Small Alaska town embraces state’s 1st swimmer to win gold

Green growth focus of hydroponic gathering

In a town where fresh produce is hard to come by, Rick Barentsen has a line on some lettuce.

Barentsen is part of an initiative at an education centre in Leaf Rapids that grows 60 heads of fresh leafy greens each week, year-round, using indoor hydroponic growing systems.

The veggies are distributed to many of the northwestern Manitoba town’s 300 residents. It’s a boon to a community where Barentsen said the local grocery store has not carried fresh produce for the last six months.

“Being the only food grower in the community, it makes a big difference for the 90 families that we have,” he said. “We harvest it, we wrap it in plastic food bags (and) we hand it out the same day.”

Fantastical, moving graphic memoir explores addictions, organ procurement and more

At the heart of Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic Frankenstein and its many pop culture adaptations is the scene in the mad scientist’s lab where Victor Frankenstein, helped by a bolt of lightning, animates the grotesque figure made out of human and animal parts lying on his anatomy table.

As much as Shelley’s novel is a philosophical investigation into the desire of modern science to create new life, it is also a gruesome window into the clandestine European trade in graveyard and battlefield body snatching that fuelled early 19th-century anatomy research, medical training and public dissection theatres.

Whose bodies ended up on the slab to advance medical knowledge? As Montreal-based artist Arizona O’Neill explains in her captivating first graphic narrative, it was inevitably poor, racialized and criminalized bodies that were deemed appropriate for the indignities of public display and dissection in earlier periods.

But what about today? This is the central question driving the story of Opioids & Organs, O’Neill’s beautifully drawn story of coming to terms with her father’s untimely death due to a fentanyl overdose as well as the awful truth that Canada’s post-2015 opioid crisis has greatly increased the number of organs available for donation, mostly from otherwise healthy young men like her father.

Under-fire Olympic composer steps down over past bullying

Stock surges and setbacks for the week ending July 16, 2021.

PCs call for crackdown on property crime

A Progressive Conservative government would open a Crown prosecutor’s office dedicated to dealing with property crime.

Interim party leader Konrad Narth made the announcement Wednesday flanked by colleagues in front of a boarded up 7-Eleven on Main Street. Narth promised to hire 25 prosecutors who would focus on property theft, which he said is the type of crime attorneys have been inundated with in recent years.

Narth said crime has increased under the NDP government and pledged to crack down on thieves in Winnipeg and rural areas, if the PCs win power in the next provincial election, due on or before Oct. 5, 2027.

“Under this premier, Manitoba’s crime rate is 81 per cent above the national average. Property crime represents 58 per cent of crimes committed, an increase of nearly 25 per cent since Wab Kinew and the NDP took office,” Narth said, citing numbers from Statistics Canada. “In Winnipeg, the rise of property crime has significantly increased the cost of doing business and forced many businesses to now close their doors.”

Manitoba to open India trade office

Instead of being stationed on Broadway, a Manitoba government employee will set up their own office — in India.

The New Democrats will today announce their plans to open a trade office in the South Asia country.

“We’re going to be continuing to expand our global presence,” said Business Minister Jamie Moses.

Government has slated $150,000 for the trade office, including the representative’s salary. A request for proposal will be posted online Tuesday, Moses said.

Israeli election once again up for grabs

The next general election in Israel will be held on Oct. 27. Needless to say, like most elections in the country’s modern and fraught history since 1948, it is a critical contest between right and left, secular and orthodox, and left, moderate, right and extreme.

Also, given Israel’s complex proportional representative political system, which allocates a seat in its 120-seat Knesset (parliament) for winning only 3.25 per cent of the national vote, this election is nearly impossible to predict.

Even before 1948, Israelis’ ardent faith in democracy, their differing points of view and penchant for arguing led to the establishment of a multitude of political parties representing a smorgasbord of almost every conceivable position on the political spectrum.

Because no political party has ever won the 61 seats required to form a majority government, the major parties have frequently had to rely on fringe parties to hold power.