‘Extraordinary’: Back on Earth, Jeremy Hansen describes his long journey in space

HOUSTON - When Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen first floated to the window after the Orion capsule's bone-rattling launch into space early this month, what he saw and felt left him grasping for words.

He saw the sweep of the ocean first, and then, drifting into view, the rich, dusty red of Australia. And behind it all was the vastness of space, with the edge of Earth's atmosphere shining like a bubble of blue glass in the black.

"It was pretty extraordinary," Hansen told The Canadian Press at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston Thursday.

The enormity of what Hansen and his Artemis II crewmates experienced is still settling in a week after they returned to Earth, splashing into the Pacific Ocean following a 10-day lunar fly-around.

Airline adding bunk beds for economy travelers but bans snacks, smells and cuddling

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Sleep on a long-haul flight in economy class has always been a fantasy for many travelers. Air New Zealand will soon offer a solution that involves climbing into a triple-tier bunk bed wearing special socks.

The airline will soon open bookings for four-hour stints in the Skynest sleep pods and says they will be the first lie-flat beds for budget air travelers. Fliers will get cozy with their fellow passengers, however, so crumbs, strong perfumes and bedsharing are forbidden.

The curtained berths will be available to economy and premium economy fliers on the airline’s new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft from November. The planes will service the Auckland to New York route, which is one of the world’s longest commercial flights and leaves economy passengers sitting upright for a marathon 16 to 18 hours.

Instead, travelers will have the option of a pre-booked four-hour spot in a curtained pod, with costs starting from 495 New Zealand dollars ($291) on top of the price of their economy tickets. But use of the six pods, arranged in a triple-bunk style layout between cabins, will put fliers in close proximity to others, prompting the airline to publish etiquette notes.

Kelowna, B.C., allowed to opt out of short-term rental rules this summer

The business community is applauding British Columbia's decision to allow the Okanagan city of Kelowna to opt out of rules limiting short-term rentals in time for this summer's tourism season, though some say the move is overdue.

The B.C. government announced Friday it was making a one-time allowance for Kelowna, with a statement from the Housing Ministry saying the exception recognizes major events planned for the community this summer.

The province is also speeding up the opt-out process for other municipalities with rental vacancy rates of at least 3 per cent for two consecutive years.

Those changes take effect in 2027, with eligible communities required to submit opt-out requests by Feb. 28 for a June 1 start date.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA crewmates reflect on historic lunar mission

HOUSTON - Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen reflected on his historic Artemis II lunar mission on Thursday, saying it left him with a powerful sense of his connection to all of humanity.

"Small and powerless, yet powerful together," Hansen said at a news conference for the Artemis ll crew at the Houston space centre — the first since the astronauts returned to Earth.

The four-person crew — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Hansen — splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, Calif., on April 10.

The 10-day flight saw astronauts travel to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, setting a record for the greatest distance travelled by humans away from Earth.

In the news today: Liberal policy convention, MP crosses the floor, High travel costs

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed...

Liberal huddle for 1st big policy convention without Trudeau

Liberal party members are gathering in Montreal and, for the first time in more than a decade, Justin Trudeau and his personal brand of politics won't tower over the party's proceedings.

Party faithful will gather as Mark Carney's ever-expanding big tent of MPs stands on the cusp of achieving a majority government following a series of floor-crossings in Parliament.

Booking earlier, wait-and-see mode: Travellers trying to get ahead of high costs

Aidan D'Souza usually starts planning international trips at least six months ahead of time. But now, he says that's not early enough to lock in lower prices.

For his upcoming trip in January, D'Souza started monitoring flight prices to Japan last month. 

"We started this a bit earlier because we're not too sure what could happen later on with ticket prices," he said. 

"They could go higher, things could change," he said. "That's why we started a bit earlier than six months, just to give us more time to plan for that."

Toronto teases with world’s second-biggest subterranean shopping complex

Manitoba boasts the world’s biggest snow maze. Ontario boasts one of the world’s biggest sub-snow mazes.

In a city known for structures that reach up and not down, Toronto’s “PATH” was until recently the world’s largest pedestrian subway network/underground shopping complex. Emphasis on “complex.” (PATH was surpassed for the Guinness World Record in 2023 by none other than Montreal’s RÉSO network, with over 32 kilometres of tunnels.)

The PATH links more than 75 downtown buildings and 1,200 businesses. About 200,000 people navigate it each weekday; on weekends, maybe 20.

Margie and I once tried to explore this improbable 30-km-long weatherproof walkway. Off Bay Street, a PATH sign pointed down some stairs. Another sign then pointed toward doors. We ended up in a parkade. And just gave up.

United Airlines raises bag fees amid rising fuel costs and introduces tiered premium fares

Most travelers flying with United Airlines will pay $10 more to check their luggage beginning on Friday, as higher jet fuel costs driven by the war in the Middle East push another major U.S. carrier to increase fees.

The first piece of checked luggage will now cost customers $45 on flights within the United States, Mexico, Canada and Latin America, according to United. A second bag will cost $55.

“This is the first time in two years the airline has raised bag fees,” United said in a statement.

Speaking to investors last month, United CEO Scott Kirby said the rising costs for jet fuel since the conflict began on Feb. 28 had already added roughly $400 million to operating costs. The CEOs for Delta Air Lines and American Airlines reported similar figures.

BC Ferries head says service remains reliable despite vessel disruptions

The president of BC Ferries is defending service levels after disruptions this week caused by two major vessels being taken out of service, but adds he plans to revisit a rejected request for a fifth new vessel to address capacity issues.

Nicolas Jimenez made the comments Thursday after the Spirit of Vancouver Island on the Tsawwassen—Swartz Bay route was knocked out of service on Tuesday with a generator problem that was supposed to have been fixed when it returned to service days before. 

The outage coincided with the Queen of Surrey on the Tsawwassen—Duke Point run also being taken out of service this week when refit work found additional problems that prevented its scheduled return, leading to cancellations and delays on both routes.

"While it may not feel like it, these kinds of significant impacts are rare," Jimenez said. "We operate our vessels at over-99-per-cent reliability, but we also know that on days like this, that's not what it feels like."

Family fighting to bring B.C. senior home after she fell into a coma in China

It was supposed to be a joyful family reunion, but instead a British Columbia grandmother is stranded in China in a coma, her family unable to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring her home via air ambulance.

Her family says Lilia Avoutova, 78, who is of mixed Chinese and Ukrainian heritage, arrived in Kunming on March 4.

But she and her 79-year-old husband, Savout, both from Burnaby, B.C., never made it to Avoutova's birthplace of Xinjiang, an autonomous territory in northwest China, after she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and stroke two days later.

Daughter Elena Lanteigne said her mother has been in an induced coma in a Kunming hospital since March 8. 

Bills to pay FAA and TSA workers during shutdowns get introduced but keep stalling in Congress

The Aviation Funding Solvency Act. The Keep America Flying Act. The Keep Air Travel Safe Act. The Aviation Funding Stability Act.

Again and again, members of Congress have dusted off the same idea: ensuring the federal employees who control air traffic and screen passengers and bags at U.S. airports get paid during government shutdowns.

Bills to make it happen keep getting introduced in one form or another, sometimes with Democrats and Republicans as co-sponsors. Yet session after session, the result has been the same — agencies receive their annual appropriations, public outrage over long security lines and flight delays fades, legislation languishes and workers have no guarantees their paychecks won't stop coming again.

“Once the crisis is over, people assume that the good times are back,” said Eric Chaffee, a Case Western Reserve law professor whose research includes risk management in the aviation industry. “It’s easy to pass the next big bill when you’re still in the throes of the financial crisis, but once the shutdown is done, people have a relatively short memory of the problems that it created.”

Frustrated travelers hear a new message from airports: Don’t get here so early

Maybe Dad was right about getting to the airport early. But it turns out there's still such a thing as TOO early.

Travelers panicked by scenes of never-ending lines at U.S. airport security checkpoints and frustrating tales of missed flights over the past few weeks are now showing up way before their departures. Some airports where the wait times have been manageable say those early birds are only adding to the misery — and in some cases causing other passengers to get to their gate too late.

In Ohio, John Glenn International Airport in Columbus is warning passengers against arriving hours in advance, even creating a chart showing when to show up: “90 minutes before departure is all you need.”

The airport says those premature arrivers — reacting to the funding standoff on Capitol Hill that’s creating crowded security checkpoints — are making things worse by creating bottlenecks during peak times.

Report finds beloved Alberta T. rex tourist draw has issues but far from extinct

A structural checkup on Tyra the Dinosaur has determined she's retaining water, has breathing issues, a fever and wrinkles — but is otherwise far from extinct.

The estimated medical bill for the 25-metre tourist attraction in Drumheller, Alta., is nothing to sneeze at: $154,000 to start with, and maintenance running in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the years to follow.

“The World’s Largest Dinosaur remains structurally sound and safe for public use,” says the analysis and financial fix-up projections from an engineering firm hired at the request of the town and its chamber of commerce amid debate over the T. rex's fate.

Tyra, though, says the firm, has some issues, particularly with her fibreglass-metal “skin.”

Saving money on vacation doesn’t have to mean sacrificing fun: Here’s how to do it

Whether jet-setting overseas or embarking on an excursion closer to home, travel experts say there are many ways to save money on a holiday, without sacrificing the fun of it all.

Trump says he’ll sign order to pay TSA agents as Senate works into the night on funding deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday he would sign an order instructing the Homeland Security secretary to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration agents, while senators worked late into the night trying to end a budget impasse that has jammed airports and left workers without paychecks.

Trump announced his decision in a social media post saying he wanted to quickly stop the “Chaos at the Airports.”

With pressure mounting, the White House and senators, who have been engaged in on-again, off-again talks to resolve the stalemate over Department of Homeland Security funding, appeared to be narrowing in on a endgame in the final hours before TSA workers miss another paycheck Friday.

Trump’s order will pay TSA agents using money from his 2025 tax bill, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly. They compared the move to actions Trump took during a past shutdown to pay troops. The rationale is that Democrats have created an emergency by declining to approve funding, the official said.