Exhibition takes Canadian history of Chinese oppression from the archives into the light

Housed within two innocuous rooms flanking the Welcome Gallery at Manitoba Museum is a sobering record of a government’s betrayal of its own citizens.

Federal government dismisses calls for radar sites to remain as farmland

OTTAWA - The federal government has rejected calls from some residents in southern Ontario to find other spots to set up planned Arctic over-the-horizon radar installations in order to preserve farmland.

Parliament received a flurry of petitions in recent months criticizing National Defence for buying up plots of quality farmland near Barrie, Ont., for the new radar system, and calling on Ottawa to register the land under an agricultural trust.

The government says the long-range radar, a $6 billion project to modernize Norad surveillance equipment, will make detecting threats in Arctic airspace faster and easier.

The federal government bought 288 hectares of land in Clearview Township, west of Barrie, for an antenna receiver site, upsetting local residents. It also acquired land for a transmitter site in Kawartha Lakes, about 70 km north of Oshawa, Ont.

Canada well positioned to face food inflation risks from fertilizer shortages: report

TORONTO - As shipping constraints in the Middle East disrupt global fertilizer supply and drive up prices, a new TD report says Canada is better positioned to face any inflationary pressures on its food production — at least in the short run.

Canada's fertilizer imports from the Gulf region are less than five per cent, limiting its exposure to the ongoing war in Iran. That's lower than Mexico and the United States, which import roughly 30-to-40 per cent of their nitrogen-rich urea from that region.

While high global oil prices have been in the spotlight since the effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the war in Iran has choked more than just oil supply.

Other essential commodities, such as fertilizers and aluminum, are also facing shortages and higher prices as tanker traffic remains halted. Roughly one-third of global seaborne fertilizer shipments of nitrogen and phosphate products pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the TD report. Demand for replacement fertilizer from alternative providers has gone up, raising prices globally.

Economic growth now tops environment as priority in energy policy, poll suggests

OTTAWA - More Canadians now say economic growth should be a bigger priority in Canada's energy policy than protecting the environment, a new Angus Reid Institute report suggests.

The pollster released a report Monday indicating 61 per cent of Canadians now see economic growth as the biggest priority in energy policy. The question offered two options on the top priority shaping federal energy policy: economic growth or environmental protection.

That's a shift in public opinion since seven years ago, when the same question had 55 per cent of Canadians saying the environment should be the top priority in energy policy.

Shachi Kurl, Angus Reid Institute president, said climate change was a top issue for voters in both the 2019 and 2021 elections, but opinion research shows the sense of urgency surrounding it has been declining in recent years.

MPs amend bill criminalizing sexual deepfakes to include ‘nearly nude’ images

OTTAWA - A House of Commons committee has amended a proposed bill that would criminalize sexual deepfakes to ensure it covers "nearly nude" images.

The change to Bill C-16 comes after experts warned the original version of the bill likely would not cover many of the images created by Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot which proliferated on his X platform at the beginning of this year.

The original version of the bill would have criminalized the non-consensual sharing of images which show the subject nude, exposing their sexual organs or engaged in explicit sexual activity. The images created by Grok — such as edits of photos of women to depict them wearing see-through bikinis — may not meet that standard.

MPs on the justice committee voted in favour of amendments put forward by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton to change the wording of the legislation to address images in which the subject is nude or "nearly nude."

Students compete to be ‘Reality Champion’

Middle school competitors deferred to their digital magnifying glass as they tried to determine whether King Charles was, in fact, pictured with a greasy plate of pepperoni pizza last month.

The barista is human but an AI agent runs this experimental Swedish cafe

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The coffee might be poured by a human hand, but behind the counter something far less traditional is calling the shots at an experimental cafe in Stockholm.

San Francisco-based startup Andon Labs has put an artificial intelligence agent nicknamed “Mona” in charge at the eponymous Andon Café in the Swedish capital. While human baristas still brew the coffee and serve the orders, the AI agent — powered by Google’s Gemini — oversees almost every other aspect of the business, from hiring staff to managing inventory.

It is not clear how long the experiment will last, but the AI agent appears to be struggling to turn a profit in Stockholm’s competitive coffee trade. The cafe has made more than $5,700 in sales since it opened in mid-April, but less than $5,000 remains from its original budget of $21,000-plus. Much of the cash was spent on one-time setup costs, and the hope is that it eventually levels out and makes money.

Many cafe patrons have found it amusing to visit a business that's run by AI. Customers can pick up a telephone inside the cafe and ask the agent questions.

Baltic, Nordic officials urge Canadians to learn from the Russian threats they face

OTTAWA - European officials are warning that Russia's meddling in the Baltic Sea is likely a preview of tactics Moscow could someday deploy in Canada's High North.

A recent panel discussion in Ottawa hosted by the Polish embassy touched on how Estonia, Poland and Nordic countries like Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark are responding to Russian threats that emerge from the sky, sea and online.

Polish Ambassador Witold Dzielski gave the example of an explosion last November on a rail line used to transport military goods to Ukraine, which his government suspects was orchestrated by Russia.

"Saboteurs are hired in order to conduct kinetic attacks," he said.

Health advice is all over social media. Here’s how to vet claims

Health and wellness advice is available in abundance on social media — from trendy to informative to straight-up disinformation — and you're far from alone in seeing it.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults — and around half of those under 50 — get health information from social media or podcasts.

Researchers also looked at the social media profiles of 6,828 health and wellness influencers with at least 100,000 followers. Only about 4 in 10 list a background as a health professional. About one-third called themselves coaches, about 3 in 10 described themselves as entrepreneurs and about 1 in 10 cited their own life experience, like being a parent.

Despite the wide range of expertise, about half of people who get health and wellness information from influencers said the influencers help them better understand their own health, while about one-third said it hasn't made much difference. About 1 in 10 said it made them more confused.

Fausses histoires, vrais liens

Ce vendredi 1er mai, la finale de la 35e saison de la Ligue d’improvisation du Manitoba (LIM) a fait salle comble une fois de plus au Centre culturel franco-manitobain.

Pour la troisième année consécutive, c’est l’équipe des Verts — Roger Durand, Eric Plamondon, Gilles Lessard, Alexandre McMurray, Avery Wolchuk, Léanne Marchildon, Zara Ramlal — menée par Mathieu Jubinville, qui a soulevé la Coupe Canot après l’avoir emporté sur les Jaunes — Alexandre Normandeau, Dominique Wyrchowny, Jacques de Moissac, Josée Roy, Lynne Connelly, Stéphane Grégoire, Stéphanie Morin-Robert — de Maryse Gagné au terme d’un match très serré.

Pour celles et ceux qui ignorent en quoi consiste un match de LIM, imaginez deux équipes qui partagent une même scène et qui s’affrontent ou collaborent parfois sur un thème donné pour raconter l’histoire la plus drôle possible.

Mathieu Jubinville, capitaine de l’équipe gagnante, donne l’exemple suivant: surveillance de voisinage.

Winnipeg’s forgotten Stanley Cup champ

On what would be his 150th birthday, the story of Maj. John Robinson Benson — Winnipeg’s forgotten Stanley Cup champion — deserves to be told.

On May 10, 1876, Dr. Edward Benson’s wife Annie gave birth to a son they named John Robinson, after the boy’s grandfather, Col. J.R. Benson. Dr. Benson had arrived in Winnipeg in January 1874 by horse-drawn sleigh via the end of the rail line in Minneapolis. He quickly established his medical practice and became one of the founding physicians of the Winnipeg General Hospital.

Young Rob — as the family called him — grew up in a household that helped build the institutions of a frontier city. At 19, he was the youngest member of the 1896 Winnipeg Victorias, the team that brought the Stanley Cup west for the first time. He had already earned his place across two Anderson Cup-winning seasons and appears in every team photograph from the era: the championship portraits, the Montreal dressing room, the commemorative poster. Listed as the squad’s spare, he was not a marginal figure. In a seven-man game with no line changes, the spare was the one player trusted to step into any position at any moment.

On Valentine’s Day, 1896, the Victorias entered Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink for a sudden-death challenge against the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Montreal Victorias. Winnipeg’s starting seven included some of the finest athletes in the country: Captain Jack Armytage, who had founded the Victoria Hockey Club and played in the first hockey game in Manitoba history; Dan Bain, later voted Canada’s outstanding athlete of the last half of the 19th century; Rod Flett, the Métis point player whose steady, unshakable defence anchored three Stanley Cup campaigns; and George “Whitey” Merritt in goal, who startled the Montreal crowd by wearing protective cricket pads on his legs — a western innovation the easterners had never seen.

New craft exhibition gives artists licence to lighten up

Textile artist and Manitoba Craft Council program co-ordinator Katrina Craig had a simple brief for the artists taking part in her curatorial debut, Serious Play, at C2 Centre for Craft: each person was asked to investigate the radical potential of play when making pieces for the show.

The four local interdisciplinary artists — Charlotte Sigurdson, Candace Neumann, Maureen Winnicki Lyons and Miriam Delos Santos — took her playful instructions seriously.

“Culturally, we think of play as frivolous or irrelevant. It’s a low priority,” Craig, 35, says. “But I think of play as an essential part of creating new things and of problem-solving. I’ve found that when I lean into that not-so-serious side of myself, good things tend to come about.”

The theme is especially pertinent in the field of craft, which can often be more intensely focused on rigorous skill-building and technical mastery. Sometimes playfulness can fall to the wayside in the pursuit of excellence

Movie review: Talking-sheep comedy pokes affectionate fun at mystery genre

There’s a certain kind of little British film that wants very much to be sweet and charming.

It’s a tricky genre. When it’s forced, sweetness can easily become sugary, charming can tip over into twee.

This all-ages talking-sheep comedy-mystery gets it right. With a lot of Babe sincerity and a smidge of Knives Out self-awareness, The Sheep Detectives is cosy but never complacent.

Using a deft blend of live-action and CGI animation, the story starts with George (Hugh Jackman), a shepherd who tends his flock just outside Denbrook, a picture-perfect village with thatched roofs, half-timbered walls and a mossy churchyard.

Governments blasted for inaction as HIV rates rise

An HIV/AIDS advocate who has spent the past 35 years raising awareness about the disease is calling for a national inquiry into what he calls a lack of proactive action by provincial and federal governments to prevent infections.

Albert McLeod, a two-spirit elder from Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, says HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis — commonly known as PrEP — has been approved by Health Canada since 2016. Despite that, infection rates have continued to climb.

“It’s just this sort of very conservative attitude to our health,” McLeod said Friday, challenging anyone to find a poster in Winnipeg promoting HIV awareness or PrEP on street corners or at bus stops.

“And now it’s suddenly an emergency in 2026, when we’ve had 10 years to be proactive and let people know about the availability of this medication? Instead, we have people who are HIV positive who could be negative.”

Hep A outbreak in province’s North makes its way to Winnipeg, officials scrambling to vaccinate people at high risk

Manitoba public health officials say an outbreak of hepatitis A that began in the province’s North last year has led to an increasing number of cases in Winnipeg in recent weeks.

The outbreak, declared in April 2025, was at first affecting communities in northern Manitoba, including several remote First Nations, but has evolved in recent months and spread to other places in the province, provincial health officials said Friday.

The outbreak has spread to Winnipeg, particularly the homeless community, and people with connections to other places where the virus was already spreading.

As of April 26, 601 cases of hepatitis A virus associated with the outbreak have been identified in Manitoba, 131 of which are in Winnipeg.

In legal dispute over ‘The View,’ ABC argues Trump administration is trying to chill free speech

NEW YORK (AP) — In a strongly worded filing, ABC accuses the Trump administration of trying to chill its constitutionally protected free speech and hinder open political discussion.

The point of contention: The popular show “The View," and whether it's subject to equal time rules.

ABC’s filing to the Federal Communications Commission, made public Friday, came in a dispute involving one ABC station in Houston, KTRK-TV. But the wording indicated the network was embarking on a broader battle with the administration.

“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” said the filing on behalf of both KTRK-TV and ABC.

Feds greenlight $673 million to keep Canada Post afloat this year

OTTAWA - The federal government is handing hundreds of millions of dollars to Canada Post to keep the money-bleeding mail service afloat for the current fiscal year.

A cabinet order gives the beleaguered Crown corporation up to $673 million so it can "meet its operating and income" demands through next March.

That amount was carried over from the roughly $1 billion Ottawa authorized in a massive funding top-up earlier this year. It also followed last year's initial $1.03-billion cash injection, which failed to sustain the postal service past early February 2026.

Despite the reassigned funds, Canada Post will likely need hundreds of millions more to make it through the fiscal year, said Ian Lee, an associate professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University.

Someone call the PM: next governor general doesn’t speak a single Indigenous language

This week, Prime Minister Mark Carney selected former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour as the country’s 31st governor general.