NEWS IMAGE COLLAGE / for 05-2008

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber killed one foreign soldier and wounded six other people, including three civilians, in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar on Saturday, the provincial governor said.

Canucks general manager Mike Gillis said the team is in the process of creating policies and establishing educational tools which will help players deal with the many unique challenges they face, including how risky activities can impact their lives.

Jiri Hudler's goal at 2:26 of the third period held as the winner as the Detroit Red Wings took a pivotal Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final over the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Sharp new images received Saturday from the Phoenix lander largely convinced scientists that the spacecraft's thrusters had uncovered a large patch of ice just below the Martian surface, team members said.

OTTAWA - Via Rail's offer of free travel for the military throughout July has triggered a backlash, as soldiers serving in Afghanistan that month miss out on the deal but civilians back home enjoy it.

Canadian soldiers made progress in a campaign to shut down a network of Taliban fighters who are making improvised explosive devices (IEDs) west of Kandahar city, a senior officer said Saturday

SINGAPORE -- Canada will move helicopters and unmanned aircraft to Afghanistan to increase surveillance of roads, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said on Saturday, as the Taliban stepped up attacks in spite of a large NATO force in the country.

People living in southeast Calgary are being asked to stay inside and keep the windows closed

Environment Canada is warning people in south eastern Manitoba that severe thunderstorms with tornadoes are imminent.

If Red Wings win Cup on Monday, Senators could buy out wayward goalie very next day

WASHINGTON - As it turned out, Sameer Mishra provided more than just comic relief at the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee. He ended up winning the title.

The only needle-exchange facility in Victoria will close on Monday, raising concerns that drug users in the area will turn to sharing dirty needles.

Western premiers say they're united in their goal to deal with greenhouse gas emissions, but they can't seem to agree on how to tackle the situation.

The Pittsburgh Penguins will attempt to even up the Stanley Cup final tonight when they host the Detroit Red Wings in Game 4 at Mellon Arena.

The Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee responded Friday to a lawsuit filed by women ski jumpers who are not permitted to compete in the 2010 Winter Games.

Suspected hit-and-run driver Darren Coupal will be allowed to attend his stepson's grad party while awaiting trial for killing a woman, a judge ruled yesterday.

Two St. Thomas high school students have been blamed for causing a massive fire at historic Alma College.

OTTAWA -- The Harper government is leaving a probe into the security failings of Maxime Bernier in the hands of bureaucrats who could be implicated in their own inquiry, Liberals warned Friday.

The RCMP is investigating whether high winds and driver inexperience contributed to the motorcycle crash that killed promising Vancouver Canucks defenceman Luc Bourdon.

VANCOUVER - Jody Broomfield is a First Nations artist who sees only prosperity and potential for his community coming from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver

NASA's Phoenix Mars lander returned more detailed images from the Red Planet and was using some of its instruments, including a robotic arm and a Canadian laser, for scientific tasks.

A Calgary man stabbed his wife, his two young daughters and a basement tenant to death before taking his own life, police have confirmed.

MONTREAL -- A Quebec woman who spent a week as a hostage in Haiti has returned to Canada.

VANCOUVER -- The B.C. Supreme Court has reversed a not-guilty verdict for a man accused of putting a cat in a microwave.

TORONTO -- Fewer than three-quarters of Canadians believe in a god, suggests a new Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey.

TRENTON, Ont. -- The driving rain did little to dampen the spirits of the hundreds of people who are gathering in Trenton, Ont., for a car rally in support of fallen Canadian soldiers.

Canadian and Afghan soldiers have concluded an operation designed to disrupt Taliban bomb-making operations in a volatile district of Kandahar province.

Julie Couillard's partially exposed breast has now been seen by as many people as Janet Jackson's at the Super Bowl

OTTAWA - Canada's economy shrank 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2008 from a year earlier - marking the first decline in nearly five years - as the manufacturing sector continued to weaken, Statistics Canada said Friday.

Labatt has launched a brand new brew, but it won't give drinkers a beer buzz on the patio this summer.

Police say a homeless woman who sneaked into a man's house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.

A man accused of using his university studies as a cover for terrorist activities has been awarded a $5,000 entrepreneurial prize from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Hard-working, devoted father Joshua Lall heard voices in his head and believed he was possessed by the devil prior to the mass killing that claimed his life and four others, sources told the Herald.

Officials in Brazil released photographs Friday of what's believed to be one of the last groups of indigenous people in the world that hasn't had face-to-face contact with outsiders.

The scarf once seen covering the faces of stone-throwing boys, wrapping the bodies of bullet-pierced babies and shading the creased napes of olive farmers now makes an appearance on the mannequins of Toronto and the outfits of the rich and fabulous of New

Five T.O. professionals forecast the big hits launched by 'Sex and the City', the year's hottest fashion flick

Carol Taylor anxiously paced along the police tape around the crime scene, unable to tear her eyes off the yellow blanket.

In a major turnaround, Mayor David Miller now says he supports removing a portion of the Gardiner Expressway to revitalize Toronto's waterfront. And he will probably have the votes to get it through city council, according to a prominent councillor not a

West Vancouver police are rolling out a plan similar to the one introduced in downtown Vancouver that aims to discourage gang members from frequenting local bars and restaurants.

Investigators are calling the deaths of five people in a northwest Calgary home a "domestic homicide," and on Thursday identified the man found among the dead as the likely killer.

A judge had delayed his ruling regarding the public release of a videotape which shows police interviewing convicted killer Paul Bernardo on the murder of Elizabeth Bain.

Disclosure of a probe into possible price manipulation may have been behind a sharp drop in oil prices Thursday.

OTTAWA -- Cheeky headlines splashed in newspapers around the world about Canada's fallen foreign minister are making a mockery of the country's reputation, opposition critics charged Thursday.

A controversial new film has become the talk of Parliament Hill. Critics of the movie -- entitled "Young People F---ing" -- say the film is as racy as its title suggests and highlights everything that's wrong with public funding of Canadian films.

The federal government is stealing money from the country's employment insurance fund that should rightfully belong to Canadian workers, federal NDP Leader Jack Layton said Thursday.

A former punk rocker has just introduced network neutrality legislation to Canada's House of Commons, and he's putting all the P2P throttlers in Canada on notice.

Luc Bourdon, a promising defenceman with the NHL's Vancouver Canucks, was killed Thursday afternoon when his motorcycle struck a tractor-trailer in his native northern New Brunswick

QUEBEC -- Provincial Sports Minister Michelle Courchesne said Wednesday she has obtained the support of her counterparts across Canada in her battle to end on-ice fights during junior hockey games.

A Canadian woman abducted last week in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, has been released and is in good condition, United Nations Police have confirmed.

Police investigators in Calgary will spend Thursday trying to figure out who killed three adults and two little girls in an upscale neighbourhood in the city's northwest.

The figure - enough to fill a 50-gallon bathtub every four minutes - was taken from her utility bill records.

What parents name their baby could determine future success, say naming guide authors

Consumers feeling the impact of high oil prices at the pumps may be in for new headaches this year as soaring energy prices drive up the cost of everything from airline tickets to dry cleaning, couriers and diapers.

A controversial chemical that Health Canada is moving to ban in baby bottles has turned up in tests conducted on cans for foods commonly served to Canadian children.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper praised Canada's environmental record Wednesday during a speech at a UN biodiversity conference in Bonn, Germany

The first-ever Mars weather report has been beamed back to Earth thanks to cutting-edge Canadian technology.

Lawmakers in Nepal voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to abolish the country's 239-year-old monarchy, turning the world's only Hindu kingdom into its newest republic.

Two children, ages four and six, and three adults have been found dead at a home in Calgary.

While shoppers at Ontario's liquor stores may soon be toting their own reusable bags, they still have an eco-dilemma: is it greener to buy wine in a glass bottle or in a Tetra Pak carton?

$100,000 budgets and toddlers in tuxes have some parents calling for end to birthday madness

PARIS - Prime Minister Stephen Harper urged France Tuesday to fight a European ban on seal products and asked the French to help Ukraine join NATO.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has downplayed his country's placing of the national flag under the ice at the North Pole, saying it was not meant to signal Russia's claim to the Arctic.

A B.C. judge has ruled that the federal government cannot constitutionally shut down Vancouver's safe-injection site.

TORONTO - A planned procession of nearly 100 cars and trucks, scheduled to travel from Trenton, Ont., to Toronto this weekend to commemorate the lives of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, has some military families seeing red.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A handful of Canadian MPs on a secret visit to Afghanistan became part of a tightly managed political show that graphically illustrated the cloud of secrecy that persists over the country's mission.

The mayor of Prince George has declared a state of emergency after three separate fires broke out at the B.C.R. industrial site in the south end of the city Monday evening and a fourth fire broke out at a small business downtown.

Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies are investigating the theft of $40,000 worth of jewelry from a posh northwest county home.

At least three mice call FAO Schwarz home, blind to the fact that only stuffed animals are allowed inside the famed children's store.

Less than a month after Miley Cyrus made headlines by appearing topless in Vanity Fair, racy photos of the Hannah Montana star have again hit the net.

For nearly a quarter of a century, Lourdes Maxwell has celebrated the arrival of summer by putting a paddling pool in the garden.

crazed, naked man stole a large transport truck truck and led police on a half-hour chase through rush-hour traffic after allegedly threatening to blow up a bridge.

Criticized for its colour-crazy Olympic collection, Hbc's fashion team is vindicated at the cash register as sales exceed expectations

It's a new frontier for psychiatric illness: brain pacemakers that promise to act as antidepressants by changing how patients' nerve circuitry fires.

A massive helium balloon drifted aimlessly away into the sky over the Canadian prairie Tuesday, taking with it the dream of a French skydiver who had hoped to set a new free-fall record.

Speaking on CTV's Mike Duffy Live on the eve of the day his official portrait is to be unveiled in Ottawa, Clark said he is concerned about the Harper government's approach to international relations.

A Nasa spacecraft has sent back historic first pictures of an unexplored region of Mars.

The Canadian military has had intelligence soldiers operating in Afghanistan for as long as it has been in the country, Canada's commander in Afghanistan told CBC News on Monday

The Pittsburgh Penguins return home still looking for their first goal in the Stanley Cup final after a 3-0 shutout loss to the Detroit Red Wings in Game 2 of the seven-game series on Monday night.

LOS ANGELES - Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack has died. He was 73.

COMOX - Hailed as one of the most successful of its kind in years, the 2008 Fincastle Long-Range Patrol Competition hosted by 19 Wing Comox is now over.

The Canadian military has been warned internally that there's no guarantee the aging search-and-rescue planes it uses will be able to keep running until 2015

Control of High Arctic waters is "critically important" for both Canadian sovereignty and the protection of a fragile ecosystem, says federal Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- The ever-increasing explosive power of roadside bombs in Afghanistan has Canada's Defence Department and the army examining the idea of buying larger, more heavily armoured vehicles to shuttle troops around the battlefield.

Embattled Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has resigned from cabinet, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters on Monday.

A man was arrested after a dramatic police pursuit of a 10-tonne truck on the Lougheed Highway near the Haney bypass during the morning rush hour Monday in the Metro Vancouver suburb of Maple Ridge.

Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme.

Ray Griffis had a chunk of his colon cut out recently. He's just finishing chemotherapy. How's it going? He is an old artillery sergeant major. They don't come any tougher. That's a good thing, because this is a hard story.

BEIJING - A half-capacity crowd in Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium stood in respectful silence Saturday evening as the Canadian maple leaf journeyed up the new Olympic venue's gold-medal flagpole.

His forearm tattoo brands him as a soldier-protector, but even a life-shaping eight-month tour of duty in Afghanistan left Tyler Patnode still a kid at heart, too trusting for his own good.

METRO VANCOUVER - NASA's Phoenix spacecraft successfully landed on Mars Sunday evening, carrying on board equipment built by Richmond-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) that will probe the planet for water and the potential for life.

Friends and family of Cody Gottschalk gathered Sunday to say goodbye to the fun-loving 19-year-old, who was stabbed to death at Cultus Lake last weekend. But instead of black suits and sombre music on a dark day, his family and friends chose bright shi

NASA's Phoenix lander has survived "seven minutes of terror" and reached the surface of Mars, marking NASA's first successful landing on the Red Planet in more than 30 years.

Pole sitter Scott Dixon won the 92nd running of the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday afternoon.

Retired scientist says climate change allows him to grow subtropical fruit

DESPITE all the gloom, oil prices are predicted to fall 30 per cent within 12 months, giving motorists much-needed relief.

Should we really be worried about computer pestilence?

Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has embarrassed this country and it should be for the last time, says Deputy Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.

MONACO -- McLaren's Lewis Hamilton battled to a masterful Monaco Grand Prix victory on Sunday despite hitting the barriers on an afternoon of mayhem on the principality's slippery streets.

The severed-feet explanation is 'beyond imagination,' expert says after latest find

I just found this old article and wondering if anyone has thought of the correlation between the big oil company and government to keep gas prices high to reap the taxes to pay for the Iraq war. Yes, everyone complains at how much the oil companies are

MLAs unanimously endorse a government motion expressing deep regret to Punjabis denied entry to province in 1914

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Female soldiers are finding an unwritten - but not unwanted - responsibility waiting for them in Afghanistan

The Elbow River and other watercourses raged in southern Alberta Saturday as rain pelted down all day

A year after Russia's controversial flag-planting dive to the North Pole seabed to assert ownership of a sprawling underwater mountain chain, Canada is launching a less brazen but potentially more effective counterclaim for control over parts of the disp

A flamboyant archeologist known worldwide for his trademark Indiana Jones hat believes he has identified the site where Cleopatra is buried.

LOS ANGELES -- Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as "Sock it to me!" has died.

BRUSSELS -- A large cargo plane crashed and broke apart close to a row of houses while trying to abort a takeoff Sunday at Brussels airport, authorities said.

CHENGDU, China - A powerful aftershock destroyed tens of thousands of homes in central China, causing hundreds of new casualties Sunday and straining recovery efforts from the country's worst earthquake in three decades

Four Canadian soldiers were wounded and a teenage Afghan boy was killed Saturday in a suicide bomb attack on a military convoy in Kandahar City, Afghan officials said.

About 10 gold pieces by late Haida native artist Bill Reid have been stolen from the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver

Beaulieu wrote of the "small, black queen of Radio-Canada" and her visit to France, where she spoke about Canadian federalism, but also saluted France for its abolition of slavery in 1847.

A Saskatchewan couple on holiday came face to face with what they say was a white "spirit bear" in East Sooke Park last week

The severed foot that washed up on a Kirkland Island beach Thursday almost certainly belonged to a woman, says the man who found the remains.

MONTREAL -- One of Quebec's most popular authors says Ottawa is using Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean to "forcefully integrate" the province into the Canadian ensemble.

DETROIT -- "Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie.'' The chants filled Joe Louis Arena as Chris Osgood's outstanding goaltending, two unassisted goals by Mikael Samuelsson and fierce forechecking combined to give the Detroit Red Wings a 4-0 victory over the Pitts

ARGHANDAB VALLEY, Afghanistan -- So let's take a drive. We come out of the Kandahar Air Field, turn left onto a madly busy highway and head west towards Kandahar City.