Last night, Hollywood celebrated the 74th annual Golden Globe Awards. The evening was filled with inspiring speeches, beautiful gowns, and of course, a few Trump jokes. In case you missed the big event, here are some of the biggest moments of the night that you need to know about.
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Waterloo researcher uses microbes to eat methane
The University of Waterloo team is testing microbes to cut methane from aging landfills.
Imagine tiny organisms that eat our pollution and help reduce emissions. This might sound like something straight out of science fiction, but university researchers are making it a reality.Laura Hug, a researcher at the University of Waterloo, is turning to an unexpected ally buried deep within waste: microbes. These tiny organisms are proving powerful tools in helping in the fight against methane emissions from landfills, which account for roughly 17 per cent of national methane emissions.
In any given landfill, a microscopic war is underway. Some microbes generate methane, while others consume it. Hugs’ research explores ways to use methane-eating microbes to reduce “legacy” methane, the ongoing, long-term gas emissions produced by decades-old organic waste buried deep underground.
“We see organisms that are able to oxidize that methane [break down the molecule],” said Hug, adding that the microbes that produce methane and feed on it are very separate from each other.
“They never see each other. The organisms generating methane are buried in the waste”
Hug leads a research team called Mitigation of Methane Emission Hot-Spots from Municipal Landfills. Her work blends soil science and environmental microbiology to better map and understand emissions from Canada’s landfills. A core focus of the project is reducing legacy and poorly quantified methane leaks from older or active waste sites.
For more than ten years, Hug has been studying landfills across Ontario and the United States. Her lab maintains a decade-long collaboration with the Region of Waterloo’s Division of Waste to collect field samples. However, collecting data at a landfill is delicate; doing it incorrectly can accidentally release the very gas they are trying to track.
“What we do is we sample the liquid that builds up in the landfill. It’s called leachate, and it is developed by organic matter breaking down and rainwater infiltrating,” explained Hug.
Beyond methane, Hug and her team use these leachate samples to develop tools that can transform other pervasive environmental contaminants using natural microbial processes.
“There are organisms that can degrade chlorinated solvents. Things like dry cleaning fluid or degreasing fluid for planes, or [chemicals] electronics are dipped into before they’re sealed, and a lot of older landfills have legacy contamination of these solvents, and they’re toxic,” said Hug.
“They partially degrade pretty readily. But there’s only a few organisms that we’ve found that are able to degrade them to a completely non-toxic end product.”
A more precise understanding of these microbes allows Hug’s team to identify which species are most efficient at destroying methane. The goal is to use these organisms to engineer more effective landfill barriers.
“The idea would be that you would be able to mix these into cover soils and put them onto landfills as you were closing and capping them, so that you were kind of starting from a position of this is your enhanced capacity for methane oxidation at a landfill from day zero,” explained Hug.
When it comes to managing aging landfills, physical engineering options are often limited and expensive, which makes microbes all the more promising as a solution.
“They don’t have a lot of physical engineering options for reducing that methane, but that methane is going to be generated and it will work its way out of the system eventually. So, having more effective cover soils would be a really important layer for controlling methane emissions at these aging landfill [sites],” noted Hug.
Copyright 2026, Woolwich Observer. All rights reserved.
Meg Deak, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Woolwich Observer.
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Vancouver officer says Gray not lawfully entitled to repel police during fatal arrest
Gray not entitled to repel police, officer says
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
A Vancouver police officer involved in the deadly arrest of Myles Gray in 2015 says he doesn't believe Gray had any lawful right to repel officers' use of force against him.
Const. Eric Birzneck is testifying at a public hearing into Gray's death called by the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner in Vancouver.
Hearing counsel Brock Martland asked Birzneck about scenarios where a member of the public may be legally allowed to resist police use of force if the "police contact is unlawful," but Birzneck says he believed Gray was "arrestable" at the time of the encounter.
Birzneck is one of seven officers involved in the fatal altercation with Gray who are named as respondents in the public hearing, called to determine whether the officers committed misconduct under the Police Act.
He is the first to testify, telling the hearing this week that Gray displayed incredible strength and appeared "impervious to pain" as officers tried to subdue him near the boundary between Burnaby and Vancouver on Aug. 13, 2015.
No charges have been laid over Gray's death, which a 2023 coroner's inquest ruled was a homicide, a term that does not assign legal blame.
The commissioner's notice of public hearing says an earlier disciplinary process had dismissed the misconduct allegations, but the discipline authority found the process "strangely lopsided" and had to decide the case despite "discrepancies and inconsistencies in statements made by VPD members."
The inquest heard that Gray was left with injuries that included a fractured eye socket, a crushed voice box and ruptured testicles, while a paramedic told the inquest that Gray's bruising was so severe, he initially thought he was not a white man.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2026.
By Darryl Greer | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Inquest into death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet hears and sees woman's final moments
Korchinski-Paquet inquest hears 911 calls
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio
A coroner's inquest into the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet has watched and listened to some of the 29-year-old woman's final moments before she fell to her death from a 24th-floor balcony.
A compilation video that overlaid the recordings of five 911 calls and police microphones with CCTV footage from the hallway outside her home on May 27, 2020, was played for jurors as the inquest began its third day.
Both Korchinski-Paquet's mother and brother called 911 to report that a fight broke out between the siblings after Korchinski-Paquet had seizures earlier in the day.
Korchinski-Paquet called three times, sounding out of breath and saying that she had difficulty breathing after her brother and mother attacked her.
In her second call, she told the operator she has epilepsy and just had a seizure. She said she broke two bottles by throwing them at her mother and brother in the hallway, adding she couldn't control herself.
An agreed narrative read earlier this week said Korchinski-Paquet had a history of seizures from epilepsy, and often experienced confusion, aggressive behaviour and temporary amnesia in their wake.
A neurologist who examined her records after her death testified that in the years before her death, she showed symptoms in keeping with postictal delirium or postictal psychosis on several occasions. Both are mental states that can follow seizures.
Inquest counsel Roger Shallow warned jurors Thursday that the recordings would be difficult to see and hear, as he offered sympathies to Korchinski-Paquet's grieving family.
"I take no shame in sharing with you that, in compiling this and watching it once it came together, I wept, and I'll probably weep again tonight," he said.
"To the family of Regis: This video is going to depict your daughter, your sister, your auntie, your loved one in the few final moments before this tragedy occurred, both in visual and in sound. My heart bleeds at the thought of the agony viewing this might cause you."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2026.
By Paola Loriggio | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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