Royal Albert not re-opening this weekend

Olympics overnight: Synchro divers spring to silver, while Penny Oleksiak powers relay team to Canada’s first medal in Tokyo

Here’s what you missed overnight and need to know about the 2020 Tokyo Olympics this morning.

Winnipeggers deserve an explanation for waste of taxpayer dollars: expert

The anti-corruption expert grew increasingly concerned with each passing example of costly and confusing construction projects ordered by Winnipeg’s public works department — year after year, intersection after intersection.

Kevin Gillese stopped the presentation halfway through — he’d seen enough.

“The materials you’ve shown me are extremely disturbing. They suggest a pattern of incompetence or corruption, or perhaps both… The patterns shown are over a long period of time and there’s no obvious rhyme or reason to what’s being done,” Gillese said.

“The extent and the magnitude is so great that it staggers the imagination. It suggests something very, very wrong in the way intersection engineering is being done in the City of Winnipeg.”

Pair of banks abandoning Brandon’s downtown

BRANDON — Two of Canada’s major banks are set to relocate from their longstanding downtown Brandon locations in October.

BMO will close its branch on Rosser Avenue and move to a new location on Park Avenue while Royal Bank of Canada’s Rosser branch will be consolidated with the existing RBC branch on 18th Street.

Neither bank owns its downtown property or could say what will happen to the buildings after they vacate.

BMO spokesperson Jeff Roman described the bank’s move to Park Avenue as an investment in the Brandon community.

Despite outbreaks, Winnipeg care-home residents allowed to leave, visit families

When an email from the personal care home where Marie Tremblay’s mother lives landed in her inbox with the subject line “holiday season visitation,” her mind started racing.

Tremblay’s mom is a resident at Park Manor Personal Care Home in Transcona, where an outbreak of COVID-19 has infected 73 residents and 37 staff. Twenty-two residents have died due to the disease.

“They’ve asked families not to go in there during COVID; it’s bad enough with staff getting it. So, I haven’t gone in to visit her since the lockdown,” Tremblay said Friday.

In a follow-up email to Tremblay, the chief executive officer explained he was obligated to inform families that the regional health authority has set guidelines for out-of-home visits, or a “social pass,” despite the home strongly discouraging such visits.

MamiMarkets connecting ethnic food vendors, customers

A West African soup recipe and a fruitless search for ingredients led to a business opportunity for two Manitoba entrepreneurs.

La Salle-based husband and wife Tayo Olayinka and Adeola Adegoke are two of the co-founders behind MamiMarkets.com, an online marketplace that connects ethnic stores to their customers. Launched in Winnipeg around 2 1/2 years ago, the service is now available in seven Canadian cities.

Ethnic grocery vendors add their products and storefront to MamiMarkets, with no point-of-sale integration required.

Customers then search for the specific brands and ingredients they need, and identify which nearby vendor has them. They can then place an order and have the products delivered to their home that day.