A man has died in hospital from injuries sustained after being struck by a vehicle on Monday.

Around 1 p.m., officers were called to the intersection  of Albert Street and 1st Avenue North for the report of a motor vehicle collision, according to a news release from the Regina Police Service (RPS).

When police arrived, they found a seriously injured man who was soon taken to hospital for treatment. He died in hospital on Wednesday, according to police.

The driver of the vehicle remained on scene.

No charges have been laid at this time, but police said the investigation continues.

Hundreds of Saskatchewan nurses and their supporters rallied outside the legislative building on Thursday calling for action to ongoing staffing shortages and hospital overcrowding around the province.

According to a September survey referenced by the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN), 86 per cent of registered nurses are reporting patient risk due to staff shortages. The survey also found that 60 per cent of registered nurses have considered leaving the profession in the last 12 months.

“It’s a perfect storm for a catastrophe in the making,” SUN president Tracy Zambory said in a news release. “I hear from SUN members lamenting their career choice almost daily, describing their severe moral distress from being unable to provide the safe care patients need or saying they’ve never wanted to leave the profession more.”

According to Zambory, Saskatchewan is short about 700 full-time registered nurses. 

The union has called for greater frontline engagement aimed at nurse retention and recruitment for the past two years.

Zambory said it’s not uncommon to see beds lining hospital hallways and critical care happening in waiting room chairs due to ongoing overcapacity issues.

According to Zambory, emergency rooms are routinely 200 per cent over capacity. SUN data also indicated that the emergency room at Saskatoons Royal University Hospital reached 350 per cent capacity on Tuesday night. 

“It’s not only big city emergencies; patients are suffering everywhere – postponed surgeries, excessive and stressful waits for lifesaving diagnostics and treatments, and widespread rural service disruptions,” she said in the release.

SUN represents 11,000 Registered Nurses, Registered Psychiatric Nurses, and Nurse Practitioners in the province.

Speaking at a campaign announcement in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan Party leader Scott Moe said hospital overcrowding is a challenge, and he is committed to working with healthcare professionals to improve the system, if re-elected.

We will commit to ensuring that happens into the future, Moe said. And we are starting to have results, but theres more work to do.

NDP candidate Vicki Mowat says Moe cant be trusted to fix the health care system and promised that an NDP government would open the Saskatoon hospital 24 hours a day and hire more workers. 

Moe says more staff are being hired thanks to a program the Sask. Party launched in 2022 . 

Saskatchewan is expecting its first widespread frost of the season Thursday night and Friday morning, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).

Many parts of central and southeast Saskatchewan will see temperatures fall below the freezing mark, ECCC says.

Reginas expected overnight low Thursday night is -3 C, Saskatoons is -4 C, according to ECCC.  

“Finally seeing our first widespread frost in Saskatchewan after a mild start to fall,” ECCC said on X on Thursday.

According to ECCC, the average first frost for Regina is Sept. 14. Saskatoon’s is Sept. 15.

Other average first frost dates, according to ECCC:

•  Kindersley – Sept. 20
•  Estevan – Sept. 17
•  Prince Albert – Sept. 15
•  Swift Current – Sept. 19

Milder temperatures are expected to return next week. Daytime highs in Regina could hit 25 C Tuesday and Wednesday, while Saskatoon could also see highs in the low 20s early next week, according to ECCC’s Thursday afternoon forecast.

Staff at Saskatoons Royal University Hospital (RUH) are calling for systemic changes just two days after its emergency room was more than three times above its capacity.

Its worse than it ever has been, NDP Saskatoon Fairview candidate Vicki Mowat said outside of the hospital Thursday morning.

We dont have time to wait for help. When you have admitted patients in a hospital that dont even have a chair to sit in, things are at a breaking point.

According to data from the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN), the RUH emergency room was at 350 per cent capacity overnight Tuesday — with 121 patients for 35 beds.

The union says there were 50 patients admitted with no beds, 25 people being treated in hallway beds and 10 ambulances were delayed in the paramedic bay treating patients because there was nowhere for them to go.

Mowat said the hospital ran out of stretchers and oxygen as other nearby healthcare facilities werent accepting patients any longer. Patients outnumbered RUH nursing staff 14 to one.

Saskatoon deserves better. Our families deserve better. Our health care workers deserve better, Mowat said.

Hundreds of healthcare workers and union representatives rallied outside of the legislature in Regina Thursday to call for help amid the healthcare crisis and staffing shortages.

How do you safely care for patients in a busy emergency room when you are routinely 200 per cent overcapacity, beds line hallways, and critical care happens out in the open in waiting room chairs, all while you are working seven registered nurses short,” SUN president Tracy Zambory said in a news release.

Speaking at a campaign announcement in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan Party leader Scott Moe said hospital overcrowding is a challenge, and he is committed to working with healthcare professionals to improve the system, if re-elected.

We will commit to ensuring that happens into the future, Moe said. And we are starting to have results, but theres more work to do.

After years of nurses and other health professionals asking for more input and calling for a nursing task force, the province agreed to create one days before the election period began.

Moe spoke about the health human resource action plan his government announced two years ago, and how its seeing benefits, but theres more work to be done.

Admittedly, there is much more work to do here, and the health human resource plan has not certainly found its way to the end of this work., he said.

This is a government that has been fully committed to not only working with frontline staff and our organizations across the health care sector on new and innovative ways to offer health care. But then putting the funding behind those discussions.

Mowat says this government has rarely taken the opportunity to sit down and listen to concerns from healthcare workers, and the action plan isnt cutting it.

The plan isnt working, and it makes sense because they didnt consult healthcare workers in creating that plan, Mowat said.

Theyve had 17 years in government to fix health care, and they havent done it.

Mowat said if elected, the NDP would open Saskatoons City Hospital emergency room 24 hours a day to help alleviate capacity issues at RUH. She says her party would also work together with post-secondary institutions, unions and staff in multiple sectors of healthcare to give them a voice in decisions and help create a culture where workers are retained.

In a survey of its own membership last month, the nurses’ union says 86 per cent of registered nurses are reporting patient risk due to short staffing and 60 per cent have considered leaving the profession in the last 12 months.

Moe said the Sask. Party isnt ruling out systemic changes, either.

Looking at delivering health care a little bit different is something that were most certainly open to, Moe said. 

Staff at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert seized a sizeable load of contraband on Monday, according to the federal correctional service.

In a news release on Thursday, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) said it found illicit items including methamphetamine, cannabis concentrate, tobacco, cell phones, charging cables, and SIM cards.

Inside the institution, prison officials estimate the contraband has a value of nearly $369,350.

“The police have been notified and the institution is investigating.”

A Regina woman has pleaded guilty to one count of fraud after being charged with defrauding Regina Mobile Crisis Services.

In January of 2022, Arlene Marie Irving was charged with theft over $5,000 and fraud over $5,000.

An investigation by the Regina Police Service (RPS) began in July 2021 when they were contacted by the non-for-profit organization.

In March of 2021, the organization was in a transition to a new financial management system when they noticed “financial irregularities.”

Evidence gathered from the investigation led to Irving being charged. She was 61 at the time and living in British Columbia.

In January 2022, Mobile Crisis Services said that one of its employees had been fired as a result of a financial investigation but never provided the former employee’s name.

Irving will be sentenced on Nov. 28.

A woman who says she worked as a hair-and-makeup stylist for Garth Brooks alleged in a lawsuit filed Thursday that he raped her in a Los Angeles hotel in 2019.

The woman does not use her name and goes by Jane Roe in the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. An email seeking comment from Brooks publicist and attorney were not immediately answered.

The woman says in the lawsuit she had worked for Brooks wife, country singer Trisha Yearwood, since 1999, and had started also working for Brooks in 2017.

She said the assault occurred when she travelled from Nashville to Los Angeles with Brooks, who was performing with soul singer Sam Moore at a Grammy Awards tribute to Moore in October 2019.

Brooks normally travelled with an entourage, but the two were alone on his private jet, and he booked just one hotel suite for both of them, the lawsuit says.

The woman alleges that in the suite, he appeared naked in the doorway to the bedroom and raped her.

The suit says that he then proceeded as though nothing had happened and expected her to do his hair and makeup immediately after.

She alleges that earlier in 2019, when she was at Brooks home, he had appeared naked in front of her, grabbed her hands, and put them on his genitals.

The lawsuit says that Brooks filed his own preemptive lawsuit in federal court in Mississippi last month, in which both him and the woman are anonymous.

In court filings in that case, the plaintiff, going by John Doe, says the allegations are “wholly untrue,” and he first learned of them in July when she threatened to publicly sue him unless he gave her millions of dollars.

He asks a judge to stop the woman from “intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and false light invasion of privacy.”

The womans suit also says Brooks exposed himself to her many other times and talked about sexual fantasies with her and sent her explicit text messages.

She said she was forced to keep working for Brooks because of financial hardship, which he knew about and took advantage of.

An email to the womans attorney asking whether she had reported her allegations to police was not immediately answered.

The 62-year-old Oklahoma-born Brooks was the biggest star in country music of the 1990s, with hits including “Friends in Low Places and “The Thunder Rolls.” He brought arena-rock theatrics to his concerts and a pop-music sensibility to his recordings. He had huge success that went beyond typical country audiences.

He married fellow country star Yearwood in 2005. There was no immediate response to a message to a Yearwood representative seeking comment on the lawsuit. 

More than 180 people were evacuated Thursday from a Ryanair Boeing passenger jet after it caught fire while taxiing to take off at Brindisi Airport in southern Italy.

The incident comes two days after a tire blowout on another of the airline’s Boeing planes during landing led to the temporary closure of Milan Bergamo Airport.

A spokesperson for the airport in Brindisi confirmed there had been a fire that halted air traffic for several hours.

Ryanair, the Irish budget airline group that operates Europe’s largest aircraft fleet, said all 184 passengers and crew were safely evacuated on the runway after Thursday’s incident. The plane had been bound for the northern Italian city of Turin.

“Flight FR8826 from Brindisi to Turin (3rd Oct) was delayed this morning after cabin crew observed fumes on the outside of the aircraft. Passengers were disembarked without incident and returned to the terminal by bus,” the airline said in a statement to CNN.

It said that the aircraft was later replaced, and passengers were flown on to their destination. The airport reopened around three hours later, according to the airport’s website.

On Tuesday, another Ryanair aircraft – flight FR846 – headed into Milan Bergamo airport from Barcelona had a tire issue upon landing, which briefly closed the destination airport.

“Passengers disembarked normally, and the aircraft was inspected by engineers, who are currently servicing the aircraft so that it can return to service,” Ryanair said in a statement to CNN.

List of incidents

This week’s events prompted several Italian lawmakers to call for an inquiry into Ryanair’s safety record, citing a number of earlier incidents.

Andrea Caroppo and Mauro D’Attis, deputies in Italy’s lower chamber of Parliament and part of the Forza Italia party that is a member of Italy’s ruling coalition, called for a senate hearing with the country’s National Civil Aviation Authority, ENAC.

“This morning, at Brindisi airport, a new accident occurred, yet another, on a Ryanair plane,” said Caroppo (who is vice president of the Transport Commission of Italy’s lower house of parliament), D’Attis and two other party members in a statement.

“We have therefore asked for an urgent hearing in the Transport Commission at the Chamber of ENAC leaders, with a focus on the safety of Ryanair flights, which - it is worth remembering - is the leading carrier in Italy for passenger traffic,” the statement said.

The statement listed other incidents,  including one in May when a flight from the Italian port of Bari to London had to turn around because of technical problems, and another flight in May departing from the northern city of Bologna to Brussels that had to make an emergency landing in Luxembourg because of a fire onboard.

“And these are just some of the many, too many accidents that have involved Ryanair in recent months, in Italy and Europe,” the statement adds.

Ryanair did not respond to a CNN request for comment on the lawmakers’ statement. Boeing, the manufacturer of both aircraft involved in this week’s incidents, referred CNN to Ryanair.

A spokesperson for ENAC said it was investigating the two incidents this week separately.

Notice of Broadcast Disruption – July 3, 2024

On July 3, 2024, at 10:49 PM, Broadcast Center 01 experienced a power outage due to a passing thunderstorm. To safeguard our equipment from potential power surges, we decided to temporarily suspend our broadcasts. This interruption affected Z103.5, 979 The Cowboy, and 101 The Rockhound.

Additionally, our Live To Air Broadcast from Union Nightclub on Z103.5 encountered an issue, resulting in no audio being transmitted.

We are pleased to report that Broadcast Center 02, which transmits Classic 88.7 The Goat, was not affected by this outage.

All broadcasts have now resumed and are operating normally. If you experience any issues, please report them on our website.

Thank you for your understanding, 

EVO Radio