A collection of breaking news briefs filed on Monday, December 29, 2025

Province warns of more measles sites

1:22 PM

The provincial government notified the public Monday of four more locations where people might have been exposed to measles.

A Brandon man accused of stealing from a local Dollarama and kicking an employee who was recording him was sentenced to 16 months in jail after the judge found him not guilty of robbery and convicted him of assault.

“In my view, this case was a very close call … I could almost as easily written a solid, defensible decision in support of a robbery conviction,” Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta said on Tuesday.

“Obviously, I’m not doing that because the scrap of doubt that does exist here must accrue to the accused’s benefit.”

Sean Lepine, 27, stood trial on the robbery charge in Brandon provincial court last week.

A second First Nation has filed a lawsuit over a massive 2019 spill of toxic manufacturing byproduct from the paper mill in The Pas into the Saskatchewan River.

In December 2023, Manitoba’s provincial court ordered Canadian Kraft Paper to pay a $1-million fine after the company pleaded guilty to a charge under the federal Fisheries Act for the spill — marking one of the largest-ever environmental fines issued in the province’s history at the time.

The company admitted the mill released black liquor, which Environment Canada calls an acutely lethal toxin, into the river over six days, beginning Feb. 27, 2019. A total 181 million litres of the byproduct flowed into the river.

Chemawawin Cree Nation, in a statement of claim filed earlier this month in the Court of King’s Bench, alleges the mill breached its treaty rights by failing to prevent the spill, failing to consult the community about how it was mitigating the incident and by contaminating the waterways its members have traditionally used to fish, hunt and trap.