- Three cargo ships were hit by Russian missiles while in Ukrainian ports last week, killing at least 10 people and leading to fears that cargo operators will avoid the country.
- The BC NDP and Conservative parties remain in a statistical dead heat in the last week of campaigning. The NDP may well hold on due to greater vote efficiency and recent publicity about the Conservatives' extremism, but even if they do it's rather disconcerting that it's even a serious contest.
- The Canadian Association of Professional Employees, which represents around 27,000 federal employees, is calling for an investigation by the parliamentary Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates into a federal mandate that orders public servants back into the office a minimum of 3 days per week. Another union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, is challenging the mandate in court but this could take years to resolve due to the backlog in the courts; the parliamentary committee could potentially get quicker results.
- Following an incident last week in which a patient at St. Boniface Hospital brandished knives, some are calling for stronger security measures at hospitals. There is some discomfort about the idea of putting metal detectors at the entrances due to concern that it could make the hospital feel less safe for some, even as it makes it feel more safe for others. No statistics are given, though on whether the presence or absence of metal detectors would scare away more people, which would seem to be a pertinent piece of information. The article does note that Health Sciences Centre has been testing an "AI weapons detector" at the entrance to their ER; why AI is needed for this is not made clear, though if it somehow makes the detector less intrusive than a standard airport-style medical detector then it might have merit I suppose.
- The distribution of rapid COVID-19 tests in Manitoba is being discontinued, except for the most vulnerable people such as care home residents. I guess too much continued awareness of the disease is bad for business.
- Two middle-aged residents of Winnipeg's Lord Roberts neighbourhood have been charged with torturing and killing cats to make videos which were posted on the dark web. The suspects are known to police; disconcertingly, this appears to be unrelated to some other killings of cats that have occurred in Point Douglas recently.
- Despite recent reports that the closures of several 7-Eleven stores in Winnipeg were due to crime, it appears that this is actually part of a company-wide shakedown. Some folks in this Reddit thread think that the plan is to move towards making the chain more upscale (as it apparently already is in Japan) and that they're closing locations that they don't consider suitable for this. It's also pointed out there that the red herring of crime has been tossed out in similar situations before, such as the closure of the Osborne Village Starbucks location (stories about this made reference to crime but left out the fact that Starbucks has been trying to eliminate locations without drive-thru service) and similar stories about various Target locations in the US (many of which were apparently in over-saturated markets). In any case, Canadian convenience store chain Couche-Tard has been trying to buy 7-Eleven for some time, but getting rebuffed, and might well leap at the opportunity to take over the closed locations as a consolation prize.
- Alexandre Brassard, a biologist at St. Boniface University, was alarmed to find that a new book, entitled Mushrooms of Manitoba, contains multiple errors and makes no mention of several deadly poisonous species. The book appears to have been written with AI; Amazon delisted the book after CBC contacted them about the matter.
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