In 2018, the Winnipeg Free Press announced it wanted to do a better job of engaging the various communities in Winnipeg. Did that include the faith community? I decided to find out.

I went to see editor Paul Samyn and then-publisher Bob Cox. As the faith page columnist at the Free Press since 2003, I knew that people in the faith community were disappointed by religion coverage in the newspaper. If there was news about religion, it was usually something bad — a priest involved in scandal or someone blowing things up in the name of God in a far-away country.

The daily life of people of faith, including the many positive contributions they made in Winnipeg and around the world, was mostly absent from the newspaper.

I told Paul and Bob if they wanted to do a better job of serving all the communities in the city, one place to start would be by creating a faith beat. They agreed. But, they said, the newspaper had no money for that. “What if I go out and raise it?” I asked. If I could do that, the Free Press would create the beat, they said.

The longevity industry wants your money. Red-light-therapy panels. Continuous glucose monitors. Cold-plunge tubs. Peptide stacks. IV drips. Supplements with names you can’t pronounce.

It’s a billion-dollar industry built on one very human fear: getting old, falling apart and running out of time.

And look, some of that stuff has merit. But here’s what nobody selling a $600 bio-hacking device wants to admit — the most powerful longevity tools you’ll ever use are free. And you already know what they are.

I turned 41 this year.

PRAIA, Cape Verde (AP) — Three cruise ship passengers with suspected hantavirus infections being flown to the Netherlands for treatment Wednesday. Three people have died, and the World Health Organization says there are eight cases.

About 150 passengers are isolating aboard the Dutch ship at the center of the outbreak. The MV Hondius is near the Cape Verde islands off West Africa, waiting to sail to Spain’s Canary Islands. Officials say those on board show no symptoms.

Hantavirus is a rare, rodent-borne illness that usually spreads when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings. The Argentine government’s leading hypothesis is that a Dutch couple contracted the virus during a bird-watching outing at a garbage dump before boarding, according to two officials.

The WHO says the risk to the global population from this outbreak is low, with the organization’s top epidemic expert telling AP, “This is not the next COVID.”

PRAIA, Cape Verde (AP) — Two patients with hantavirus and one suspected of being infected were being evacuated from a cruise ship to the Netherlands on Wednesday, the U.N. health agency said. The vessel at the center of a deadly outbreak remained off Cape Verde with nearly 150 people on board waiting to head to Spain’s Canary Islands.

Associated Press footage showed health workers in protective gear heading to the ship for the evacuation that included the ship's British doctor, who Spain's health ministry said had been in “serious condition” but has improved. An air ambulance later departed.

Three people have died, and one body remained on the ship, the World Health Organization said. Of the eight cases recorded, five were confirmed by laboratory testing.

Hantavirus usually spreads by inhaling contaminated rodent droppings and can spread person-to-person, though that is rare, according to the WHO, whose top epidemic expert said the risk to the public is low.

OTTAWA - Federal and provincial watchdogs say OpenAI failed to respect Canadian privacy laws when training its artificial intelligence-powered ChatGPT chatbot.

The conclusion came in a report released Wednesday following a joint investigation by federal privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne and his counterparts from British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec.

ChatGPT, released in November 2022, is a popular conversation-style tool that responds to online users' prompts with a wide range of information almost instantly — responses that may or may not be accurate.

They found OpenAI's collection of information to train its models was overly broad, resulting in the compilation and use of sensitive personal details.

Do you support banning kids from social media? Do you also post photos of your kids on your Facebook or Instagram?

Whenever the topic of banning social media for kids comes up, as it did again this week when Premier Wab Kinew announced that Manitoba will ban youth from using social media and AI chatbots, we run into a wee bit of cognitive dissonance among the adults.

Many of today’s young people had social media presences long before they were old enough to consent to them — not as users, but as content posted by their parents. Instagram is nearly 16 years old; the iPhone nearly 20. A lot of kids have had digital footprints since the sonogram. Their whole lives are online.

So, as young people who are already on social media transition into social media users themselves, we should, as a society, empower them to make informed decisions about how, where and if they want to show up online, not ban them from platforms they use to connect with their peers, express their creativity and learn about the world. Platforms they’ve grown up around and, in many cases, on.

Bill C-9, the government’s anti-hate legislation, also known as the Combatting Hate Act, has prompted criticism from some religious groups due to its removal of what is called the “good faith religious belief defence.”

That defence, which currently exists in the Criminal Code, states that something is not hate “if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.”

It has never been put to the test in a court of law.

The defence was removed from Bill C-9 by the government at the request of the Bloc Quebecois, who offered to support it in what was then a minority Parliament — but only if the defence was taken out of the legislation.