Pick battles better over noisy neighbours

Feminist activist Susana Chávez Castillo from Ciudad Juárez — who was strangled to death in 2011 — coined the phrase: “Not one woman less, not one more death.”

But murders of women and girls in Mexico have continued unabated. In fact, they have been on the rise in recent years. The lion’s share of these women are Indigenous or mixed race, poor and unskilled labourers and migrant factory workers who are viewed as worthless, subhuman and, ultimately, disposable.

In May, 23 year-old Valeria Marquez, a noted Mexican influencer, was shot and killed while livestreaming on TikTok. Days later, Yesenia Lara Gutiérrez, a candidate for mayor in Veracruz state, was also fatally shot (along with three others) as she livestreamed a campaign event.

Not surprisingly, the Mexican government does a poor job of collecting data on the precise number of women murdered every year. An undated report by Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography states that 22,482 women were murdered during the years of 2007-2016, which translates into a violent death of an adult woman or young girl every four hours.

The Bishnoi Gang, which is run by a convicted gangster from his prison cell in India, appears to have gained a foothold in Manitoba.

A civil forfeiture lawsuit filed in the Court of King’s Bench this month has revealed a 36-year-old man, who was arrested this year, had claimed he is a member of the Bishnoi Gang when he tried to extort cash from a Winnipeg resident.

Arshdeep Singh Brar was arrested by Winnipeg Police Service officers in Headingley on March 3 and charged with extortion and two firearms offences, says the claim.

The victim, identified in the court documents as a man of South Asian descent, had gone to police.

BRANDON — Wait times for MRI scans have surged in the Prairie Mountain Health region during the last two years.

Despite a campaign promise by the NDP in September 2023 to increase the number of allied health professionals capable of administering diagnostic imaging in northern and rural areas, wait times for MRIs have increased dramatically in Brandon and Dauphin.

Median imaging wait times tripled at Dauphin Regional Health Centre between 2024 and 2026, increasing from eight to 24 weeks, according to the province’s wait time dashboard.

The Brandon Regional Health Centre median wait times for MRI scans more than doubled during the same period, from nine to 23 weeks.

The Manitoba government recently held public forums to discuss regulations for Bill 51, the Public Sector Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity Governance Act. I was able to participate in the meeting in Brandon and there was also a session in Winnipeg.

I was a bit fired up, ready to rail about data centres and phone terms and conditions and generally give it to big tech. The discussion, however, was focused on what the public sector responses should be regarding cybersecurity, data and privacy protections, and AI usage in government.

With all the recent attention on social media bans, the harms of AI, misinformation and the like, I was somewhat disappointed that these would not be tackled directly in this meeting. Those issues may be discussed at future forums.

At this event, as focus groups developed responses, the discussion between private companies and public governance kept getting mixed in, pointing out the reliance of government services on private companies in running their digital operations. As government operations become more dependent on digital infrastructure and towards AI agency and control, rethinking how technology is implemented may be crucial to our democracy.

Foster system must be better

Re: Paralyzed foster girl has system under a microscope (Aug. 18)

Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine’s assertion that “you can’t train people not to be violent” should concern everyone who cares about the safety of children in Manitoba’s child welfare system.

Of course, no training program can guarantee that an individual will never harm a child. But framing these tragedies as the actions of a few “abominable” people risks absolving the system of its responsibility to prevent harm.