Author: News Room

As Albertans get set to head to the polls next week, one political expert is saying she sees no real threat to Canadian unity, but the results of the referendum may be challenging to interpret. “I don’t see why these are referendum questions at all,” Grace Skogstad, a professor emeritus in the department of political science at the University of Toronto told Global News.Albertans will be given 10 ballots for 10 different questions. The first nine questions are related to immigration and the Constitution.The last question asks whether or not the Government of Alberta should “commence the legal process required…

Elon Musk has handed out at least $276 million to Republican groups since July, The New York Times reports, making him both the party’s top known donor and the biggest established midterm donor. $158 million of that money — one of the largest political donations in American history — has been funneled into the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC that aims to secure and maintain a Republican Senate majority. Among others, it’s fighting to retain the party’s Senate seat in Texas, which serves as a major hub for Musk’s business empire.He’s also donated over $76 million to America…

The new models, Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, are available for Muse Code subscribers starting today. Wonder can also be accessed through the Meta Model API, Meta said.Meta says it eventually plans to power its Muse AI agent with Wonder, starting with subscribers, and will develop specialized models it “can bring to everyone using Muse.” It hasn’t shared specifics or provided a timeline for either.The company says its new models can rival leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic, including GPT-6 Astra, Claude Opus 5.5, and Claude Fable 5.1, pointing to results from internal testing on several industry benchmarks. It’s…

Microsoft is announcing its third-generation Maia in-house AI chip today, designed to be the “primary AI inference system” for Microsoft’s products and services. Maia 300 not only improves the cost and efficiency of running AI workloads in the cloud, it’s also more capable of handling the latest reasoning models and agentic tasks.Maia 300 will start being rolled out to production in 2027, and it has been designed with efficiency in mind. “We expect Maia 300 to deliver 40 percent more tokens per megawatt compared to leading GPU-based systems,” says Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s cloud group. “And in…

By Staff The Canadian Press Posted October 12, 2026 11:06 am 1 min read Descrease article font size Increase article font size One person is dead after a weekend collision between a motorcycle and an SUV in Ottawa’s east end. Ottawa police say a 21-year-old man who was riding the motorcycle died in the crash. Get daily National news Get daily Canada news delivered to your inbox so you’ll never miss the day’s top stories. Officers responded to the collision on Trim Road, south of Watters Road, around 9:30 p.m. Saturday.The female driver of the SUV sustained minor injuries and…

Multiple Ukrainian drone strikes over the last week have taken Russian data centers offline and reportedly caused online bot traffic to plummet — but in reality it’s probably not the kind of bot activity most people associate with Russia.A chart citing Cloudflare data has been circulating around social media platforms, showing a sharp decline in bot traffic following attacks on Yandex servers — a technology company often described as “Russia’s Google.” While many people are inferring that the chart refers to bot farms that push disinformation, conspiracy theories, and other harmful content across online platforms, reputed troll farm exposer antibot4navalny…

My first week with the new Android-powered laptops has been about as rocky as anyone’s, but I’ve slowly learned to like them, even if love still feels a ways off. Every moment that’s impressed me has been thanks to Android, whether I’ve been accessing a native version of a useful app or quickly checking my phone notifications from the laptop user interface.But man, sometimes it just sucks.Phone connectivity is flaky, app casting is awkward, and file-sharing seems to be flat-out broken. And that’s just the interaction between a Googlebook and a phone — I have a whole other set of…

By Staff The Associated Press Posted October 12, 2026 9:24 am 1 min read Descrease article font size Increase article font size British comedian and actor Russell Brand appeared in a London court on Monday for the start of his trial on rape and sexual assault charges. The hearing at Southwark Crown Court was adjourned until Tuesday after a morning of jury selection. The prosecution is due to open its case later in the week.Brand, who is on bail, left the court building beside the River Thames holding hands with his wife, Laura Gallacher. He had earlier arrived at court…

Today the OnePlus 16 launched in China, the company’s first flagship phone since quitting both the US and European markets this summer. As luck would have it, it also looks like the company’s best phone in some time.Like most OnePlus phones, the 16 is positioned around performance, with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset, and up to 1TB of storage and 16GB of RAM. That’s backed up by an enormous 9,000mAh silicon-carbon battery, one of the biggest seen in any Android flagship yet. 100W wired and 50W wireless charging complete the power setup.On the display front, the phone…

Pope Leo XIV is scheduled to have an operation this week to remove “a localized nodule” in his lung that was “detected at a very early stage.” It is the first medical event of his 17-month papacy. The Vatican said he will be admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Tuesday, and predicted a weeklong recovery.Here is what is known:A lung nodule is a small abnormal area measuring less than three centimeters (about 1.2 inches) across. It is sometimes detected on a CT scan performed to investigate another problem, such as trauma or a lung infection, according to the American Cancer…