Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s therapy-set two-hander plays with reality

The public and private perils of online engagement crash through the screen and into a therapist’s office in Job, a nervy drama that explores the power of posts and the ethical responsibilities inherent to our respective postings.

Written by New York’s Max Wolf Friedlich and directed by Calgary’s Jack Grinhaus, the opening production of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s season heads to the races with the brandishing of a starter’s gun in the warped offices of Bay Area psychotherapist Lloyd (Dov Mickelson).

Lloyd’s description of his typical patient — young people who are “hopeless and beyond help” — isn’t exactly inspirational.

Blundstone-booted Jane (Jada Rifkin) seems to have made the cut, having been placed on paid administrative leave after a viral meltdown by her employer, an unnamed tech giant on whose campus she’s enrolled as an adjudicator.

Rogers wins gold, sets Canadian record in hammer throw at world championships

TOKYO - Camryn Rogers set the tone early in the women's hammer throw at the world athletics championships Monday with an impressive opening toss of 78.09 metres.

Good enough for a world title. Not good enough for Rogers.

The 26-year-old from Richmond, B.C., put the competition out of reach with her second throw of 80.51 metres to claim her second straight world championship gold medal in dominant fashion.

Rogers's winning throw broke her own Canadian record and is the second longest ever behind the world record of 82.98 set by Poland's Anita Wlodarczyk in 2016. Rogers's previous personal best was 78.88 metres.

First Anishinaabe woman Bar Association president prioritizes mentorship, protecting the rule of law

In 1991, when Stacey Soldier was just 15 years old, Manitoba marked a watershed moment. After three years of hearings, the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry released its final report, a searing reckoning with how the province’s police and justice system had failed Indigenous people.

At home in Thompson, Soldier watched news of the inquiry unfold on TV. (“We were only allowed to watch the news in our house,” she says with a laugh.) The Anishinaabe teen was inspired to see an Indigenous judge, then-Justice Murray Sinclair, co-presiding over the proceedings, and was transfixed by the findings.

It felt “thrilling for justice,” she recalls. But it was also a stark lesson in the challenges her people faced to obtain it.

“One thing that the AJI made clear is that this is a system that wasn’t designed to help Indigenous communities and people in any way,” she says, chatting at her law firm Cochrane Sinclair’s Exchange District offices last week.

Blame game after acts of political violence can lead to further attacks, experts warn

DENVER (AP) — From the moment conservative activist and icon Charlie Kirk was felled by an assassin’s bullet, partisans began fighting over which side was to blame. President Donald Trump became the most prominent to do so, tying the attack to “the radical left” before a suspect was even identified.

It was part of a new, grim tradition in a polarized country — trying to pin immediate responsibility for an act of public violence on one of two political sides. As the nation reels from a wave of physical attacks against both Republicans and Democrats, experts warn that the rush to blame sometimes ambiguous and irrational acts on political movements could lead to more conflict.

“What you’re seeing now is exactly how the spiral of violence occurs,” said Robert Pape, a political scientist and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago.

On Friday, authorities announced they had arrested 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Washington, Utah, in the shooting. While a registered voter, he was not affiliated with any party and had not voted in the last two general elections. Even so, officials said Robinson had recently grown more political and expressed negative views about Kirk.

Equatorial Guinea enforces yearlong internet outage for island that protested construction company

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — When residents of Equatorial Guinea's Annobón island wrote to the government in Malabo in July last year complaining about the dynamite explosions by a Moroccan construction company, they didn't expect the swift end to their internet access.

Dozens of the signatories and residents were imprisoned for nearly a year, while internet access to the small island has been cut off since then, according to several residents and rights groups.

Local residents interviewed by The Associated Press left the island in the past months, citing fear for their lives and the difficulty of life without internet.

Banking services have shut down, hospital services for emergencies have been brought to a halt and residents say they rack up phone bills they can't afford because cellphone calls are the only way to communicate.

Local engineer was a real game changer

Forty-seven years ago, George Klassen had an idea that improved the lives of millions of people in Bangladesh. It was for a hand-powered rower pump, a classic piece of simple, inexpensive and appropriate technology that poor farmers could use to irrigate their crops.

Today, an estimated 500,000 rower pumps are still in operation, benefitting more than 2.5 million people in that southeast Asian country — a legacy to Klassen’s vision, curiosity and ingenuity.

Klassen, who died on April 15 in Steinbach, spent his early years in Blumenort (near Gretna) before moving with his parents and 10 siblings to a farm near Steinbach. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with a B.Sc., he taught science and math in Nigeria with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for three years.

There, he became convinced the best way he could serve people in the global south was by assisting them with practical skills and knowledge. With that in mind, when Klassen returned to Canada he decided to go back to the University of Manitoba to study engineering.

Very hungry caterpillars very good for biodiversity

Widely considered a pest and a scourge, a leaf-chomping defoliator dedicated to decimating crops, boring into buds and biting down blossoms as it works to satiate its inexhaustible appetite, a new nature documentary reveals there’s more to the much-maligned caterpillar than meets the eye.

The larval creature takes centre stage in Winnipeg filmmaker Jeff McKay’s documentary feature The Extraordinary Caterpillar.

His hour-long film takes viewers on a journey to understanding why the famously “very hungry caterpillar” is a key player in maintaining biodiversity.

“Caterpillars are right at the centre of the food chain, they are key to the food chain working as it should,” McKay says.

Running down Terry Fox’s dream

In an era when today’s endurance feats seemingly defy human limits, his accomplishments still marvel.

In 1980, a curly-haired young man dipped a prosthetic right leg in the Atlantic Ocean in St. John’s, Nlfd., before embarking on a cross-country journey to raise money and awareness for cancer research.

With his signature hop-step running gait, Terry Fox, often only wearing grey shorts, a white cotton T-shirt with the words Marathon of Hope stencilled on the front, and blue adidas shoes, ran an average of 42 kilometres, or the equivalent of a full marathon, for 143 days. In total, he tallied 5,373 kilometres spanning six provinces.

His physical journey ended Sept. 1 of that year just shy of Thunder Bay when the cancer that had claimed his leg at age 18 had returned in his lungs. He died 10 months later, shortly before his 23rd birthday. However, his dream of raising millions of dollars for cancer research never faded.

Anything but sweet: outage spoils dozens of litres of parlour’s ice cream

The owner of an ice cream shop was licking her wounds Thursday after dozens of litres of icy treats melted away, causing profits to go down the drain.

Patty Mikos, the longtime co-owner of Dairy Delight on St. Anne’s Road, arrived at work to find 10 tubs of 11.4 litres of hard ice cream melting inside a freezer that had been off for hours because of a hydro outage.

The ice cream was tossed into a garbage bin with other perishable food products, including hamburger.

“We had to throw out all the meat — about 50 pounds today,” Mikos said. “You don’t want to risk it when it comes to meat.”

Amazon’s Zoox launches its robotaxi service in Las Vegas

Amazon's Zoox on Wednesday launched its robotaxi service in Las Vegas, offering free rides through parts of the entertainment mecca for anyone willing to gamble on the safety of a driverless vehicle that operates without a steering wheel.

The Las Vegas debut of Zoox's long-planned ride-hailing service reflects Amazon-owned robotaxi maker's confidence in the safety of its boxy vehicles after two years of testing them in the city.

The robotaxis initially were only available to employees in Las Vegas before gradually expanding to friends and family members. Now, anyone with the Zoox app will be able to request a ride to five designated locations, including Resorts World, the Luxor hotel and the New York-New York hotel. The longest distance the Zoox robotaxis will travel is about three miles (4.8 kilometers) while carrying up to four passengers.

All rides will be provided for free for at least the first few months to help promote the existence of the service in the perennially popular travel destination. Once it begins charging for rides in Las Vegas, Zoox says its prices will be comparable to traditional taxis and ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft.

Nepal internet crackdown part of global trend toward suppressing online freedom

Nepal's crackdown on social media companies, which led to protests and police killing at least 19 people, is part of a yearslong decline of internet freedoms around the world as even democracies seek to curtail online speech.

The Himalayan country’s government said last week it was blocking several social media platforms including Facebook, X and YouTube because the companies failed to comply with a requirement that they register with the government. The ban was lifted Tuesday a day after the deadly protests.

What's happening in Nepal mirrors “this broader pattern of controlling the narrative and controlling of stories emerging from the ground,” said Aditya Vashistha, an assistant professor of information science at Cornell University. “This has happened several times in the neighboring countries India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. So this is nothing new — in fact, I would say this is taken from the playbook, which is now very established, of trying to control social media narratives.”

Not just Nepal

400+ brands in 5+ years: Winnipeg-based digital marketing firm Mad Social Agency continues to evolve

Maddie Thompson was on a beach when she decided to drop out of school.

It was February 2022 and she was studying architecture at the University of Manitoba. While maintaining her spot on the dean’s honour list, Thompson was also running Mad Social Agency Ltd., the digital marketing firm she’d started two years earlier. She had enough business by that point she was hiring friends to help manage accounts.

Sitting on Locarno Beach in Vancouver, she realized it made sense to drop out and pursue the business full-time.

“My thought process was: I’m going to take a one-year leave of absence and see if I can make this work,” says Thompson, 23. “And I just never went back.”

Onslaught of sports betting ads make gambling seem enticing to youth, doctors say

TORONTO - Doctors are calling for restrictions on sports betting ads, saying they are setting youth up for a future of problem gambling.

An editorial published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday says the ads are everywhere during sports broadcasts and that the legalization of online gambling has made every smartphone a potential betting platform.

Editor Dr. Shannon Charlebois says even though betting sites say they're only for people 19 years of age and older, youth are being inundated with advertising that equates enjoying sports with betting.

She says child and teen brains are still developing and the constant exposure to gambling messages normalizes harmful behaviour that they can carry into adulthood

Offhand insult in 2003 gave rise to the Banjo Bowl — one of CFL's most-colourful and enduring rivalries

It was the verbal shot heard ’round the world. Or at least, across a pair of Prairie provinces.

Canadian Football League fans in Manitoba and Saskatchewan are well familiar with the origin of the Banjo Bowl, the annual tilt that pits the host Winnipeg Blue Bombers against their principal rival, the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Followers of both teams can tell you that the match evolved out of a comment uttered by former Bombers placekicker Troy Westwood in September 2003, when he sarcastically referred to Saskatchewaners (Saskatchewanites? Saskatchewians?) as “banjo-picking inbreds.”

Then, how he doubled down on that jibe a few weeks later when, at a scheduled news conference, he told members of the media that he had misspoken, as “the vast majority of the people in Saskatchewan have no idea how to play the banjo.” (For the record, Westwood’s mom was born in the Land of the Living Skies, and his aunts and grandmother were living there when he was spouting off.)

Ryan Reynolds suggests swapping phones with a MAGA supporter, checking out their algorithm

TORONTO - Ryan Reynolds says mounting tensions between Canada and the U.S. haven't changed anything for him as a Canuck in Hollywood.

The "Deadpool" star preached unity during an onstage conversation at the Toronto International Film Festival, when chief programming officer Anita Lee asked him what it was like being a Canadian in Los Angeles during this "elbows up" era of increased nationalism.

In a nearly five-minute answer to the question, Reynolds said he's always held Canadian values, including conflict resolution, and he seeks "to learn, rather than win."

Reynolds is at TIFF to promote the new documentary "John Candy: I Like Me," which he produced.

YouTube using creators to enhance broadcast of the NFL game between the Chiefs and the Chargers

Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Andy Reid’s Kansas City Chiefs face Justin Herbert and Jim Harbaugh’s Los Angeles Chargers in the most accessible game to viewers on Friday night in Brazil.

It’s the first NFL game streamed on YouTube and there will be plenty of unique elements surrounding the broadcast.

The league and YouTube have assembled a lineup of content creators to enhance the viewing experience.

Cam Newton, Brandon Marshall, Derek Carr and Tyrann Mathieu will be part of a pre-game and post-game shows hosted by Kay Adams.

Worse-for-wear riverwalk a victim of total neglect

Partway down my well-beaten path from West Broadway to The Forks, I feel a bit like Dorothy navigating Oz. The path ahead is lined with Winnipeg’s version of dancing poppies and flying monkeys: hazards, confrontations and ghostly spectres to which we’ve become perhaps far too accustomed.

Alberta government postpones release of revised school library book ban

EDMONTON - The Alberta government has postponed the release of its revised school library book ban to Monday.

The government had promised the new ministerial order for Friday afternoon, with a technical briefing for reporters set earlier in the day.

After the briefing was supposed to start, media were informed by email that it had been rescheduled.

“We are taking the time needed to ensure that the revised ministerial order is clear for all school boards," Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides later said in an email in response to questions about the postponement.

Girls fell behind boys in math during the pandemic. Schools are trying to make up lost ground

IRVING, Texas (AP) — Crowded around a workshop table, four girls at de Zavala Middle School puzzled over a Lego machine they had built. As they flashed a purple card in front of a light sensor, nothing happened.

The teacher at the Dallas-area school had emphasized that in the building process, there is no such thing as mistakes. Only iterations. So the girls dug back into the box of blocks and pulled out an orange card. They held it over the sensor and the machine kicked into motion.

“Oh! Oh, it reacts differently to different colors,” said sixth grader Sofia Cruz.

In de Zavala’s first year as a choice school focused on science, technology, engineering and math, the school recruited a sixth grade class that’s half girls. School leaders are hoping the girls will stick with STEM fields. In de Zavala’s higher grades — whose students joined before it was a STEM school — some elective STEM classes have just one girl enrolled.

One Tech Tip: Ditch the chatbots and take your AI nature apps on a birdwatching hike

I didn't notice the scarlet tanager until the alert appeared on my phone: “Merlin heard a new bird!”

Despite its brilliant plumage — jet-black wings on a crimson body — the songbird can be a hard one to spot in a forest because it prefers to stay high in the canopy. It sounds a little like a robin to an untrained ear.

But the free Merlin Bird ID app detected a scarlet tanager was likely nearby by using artificial intelligence to analyze my phone’s live sound recording. I paused my hike, quietly scanned the treetops, saw the bird as it kept singing and clicked a button to add the species to my growing "life list" of bird sightings. Digital confetti burst on my screen.

Like a real-world version of Pokémon Go, a gotta-catch-'em-all drive to add to my Merlin list has helped me find a great kiskadee in Mexico and a rusty-cheeked scimitar-babbler in the Himalayas. But sometimes the greatest revelations are close to home, as more AI nature app users are starting to discover.

Winnipeg elementary school shoots for moon with stuffie design

A stuffed animal designed by elementary schoolers in Winnipeg could be launched into outer space on NASA’s Artemis II mission.

How young content creators plan to balance their social media success and campus life

Growing up, Sofia DelGiudice never imagined her father’s annual back-to-school tradition would be a pivotal moment in her social media career.

Before starting university two years ago, the 19-year-old content creator from Toronto had the idea to stitch together all the videos her dad filmed of her descending the stairs in the family's home on the first day of school.

"It's the first day of what grade?" DelGiudice’s dad can be heard asking her in each clip recorded from kindergarten onward.

DelGiudice posted what she thought was a cute homage only her small TikTok following would see — and it went viral.

As AI becomes part of everyday life, it brings a hidden climate cost

Marissa Loewen first started using artificial intelligence in 2014 as a project management tool. She has autism and ADHD and said it helped immensely with organizing her thoughts.

“We try to use it conscientiously though because we do realize that there is an impact on the environment,” she said.

Her personal AI use isn't unique anymore. Now it’s a feature in smartphones, search engines, word processors and email services. Every time someone uses AI, it uses energy that is often generated by fossil fuels. That releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and contributes to climate change.

And it's getting harder to live without it.