Amazon in the weeds over damage to tall grass reserve

Patricia Dutchak was devastated when she first saw the wide swaths of crushed grass and upturned soil at Winnipeg’s Rotary Prairie Nature Park, a municipal heritage site.

“This is a very rare ecosystem, a remnant of tall grass prairie, there’s barely any left in the world, and to come here and see all this damage was heartbreaking,” Dutchak, chair of the Transcona Rotary Club’s parks committee, says.

The club is responsible for maintaining the protected green space, which was significantly damaged this summer when a fence between the park and the neighbouring Amazon distribution centre was relocated.

The 20-acre nature preserve is situated on a narrow tract of land on Regent Avenue West in the commercial heart of Transcona. The park received its municipal heritage designation in 1992 and is, today, surrounded by high-traffic streets, industrial warehouses and car dealerships.

French riot police fire tear gas as more than 250,000 rally nationwide for school funding

PARIS (AP) — Police fired tear gas to control crowds in Paris and elsewhere in France on Tuesday as more than a quarter of a million people rallied nationwide to support high school students demanding more education funding, according to government figures. The protests increased pressure on the administration of outgoing President Emmanuel Macron.

As pupils blockaded high schools, large crowds waving flags and placards gathered in Marseille, Strasbourg and other cities. The demonstrations showed how protests that began at a high school in the Paris region in mid-September have grown into a nationwide movement — the latest of many that have marked Macron’s nearly decade-long tenure.

“We need to listen to them,” said Léa Monimart, an adult demonstrator in the northern city of Lille. “They are 17 years old; they are not completely clueless, and they know what they are talking about. It’s important to show that there are adults who support them.”

The Interior Ministry estimated that 266,000 people took part in demonstrations across the country on Tuesday, including 56,000 in Paris, where small groups of protesters clashed with riot officers at a city square at the end of a largely peaceful march.

Real journalists matter in an AI world

An algorithm can decide what you see, but it doesn’t report the news. Nunatsiaq News, an award-winning newspaper in Nunavut, recently reported that a so-called “news” website was posting AI-generated articles about the north by stealing real news stories produced by real journalists.

The articles were supposedly written by Nunavut correspondent Leah Qammaniq — a fake journalist, with a fake photo and a fake bio.

Governor General Louise Arbour warned us of fake news in her installation speech in June. She said, “We must continue to protect the public space in which our national debates take place: from schools and universities to the media, political parties, unions and civil society organizations …With instant access to vast amounts of information, it is very tempting to pay little attention to the reliability of sources. The lines between knowledge and belief, between truth and falsehood, between facts and assumptions, are increasingly blurred. AI could be threatening not only the way we live and work, but also the control we exercise over our own destiny.”

The Government of Canada has recognized the problem as well. Its recent discussion paper, Enhancing trust in artificial intelligence through increased transparency, stated, “Canadians encounter news reporting, product reviews, and audio-visual content across the internet, often without any indication of whether it was written by a person, generated by an AI system, or produced through some combination of both … A particular concern within this broader landscape is that generative AI greatly enables the creation and dissemination of deceptive or misleading content.”

Modern myths: RWB updates classic Slavic folk tales as part of Stravinsky-based double bill

Two stories, two choreographers, one composer: the Royal Winnipeg Ballet opens its 2026/27 season with a double bill that celebrates the influential works of Igor Stravinsky.

Stravinsky Stories, which runs Thursday to Sunday at the Centennial Concert Hall, pairs veteran Russian-Ukrainian choreographer (and former RWB principal dancer) Alexei Ratmansky’s The Fairy’s Kiss with the world première of emerging Chicago-born choreographer Houston Thomas’s Firebird.

Much like Tchaikovsky before him, Stravinsky was a composer who took commissions for ballets, but there are actually no definitive versions of either of these works, says RWB artistic director Christopher Stowell.

“Unlike Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty, where there’s sort of a blueprint of a classical production that most people follow, there have been famous productions of both The Fairy’s Kiss and Firebird, but there isn’t one that everyone’s following at all,” he says.

Budding food scrap pickup services across the US want your coffee grounds and eggshells

DETROIT (AP) — Every Monday, Ricky Blanding drives his Ford Ranger pickup truck around Detroit along a carefully planned route.

Blanding hops in and out of the truck, grabbing buckets of food scraps from porches and restaurants, piling those scraps into bins in the truck bed and driving them to a composting site.

Blanding is the CEO of Scrap Soils, one of the many budding food waste collection services across the country helping to divert food from landfills and make composting more accessible. It's especially important for those who can't compost at home, who live in cities without municipal curbside pickup or who can't get to a drop-off location.

Composting leftover coffee grounds, eggshells, carrot tops and more reduces the amount of food that goes into dumps where it produces the potent greenhouse gas methane. It also ultimately helps create healthy soil for gardeners and urban farmers.

Volunteer pop-up library axed from Manitoba Youth Centre

Manitoba Corrections has cancelled a pop-up library program at the Manitoba Youth Centre, leaving inmates without librarian services and fewer options to borrow certain books.

The Prison Libraries Committee, part of the non-profit Manitoba Library Association, operated and funded the volunteer program since 2024 before it was shut down by the province last month. The group previously partnered with the province to offer the service because the facility has no dedicated library of its own.

“It is concerning that community members who are incarcerated, especially youth, are losing out on meaningful programming, access to information and rehabilitation efforts, which are offered at no cost to (Manitoba) Corrections. We urge Manitoba Justice to promote more library services and programming, not less,” said a Sept. 24 letter from the non-profit addressed to the justice minister.

Ashley Huot, chair of the Prison Libraries Committee, said she was puzzled when she received an email last month from Manitoba Corrections stating that the pop-up library was no longer needed.

The idea of Alberta separation viewed through a faith lens shows further fracture lines

CALGARY — One morning in May, John Pentland, a minister at Hillhurst United Church in Calgary, opened his newspaper and read about a group of Albertans who were trying to divide his country.

Something inside of him felt like it cracked open. He started to weep.

“I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t breathe,” he said. He called a friend and told him: “I think I’m losing my mind.”

Pentland has always believed in Canada — flawed as it might be — as a nation gifted with diversity and welcoming of asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants. But recently that belief has been shaken as he’s witnessed right-wing ideologies charged with anti-immigrant sentiment take root in his province. It makes him angry and embarrassed for the country he loves.

U of W Collegiate students thank residential school survivors with the lessons they’ve learned

It’s become a back-to-school tradition for teachers to invite Indigenous elders to their classrooms to share first-hand accounts about the ongoing impacts of Canada’s residential school system.

This fall, the University of Winnipeg Collegiate was among the schools that sent an invitation — but its purpose wasn’t to educate students about the system’s horrors.

“Truth and Reconciliation week is so emotional and draining for residential school survivors,” said Christine M’Lot, a longtime instructor of the school’s Grade 9 truth and reconciliation course.

“I wanted to do something a little bit different and offer a thank you.”

Cops handcuffed by bail issues, lack of mental-health options, WPS chief tells residents in crime-ridden North End neighbourhood

Weak bail reform and a lack of mental-health resources and addictions treatment beds are making it more difficult to tackle crime in inner-city neighbourhoods such as William Whyte, where there has been a significant increase in criminal behaviour compared to last year, the city’s top police officer says.

Winnipeg Police Services Chief Gene Bowers made the remarks Thursday night at an event hosted by the William Whyte Neighbourhood Association, where about two dozen residents gathered to share their concerns about crime in the North End community.

“Fentanyl and meth, that’s caused a strain on all our front lines and and all these agencies that are trying to help people,” Bowers told the room of people at Inner City Youth Alive on Aberdeen Avenue Thursday night.

“What really is the problem is there’s no treatment. That’s the gap, because (police and agencies) are all churning the same people through, and we’re all seeing them. We’re all frustrated that there’s no help.”

Alberta Mountie found not guilty of using police database to help Rwanda

CALGARY - An Alberta Mountie subjected to a major RCMP investigation and surveillance after being suspected of using a police database to help Rwanda was found not guilty Friday of several charges.

Const. Eli Ndatuje, 39, was arrested following an extensive investigation dubbed "Operation Salt Mine," involving wiretaps and up to 30 officers and civilian staffers.

Ndatuje admitted to using the database to check up on a missing person but said he didn’t pass the information on.

He called it a dumb move but said he wasn't a spy or a traitor.

Clock ticks down on destruction of records documenting residential school abuses

In less than a year, a private company is set to destroy the largest cache of records detailing the widespread abuse of Indigenous children at residential schools in Canada.

The destruction, which was ordered by an Ontario court in 2014 and later upheld by the Supreme Court, is set to take place on Sept. 19, 2027.

This countdown is igniting emotional conversations that seek to balance the immense historical value of the records alongside the confidentiality survivors were promised as part of the process of providing detailed testimony about abuses they’d suffered.

The records were created as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a class-action settlement stemming from survivors who began suing the federal government in the late 1990s over the harm they’d been subjected to at residential schools.

Province putting $8M into safe space for Thompson Indigenous women and families

An $8-million provincial investment in the Mino’Ayaawag Ikwewag Northern Lodge in Thompson fulfils the NDP’s 2023 election promise to establish three new 24-7 safe spaces for Indigenous women and their families in that city, Winnipeg and Brandon.

The lodge is expected to be up and running in 2028, Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine, who is also responsible for women and gender equity, said at a news conference in Winnipeg. It builds on a 2025 investment of $3.5 million to establish a first-of-its-kind 24-7 safe space for Indigenous women and their children in Winnipeg, and a 2024 investment of $500,000 to support the creation of Franny’s Place, a new 24-7 safe space in Brandon.

The Mino’Ayaawag Ikwewag (Anishinaabemowin for “all women doing well”) Northern Lodge will operate as a community of care, offering culturally grounded supports that help individuals and families heal, stabilize and rebuild lives at risk of violence.

It will include 10 short-term private studio suites, a communal kitchen and living area, counselling and program space, laundry facilities and a dedicated child-minding area with Indigenous cultural teaching and play-based learning. Residents will have access to trauma-informed supports, cultural programming, parenting supports, peer support and supported connections to housing, health, education, employment and legal services.

Time for AI guardrails is right now

The genie is most definitely out of the bottle.

Critical mineral development: Grid Metals promotes southeast Manitoba cesium deposit

An exploration company says it’s found the second-largest cesium deposit to be developed in the Western world — and it’s looking to mine in southeastern Manitoba.

Cesium is used in the defence sector, solar panels, internet and phone networks and GPS satellites, among other things. Canadian and United States governments have both deemed it a critical mineral.

It’s rare: just six cesium deposits have been found globally, according to the company behind the Manitoba site.

Grid Metals, a Toronto-based firm, spent October 2025 through March drilling holes in land 130 kilometres east of Winnipeg, at its Falcon West property.

Robot study gives seniors say in era of AI

It’s no longer the stuff of sci-fi: AI sidekicks that simulate emotional support and guide routines.

Robot companions are increasingly becoming part of everyday life for seniors, with certain U.S. states even subsidizing such devices for personal use through public health-care programs.

Among the many ethical questions this raises: what’s to be done with these robots, and all the secrets and personal data they carry, after the owner dies?

“We don’t know the answers. That’s why I’m running a study. It’s a participatory study with seniors,” said Clara Xi, a PhD student in computer science at the University of Calgary, who is conducting research at the University of Manitoba.

Work aims to share Jordan River Anderson’s heroic legacy with young audiences

It isn’t often that Yvette Nolan is brought to tears by her own work.

But at the Montreal premiere of Jordan, the playwright found herself weeping in the aisles.

“I was a mess,” she recalls.

But all around her, the audience of children at Montreal’s Geordie Theatre were cheering at the conclusion of Nolan’s latest work, a fable centred on the heroic influence of Jordan River Anderson, a Norway House boy who spent two years living in hospital because the federal and provincial governments couldn’t agree on which level of elected office should pay for his at-home care.

Indigenous groups given just two months to consult on pipeline project designation

OTTAWA - Indigenous communities along the route for the newly announced West Coast oil pipeline were given just two months for consultations on whether the pipeline should be designated a project of national interest — and that was still more than the government had planned.

At first, the consultations were to take place over one month. They were extended to two months after Indigenous leaders raised concerns about the tight timeline.

A summary of those consultations posted online by the federal government says Indigenous groups decried a lack of information about the project, which they said prevented them from fully assessing its impact.

Prime Minister Mark Carney promised his major projects agenda would not interfere with Canada's obligations under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous leaders have warned his government risks violating their rights with "national interest" designations through the Major Projects Office and the controversial Building Canada Act.

AI agent attempted to hack Library and Archives Canada, says U.S. research group

OTTAWA - The website for Library and Archives Canada was one of the targets of a failed hacking attempt by an artificial intelligence agent, a San Francisco-based lab that monitors AI activity said in a report this week.

Transluce posted an incident report Wednesday detailing what it describes as "aggressive attempts" to access public data on Canadian and U.S. government web pages.

The report says the attempted hacks occurred on May 28 and June 9 and involved 899 search queries into divorce records between 1905 and 1911.

Thirteen of the requests involved "attack payloads" seeking vulnerabilities in the search parameters, the report says.

Tokyo court grants legal protection to human voices in AI clone case

TOKYO (AP) — A Tokyo court has awarded legal protection to the human voice in a landmark case in which a popular Japanese anime voice actor demanded that TikTok close an account over its unauthorized use of an artificial intelligence clone of his trademark baritone.

The Tokyo District Court's decision Wednesday was the first acknowledgment of the right to one's voice in Japan. The ruling was good news for many anime voice actors at a time when they are increasingly concerned about the use of AI-generated versions of their voices on social media.

The plaintiff, Kenjiro Tsuda, is an actor best known for his “lustrous and deep” voice in starring characters such as Kento Nanami in “Jujutsu Kaisen,” a popular anime series.

In his lawsuit, Tsuda said that the anonymous operator of the TikTok account “Nanami" wrongfully profited by attracting viewers with his voice narrating in more than 180 videos about urban legends and paranormal phenomena, and asked for the material to be deleted.

Carney gives Alberta pipeline special interest designation, to be called Pacific Link

FORT MCMURRAY - A pipeline to haul Alberta oil to tankers on the B.C. coast took a big step forward Thursday.

Prime Minster Mark Carney, with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith at his side, announced the line – to be known as Pacific Link — is the first project to receive national interest designation under the Building Canada Act.

The designation doesn't mean the line is a done deal, but it streamlines and simplifies rules, timelines and oversight to help make it a reality.

The goal is to get consultations, environmental safeguards, financing and Indigenous partnerships completed by Sept. 1, 2027, to clear the way for construction to begin and ensure startup by 2032-33.

Winnipeg’s challenge: preparing for weather extremes

A new United Nations report warns the world will exceed the 1.5 C Paris limit by 2030.

3 GOP states go to US Supreme Court to challenge 3 Democratic-led states’ abortion ‘shield’ laws

Three Republican states went to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to challenge abortion “shield laws” protecting providers in three Democratic states, escalating the legal conflict over pills that account for a majority of abortions.

The attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana contend that the laws in California, Massachusetts and New York undermine their abortion bans and their states' sovereignty. Federal regulations allow prescriptions for abortion pills to be made by telehealth and filled by mail, and the three GOP states want to keep the pills out and punish out-of-state providers for sending them.

“This is the first time we've seen a state or group of states suing other states to challenge the validity of shield laws,” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California, Davis, law professor and author of seven books on abortion law and history.

The Supreme Court can hear disputes between states directly, though it rarely does. If the top court weighs in, it could short-circuit existing lawsuits.

Hero fought to remember children lost at residential school

The story of the gravesites of students who attended the Brandon Indian Residential School underneath the Turtle Crossing Campground is truly a Manitoba tragedy.