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Strong El Niño forecast raises the stakes for winter preparedness: Six maintenance tips to help protect your home now

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Intact Insurance shares practical tips to help homeowners prepare for the colder months ahead

TORONTO, Oct. 7, 2026 /CNW/ — As Canadians prepare for the colder months ahead, Intact Insurance is reminding homeowners that a little prevention can go a long way. Nearly two-thirds1 of Canada’s landmass is covered in snow for more than six months each year and winter weather patterns are becoming increasingly unpredictable, especially with a strong El Niño forecasted for the 2026-27 winter2.

“What happens thousands of kilometres away in the Pacific can have an influence on the weather we experience here in Canada,” says Jonathan Gadoury, meteorologist at Intact Insurance. “The signals we’re monitoring around El Niño suggest parts of the country could experience more frequent freeze-thaw cycles, freezing rain and ice accumulation this winter. While no seasonal forecast is exact, it’s a reminder that homeowners should prepare early rather than wait for the first major weather event.”

With changing weather conditions on the horizon, fall is a good time for homeowners to turn their attention to the things they can control and prepare their homes for the colder months ahead.

“Many of the most common winter-related issues start with small maintenance problems that go unnoticed until temperatures drop,” says Mel Wright, Vice President and Head of Intact Insurance’s Prevention program. “Taking action now, whether it’s clearing your eavestroughs, checking your roof or testing your sump pump, can help homeowners identify vulnerabilities before winter weather puts them to the test. Through KeepItIntact.ca, homeowners can access trusted advice, seasonal checklists and tools to help make it easier to prepare for the weather ahead.”

Get ahead of winter: six maintenance tips to help protect your home

Clean your eavestroughs and downspouts

Leaves and other debris can clog eavestroughs preventing water from draining properly. When temperatures fluctuate, trapped water can freeze and contribute to ice buildup and water damage.

Inspect your roof and house siding

Look for damaged, loose, or missing shingles or siding and address repairs before winter weather arrives. Even small issues can worsen when exposed to snow, ice, and strong winds.

Trim trees and remove dead branches

Heavy rain, freezing rain, snow, ice accumulation, and strong winds can cause weakened branches to fall and damage roofs, vehicles, fences, and power lines.

Seal drafts around doors and windows

Replacing worn weatherstripping and sealing gaps can prevent cold air and moisture from entering your home.

Check exterior drainage and test your sump pump

Ensure water is directed at least 2 metres away from your home’s foundation and that the drains remain clear to reduce the risk of pooling water and potential freeze-thaw damage.

Prepare your outdoor spaces

a. Detach all garden hoses and close the [indoor] shut-off valve for your outdoor faucet and drain the water from the faucet.
b. Secure outdoor objects like trash cans, patio furniture, barbecue, and inspect decks and fences.

Keep It Intact

In 2025, Intact launched a national prevention program called Keep it Intact. The program provides an array of tools, solutions, and practical advice to empower Canadians to protect their properties. With many easily implemented and proven tips, homeowners can take proactive steps to help prevent or reduce damage from extreme weather.

For more prevention tips and seasonal checklists, visit keepitintact.ca.

The Jiffy app, helping homeowners protect their homes

With 20% of Canadians6 finding it hard to secure reliable contractors as one of their top three barriers to taking additional steps to protect their home against extreme weather, access to trusted professionals emerges as a notable challenge. Jiffy helps homeowners handle seasonal maintenance and make their home more resilient to severe weather by connecting them with vetted experts for on-demand home maintenance and repair services. Jiffy currently operates in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ottawa, Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton and Montreal.

https://www.keepitintact.ca/

About Intact Financial Corporation

Intact Financial Corporation (TSX: IFC) is a global provider of property and casualty insurance founded on core values and a belief that insurance is about people, not things. Intact’s success is fueled by its 32,000 employees worldwide who embody the company’s purpose: to help people, businesses and society prosper in good times and be resilient in bad times. To achieve its ambitions, Intact seeks to ensure customers are its advocates, its people are engaged and the company is one of the most respected.

Intact is the largest provider of property and casualty insurance in Canada and has successfully exported its strengths across North America, the UK, and Europe. Its growing commercial and specialty solutions network now spans over 150 countries. With a customer-driven mindset, Intact has expanded its operations to include insurance distribution, restoration and prevention.

Intact solidifies its outperformance by leveraging its competitive advantages: global leadership in data and AI for pricing and risk selection; deep claims expertise and integrated supply chain network; and strong capital and investment management. Intact’s total annual operating Direct Premiums Written has tripled over the last decade to $25 billion.

Explore Intact’s offerings at intactfc.com. 

SOURCE Intact Financial Corporation

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Parallel Systems Closes $100M+ in New Funding to Fully Commercialize Autonomous Freight Rail System

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October 7, 2026

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New capital will accelerate production of the company’s next generation Panther rail vehicle and fuel commercial expansion including international markets

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Parallel Systems (Parallel or The Company), the world’s leading battery-electric autonomous freight rail company, has closed its Series C funding round with $100 million in new capital. New investors include AVP which led the round, Hillspire, Agility Global, and Cobalt Capital, as well as participation from existing investors including Anthos Capital, Congruent Ventures, Riot Capital, and Collaborative Fund. Founded in 2020 by Matt Soule, who spent 13 years with SpaceX, the Company has assembled a team of engineers and rail operations professionals who will drive full commercialization, expansion into international markets, and scale manufacturing of Parallel’s third-generation Panther rail vehicle.

Parallel enables railroads to handle shorter, lower-density routes competitively, allowing shippers to use rail for short-haul freight that previously required trucks. The $1 trillion market for surface freight, dominated by trucking, continues to face severe pressure from rising operational costs, tightening capacity, and strict logistics constraints. The United States’ rail network remains significantly underutilized particularly for shorter haul routes less than 500 miles representing 60% of the surface freight market. Parallel’s integrated technology taps into this existing network, providing an on-demand freight movement solution that provides shippers with the flexibility of trucking combined with the cost and environmental efficiencies of rail.

“Closing our Series C round is a major inflection point for Parallel and as well as the short-haul logistics industry, and is the strongest market signal to-date that autonomous freight rail is ready for its moment,” said Matt Soule, Founder and CEO of Parallel Systems. “With the FRA-approved pilot proving our platform in real-world corridors, this capital will directly fund the production scale-up of our Panther vehicles and accelerate our entry into international markets hungry for lower cost, more resilient supply chains,” added Mr. Soule.

Since closing its Series B round in 2025, Parallel has successfully transitioned from initial prototyping to live commercial deployment under regulatory test approval. A number of major railroads are now under contract to deploy Parallel to transport commercial freight using the Company’s fully integrated autonomous delivery system, which seamlessly pairs its advanced hardware and software ecosystem. Parallel’s Georgia pilot is actively advancing in partnership with short-line railroad operator Genesee & Wyoming (G&W), operating under Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) supervision.

“Matt and the entire Parallel team have built a proven, viable and scalable autonomous freight rail platform that has generated significant commercial interest among the major rail companies in the U.S. and globally,” said Arun Gupta, Parallel’s Executive Chairman. “We are now past the question of ‘if’ and fully onto ‘how soon,'” added Mr. Gupta.

About Parallel Systems

Founded in 2020, Parallel Systems is the world’s first autonomous battery-electric rail system. The company is a U.S. based manufacturer and transportation technology innovator whose mission is to deliver a safer, more efficient and sustainable alternative to short-haul trucking. The company provides significant benefits, including: 1) enables railroads to grow by increasing their role in shorter-route transportation; 2) makes America’s busiest roadways safer for motorists by decongesting; 3) reduces the costs of shipping; 4) creates new industry jobs; 5) reduces pollution. To-date the company has raised more than $200 million in funding.

For more information, please visit www.moveparallel.com

Media Contact
Dan Tarman Actum LLC
dtarman@actumllc.com
213-705-8454

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SOURCE Parallel Systems

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OptiSigns Expands Secure TV Dashboard Apps for Power BI, Salesforce, Tableau, Grafana, Databricks and More

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October 7, 2026

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Secure, centrally managed dashboard apps bring business data to the TVs teams already look at.

HOUSTON, Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — OptiSigns, a digital signage company powering more than 200,000 screens worldwide, today announced expanded and enhanced dashboard apps, which now work with Microsoft Power BI, Salesforce, Tableau, Grafana, Databricks and more. Businesses can now show automatically updating  live dashboards on TV screens in offices, factories and operations centers.

Companies spend more than $70 billion a year on business intelligence software, according to HG Insights, yet research from BARC and Eckerson Group found only about a quarter of employees actively use BI tools. A 2016 meta-analysis of 138 studies published in Psychological Bulletin found that monitoring progress helps people achieve their goals, with greater benefits when progress is recorded or shared publicly. Getting dashboards onto shared screens can mean relying on manual screenshots, leaving account credentials on devices or publishing sensitive reports publicly.

With OptiSigns, companies connect their dashboard accounts once, pick a dashboard and assign it to one screen or many. The apps work with cloud and self-hosted platforms, personal or company accounts, and any number of teams. In Power BI, a single report can also show each location its own figures. For example, a retailer can use screen-specific filters to display each store’s sales figures while managing one report centrally.

Dashboards rotate in playlists, run on schedules or share a split screen like any other OptiSigns content. Screens never hold the account’s password or long-lived secrets, which stay encrypted on OptiSigns’ servers.

“When the numbers are on the wall, everyone sees the same picture at the same time,” said Henry Le, chief executive officer at OptiSigns. “Companies put real money into their dashboards, and then those dashboards sit on a few laptops. We made it simple to get that information in front of the whole team.”

Dashboard apps are available today on the Pro Plus plan and higher. Plans start at $10 per screen per month. For more information, visit optisigns.com.

About OptiSigns

OptiSigns is a Houston, Texas-based digital signage company that helps more than 36,000 businesses run content across over 200,000 screens worldwide. Its catalog of 160+ apps turns any TV into a live display for menus, schedules, social feeds and dashboards. Learn more at optisigns.com.

Media Contact: General Media, media@optisigns.com

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SOURCE OptiSigns

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Architect Financial Technologies Launches Liquid Inference, a Real-Time Exchange for AI Inference

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October 7, 2026

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Liquid Inference brings exchange-style price discovery, quote routing, and pre-trade price limits to the market for AI model output.

Launch expands Architect’s AI Exchange offering to encompass inference in addition to compute forwards, swaps, options, and US futures, pending regulatory review.

CHICAGO, Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Architect Financial Technologies Inc. (“Architect” or “the Company”) today announced the launch of Architect Liquid Inference (“Liquid Inference”), a live auction platform for large language model (LLM) inference. On Liquid Inference, inference providers post competing offers to serve AI models, and every request is awarded to the lowest-priced offer that satisfies the buyer’s rules for cost, intelligence, latency, and data handling.

Liquid Inference applies market structure principles from regulated derivatives trading to AI inference, while offering a chat-style interface and standard LLM API to users. The platform publishes live order books, per-provider and per-model quotes, and cleared transactions for account holders. Buyers can attach purchasing rules to any request, including per-job cost caps, maximum time to first token, minimum throughput, approved regions, zero data retention, and provider or model allow lists. Liquid Inference also supports auto-routing features to dynamically choose the optimal model for a particular unit of work.

Liquid Inference is compatible with all existing AI code tools and agentic workflows. Buyers can use any OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible client, including the official SDKs and coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Cline. The platform auctions the requests across every provider quoting the named model, locks a maximum price before the first token is generated, and charges only on metered usage. Each job produces a fixed receipt showing the winning provider, the price cap, the final charge, and the depth of competition at the time of award.

Brett Harrison, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Architect, commented on the launch, “Inference is quickly becoming one of the largest line items in every technology budget, but it is still only available via static list prices and bilateral contracts. Liquid Inference brings the core tools of modern exchanges to every AI request: competitive quoting, transparent market data, and firm limit prices. Developers get the best available price without changing their code, and providers get a neutral venue to compete on cost and performance. Providers also have a place to monetize underutilized GPU clusters.”

The launch extends Architect’s wide-ranging enterprise to financialize AI inputs. The Company is operationalizing the American Innovation Exchange (“AI Exchange”), a U.S. Designated Contract Market acquired in May 2026, as the first CFTC futures exchange purpose-built for GPU compute futures and options and AI supply chain commodities pending regulatory review. Architect additionally brokers block transactions in compute capacity and structures OTC swaps on compute and memory through its CFTC Introducing Swaps Broker subsidiary Architect Financial Derivatives LLC.  In launching Liquid Inference, Architect adds a live spot market for inference to its extensive suite of AI trading and financial services.

New Liquid Inference accounts receive a starting balance in inference tokens, enabling developers to send their first auctioned requests immediately upon signup. To receive an API key and view the live order book, and to apply to sell inference on Liquid Inference, visit https://inference.ai.exchange.

About Architect

Architect Financial Technologies Inc is a multinational derivatives exchange group and electronic brokerage designed for the AI economy. The company offers the American Innovation Exchange, the first US Designated Contract Market purpose-built for GPU compute and AI commodities, pending regulatory review. Architect Bermuda Ltd. operates a traditional asset perpetual futures exchange regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority. Architect Securities LLC is a FINRA-registered Introducing Broker-Dealer for SEC-regulated securities and security derivatives. Architect Financial Derivatives LLC is an NFA-registered Independent Introducing Broker for CFTC-regulated futures, swaps, and options. To learn more, please visit architect.co.

Architect Financial Technologies Inc.’s intended products described herein will only be offered in compliance with all applicable law and regulations, and subject to regulatory approval. 

This communication is for informational purposes only, and does not constitute a recommendation, investment, or legal advice.

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SOURCE Architect Financial Technologies Inc

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