NEWS IMAGE COLLAGE / for 11-2008

TORONTO -- A Scarborough man is lucky to be alive after the airbags in his pickup truck spontaneously deployed yesterday.

Health Canada has issued a recall of millions of plush toy animals dressed as Mounties because they contain hazardous levels of lead and are a choking hazard for children.

CAIRO, Egypt -- Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted on the Internet on Wednesday, describing the U.S. president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.

Ontario will join British Columbia in offering enhanced driver's licences as an alternative to a passport for residents who travel to the United States, despite claims by critics that the new system could be wide open for privacy abuses.

Syncrude has reached a new Crown agreement with the Alberta government that will see the partners in the project pay an additional $975 million in royalties from 2010 to 2015

A delegation of federal and provincial officials is headed to the U.S. Wednesday to investigate how a proposed U.S. bailout of automakers could affect Canada.

Hockey Canada plans to fight to use its logo at the 2010 Olympic Games, reports the Globe and Mail.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A major Norwegian shipping group on Tuesday ordered its more than 90 tankers to sail around Africa rather than use the Suez Canal after Somali pirates seized a Saudi supertanker carrying US$100 million in crude.

A Thai fishing boat taken hostage in the Gulf of Aden is now one of three vessels that have reportedly been hijacked off the coast of Somalia this week

As the international press learns this week how much it will cost to cover the 2010 Winter Games, activists hope they will also learn how much the Olympics are costing Vancouver.

A high-ranking Estonian defence official has been charged with treason, accused of passing sensitive NATO information to the Russian government for the past several years.

On Dec. 13, 2007, the first of three Super C-class vessels built for $542 million in Germany arrived in B.C. to much fanfare. Less than 10 months later, B.C. Ferries announced the Coastal Renaissance would be spending more days tied up at the terminal tha

BEIJING - China says it will not send any troops to Afghanistan - rejecting recent speculation that Beijing might support the international coalition there.

Police on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast say they made the right decision to fatally shoot a bear outside of a shopping centre in the tiny town of Gibsons

On November 3, 2008, Marcel Basque of Saint Maurice pled guilty in Richibucto Provincial Court to two charges under the Radiocommunication Act. These charges relate to the possession of numerous pirated, or illegal satellite TV receivers, including Canadi

The first order of parliamentary business since last month's federal election turned into a drawn-out affair Tuesday as MPs voted to elect a Speaker for the House of Commons.

VICTORIA - A Victoria-area woman is dead after falling 15 storeys from her highrise apartment Monday following an ill-fated attempt to enter through her balcony.

WINNIPEG - A Winnipeg man serving a life sentence in a Greek prison for drug smuggling is now considered an international fugitive after he vanished last week after nine years in custody, the Winnipeg Free Press has learned.

TORONTO -- Earbuds may be hip, but the MP3 generation of high-school students is listening to personal music players at dangerously high volume levels, a survey indicates.

WASHINGTON - A Stone Age burial site in central Germany has yielded the earliest evidence of people living together as a family.

Women ski jumpers have cleared the next hurdle in their uphill legal battle for the right to compete at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

Debby, the oldest living polar bear, had to be euthanized because of declining health, Winnipeg zoo officials have announced.

Fears of a prolonged recession in developing countries and weak crude demand sent oil prices drifting below $55 a barrel Tuesday.

A Kensington, P.E.I., man was sentenced on mischief charges Monday after leaving a dead cow and tonnes of manure on the edge of a property he used to own

It's not often Roberto Luongo is outplayed by an opposing netminder, but such was the case Monday night on Long Island.

OTTAWA - Canada's Defence Department has ordered more specialized roadside detection vehicles for combat engineers in Afghanistan.

OTTAWA - After arts cuts that sparked a furor in the federal election campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is dispatching Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean on a two-week tour of European countries to promote art and cultural links with Canada.

It turns out that the women, who have been fighting for the right to fly at the 2010 Games in Vancouver and Whistler, will get their day in court.

UNITED NATIONS - Georgia's UN ambassador has called for an independent international investigation to determine whether Georgia or Russia started the war in South Ossetia in August that badly damaged ties between Moscow and the West.

Winnipeg zoo officials euthanized the oldest living polar bear on Monday, after a clinical exam found Debby was suffering from multiple organ failure.

A University of Toronto supercomputer still in the process of being built was powerful enough already to make a list of the fastest supercomputers in the world.

Two teens in Camrose, Alta., pleaded guilty Monday to lesser charges of break and enter in a December 2007 home invasion where a cat was killed in a microwave.

Police and tax officials are warning about a letter and e-mail fraud scheme that attempts to pry confidential banking information and passport numbers from Canadians.

Eight Muslim women who filed a human rights complaint against the United Parcel Service (UPS) over a dress code dispute, have settled with the company.

OTTAWA - Canada's top military commander says the next time someone is kidnapped in Afghanistan, he hopes the media shows the same kind of restraint it did in the case of captured CBC journalist Mellissa Fung.

The NHL's Senior Vice President and Director of Hockey Operations, Colin Campbell, had the following memo, obtained by TSN, posted in every NHL dressing room on Friday.

SHANGHAI, China - The trial of an 18-year-old man accused of murdering Canadian model Diana O'Brien in China began Monday in a Shanghai courtroom.

It is as thick as your arm, gungy and smells disgusting - and it has just been caught on camera for what is thought to be the first time.

The Toronto mosque that once warned its members to avoid wishing others "Merry Christmas," equating it with murder, is once again pitted in controversy.

Canada Post administrative and technical workers are on strike Tuesday after rejecting a final offer from their employer late last week.

PASAB, Afghanistan - Until they get their own helicopters next year, Canadian troops in Afghanistan will have access to six civilian choppers to lessen the risk of coming under insurgent attack while moving along the country's notoriously dangerous roads.

Students are slowly returning to classes at a Kandahar City girls' school following an attack last week that left several girls with acid burns on their faces.

Three major fires continue to burn in southern California Monday as fire crews take advantage of weakening winds to gain a foothold against the blazes

Somali pirates have seized a Saudi-owned supertanker off the coast of Kenya and are taking it to a Somali port, the U.S. Navy said Monday.

Transportation Safety Board representatives were expected to arrive at the scene of a deadly airplane crash off British Columbia's Sunshine Coast on Monday to begin an investigation.

In rural Georgia, a group of high-schoolers gets a visit from the Secret Service after posting "inappropriate" comments about President-elect Barack Obama on the Web. In Raleigh, N.C., four college students admit to spraying race-tinged graffiti in a pede

TORONTO -- New zero-tolerance laws that will combat drinking and speeding among young drivers are a "major step in the right direction," road-safety advocates said yesterday

CALGARY -- An out-of-province driver stopped his car to talk on a cellphone yesterday but picked a bad place to do it.

LONDON -- The cancer makes her weaker every day. Sometimes it's too much even to open her eyes. Still, she never fails to ask for her daughter.

TORONTO -- Great Big Sea no longer wants to be the party band known mostly for jumping up and down onstage with boundless energy.

LONDON -- Are Canadian elections boring? Well, according to the folks in Britain who put out the Collins English Dictionary, it seems our elections practically define the term.

Two Afghan police officers and one civilian are dead after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a meeting between tribal leaders and Canadian provincial reconstruction officials in Kandahar on Monday.

A new monument to the original Ottawa Senators' first Stanley Cup win more than a century ago will be unveiled Monday to replace the one destroyed by vandals this past spring, thanks to donors such as the grandson of one of the hockey players who took par

OTTAWA-A massive haul of valuable Canadiana comprising 1,200 artworks, artifacts and historical documents from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries has just been repatriated from England

OTTAWA-The Department of National Defence plans to ask the government to approve a multibillion-dollar package to purchase new armoured vehicles and rebuild others that have been worn down by continued use in Afghanistan.

The Canadian speedskating team added another three medals to its World Cup tally at Heerenveen, the Netherlands on Sunday.

Hockey's hottest puck stopper returns to his first NHL home Monday and even Roberto Luongo can't fathom a guess if anyone will care.

TransLink and B.C.'s transportation minister are defending pay raises of up to 90 per cent over six years for top TransLink executives.

Canada's highest point - the ice-covered peak of Yukon's soaring Mount Logan - may be due for an official re-measurement after an American researcher on a neighbourly flyby took readings that suggest this country's superlative summit has experienced a gro

Seven people have died in a small plane crash on South Thormanby Island off British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, a spokesperson for the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria has confirmed.

Much of the western world just honoured the millions of soldiers fallen in two world wars. But we also need to look beyond post-war myths and understand the tragic political mistakes that sent these soldiers to die in wars that might have been avoided.

Michael Crichton was a Harvard trained medical doctor with post-doctoral hitches at Cambridge, England, and the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies at La Jolla, California.

The planet could face a freeze worse than an Ice Age starting in as little as 10,000 years, giving future societies a headache the opposite of coping with global warming, scientists said this week.

LAKOKHEL, Afghanistan -- Three Canadian soldiers narrowly escaped a booby-trap blast that seriously injured three Afghan army troops early Sunday morning.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Seven years ago Thursday, people celebrated in the streets of Kabul as members of the Northern alliance rolled into the capital of Afghanistan, driving the Taliban and their al-Qaida allies into hiding in the south.

LAKOKHEL, Afghanistan - Improvised explosive devices are the deadliest obstacle NATO soldiers face in the Afghan trenches - a fact driven home Sunday by the sight of a bloodied Afghan soldier being cared for by one of his young Canadian mentors.

LITI VILLAGE, China -- Li Xiaokai died of kidney failure on the old wooden bed in the family farmhouse, just before dawn on a drizzly Sept. 10.

EDMONTON -- A rising star in the field of genome research has been lured back to Canada from the U.S. to carry out the world's largest plant DNA project at the University of Alberta.

EDMONTON -- The 2006 rape of a female security guard in Calgary has reignited the sometimes bitter debate over whether there needs to be better laws to protect employees who work alone at night.

Calmer winds have helped slow down a series of wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of houses in Southern California since Thursday evening.

PASHMUL, Afghanistan - It's 15 seconds of his life that Sgt. Deryk McGougan will never get back.

For the first time, Australia's vast Simpson Desert Conservation Park will be closed during the fierce heat of summer to protect unwary tourists

A strong earthquake off Indonesia's Sulawesi island triggered a tsunami warning, which was later lifted

Quebec Premier Jean Charest confirmed on Sunday that all efforts to save the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal have failed

The Conservative government is going to open its wallet to help boost the Canadian economy as part of a global effort to stave off a deepening recession, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says.

With Corner Gas closing its pumps, perennial good guy Eric Peterson is ready for something completely different: playing a malignantly evil patriarch

If we're paying someone else to make us dinner, shouldn't we be able to eat any time we want? Not really.

Nine teenagers face 81 charges after at least five victims were beaten with a steel meat tenderizer and robbed for their iPods and cellphones within two hours early this morning.

PARIS - A five-year quest to locate the tomb of d'Artagnan -- the inspiration for Alexandre Dumas's novel The Three Musketeers -- has led to a small Dutch church where new research suggests the swashbuckling hero is buried.

What was hoped to halt the spread of the B.C. mountain pine beetle may actually be hazardous to human health.

Devastating wildfires fed by hurricane-like winds again ravaged Southern California on Saturday, destroying hundreds of homes, closing down freeways and threatening Los Angeles with power failures.

BAZAR-E PANJWAII, Afghanistan - In the heat of battle, thoughts of home or loved ones don't flash through the minds Canadian soldiers, the usual reaction is nothing at all.

Resident killer whales know the precise sound of their favourite dinner, according to a new study by a team of Canadian and U.S. researchers.

The Toronto Maple Leafs finally learned the difficult task of scoring on Vancouver goaltender Roberto Luongo

The Calgary Stampeders are Grey Cup-bound for the first time in seven years

Larry Taylor was hardly the name on everyone's lips as the CFL's "East" final got underway on Saturday afternoon.

The Crown corporation is looking for a business partner to set up a web-based entertainment store so customers can download songs and videos for a fee. The proposal to compete with giants like Apple Inc.'s iTunes store was issued electronically last w

Immigration officials have ordered yesterday the release of a known city gangster. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada decided that Nghia Trong Nguyen-Tran, known as Jackie Tran, did not violate the terms and conditions of his release from imm

Calgary police have arrested a man wanted in the abduction and sexual assault of a woman who was working at a northeast business, less than 24 hours after they issued a warrant.

The discrimination case of an Iranian-born man who was tossed out of the RCMP training program has caught the attention of a visible minority police officers group in the United Kingdom.

Canadian journalist Arthur Kent, known as the "Scud Stud" for his live NBC reports during the 1991 Gulf War, has filed a libel lawsuit against Canada's biggest media group, CanWest Global Communications Corp.

A Calgary man is believed to be the first person convicted in Canada under new movie pirating legislation when he pleaded guilty to the unauthorized recording of the Johnny Depp movie Sweeney Todd.

The federal government is trying for a third time to block public hearings into whether it allowed the transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities, despite having knowledge they could be tortured, according to a Globe and Mail report.

A judge has ordered a publication ban at a hearing for an Ottawa sociology instructor wanted by French authorities in connection with a deadly bomb attack in Paris nearly 30 years ago.

IQALUIT, Nunavut -- Eva Aariak, Nunavut's former languages commissioner, is now its premier.

VANCOUVER -- Voters across B.C. go to the polls today to elect their local councils, and never has the battle been more bitter than in Vancouver where the new mayor will lead the city into the 2010 Olympic games.

12 per cent fail 3-week certification course on first try, papers reveal

A stunning light display over Saturn has stumped scientists who say it behaves unlike any other planetary aurora known in our solar system

At this time on Remembrance Day, the members of Task Force Balkans deployed in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, remember our fellow Canadians who lost their lives in the struggle to bring peace to this country that has suffered so much war, corruption and mi

A rare print of a 396-year-old map of Canada created by French explorer Samuel de Champlain has sold at an auction in Britain for nearly $250,000, triple the expected price.

BAZAR-E PANJWAII, Afghanistan - It's the kind of image the public has grown to expect - a group of Canadian soldiers going through the villages of southern Afghanistan handing out aid and assistance to the delight of throngs of screaming and smiling small

Along with delivery of regular household items like a fridge and exercise equipment, the International Space Station is getting a gadget you won't find at home: a machine that turns urine into drinking water.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency for Santa Barbara County on Friday, as firefighters and aircraft battled a raging wildfire that has destroyed about 100 multimillion-dollar homes and burned across 800 hectares of land.

Defenceman Kevin Bieksa of the Vancouver Canucks will be out of the lineup from two to four weeks, the club announced on Friday

Passengers may see some four-legged security guards patrolling British Columbia ferry terminals in the near future

A Canadian expert on wildlife co-management systems says a joint survey of polar bear populations in Nunavut's Baffin Bay region could resolve disagreements between biologists and Inuit hunters over how many polar bears are there.

First-time member of the legislative assembly Eva Aariak defeated incumbent Paul Okalik to become Nunavut's second premier Friday, and the northern territory's first female premier.

The NHL is investigating a suspicious spike in votes for Montreal Canadiens players in all-star fan balloting.

U.S. oil companies in Alberta can use NAFTA to sue the Canadian government if any level of government passes a law restricting their profits, says Maude Barlow, a senior advisor to the United Nations.

SARNIA -- What happened to the puck Paul Henderson fired into the net to win hockey's legendary '72 Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union has been one of the enduring mysteries of Canadian sports.

Calgary Police have identified the suspect who kidnapped a woman and sexually assaulted her Monday, and have issued a warrant for his arrest. Police say they are looking for Michael Peter Nadolnick, 41, of Calgary. Nadolnick is wanted for kidnapping a

MONTREAL - Soon girls may not be the only ones getting Gardasil injections. Merck Frosst is moving ahead with plans to extend the use of its controversial Gardasil vaccine to boys and young men.

OTTAWA - An Ottawa university professor has been arrested for the infamous terrorist bombing of a Paris synagogue in 1980 that killed four, injured scores and put synagogues around the world on a tough new security footing.

OTTAWA - It was another tale of two diverging North American economies early Friday with news of stronger than expected factory shipments and auto sales in Canada but much weaker than anticipated retail sales in the U.S.

BRETTEVILLE-SUR-LAIZE, France -- More than 60 years after he died on a French battlefield in the Second World War, a Canadian soldier has received a proper funeral

The Crown has withdrawn charges against a Halifax man who spent two years behind bars awaiting trial, after two witnesses recanted their stories.

The Flames - outshot 20-5 and outscored 4-0 in the first period - yanked goalie Miikka Kiprusoff after 20 minutes.