SuperDogs lap up the love, 50 years after being unleashed on adoring fans

VANCOUVER - Lisa Sun recalls watching the SuperDogs at the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver as many times as she could as a kid, delighting in the performers' speed, skill and comic relief.

Now it's Sun and her three pugs, Mario, Luigi and Yoshi, who are entertaining crowds at the fair, 50 years after it hosted the first SuperDogs show.

Their role? "Definitely comedy," Sun said.

"When they come out onstage, people know they're not going to be the fastest.... But you know what? They have personality, they have character."

Billboard evangelism may look outdated but group says it’s effective

Maybe you’ve seen them in Winnipeg — billboards that say things like: “Jesus is alive!” “Are you prepared to meet Jesus?” “After you die, you will meet God.” They include a phone number to call: 844-FIND-TRUTH.

There are two billboards in Winnipeg. One is on Henderson Highway in Elmwood. The other is on Balmoral Street, by Cumberland.

Have you ever wondered who is behind them, and why they do it?

You might be surprised to learn they are created and sponsored by an Amish/Mennonite organization called Christian Aid Ministries (CAM). Based in rural Ontario, the group is funded by Amish and some conservative Mennonite denominations and individuals.

Are you dyeing to try?

“I like to grow plants with purpose,” Bethany Booy said as we sat in her backyard in St. Vital on a warm day in August.

Booy is a fibre artist who gardens and forages locally grown plants for projects that she makes such as clothing items and baskets. She made a vest, for example, out of yarn she dyed using the indigo plant (Persicaria tinctoria) which she grows in her garden. She has also made her own natural dyes for yarn using onion skin, coreopsis (tick seed), and dock, a common perennial weed, as well as sumac and the bark and leaves from apple trees.

She grows a range of flowers such as Hopi Red Dye Amaranth, Rudbeckia black-eyed Susan, black hollyhock (Alcea rosea Nigra), Scabiosa Black Knight, marigolds and Cosmos sulphureus (sulphur cosmos) which she harvests and dries, and then uses for natural dyeing.

Booy also grows a dainty flower called Dyer’s chamomile. “It’s not used for making tea. It dyes a beautiful bright yellow,” she says.

For feminists, the deaths of Parton and Steinem days apart deliver a double dose of grief

One shaped and delivered the language of feminism. The other rejected the label but showed how feminism can be done: with a microphone dusted in rhinestones, and without apology.

Gloria Steinem and Dolly Parton embodied two towering versions of the same idea: that women should know themselves well enough to make their own choices about matters intimate and societal. Their deaths eight days apart sent a double dose of grief around the world and across generations as many women (and some men!) asked who would take their places at the forefront of women's rights.

Steinem, overtly political, went undercover as a Playboy bunny to deliver an exposé, founded Ms. Magazine and spent the rest of her life urging women to support each other. Parton, on the other hand, defined herself as a larger-than-life daughter of the American South who told stories with music and included everybody — but refused to play politics or call herself a feminist.

“Dolly taught us to dream big. Gloria taught us to speak up," wrote DeMond B Nason, a New York City singer. “Both reminded us that a woman could walk into a world that told her who she was supposed to be — and simply decide to become something else.”

A mistrial is declared in the murder case against Lindsay Clancy. Here’s what could happen next

The trial to decide if Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible when she strangled her three children in 2023 ended in a mistrial Friday after jurors were unable to reach a consensus after weeks of conflicting testimony about her post-pregnancy mental health and seven days of deliberations.

What happens now?

Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, remains charged with murder and will continue to be held in a psychiatric hospital until the case is resolved. Attorneys on both sides have a few options when it comes to the next steps.

A hearing later this month could determine the path forward

Bear activity shuts down popular campground in Bruce Peninsula National Park

A popular campground in Ontario's Bruce Peninsula National Park will be closed over the long weekend because of increased bear activity in the area. 

Parks Canada says Cyprus Lake Campground will be closed through Labour Day. 

It also says parking access for the Grotto, one of the top tourists attractions in the region, has been cancelled up to Saturday.

Parks Canada says it will inform the public if the closures have to be extended as it continues to monitor bear activity.

N.B. regulator to review complaints about noise and odours near potato chips factory

FREDERICTON - A group of residents who live near a potato chip factory in a New Brunswick town are moving forward with their case against the company.

The 17 residents say the Covered Bridge Potato Chips Ltd. plant brings overwhelming smells, constant noise and more traffic to their once-quiet neighbourhood.

Each resident filed a claim with provincial farming regulator alleging the plant was causing significant and ongoing disruption to their lives.

The company's lawyer, Sheila Mecking, has asked the province's Farm Practices Review Board to settle the case, arguing that the company is an agricultural operator under provincial legislation.

B.C. school districts crack down on e-scooters, e-bikes as emergency room visits rise

More British Columbia school districts are banning electric bikes and scooters from their properties ahead of the new school year, citing a spike in injuries among underage riders. 

The Langley School District said in a letter to parents this week that e-scooters and e-dirt bikes are now banned at all of its schools, while the Nanaimo-Ladysmith district said elementary students cannot arrive to school on an e-bike or scooter.

"If an e-bike or scooter does come to school we will call parents to come and pick up the e-bike or e-scooter," said Gillian Robinson, communications director with the Nanaimo-Ladysmith district.

Both school districts said an increase in injuries among children and youth riders influenced their decision to implement bans on school property. 

Ode to the remote control, that tiny box that lets you channel your desires without ever getting up

If the TV remote hadn’t been invented, channel surfers and couch potatoes would have to argue about something else. Come to think of it, those surfers and potatoes might not even exist.

Trump administration scrubs data on gender-based bullying from school civil rights survey

The Trump administration this week quietly released an update to a major survey on civil rights in schools that was scrubbed of all data related to nonbinary students or bullying based on gender identity.

The numbers come from the Education Department's Civil Rights Data Collection, a federal survey of nearly every public school in the nation. The release this week covers the 2023-2024 school year, when the survey included “nonbinary” as a gender category alongside male and female.

However, an Associated Press analysis shows that in every column for information related to gender identity, the numbers were replaced with a code indicating “Suppressed in Compliance with Executive Order.” That refers to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed on his inauguration day calling for the federal government to define sex as only male or female.

The government also suppressed the number of allegations of harassment or bullying on the basis of gender identity in schools, information about whether the districts had written policies prohibiting such harassment, and any links to those policies.

The presence of influencers and tennis etiquette become hot topics at the US Open

NEW YORK (AP) — Naomi Osaka usually does not have a problem focusing on playing tennis and blocking out the crowd when she's on the court. Her first-round match at the U.S. Open became a notable exception.

“There was a moment where there was people shouting and stuff," Osaka said. “You could hear it quite clearly.”

The source of the disruption: a group of influencers and content creators who have been afforded widespread access at this U.S. Open. The number of content creators who were credentialed to cover the tournament has doubled from last year, and the interruptions have made the influencers and tennis etiquette a hot topic at Flushing Meadows.

Chair umpire Kader Nouni admonished a group of influencers in a suite for recording a video in the middle of a point, and another incident Monday night involved the use of a bright ring light to take photos. In Osaka's second match, chair umpire Marijana Veljovic asked fans several times to be quiet, an effort the players appreciated.

Montreal fire department saw more outdoor fires, climate-related emergencies in 2025

MONTREAL - The Montreal Fire Department says it responded to more outdoor fires in 2025 than in the year before, largely because there are more homeless encampments in the city.

Department Director Richard Liebmann presented the department's 2025 activity report in a public assembly on Thursday evening.

He said encampment fires are often minor and that the department, in partnership with the municipal government and police force, are working within the encampments to curb them.

He also said fire fighters are regularly responding to climate-related emergencies.

Changes to Canada’s climate now ‘irreversible,’ federal report says

OTTAWA - The impacts of climate change in Canada are now largely irreversible and average temperatures are expected to rise by at least 3.5 C by the end of the century, a new government report warns.

The report, published Thursday, is the second released by Environment and Climate Change Canada examining changes to Canada's climate. It was authored by nearly two dozen government and climate science experts.

It says that even if the world reaches net-zero emissions by 2075 — which would mean any greenhouse gases would be captured by nature or technology — the effects in Canada will be stark.

The report says those effects include a nearly 50 per cent increase in the area burned by wildfires and glaciers in Western Canada losing more than 75 per cent of their mass.

Prehistoric Yukon ‘cheetahs’ were fish eaters, not really cheetahs at all: study

Slender, agile cheetahs that roamed the Yukon 30,000 years ago were not technically cheetahs at all, but relatives of the puma that adapted to mostly eat fish instead of antelopes in a harsh northern climate, new research shows. 

A study published in the journal Current Biology analyzed fossils found in the Yukon and Wyoming in the United States belonging to Miracinonyx trumani, also known as the "American cheetah."

With their gracefully slim bodies and long legs, the now-extinct cats appeared to resemble African cheetahs. 

But the researchers found the cats were actually closer relatives of the puma, having diverged from the puma lineage around 2.6 million years ago as growing grasslands and cooling temperatures drove diversification in many North American mammals. 

Rescue satellite gets close to NASA’s doomed telescope, even if it can’t save it

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private spacecraft that was supposed to provide a lifeline to NASA’s Swift Observatory managed to get close to the sinking telescope and even snap photos two weeks after the rescue was abandoned.

But the three-armed robotic salvager had to turn away because it was low on fuel, according to Katalyst Space Technologies, which attempted the daring operation.

“We got so close, but so far,” Katalyst CEO Ghonhee Lee told The Associated Press this week.

Katalyst’s Link spacecraft got within 15 kilometers (9 miles) of Swift on Tuesday, using its sensors to gather data on the doomed telescope for NASA. The rescue effort had already been called off in August because of Link’s own troubles in orbit, but the company wanted the practice for future satellite-servicing missions.