Meta slashes 8,000 jobs, or 10% of its workforce, as Microsoft offers buyouts

Meta is laying off about 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, the company said Thursday as it continues to ramp up spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and highly paid AI-expert hires.

The company said it was making the cuts for the sake of efficiency and to allow new investments in parts of its business, as first reported by Bloomberg, which also said the company will leave about 6,000 jobs unfilled.

Also Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its U.S. employees.

The software giant plans to make the offers in early May to about 8,750 people, or 7% of its U.S. workforce, according to two people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

City failed to read the room before ditching Sals

If ever there were a moment to rethink how governments award contracts, this would be it.

Manitoba crypto companies say provincial plans would put them out of business

WINNIPEG - Manitoba's plan to charge cryptocurrency operations higher electricity rates and curtail power at peak times will drive businesses under, officials with two companies told a legislature committee.

"If this goes through, our business goes bankrupt and a lot of families will be impacted," Guildo Theriault, co-founder and chief executive officer of Gator Mining, told a committee hearing Wednesday night.

The government has introduced two bills in the legislature that are aimed at controlling the growing demand on Crown-owned Manitoba Hydro's electrical grid.

One bill would charge cryptocurrency operations and data centres up to 100 per cent higher rates for electricity. The other would allow Manitoba Hydro to temporarily reduce power to cryptocurrency operators at peak times in order to ensure stability of the grid.

Syrup season in swing

Louise May has been tapping the trees at the St. Norbert Arts Centre for 37 years, extracting the nectar that becomes maple syrup.

May began making syrup as a way to connect with the trees and continue in the footsteps of the Trappist monks who originally planted the maple trees more than a century ago.

Recently, the endeavour has taken a more spiritual turn as May began collaborating with kookum Christine Cyr and sharing the syrup for a strawberry heart medicine used during Sundance ceremonies, which include a four-day fast.

“This is a really powerful medicine,” says Cyr. “It physically and spiritually helps people to get through” the ceremony when it is typically taken on the third day of the fast. At the beginning of the season, community members drummed, sang, and offered tobacco to each tree as May put the taps in.

High fuel prices driving up shipping costs for northern grocers

Whether it's Florida oranges, Colombian coffee or even homegrown items from another province, food has often travelled a long way before it reaches grocery stores in Canada.

The supply chain gets even longer for communities in the Far North.

Typically, groceries are loaded onto a truck and taken to a launch point in cities like Ottawa or Winnipeg. They're then flown, or shipped by sea, to finally reach the shelves of remote northern grocery stores.

It's an expensive journey. By the time groceries reach northern communities, the added transport costs mean items are priced significantly higher than what most Canadians pay at the grocery store — and even more for fresh and perishable produce.

After facing the death of its dominant newspaper, Pittsburgh’s media has a surprising turnaround

PITTSBURGH (AP) — In the space of a couple of weeks this spring, Pittsburgh media has lived through a near-death experience and a resurrection.

Owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week announced the newspaper's sale to a nonprofit foundation that said it was committed to keeping it open. A news outlet that predates the U.S. Constitution was due to close on May 3, which would have made the Steel City the nation's largest community without a city-based paper.

Weeks earlier, the alternative Pittsburgh City Paper, whose staff learned on New Year's Day that it was closing after 34 years, roared back to life under new ownership.

They were rare positive developments for a local news industry that has seen its share of the opposite over the past two decades — newsrooms shuttered or thinned out, journalists thrown out of work, consumers drifting away. No one is pretending that a true turnaround will be easy in Pittsburgh. One thing that may help is that the city faced a news abyss and was forced to prepare for it.

Military hits 30-year recruitment high but still falls short on key trades

OTTAWA - The Canadian military just had a banner year for recruitment — but not enough for the defence minister to declare an end to what his predecessor called a personnel "death spiral."

Military recruitment hit a three-decade high when the Canadian Armed Forces brought in 7,310 new members over the past year, Defence Minister David McGuinty said Monday.

That's 600 more than the previous year, when the military brought in 6,710 recruits.

McGuinty touted a surge in enlistment applications Monday morning — just hours before a House of Commons committee heard testimony about how the Canadian Armed Forces has struggled to keep applicants from dropping out of the recruitment process.

Rural communities team up to court doctors

A close call that would have seen the Russell emergency department temporarily close has leaders in the area joining forces to entice more doctors to practise in the town.

“At this point in time, it’s becoming a crisis,” said Louise Perreault, who manages both the Lions Manor and Park Manor, home to approximately 40 seniors.

The ER at the Russell Health Centre was set to close for a weekend earlier this month, but the shutdown was avoided at the last minute when a doctor was found.

Currently, only two doctors work in the community, one at the medical centre and another at a local clinic, but the low numbers are creating concern for many in the area, located roughly 350 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

In praise of the deliberately slower lane

Before I begin this story, I should first confess that I once suffered from a serious affliction — that nasty urban disease known as road rage.

Wooden elevator reduced to rubble after towering over Austin for 75 years

With the demolition of the wooden grain elevator in Austin, a community about 130 kilometres west of Winnipeg, the Manitoba Historical Society estimates there are only 114 such structures remaining in the province.

Supervised drug consumption site will be grounded in culture, compassion: facility’s leader

Winnipeg’s first supervised consumption site is being designed as a culturally grounded health space where people struggling with addiction will be met with familiarity, dignity and support from the moment they enter.

‘Extraordinary’: Back on Earth, Jeremy Hansen describes his long journey in space

HOUSTON - When Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen first floated to the window after the Orion capsule's bone-rattling launch into space early this month, what he saw and felt left him grasping for words.

He saw the sweep of the ocean first, and then, drifting into view, the rich, dusty red of Australia. And behind it all was the vastness of space, with the edge of Earth's atmosphere shining like a bubble of blue glass in the black.

"It was pretty extraordinary," Hansen told The Canadian Press at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston Thursday.

The enormity of what Hansen and his Artemis II crewmates experienced is still settling in a week after they returned to Earth, splashing into the Pacific Ocean following a 10-day lunar fly-around.

Boeing commits $36M for Winnipeg projects

Canada’s next Air Force planes will be built with the help of a burgeoning workforce: robots.

Gatorade, inventor of the sports drink, is getting a rebrand targeting non-athletes

Sixty years after it invented sports drinks, Gatorade is making a surprising pivot: It’s no longer focusing primarily on athletes.

PepsiCo, Gatorade’s parent company, said Thursday that the brand wants to broaden its reach to non-athletes who are looking for ways to hydrate, whether they’re on a long flight, going for a walk or nursing a hangover. New packaging highlights the specific ways Gatorade’s various drinks and powders work and the research behind them.

The change reflects U.S. consumers’ booming interest in beverages with perceived health benefits. Jack Doggett, a food and drink analyst with the consulting firm Mintel, said his research indicates 60% of consumers who buy sports drinks aren’t athletes but want the functional ingredients those drinks provide, like electrolytes for hydration and carbohydrates for energy.

“People are using these drinks more for wellness and daily maintenance,” Doggett said. “It’s easy to say that the wellness consumer is the young consumer, but older generations are also drinking these drinks for hydration.”

AI-rendered Val Kilmer debuts in ‘As Deep as the Grave’ trailer

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The filmmakers behind “As Deep as the Grave,” the indie film that is using an artificial intelligence-rendered version of Val Kilmer in a prominent role, debuted a first look at the recreated actor Wednesday at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

“Don’t fear the dead and don’t fear me,” Kilmer’s character, Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, says at the end of the trailer.

The actor died last year at 65, of pneumonia. The use of generative AI to recreate Kilmer for the historical drama based on archaeologists Ann and Earl Morris became a hot button topic when the filmmakers announced it last month. The trailer shows Kilmer’s character at various ages.

Writer-director Coerte Voorhees, along with his brother John, spoke on a panel Wednesday about the controversial decision to use technology to create a performance from a deceased actor and explained why they feel they've done it ethically by working with Kilmer's children and the actors union. Coerte Voorhees stopped short of calling it a Val Kilmer performance, however.

Tesla leader believes Shanghai factory operations will play a role in robot mass production

SHANGHAI (AP) — A Tesla Inc. leader said Tuesday he believes its Shanghai factory operations will help resolve the challenges in achieving mass production of the company's humanoid robots as the U.S. electric vehicle giant pivots to robotics.

Wang Hao, Tesla's vice president, said the Shanghai facilities, like other Tesla factories, will contribute after the company enters an era of robots.

Wang, who also serves as president of Tesla China, told reporters on a government-organized tour of one of its Shanghai factories that CEO Elon Musk once noted having production at scale is a critical challenge in manufacturing humanoid robots.

Wang said he believes the Shanghai manufacturing arm “is a golden key to solving this challenge," but did not specify how the operation will support the company's robotic business.

Finding a fitting way to build in the Exchange District

Over the last few months, renowned Newfoundland musician Alan Doyle, best known as the lead singer of Great Big Sea, has been touring Canada. At each stop, he shared a “coffee walk” on social media, stepping off his tour bus to wander in search of a coffee while reflecting on places he has visited throughout his 40-year career criss-crossing the country.

Karoline Leavitt puts the ‘pro’ in propaganda

It’s not often a press secretary is so rabidly enthusiastic about their mission that they develop their own following, but then Karoline Leavitt is exceptional.

Rent control killing jobs: landlords

Companies are laying off staff and pausing major investments ahead of changes to Manitoba’s rental market.

One Manitoba company that works primarily on apartment buildings has had four projects put on hold and had to lay off roughly a dozen staff.

“That’s been a common theme with my peers… They’re all having to do the same,” said Con-Restor Technologies owner Stephane Phaneuf.

The Manitoba government plans to change how rental property managers can apply for above-guideline increases this spring. If implemented, landlords won’t recoup renovation costs through rent as quickly.

Trump administration terminates agreements to protect transgender students in several schools

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Education Department said Monday it has terminated agreements with five school districts and a college aimed at upholding protections for transgender students, backing away from requirements negotiated by previous administrations that took a different interpretation of civil rights.

The decision removes the federal obligations for the schools to keep up measures such as faculty training on abiding by a students' preferred name and pronouns and allowing students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

One of the school systems, Delaware Valley School District in rural eastern Pennsylvania, received notice of the change from the Trump administration in February and has since voted to roll back its antidiscrimination protections for transgender students. Another district, Sacramento City Unified, said Monday it "remains committed to the support of our LGBTQ+ students and staff.”

The other affected districts are Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware, Fife School District in Washington, and La Mesa-Spring Valley School District and Taft College in California.

AP says it will offer buyouts as part of pivot away from newspaper-focused history

The Associated Press, one of the world's oldest and most influential news organizations, said Monday it is offering buyouts to an unspecified number of its U.S.-based journalists as part of an acceleration away from the focus on newspapers and their print journalism that sustained the company since the mid-1800s.

The News Media Guild, the union that represents AP journalists, said more than 120 of the staff members it represents received buyout offers on Monday.

The news organization is becoming more focused on visual journalism and developing new revenue sources, particularly through companies investing in artificial intelligence, to cope with the economic collapse of many legacy news outlets. Once the lion’s share of AP’s revenue, big newspaper companies now account for 10% of its income.

“We’re not a newspaper company and we haven’t been for quite some time,” Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of the AP, said in an interview.

Why one Las Vegas newspaper just stopped printing its rival

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Las Vegas Review-Journal announced Friday that it will no longer print its rival the Las Vegas Sun for the first time in decades, sharpening their legal dispute over the nation’s last joint operating agreement stemming from a 1970 law designed to preserve newspapers.

Readers “will not find a printed Las Vegas Sun insert inside,” the Review-Journal wrote in an editorial, noting the Sun maintains a website, has a few hundred thousand followers across social media platforms, and is free to produce its own newspaper.

“We encourage them to do so. The Review-Journal competes with countless sources of news and entertainment, but we would welcome one more. We just don’t want to foot the bill. It is time the Sun stood up on its own two feet,” the editorial said, without specifying the cost.

It was the first day in 76 years the Sun hasn’t been printed, Sun attorney Leif Reid said in an email.