UN gravely concerned by an Afghan Taliban law that has provisions on child marriage

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The United Nations expressed “grave concern” on Thursday about a new law issued by Afghanistan’s Taliban government on separation in marriage which includes provisions on child marriage, saying the code further entrenches discrimination against women and girls.

The government rejected the accusations, saying the decree follows Islamic law and insisting the country has already banned the forced marriage of girls.

Afghanistan’s justice ministry published Decree No. 18 “on judicial separation of spouses” last week, which sets out rules for separation of a married couple.

Among its most controversial provisions, it says that the silence of a girl reaching puberty can be interpreted as consent to marriage. It also includes a section on the separation of girls who reach puberty and are married, which “implies that child marriage is permitted,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement.

Alberta legislature committee eyes separation vote as meeting hits bizarre roadblock

EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA - Alberta’s journey toward holding a fall referendum on separation took a bizarre turn Wednesday — straight into another roadblock.

It occurred when the governing United Conservative members on a bipartisan legislature committee introduced a motion to formally ask Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet to initiate a provincewide vote on Alberta's status in Confederation this October.

The motion was expected to pass, given the UCP members on the committee outnumber the Opposition NDP members on it three to two.

But while the motion was still being debated, the UCP caucus published a news release announcing the vote had taken place and that the motion had passed.

Louis Riel division hires province’s first Indigenous woman superintendent

The new leader of the Louis Riel School Division is a Métis teacher who has — not unlike the founder of Manitoba — dedicated much of her life to supporting Indigenous families.

Jackie Connell has been named the incoming superintendent and chief executive officer of the St. Vital-based board office in charge of educating 17,000 students.

The board of trustees announced her historic appointment, which begins Aug. 4, late Tuesday.

“I feel Indigenous women are inherently built to lead. I don’t know that education systems always see or honour that leadership,” Connell said in an interview Wednesday.

Winnipeg police get behind Ottawa’s ‘lawful access’ bill

Winnipeg Police Service Deputy Chief Cam Mackid said Wednesday the force fully supports the federal government’s proposed lawful access bill.

The legislation would give law enforcement and the national spy agency broader access to digital data following judicial authorization.

Part of the bill would require social media, internet service providers and telecommunication companies to adapt systems to allow for officials to more easily access data, after a warrant is obtained, and order certain providers to retain metadata for up to a year.

The bill has received significant pushback from advocates and technology companies who say it will erode privacy and civil rights and enable excessive surveillance.

Time for change? Province launches survey to review clock changes

The provincial government has asked Manitobans to weigh in on whether to end the seasonal time change.

Premier has everyone’s attention on and about social media; now it’s time for some careful thought

Using social media to condemn social media may seem hypocritical. But when you look at the audience Premier Wab Kinew commands across his social media accounts, there is a certain logic. An admittedly perverse logic, but logic all the same.

Small businesses’ capacity to hire youth being constrained: CFIB survey

TORONTO - A weaker economy and rising costs are leaving little room for small businesses to hire and train inexperienced youth, a new report suggests.

While small businesses remain the "training ground" for many young people entering the workforce, a survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business says small businesses are facing challenges from weak demand and rising payroll costs.

That's leaving many business owners with fewer resources to hire and train young workers.

"For many small businesses, taking a chance on someone with no experience, especially when training requires considerable time and effort, is simply not feasible in the current climate," the report said.

Washing ceremony marks settlement of Canadian Tire racial profiling complaint

VANCOUVER - The sounds of Indigenous drums and song bounced off the walls of an East Vancouver banquet hall Tuesday evening as members of British Columbia's Heiltsuk Nation gathered for a traditional washing ceremony years in the making.

Dawn Wilson and her father Richard filed a human rights complaint against Canadian Tire and security company Blackbird Security over a racial profiling incident at a store in Coquitlam.

Canadian Tire acknowledged its former employee contravened the human rights code against racial profiling and discrimination when they searched Richard Wilson's bag in 2020.

The ceremony, held at the Croatian Cultural Centre on Commercial Drive, drew dozens to take part in the cultural healing process. Dawn Wilson thanked representatives of both companies for showing up.

Only unions consulted about jobs deal for provincial builds: industry

The Manitoba government is being accused of consulting only with a union collective before adopting a jobs policy that governs contracts involving the construction of public projects, including four new schools.

Construction industry associations representatives said Tuesday they learned through a freedom-of-information request that the government met only with Manitoba Building Trades, which proposed a labour framework in July 2025. The two parties discussed the jobs agreement in August, and it was signed 13 days later, the associations said.

They now want the provincial ombudsman to pause the Manitoba Jobs Agreement and conduct a review.

“I was extremely disappointed that there was little rigour in the negotiation,” said Darryl Harrison of the Winnipeg Construction Association.

Hydro advisory circle brings ‘wealth of Indigenous perspectives’

The board of Manitoba Hydro has appointed an Indigenous advisory circle as part of the Crown corporation’s reconciliation efforts.

Former Fox Lake Cree Nation chief and Keeyask Hydropower Limited Partnership board chair Robert Wavey will co-chair the group with Manitoba Hydro board chairman Jamie Wilson. The provincial government ordered the creation of the advisory circle in its 2023 mandate letter to Hydro’s board.

“I think we wanted to get everything right on this one,” Wilson said when asked why it has taken more than two years to appoint Indigenous advisers.

“This is a pretty fantastic group of people from a diverse background, including communities that are directly impacted by Hydro development in the past,” the first Indigenous chairman of the Manitoba Hydro board said in an interview Tuesday.

This not just in: treaty rights carry legal force and are protected in the Constitution

More than a century after the numbered treaties were signed across Western Canada, the courts delivered a blunt reminder last week that those agreements are not ancient historical footnotes.

They still carry legal force and governments cannot ignore them.

Two major court rulings — one in Manitoba and one in Alberta — reinforced a reality many Canadians still do not fully understand: treaties between First Nations and the Crown remain constitutionally protected agreements that continue to shape Canadian law, public policy and governments’ obligations today.

The decisions also underscored something else: Canadians would benefit greatly from learning more about treaties, why they were negotiated as Canada expanded westward and why courts continue to uphold Indigenous and treaty rights.

Alberta’s timing targets for West Coast pipeline ‘best-case scenario’: CIBC analysts

CALGARY - The targeted timeline the Alberta government set out for construction to begin on a potential new West Coast oil pipeline is ambitious, with many obstacles yet to clear, analysts at CIBC World Markets wrote in a recent report.

The province aims to submit a proposal to the federal major projects office by July 1, have it designated a project of national interest by Oct. 1 and get shovels in the ground as early as Sept. 1, 2027. Oil could begin to flow around 2033 or 2034, a provincial official told a media background briefing last week.

"While we are encouraged by the continued sense of urgency, we would characterize these timelines as optimistic and reflective of a best-case scenario," analysts Robert Catellier and Rogan Anantharajah wrote in a Monday industry update.

The Alberta government laid out those targets Friday after it and Ottawa finalized one of the last outstanding elements of the energy accord they signed late last year: an agreement on how the market price on carbon is to gradually increase to $130 a tonne by 2040.

WHO chief concerned over ‘scale and speed’ of Ebola outbreak as Congo reports 134 dead

BUNIA, Congo (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization on Tuesday expressed concern over the “scale and speed” of an outbreak of a rare type of Ebola known as Bundibugyo in eastern Congo, where authorities reported 134 suspected deaths and more than 500 suspected cases.

The virus spread undetected for weeks after the first known death as authorities tested for a more common type of Ebola and came up negative, health experts and aid workers said. The Bundibugyo virus has no approved medicines or vaccines.

In Bunia, the site of the first known death, health workers in protective gear moved among residents wearing fabric masks. “I know the consequences of Ebola, I know what it’s like,” said a worried resident, Noëla Lumo.

Congo was expecting shipments from the United States and Britain of an experimental vaccine for different types of Ebola, developed by researchers at Oxford, said Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a virus expert at the National Institute of Biomedical Research.

Americans are looking back centuries to find Canadian ancestors — and citizenship

Cody Sibley was born and raised in Louisiana, but he always felt his family shared strong ties to Canada thanks to his Acadian ancestors from Nova Scotia.

Sibley said that as an eighth-generation descendant of Acadians, his family's roots could be traced back to "generation zero," Agathe Doucet, who was baptized on Jan. 19, 1710, in Nova Scotia.

He said Doucet married to Pierre Pitre in 1727, but the couple's lives were turned upside down in 1755 when British soldiers arrived at their doors and ordered their expulsion; like many Acadians, they ended up in Louisiana, where the community went on to become known as Cajuns.

Sibley is now among a surge of Americans combing through genealogical records in the hopes of finding a Canadian ancestor — some, like Sibley's, dating back hundreds of years, long before Canada officially existed. They plan to use the information to claim Canadian citizenship, under recently introduced legal changes that remove the so-called "first-generation limit" on citizenship for people born or adopted outside Canada to a Canadian citizen.

Snowbirds aerobatic team grounded until early 2030s while new planes purchased

MOOSE JAW -

Canada’s famous military aerial ambassadors – the Snowbirds – will soon be grounded.

Defence Minister David McGuinty announced Tuesday that after this upcoming season, the nine-jet aerobatic team will be mothballed until the early 2030s.

The pause is to allow the team’s signature but aging CT-114 Tutor jets to be replaced by the CT-157 Siskin II.

The folly of war: the wisdom of peace

In the 1980s I was a peace advocate —I still am. One of the founders and first president of the Educators for Social Responsibility, I helped organize, promote and speak at peace and anti-nuclear rallies and marches. We developed, collected and distributed peace curricula from across Canada for teaching in Manitoba schools.

OpenAI avoided a costly court loss to Elon Musk, but neither side is unscathed

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — After prevailing in its court fight with Elon Musk, OpenAI — the ChatGPT maker valued at $852 billion — remains on track for what could be one of the largest initial public offerings in history.

Musk had been seeking the ouster of his fellow OpenAI co-founder, CEO Sam Altman, among other changes to the company. But with testimony from witnesses who called Altman dishonest, he’s hardly emerged unscathed.

At a time of growing concern about artificial intelligence's impacts, the landmark trial also shed new light on the flaws and outsize ambitions of the small number of billionaires steering the development of the breakthrough technology.

The trial was a reminder, said Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute, “of how much the future of AI still depends on a remarkably small group of powerful tech figures and their personal rivalries.”

U.S. says it’s pausing long-standing military board with Canada

WASHINGTON - The U.S. undersecretary of defence for policy said Monday that the United States is pausing a long-standing military board, claiming "Canada has failed to make credible progress on its defense commitments."

In a post on social media, Elbridge Colby said his department is pausing the Permanent Joint Board on Defense "to reassess how this forum benefits shared North American defense."

The board was established in 1940 and is an advisory forum for U.S.-Canada bilateral defence co-operation.

Colby said the United States "can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality" in the post, where he shared a link to a transcript of Prime Minister Mark Carney's January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

People for Education explore convergence of public education and truth and reconciliation

A national charity is putting Manitoba’s school system under the microscope as it develops a plan to protect and bolster publicly funded classrooms across Canada.

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.