheered the jury decisions.

Canadian sport system ‘underfunded and unsafe,’ commission urges Ottawa to step up

Canadian sport needs an overhaul, and it starts with the federal government.

That was the conclusion of the Future of Sport in Canada Commission's final report released Tuesday.

The Canadian sport system is broken, fragmented and unsustainable, said Lise Maisonneuve, a former chief justice of the Ontario court of justice, who headed the commission.

The report issued 98 calls to action for phased-in change over five years, but starting immediately.

Provincial budget includes free transit passes for youths in Winnipeg, three other cities

Manitoba’s NDP government will make it more affordable for youths as young as 12 to get to school, jobs and activities with free transit passes.

‘Wake up people’: mom says proposed drunk-driving law falls short

The mother of a designated driver who was killed by an impaired driver says proposed legislation to prohibit school bus and semi drivers from having booze in their system doesn’t go far enough.

“Wake up people, it should be zero for everybody,” said Karen Reimer, whose daughter Jordyn Reimer, 24, was killed in 2022 after being hit by a pickup travelling at 108 kilometres an hour on a residential street in Transcona.

Under Bill 31 (The Highway Traffic Amendment Act), drivers of class 1 to 4 vehicles — including semi-truck and bus operators — would not be allowed to have any alcohol in their blood.

Reimer told a legislative committee Wednesday laws aren’t moving the needle when it comes to impaired driving deaths and injuries. The province had 13 impaired driving fatalities in 2025, the same number that it had a decade ago. Last year, there were 62 serious injuries, an increase from 60 in 2015, as reported by Manitoba Public Insurance.

Family says teen re-victimized by school’s lax response after reporting sexual assault

With its soft lighting and cosy couches, the classroom hangout at the River East-Transcona School Division high school is supposed to be a safe space for students to decompress.

But that changed one Monday in January.

That day, after the supervising teacher had left the room, a teenage girl says she was sitting on the floor with her back against a love seat when a much larger male student sat down on the cushion directly behind her, boxing her in between his knees.

She said he reached over and forced his hands beneath her shirt, grabbing her breasts for several minutes while she froze and did not speak or move.

‘Extreme’ workouts drive spike in ‘rhabdo’ cases among young N.L. women, says doctor

ST. JOHN'S - Intense workouts and social media pressure are driving a spike in rhabdomyolysis cases in young women in Newfoundland and Labrador, a physician with the province's health authority said Thursday.

Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services said it confirmed about 20 cases in the eastern part of the province in the past six months. Doctors typically expect to see a few cases a year, said Dr. Richard Barter, the clinical chief of emergency medicine in the authority's eastern urban zone.

"The cases that we've seen have been exclusively exertional rhabdomyolysis, and this is when a person takes their physical workouts to an extreme level," Barter said in an interview.

Rhabdomyolysis, or "rhabdo," occurs when muscle tissue is severely damaged and breaks down, leaking enzymes and other substances into the blood. The painful condition can cause urine to turn the colour of black tea and it can lead to kidney damage, Barter said.

Alberta government moves to drastically reduce access to medically assisted dying

EDMONTON - Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's government took steps Wednesday to drastically restrict who's eligible for medical assistance in dying.

Smith’s United Conservative Party government introduced a bill that, if passed, would limit medical assistance in dying, better known as MAID, to those likely to die of natural causes within a year.

Those under 18 would still be prohibited regardless of condition, in line with current federal rules.

But Smith said Ottawa's framework is largely missing the mark.

Accessible, inclusive sports giving elementary-age phys-ed students a lesson in empathy

Beaverlodge School phys-ed teacher Jordan Adam has launched a new inclusive sports program to expose students to lesser-known activities and spark discussion about accessibility.

Former volleyball star recalls struggles for gay rights during 1980s

In 1981, tennis star Martina Navratilova made international headlines off the court for coming out as a lesbian. Around the same time, a less prominent Canadian athlete named Betty Baxter was beginning a public battle for equality.

Baxter was well-known in the queer community, having played on the national Canadian women’s volleyball team at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. She caused a media frenzy a few years later when she became the first female and youngest ever coach of the same team.

Less well-known was that after only 18 months as coach she was fired, behind closed doors, as rumours swirled that she was a lesbian. Baxter had not come out publicly; she lost her job for not denying she was a lesbian.

She was told by a human rights lawyer that she had no recourse. This was common practice before sexual orientation was enshrined in the Human Rights Act in 1996; contemporary readers may have a difficult time imagining how brave it was to come out publicly in the ‘80s.

Spaniards in town for curling documentary, brush up on the game

Joan Baucells looks out onto the ice at the Fort Rouge Curling Club and pauses for a moment, searching for the right words to describe it.

“This is like a cathedral,” he says.

His home country of Spain is world-renowned for its stunning architecture, but none of those buildings have what this one has to offer: pebbled ice, granite rocks and carbon-fiber brooms.

Oh, and don’t forget an in-house restaurant serving fat boy burgers and poutine.

Senior squeeze: Many older Manitobans are in an increasingly precarious financial situation

Terisa Taylor is deemed a low-income senior, based on the federal tax bracket classification, but the numbers don’t take a full measure of the person.

At age 73, the St. Boniface resident relies on the three acronyms synonymous with aging — CPP, GIS and OAS — to make ends meet.

Manitoba Rental Assistance helps cover about half her apartment costs, but she gave up her car when it became clear it was no longer affordable.

Despite that, Taylor considers herself one of Manitoba’s more fortunate seniors since she’s able to continue to pursue a meaningful life.

Non-profit to operate home for young moms in River Heights

A home in River Heights will soon be filled with Indigenous mothers and mothers-to-be receiving care and wraparound supports.

Come this summer, a six-bedroom home on Lindsay Street will provide three to six months of pre- and post-natal care and programs.

Hillary Thompson, an 18-year-old who is in her third trimester, has already picked her bedroom.

The spacious room on the main floor has plenty of space for her and a crib, and she can decorate it the way she wants. It’s a far cry from the homes she grew up in as a foster child, she said.

Lower colorectal cancer screening age to 45 from 50, Canadian Cancer Society urges

TORONTO - Michael Groves thought he had appendicitis.

In January 2021, he went to the emergency department with abdominal pains, but after testing, medical staff ruled it out and he went home.

A couple of days later, Groves, who lives in Ottawa, saw blood in his stool, so he told his family doctor.

Both the pain and bleeding stopped, but his doctor decided to schedule the 49-year-old for a colonoscopy for that April to be on the safe side.

After training in deep snow and bitter cold, ex-reality show star seeks to win the Iditarod again

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Riches and paid appearances haven’t followed Jessie Holmes since he won the world’s most famous sled dog race, the Iditarod, last year.

He doesn't mind.

A carpenter and a former cast member of National Geographic's reality show “Life Below Zero,” Holmes has instead been content to return to his austere, hand-built homestead in the wilderness near the continent's tallest mountain. His life is solitary and frugal. His closest neighbors are 30 miles (50 kilometers) away.

“There’s a lot of things that can happen in your life once you win the Iditarod,” Holmes told The Associated Press in an interview before this year's race. “You could become a real big deal, or you could just go back out in the bush and get right back to work, you know? And that’s what I did.”

Five examples of representation in recognition of International Women’s Day

To mark International Women’s Day on Sunday, the Free Press is spotlighting five Manitobans doing impactful work in sports.

Alyssa White — para hockey athleteWhite was 14 when she made the Canadian women’s para hockey squad.

“It’s kind of wild still to me to think about because I had only started playing hockey a year prior to that,” said the now 20-year-old.

Eby says OpenAI’s Altman will apologize to Tumbler Ridge, B.C., in wake of shootings

VICTORIA - British Columbia Premier David Eby said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has agreed to apologize to the people of Tumbler Ridge after the mass shooting by a user of the firm's technology, whose worrisome online behaviour wasn't flagged to police by the company.

"Everybody on the call recognized that an apology is nowhere near sufficient, but also that is completely necessary," Eby said of his conversation with Altman on Thursday.

OpenAI will also work with the province to come up with recommendations for federal regulatory standards on artificial intelligence and reporting of problematic interactions with its users, Eby said.

The premier said after the virtual meeting with Altman that OpenAI will work on the apology with the mayor of Tumbler Ridge where eight victims were shot dead on Feb. 10 by Jesse Van Rootselaar.

Councillors back permanent bike lane for Wellington Crescent next year

The city is poised to scrap a long-awaited temporary bike lane pilot project on Wellington Crescent, which was expected this year, and speed up the construction of permanent bike lanes instead.

On Wednesday, council’s public works committee voted to accelerate the plan to construct permanent bike lanes in 2027, pending a final council vote. The city had planned to spend $5.5 million to do so in 2029.

Coun. Janice Lukes, chairwoman of public works, said the switch to pursue permanent protected bike lanes, with curbs to separate cyclists from vehicular traffic, is the best way to ensure lasting safety improvements.

“This is going to be a fundamental change in the way traffic moves, pedestrian cycling and vehicular traffic in this section, and I want to rip the Band-Aid off once… It’s going to be a big change for everyone,” said Lukes (Waverley West).

Moms describe being trapped in a cycle of anguish when a loved one faces mental health crises

TORONTO - Nancy Saunders says her son Ben Brennan accomplished so much in his short life.

He was an exceptional musician, loved writing and was a freelance recording engineer, she said.

Brennan played in bands across Canada and toured Europe. He studied at the University of King’s College in Halifax.

Deeply kind and compassionate, “he just had a huge soft heart,” Saunders said.