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Telecom CEOs appear before federal committee, tell MPs prices are coming down

CEOs say prices are falling

The chief executives of Canada's three largest telecom companies stressed that phone and internet prices are coming down during an appearance before MPs on Monday, citing increased data usage, high spectrum costs and regulatory conditions as some reasons Canadians may feel otherwise.

The three CEOs — Rogers Communications Inc.'s Tony Staffieri, BCE Inc.'s Mirko Bibic and Telus Corp.'s Darren Entwistle — appeared virtually at the House of Commons industry committee meeting after its members voted unanimously last month to summon them.

The committee's study on the accessibility and affordability of wireless and broadband services was prompted when Rogers confirmed prices were going up by an average of $5 for wireless customers not on contract.

Bibic would not confirm whether Bell plans to follow suit with similar price hikes, stressing the company's focus is on lowering costs, while Entwistle said he was confident Canadians would see price declines but could not discuss specifics about price setting.

When asked whether the timing of Rogers' price increase was "tone deaf," Staffieri told MPs the move affected customers on legacy plans and the company wanted to offer them choice, noting they could opt for an alternative option offering better value.

Some members of the committee say they are concerned about cellphone and internet prices in Canada, arguing Canadians pay too much for those services, but the CEOs cited recent Statistics Canada data showing wireless prices are down 16 per cent in the past year.



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National home sales in February up nearly 20% compared with year ago

February home sales spike

The Canadian Real Estate Association says February home sales jumped 19.7 per cent compared with a year ago.

The association says the increase in part reflected weakness last year, as the result for February 2023 was one of the lowest for the month in the past two decades.

On a month-over-month basis, CREA says seasonally adjusted home sales in February dipped 3.1 per cent compared with January.

CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says February could end being the "last relatively uneventful month of the year" for home sales, due to pent up demand that has been put on hold amid the high interest rate environment.

The number of newly listed properties was up 1.6 per cent month-over-month.

The actual national average home price was $685,809 last month, up 3.5 per cent from February 2023.

 



'Art and science:' How bracketologists are using artificial intelligence this March Madness

AI and March Madness

College hoops fans might want to think again before pinning their hopes of a perfect March Madness bracket on artificial intelligence.

While the advancement of artificial intelligence into everyday life has made “AI” one of the buzziest phrases of the past year, its application in bracketology circles is not so new. Even so, the annual bracket contests still provide plenty of surprises for computer science aficionados who've spent years honing their models with past NCAA Tournament results.

They have found that machine learning alone cannot quite solve the limited data and incalculable human elements of “The Big Dance."

“All these things are art and science. And they’re just as much human psychology as they are statistics,” said Chris Ford, a data analyst who lives in Germany. “You have to actually understand people. And that’s what’s so tricky about it.”

Casual fans may spend a few days this week strategically deciding whether to maybe lean on the team with the best mojo — like Sister Jean’s 2018 Loyola-Chicago squad that made the Final Four — or to perhaps ride the hottest-shooting player — like Steph Curry and his breakout 2008 performance that led Davidson to the Sweet Sixteen.

The technologically inclined are chasing goals even more complicated than selecting the winners of all 67 matchups in both the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments. They are fine-tuning mathematical functions in pursuit of the most objective model for predicting success in the upset-riddled tournament. Some are enlisting AI to perfect their codes or to decide which aspects of team resumes they should weigh most heavily.

The odds of crafting a perfect bracket are stacked against any competitor, however advanced their tools may be. An “informed fan” making certain assumptions based on previous results — such as a 1-seed beating a 16-seed — has a 1 in 2 billion chance at perfection, according to Ezra Miller, a mathematics and statistical science professor at Duke.

“Roughly speaking, it would be like choosing a random person in the Western Hemisphere," he said.

Artificial intelligence is likely very good at determining the probability that a team wins, Miller said. But even with the models, he added that the “random choice of who’s going to win a game that’s evenly matched” is still a random choice.

For the 10th straight year, the data science community Kaggle is hosting “Machine Learning Madness.” Traditional bracket competitions are all-or-nothing; participants write one team’s name into each open slot. But “Machine Learning Madness” requires users to submit a percentage reflecting their confidence that a team will advance.

Kaggle provides a large data set from past results for people to develop their algorithms. That includes box scores with information on a team's free-throw percentage, turnovers and assists. Users can then turn that information over to an algorithm to figure out which statistics are most predictive of tournament success.

“It’s a fair fight. There’s people who know a lot about basketball and can use what they know," said Jeff Sonas, a statistical chess analyst who helped found the competition. "It is also possible for someone who doesn’t know a lot about basketball but is good at learning how to use data to make predictions.”

Ford, the Purdue fan who watched last year as the shortest Division I men’s team stunned his Boilermakers in the first round, takes it a different direction. Since 2020, Ford has tried to predict which schools will make the 68-team field.

In 2021, his most successful year, Ford said the model correctly named 66 of the teams in the men’s bracket. He uses a “fake committee” of eight different machine learning models that makes slightly different considerations based on the same inputs: the strength of schedule for a team and the number of quality wins against tougher opponents, to name a few.

Eugene Tulyagijja, a sports analytics major at Syracuse University, said he spent a year’s worth of free time crafting his own model. He said he used a deep neural network to find patterns of success based on statistics like a team’s 3-point efficiency.

His model wrongly predicted that the 2023 men’s Final Four would include Arizona, Duke and Texas. But it did correctly include UConn. As he adjusts the model with another year’s worth of information, he acknowledged certain human elements that no computer could ever consider.

“Did the players get enough sleep last night? Is that going to affect the player’s performance?” he said. “Personal things going on — we can never adjust to it using data alone.”

No method will integrate every relevant factor at play on the court. The necessary balance between modeling and intuition is “the art of sports analytics,” said Tim Chartier, a Davidson bracketology expert.

Chartier has studied brackets since 2009, developing a method that largely relies on home/away records, performance in the second half of the season and the strength of schedule. But he said the NCAA Tournament's historical results provide an unpredictable and small sample size — a challenge for machine learning models, which rely on large sample sizes.

Chartier's goal is never for his students to reach perfection in their brackets; his own model still cannot account for Davidson's 2008 Cinderella story.

In that mystery, Chartier finds a useful reminder from March Madness: "The beauty of sports, and the beauty of life itself, is the randomness that we can't predict."

“We can't even predict 63 games of a basketball tournament where we had 5,000 games that led up to it," he tells his classes. "So be forgiving to yourself when you don't make correct predictions on stages of life that are much more complicated than a 40-minute basketball game.”

 



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Uber pays $178 million to end legal fight with Australian taxi drivers

Uber pays $178 million

Global rideshare giant Uber will pay 272 million Australian dollars ($178 million) to settle a long-running dispute with Australian taxi and hire car drivers who lost out when the company entered the Australian market.

A class action against Uber had been expected to go to trial in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Monday, but Maurice Blackburn Lawyers — representing 8,000 taxi and hire car drivers — said the case will be dropped because Uber agreed to the financial settlement.

Maurice Blackburn principal lawyer Michael Donelly said that drivers and car owners suffered financial losses due to Uber’s aggressive entry into the market in 2012 and that the company consistently attempted to avoid compensating them.

“On the courtroom steps and after years of refusing to do the right thing by those we say they harmed, Uber has blinked, and thousands of everyday Australians joined together to stare down a global giant,” he said.

An Uber statement described the complaints of the taxi industry as “legacy issues” and said rideshare regulations did not exist anywhere in the world when the company started more than a decade ago.

“The rise of ridesharing has grown Australia’s overall point-to-point transport industry, bringing with it greater choice and improved experiences for consumers, as well as new earnings opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Australian workers,” the statement said.

“Since 2018, Uber has made significant contributions into various state-level taxi compensation schemes, and with today’s proposed settlement, we put these legacy issues firmly in our past."

It’s the fifth-largest class action settlement in Australia’s history and comes five years after the action was launched.



Apple to pay $490 million to settle allegations that it misled investors about iPhone sales in China

Apple to pay $490 million

Apple has agreed to pay $490 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging CEO Tim Cook misled investors about a steep downturn in iPhone's sales in China that culminated in a jarring revision to the company's revenue forecast.

The preliminary settlement filed Friday in Oakland, California, federal court stems from a shareholder lawsuit focused on the way Apple relayed information about how iPhone models released in September 2018 were performing in China, one of the company's biggest markets.

Cook signaled that the new iPhones were off to a good start during an investor conference call in early November 2018, according to the complaint.

That reassurance dissolved into a huge letdown on Jan. 2, 2019 when the Cook issued a warning that Apple's revenue for the just-completed quarter would fall $9 billion below management's forecast for the period. What's more, virtually all of the sales drop was traced to weak demand in China.

It marked the first time Apple had cut its revenue guidance since the iPhone's release in 2007 and triggered its stock price to plunge 10% in the next day of frenetic trading, wiping out more than $70 billion in shareholder wealth.

Apple vehemently denied Cook deceived investors about the iPhone's sales in China between early November and early January. The Cupertino, California, company maintained that stance in the settlement documents, but said it decided to make the payment after more than four years of legal wrangling to avoid an “overly burdensome, expensive, and distracting” hassle.

The settlement was reached through a mediator after U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected Apple's request to dismiss the case and set a Sept. 9 trial date.

Gonzalez Rogers is now being asked to approve the settlement in a hearing scheduled for April 30.

Thousands of shareholders who bought Apple stock in late 2018 could be eligible for a piece of the settlement, which will be distributed from of a pool that will be less than $490 million after lawyers involved in the case are paid. The attorneys plan to seek up to one-fourth, or about $122 million, of the settlement.

The $490 million payment represents less than 1% of the $97 billion profit that Apple pocketed during its last fiscal year ended in September. Apple shareholders who have held on to their shares have become wealthier too. Apple's stock price has more than quadrupled from where it stood after Cook's China warning, creating an additional $2 trillion in shareholder wealth.



February housing starts increased 14% from January: Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp

Housing starts jump 14%

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says the annual pace of housing starts in February climbed 14 per cent compared with January.

The national housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts amounted to 253,468 units in February compared with 223,176 in January.

When looking at year-over-year figures, February's actual housing starts were 10 per cent higher in Toronto and 82 per cent higher in Vancouver because of higher multi-unit starts.

Montreal's actual starts dropped nine per cent with multi-unit and single-detached starts both falling.

The annual rate of rural starts was estimated at 14,835 units.

The six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates of housing starts in February was 245,665, up by 0.4 per cent from 244,638 in January.

 



Honda and Nissan agree to work together in developing electric vehicles and intelligent technology

Honda, Nissan collaborate

Nissan and Honda announced Friday that they will work together in developing electric vehicles and auto intelligence technology, sectors where Japanese automakers have fallen behind.

The chief executives of Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. appeared together at a news conference in Tokyo to announce that Japan's second and third biggest automakers will look into areas with a potential for collaboration.

The details of the non-binding agreement are still being worked out, both sides said. The executives said the companies will develop core technologies together, but their products will remain different.

Nissan Chief Executive Makoto Uchida stressed that speed is crucial for the companies in developing technological solutions.

“We don’t have time,” he said. “It is significant that we have reached this agreement based on a mutual understanding that Honda and Nissan face common challenges.”

Honda President Toshihiro Mibe said the companies share common values and could create “synergies” in facing their formidable rivals.

The world’s automakers are rapidly shifting toward electric vehicles, focusing on batteries and motors instead of gas engines, as concerns grow about emissions and climate change.

But Japanese automakers have fallen behind rivals such as Tesla of the U.S. and BYD of China in developing EVs, partly because they have historically been so successful with combustion engine vehicles.

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest automaker, has often said the world is not ready for a complete shift to EVs, in part because of the lack of a charging infrastructure, and instead has pushed hybrids, which have a gas engine in addition to an electric motor.

But Toyota is also expected to aggressively deliver on an EV push in coming years.

Nissan is relatively ahead in EVs among Japanese automakers because it was among the first to come out with an EV with its Leaf, which went on sale in late 2010.

High expectations for the Nissan-Honda agreement were reflected in sharp increases in the stock prices of both companies on Thursday after a Japanese media report said such a deal might be in the works.

Their shares continued to rise Friday, with Nissan finishing 3.2% higher Friday and Honda rising 1.7%. The agreement was announced after trading closed in Tokyo.

The executives said no mutual capital ownership is involved in the agreement for now, but the companies may look into the possibility down the road.

“How we can raise our competitiveness is what we are determined to pursue,” Uchida said.

 



McDonald's system outages have been reported worldwide. The chain says they're getting fixed

Global McDonald's outages

System failures at McDonald's were reported worldwide Friday, shuttering some restaurants for hours and leading to social media complaints from customers, in what the fast food chain called a “technology outage” that was being fixed.

Chicago-based McDonald's Corp. said the problems were not related to a cybersecurity attack, without giving more details on what caused them.

“We are aware of a technology outage, which impacted our restaurants; the issue is now being resolved," the burger giant said in a statement. “We thank customers for their patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Earlier, McDonald's in Japan posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “operations are temporarily out at many of our stores nationwide," calling it “a system failure.” In Hong Kong, the chain said on Facebook that a “computer system failure” knocked out orders online and through self-serve kiosks.

Downdetector, an outage tracker, also reported a spike in problems with the McDonald's app in the last few hours.

Some McDonald’s restaurants were operating normally again after the outage, with people ordering and getting their food at locations in Bangkok, Milan and London.

A worker at a restaurant in Bangkok said the system was down for about an hour, making it impossible to take online or credit card payments but allowing it to still accept cash for orders.

At another location in Thailand’s capital, there was plywood over a door with a sign saying, “Technicians are updating the system," even as customers were ordering again and paying digitally.

A worker at a Milan restaurant noted that the system was offline for a couple of hours and a technician walked them through getting it back up and running.

A spokesperson for McDonald’s in Denmark said the “technology failure” was resolved there and its restaurants were open.

Media outlets reported that customers from Australia to the U.K. had complained of issues with ordering, including a customer in Australia who posted a photo to X saying a kiosk was unavailable.

”All McDonald’s restaurants are connected to a global network and that is what’s messed up,” Patrik Hjelte, owner of several McDonald’s restaurants in central Sweden, near the Norwegian border, told local newspaper Nya Wermlands Tidning.

 



International students face growing mental distress in Canada, advocates warn

International student stress

When Gobindbir Singh describes the stress international students are under, he remembers a young man who called in tears.

Unable to pay his tuition for the upcoming semester, the student said his parents were selling their home in India and it still wasn't enough.

He had asked friends to lend him money and tried getting an extension from the college.

Completely desperate, he turned to Khalsa Aid Canada.

"He literally cried over the phone," said Singh, a project manager for the organization in Ottawa, which supports international students by providing free groceries once a month and winter coats.

"He said, 'I have tried everything, and you are the last resort.'"

The story is one example of the difficult situations international students are finding themselves in as the cost of living skyrockets in Canada and it becomes more difficult for newcomers to find work.

These challenges have become more noticeable as the number of international students in the country has jumped in recent years.

In 2023, more than 900,000 foreign students had visas to study in Canada — more than triple the number from 10 years ago.

Post-secondary institutions and policymakers are facing significant scrutiny over the increase as colleges and universities increasingly use international student tuition to supplement inadequate government funding.

Meanwhile, more stories are surfacing of international students living in substandard housing and relying on food banks.

Singh, a former international student himself, said stress around finding work, paying for high tuition and adjusting to life in Canada can take a toll on a student's mental health. Often, the students don't know where to seek help.

Dealing with immigration issues or a family matter back home only makes the situation worse, he added.

Thushara Rodrigo, Sri Lanka's consul general in Toronto, recently issued a warning to parents to stay informed about how their children are doing, after a 19-year-old Sri Lankan student was charged with killing six people, including four children, in Ottawa last week.

Police have not assigned a motive or divulged the circumstances that led to the attack.

Some of those who spoke with The Canadian Press were quick to caution that based on the limited information available now, it is difficult to draw any link between the horrific case and the general experiences of international students.

Rodrigo says he regularly hears from Sri Lankan students who are looking for help finding a job, and reeling from the shock of how much it costs to buy groceries and pay rent in Canada. That's why he decided to put out the warning, he said.

He added that given Sri Lanka's economic situation, there is "a very big demand" for people to emigrate, and families will mortgage their homes or borrow money to send their children to what they hope is a land of better opportunities.

The problem, he said, is the image painted by educational consultants hired to recruit and match students for schools in Canada.

He said the students don't know how difficult it is to find a job and that if they find one, they will have to work late into the night — working as Uber drivers, for example — and wake up early for class after a 16-hour day.

"They are under severe pressure."

Sri Lankan students ask for help looking for work, he said.

Sarom Rho from the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change said the root cause of the problem is that international students are not afforded the same rights and protections as permanent residents.

For example, international students cannot get public health care in most provinces.

"What this does is add an incredible amount of pressure and stress and sense of exclusion," Rho said.

Students are also under immense strain to find work after graduation as they strive for permanent residency.

Narinder Singh said he's noticed a disturbing trend: his Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C., has sent the bodies of 30 students back to India since 2021, and cremated around 15 others.

Some died by suicide and accidents, he said, but the majority died from drug overdoses as a toxic drug crisis ravages the province.

Singh, president of the Gurdwara Dukh Nivaran, said he believes one of the reasons students start using drugs is to deal with the mental distress of living in a place where they cannot afford housing or food, and to cope with loneliness.

"They had a different picture in their mind," he said.

"When they came here, the situation is totally, totally different."

Singh said he would not recommend that parents in India send their aspiring students to Canada.

His temple offers welcome packages for new students that include a mattress and other necessities. He said many families don't send enough money for them to survive.

Jatinder Singh, the national director of Khalsa Aid Canada, said the need has been growing steadily over the past four years.

In Ottawa alone, the organization has some 920 students registered from 51 different countries.

A new phenomenon, he said, is hearing from parents who are searching for a missing child. He estimated at least one case comes across his desk a week.

"Invariably, what we find is that student has become unhoused or has become drug addicted, and is basically living on the streets or, you know, living in malls for as long as they can during the day and they're not studying anymore."

Singh blamed that on a lack of wraparound services for students.

"When they are having issues, there's really no one to turn to."

With files from Nojoud Al Mallees.



Lyft and Uber say they will leave Minneapolis after city council forces them to pay drivers more

Lyft, Uber threaten to leave

Lyft and Uber said they will cease operations in Minneapolis after the city's council voted Thursday to override a mayoral veto and require that ride-hailing services increase driver wages to the equivalent of the local minimum wage of $15.57 an hour.

Lyft called the ordinance “deeply flawed,” saying in a statement that it supports a minimum earning standard for drivers but not the one passed by the council.

“It should be done in an honest way that keeps the service affordable for riders,” Lyft said. “This ordinance makes our operations unsustainable, and as a result, we are shutting down operations in Minneapolis when the law takes effect on May 1.”

Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but news outlets reported that it issued a similar statement saying it would also stop service that day.

Both companies promised to push for statewide legislation that would counter the Minneapolis ordinance, and state House Republicans proposed a bill Thursday that would preempt local regulations of ride-hailing services.

The City Council first passed the measure last week in a 9-4 vote despite Mayor Jacob Frey’s promise to veto it. The measure requires ride-hailing companies to pay drivers at least $1.40 per mile and $0.51 per minute for the time spent transporting a rider — or $5 per ride, whichever is greater — excluding tips. In the event of a multi-city trip, that only applies to the portion that takes place within Minneapolis.

Critics of the bill say costs will likely spike for everyone, including people with low incomes and people with disabilities who rely on ride-hailing services. Supporters say the services have relied on drivers who are often people of color and immigrants for cheap labor.

“Drivers are human beings with families, and they deserve dignified minimum wages like all other workers,” Jamal Osman, a council member who co-authored the policy, said in a statement.

“Today’s vote showed Uber, Lyft, and the Mayor that the Minneapolis City Council will not allow the East African community, or any community, to be exploited for cheap labor,” Osman added. “The Council chooses workers over corporate greed.”

Democratic Gov Tim Walz, who vetoed a bill last year that would have boosted pay for Uber and Lyft drivers, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he was concerned because so many depend on those services, including disabled people.

He said he believed the companies would pull the plug, “and there’s nothing to fill that gap.”

Walz added that he hopes the Legislature will seek a compromise that both includes fair pay for drivers and dissuades the companies from leaving.

Seattle and New York City have passed similar policies in recent years that increase wages for ride-hailing drivers, and Uber and Lyft still operate in those cities.



SpaceX comes close to completing test flight of mega rocket but loses spacecraft near end

SpaceX rocket comes close

UPDATE 1:15 p.m.

SpaceX came close to completing an hourlong test flight of its mega rocket on its third try Thursday, but the spacecraft was lost as it descended back to Earth.

The company said it lost contact with Starship as it neared its goal, a splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The first-stage booster also ended up in pieces, breaking apart much earlier in the flight over the Gulf of Mexico after launching from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border.

“The ship has been lost. So no splashdown today,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot. “But again, it’s incredible to see how much further we got this time around.”

Two test flights last year both ended in explosions minutes after liftoff. By surviving for close to 50 minutes this time, Thursday's effort was considered a win by not only SpaceX's Elon Musk, but NASA as well as Starship soared higher and farther than ever before. The space agency is counting on Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in another few years.

The nearly 400-foot (121-meter) Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, headed out over the Gulf of Mexico after liftoff Thursday morning, flying east. Spectators crowded the nearby beaches in South Padre Island and Mexico.

A few minutes later, the booster separated seamlessly from the spaceship, but broke apart 1,500 feet (462 meters) above the gulf, instead of plummeting into the water intact. By then, the spacecraft was well to the east and continuing upward, with no people or satellites on board.

Starship reached an altitude of about 145 miles (233 kilometers) as it coasted across the Atlantic and South Africa, before approaching the Indian Ocean. But 49 minutes into the flight — with just 15 minutes remaining — all contact was lost and the spacecraft presumably broke apart.

At that point, it was 40 miles (65 kilometers) high and traveling around 16,000 mph (25,700 kph).

SpaceX's Elon Musk had just congratulated his team a little earlier. “SpaceX has come a long way,” he said via X, formerly called Twitter. The rocket company was founded exactly 22 years ago Thursday.

NASA watched with keen interest: The space agency needs Starship to succeed in order to land astronauts on the moon in the next two or so years. This new crop of moonwalkers — the first since last century’s Apollo program — will descend to the lunar surface in a Starship after transferring from NASA's Orion capsule in lunar orbit.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson quickly congratulated SpaceX on what he called a successful test flight as part of the space agency's Artemis moon-landing program.

The stainless steel, bullet-shaped spacecraft launched atop a first-stage booster known as the Super Heavy. Both the booster and the spacecraft are designed to be reusable, although they were never meant to be salvaged Thursday.

On Starship’s inaugural launch last April, several of the booster’s 33 methane-fueled engines failed and the booster did not separate from the spacecraft, causing the entire vehicle to explode and crash into the gulf four minutes after liftoff.

SpaceX managed to double the length of the flight during November’s trial run. While all 33 engines fired and the booster peeled away as planned, the flight ended in a pair of explosions, first the booster and then the spacecraft.

The Federal Aviation Administration reviewed all the corrections made to Starship, before signing off on Thursday’s launch. The FAA said after the flight that it would again investigate what happened. As during the second flight, all 33 booster engines performed well during ascent, according to SpaceX.

Initially, SpaceX plans to use the mammoth rockets to launch the company’s Starlink internet satellites, as well as other spacecraft. Test pilots would follow to orbit, before the company flies wealthy clients around the moon and back. Musk considers the moon a stepping stone to Mars, his ultimate quest.

NASA is insisting that an empty Starship land successfully on the moon, before future moonwalkers climb aboard. The space agency is targeting the end of 2026 for the first moon landing crew under the Artemis program, named after the mythological twin sister of Apollo.


UPDATE 8:10 a.m.

SpaceX’s mega rocket blasted off on another test flight Thursday and made it farther than two previous attempts, but the spacecraft was lost as it descended back to Earth.

The company said it lost contact with the spacecraft as it neared its goal, a splashdown in the Indian Ocean, about an hour after liftoff from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border.

T wo test flights last year both ended in explosions minutes after liftoff.

Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, headed out over the Gulf of Mexico after launch Thursday. Minutes later, the booster separated seamlessly from the spaceship and splashed down into the gulf and the spacecraft continued eastward. No people or satellites were on board.

An hour later, SpaceX commentators said contact had been lost with the spacecraft.

“The ship has been lost. So no splashdown today,” said SpaceX's Dan Huot. "But again, it’s incredible to see how much further we got this time around.”

Earlier during the flight, SpaceX's Elon Musk had congratulated his team.“SpaceX has come a long way,” Musk said via X, former Twitter. The rocket company was founded exactly 22 years ago Thursday.


ORIGINAL 7:05 a.m.

SpaceX’s mega rocket blasted off on another test flight Thursday, aiming to make it halfway around the world this time.

Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, soared from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border and headed out over the Gulf of Mexico. No people or satellites were on board.

Minutes later, the booster separated seamlessly from the spaceship and splashed down into the gulf. The spacecraft continued on its flight eastward, reaching an altitude of 100 miles (160 kilometers) and approaching orbital speed — outperforming the previous attempts.

The first two flights last year lasted mere minutes before blowing up over the Gulf of Mexico.

The rocket and futuristic-looking spacecraft towers 397 feet (121 meters), easily exceeding NASA’s past and present moon rockets.

SpaceX's Elon Musk was shooting for a shorter, hourlong flight on the latest demo, with the Indian Ocean as the spacecraft’s finish line. He noted that the company made thousands of upgrades and fixes to improve the odds.

NASA watched with keen interest: The space agency needs Starship to succeed in order to land astronauts on the moon in the next two or so years. This new crop of moonwalkers — the first since last century’s Apollo program — will descend to the lunar surface in a Starship, at least the first couple times.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.



Sobeys parent sees earnings rise 8.5 per cent as shoppers continue seeking deals

Grocery chain earnings rise

The parent company of the Sobeys, Safeway and FreshCo grocery chains saw net earnings in its latest quarter rise 8.5 per cent to $134.2 million.

That compares with net earnings of $125.7 million a year earlier, said Empire Co. Ltd.

"Our team delivered solid results, in line with our expectations, given a cautious consumer navigating the impacts of higher interest rates," said president and CEO Michael Medline in the release.

The Stellarton, N.S.-based grocer said third-quarter earnings amounted to 54 cents per diluted share compared with 49 cents per diluted share a year prior. Adjusted net earnings for the period ended Feb. 3 totalled $153.1 million compared with $164.8 million a year before.

Sales reached about $7.49 billion compared with roughly $7.48 billion a year ago. They were driven by growth in both its discount and full-service businesses, but offset by lower fuel sales, largely because of the sale of all of its retail fuel sites in Western Canada in the first quarter of its fiscal 2024.

The grocer's results were on the softer side relative to expectations, said RBC Dominion Securities Inc. analyst Irene Nattel in a note, "as consumer value-seeking behaviour continues to be a headwind relative to its largely full-service network."

Empire continues to try and maximize revenues in its full-service stores, which are losing traffic to discount banners -- but it's also growing its discount presence, said Nattel.

As of March 13, there are 47 FreshCo stores in Western Canada, Empire said in its release. It's been expanding the discount banner since announcing in fiscal 2018 that it planned to convert up to a quarter of its Safeway and Sobeys stores in Western Canada to discount.

The major grocers in Canada have been under pressure from the government to stabilize food prices in their stores. Empire said that during the quarter, it "continued to comply with the federal government's request to identify ways to help further stabilize prices for consumers."

As shoppers are more sensitive to prices, Empire said it's focusing on negotiations with its suppliers to ensure competitive pricing.

It also said it recently launched an 11-week program that lowered or locked prices on around 1,000 items across many of its banners.

Empire's two transformation strategies, Project Sunrise and Project Horizon, were successfully completed over the past six years, the company said. Now, the company said it aims to grow its earnings over the long-term through net earnings growth and share repurchases.

The grocer plans to invest in its store network, renovating between 20 and 25 per cent of its stores over the next three years. These renovations will include upgrades to improve sustainability.

Empire also said it's focusing on digital and data initiatives, through continued expansion of e-commerce, its loyalty program, personalization, promotional optimization and improving the productivity of its stores by changing layouts and tailoring product assortments.

Labour expenses, driven by wage rate increases, increased in the third quarter, Empire said. However, after ratifying new agreements with the United Food and Commercial Workers, the company offered voluntary buyouts to senior employees at B.C. Safeway locations, which it said will help better manage labour and operational costs.



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