Spain’s Prado Museum says copy of ‘Mona Lisa’ done in da Vinci studio

Manitoba abandoning spring, fall clock changes

Time’s up for the time change in Manitoba.

Manitobans won’t be setting their clocks back an hour in November. The province has decided to permanently stay on daylight time after surveying residents on the twice annual clock adjustment.

“We heard from Manitobans loud and clear — no more changing the clocks in Manitoba,” Premier Wab Kinew said in a news release Thursday.

Most of the 72,000 votes submitted in an online EngageMB survey — 92 per cent — said they would like to see the practice end. The survey asked if they preferred earlier sunrises in winter with standard time or the later sunsets in summer with daylight time. More than half of survey participants (58 per cent) indicated a preference to stay on permanent daylight time; 34 per cent voted to eliminate the time change but stay on standard time.

Spain’s Prado Museum says copy of ‘Mona Lisa’ done in da Vinci studio

MADRID - A "Mona Lisa" copy owned by Spain's Prado Museum was almost certainly painted by one of Leonardo da Vinci's apprentices alongside the master himself as he did the original, museum officials said Wednesday.

The stunning find of what the Prado now says is probably the earliest known copy of La Gioconda will give art lovers and experts an idea of what the Mona Lisa looked like back in the 16th century, said Gabriele Finaldi, the museum's deputy director collections.

"It is as if we were in the same studio, standing at the next easel," he told reporters.

The copy has been part of the Prado collection for years and displayed occasionally but no one paid much attention to it because around the woman in the Mona Lisa was a stark black background, not the pretty landscape seen in the original.

Near-future U.S. the setting for surreal dual-world storyline

It’s not every day you encounter a seriously intended literary novel that attempts to dramatize a mind-bending physics theory like quantum entanglement.

But then the B.C.-born-and-raised Emily St. John Mandel is not your everyday Canadian literary writer.

In her late 40s, she has lived in the U.S. for her entire writing career. She is best known for her 2014 dystopian novel Station Eleven, about a Shakespearean acting troupe navigating a pandemic-ravaged America.

Her new outing, her seventh, Exit Party, shares DNA with detective and sci-fi genres more than with conventional literary fiction.

Klein has burned bridges with PM, Gillingham says

One mayoral candidate accused another of writing a column so critical it could compromise his ability to work with the federal government.

Give-and-take relationship of Roman leaders takes centre stage in Harris’s historical fiction

British novelist Robert Harris’s latest work is a reflection on tyranny, corruption and betrayal among all-powerful political leaders.

You might be forgiven for thinking it’s a contemporary thriller — it’s actually historical fiction set in ancient Rome.

A former BBC journalist, Harris debuted as a novelist in 1992 with Fatherland, an alternative history where Nazi Germany won the Second World War.

Since then, the prolific author has become best-known for his works of historical fiction, especially his ancient Rome trilogy released from 2006-2015 and the novel Conclave, which was published in 2016 and was made into the film of the same name in 2024.