5 things you absolutely must know today (weekend edition)

Every morning, we scour the Internet and vet what we believe are the five things you absolutely need to know for the day. Join this mailing list to receive 5 things you absolutely must know today every morning, Monday to Friday, by 8 a.m.

***

Winnipeg’s Bartley Kives tackles indigenous issues in thought-provoking Guardian piece

“Whoever is elected mayor has a responsibility to build bridges between the aboriginal and non-aboriginal community,” said Brian Bowman at a fundraising event shortly before being elected mayor of Winnipeg. Bowman is Métis, and third-place finisher, Ph-D-educated Robert-Falcon Ouellette,who is Cree, are what Bartley Kives referred to as “the new faces of indigenous Winnipeg: well-spoken, suburban-dwelling professionals.” And he’s right. And he’s eloquent and hard to pigeonhole on what is a highly-charged topic in Winnipeg, in Manitoba, and elsewhere. “By any metric you choose – income, education, employment, health, life expectancy, access to housing, incarceration and above all exposure to violent crime – Winnipeg’s roughly 80,000 First Nations, Métis or Inuit residents are worse off, on average, than the other 620,000 city dwellers,” writes Winnipeg’s own Bartley Kives, in the article The ‘great indigienous divide’: Winnipeg stares into an ethnic chasm, which appeared in The Guardian. “Closing this “great divide,” as it’s coming to be known in Winnipeg, has emerged as the city’s crucial obstacle.” If you haven’t yet, take some time over the weekend to read the full article. It’s great. We recommend it. [Source: The Guardian]

Khadr awarded right to sue Ottawa for conspiring with U.S. over his alleged torture and mistreatment

Omar Khadr, the former Guantanamo Bay prisoner currently incarcerated in Alberta, has been awarded the right to sue Ottawa for allegedly conspiring with the U.S. to torture him and deprive him of basic rights. The ruling comes from Judge Richard Mosley and it means that Khadr can broaden his current civil lawsuit against Ottawa over what he calls his arbitrary detention in the U.S. to include conspiracy. “Whether Canada conspired with foreign officials to violate the fundamental rights of a citizen is not a trivial matter,” Mosley said in his ruling. “If anything, adding conspiracy to the statement of claim clarifies the nature of the controversy between the parties and facilitates its comprehensive examination by a court.” Documents surrounding Khadr indicate Canadian soldiers interrogated him at Guantanamo in 2003 and 2004, and agreed to share the information they gathered with the U.S., according to the Globe and Mail. It is also alleged that his captor tortured him prior to those visits. Khadr was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 following a gunfight that left him injured and a soldier dead. He was 15 at the time. Khadr, born in Toronto, was then sent to Guantanamo Bay where he eventually pleaded guilty to five war crimes in a bargain that would allow him to serve out his sentence in Canada. [Source: Globe and Mail]

New York doctor first in city to contract Ebola

Doctor Craig Spencer, 33, has become New York City’s first Ebola patient, and is being heralded for how swiftly he reacted to his own symptoms. Spencer, who was working with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea last week, where he contracted the virus, is currently in an isolation ward in a designated Ebola treatment facility. Though new cases infecting previously untouched cities tend to fuel paranoia and irrationality, health officials are standing by their claim that the average person has only a slim risk of getting Ebola, as it’s spread through direct contact with the fluids of an infected person. [Source: CBC]

Winnipeg’s pop-up restaurant will be designed by British firm OS31

OS31 is a British architectural firm. And they have won the privilege of designing the pop-up restaurant RAW: Almond on Winnipeg’s Assiniboine River this winter. The firm’s design, which beat out an international pool of entries, includes three dining rooms, a bar, and an anteroom to combat the winter. OS31’s Tony Boomhead told the Winnipeg Free Press he has never been to Winnipeg, and that he’s all excited about building a restaurant on ice for the Jan. 22 to Feb. 11 event. No doubt. Tickets to the restaurant cost $100 per person and will go on sale shortly before Christmas. [Source: Winnipeg Free Press]

Students allowed to pose with guns and game in yearbook photos

The Broken Bow School District in Nebraska is allowing photos of students posing with guns into its yearbook. Approval will be granted on a case by case basis, but the district did release this stipulation: The photos must be “tasteful” and students “should not submit a photograph of game shot by the student if the animal is in obvious distress.” The District had previously banned such photos, not wanting to come across as advocating school violence, but has since bent on the rule, arguing for the inclusion based on how popular hunting is in the area. The following pics are what the school considers okay: