These are the news stories that dominated Edmontonians’ interest this week. History lesson in time change Last weekend, Albertans did not change their clocks, with the province adopting permanent Daylight Saving Time. Both Canada and the United States have played around with time changes and zones. We took a look at the origin of time change as a concept more than a century ago, and how it came to be more widely adopted. NDP questions government distillery tour According to documents obtained by the Opposition NDP, the husband of Red Tape Reduction Minister Dale Nally’s chief of staff did not pay his own transportation costs when he joined a bourbon distillery tour in Kentucky last year. Physicians now helping triage in emergency departments The provincial government says six emergency rooms across Alberta now have physicians triaging patients, a change announced after the death of a man in Edmonton’s Grey Nuns Community Hospital. They are meant to help identify patients in more severe conditions. However, some doctors say the change won’t do much to lessen emergency department wait times, and that more hospitals and trained professionals are what is really needed. Veteran’s son finds Italian family who helped him A Sherwood Park, Alta., man was finally able to thank in person the Italian family who saved his father’s life after he escaped from a prison camp during the Second World War. Norman Hemming was one of thousands of Allied prisoners of war who fled the camps after an armistice was announced in September 1943 and was found, exhausted and starving, by Vito Urbanetti in a farmer’s field north of Rome in November. More than 80 years later, Eric Hemming travelled to Italy to meet Vito’s now 96-year-old daughter, Norma, who brought food to Norman’s hiding place. “She still remembered him and had a soft place in her heart for him. That was, to me, the most special part,” Eric said. Harry Potter backlash Duchess Bake Shop has changed course for its annual gingerbread project after public backlash to its original idea, inspired by the upcoming Harry Potter television adaptation. “We didn’t stop to consider the impact of this association on the trans community or fully understand the harm connected to the author’s views and actions,” read a statement from the bakery. “(J.K.) Rowling’s influence has amplified anti-trans rhetoric globally, contributing to challenges around legal recognition and access to public spaces.”
