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The days of peacefully watching a TV show, only to be jolted awake by the insanely loud commercials are over. After years of complaints, the CRTC tested and proved, it wasn’t just in our heads, the volume really did jump. Starting Saturday, all broadcasters will have to make sure the volume of commercials isn’t higher than that of regular programs.

Labour Day is when a lot of Manitobans do some cross-border back to school shopping. Don’t forget Canadians can now buy up to $200 worth of goods for a 24-hour trip to the US. BUT, the hitch is, if you go over that $200 limit, the entire amount you bring back is subject to tax.

Isaac may no longer be hurricane strength, but the storm has been hovering long enough to dump a pile of rain on Louisiana. Even though the city of New Orleans has been mostly protected, mass flooding elsewhere has forced thousands to be evacuated and left at least half of the state without power.

 
 Disappointing news for Winnipeg’s homeless, as the Red Road Lodge is closing their doors after being turned down for federal funding it has relied on. The resource centre offered programming and services for about 30 to 40 people on a daily basis.
 
 
 Have you noticed the Home Street park at the corner of Sargent looks a little brighter these days? You can thank some U of M exchange students from Japan along with Take Pride Winnipeg. The old pool house has been painted a bright blue, and wood chips were brought in to spruce up the landscaping.

If you have a flight booked with German airline Lufthansa today, you may want to check your flight status. More than 100 flights were cancelled when about 1000 Lufthansa flight attendants went on an eight hour strike, demanding more money and better working conditions.

One of Canada’s Olympic athletes, silver medallist Janine Hanson, arrived home in Winnipeg yesterday. Hanson helped the women’s rowing team clinch second place in London.

Eddie Van Halen is recovering from surgery for an intestinal problem. He’s expected to fully heal, but it’s going to take about 4-6 months.

It’s a lot of money for a baseball card. An 1888 card of Hall of Famer Michael “King” Kelly has sold at auction for $62,000. Kelly was a star in his day and is actually considered to be the first celebrity baseball player. The card was found in a trunk of old papers.
 
Fans of Jersey Shore aren’t happy to hear that the show will end after the upcoming season. MTV has decided to pull the plug on the show that gave us Snookie, The Situation and J-Wow, and taught us the meaning of GTL. The new season begins October 4th.

Hurricane Isaac weakens to tropical storm, but the main threat is still heavy rain. Issac has killed at least one person and cut power to 700-thousand homes and businesses. Almost a third of a metre has already drenched New Orleans and the eye of the storm stays hovering over Louisiana.

The union representing Winnipeg police says that there just isn’t enough room in the drunk tank and police officers are stuck waiting outside to drop people off, sometimes for hours. The Main Street Project, which provides emergency shelter and services to people under the influence, only has spots for 20 people,

Some students at our two universities are trying to find a place to live, with school starting next week. The U of W’s student residences are full, the U of M is not only full but has a waiting list 300 strong and Winnipeg has the lowest apartment vacancy rate in Canada.

Manitobans will be paying more for electricity on September 1^st. The Manitoba Public Utilities Board has approved a 2.5% interim rate increase and Manitoba Hydro is asking for a further 3.5% increase for April 1^st.

Taxpayers are finding out now how much it cost for Canada to say goodbye to Jack Layton. His state funeral last year rang in at more than $368-thousand, more than the combined cost of recent state funerals for two former governors general. Jack Layton died a year ago from cancer, right after he led the NDP to become the Official Opposition, their strongest-ever election result.

ING Canada, whose motto is “Save your money,” has been bought by one of the big banks. Bank of Nova Scotia agreed to buy ING Bank of Canada for $3.1-billion. They plan on keeping operations the same, recognizing that’s what drew ING’s customers in, but will be looking at changing the brand ING Direct in about 18 months.

Forget back-to-school shopping. It’s back-to-school sleeping that’s stressing out many parents this week. Experts recommend dialing back bedtime 15 minutes a night. A good way to get their clocks on the new schedule is to open the blinds in your children’s rooms an hour before they need to be up. (Sorry, waking up even earlier than your kids is one of the downsides.) On the other end, reduce artificial light around bedtime – especially the flicker and flashing of video games.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will be heading up the Major League Baseball playoffs. “Land of Hopes and Dreams” will be used in postseason coverage, with footage of Springsteen in concert cut with baseball highlights from the last season.

It’s seven years since Katrina touched down and the city of New Orleans is being hit by heavy rain and sustained, strong winds of 130 km/h as Hurricane Issac begins to move inland over Louisiana today. The storm is moving so slowly there’s concern about flooding, even if the reinforced levees in New Orleans hold as expected.

One of the charges against the 69-year-old Manitoba senator’s 23-year-old wife was dropped yesterday. Maygan Sensenberger will be back in court today to face charges of causing a disturbance and uttering threats, but a charge of endangering the safety of an aircraft was dropped.

While we like to make fun of our neighbours to the south and laugh at their lack of education, we might need to start looking harder at ourselves. A recent poll shows many Canadians don’t know this is the 200^th anniversary of our war with the United States. Even fewer knew that it was called the War of 1812.

There is a mango recall in Canada for Daniella brand mangoes. The recall affects fruit sold since July 12, up to as recently as yesterday. The mangoes may be contaminated with salmonella.

It may be the end of August, but the province has issued a heat advisory. High temperatures and humidity are expected for the next two days. Drink plenty of liquids, limit physical activities outdoors and take cool breaks at places like the mall, restaurant or movie theatre if you have no air conditioning at home.

Olympian Clara Hughes is being inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame. Hughes competed in winter and summer Olympics as a speedskater and cyclist, winning a total of six medals. Hockey Hall of Fame goalie Ed Belfour is also being inducted, as is sailor Kelly Hand, speedskater Michael Ireland, football player Harry Langford and softball player Sandy Maskiw.

While we enjoyed the warm summer, scientists say critical ice in the Arctic Ocean melted to record low levels. These figures are based on satellite records dating back to 1979. The same scientists say the melt can be blamed mostly on global warming from man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. The Arctic sea ice helps moderate temperatures around the world.

The 23-year-old wife of a 69-year-old Manitoba senator will appear in domestic violence court today in Saskatoon. Witnesses say Senator Rod Zimmer started having health problems on a flight and police allege his wife responded to the health problems by threatening her husband and yelling about bringing down the plane. Other witnesses have said they didn’t see any of that and she just seemed concerned about her husband. One of the conditions of Maygan Sensenberger’s bail is that she not have any contact with her husband. Their wedding anniversary was yesterday.

Reka, one of the Amur tiger cubs born last year at Assiniboine Park Zoo died yesterday. Zoo staff started to monitor him on the weekend after he became lethargic, wasn’t eating and had a discharge from his eyes. When they tranquilized him for a full exam, Reka stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest.

Penn State won’t play Neil Diamond’s song “Sweet Caroline” during football games any more. The Altoona Mirror reports there was some concern about the lyrics “Touching me, touching you” after the Jerry Sandusky child-sex scandal. The Associate Athletic Director says of course they talked about the lyrics, but the just wanted to rotate in some new songs.

Manitoba has one more city. The Morden town council voted earlier this year to become a city, which requires a population of at least 7,500. Their latest count was around 8000 so the big new was announced Friday night at the Morden Corn and Apple festival.

Parents…Registration for fall programs in the City’s Leisure Guide begins this morning. But, only swimming lessons registrations can be booked today. Registration for all other programs will open Wednesday at 9 a.m. You can register online, or call 311 for more information.

A Winnipegger is among the top 20 contestants in a CBC reality show to find “Dorothy” for a production of “The Wizard of Oz.” Look for Colleen Furlan on the two-hour premiere on Sunday, September 16 at 8 p.m. on CBC.

Blue Bombers fired head coach Paul LaPolice on Saturday and replaced him with defensive co-ordinator Tim Burke.  

If you’ve been hoping for a few more weeks of summer, the Weather Network aims to please. They’re predicting above-average temperatures from Newfoundland to southern Manitoba. To quote the director of meteorology, he “wouldn’t close the pool just yet.”

The City of Winnipeg has closed the civic parkade on Princess, meaning monthly parkers will have been contacted over the weekend to move their spots to the Millennium Library Parkade on Donald. Transit buses will shuttle those drivers to city hall. The Winnipeg Police Service can still use the underground levels of the parkade. The parkade was closed as a precaution after an engineering report was released Friday.

Hundreds of people from the Filipino community were in Winnipeg Saturday to celebrate. The first Manitoba Filipino Street Festival took over Garden City Shopping Centre’s parking lot. A parade kicked off the day with singing, tribal dancing and more in and outside the mall.

Tropical Storm Issac is expected to grow into a hurricane today. By the time the eye comes ashore tomorrow night or Wednesday, somewhere between Florida and New Orleans, it’s expected to be a Category-One or Two. Wednesday is exactly seven years after Hurricane Katrina struck catastrophically in 2005.

Elections Manitoba has given Darrell Ackman the go-ahead to be run in the Sept. 4 byelection in Fort Whyte,  even though he faces numerous sex-related charges. Only weeks ago, Ackman, who also calls himself “MrJetztv,” was charged with living off the avails of prostitution, sexual assault, sexual interference and making and publishing child pornography. The charges relate to four girls, all of whom are 14 years old and considered at-risk youth, and police are trying to locate 8 other alleged victims, under the age of 18.

It was a sad weekend for diners along Ellice Avenue, as three establishments within a few blocks of each other have closed their doors for good. The Black Sheep Diner shut down on Sunday. Ellice Cafe and Theatre, on Ellice and Sherbrook, shut down on Friday and the Lo Pub and Bistro served its last drinks Saturday night.

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, died Saturday at the age of 82. He died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, his family said in a statement.

Lance Armstrong says he’s tired of fighting. He denies doping but chose yesterday to no longer fight charges brought against him by the US Anti-Doping Agency. In his statement, he said “There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ For me, that time is now. I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999. He also added “there is zero physical evidence to support … [the] outlandish and heinous claims.”

The head of USADA says his agency will ban Armstrong for life and strip him of his seven Tour de France titles. Armstrong maintains that USADA doesn’t have the authority to take away his wins.

Anders Verivik, the militant Christina in Norway who killed 77 people last summer, was declared sane and convicted of terrorism and premeditated murder. He was sentenced to at least 10 years in jail, but under Norweigan law he can be kept in jail as long as he’s considered to be dangerous.

The St. Norbert Farmers Market says it’s planning a $1-million makeover because of all the Winnipeg shoppers who are seeking locally-sourced food. The market will start fundraising right away to pay for upgrades like washrooms, better parking and drainage, and an indoor area for some vendors.

It’s not just in the porn world. Though porn shoots in LA may have been put on hold for two weeks after five performers tested positive for syphilis, there’s a rise in syphilis cases here in Canada too. It’s not dumb teenagers either. People 30 years and older made up 73 per cent of all the reported cases in 2010. Syphilis is treated with penicillin but if left untreated can have serious long term affects, including damage to the brain.

More than 50 Winnipeg Jets and Blue Bombers specialty licence plates have been reported stolen this year and MPI is pretty sure it’s crazed sports fans behind the theft. To try and prevent them from being swiped from vehicles they’ve got some special security screws.

By the fall of 2013, you should be able to pay your bus fare online. The electronic fare-collection system Winnipeg Transit plans to roll out next year calls for smart cards that can be reloaded on the Internet, over the phone or in person at retail stores. The new fare boxes will not only be able to read these smart cards, but will be equipped with electronic devices that can tell the value and how many coins you inserted.

For 7th time, Mark David Chapman has been denied parole for the murder of John Lennon in 1980. A parole board refused to release him because they say that would “undermine respect for the law” since he committed a “heinous, unprovoked, violent, cold and calculated crime.”

We may soon have a clearer picture of Canada’s north, now that Google maps staff have arrived in Nunavut. This is the farther north the team has ever travelled. They’re not only snapping pictures in Cambridge Bay but Google is also donating computers so other Arctic communities can update their own maps.

Newly released documents show the Mounties have been unable to get a full list of the aboriginal women and girls who’ve gone missing because the aboriginal women’s group making the list is holding back names due to privacy concerns and confidentiality guarantees. The Native Women’s Association of Canada has a database of nearly 600 cases but have only shared data with RCMP on 118 unsolved cases.

Remember the bizarre tale of the woman that fell to her death during a tandem hang-glide while her boyfriend watched? Then the pilot swallowed the memory card of the on-board camera? He may have had reason to swallow it. Pilot error, not equipment failure, is the reason Lenami Godinez fell. Investigations have found that it appears Godinez was never properly attached to the glider in the first place.

A small plane has crashed in Southern Manitoba, about a kilometer north of Manitou. Both the pilot and lone passenger were killed after the plane landed in a lagoon at the end of the runway.

Five Manitobans are reported to have contracted West Nile virus this summer. So far, no one has become seriously ill from the disease but as West Nile’s incubation period is as long as three weeks, it’s likely more cases will come out in the next few weeks.

Taxi drivers in Winnipeg want to charge more but a public hearing would have to take place before any fare increase was approved. Early last year, a 20 percent increase in taxi fares came in to cover the costs of protective taxi shields.

Billy Corgan is not only coming to Winnipeg with his band Smashing Pumpkins on October 2nd, he’s writing his autobiography. He says he’s not approaching it as a tell-all rock biography but more of a spiritual memoir. He also took a lot less money to use pseudonyms for all the celebs in the book, rather than name names.

A new security measure at Blue Bomber home games mean snacks and drinks from outside the stadium are not allowed at games. Security has been confiscating anything they find and some fans are not happy about it. If you have medical issues like diabetes you can get an exception though.

With the garbage autobins coming to an end, building managers at multi-family buildings were warned to make some plans for garbage pick up. Previously, the city picked up the bins even though they didn’t own them. Some managers did not make new arrangements and trash has been piling up for weeks in some dumpsters. The city says don’t call them – call your property management company.

Police had to shoot five raccoons in East Kildonan after a rise in cases of canine distemper. Usually Manitoba Conservation handles calls about aggressive wildlife, but police have been responding because of a potential risk to the public.

Did not see this one coming but pop-rocker Avril Lavigne and Nickelback frontman, Chad Kroeger, are engaged. The two started dating six months ago after they worked on co-writing a song together. This would be the second marriage for Lavigne and the first for Kroeger, who’s only 10 years older than her.

Filming is on hold down in LA after nine porn stars have reported testing positive for syphilis. The moratorium on shooting is going to last over the weekend so more performers can be tested. Then, after a shot of penicillin and a 10 day waiting period, they can all get back to work.

Officials have found a large number of polar bear dens along the Hudson Bay coast, near the Ontario boundary. It’s good news because the discovery could be a sign the polar bear population in that area is thriving, at least for now. Polar bears are threatened by a shrinking feeding time, due to melting ice. Less food makes it harder for females to gain enough weight to give birth.

Winnipeg-born Clara Hughes is the only Canadian to have won medals in both the Summer and the Winter Olympic games and is tied with fellow Winnipegger Cindy Klassan for the Canadian to have the most Olympic medals – six each. A local man believes the city should name more landmarks after them in tribute.

Edmonton Street will be closing for lunch today and on August 29^th. The Edmonton Street Festival has live art, a merchant market and entertainment and will close the stretch of Edmonton between Portage and Graham to traffic from 11:30 to 1:30.

Never trust toddlers not to talk about fight club. Three daycare workers in the States are accused of ordering toddlers to fight each other so they could watch. A cell phone video showed the employees encouraging the three-year-olds to punch each other.

A Winnipeg School Division school bus strike has been averted in time for the kids to head to school in a few weeks. The new agreement means drivers will be paid by the hour for their regular routes and a flat rate for extra routes, such as for field trips.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be announcing the creation of a huge new national park in the Northwest Territories. He started his annual summer tour of the Canadian North in the Yukon on Monday,

More than 100 people came to Winnipeg’s Southdale Community Centre on Monday evening to discuss the facility’s new user fees, which have caught parents off guard. Parents will be charged $110 for each child over the age of nine to play hockey, and $75 for each child to play ringette, compared to the per-family fee of $85 that was charged last year.

Rosie O’Donnell says she suffered a heart attack last week and is “lucky to be here.” An artery was 99 per cent blocked and a stent was inserted.

NBC has made it official: Michael J. Fox is coming back to series TV with a new comedy series, based loosely on his personal life. Set to premiere in fall 2013, the single-camera comedy will feature Fox as a husband and father of three from New York City, dealing with family, career and Parkinson’s.

Astronauts went spacewalking yesterday to hang shields on the space station as barrier against zooming space junk. This was the ninth spacewalk for Padalka and the fifth for Malenchenko. An American and a Japanese astronaut will venture out next week on a NASA-directed spacewalk

Manitoba farmers are starting to feel good about what could be a banner year for crops. Favourable conditions and high commodity prices translate to a good harvest, which will have a positive impact on Manitoba’s economy.

Phyllis Diller, the legendary, ground breaking female comedian, died yesterday morning in Los Angeles at the age of 95. Diller, who suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1999, was found by her son, Perry Diller. The cause of her death has not been released.

A major to change to the way Osborne Village looks. The demolition of the old Movie Village building and Vi-Ann restaurant starts this week. Across the street at River and Osborne, Papa George’s has confirmed they will be shutting down within the next six weeks.
A cultural event on Saturday is being called a political fundraiser in disguise. Protesters say an Eritrean band that performed at a Winnipeg church on Saturday is actually a military band raising money for the African country’s military dictatorship and that it is travelling with the minister of research and documentation from Eritrea’s ruling party. That could make the event illegal, as back in 2010, Canada adopted a UN Security Council resolution that prohibits anyone from providing money to Eritrea for military activities.

The son of Canada’s most decorated aboriginal soldier has been honoured with a Diamond Jubilee medal. Tommy Prince Jr. was honoured Saturday for his community work, including working as a volunteer counsellor at the Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg.

Winnipeg police have arrested a man they believe is behind a string of robberies dating back to December.  The arrest came Friday when a man wearing a disguise entered a financial institution on Sargent Avenue and fled with an undisclosed amount of cash. Glen Thomas Muskego, 40, has been charged with five robbery-related counts. He is being held in custody.

John Lennon’s killer is up for parole again. Mark David Chapman will be interviewed by the parole board this week and a decision should come by the end of the week. He was sentenced in 1981 to 20 years to life in jail after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. He’s been denied parole six times.

The director of Top Gun and True Romance is dead. Tony Scott is reported to have jumped off a bridge and the LA Times is reporting that investigators have found a suicide note. Scott was 68.

Adrenaline Adventures on the outskirts of Winnipeg is hosting the Manitoba Provincial Cable Wakeboarding Championship next month. Preliminary rounds on the evening of the 14th, and the finals on the 15^th. Tickets for the all-ages event will go on sale August 22 at AdrenalineMB.com.