Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 27, 2024, Winnipeg, Manitoba www.brightwaterseniorliving.com 204-560-0286 BOOK A TOUR TODAY! 741 Sterling Lyon Parkway Winnipeg, MB R3P 2S9 Pet friendly living SERVING MANITOBA SINCE 1872. FOREVER WITH YOUR SUPPORT. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2024 TODAY’S WEATHER CITY GAS PAINS CONTINUE / B1CLOUDY. HIGH -5 — LOW -11 ‘I am dead in the water right now, and so are my students,’ prof says U of W paralyzed by cyber incident W EEKS before exams are set to begin, students and faculty at one of Manitoba’s largest universities are scrambling to access academic files after a weekend “cyber incident” knocked out network access and forced the institution to cancel classes. Lessons at the University of Winni- peg resumed Tuesday after a one-day hiatus, but many educational services remain unavailable, including Nexus — the school’s learning-management system, in which many professors store and disseminate the bulk of their curriculum. “Right now, I have no way of con- tacting students. They’ve lost access to all of the course materials,” biology professor Scott Forbes said. “We are just about to start exams, so this is just about as bad as it gets…. Basically, I am dead in the water right now and so are my students.” More than 9,000 students enrolled at the university were told not to attend classes Monday after the campus Wi- Fi was disabled and an assortment of critical, web-based academic pro- grams became inaccessible. School officials initially described the issue as an internet service outage but later said it was linked to some form of “cyber incident” that was dis- covered Sunday. The university confirmed Tuesday the outage was the result of a cyber attack. It would not say whether any student or institutional data had been compromised. “At this early stage, we’re still in the process of investigating the incident to better understand its impact — and also don’t have a solid ETA for when all systems will be available again,” a spokesperson said in an email state- ment. In a separate statement posted on its website, the university provided an update, saying it has taken “immedi- ate steps to secure its network, which included making a variety of services unavailable.” “We appreciate that this incident raises concerns within our campus community, and.… We are working with expert partners to resolve the incident and have reported it to the authorities,” it said. The university notified the Winnipeg Police Service and the Canadian Cen- tre for Cybersecurity about the attack, the spokesperson said. TYLER SEARLE Judge says police tactics taint validity of confession Stepmom’s admission in child’s death tossed A JUDGE has tossed out a police statement given by an intellectually vulnerable woman charged with man- slaughter in the death of her toddler stepson, ruling her confession came after hours of “psychological pummel- ling” by investigators. The woman, who is 24 years old, was arrested in April 2020 following the death of her two-year-old stepson. The woman cannot be identified under terms of a court-ordered publication ban. “Normally, statements made by an accused person admitting a serious offence amounts to very important evidence in the Crown’s case,” provin- cial court Judge Don Slough said in a recently released trial ruling. “Frankly, given (the accused’s) significant vulnerability and suggest- ibility combined with the tactics of the police, her statements cannot be ac- corded the weight normally assigned to a confession,” Slough said. “I find that the admission of (her) statements would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.” The woman called 911 on March 24, 2020, to report the child had been in- jured. She initially told police he might have been hurt in a fall or struck by one of his two siblings. The child died two days later in hospital as the result of a brain injury. Police arrested the stepmother a week later, saying at the time her explana- tions didn’t account for the serious- ness of his injuries. During an 11-hour police interview recorded on April 3, 2020, an investi- gator became “increasingly aggres- sive” with the woman, engaged in “a lengthy personal attack” and showed her a graphic autopsy photo, Slough said. The autopsy photo “can only be described as gruesome and shocking,” Slough said. “Showing (the accused) this photograph served no legitimate purpose; rather it was intended as a brutal psychological shock to provoke an emotional response and perhaps a confession.” DEAN PRITCHARD Baltimore bridge collapses, 6 believed dead BALTIMORE — Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed early Tuesday after a support column was struck by a container ship, sending at least seven cars into the Patapsco River, launching a search-and-rescue operation and prompting Gov. Wes Moore to declare a state of emergen- cy. Six construction workers were missing and presumed dead. In a news conference a few hours after the incident, Baltimore Fire Department Chief James Wallace said authorities are “still very much in an active search and rescue pos- ture,” noting they are searching for “upwards of seven individuals” and that sonar has detected the presence of vehicles in the water. There is no indication the event was intentional, Wallace said. “This is a tragedy that you could never imagine… It looked like some- thing out of an action movie,” Mayor Brandon Scott said. Video from the incident shows the container ship, billowing smoke, colliding with a support beam and quickly causing much of the bridge to collapse. Just before the collision, the ship’s lights appear to turn off, then on, then off again. The ship had been under the opera- tion of a pilot. All traffic has been rerouted from the 2.6-kilometre steel bridge that is part of Interstate 695. “We know that we have a long road ahead, not just in search and rescue, but in the fallout from this,” Baltimore County executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. said at the news confer- ence. Priscilla Thompson, who lives on the water in Dundalk facing the Key Bridge, was awakened in the middle of the night by the horrible sound of crashing steel. “I really thought it was an earth- quake or something because it shook this house so bad,” she said. “It shook it — it really rattled it — for four or five seconds.” “Then, it got real quiet,” she said. Moore said in a statement that he has declared a state of emergency and will work to “quickly deploy federal resources.” “We are thankful for the brave men and women who are carrying out efforts to rescue those involved and pray for everyone’s safety,” Moore said in the statement. “We will remain in close contact with federal, state, and local entities that are carrying out rescue efforts as we continue to assess and respond to this tragedy.” A spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard said the 948-foot, Singa- pore-flagged cargo ship Dali struck the bridge around 1:20 a.m. “We are deploying assets in response,” said Petty Officer First Class Matthew West, including two response boats from Curtis Bay and one from Annapolis. A helicopter was also deployed to assist in the search and rescue and several police helicopters were seen circling the area Tuesday morning. The ship was built in 2015 and was arrived from Norfolk, Virginia, according to Vessel Finder, a ship tracking website. It departed from the Port of Bal- timore around 1 a.m., according to MarineTraffic, a separate tracking website. The cause of the incident is yet to be determined, according to a statement from Dali’s owners and managers. Two pilots were aboard the ship and they, as well as all 22 Indian crew members, have “been accounted for and there are no re- ports of any injuries.” MICHELLE DEAL-ZIMMERMAN AND HAYES GARDNER KARL MERTON FERRON / THE BALTIMORE SUN A container ship lost power and struck a support caisson of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, Md., collapsing the span in seconds. Ship collides with structure; seconds later, entire span hits water ● COLLAPSE, CONTINUED ON A2 ● CONFESSION, CONTINUED ON A2 ● CYBER, CONTINUED ON A2 ;