With new American pressure, will Cuba fall?

If you were to listen to many of the commentators, experts and prognosticators, you would think that Cuba is about to collapse.

Homelessness a humanitarian crisis, Rattray says

Jennifer Rattray says few challenges facing Winnipeg are as urgent as the homeless crisis.

“Collectively as a society, as a province, as a city, we need to do better,” the new executive director of End Homelessness Winnipeg told the Free Press.

She says a humanitarian crisis has unfolded on city streets.

“It’s awful,” she says. “We need to do something, and we need to do more than what we’re currently doing.”

Food inflation spiked 7.3% in January. Here’s what’s driving the increase

OTTAWA - Statistics Canada reported an easing in the headline inflation rate Tuesday but a jump in the pace of food inflation amid tax changes and lingering pressures at the grocery store continue to put the squeeze on consumers.

StatCan said Tuesday that the annual rate of inflation edged down to 2.3 per cent in January. Economists had expected inflation to hold steady at 2.4 per cent.

The agency said gas prices were 16.7 per cent lower year-over-year in January, largely thanks to the end of the consumer carbon price in April. Shelter inflation — long a pain for households in Canada — also fell to its lowest level in nearly five years as rent pressures abate.

Those declines helped offset food inflation, which accelerated to 7.3 per cent annually in January from 6.2 per cent a month earlier.

Advocate urges feds to update equity act, settle class action with Black employees

OTTAWA - An advocate is urging the federal government to update equity legislation for Black employees and to drop its fight against a discrimination lawsuit that has cost more than $15 million so far.

Nicholas Marcus Thompson, president and CEO of the Black Class Action Secretariat, told The Canadian Press that changes to Canada's Employment Equity Act are long overdue.

In 2023, former labour minister Seamus O'Regan announced two new designated groups would be created under the act for Black and LGBTQ+ people.

The act requires that federally regulated employers, including the public service, take steps to eliminate barriers and maintain proportional representation in the workplace for members of designated groups.

Ukrainian emergency visa holders expected to return after war: immigration department

OTTAWA - Canada's immigration department says it still expects Ukrainians who fled the war with Russia to return to their home country once the conflict ends.

That's in spite of comments from Immigration Minister Lena Diab, who recently acknowledged that many Ukrainians who came to Canada on temporary visas are here to stay.

"Canada and the people that made the decision felt that it would be temporary, which is why they were called temporary programs. We now know it's not temporary," Diab said in a Jan. 26 interview with The Canadian Press.

"They've been here for X number of years, and for the most part, people are working, they're building a life, they have children and so on. So I understand that."

Modern, historic letters showcase love in dangerous times

Love is in the air at Oseredok.

The Ukrainian cultural and educational centre’s current exhibition, Love Letters: A Timeless Experience, bears witness to the fraught and emotional journeys of past and present Ukrainian-Canadian couples through historical love letters, digital declarations and personal artifacts as they navigated courtship, separation and reunion.

Spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, the exhibition draws on a combination of archival material, including the cultural centre’s collection of rare wedding photographs and studio portraits, and visual installations to trace the love lives of Ukrainian-Canadians across the decades.

A letter-writing manual penned in 1913 by linguist and author F. Dojacek forms the backbone of the immersive show.

Relationship with city’s icy waterways warms many a Winnipegger’s heart

In summer, a screened porch or gazebo adds another room to Winnipeg houses, full of light and fresh air.

A balcony in a high-rise apartment seems to double the horizon available to residents: it feels like you could step out into the branches of a big old elm or a cottonwood, full of birds.

In the same way, the frozen Assiniboine, Red and Seine rivers add concert hall- and football stadium-sized swathes of space to the city.

The iced-over rivers provide new ways of seeing and understanding this place we call home.

Province warns of measles exposure at Jets game as cases surge

Manitoba public health officials are warning attendees of a Winnipeg Jets game they may have been exposed to measles, as the province continues to grapple with outbreaks.

More Canadian athletes powered by artificial intelligence at Winter Games

Just for fun, Xavier McKeever and his cross-country ski teammates once tasked ChatGPT to design a training plan for them.

"It was the craziest training plan we've ever seen," said the 22-year-old from Canmore, Alta.

"It basically said you should do intensity every single day. You should do three hours of skiing and then an hour of intensity, and repeat that a few times -- and then you should take a week off completely. We know you can't do that.

"It was pretty funny to see and do, to see Chat GPT can't write a training plan, and that we need our coaching to help us with that."

Province to power up smart thermostat program, rebates

Manitobans may get cash for turning down the thermostat during peak energy-use periods next winter.

What to know about EPA decision to revoke a scientific finding that helped fight climate change

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday revoked its own 2009 “endangerment finding,” a scientific conclusion that for 16 years has been the central basis for regulating planet-warming emissions from power plants, vehicles and other sources.

The finding itself is straightforward: Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases — caused by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas — endanger public health and welfare.

It was adopted after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases are air pollutants that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The Trump administration says the finding hurts industry and the economy and that the Obama and Biden administrations twisted science to determine that greenhouse gases are a public health risk.

Get vaccinated for flu, COVID-19, measles to protect crowded hospitals: top doc

The province’s top doctor is asking Manitobans to get vaccinated as respiratory virus season threatens to strain hospitals and measles outbreaks tear though parts of Manitoba.

Manitoba to study food prices

The Manitoba government has followed through on its promise to conduct a study on groceries in a bid to lower food costs.

Project leads will investigate whether differential pricing — in which shoppers are charged different prices by the same retailer based on customer segment, location, time or demand — is occurring in Manitoba.

Antitrust and anti-competition policies, supply chain vulnerabilities and geographic food deserts will also be probed, the government said Wednesday.

“We know Manitobans are struggling with the price of food, and we know that the prices of food continue to grow in ways that are very concerning,” Finance Minister Adrien Sala told reporters.

Energy sector’s interest in Churchill heating up: Kinew

Several companies, including at least one Canadian energy giant, are “kicking the tires” on a long-touted vision to export oil, gas, minerals and agricultural products through Churchill, bringing the dream of a trade corridor to the Hudson Bay coast closer to reality, Premier Wab Kinew says.

A mother recounts her dangerous journey across the border to escape Trump’s America

MONTREAL - At times, a 25-year old woman said the snow reached her knees as she trudged through a dark, icy forest near the Quebec border in mid-January.

With temperatures hovering around -11 C, her left hand clutched her daughter and her right held up a cellphone, as they listened to a voice transmitting instructions on which direction to go and where they needed to stop. Four other Haitian migrants were travelling with them.

“It felt like a race with time,” the woman recalled in a recent interview.

Weeks after this ordeal, the woman and her daughter are seeking asylum in Canada.

Vote to crack down on ‘nuisance’ protests set for city council

City council will soon vote on the proposed ban on “nuisance” protests and intimidation within 100 metres of schools, places of worship, hospitals and other “vulnerable social” locations.

Plight of imprisoned Hong Kong ex-publisher Jimmy Lai evokes grief over loss of press freedoms

HONG KONG (AP) — About five years after Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Apple Daily shut down and its founder was jailed, the newspaper’s former staff and readers are lamenting the loss of the city’s press freedoms.

Founder Jimmy Lai, 78, was sentenced Monday under a Beijing-imposed national security law to 20 years in prison, the longest such sentence so far. His co-defendants, six other former Apple Daily journalists, received jail terms ranging between six years and nine months and 10 years.

Officials in both Hong Kong and Beijing defended the case against Lai, with the city's leader John Lee accusing the newspaper of inciting violence and poisoning young minds. The government insisted his case had nothing to do with press freedom, saying the defendants used journalism as a guise to commit acts that harmed Hong Kong and China.

There's no question that things are different in Hong Kong without the Apple Daily. Since it folded, the city’s once freewheeling press scene has changed drastically. Its voice was one of many that have been silenced in the former British colony.

Ukrainians push for permanent residency in Canada as war with Russia grinds on

OTTAWA - Roksolana Kryshtanovych never planned on moving to Canada before Russia's war, but the invasion made it impossible for her to go home to Ukraine.

In the years since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, she said, Canada has become her new home. But without a path to permanent residency, she and thousands of other Ukrainians here face an uncertain future as the war drags on.

Immigration Minister Lena Diab has acknowledged many of these visa holders are no longer here temporarily — but the government has no concrete solution yet to their plight.

Now, her government is under new pressure to open a permanent residency pathway for the nearly 300,000 Ukrainians like Kryshtanovych who came to Canada through the emergency visa program.

Conservatives table motion on refugee claims in response to extortion wave

OTTAWA - The Conservatives introduced a motion Tuesday calling on the government to bar non-citizens convicted of serious crimes from making refugee claims.

The motion introduced in the House of Commons also urges the government to prevent asylum claims from people whose cases are still working their way through the courts.

One legal expert questioned the value of the proposed changes, and noted that people found guilty of serious crimes can already be barred from attaining refugee status under Canada's immigration law.

"This is not really about solving a real problem," said University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin. "This is about sending some kind of get tough message."

Google, Meta, push back on addiction claims in landmark social media trial

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jurors in a landmark social media case that seeks to hold tech companies responsible for harms to children got their first glimpse into what will be a lengthy trial characterized by dueling narratives from the plaintiffs and the two remaining defendants, Meta and YouTube.

At the core of the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM,” whose case could determine how thousands of similar lawsuits will play out. KGM and the cases of two other plaintiffs have been selected to be bellwether trials — essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury.

Comparing social media platforms to casinos and addictive drugs, lawyer Mark Lanier delivered opening statements Monday in the Los Angeles Superior Court trial that seeks to hold Instagram owner Meta and Google's YouTube responsible for addictive features and harms to children who use their products. Two other defendants, TikTok and Snap, have settled the case.

Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt spoke of the disagreement within the scientific community over social media addiction, with some researchers believing it doesn’t exist, or that addiction is not the most appropriate way to describe heavy social media use.

Class-action suit against care home, WRHA can proceed, judge rules

A Manitoba judge has certified a class-action lawsuit against the owners of Maples Personal Care Home and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, more than five years after 56 residents died during a COVID-19 outbreak at the north Winnipeg facility.

Manitoba Court of King’s Bench Associate Chief Justice Shane Perlmutter said the suit, put forward by Lawrence Lewsey and Eddie Calisto-Tavares, who each lost a parent during the outbreak, is the best way to deal with the allegations that both defendants were negligent.

“Broadly, the allegations relate to alleged failures to adequately plan for, and respond to, the COVID-19 outbreak at Maples,” Perlmutter wrote in a 24-page decision released last week.

“I am satisfied that the proposed class action would be a fair, efficient, and manageable method of advancing the claim and is preferable to other reasonably available procedures to resolve the common issues.”

Province’s Indigenous tourism industry growing

Melanie Gamache has been taking her beading and jigging sessions on the road lately.

Schools, immigrant services agencies and private companies had asked whether she would take Borealis Beading to them.

“With the exception of last year (with wildfires), there has been a growing demand,” Gamache said. “There’s just an increase in people wanting to know more — like people want to know the history.”

Gamache registered her company, Borealis Beading, in 2018 and started by hosting Métis beading workshops.