BEIJING SNAPSHOT: As Olympics ebb, smartphone synchronicity

COVID-19 forces province to indefinitely suspend K-12 classes

The indefinite suspension of in-person classes may mean all Manitoba students will finish the school year via worksheets and online lessons.

At a news conference Tuesday morning, Premier Brian Pallister and Education Minister Kelvin Goertzen announced the latest measure to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus: putting all kindergarten to Grade 12 classroom instruction on hold, until further notice.

The decision, they said, was made in the interest of students, teachers, and the entire population of Manitoba.

“If, prior to the regularly scheduled conclusion of the school year, the public health officer determines that it is safe to reopen our schools, then we would eagerly welcome our students back,” Goertzen said.

Students join striking U of M profs in show of solidarity

STUDENTS say they are willing to make sacrifices as they stand in solidarity with striking faculty members at the University of Manitoba.

Many of them joined picketing professors and staff members at a rally at the U of M administration building Thursday despite being caught in the crossfire in the protracted dispute.

“Students are by far and away the ones most affected. We are the collateral damage,” said University of Manitoba Student Union president Brendan Scott.

Scott described the situation at the university as dire, as the longest strike in its history drags on.

Paralympics open in empty stadium - just like Olympics

On Wednesday at 12 p.m. ET, Toronto Star baseball columnist and Deep Left Field podcast host Mike Wilner will answer your questions about the Blue Jays and anything else baseball-related.

Beware invasive, ‘frightening’ waterhemp

There’s a threat lurking on the edge of Manitoba farmers’ fields this fall that’s even scarier than the escalating trade war with their biggest customer.

Provincial extension advisers are warning farmers to watch for a weed known as “tall waterhemp,” which, true to its name, may already be towering above ready-to-harvest crops.

Those wispy tentacles waving in the breeze look pretty innocuous from a distance. But this highly invasive member of the pigweed family produces hundreds of thousands of seeds that are just itching for dispersal through farmers’ combines and across their fields.

Each of those tiny seeds — one small pill container filled halfway holds 44,000 — can produce plants with stems the width of saplings and heights of two to five metres. One or two plants can quickly turn into a patch. If waterhemp takes over a field, it can choke out the growing crop and cut yields by more than 90 per cent.

After 20 years, Planet of Sound is still in its own orbit around the world of music

According to a press release issued last week by the Recording Industry Association of America, for the first time since 1986 — the year songs such as Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach, Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer and Falco’s Rock Me Amadeus were topping charts all over the globe — sales of vinyl records outstripped sales of compact discs for the initial six months of the year.

Hey, Mr. Mister, it wasn’t even close. The RIAA report stated that between January and June, audiophiles doled out US$232.1 million on vinyl albums as compared with just less than US$130 million on their digital counterparts. And while that bit of news was music to the ears of Planet of Sound owner Dave Wright, it certainly didn’t come as some big surprise.

“Vinyl is definitely on the upswing and has been for a while, which is precisely why we started carrying it in the store about 10 years ago,” says Wright, whose cosy, 800-square-foot shop at 1109 Henderson Hwy., which stocks a healthy number of LPs in addition to CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays, even an assortment of long-considered extinct LaserDiscs, will celebrate its 20th anniversary in November.

“It’s not just people who grew up listening to vinyl, either,” he goes on, sporting the office uniform: sneakers, dark jeans and an aquamarine-coloured, zip-up hoodie, the latter of which only partially conceals a well-worn, Joy Division T-shirt. “The other day there was a gal in here who I would have put at around 14. She picked up the Tea Party’s Edges of Twilight plus an album by the Wallflowers, the one that had their first big hit on it (we think he means Bringing Down the Horse). As she was taking out her debit card to pay I was like, how do you even know about these groups? Don’t they predate you by at least 10 years?”