Seasonal Schulz double bill delivers plenty of Peanuts

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: After 2 a.m. , there are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions. The moon is in Scorpio.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

You’ll be pleased at how much you accomplish. This is because your ruler Mars is boosting the sun while it is travelling through your house of employment. You’ll be the perfect example of Col. Saito’s motto: “Be happy in your work.”

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

COVID-19 tracking apps raise concerns: watchdogs

VANCOUVER - Privacy watchdogs are voicing concerns over proposals across the country to implement smartphone apps to help track COVID-19.

New Brunswick, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan are among the provinces looking at or planning on creating smartphone apps that would track a user's whereabouts.

Alberta is the first province to launch an app.

Known as contact tracing, the apps track those who the user comes in to contact with, commonly by monitoring a device's Bluetooth signal.

Seasonal Schulz double bill delivers plenty of Peanuts

Manitoba Theatre for Young People first presented this Charles Schulz-inspired musical mash-up in the before times, back in December 2017.

50 years ago, we thought we could change the world

Winnipeg, 50 years ago.

We began as a small loose unorganized group of teaching friends and educators who shared the same political and social convictions.

We defined ourselves as socialists, feminists and political activists. We were a cross section of educational minds — language arts and social studies teachers, an art teacher, an early childhood educator, a Winnipeg school trustee, a school principal — making our group quite representative of school culture at the time.

Our questions and discussions about politics, education and society arose from a diversity of backgrounds, yet reflected a progressive cohesiveness. The political climate in Manitoba helped bring us together. Sterling Lyon was premier and his Conservative government was pursuing policies that we strongly opposed. To us, his government represented a determined assault on many of the social and political values we believed in, particularly related to education. Eventually we decided that perhaps we should do more than talk. And so the Socialist Teachers Education Movement — STEM — was born.

250 years ago Thomas Jefferson and the American Declaration of Independence

In the 16th and 17th centuries, countries and territories such as the Netherlands and Portugal boldly declared their independence from Spain. But 250 years ago, on July 4, 1776, the American Declaration of Independence — marked in the U.S. by the semiquincentennial celebrations — was the first time an overseas colony (the 13 colonies, in this case) had set out in an official document its reasons for breaking away from its mother country.

Because the Declaration ultimately gave birth to the United States, it is considered one of the greatest of historical treatises. Thomas Jefferson, its primary author, later explained that his main aim was “not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of … but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject; in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.”

He did so brilliantly, creating, in theory at least, an enlightened argument for American independence based on the political, economic, social and philosophical thinking of the era.

Influenced by such philosophers as John Locke and Montesquieu, Jefferson, then 33 years old, a lawyer, landowner, Virginia politician and a delegate to the Second Continental Congress which met in Philadelphia, passionately believed in natural law — that all human beings were born free and equal and that no king or ruler could abolish these rights. It was a key point he made in the Declaration’s well-known preamble.

Why is Cuba embracing freer markets?

As long as Donald Trump is entangled in a war with Iran, Cuba is probably safe from being next on his hit list.

But if the mercurial U.S. president can somehow extricate himself from the Persian Gulf trap, then all bets are off. One thing is certain: Trump is not going to give up the idea of getting his greedy hands on the Caribbean island.

In response to Trump’s threats of military invasion, the beleaguered Cuban government is understandably in full panic mode. Right now, it is just trying desperately to keep its head above water as the situation on the ground in Cuba deteriorates further with each passing day.

Not all of the blame for the country’s current humanitarian crisis can be laid at the feet of the Trump White House. The Cuban political leadership deserves its fair share of blame for poor economic and financial management, for too much emphasis on expanding the tourism market, and for not enough attention on modernizing the electrical grid and attracting much-needed foreign investment.