Manitoba’s regional authorities spent over $35M last year in the ongoing effort to keep health-care workers safe

Last Christmas Eve, a man walked into Thompson General Hospital with a loaded rifle concealed in his clothing.

He moved through the emergency department and other areas — some full of patients — before taking an elevator to the second-floor chapel.

No one knows how long the 33-year-old man was in the facility. He was discovered by a patient who wanted to use the chapel for prayer.

The patient, hearing a commotion behind the locked doors, notified a nurse. Security was nowhere to be found.

Shiffrin says in essay she feels ‘like myself again’ after recovering from ski racing crash, PTSD

Two-time Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin finally feels “like myself again” after recovering from a ski racing crash last season and lingering post-traumatic stress disorder.

Shiffrin described in an essay for The Players’ Tribune released Friday the physical and mental hurdles she needed to clear after her serious spill during a giant slalom race in Killington, Vermont, on Nov. 30. In the crash, something punctured Shiffrin’s side and caused severe damage to her oblique muscles.

“Everyone knows what it feels like to have a bad cough. But PTSD … it’s not like that,” the 30-year-old from Edwards, Colorado, wrote. “It comes in all shapes and sizes. Everyone experiences it in their own way, and no two cases are exactly alike.”

Shiffrin was leading after the first run of the GS that day in Killington. With the finish line in sight on her final run, she lost an edge and slid into a gate, flipping over her skis. The all-time winningest Alpine World Cup ski racer then slammed into another gate before coming to a stop in the protective fencing. To this day, she doesn’t know what led to the puncture wound, only that it was "a millimeter from pretty catastrophic,” she told The Associated Press.

Many survivors of Myanmar’s devastating quake in March still live in leaky tents

BANGKOK (AP) — Two months after a deadly earthquake ravaged much of central and northeastern Myanmar, recovery is just inching along, with huge numbers of people living in temporary shelters while facing the heavy rainfall and strong winds of monsoon season.

The 7.7 magnitude March 28 quake caused significant damage to six regions and states, including the capital Naypyitaw and Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city. The confirmed death toll from the disaster has reached 3,740, with 5,104 injured, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported on Friday.

Bodies are still being found

As the task of rebuilding grinds along, the grim work of recovering the dead is continuing.

Residents, advocates say trust issues, strict rules, red tape keep encampments up

Tents, tarps, and makeshift shelters line the beaten path along the Assiniboine River near Balmoral Street in West Broadway — a community hidden in plain sight.

Oilers defenceman Stecher understands Scheifele’s pain: ‘Still affects me day to day’

DALLAS - Edmonton Oilers defenceman Troy Stecher felt for bereaved Mark Scheifele when the Winnipeg Jets centre suited up for an NHL playoff game with the knowledge his father had just died.

Stecher's father Peter died of diabetes complications at age 65 in 2020, shortly before the defenceman entered the NHL's summer playoff bubble with the Vancouver Canucks.

Scheifele scored Winnipeg's lone goal in Saturday's Game 6 loss to the Dallas Stars — Edmonton's opponent in the Western Conference final — after learning his father, Brad, had just died at age 68.

"A lot of respect for him," Stecher said Friday before Game 2 of the conference final.

Little pictures, big ears, and bad examples

One of the pillars of a thriving democratic society is exemplified through the civil conduct of our elected political leaders. The ethos of honesty, humility, and empathy are becoming increasingly relinquished in lieu of posturing public vitriol and moral indifference.

Don’t like a columnist’s opinion? Los Angeles Times offers an AI-generated opposing viewpoint

In a colorful commentary for the Los Angeles Times, Matt K. Lewis argued that callousness is a central feature of the second Trump administration, particularly its policies of deportation and bureaucratic cutbacks. “Once you normalize cruelty,” Lewis concluded in the piece, “the hammer eventually swings for everyone. Even the ones who thought they were swinging it.”

Lewis' word wasn't the last, however. As they have with opinion pieces the past several weeks, Times online readers had the option to click on a button labeled “Insights,” which judged the column politically as “center-left.” Then it offers an AI-generated synopsis — a CliffsNotes version of the column — and a similarly-produced opposing viewpoint.

One dissenting argument reads: “Restricting birthright citizenship and refugee admissions is framed as correcting alleged exploitation of immigration loopholes, with proponents arguing these steps protect American workers and resources.”

The feature symbolizes changes to opinion coverage ordered over the past six months by Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who's said he wants the famously liberal opinion pages to reflect different points of view. Critics accuse him of trying to curry favor with President Donald Trump.

Global extremism, as close as your keyboard

An arrest in Winnipeg has provided yet another reminder of just how much extremist attitudes have spread across the world.

Conservative MPs beat Liberals, NDP on online engagement, study finds

OTTAWA - A new study from McGill University says Conservative MPs far outpace their Liberal and NDP counterparts in online engagement, partly due to the their voices being amplified on X.

The report from McGill’s Media Ecosystem Observatory found in 2024, online posts from federal Conservative MPs garnered 61 per cent more engagement — likes, shares and comments — than those from Liberal and NDP MPs combined.

It found that engagement with Conservative politicians on X has increased 52 per cent since Elon Musk, a key ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, took over the platform previously known as Twitter in 2022.

The report looked at online posts from all members of Parliament on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok between January 2022 and November 2024.

As elites arrive in Davos, conspiracy theories thrive online

NEW YORK (AP) — When some of the world’s wealthiest and most influential figures gathered at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting last year, sessions on climate change drew high-level discussions on topics such as carbon financing and sustainable food systems.

But an entirely different narrative played out on the internet, where social media users claimed leaders wanted to force the population to eat insects instead of meat in the name of saving the environment.

The annual event in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos, which opens Monday, has increasingly become a target of bizarre claims from a growing chorus of commentators who believe the forum involves a group of elites manipulating global events for their own benefit. Experts say what was once a conspiracy theory found in the internet’s underbelly has now hit the mainstream.

“This isn’t a conspiracy that is playing out on the extreme fringes,” said Alex Friedfeld, a researcher with the Anti-Defamation League who studies anti-government extremism. “We’re seeing it on mainstream social media platforms being shared by regular Americans. We were seeing it being spread by mainstream media figures right on their prime time news, on their nightly networks.”