Three people dead, two injured after head-on collision involving truck and bus: OPP

SpaceX pulled off the boldest test flight yet of its enormous Starship rocket on Sunday, catching the returning booster back at the launch pad with mechanical arms.

A jubilant Elon Musk called it “science fiction without the fiction part.”

Towering almost 400 feet (121 meters), the empty Starship blasted off at sunrise from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. It arced over the Gulf of Mexico like the four Starships before it that ended up being destroyed, either soon after liftoff or while ditching into the sea. The previous one in June had been the most successful until Sunday’s demo, completing its flight without exploding.

This time, Musk, SpaceX’s CEO and founder, upped the challenge for the rocket that he plans to use to send people back to the moon and on to Mars.

At the flight director’s command, the first-stage booster flew back to the launch pad where it had blasted off seven minutes earlier. The launch tower’s monstrous metal arms, dubbed chopsticks, caught the descending 232-foot (71-meter) stainless steel booster and gripped it tightly, dangling it well above the ground.

“The tower has caught the rocket!!” Musk announced via X. “Big step towards making life multiplanetary was made today.”

Company employees screamed in joy, jumping and pumping their fists into the air. NASA joined in the celebration, with Administrator Bill Nelson sending congratulations.

Continued testing of Starship will prepare the nation for landing astronauts at the moon’s south pole, Nelson noted. NASA’s new Artemis program is the follow-up to Apollo, which put 12 men on the moon more than a half-century ago.

“Folks, this is a day for the engineering history books,” SpaceX engineering manager Kate Tice said from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

“Even in this day and age, what we just saw is magic,” added company spokesman Dan Huot from near the launch and landing site. “I am shaking right now.”

It was up to the flight director to decide, in real time with a manual control, whether to attempt the landing. SpaceX said both the booster and launch tower had to be in good, stable condition. Otherwise, it was going to end up in the gulf like the previous ones. Everything was judged to be ready for the catch.

The retro-looking spacecraft launched by the booster continued around the world, soaring more than 130 miles (212 kilometers) high. An hour after liftoff, it made a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean, adding to the day’s achievement. Cameras on a nearby buoy showed flames shooting up from the water as the spacecraft impacted precisely at the targeted spot and sank, as planned.

“What a day,” Huot said. “Let’s get ready for the next one.”

The June flight came up short at the end after pieces came off. SpaceX upgraded the software and reworked the heat shield, improving the thermal tiles.

SpaceX has been recovering the first-stage boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets for nine years, after delivering satellites and crews to orbit from Florida or California. But they land on floating ocean platforms or on concrete slabs several miles from their launch pads — not on them.

Recycling Falcon boosters has sped up the launch rate and saved SpaceX millions. Musk intends to do the same for Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built with 33 methane-fuel engines on the booster alone.

Musk said the captured Starship booster looked to be in good shape, with just a little warping of some of the outer engines from all the heat and aerodynamic forces. That can be fixed easily, he noted.

NASA has ordered two Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX intends to use Starship to send people and supplies to the moon and, eventually Mars.

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The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Economists expect inflation continued its downward trend last month, giving the Bank of Canada the all-clear to continue cutting its benchmark interest rate.

“We are looking for headline inflation to cool below the bank’s two-per-cent target in September,” said BMO economist Shelly Kaushik.

Kaushik said she expects annual headline inflation cooled to 1.8 per cent, largely thanks to lower gas prices last month, but added that as pump prices rose in October, the headline number could tick higher in the following report.

The latest report on consumer price growth is set to be released Tuesday, and is the last big economic report before the Bank of Canada’s next interest rate decision on Oct. 23.

TD Bank senior economist James Orlando said he sees headline inflation slowing to 1.9 per cent in September, with core measures of inflation remaining above two per cent.

“Now that we’re back at target, it’s more like, well, how do we stick around here?” he said.

In August, inflation hit the Bank of Canada’s two-per-cent target, falling from 2.5 per cent year-over-year in July to reach its lowest level since February 2021. Lower gasoline prices underpinned the decline.

Underlying inflation pressures are continuing to slow, said Nathan Janzen, assistant chief economist at RBC, but shelter costs, especially mortgage payments, have continued to put upward pressure on the overall number.

However, that pressure is slowly easing as interest rate cuts begin working their way through the economy, he said — though the mortgage interest component of inflation will remain high for a while.

“It takes time for market rate changes to impact five-year, fixed-rate mortgage payments through renewals, and so you’ll still have further increases in mortgage costs. But they are getting smaller,” said Janzen, who also sees headline inflation hitting 1.8 per cent in September.

The Bank of Canada started hiking interest rates in March 2022 to fight inflation, hitting pause mid-2023 at five per cent before beginning cuts this past June.

It has now cut rates three times this year and is expected to continue cutting as other areas of the economy, such as the labour market, have weakened.

However, the labour market was surprisingly stronger in September, adding more than twice as many jobs as in August, while the unemployment rate ticked lower to 6.5 per cent.

Looking at the broader trend, though, the jobs market has steadily weakened, which is another reason why many economists say the Bank of Canada is all but certain to cut in both October and December.

The question is how big that cut will be.

So far, the central bank has only made cuts by a quarter of a percentage point, but recently, its U.S. counterpart kicked off its easing campaign with a more aggressive half-point reduction.

Orlando sees the Bank of Canada cutting by a quarter-point this month and in December.

“Nothing in the data right now (is) saying that you need to speed up those rate cuts,” he said.

The Bank of Canada is more focused on the labour market now than on inflation, said Orlando. But Friday’s jobs report wasn’t as weak as many feared, he said, and “echoes everything else we’ve been seeing in the economy, that a quicker pace of rate cuts isn’t necessary.”

Some think the central bank could take a more aggressive tack — Janzen sees two larger-sized cuts of half a percentage point each in October and December, even after Friday’s jobs report.

“I think there’s just growing evidence that interest rates are higher than they need to be, and potentially substantially higher than they need to be,” he said.

Kaushik said while she forecasts two smaller cuts this year, she thinks a half-percentage-point cut isn’t out of the question.

“The question of 25 versus 50 basis points (is) still very much up in the air,” she said.

Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem signaled in September that the central bank could make more sizable cuts if economic weakness persists.

“With inflation getting closer to the target, we need to increasingly guard against the risk that the economy is too weak and inflation falls too much,” he said after announcing a rate cut on Sept. 4.

Also on Friday, the Bank of Canada’s latest surveys on consumer and business outlooks found both remained subdued, with consumers less pessimistic about their finances but still reducing spending.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 13, 2024.

WEST BEND, Wis. – Mary Herrick has lived in Washington County, just outside of Milwaukee, for 50 years but during a recent lunch with a close friend there was an uncomfortable moment: Herrick said she was going to vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris and her friend said she would be voting for former president Donald Trump.

“I think my jaw probably hit the floor,” Herrick, 76, said in a recent interview from her home in West End.

The upcoming election has caused relationships to fracture as Americans deal with intensifying political polarization. The division, heightened by social media echo chambers, has spilled into friend groups and families where political ideology is pushing people apart.

“I just couldn’t say anything,” Herrick said about how the conversation with her friend ended. “I just don’t understand why people would vote for him.”

The country’s two major parties sit at virtual parity. About half of registered voters, 49 per cent, lean toward the Democratic party, while 48 per cent identify as Republicans, according to the Pew Research Center.

Political parties used to be ideologically heterogeneous, said the University of Pennsylvania’s Marc Trussler, meaning their membership included people with a range of different priorities. But over the last 12 years, party support has become more sorted by ideology or world view.

The result: elections feel much more existential, he said, and it becomes easier to fundamentally dislike the other side.

“It’s increasingly the case that, ‘People like me are in my political party and people not like me are in the other political party’,” said Trussler, director of data science for the university’s program on opinion research and election studies.

Political division is particularly stark in Wisconsin, an important battleground state that could prove crucial to deciding the November election.

A neighbour stopped by to talk to Herrick on recent warm afternoon. Pointing to the Kamala Harris sign in her yard, the neighbour laughed and said she could vote for those communists, referencing an often-used Trump attack about the vice-president. Unfazed by her neighbour’s remark, Herrick reflected on what was behind her decision in the election.

“Maybe my choice shouldn’t be made this way but … Trump as a person, I just don’t like him,” Herrick said.

Trump took Wisconsin in 2016 by less than a percentage point. President Joe Biden narrowly edged ahead in 2020, helping him take the White House.

The state has seen its political division play out in numerous ways beyond the presidential ticket. Until very recent changes, Wisconsin was considered one of the most gerrymandered states in the U.S., formerly with a “Swiss cheese” appearance to its electoral maps.

Its senators, conservative Republican Ron Johnson and liberal Democrat Tammy Baldwin, could not be further apart on nearly every core issue. It’s also where Scott Walker was the controversial Republican governor, bringing in a law that ended nearly all collective bargaining in the state until he was replaced by Democrat Tony Evers in 2019.

A large Trump flag waves in the wind outside Donna Hass’ house as the 65-year-old talked about crime and immigrants. Her county is considered one of most red in Wisconsin, and on social media she only uses Truth Social, a media platform owned by Trump.

“I have one son that doesn’t like to talk to me because he’s a lefty,” Hass said. “It’s horrible. You can’t even talk to your own kid and that’s just because of all the rhetoric.”

A recent Marquette Law School survey in Wisconsin found 46 per cent of people polled had stopped talking to someone about politics because of the presidential race.

Trump has exacerbated the division, said Allison Prasch, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The former president’s powerful use of language galvanizes his base through fear, emotional appeals, and by tapping into anger and rage, she said.

“You see individuals responding very strongly in response to Trump,” the expert on U.S. presidential rhetoric said. “Whether that is moving toward a love and affiliation for him or being motivated by a deep hatred for him.”

Race, income and the rural-urban divide are some of the most important predictors of voting behaviour. Madison and Milwaukee, and some of their surrounding suburbs, lean Democrat while the rest of the state largely leans Republican.

College education is an important voting predictor. At Marquette University during a break from class, Chase Harris said sometimes it feels like “it’s Milwaukee versus the entire state.”

Sydney Tepley said people are too focused on the personal aspects of the candidates and it means there are not enough conversations about their policies and vision for the future of America.

“The long story short: the cost of living, inflation and taxes,” she said.

Tepley and Harris, nurses who are updating their training to become anesthetists, say it feels like the most pivotal election for their futures. But they are disheartened by what has taken place during the tumultuous campaign. Both intend to vote but are begrudgingly casting their ballot.

“I think I have an idea of where I lie,” Harris said. “But I will tell you for the first time ever I don’t want to vote for either of them.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 13, 2024.

— With files from The Associated Press