Au naturel cooking experience can sizzle

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: There are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions. The moon is in Aries.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

The moon in your sign is lined up with stern Saturn, which can make you feel isolated from others. Domestic problems might surface. Possibly, you might feel cut off from your emotions. You might even feel a tinge of guilt. This is fleeting.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Pallister’s ego behind carbon tax flip-flop

It doesn't make any sense.

Earlier this week, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister stunned onlookers inside and outside the province with a decision to abandon his own $25-per-tonne carbon tax — the core lever in a complex, provincewide plan to curb carbon emissions.

The premier told reporters Wednesday he was throwing out nearly two years of work on a homegrown climate change plan because Ottawa did not "respect" Manitoba's desire to hold carbon taxes at about half the level demanded by the federal government.

It was not clear what Pallister meant by respect; the two levels of government disagree about the level at which carbon taxes should be set. Up until this week, the two levels of government disagreed over policy and methodology.

Luxurious by design

When it comes to designing a luxury home, it’s critically important that builders pick and choose when to weave in the wow factor.

The reason taking a measured approach is simple. As much as a builder’s goal is to impress prospective buyers with fancy finishes and design details, too much wow can be overwhelming.

Overdone, it can cause people to quickly rule out the home and move on to find something more suitable and less overwhelming.

Gino’s Homes sales manager Cam Ftoma says Gino’s new 2026 Fall Parade of Homes show home at 111 Bullrush Bay in Sage Creek is all about tasteful luxury.

Une nouvelle oeuvre pour raconter l’histoire autrement

Pendant des décennies, le parc La Vérendrye, situé sur l’avenue Taché, au cœur de Saint-Boniface, a raconté l’histoire de l’explorateur français du même nom à travers une seule statue. La Compagnie de La Vérendrye, un groupe de reconstitution historique, a piloté un projet de conception d’une nouvelle œuvre d’art qui pourrait raconter une autre partie de l’histoire.

Family account spiced with magic realism, geopolitical intrigue and a ghost story

Tom Lin’s second novel Babylon, South Dakota moves beyond a historical account of an immigrant family’s struggle, delightfully blending and bending genres.

Lin is a Chinese-born novelist whose family emigrated to the U.S. when he was four years old. His debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, making him the youngest ever recipient of that award. He earned a PhD in English from the University of California Davis and is currently an assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of Iowa.

Babylon, South Dakota takes place in an unspecified time period that can be understood to be during the Mao era — likely the 1950s or ’60s. A young Chinese couple, the Hsuis, immigrate to the rural community that gives the book its title. They take the names Saul and Mei and settle on a 160-acre homestead left to them by a distant relative.

Saul’s dream is to breed and sell chrysanthemums from seeds he brought from China, while Mei wants to raise livestock. They speak no English, know nothing of life in the United States, are unprepared for the harshness of winter and the isolation of the farm and bring nothing with them except some gold, which Mei hides around the house for emergencies. Their only link to the outside world is a discarded and marginally functioning TV set, which Saul rescues and rigs up.

Dynacare must treat workers fairly: health minister

Manitoba’s health minister defended the government’s contract with Dynacare, saying the for-profit company is expected to treat its workers fairly — but wouldn’t say if that expectation was spelled out in the deal.

The 350 private lab workers, who are represented by the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, have been without a contract since March 31 and went on strike on Sept. 8.

The Manitoba Labour Board ordered them back to work and they returned to the job one day later.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara was asked Wednesday about the lack of an essential services agreement and why the government didn’t intervene in March, knowing that a labour dispute could interrupt community lab services.