In the News

Dutch police confirm one person has been killed and an unspecified number of others were wounded in a shooting on a tram in city of Utrecht. Heavily armed anti-terror officers have gathered in front of an apartment block close to the scene of a deadly shooting in the central Dutch city.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has been drawn into the ongoing row over Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecommunications network equipment which has been accused of posing a spying risk.

There is nothing wrong with the basic mechanics of the aircraft: Its engines, wings and control surfaces are all believed to be working fine. Rather, the passenger jet may have killed 346 people for the terrifyingly modern reason that human pilots were unable to override a malfunctioning computer.

Forty-nine people are dead and more than 20 are seriously injured after a heavily armed gunman clad in military-style gear opened fire during prayers at a mosque in the center of Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday. A second mosque was also targeted in what Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called a well-planned “terrorist attack” making for “one of New Zealand’s darkest days.”

Immediately following an announcement by Transport Canada that it is grounding all Boeing 737 MAX planes, WestJet announced it would comply, and grounded all 13 of its 737 Max aircraft. Read on for the announcement by WestJet Executive VP, Arved von sur Muehlen:

The Honourable Marc Garneau, Minister of Transport, issued a statement today banning all Boeing 737 Max aircraft from Canadian airspace. Here is the text of his statement.

Canada has no idea how much dirty money local gangsters, violent drug cartels and sophisticated transnational gambling networks are washing within its borders every year, according to a confidential draft research paper from the country’s money-laundering watchdog.

The British Gliding Association has now advised its members to issue special notices to other aviators when flying in large groups after a pair of of the US Air Force F-15 fighter jets, flying at 380mph, came within a split second of smashing into a glider.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau said he would board "without hesitation" the type of aircraft that crashed in the Ethiopian Airlines tragedy on Sunday, stressing his confidence in the new plane.

China, Ethiopia and Indonesia have grounded all Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft while a number of airlines across the world are carrying out safety measures on the jets following the Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday that killed all 157 people on board.

The Royal Canadian Air Force launched a "major search and rescue operation" on Saturday for a Kapuskasing, Ont., couple who went missing during a helicopter flight this week.

Chinese hackers have targeted over two dozen universities in the US and Canada in an apparent bid to steal key maritime military research, The Wall Street Journal has reported. All the universities targeted, either studied underwater technology or had faculty with relevant backgrounds.

Adding another strange wrinkle to Canada-China relations, a Chinese official who oversaw research on his country’s burgeoning naval-submarine fleet has been placed under arrest in China and accused of illegally obtaining Canadian citizenship.

South Korea and the U.S. are eliminating their massive springtime military drills and replacing them with smaller exercises as part of efforts to support diplomacy aimed at resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis.

The opening of the Arctic and the stirring of Russian and Chinese interest along the U.S. and Canadian northern borders is a major worry for the top officer at U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland is urging India and Pakistan to “exercise maximum restraint” as tensions over the disputed Kashmir region mount. Freeland issued a statement Wednesday afternoon calling on both countries to “avoid any further military escalation” following Pakistan’s shooting down of two Indian military aircraft in response to Indian airstrikes.

Narcity News has gathered up a list of countries that the Government of Canada is advising Canadians not to travel to or advising Canadians where they should exercise extra caution during their travels.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Karen McCrimmon, has announced funding to the John Howard Society of Ottawa to disengage at-risk individuals in the eastern Ontario region from extremist-based violence.

President Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday of a resolute response if the U.S. decides to station missiles in countries neighboring Russia. He said that Russia would respond to any deployment of new intermediate-range missiles in Europe by targeting the United States itself and not just the countries where they are deployed, according to a Reuters translation.

Expected to result in more modern, resilient and green infrastructure, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has announced financial support for small and medium-sized municipalities across Canada to address staffing gaps in response to the intensifying impacts of climate change.

Canadian cities rate highly among the most desirable in the world, but also the most unaffordable. The culprit has been money laundering – by criminals, kleptocrats and tax evaders, says Diane Francis. Their favourite means of hiding money is real estate.

Justin Trudeau's principal secretary and long-time friend has resigned amid allegations that the Prime Minister's Office interfered to prevent a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. In a statement, Butts denies accusations related to pressuring former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to help the Montreal-based engineering giant avoid a criminal case on corruption.

The Senate resoundingly approved a border security compromise Thursday that ignores most of President Donald Trump's demands for building a wall with Mexico but would prevent a new government shutdown. Trump says he would quickly declare a national emergency and perhaps invoke other executive powers to try to shift money to wall-building from elsewhere in the federal budget.

As part of a collaboration with small island developing states, four Canadian fishery officers were a part of patrols around Fiji and the island nations of Kiribati, Tokelau, Vanuatu, and Tuvalu for two weeks in January, working on a U.S. Coast Guard vessel out of Honolulu and an RCAF Aurora maritime patrol aircraft in Nadi, Fiji.

St. John's Dockyard Ltd. in Newfoundland has been awarded a $10-million vessel life extension contract for the Hudson, a 56-year-old Canadian Coast Guard ship. The coast guard is hoping to squeeze another five or even 10 years out of the Nova Scotia-based offshore oceanographic science vessel that was built in 1963.

Jody Wilson-Raybould – the former justice minister who has kept largely silent since a news report claimed the Prime Minister's Office pressured her to help Quebec-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin avoid criminal prosecution – has quit the Liberal cabinet. She resigned as Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence.

The RCMP and other police forces arrested 15 people Monday in a series of raids in Montreal and Toronto targeting what investigators say is an extensive international money laundering network with ties to organized crime.

According to Globe & Mail protected sources, Jody Wilson-Raybould was pushed out of the Justice portfolio for her unwillingness to press the public prosecution office to abandon the court proceedings against SNC-Lavalin. This allegation was denied by the PMO.

It didn’t take long following the US announcement that the country would suspend its participation in the INF treaty for Russia to move in kind. Now, freed of its obligations under the 1987 treaty, Moscow is wasting no time in developing new, once-prohibited weapons systems.

Over the next year, the top-secret National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians plans to probe the threat foreign interference poses to Canada, and examine how the military collects and uses information about Canadians.

The NDP is trying to prod the federal government into launching an investigation into whether the RCMP used invasive – and possibly illegal – techniques to eavesdrop on one of their own during a harassment lawsuit.

Border and customs agents are being pulled from the Greater Toronto Area to handle the expected “significant” influx of asylum seekers across the U.S. border into Quebec between May and September 2019.

First appearing in British Columbia in 1997, the deadly Amanita phalloides species has been showing up at more than 50 locations in and around Vancouver, including schoolyards, and have recently been found on the island. After injesting the mushroom, the liver will start to fail, bleeding disorders, brain swelling, and finally multi-organ failure can occur.

NATO's chief is calling on China to treat two Canadians detained in the country "fairly and with due process." In his first public comments about the case, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said today that he was following their case "with concern."