A new organization dedicated to supporting Manitoba startups is celebrating its new Winnipeg headquarters and the small businesses already working in it.

Manitoba Innovates has 85 startups occupying its office spaces at 423 Main St. in different capacities — everyone from “a single entrepreneur with a slide deck and a vision to companies of 80 or 90 employees,” said Paul Card, the group’s chief executive officer.

“We’re really here to build a community around growth, job creation and investment. And those aren’t always easy to do, but it’s easier to do on average, through a large community,” Card told the Free Press at Thursday’s launch event.

“There will be some wins and there’ll be some losses, but en masse, what we’re hoping to do is make all those things happen.”

President Donald Trump has raised hopes, again, that the United States and Iran are moving closer to an initial agreement to end the war, amid reports of another U.S. proposal that he has not detailed. And "if they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before,” Trump posted on social media Wednesday.

According to reporting by Axios, the U.S. has sent for Iran's review a one-page memorandum to end the war, with provisions including a moratorium on Iranian uranium enrichment, a lifting of U.S. sanctions, the distribution of frozen Iranian funds and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The White House did not respond to questions about the possible agreement, and Trump wrote that it was “perhaps a big assumption” that Iran would agree.

Also Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is appearing before a House committee investigating convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as lawmakers seek answers for Lutnick’s contact with him in the years after 2008. Lutnick has given contradictory statements about his relationship with Epstein but said he has done nothing wrong and welcomed the closed-door interview with lawmakers.

And elections in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan on Tuesday reinforced a picture that’s becoming increasingly clear — while Trump still dominates the Republican Party, ousting lawmakers who Democrats seem to have the momentum ahead of November’s midterm elections. In Indiana, five of the president’s candidates won with the help of an avalanche of cash.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Iran appeared to be moving closer Wednesday to an initial agreement to end the war, as U.S. President Trump sought to pressure Tehran with threats of a new wave of bombing if a deal is not reached.

Trump posted on social media that the two-month war could soon end and that oil and natural gas shipments disrupted by the conflict could restart. But he said that depends on Iran accepting a reported agreement that the president did not detail.

“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts,” Trump wrote.

Trump made his latest comments after he suspended a short-lived U.S. effort to force open a safe passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which major oil and gas supplies, fertilizer and other petroleum products passed before the war.

NEW YORK (AP) — Ted Turner, a brash television pioneer who raced yachts, owned huge chunks of the American West and transformed the news business by launching CNN and introducing the 24-hour cable news cycle, died Wednesday. He was 87.

Turner died surrounded by his family, according to Turner Enterprises, the company that oversees his vast business interests.

Turner owned professional sports teams in Atlanta, defended the America’s Cup in yachting in 1977 and donated a stunning $1 billion to United Nations charities. He married three women — most famously actor Jane Fonda — and earned the nicknames “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South.”

He once bragged: “If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect.”