Gamification and memes lure young people to sports wagering apps, prediction markets

When Rory McIlroy won the Masters for the second year in a row, Kalshi shared a photo of him on Instagram with the words, “Wait he’s goated.” When a video of NBA player Damian Lillard recovering from an injury circulated online, Kalshi’s main competitor Polymarket posted, “The league is cooked.”

If you don’t know what either of those phrases mean, it's because you may not be the target audience.

The posts and hundreds of others like it are exposing younger people to prediction market platforms, where users can put money on the line for the outcomes of real-world events — or absurd ones like when the U.S. will confirm that aliens exist or whether Jesus Christ will return before 2027.

Once on the platforms, companies keep users hooked with what they market as low-stakes, casual opportunities to make an easy buck, creating an environment that some say feels more like a game and less like a risky financial transaction with potentially harmful consequences. Indeed, recent academic research looking at 588 million trades on Polymarket found that profits were concentrated to just a very small group of top traders while the majority of users — 69% — lost money.

The Minneapolis immigration crackdown ended months ago. For these little kids, trauma remains

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS, Minn. (AP) — The little girl approached the therapy dog outside the school library, reaching out to touch her fluffy blond coat. Social worker Nicole Herje leaned in.

"How does it feel when you pet Sage?” Herje said.

“I like it," the girl said. “In Ecuador, I had a dog.”

A few months earlier, this girl and many of her classmates at Valley View Elementary were staying off the streets to avoid the immigration officers flooding their suburban Minneapolis community. Attendance plummeted as families kept their kids from school during the Trump administration’s enforcement surge.

Some brands say their jeans are eco-friendly. Here’s how to find a pair that’s actually sustainable

NEW YORK (AP) — Your favorite pair of jeans may have traveled around the world through cotton farms, dye houses, wash facilities and factories before ending up in your closet. The denim may have never been worn but it is stonewashed, sanded, chemically faded or laser-treated to look like it.

Those processes can require significant amounts of water, energy and chemicals — part of the reason denim has become a growing target for sustainability efforts across the fashion industry, which is among the world’s biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions.

Brands are responding to wider awareness by marketing their jeans as “sustainable,” touting regenerative cotton, recycled fibers and low-water manufacturing techniques. But figuring out if that's true is far more complicated. For one, sustainability is difficult to define — and there isn't a universal set of standards.

Last week, Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein acquired Everlane, a brand known for transparency and sustainability efforts, highlighting broader tensions over scale and affordability. Improvements in sustainable processes typically cost more, making it difficult for companies with fast production cycles and low prices to adopt them widely. Consumers are left to navigate a complicated web of tradeoffs involving farming practices, chemical processes, labor ethics and a wide range of prices.

Vacant property owners overwhelmingly ignoring city fines imposed after fires

The city’s effort to crack down on vacant property fires by charging owners has fallen short, with new data showing it has recovered just a fraction of the more than $3.5 million imposed in fines since 2023.

Manitoba bill would reduce availability of flavoured vapes; one group wants more

WINNIPEG - The Manitoba government plans to greatly reduce the number of locations where flavoured vaping products can be sold, but one group says the idea does not go far enough and lags behind efforts in many other provinces.

A bill introduced in the legislature Tuesday would forbid the sale of such products in businesses in urban areas that allow people under 18 to enter. The measure would not apply in rural areas.

The NDP government said the aim is to help reduce the risk that minors might see the products, be enticed by the flavouring, and get hooked.

"We know that (flavoured vapes) is a gateway for kids in particular (to) choosing more significant — like tobacco, cigarettes — substances later on," Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said.

NASA lays out moon base plans with landers, buggies and drones at the top of the list

NASA is already ordering landers, rovers and drones for a sprawling moon base, less than two months after the Artemis II's record-breaking lunar flyaround.

System to address violence in schools a no-brainer

For too long, violence in Manitoba classrooms has been treated as an uncomfortable problem discussed quietly in staff rooms, but rarely confronted publicly.

That silence is beginning to crack.

As more teachers come forward with stories of classroom evacuations, physical assaults and workplaces increasingly defined by fear and disruption, the province can no longer dismiss these incidents as isolated or unavoidable.

Far more needs to be done to provide teachers — and students — with safe learning and working environments.

Inclusion groups sign open letter calling on Ottawa to halt MAID for mental illness

OTTAWA - Ninety disability advocacy and mental health organizations have signed an open letter urging the federal Liberals to permanently exclude people with mental illness from eligibility for medical assistance in dying.

Inclusion Canada is leading the effort, which includes Disability Without Poverty, the Schizophrenia Society of Canada and the Canadian Mental Health Association.

Under current law, people whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness will become eligible to apply for MAID assessments beginning in March 2027.

The letter, which is addressed to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Health Minister Marjorie Michel and Justice Minister Sean Fraser, says that would be "a significant and misguided expansion."

What tastes like a Korean pancake and is purple all over? An Oreo inspired by K-pop group BTS

Oreo is teaming up with K-pop supergroup BTS for a bit of marketing dynamite that capitalizes on consumers’ growing interest in global flavors.

Mondelez, Oreo’s parent company, said Tuesday that BTS-themed Oreos will go on sale June 1 online and June 8 in stores. The cookies, which feature purple wafers in a nod to the band’s signature color, will be sold in more than 80 markets around the world, making the partnership the brand's biggest to date.

The band also designed 13 embossments for the wafers, including the names of the seven members and an outline of the light stick that fans hold at BTS concerts.

The white-and-tan creme center of the sandwich cookies was formulated to taste like hotteok, a warm, brown sugar-stuffed pancake that’s a popular Korean street food.

You should be dancing, yeah. Moving to music offers all kinds of benefits as you age

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Carol Ross can’t stop smiling at dance practice as she shouts out the steps of a routine to members of her tap and jazz troupe for women age 50 and older.

“I’ve been dancing my whole life, it’s the best,” said Ross, who founded the Rodeo City Wreckettes group 23 years ago at an age when many people are getting ready for retirement.

Now 87, Ross and her husband and lifelong dance partner John, also 87, have long known what more older adults are now discovering: Moving to music is one of the best ways to stay healthy. Medical professionals say it doesn’t matter if it’s Western line dancing, ballroom steps, salsa, tap, Zumba at the gym, or with a group like the Wreckettes.

“Dancing is one of the most powerful activities for older people,” said Julio Loya, a nurse and geriatric program coordinator at the Tucson Medical Center.

Winnipeg pair look to launch EyeMirage device for sale in Canada in fall, with eyes to follow on international markets

By winter, a pair of Winnipeg entrepreneurs aim to have portable vision and concussion-screening products circulating Canada.

“Designing a device that is portable, affordable and AI-based and smartphone-based is a puzzle,” Dr. Behzad Mansouri said, a prototype of the device on the desk in front of him at the Brain, Vision and Concussion Clinic off St. Anne’s Road on Monday.

He’s a neuro-ophthalmologist at the clinic. He’s also the co-founder of Neuroptek, the medical technology company behind headsets meant to help diagnose concussions and other vision and neurological injuries and disorders.

The products look like virtual reality headsets. Instead of games, users take visual tests they’d find at a doctor’s office. They might try to read letters or identify colours.

FarmerTitan app rolls into agriculture equipment tracking field

Katie Friesen is used to playing games.

The Manitoban’s prowess on the volleyball court led to a scholarship to Florida International University in Miami, where she competed on the Division 1 school’s beach and indoor volleyball teams.

But seven years after graduation, Friesen is playing a different game.

The 29-year-old, who divides her time between Manitoba and Austin, Texas, is the founder of FarmerTitan. The platform allows farmers to manage their equipment and employees using QR codes and a mobile app.

Manitoba doctors support provincial government’s proposed social media ban

WINNIPEG - The negative effects social media has on children and youth's mental and physical health is outweighing other health concerns like substance use and injuries prompting some Manitoba doctors to support a ban on these sites, a new report has found.

Doctors Manitoba, the organization representing roughly 5,000 physicians and students in the province, surveyed its members and found that social media and excessive screen time pose significant risks to the mental health, sleep and robust development in children and youth.

Of the 242 physicians who completed the survey, 90 per cent supported a ban on social media sites and artificial intelligence chatbots for children.

"The findings are quite clear. Doctors believe social media, screen time and chat bots are among the top risks to children's health and well-being, ranking higher than even smoking, drinking, injuries and sedentary lifestyles," Dr. Alon Altman, president of Doctors Manitoba, told reporters on Monday.

For the patient, where does the buck stop?

The word “fiduciary” did not begin in medicine. It began in law.

For centuries, lawyers have refined a doctrine that is now woven through corporate governance, trust administration, securities regulation and pension oversight.

A fiduciary acts solely in the interest of the beneficiary. The duty is loyalty, prudence and full disclosure.

Implicit in all of these is the duty of competence and the requirement that the beneficiary’s interest comes before the fiduciary’s own. Where the duty is breached, courts intervene.

Could anything but profit steer AI? The OpenAI trial offered clues but no verdict

The trial pitting Elon Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made clear the two billionaires agreed on one thing: building artificial intelligence would require significant resources — and enormous amounts of money.

It may seem obvious now, as an AI-obsessed stock market helps finance a global construction boom of chipmaking factories and energy-hogging data centers to keep chatbots running, but testimony and evidence showed how people with outsized control of the AI industry were privately debating its costs nearly a decade ago.

“Even raising several hundred million won’t be enough,” Musk said in a 2018 email to Altman and other OpenAI co-founders about what he increasingly saw as a futile attempt to compete with Google. “This needs billions per year immediately or forget it.”

The soaring costs factored into the trajectory of OpenAI, which began in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI for the common good and is now a capitalistic enterprise valued at $852 billion. As San Francisco-based OpenAI and other AI companies move toward historically large Wall Street debuts, the trial also raised questions about whether anything but commercial interests can steer AI’s future.

Linking Hope creates nonprofit connections to build a better future

Standing atop a plastic chair in a bustling warehouse on the edge of downtown Winnipeg, Breena Courchaine projects her voice to coordinate dozens of volunteers and thank them for the day’s work.

The morning has been a frenzy of piling clothes atop tables, moving donations around the room and finding permanent homes for things at Linking Hope’s new, permanent home.

By 12:30 p.m. Saturday, more than 100 volunteers had moved Linking Hope’s inventory into its new home at 323 Edwin St., across the road from its former space at 190 Disraeli Fwy., and the team was well ahead of schedule — a testament to the organization's support, staff say.

“We literally could not do this without our volunteers,” Courchaine said. “Every idea that has made this place better is mostly coming from the volunteers.”

Proponents of solar power push for provincial infrastructure investment to boost grid resilience

In the early 1970s, licence plates were stamped with the slogan “Sunny Manitoba” — a nod to long summer days, crisp blue winter skies and frequent sun dogs reflecting off of blinding white snow. While the slogan later changed, Manitoba’s ranking as Canada’s second-sunniest province has not.

Despite that sunlit reputation, solar power — one of the most-developed renewable energy sources — makes up just a small fraction of the province’s electricity grid.

“It’s extremely marginal, especially when you compare to other jurisdictions like Alberta and Saskatchewan,” said James Wilt, policy development manager at Climate Action Team Manitoba.

Manitoba boasts a predominantly emissions-free grid, with 97 per cent of its power generated by a network of hydroelectric dams. But the provincial utility, Manitoba Hydro, has forecasted that its once-abundant renewable energy source will soon fall short. There is growing demand for power amid the electrification of sectors like transportation and heating, and the rapidly growing interest in developing electricity-hungry data centres. Combined with more unpredictable water levels owing to climate factors like extreme drought, it’s all prompted the utility to warn that capacity could run out as soon as 2030.

Pushing back against AI’s ‘inevitability’

Don’t misunderstand: I am not anti-technology. I’m anti-Big Tech forcing AI down our throats in order to better surveil us and take away our jobs while destroying the environment.

Banning YouTube removes tools from schools

It’s been a long time since the norm for audio-visual presentations in classrooms took the form of a slide projector, or a TV cart with a VHS player and a small cathode-ray tube set.

But Manitoba’s premier is asking himself something lately: are the modern equivalents good for schools?

Premier Wab Kinew said during a recent CBC interview that he does not think YouTube, the popular video-streaming site, should be used in classrooms. He made the comment during a discussion on his broader effort to keep kids aged 15 and younger from accessing YouTube and other social media apps.

The comments have caused some consternation among educators who, while recognizing YouTube in general is not a great source of information for young people, believe it nevertheless offers access to a solid repository of educational video content provided by reputable sources.

Outrage over Northland Tales program hypocritical

Mud-slinging isn’t stopped by slinging more mud — and the concept behind the satirical TV show Northland Tales is an attempt to harmfully engage with a set of harmful beliefs and behaviours.

Pappas Greek Food and Steak closes after three decades of serving Winnipeg

Customers at Pappas Greek Food and Steak were served a side of gratitude with their meals on Friday, as the long-running Winnipeg restaurant marked its last day in business.

Owners Bob and Maria Papasotiriou are retiring after more than 30 years of operating the eatery, located at the corner of Roblin Boulevard and Elmhurst Road in the Charleswood neighbourhood.

“People walked in, they celebrated around our tables — birthdays, special occasions — and memories were created. So it’s not like a business anymore. This is home,” Maria said before lunch service.

“I want to express our deep appreciation for everybody who came through our doors and made our dream a success. They filled our hearts with a lot of joy.”

Combat in the classroom: Many Manitoba public school teachers are concerned violence is making their jobs more difficult

The majority of teachers in a new Probe Research study reported both the prevalence of violence and severity of incidents has increased since they joined the profession. Early years and veteran teachers, along with those working in Winnipeg, were the most likely to report worsening conditions.