Joe Kornelsen was alarmed, until he realized he was witnessing employee innovation.

The West End Business Improvement Zone executive director expected to be the first one at the office when he arrived at 5:15 a.m. one day in July, only to find the non-profit’s truck running outside. Concerned, he entered the building cautiously and found Jose, the staff member in charge of the organization’s street cleaning team, already at work.

Unbeknownst to Kornelsen, Jose had implemented a 5 a.m. planter-watering shift to avoid daytime traffic — a move that on some days allowed Jose and his team to water 300 planters and 55 hanging baskets in half the time.

Kornelsen relayed the story to a crowd at the BIZ’s annual general meeting on Wednesday to illustrate all staff members at the organization are continually thinking of new ways to improve what they do.

Sobr Market, a Winnipeg-based company selling non-alcoholic drinks, will unroll bottle shops in Walmarts across Canada.

The first five locations will open in spring 2026 in Winnipeg, Calgary, Saskatoon, Surrey, B.C., and London, Ont.

Sobr Market launched in 2022, and operates a storefront at 484 Academy Rd. It has a warehouse in Winnipeg and brick-and-mortar shops in Toronto.

— Free Press staff

Proposed legislation aims to make Manitoba’s manufacturing sphere more competitive.

The NDP government on Tuesday announced plans to convert part of the Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit into a retail sales tax exemption on new machinery and equipment.

The exemption would apply at the time of purchase (for qualifying items). The tax credit’s one per cent non-refundable portion would be retained.

“This gives businesses the opportunity to reinvest those savings to create more good jobs and strengthen Manitoba’s economy,” Business Minister Jamie Moses said in a news release.

BANGKOK (AP) — It often starts with a text message asking if you are available on weekends, looking for a part-time job or you get a simple “hello” from an unknown number. Halfway across the world, a laborer is usually pulling in 12-16 hour days, sending non-stop messages, hoping someone will take the bait.

The ultimate goal is always to take your money — victims have lost tens of billions to scams and hundreds of thousands of people are in forced labor to keep the schemes going. These workers are often housed in massive complexes scattered across southeast Asia, where the industry has flourished.

Here is why rooting out the scamming industry is such a complex issue:

The crackdown in Myanmar

TOKYO (AP) — Japan announced Friday that its seafood exports have resumed for the first time since China imposed a ban over the discharge of treated radioactive wastewater from the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant more than two years ago.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara told reporters that 6 metric tons (6.6 tons) of scallops harvested in Hokkaido were shipped to China on Wednesday, the first shipment to that country since Beijing banned all Japanese seafood in August 2023.

Beijing announced in June that it would ease the ban and prepare for the resumption of imports, following repeated negotiations between the two sides.

The wastewater discharges from the Fukushima Daiichi plant — debated for years at home over concern about the reputational damage to the region and its local produce — had also become a major political issue between Japan and its neighbors, including China and South Korea.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Congressional Budget Office on Thursday confirmed it had been hacked, potentially disclosing important government data to malicious actors.

The small government office, with some 275 employees, provides objective, impartial analysis to support lawmakers during the budget process. It is required to produce a cost estimate for nearly every bill approved by a House or Senate committee and will weigh in earlier when asked to do so by lawmakers.

Caitlin Emma, a spokeswoman for the CBO said in a written statement that the agency “has identified the security incident, has taken immediate action to contain it, and has implemented additional monitoring and new security controls to further protect the agency’s systems going forward.”

The Washington Post first wrote the story on the CBO hack, stating that the intrusion was done by a suspected foreign actor, citing four anonymous people familiar with the situation.

U.S. airlines began canceling hundreds of flights Thursday due to the Federal Aviation Administration’s order to reduce traffic at the country’s busiest airports starting Friday because of the government shutdown.

More than 500 flights scheduled for Friday were already cut nationwide, and the number of cancellations climbed steadily throughout Thursday, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.

The FAA order to cut flights at 40 of the busiest airports across the U.S. includes New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, according to a list distributed to the airlines and obtained by The Associated Press. But the impact will disrupt travel at many smaller airports too.

The FAA seeks to reduce service by 10% across “high-volume” markets to maintain travel safety as air traffic controllers exhibit signs of strain during the shutdown. The move also comes as the Trump administration is ramping up pressure on Democrats in Congress to end the shutdown.