The province has increased its eligibility for free hepatitis A vaccines ahead of the Manitoba Indigenous Summer Games.

People aged six months or older in Norway House Cree Nation and Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation, anyone travelling to or working in these communities during the games, and people who have visitors from those communities are eligible for free hepatitis A vaccines.

The games take place July 8 to 12 in Norway House Cree Nation and Aug. 10 to 15 in Sagkeeng.

The current hepatitis A outbreak in Manitoba, first declared in April 2025, has affected communities in northern Manitoba, including an increasing number of cases in Winnipeg.

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s Cabinet unanimously approved a proposal on Sunday to designate violence against Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as a genocide.

The step, which still needs approval in Parliament, reflects deteriorating ties between Israel and Turkey. Turkey has fiercely lobbied to prevent countries from officially recognizing the mass deaths of Armenians around 1915 as a genocide, even as Armenians have pushed for it.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

For years, Israel never officially broached the subject for fear of angering Turkey, but that relationship has soured over the past two decades, especially as the most recent wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran have dragged on.

Manitobans are being asked if they want to end seasonal time changes by making either standard or daylight savings time permanent in the province.

So far, three-quarters of those who answered a survey by Winnipeg-based Prairie Research Associates support an end to seasonal time changes. Of those, 34 per cent prefer a move to permanent daylight time — which means the sun would rise and set later each day.

Eighteen per cent prefer standard time, while 21 per cent just want the province to choose one time or another.

Talk about time change got me thinking about how such a change could impact religious groups.

Graydon Nicholas, a retired lawyer, judge and an elder from the Wolastoqey First Nation in New Brunswick, understands only too well the negative impact of colonization on Indigenous people in the Americas.

He also understands the role the Roman Catholic Church played in it through what became known as the Doctrine of Discovery — the idea that by “discovering” the Americas, colonizing countries like Spain and Portugal could claim Indigenous land as their own.

But Nicholas, who is Roman Catholic, also believes the story is more complicated than most people realize and also incomplete without noting opposition from those in the Church during that age of discovery and conquest.

That includes Dominican priests such as Antonio de Montesinos, who publicly condemned Spanish and Portuguese abuses against Indigenous people in the Americas during that time.

Due to unprecedented levels of antisemitism in Canada in the last few years, most organizers of Jewish community events, in Winnipeg as elsewhere across the country, no longer publicly advertise the location of those events, choosing instead to share that information only with those who are registered in advance and, in some cases, only to those who provide proof of identification.

The fact that the organizers of a conference entitled Faith Not Fear still felt the need to follow that practice is less ironic than it is pragmatic. Not publicly identifying the conference’s location seemed to be the only way to ensure that its participants could safely meet to learn about protecting themselves, their community institutions and their freedom to walk through university campuses and city streets without being harassed because of their religion, culture or an international conflict in which they play no part.

Faith Not Fear: Building Jewish Leadership for a New Era in Canada took place in Vaughan, Ont., on the evening of Sunday, June 14. It was, as Simon Wolle, CEO of conference co-sponsor B’nai Brith Canada, explains, “a fresh initiative bringing together voices and organizations at a time when there is a national crisis of antisemitism.”

“The conference was inspired by the need to address Canada’s systemic failure to address threats to the Jewish community, the ongoing threat to Canadian values and its effect on the lived experience of Jewish Canadians in particular,” Wolle said.