Free Press Head Start for September 4 – Winnipeg Free Press

Your forecast

A mix of sun and clouds, with a 30 percent chance of rain early in the morning. Localized smoke becoming widespread in the early afternoon. Winds will be northwest at 20 km/h, gusting to 40 this morning. High 25°C, Humidex 28, UV Index 5 or moderate.

What's happening today

The Bank of Canada will announce its interest rate decision this morning. Forecasters expect a further cut of a quarter of a percentage point. The key interest rate is currently at 4.5 percent and Governor Tiff Macklem has signaled that the bank will continue to cut rates as long as inflation continues to fall. This is reported by the Canadian Press.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press-Files)

Today's required reading

Terry Johnsen said he was talking to a woman and her partner in a homeless camp on the south bank of the Assiniboine River shortly before she was fatally struck by a police car on Monday night.

“They came running here like crazy and I guess they didn’t see them,” said Johnsen, who lives in a tent in Fort Rouge Park in Osborne Village, the Free Press Tuesday after police held a press conference to announce the tragic incident. “You could hear the bang and then the commotion.”

Manitoba's Independent Investigation Unit is investigating the woman's death because police officers are involved in the death. Nicole Buffie has the story.

Camp resident Terry Johnsen was talking to a woman before she was hit by a police car. She later died of her injuries. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Free Press)

The positive side

In a classroom at the House of Urban Culture, hidden in the narrow streets of Dakar, Senegal, Aminata Thiam claps her hands to the beat of a beat she created on her computer. “You just have to find the loop you want. Cut it, duplicate the sample, then add your effects,” she says.

She gives five young women a course in beatmaking, with each of them working concentratedly on their own beats on the computer in front of her.

Thiam, 31, is a beatmaker and one of the few women in Senegal who call themselves that. Her discipline is the art of “making beats and rhythms,” says Thiam. She traces a lineage from American DJs like Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc, who are considered the founders of hip-hop, to today's beatmakers, the Associated Press reports.

Female students compose music during a beatmaking class for women in Dakar, Senegal, in August. (Annika Hammerschlag/The Associated Press files)

On this date

On September 4, 1947: The Winnipeg Free Press reported that the initial findings of an investigation into the Dugald train crash, in which the Minaki Campers' Special passenger train collided with the Toronto-bound transcontinental train, indicated that the former train must have been in a siding at the time of the collision. Railroad workers continued to search for the bodies of those killed in the collision and fire, and the mayor of Winnipeg announced that a mass burial with a public memorial service was planned for all unidentified victims of the crash. Read the rest of today's newspaper here. For more information, visit our archives here.

Today's front page

Read the full story: Read today’s e-edition of Free Press.