Marcia Dunn

4 days ago | castanet.net | Danica Coto |Mehmet Guzel |Marcia Dunn |Abby Sewell

Representatives of Russia and Ukraine met Monday for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, but aside from agreeing to swap thousands of their dead and seriously wounded troops, they made no progress toward ending the 3-year-old war, officials said.

4 days ago | castanet.net | Danica Coto |Marcia Dunn |Mehmet Guzel |Abby Sewell

A massive cloud of dust from the Sahara Desert blanketed most of the Caribbean on Monday in the biggest event of its kind this year as it heads toward the United States. The cloud extended some 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Jamaica to well past Barbados in the eastern Caribbean, and some 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) from the Turks and Caicos Islands in the northern Caribbean down south to Trinidad and Tobago. “It’s very impressive,” said Alex DaSilva, lead hurricane expert with AccuWeather.

4 days ago | castanet.net | Marcia Dunn |Mehmet Guzel |Abby Sewell |Amanda Seitz

It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers reported Monday that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That’s essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time.

1 week ago | castanet.net | Ritika Dubey |Elaine Kurtenbach |Marcia Dunn |Lauren Krugel

National Bank of Canada reported a second-quarter profit of $896 million, down slightly from $906 million a year earlier. The Montreal-based bank says the profit amounted to $2.17 per diluted share for the quarter ended April 30, compared with $2.54 per diluted share a year ago. The bank says its adjusted profit, which excludes items related to its recent acquisition of Canadian Western Bank, amounted to $2.85 per diluted share, up from an adjusted profit of $2.54 per diluted share a year ago.

1 month ago | castanet.net | Aamer Madhani |Marcia Dunn |Lolita Baldor |Molly Quell

Fresh from space, NASA’s oldest full-time astronaut said Monday that weightlessness made him feel decades younger, with everyday aches and pains vanishing. Don Pettit marked his 70th birthday on April 20 by plunging through the atmosphere in a Russian Soyuz capsule to wrap up a seven-month mission at the International Space Station.