Up until 2007, it was illegal in Manitoba to stand up in a bar and carry your drink to the washroom. Up until 1979, it was illegal to stand up in a bar with a drink at all.

Up until 1970, buying booze from a government outlet meant filling out a permit with your name and address. Up until 1960, indigenous Manitobans weren't allowed to buy booze from any source, government or otherwise....       ... The Liquor Control Act, however, is on the way out. The impending merger of the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission and the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation, announced as part the 2012 provincial budget, has created a window of opportunity to update the rules that govern booze. By 2014, the province expects to have a new liquor-and-lotteries act in place that will eliminate some of the complaints about the current set of rules....         ..."The licences are going to be simplified. The licences are going to be more flexible and the vast majority of people who are involved in the (hospitality) industry are going to be very pleased," he said.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/fyi/alcohol-lowering-the-bar-j234-187569271.html

Complete: Marina R. James, president and CEO of Economic Development Winnipeg Inc., has been appointed vice-chairwoman of the International Advisory Committee of the International Economic Development Council. The International Economic Development Council provides leadership and excellence in economic development to professionals whose role is to develop vibrant communities and improve the quality of life by way of community development.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/manitoba-movers-jan-21-187705261.html

Complete: Tourism Westman is already gearing up for this year's tourism season — and that includes kicking it off with awards that recognize the best that the region has to offer.

Individuals, businesses, organizations and communities that have contributed and made a difference in tourism development and promotion over the past year will be recognized at the 10th anniversary Tribute to Tourism awards, in June.

Tourism Westman is currently acception nominations in seven categories: Aspiring Youth, Marketing Excellence, Partnership, Product Development, Service Excellence, Volunteer of the Year and Event of the Year.

Each nominee will receive one complimentary ticket to the gala where they will be honoured by their peers. As well, all winners will automatically advance to the Manitoba Tourism Award competition. Winners will be announced at an awards gala at the Royal Oak Inn on June 5.

Nomination forms and more information can be found online at tourismwestman.ca, by clicking the Tribute to Tourism logo at the bottom of the page. Nomination forms can also be obtained directly from the Tourism Westman office at 1-888-347-4342 or via email at info@tourismwestman.ca.

http://www.brandonsun.com/breaking-news/Nominate-now-for-10th-annual-tourism-awards-187494671.html?thx=y

Complete: Occupy Winter invaded Riding Mountain National Park this weekend turning the national park into a hot bed of winter activity and activism.

"Occupy Winter is a response to the federal Parks Canada cuts to winter services," Celes Davar said. "We wanted to start a national campaign to draw attention to the fact that this is a missed opportunity and that the parks in Canada are great places for celebrating the Canadian identity."

On Saturday, more than 100 people showed up at Moon Lake Campground to snowshoe and cross-country ski and try their hand at building quinzees.

"It’s been a cold Manitoba weekend and some of the people even slept overnight in the quinzee that they built," Davar said.

While quinzees were being built, Brandon artist Weiming Zhao painted scenes from the national treasure.

"It’s probably -35 C with the windchill and Weiming is out painting with oil paints on a canvas and it’s incredible," Davar said.

The artist is just part of a diverse sub-culture that exists at RMNP, making it truly unique.

And while Zhao painted, Grandview singer-songwriter Kayla Luky sang the song that she wrote and composed about the Occupy Winter movement and RMNP.

The event, which coincides with National Snow Day, highlights Riding Mountain’s many winter activities, bringing families together for a weekend of fun.

"The great thing about winter and the park is when you get out into the bush, you don’t feel the same cold as you do when you are out in the wind," Davar said.

The movement also has very strong political undertones and takes it’s name from the Occupy Wall Street protests that happened in cities around the world last year.

"The name Occupy Winter was intented to draw on the greater occupy movement," Davar said. "It’s not just a protest, it’s really about showing, as Canadians, that we love our parks."

Davar will also soon present Conservative MP for Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette Robert Sopuck a local petition that has garnered more than 650 names of people requesting that the government re-visit cuts made to national parks.

"We aren’t happy with what has taken place," Davar said. "We expected more from (MP Sopuck) and we expected more from this government. And we want Parks Canada to listen to us and reverse this three-seasons designation at our national parks."

"It gives Canadians a weekend to tell Parks Canada that we love our parks and we love our four seasons."

http://www.brandonsun.com/local/occupy-winter-promotes-activities-at-rmnp-187717501.html?thx=y

Complete: The Downtown Hub’s pedestrian mall project may be at a standstill for the second summer in a row.

City council voted against a motion brought forward by Coun. Corey Roberts (Rosser) to invest $50,000 in the initiative this year.

“It’s a huge disappointment,” Roberts said. “One of the first places that most big businesses want to visit in any urban centre is their downtown development. This is sort of a staging point that indicates to big business that this city cares about its urban growth and it shows how well we’ve got our act together in other infrastructure departments.”

A busy and vibrant pedestrian mall could be a showcase for Brandon and demonstrate that the city’s downtown is growing in a positive way, Roberts said.

“If you have a dilapidated, aging downtown that nobody’s investing in, it speaks volumes to new developers coming to town,” he said.

The pedestrian mall was included as one of the projects in the city’s Roadmap for Growth. The goal was to foster a “vibrant, active downtown, designed for people.”

In the summer of 2011, from Aug. 17 to Sept. 16, the block of Rosser Avenue between Ninth and 10th streets was modified to allow for a pedestrian-friendly shopping corridor, complete with picnic tables, benches and live entertainment.

The area was blocked off entirely to motorists to start but was opened up to a single lane a few weeks later in response to concerns by businesses further down the block that lamented a lack of through traffic.

The project was met with mixed reviews.

“Everybody has an opinion, whether it was a success or failure,” Roberts said. “The most important thing that we garnered out of that experiment was that it got folks engaged and talking about downtown.”

That same summer, the city made Ninth and 10th streets one-way between Princess and Pacific avenues, and added angled parking along the side. It was intended to make an easy-to-navigate “loop” for downtown drivers as well as try out angled parking instead of parallel parking.

Gwen Bromley’s shop, The Cinnamon Tree, is situated within the block where the pedestrian mall was set up.

“We saw more people and positive comments from the people who were here,” she said.

Bromley said she is “extremely disappointed” to hear the pedestrian mall won’t be getting city funding this summer.

“I think it had huge potential to draw people downtown for lots of different activities that could have been part of it,” Bromley said. “I definitely feel that in order to renew our downtown that it’s going to take something like that, and a lot more, so that’s why it’s a huge disappointment to us that nothing is going to be done.”

Another disappointed merchant is Miranda Stobbe, who manages Abby Rose on the 900-block of Rosser Avenue.

“We were looking forward to having that (pedestrian mall) available,” she said. “Especially with the café next door, to be able to have seating outside in the summer and have a little more foot traffic … It definitely made it more appealing to hang out down here.”

Barry Cullen, owner of Keywest Photo further east along Rosser Avenue on Fifth Street, said he agrees with the decision of city council.

“If they’re going to do something, they’ve got to get it right,” he said. “If you’re going to make the effort and you don’t have the funding, then the decision is correct to not move forward … We want it done right, and to do it right, usually costs money.”

Cullen wasn’t sold on the idea of completely blocking traffic.

“On Rosser, because of the way the structure works with the one-way streets to carry you in a circle … you go east down Rosser and you come back to the west on Princess, if you block that circle then you’re actually probably doing more damage than good,” Cullen said.

Mayor Shari Decter Hirst said the one-way streets and angled parking have been met with positive feedback.

“Retailers would like more angled parking,” she said. “We added over 70 new spots when we went to the angled parking, so I don’t anticipate that we’ll be going back to the old system.”

Shaun Cameron, chair of Renaissance Brandon, said the pedestrian mall would have been a “focal point” for downtown.

“It’s just unfortunate,” he said. “It’s just another instance of the scope of the downtown not being realized by everyone.”

Roberts said he is not giving up on the initiative.

“I’m going to still try to engage the rest of council over the next little while before the budget is finally approved,” he said. “Hopefully if we can get maybe an official comment from the province that they would support this development … who knows? Maybe it’s not dead yet.”

http://www.brandonsun.com/local/ped-mall-setback-disappoints-roberts-187562031.html?thx=y

WFP Editorial: Does it make sense that the Norwood Lawn Bowling Club will get a civic grant of $16,521 this year, the same as last year, while the St. Boniface Museum will see its funds slashed by 10 per cent, or $45,000?

Well, Norwood's grant may be fair if you consider it is the only lawn bowling club that is not fully funded by the city, but the idea that St. Boniface Museum has less value to the community than lawn bowling this year than last is questionable. The museum is a national historic site, one of the oldest structures in the city and the largest oak log building in North America.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/editorials/city-cuts-without-warning-187705351.html

Complete: Statistics Canada says travel to Canada fell 0.6 per cent to 2.1 million trips in November, as a decline in visitors from the United States more than offset an increase from overseas countries.

Almost 1.7 million people came to Canada from the United States, down 1.0 per cent from October.

The number of visitors from overseas rose 1.1 per cent to 387,000.

Travel of one or more nights from the United States declined 1.9 per cent, to 963,000, although same-day car trips to Canada increased 0.4 per cent to 622,000 trips.

Travel from the United Kingdom to Canada fell 6.5 per cent in November to 51,700 trips, while travel from France increased 1.8 per cent to 39,500 trips and travel from Germany declined 0.5 per cent to 26,200.

In the opposite direction, Canadian residents made 5.5 million trips abroad in November, up 0.3 per cent from October, with 4.7 million of these trips going to the United States.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/01/21/business-travel-canada.html

DALLAS -- After two separate and serious battery problems aboard Boeing 787s, it wasn't U.S. authorities who acted first to ground the plane. It was Japanese airlines.

The unfolding saga of Boeing's highest-profile plane has raised new questions about federal oversight of aircraft makers and airlines.

Some aviation experts question the ability of the Federal Aviation Administration to keep up with changes in the way planes are being made today -- both the technological advances and the use of multiple suppliers from around the globe. Others question whether regulators are too cosy with aircraft manufacturers.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/dreamliner-a-nightmare-for-regulators-187643641.html

WASHINGTON - The battery that caught fire in a Japan Airlines Boeing 787 in Boston earlier this month was not overcharged, but government investigators said there could still be problems with wiring or other charging components.

An examination of the flight data recorder indicated that the battery didn't exceed its designed voltage of 32 volts, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement.

NTSB investigators are continuing to look at the battery system. They plan to meet Tuesday with officials from Securaplane Technologies Inc., manufacturer of the charger for the 787s lithium ion batteries, at the company's headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, said Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the board.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/government-investigators-say-boeing-787-battery-fire-not-result-of-overcharge-probe-continues-187684311.html

Those airport scanners with their all-too revealing body images will soon be going away.

The Transportation Security Administration says the scanners that used a low-dose X-ray will be gone by June because the company that makes them can't fix the privacy issues. The other airport body scanners, which produce a generic outline instead of a naked image, are staying.

The government rapidly stepped up its use of body scanners after a man snuck explosives onto a flight bound for Detroit on Christmas day in 2009.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/travel/tsa-to-drop-x-ray-airport-scanners-by-june-because-of-privacy-concerns-other-scanners-staying-187524281.html

RIO DE JANEIRO - One worker strips mirrored paneling off the ceiling, as another pries up the fiberglass shell of a whirlpool bath. A third man takes a sledgehammer to a life-size statue of Venus de Milo posing topless with a swirl of plaster robes hanging from her waist.

The Shalimar love hotel is going family-friendly.

Like about a third of the city's 180 hotels that rent rooms by the hour, mostly for amorous rendezvous, the Shalimar is trading its oversized round beds and bondage-ready chairs for proper couches, functional desks and other businesslike furnishings. The goal is reinvention as a standard pay-by-the-day tourist hotel.

With next year's World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympic Games arriving in this seaside city, local officials are scrambling to solve a chronic hotel bed shortage so severe that during a UN conference here last year, the mayor had to appeal to residents to open their apartments to visitors.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/with-olympic-games-approaching-rios-love-hotels-clean-up-for-tourists-187472531.html

LONDON - Hundreds of fights were cancelled in Britain, France and Germany Monday as snow and ice blanketed Western Europe.

London's Heathrow airport cancelled about 130 flights, 10 per cent of the daily total, compared to 20 per cent on Sunday. Flights have been disrupted since Friday at Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, which has seen long lines and stranded passengers camping out on its terminal floors.

Heathrow says it has spent millions improving its winter resilience since the airport was virtually shut down by snow for several days in December 2010. But it says low visibility means it must leave bigger gaps between planes, triggering delays and cancellations.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/snow-woe-winter-weather-causes-delays-cancellations-at-heathrow-other-european-airports-187704231.html

(Excerpts from an article published originally in the WFP, Jan.  '77)

If airliners on the drawing board are an indicator — the supersize Boeing 747 and its shorter jumbo contemporaries, the Lockheed L-1011I and Douglas DC-10 — will just be collectors' items when we reach the 21st century. The 747, which first came off the production line in I969, is a great airplane — a super-achievement and one of the crown jewels of aerospace technology, ranking with rockets, space shots and manned flights, moon walks and Mars' exploration — simply because the big bird has the highest profile in civil aviation. This is not a requiem for the ocean sized 350-tonner; it will ply the airways for another decade or more. But airline demands of the future seem to indicate the huge double-decked colossus doesn't figure in the distant future. Even though the wide-bodied jets are still exceedingly marketable, the designers at all major manufacturing plants are quietly plotting its last days and preparing the succession of patricians of the airline industry. Engineers are no longer thinking Big. Cemeteries for the jet-generation planes that came before the jumbos are being seen with increasing frequency — rows and rows of DC-8s and B-707s. They're being mothballed with engine holes covered as though the "burial crews" were reluctant to witness the end of an era. The engineering pride that went into the launching of the airline jet age and the slim, sleek models that shrunk the globe and opened a Pandora's Box of unheralded social and industrial problems is already working on turning out different aircraft for a new generation of airliners in the 1980’s. Engineers are even working on aircraft for the more distant future — craft the industry thinks will use the fuel that will replace the fossil fuels in use today. I talked to the people at the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company about what the air traveller may expect in the 1980s, based on what the airlines are asking for to reignite the air-travel interest that seems to have declined as the world's gasoline tank drops toward empty. The past year, Boeing has' been developing potential new models of airplanes that would carry 120 to 200 passengers….       … The experts say the largest available market for new airliners in the 1980s is in the medium-size, medium-range field, and (he desire and capability of the airlines to consider new airplanes seem to be improving. Canadian airlines, in the face of severe losses during the past two years, are faced with a monumental aircraft replacement bill during the next 10 years. There is great hope that the new airliners now on the drawing board will solve the economic woes of the air carriers and awaken new interest in air travel.