In the global race to find a COVID-19 vaccine, the federal government announced Monday it is pumping $23 million into an academic research lab in Saskatchewan.  The Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization – International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac) at the University of Saskatchewan started as a modest veterinary lab in 1975. But it has evolved into a…

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hasn’t ruled out using smartphone data to track whether people are complying with public health officials’ pleas for them to stay inside to curb the COVID-19 pandemic — a notion that raises some thorny ethical dilemmas regarding public health and privacy rights. Tracking where the coronavirus will strike next, and convincing people to self-isolate…

A worm-like creature smaller than a grain of rice that burrowed on the seafloor in search of meals like dead organic matter about 555 million years ago may be the evolutionary forerunner of most animals living today — including people. Scientists on Monday announced the discovery in the Australian outback of fossils of this creature, named…

A joint Canadian-U.S. science mission to monitor ocean climate on the east coast this spring has been scrubbed because of the coronavirus outbreak. Scientists from both countries were scheduled to leave Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts last Thursday for a three-week cruise before the trip was cancelled. The mission would have measured a wide…

Canadian scientists have delivered a calamitous fish stock assessment in the southern Gulf of St Lawrence, predicting the spring spawning herring population is on a trajectory toward extinction in 10 years. The grim projection was shared earlier this month by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, just days before the spring herring fishery is set to…

Pacific Gas & Electric has agreed to plead guilty to 84 involuntary manslaughter counts in connection with the 2018 Camp Fire, the most destructive wildfire in California’s history. The plea by California’s largest utility was announced on Monday by its parent PG&E Corp, three days after the utility accepted tighter oversight and pledged billions of…