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Photo : ultrafx ( Shutterstock ) It’s been two years since Microsoft released their Xbox Series S, and the price has finally come down below the $300 mark for the holidays:   Microsoft has announced that their simpler, sleeker Xbox Series S model (compared to the bigger and more powerful Series X) will be $50 off for the holiday season, for a total of $250. But there’s another deal you can take advantage of for a limited time, too. What is the Xbox Series S deal? Target is offering a $50 gift card for those who buy their Xbox Series S online before Saturday, Nov. 19. There is no delivery option, though, you must pick it up in-store. That means you can get the Xbox Series S for a net spending of $200 if you plan to spend at least $50 at Target . Target also offers the “ RedCard ” credit card that you can use to save an additional 5%. And Target has pledged that if the price of the Xbox Series S drops any lower before Dec. 24, Target will refund the difference with the...

A fast-moving conveyor moves packages to delivery trucks at an Amazon fulfillment centre in Robbinsville, N.J., on Nov. 29, 2021. MIKE SEGAR/Reuters Spending on Cyber Monday, the biggest U.S. online shopping day, may hit a record $11.6 billion, according to a report, as discounts on everything from pajamas to AirPods drive shoppers to buy even under the strain of inflation. The Adobe Analytics report is predicting Cyber Monday spending of $11.2 billion to $11.6 billion, an increase of up to 8.5% from a year earlier, as inflation-weary consumers have been putting off holiday shopping for weeks in the hopes of deep post-Thanksgiving markdowns. Adobe Analytics, which measures e-commerce by analyzing transactions at websites, has access to data covering purchases at 85% of the top 100 internet retailers in the United States. Cyber Monday sales fell 1.4% last year as retailers spread out promotional deals across weeks from as early as October to better manage inventories amid widespread p...

Police officers patrol outside the Palais de Congres, during the opening of COP15 on Dec. 6, the two-week U.N. biodiversity summit in Montreal. CHRISTINNE MUSCHI/Reuters Delegates have reached the starting line for COP15 in Montreal, the 15th United Nations conference on biodiversity, where work on a new international agreement to protect nature is set to commence on Wednesday. But participants say the road ahead is already looking like a steep, uphill climb. For representatives from 196 countries who are party to the UN Convention on Biodiversity, the central purpose of the meeting is to hammer out a new framework under the convention, with agreed targets to be met by 2030. The previous framework expired in 2020 with none of its targets met. COP15 was initially intended to take place that year in China, but its completion has been delayed two years by the COVID-19 pandemic and the venue shifted to Montreal. The conference, taking place at Montreal’s Palais des congrès, is surrounded...

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announces a major scientific breakthrough in fusion research made at a lab in California, during a news conference at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 13. J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press Scientists have reached a major milestone in the pursuit of nuclear fusion, the process that powers the stars and could one day provide a globally accessible, long-term supply of carbon-free energy. U.S. government officials said the breakthrough was achieved last week at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the site of a long-running effort to achieve fusion by blasting specially designed targets with powerful laser beams. During a test on Dec. 5, the nuclear reaction triggered in a tiny target released about 50 per cent more energy than it took to trigger the reaction with a powerful blast from the laser. The result marks the first time any such experiment has achieved a net energy gain – a crit...

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, centre, announces a major scientific breakthrough in fusion research that was made at a lab in California, during a news conference at the Department of Energy in Washington on Dec. 13, 2022. J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press Scientists have reached a major milestone in the pursuit of nuclear fusion, a process that powers the stars and could one day provide a globally accessible long-term supply of carbon-free energy. U.S. government officials said the breakthrough was achieved last week at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the site of a long running effort to achieve fusion by blasting specially designed targets with powerful laser beams. During a test on Dec. 5, the nuclear reactions triggered in a tiny target released about 1.5 more energy during the experiment than it received when it was struck with a powerful blast from the laser. The result marks the first time that any such experiment has ac...

An electric vehicle charges in Ottawa, on July 13. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press One-fifth of all passenger cars, SUVs and trucks sold in Canada in 2026 will need to run on electricity under new regulations Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is proposing Wednesday. By 2030, the mandate will hit 60 per cent of all sales and by 2035, every passenger vehicle sold in Canada will need to be electric. Guilbeault’s parliamentary secretary Julie Dabrusin said during Wednesday’s announcement the new target is “about making sure that Canadians have access to the vehicles they want.” Manufacturers or importers who don’t meet the sales targets could face penalties under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act through a phased-in approach. Canada still has a long way to go before approaching the first target in 2026. In the first six months of this year, sales of fully-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles made up just 7.2 per cent of new car registrations. For all of 2021, the proporti...

A Target store in Cheektowaga, New York, was turned into an Airbnb of sorts when it played host to two dozen stranded motorists during one of the Buffalo area's worst blizzards on record, according to The Buffalo News . Facebook/Jessica Lee Frozen doors at Target in Buffalo One stranded motorist, Jessica Sypniewski, was running what she thought would be a quick errand before the storm (with her boyfriend and two children in the car) when the weather took a turn and the snow began to come down "sooner and heavier than we thought it would," she told the outlet. After running into white-out conditions, the group turned into a shopping plaza and were turned away from a grocery store, she said, before trying Target — where they were greeted with warm cocoa and blankets. "I got so emotional, I just sat down and started crying," Sypniewski told The ...

That's one way to stop a thief. One TikToker is going viral for showcasing customers leaving a Target store and struggling with the new anti-theft technology that's being used on shopping carts. Essentially, if a cart moves a certain distance away from the store, a censor activates and causes the wheels of the cart to lock, rendering it unmoveable. In a video that's been viewed over 4.6 million times, customers can be seen struggling to pull the carts with locked wheels. "You probably don't know this, because it's clearly a new thing, but Target has installed sensors on the carts, which make it so the carts can't go outside a certain parameter of Target," she says. @taylormadesince1993 #target #nostealing #targetcarts #FYP #pureentertainment #cartnarcs ♬ original sound - Taylor Ann The video shows confused shoppers unable to get to their vehicles because the sensors are going off. In one scene, one man begins to pull the cart fro...

Photo : Jonathan Weiss ( Shutterstock ) Many of us rely on customer reviews of products when we’re trying to decide what to buy or choose between similar items from different brands. Hearing from “real people” can feel much more valuable and authentic than believing whatever the professional marketing language is trying to sell you. But what if you could be the person who helps others make these decision—and score some free products for yourself in the process? Target offers two such programs in which it sends free products to participants in exchange for an honest review. Here’s a little about each one. Sampler Samplers is a product-experience platform where subscribers get to try different products from brands that have partnered up with them to send free products for an honest review. Recently, Target has partnered up with Sampler to send Target Insider Boxes to reviewers containing products based on the demographic and answers from the questionnaire that subscribers n...

Citigroup Inc C-N reported a 21 per cent fall in quarterly profit on Friday, missing forecasts, as the bank increased provisions to prepare for a worsening economy and investment banking revenue declined due to a sharp drop in deal making activity. Fears of a potential recession prompted Citi to add $640-million to its reserves in the fourth quarter, compared with a release of $1.37-billion from its reserves in 2021 when pandemic-related loan losses failed to materialize. “We continue to see the U.S. entering into a mild recession in the second part of the year,” Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser said in a call with analysts. The bank sees consumer and corporate balance sheets remaining strong, and “very sticky” core inflation. On an adjusted basis, Citi earned $1.10 per share for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, below estimates of $1.14 a share, according to Refinitiv. The U.S. Federal Reserve last year raised its interest rate by 425 basis points from the near-zero level to tame...

B.C. Environment and Climate Change Strategy Minister George Heyman speaks during an announcement at Burns Bog, in Delta, B.C., on June 29, 2020. DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press A British Columbia judge has tossed out a lawsuit that accused the B.C. government of violating its own rules to account for greenhouse gas emission targets. In dismissing the lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club of British Columbia, Justice Jasvinder Basran finds the environment and climate change minister has “reasonably complied” with the Climate Change Accountability Act. It requires the government to publish annual reports outlining progress toward emissions targets for 2025, 2040 and 2050, but the Sierra Club alleged both the 2021 report and the oil and gas sector target for 2030 didn’t include that data. Basran agrees the case represents “an appropriate legal question” because wording of the act indicates the legislature “intended for these reporting obligations to be enforceable by the courts,” but he says...

By one measure of inflation, the pace of consumer price growth is fading quickly and nearing the Bank of Canada’s 2-per-cent target. Karyne Charbonneau, the executive director of economics at CIBC Capital Markets, has tracked the short-term trend for core inflation, excluding not only energy and food costs, but also those for mortgage interest. The three-month change in this version of core prices, expressed at an annual rate, was just 2.5 per cent in December, according to Ms. Charbonneau’s estimates. It peaked at 8.6 per cent in May. When assessing inflation, central bankers and economists will often exclude food and energy costs, which are heavily influenced by international factors outside the central bank’s control. But in a recent report, Ms. Charbonneau said the Bank of Canada should also “look through” the rapid climb in mortgage interest costs “when judging the underlying inflationary trend.” There is a good argument for doing this. While the Bank of Canada is raising intere...