Stooping down amid rows of 20-year-old pinot noir vines, David Paterson bends a cordon into place, picturing how it might yield grapes this summer. A year ago, these plants appeared to be dead after a devastating cold snap. But he resisted the temptation to replant, and now his optimism is paying off.

“There’s a long way to go, as far as regenerating the whole vineyard and getting back to normalcy,” said Mr. Paterson, the winemaker and general manager of Tantalus Vineyards. “We’re just thankful that it’s alive and we’re not pulling every one of these out of the ground.”

A Waterloo, Ont., professor says he’s once again figured out the best time to play the online portion of the Tim Hortons Roll Up To Win game for the highest chances of prizes. But he adds the coffee shop chain’s decision to bring back the physical cups this year has made strategizing "drastically more complicated."

Roads are wet on the Avalon, Burin, and Northern Peninsulas this morning. Fog is reducing visibility on the Avalon. In central Newfoundland, roads are snow-covered. Visibility is poor from Gander to the Fogo Island Ferry Terminal. Travel is not recommended from South Brook to Springdale to Harry’s Harbour.

Across Labrador, roads are mostly bare and dry with a few icy and slushy with good visibility.

The MV Qajaq W is out of service today because no icebreaker assistance is available. All other ferries are on time.

At the Gander International Airport, Sinwing Flight 4354 is delayed. In Deer Lake, Air Canada Flight 7719 is cancelled. Flights are on time in St. John’s.

The CEO of Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services says it will be the provincial government that makes the final decision on procurement of goods and services from the United States.

In the House of Assembly earlier this month, acting Health Minister John Haggie announced that he had written the health authority to evaluate procurement contracts they have with companies in the U.S., given trade tensions with the country.

Pat Parfrey says a lot of work has been done regarding the impact of tariffs, but it wouldn’t be appropriate to discuss particular contracts that have been identified given that “directly relates to government policy.”

He says their role is to identify where they are procuring from and what their options are, but it is government that makes the final decision.

Minister of Tourism, Culture, Arts and Recreation Steve Crocker will be in Corner Brook today to make an announcement regarding the Newfoundland and Labrador Games.

The announcement will begin at 1:00 p.m. at the Corner Brook Civic Centre.

Crocker will be joined by Minister and MHA Gerry Byrne, Corner Brook Mayor Jim Parsons, and Darren Colbourne from Sport NL.

Newfoundland Power says some 7,000 customers should start receiving their March bills in the coming days.

The utility says it started getting contacted by customers last week indicating they had not yet received their bills for the previous month. Newfoundland Power says some 7,000 bills had been delivered to Canada Post on March 5, but subsequently learned that there was a delay processing the batch.

Those bills have since been released for delivery in the mail, and customers should start getting them in the next day or so. The company says it is taking steps to ensure that a similar delay doesn’t happen in future.

There is a very small chance that an asteroid capable of taking out an entire city could strike Earth in less than eight years. But even if this asteroid is hurtling our way, humanity is now able to defend itself against such a threat, experts say.

The odds that the recently discovered asteroid will hit Earth on Dec. 22, 2032, were once 3.1 per cent, NASA said on Tuesday, the highest probability for an impact by such a large space rock in modern forecasting.

But Feb. 24 calculations conclude that there is “no significant potential for this asteroid to impact our planet for the next century.”

“Don’t panic,” Richard Moissl, head of the European Space Agency’s planetary defence office, said.

However, even in the unlikely event that the probability somehow would be 100 per cent, “we are not defenceless,” Moissl emphasized.

Here are some of the ways that humanity could deflect or destroy an asteroid.

Smash a spacecraft into it

Only one planetary defence strategy has been tried out on an actual asteroid.

In 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) deliberately smashed a spacecraft into the 160-metre-wide Dimorphos asteroid, successfully altering its orbit around a larger space rock.

An advantage of this plan is that we could hit an asteroid with multiple spacecraft, observing how each one changed its trajectory, Bruce Betts, chief scientist for the nonprofit Planetary Society, said.

The asteroid discovered in December is estimated to be 40-90 metres wide — roughly half the size of Dimorphos.

“You have to take care not to overdo it,” Moissl warned.

If the spacecraft partially destroyed it, the collision could send “bits flying off” that still head towards Earth, he said.

If this kind of mishap changed the eventual impact site on Earth — for example, “from Paris to Moscow” — that would likely cause major problems back home, Betts added.

Tractor, ion beams, paint

A separate idea called a gravity tractor involves a large spacecraft flying up near the asteroid and — without touching it — using its gravitational pull to tug it away from Earth.

Another non-contact plan would put a spacecraft near the asteroid armed with thrusters that would exert a “constant stream of ions” to shove it off course, Moissl said.

Scientists have also considered spray painting one side of the asteroid white, increasing its reflectiveness so it slowly changes trajectory.

These subtler strategies would require reaching the asteroid sooner than for some more severe options.

The nuclear option

Or we could also just blow it up with a nuclear bomb.

Rather than drilling a nuclear weapon deep into an asteroid — as depicted in the 1998 sci-fi action movie “Armageddon” — this would likely involve detonating a bomb nearby.

Last year, U.S. researchers testing out this theory on a marble-sized mock asteroid in the lab found that the x-rays from a nuclear blast would vaporize its surface and send it shooting off in the opposite direction.

Even setting aside the ethical, political and legal issues of sending nukes into space, this is considered more of a last-ditch plan for kilometres-wide asteroid like the one that killed off the dinosaurs.

And again, there is a risk that a nuclear explosion could still send unpredictable chunks hurtling towards Earth.

Lasers

Along less dangerous but similar lines, another idea is to shoot laser beams from a spacecraft to vaporize the side of an asteroid, pushing it away.

Lab experiments suggest this plan is viable, but it is not one of the “top techniques” being looked at, Betts said.

If all else fails

If necessary, deflecting this asteroid is “doable, but it depends on the speed at which we move as a planet,” Moissl said.

While experts and space agencies will make their recommendations, ultimately the decision on how to tackle the asteroid will be made by world leaders.

If all else fails, we will have a good idea of the strike zone of the space rock — which is not a “planet killer” and at most could threaten a city, Moissl said.

This means that preparing for impact, potentially including evacuation if the area is populated, will be the last line of defence.

The post Do look up: How Earth can defend itself against asteroid appeared first on CANADIAN AFFAIRS.

Toronto's 2026 FIFA World Cup committee wants to spend nearly $11 million on ticket packages for the upcoming games and resell them at marked up prices, with some councillors saying the move would amount to "scalping" with taxpayers' money.

Susan Holt’s first budget as premier is leaving some groups in New Brunswick happier than others.

New Brunswick Housing Minister David Hickey says he wants to see Ottawa expand the HST exemption on new rental apartments to include the construction of new detached homes and townhouses.

Tammy Burrell got the 2025 property tax bill for her rural Salisbury home earlier this month and, as she feared, it had risen to $1,309 — 59 per cent more than she was paying three years ago.

About 700 Ukrainians fleeing war found their way to Nova Scotia’s Annapolis County. They had been given temporary housing at former CFB Cornwallis. But some are now facing a deadline to move. This story is part of a series about changing rural communities in Nova Scotia.

The operator of a luxury resort on Nova Scotia's Northumberland Shore believes the Canada-U.S. trade war and a weak Canadian dollar could provide a boost to the tourism industry this year.

Amid the patriotic fervour whipped up by tariff and annexation threats from U.S. President Donald Trump, the debate over whether Tim Hortons is Canadian is as hot as a double double.

Provincial officials and oyster industry members returned from a trip to Virginia last month with new insights on tackling the oyster parasite MSX.

The amount and duration of shore ice around Prince Edward Island has been changing in recent years, and researchers say shorter seasons are a concern because the ice provides a protective shield against winter storms and erosion.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan’s President William Lai Ching-te said that a Taiwanese semiconductor company’s massive investment in Arizona is the “best model” for the island’s effort to build computer chips supply lines that don’t rely on Chinese producers, in remarks to the state’s visiting Governor Katie Hobbs.

Taiwan’s leading chipmaker TSMC has committed $100 billion to build three chip foundries, an R&D center and two packaging facilities in Arizona, on top of a previous pledge to build $65 billion in three chip foundries in the state, one of which has begun operations.

Lai and TSMC say that the latest mega-investment stemmed from customer demand and not pressure from the administration of President Donald Trump.

Trump previously said that Taiwan had taken away the U.S. chip business and that he wanted it back.

At their Tuesday meeting, Lai said Taiwan and Arizona were working to build a “non-red” supply chain that excluded suppliers from China, which threatens military action to assert its claim over the island.

TSMC has said the development plans in the U.S. would not affect its work in Taiwan, and that the company currently has 10,000 employees researching and developing 1.0 nanometer chips. Taiwan accounts for more than 90% of advanced computer chip production.

The U.S. does not recognize Taiwan as a country, but is its strongest backer and biggest arms provider.

News about the meeting was released Wednesday by Taiwan’s official Central News Agency.

The project is expected to create 40,000 construction jobs over the next four years and tens of thousands of tech and manufacturing jobs, Hobbs’ office said in a news release sent before the meeting.

“I’m thrilled by Arizona’s emergence as America’s hub for advanced manufacturing, creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs and bringing billions of dollars of investment into our state,” Hobbs said in the release.

CNA quoted Hobbs as saying that the TSMC project would “not only contribute to the global advancement of artificial intelligence and other technologies, but also strengthen bilateral ties.”

Christopher Bodeen, The Associated Press

In February the national inflation rate increased 2.6 percent. That is up from a 1.9 percent increase back in January.

The end of the GST break contributed notable upward pressure to prices for eligible products according to Statistics Canada.

Slower price growth for gasoline prices moderated the all-items in inflation acceleration.

Prices for food purchased from restaurants declined at a slower pace year over year in February compared with January. Restaurant food prices contributed the most to the acceleration in the all-items CPI in February.

The City of St. John’s is axing its X accounts, saying the social media platform no longer reflects its core values of positivity and respect.

Council’s committee of the whole unanimously supported the move yesterday, following a growing trend, and paving the way for approval at next week’s regular public meeting.

It was part of a request by Deputy Mayor Sheilagh O’Leary for a review of all the city’s U.S. dealings, including X, the former Twitter, in light of escalating trade tensions.

Staff found that Facebook is by far the city’s most effective social media tool, while use of X continues to decline.

(File photo.)

O’Leary, who along with other councilors deactivated their X accounts long ago, says dumping it is a no-brainer, given the current discourse.

“It’s so important to get information out there but misinformation and abuse of information and harassment and these things are very problematic,” she said. “So I’m very happy to support this recommendation. I think it’s something that will help decrease some of the anxiety and misinformation that we’ve all been party to, including and especially the public.”

The city is considering the new Bluesky platform, which the province has joined while still holding about 20 accounts on X.

The city is encouraging residents to sign up for automatic email alerts and advisories regarding city issues and and events, as an alternative.

They also note the city’s What’s Happening link on Facebook continues to gain traction.

A teenager is facing several charges after a tussle with an RNC officer following an incident at a business in the west end last night.

Police rushed to the business just before 10:30 p.m. only to find the young person sprinting away from the shop.

Officers chased the teen on foot and once they caught up with him, a physical altercation ensued.

He was eventually taken into custody and charged with assault, assaulting a peace officer, resisting arrest, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, and carrying a concealed weapon.

The teen, who already had eleven outstanding warrants, was taken to the Youth Remand Centre.

It’s a conversation Juan Roberts tries to avoid, but because more than half of his seafood is shipped to the United States, it’s hard not to avoid tariff talk. Roberts spoke with CBC’s Leila Beaudoin in Boston about exploring other markets.

Newfoundland and Labrador's capital city is closing its X account — and just not because of the platform's controversial owner.

After CBC reported on crumbling infrastructure and capacity issues at the Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Centre in Whitbourne, the province's child and youth advocate has launched an investigation.