What to know about the decision to make Bible stories required reading in Texas public schools

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Bible stories have become required reading for more than 5 million public school students in Texas.

The vote to approve the plan Friday by the Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education reflects a broader conservative effort to introduce more religion into U.S. schools. Last year, Texas became the largest state to require every classroom to display the Ten Commandments.

The mandated reading list has drawn fierce opposition. Critics argue that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state, lacks diversity, and favors Christianity over other religions. Supporters say Judeo-Christian traditions were fundamental to the nation’s founding and that should be reflected in the public school curriculum.

Here's what to know about the reading list and the broader fight over religion in public schools:

Websites suggest conspiracies fed accused Montreal gunman’s ‘buffet extremism’

Online activity suggests accused Montreal shooter Seth Hatfield watched videos about weapons, the outdoors and a tangle of conspiracy theories and grievances.

However, experts warn against drawing conclusions about the gunman. They also urge people to stop sharing online images of Monday's shooting outside a Montreal hotel.

Police said two officers were shot — Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, 34, was killed along with a bystander, Michel Mizrahi, 68, and the shooter died in the crossfire.

The coroner identified the dead suspect as 25-year-old Seth Hatfield from Lethbridge, Alta.

South African prisons open art galleries to showcase inmates’ work

When most people think of prison, they picture steel bars, locked gates and lost freedom. But at a correctional facility in Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, visitors are greeted by something unexpected: an art gallery.

Nova Scotia failing to properly oversee addictions, mental health care, says auditor

HALIFAX - Nova Scotia's auditor general says the Office of Addictions and Mental Health has failed to provide effective oversight of mental health and addiction services and its staff were not aware of all provincially funded centres offering care.

In response to a rise in mental health needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, the government created the office with a dedicated minister in 2021. Five years later, auditor general Kim Adair said the office has insufficient oversight and responsibility for mental health and addiction services — despite its role in setting policy direction and care standards.

"We're concerned that five years in, some of these fundamental aspects which we would expect to be in place by now are not there," Adair told reporters Tuesday.

The audit found the province has spent close to $1 billion on mental health addiction services over the past three years; however, Adair found that the office did not set up standards for access to services to ensure consistent and equitable mental health and addictions care.

As Native American boarding schools project ends, survivors describe feeling honored and restored

Hundreds of Indigenous people have testified. They’ve sobbed, cursed and laughed in spite of it all. Many told stories about their time in boarding schools that they’ve kept inside for decades, finally able to begin recovering from childhood trauma.

An oral history project led by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is wrapping up in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Friday. To date, the nonprofit’s historians have collected video testimony from more than 360 Indigenous survivors in 19 states — stories set to be preserved in the Library of Congress for years to come.

Iona Mad Plume, who is Blackfeet and grew up on her tribe’s reservation in Montana, said she “can’t emphasize enough” how healing her experience was. She testified in front of a video camera last month in Billings about her time in the Pierre Indian School in South Dakota, where she was sent at age 14.

Mad Plume, now 74, said since her interview she’s been more grounded and has been able to let go of some of the haunting memories: a dusty blue Greyhound bus driving her away from her parents’ red pickup truck. School staff beating her with a wooden dowel as she cowered on a bunk bed in her dorm room. Eating corn meal or cereal littered with weevil bugs.

Philippines temporarily blocks gaming app used by suspect in deadly school shooting

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine authorities said Tuesday they will temporarily block an online gaming app that one of two students blamed for a deadly school shooting has avidly used, to assess whether it played a role in fostering such violence.

Three students were killed and 20 others were wounded when the two suspects, aged 14 and 15 and armed with a handgun each, opened fire Monday at the San Jose National High School in central Tacloban city.

The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center said its decision to block Gorebox was prompted by an ongoing police investigation which showed that one suspect was an avid user of the app, adding that this will allow authorities to determine “whether the platform played any role in the actions of the suspects.”

The decision would be enforced starting Tuesday, undersecretary Aboy Paraiso of the cybercrime center said in a statement.

Art show features paintings created as therapy

Having watched Bob Ross’s painting lessons on TV for years, Maxine Utsunomiya finally decided to take a lesson herself.

Now, after signing up for Art in the Garden — a painting workshop at Victoria Hospital for patients in the mental health services program — she’s one of 15 people whose work is being featured in an exhibit at Studio Central in Portage Place.

The annual art program, now in its fifth year, is held at the hospital’s Will and Mavis Tishinski Tranquility Trail.

“It’s very relaxing, it’s very stimulating and I really enjoyed this,” said Utsunomiya, 69.

AI safety advocates say bill a good ‘first step’ on regulation, but more needed

The federal government’s proposed online safety legislation is a good start on regulating artificial intelligence chatbots — but more work will be needed to protect Canadians from their potential harms, a pair of advocates say.

Bill C-34, introduced earlier this month in the House of Commons, would regulate the companies behind AI chatbots by imposing on them a duty to act “responsibly.”

It includes measures to lower the risk of chatbots communicating harmful content and would put in place crisis intervention protocols for cases involving self-harm, suicide or violence.

Wyatt Tessari L’Allié, founder of Artificial Intelligence Governance and Safety Canada, said the bill’s effectiveness depends on how the details are worked out.

Close encounters of the amphibian kind

Frogs, snakes and horses, oh my!

Liam Peterson, an 11-year-old outdoor enthusiast, encountered all of those during summer camp last year at Circle Square Ranch.

“There were always frogs hopping around our cabin, and I let one in because I wanted it to have company because it was bored — it was just sitting there,” recalled Liam.

“And then my friend freaked out because it was on top of (his foot) in the morning. Everyone in the cabin woke up and he woke up with a red bump on his head after hitting his head on his bunk.”

Elementary students develop friendships with care home residents

Nine-year-olds and seniors in their ’90s regularly bond over bocce in Tuxedo.

École Tuxedo Park and Extendicare Tuxedo Villa are marking a decade of Senior Buddies, a partnership that began to build intergenerational friendship and understanding in their neighbourhood.

“It’s opening (students’) eyes to different parts of being a human and humanity and the community that they live in,” said Diana Stahl, a school counsellor at the kindergarten-to-Grade 4 building in Winnipeg.

Stahl and her students made the 350-metre trek to the long-term care home on Thursday for their final visit of the school year.

What prediction market trading is and why it’s gaining popularity

Financial services company Wealthsimple announced Thursday that it will start offering a new form of investment based on real-world events.

The product is called prediction market trading and it's gaining increasing popularity around the world.

Here's a breakdown of how it works, what's driving its growth and what investors should beware of.

What are prediction markets?

School board’s plan violates rights of young people: children’s advocate

Backlash is mounting over the Steinbach school board’s plans to disregard “mature minor” status and recognize parents as primary decision makers in all student health matters.

One of Canada’s most prominent MAID providers reflects on divisive decade

TORONTO - Dr. Ellen Wiebe has never been one to shy away from risk.

It started with the very first patient she provided with a medically assisted death: Hanne Schafer, a 66-year-old Calgary psychologist diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis three months before retiring in 2013.

MAID was three years away from legalization, but Schafer was quickly losing her ability to talk, walk, eat and drink and wanted the procedure as soon as she could get it. On Feb. 29, 2016, a judge approved her request, more than three months before MAID would become legal on June 17.

The next hurdle was finding a doctor prepared to do it, recalls Schafer’s husband Daniel Laurin. He credits Wiebe with helping his late wife when no one else would: "It was a very humane thing to do.”

Committee majority recommends against MAID for mental illness, four senators object

OTTAWA - A parliamentary committee is calling on the federal government to indefinitely exclude people with mental illness from becoming eligible for medical assistance in dying, after a process that some of the committee's members decried as flawed and biased.

Conservative and Liberal members of Parliament on the committee co-signed that single recommendation in a report Wednesday that included a number of dissenting opinions.

People with a mental illness as their sole underlying condition are set to become eligible to apply for medical assistance in dying, or MAID, next March.

The committee of MPs and senators was tasked with studying whether the country is ready for that to happen.

Justice minister says he will review MAID committee testimony before making decision

OTTAWA - Justice Minister Sean Fraser says he will take time over the summer to review the work of a committee tasked with determining whether Canada is ready to allow people with mental illness access to medically assisted dying.

Committee co-chair Marcus Powlowski said last week the report would be presented to Parliament on Wednesday to ensure it's in the government's hands before the House of Commons takes its summer break.

Fraser said Tuesday he will consider more than the committee's conclusions and recommendations.

"Importantly to me, I'm also going to be reviewing the witness testimony upon which those recommendations were based," he said.

MPs urge action to undercut ‘manosphere’ by tackling anti-women ideology

OTTAWA - MPs are calling on the government to tackle the rise of antifeminist ideology by funding programs that undercut the "manosphere" of online influencers who blame women for men's problems.

The House of Commons status of women committee tabled a report Tuesday warning "antifeminist ideologies are becoming increasingly prominent in Canada and internationally."

The committee says boys and young men who are isolated or struggling to find their place in society are being presented with extreme content online that glorifies dominating and dehumanizing women and amplifies gender-based violence.

At a news conference on Parliament Hill, Conservative MP Dominique Vien, the committee's chair, told reporters witnesses who spoke to the committee struggled to identify a single reason for the rise in antifeminism.

‘Dominoes’ we don’t mean to topple yield results

A keystone habit is a single change that, once in place, quietly drags a whole pile of other positive changes along behind it.

‘Fentanyl fold’ on city streets stresses prompt need for supervised consumption site: premier

Alarmed after seeing the “fentanyl fold” on city streets, Premier Wab Kinew promises a supervised drug consumption site will open this month — despite concerns essential staffers have yet to be hired.

In a sit-down interview with the Free Press Friday, the premier reinforced that the site — announced in the summer of 2024 — would be operational by the end of June.

“The urgency of the drug crisis is so visible in a way that everyone sees it,” Kinew said.

The province received approval from Health Canada for the Indigenous-led site, at 366 Henry Ave., in May.

New Brunswick woman sues OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT led to daughter’s death

When 24-year-old Alice Carrier told ChatGPT that she had to die to stop the pain she was feeling, the chatbot allegedly appeared to agree. By the next day, Carrier was dead.

Mother of B.C. cyberbullying victim Amanda Todd welcomes federal online safety bill

The mother of a British Columbia teen who died by suicide after being relentlessly tormented by a cyberbully says proposed federal legislation tackling online safety would have helped her daughter and will help save lives.

Carol Todd's daughter Amanda died in 2012 after being sexually exploited by an online predator.

Todd said in an interview on Thursday that the Safe Social Media Act addresses the mental and emotional toll of social media and is an important step toward keeping youth safe online.

It's also something Amanda would have wanted, she said.

Concerns from array of groups about prevalence of gambling ads during World Cup

TORONTO - The stage is set for Toronto's turn as FIFA World Cup host, and some government officials and advocates worry that the major sporting event will also spark intensified gambling advertising — and the public health problems that can follow.

Stan Cho, Ontario's minister of tourism, culture and gaming, is looking at further restrictions on gambling advertising in the province and is concerned in particular about the global soccer tournament.

"Any time there's a big sporting event, you see the spike in just gambling in sheer numbers," he said recently. "Of course that means that problem gamblers are going to be more susceptible to the problem that they have."

The Responsible Gambling Council reserves ad spots during events like the World Cup, Cho said, but advocates who oppose gambling advertising want to see the first province to bring in a regulated online gambling market go much further.

Social media platforms, app stores at odds over who should enforce social media bans

As countries including Canada move toward social media bans in an attempt to keep youths safe online, tech companies are in a tug of war over who should be the gatekeepers.

Executives from Snapchat and Meta, the owner of Instagram, Facebook and Threads, have argued it should be app stores rather than platforms charged with verifying the ages of users when they try to add a platform to their phones.

Apple and Google, which run the App Store and Play Store respectively, have introduced some age-gating measures but appear to be at odds with social media platforms over whose responsibility those measures should be.

Experts say trying to put the onus on either side is pointless because app store owners, platforms, governments and parents all have to step up to keep kids safe online.

Oligarchs don’t care about ‘public good’

Don’t think the tech oligarchs are the good guys, fighting for democracy, in the next battle that’s coming. Because they’re not.