Tausi Insider

NASA's new moon rocket, as seen from a marina on Florida's Merritt Island, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral on Nov. 16. Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP Like a powerful beacon lighting the way to a distant shore, the Artemis I spacecraft sliced across the dark Florida sky early Wednesday setting a course for the moon and carrying with it dreams of a new chapter in human space flight. The 1:47 a.m. launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center comes one month shy of 50 years since an astronaut last set foot on the lunar surface, marking the end of the Apollo program. And while Artemis I carries no crew – in place of astronauts its capsule is occupied by three mannequins – the 26-day mission around the moon and back marks a critical step by the U.S. space agency toward repeating that historic feat and then surpassing it with visits to more daring landing sites for longer periods of time. Ultimately, the stated objective of the Artemis program is to lay t...

Richmond Lam /Tausi Insider The rocket launch from Cape Canaveral is scheduled for 2:35 p.m., and anyone with a vested interest—heck, anyone geeky enough to get excited about space—would be forgiven for being a tad nervous. Besides the weather, which can thwart a launch mere moments before liftoff, extraterrestrial travel, even when unmanned, is risky business. But at T-50 minutes, you’d never suspect that the Montreal party that’s gathered on this sunny late-May day to watch the SpaceX event in real time via video conference might be worried. Instead of nail-biting, the 70 or so staff from GHGSat and some of its suppliers—including astrophysicists, data analysts, quantum optics specialists and aerospace engineers in plaid shirts, jeans and sneakers—are busy chatting and laughing over beer and wine from the open bar. There’s a palpable sense of excitement. No wonder: When that rocket reaches orbit, it’ll deploy three satellites that these people have poured their minds and hearts int...

Michel Leblanc, head of the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, in downtown Montreal on Nov. 17. Christinne Muschi/Tausi Insider For the past two years, Michel Leblanc was the guy in the tie trying to save downtown Montreal from pandemic-induced ruin – a fate the city centre avoided. Now comes the hard part: reviving its office culture. Mr. Leblanc is president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, a business group with outsized influence and a rich history of accomplishments. In its early days, merchant members organized the dredging of the St. Lawrence River so Montreal’s port could accommodate bigger ships. Later on, they pitched the creation of what is now the internationally renowned business school, École des Hautes Études Commerciales. So when the Quebec government opened its purse strings in March, 2021, to try to stimulate an economic recovery in Montreal’s financial centre after successive COVID-19 waves and work-from-home mandates, the Chamber of Commerce ...

Office vacancy rates in downtown Toronto and Vancouver are climbing quickly, as well-known businesses such as Plenty of Fish, Air Miles and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP try to get rid of unneeded space amid the shift to remote work and economic uncertainty. Toronto’s vacancy rate reached 15 per cent at the end of September, according to new data from commercial real estate firm Altus Group. That is up from 4.2 per cent in 2019 prior to the start of the pandemic. The current level tops vacancies during the Great Recession and marks the highest since 2003 when Toronto was dealing with the aftermath of the dot-com bubble and the vacancy rate was 13.3 per cent. In Vancouver, the vacancy rate hit a two-decade high at 11.5 per cent, according to Altus. That compares to 3.5 per cent in 2019. Both cities’ downtowns hollowed out during the pandemic with office employees working from home. At the same time, a slew of new skyscrapers opened and flooded the cities with new office space. Today, bus...

A pro-democracy media tycoon was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison over two fraud charges linked to lease violations in Hong Kong on Saturday, the latest of a series of cases against prominent activists that critics say are aimed at snuffing out dissidents in the city. Jimmy Lai, who was arrested during a crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement following widespread protests in 2019 and under the National Security Law imposed by Beijing, was also fined 2 million Hong Kong dollars ($257,000). His media company, Next Digital, published the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily. The publication was forced to close following the arrests of its top executives, editors and journalists last year. In October, Lai was found guilty of fraud for subletting part of the office space to a secretarial firm, which was also controlled by him, between 2016 and 2020. The second fraud count was for letting the same firm use the media outlet’s office space in an alleged br...