NEWS IMAGE COLLAGE / for 12-2011

"Contamination of the Athabasca River is a high-profile concern," said the presentation, marked secret, but released to Postmedia News through access to information legislation. "Recent studies suggest elevated levels of pollutants near mining sites

Widely criticized for its months-long crackdown on street protests, Egypt's ruling military council dramatically backed down Tuesday during a march by thousands of women through the streets of Cairo.

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian, an American and a Dutchman to the International Space Station blasted off flawlessly from Russia's launch facility in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is warning the public not to eat certain fresh jalapeno peppers because they may be contaminated with salmonella.

A U.S. man who won a $380,000 Lamborghini in a contest by a convenience store chain says he crashed the sports car six hours after he got it.

A military technician who died during a rescue mission in Nunavut was missing his life raft at the time of his death, a flight report reveals.

The Vancouver Canucks and Detroit Red Wings are among the hottest teams in the league heading into their first matchup at Rogers Arena this season.

A deadly storm that halted travel throughout the Great Plains weakened as it headed east into Missouri and toward the Great Lakes, and officials reopened highways in areas where motorists had been forced to adjust holiday plans mid-trip.

A lost seabird, likely from the craggy coasts of Atlantic Canada, has been found more than 1,000 kilometres from home: waddling on a busy downtown Montreal street.

A man cleaning his muzzle-loading rifle in Ohio shot the gun into the air, accidentally killing a 15-year-old Amish girl driving a horse-drawn buggy more than 1.6 kilometres away, a sheriff said Tuesday.

BC Ferries closed its Duke Point terminal near Nanaimo after a vessel rammed the dock just before 3 p.m. PT Tuesday.

From Yahoo! Finance: The New York Times has unmasked 80-year-old Cornell alum Charles F. Feeney as the anonymous donor who gave the school a $350 million donation to construct a new technology-based satellite campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City. O

Read 'Military Wives outselling Little Mix for Christmas number one, Simon Cowell concedes defeat' from our blog 110% pop on Yahoo! omg! UK. The Military Wives are all but certain to be Christmas number one this year, after outselling X Factor winners Lit

Astronomers in the US have detected the first Earth-sized planets, which are orbiting a star similar to our own Sun.

The Montreal Canadiens are feeling the heat after tossing aside a French-speaking head coach for an anglophone replacement who can't speak the language that the majority of Quebecers understand.

The father of a baby who vanished in the Australian Outback more than 30 years ago said he is confident a new inquiry into the tragedy will officially rule that a dingo took his daughter.

North Koreans said they would die for their Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il. North Korea's state-run media called him the peerless one. But South Korean and American media said he was a wacko.

The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has raised hopes that nuclear disarmament talks on the volatile Korean peninsula can be resumed.

Vancouver police are recommending 52 new charges against 20 people for allegedly participating in the Stanley Cup riot earlier this year.

Fighting in hockey should be stopped because it leads to head trauma that causes progressive brain damage, says an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

A 66-year old man B.C. man who circumnavigated Ellesmere Island in Nunavut has been short-listed for National Geographic's 2012 Adventurer of the Year.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has died aged 69 of a heart attack, state media announced Monday, plunging the nuclear-armed and deeply isolated nation into a second dynastic succession.

North Korean television announces the death of Kim Jong-il, who has led the communist nation since the death of his father in 1994.

Ships illegally dumping oil off Canada's coasts are having a harder time getting away with the crime because of a relatively new process used by government scientists.

The discovery of an intact ejection seat from Canada's legendary Avro Arrow is fuelling a half-century-old conspiracy theory that one of the purportedly destroyed jets was smuggled to safety.

If you're reading this on Chrome, you're part of a wave that has ditched Internet Explorer or Firefox and helped vault Google's browser to the top Web browser spot worldwide.

The 32 crew members aboard a leaking Russian fishing ship near Antarctica have made progress stabilizing the vessel, and a plane was scheduled to drop them supplies Saturday. Rescue ships, hampered by heavy sea ice, were still several days away.

A small comet survived what astronomers figured would be a sure death when it danced uncomfortably close to the broiling sun.

The Ottawa Senators have acquired forward Kyle Turris from the Phoenix Coyotes in exchange for Swedish defenceman David Rundblad and a second round pick.

The federal government has denied an export permit for the Baymaud shipwreck resting in waters off Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

Food drives to support local food banks are everywhere this time of year. But some argue that the whole food drive model is inherently inefficient and that hard cash donations are what food banks need most.

The Toronto Maple Leafs didn't have an answer for Vancouver's top line of Alex Burrows, Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin, which accounted for the two most important goals of Saturday's 5-3 win.

Authorities in Illinois have said five people, including two children and a baby, were killed in a murder-suicide on Friday, but they haven't identified the shooter. The bodies were found Friday in Emington, a small farming community about 80 miles southw

One of the farmers who cheered the end of the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly on western wheat and barley sales once hauled grain across the border illegally so he didn't have to go through the marketing agency.

Jacques Martin was fired as coach of the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday, with the storied team in last place in its division. Assistant Randy Cunneyworth will be the interim head coach for the rest of the season.

Birdwatchers are flocking to Boundary Bay in Metro Vancouver to catch a glimpse of snowy owls, which migrate south only once every four or five years, as the CBC's Renee Filippone reports.

Russia's space agency says a probe bound for a moon of Mars that instead got stuck in Earth's orbit will plummet down to Earth next month.

A man named Derek Jensen was the shooter in a murder-suicide that left four people dead on an Alberta highway, CBC News has confirmed.

It's almost winter, but get ready for some surf and sun: The Beach Boys are reuniting. The Beach Boys first concert is scheduled for April 27 at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

A pep rally prank intended to bring laughter and cheers at a Minnesota high school has instead sparked a firestorm of controversy after parents of some senior student athletes took a practical joke too far.

Grain handler Viterra Inc. said Friday it is ready to start marketing wheat and barley on behalf of growers right away now that the Canadian Wheat Board no longer controls sales of those grains.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Keystone XL pipeline was the clear winner in Thursday's Republican debate, garnering wild applause as the candidates blasted President Barack Obama for delaying the $7-billion project.

The Alberta Enterprise Group (AEG) is calling for a boycott of Chiquita Brands International after it agreed to avoid fuels derived from oilsands crude, ForestEthics announced Thursday

Following a recent hunting trip to eastern Alberta, ultimate fighting superstar Brock Lesnar is grappling with a foe in an entirely different ring. Charges related to the improper handling of hunted game were read out in Medicine Hat Provincial Court

Drayson Bowman scored two goals to lead the Carolina Hurricanes past the Vancouver Canucks 4-3 on Thursday night. Tuomo Ruutu added a deflected goal and an assist, and Jaroslav Spacek scored his first goal since being acquired by the last-place Hurricanes

62-year-old author, essayist and polemicist dies after lengthy, public battle with cancer

First Nation leaders in Lytton, B.C., are concerned after bighorn sheep were killed while grazing on sacred land earlier this week.

Debris from Japan's tsunami has already hit Vancouver Island shores -- a year-and-a-half early, according to oceanographers' predictions.

Lawyers are predicting the B.C. government could be hit with a class action lawsuit to recover millions of dollars paid by suspected drunk drivers.

The Philadelphia Flyers say captain Chris Pronger will miss the rest of the season with "severe post-concussion syndrome." The decision was made after the 37-year-old was examined in Pittsburgh by doctors John Maroon and Mickey Collins, who also treated P

The Gaddafi family owns a $1.6-million penthouse apartment in downtown Toronto that has apparently gone unnoticed by the Canadian and Libyan governments, the National Post has learned.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health said on Thursday that it will review all federally funded research using chimpanzees after an independent panel of experts said most such studies are unnecessary

A female Sumatran tiger has died after a fight with a male at the Toronto Zoo. Zoo veterinarians said that the 13-year-old Brytne died of a crushed larynx as a result of a "conflict" with three-year-old Sumatran tiger Harimau Kayu

Three men and a woman are dead and another woman is recovering in a Calgary hospital after gunfire rang out along Highway 2 north of Claresholm early Thursday morning. RCMP say they are investigating the case as a murder-suicide and believe all of the vic

If you ever wanted to visit a pristine Arctic lake, you're probably about 100 years too late.

One of Canada's leading bank economists is predicting a year of slow economic growth, low interest rates and continued uncertainty due to the financial crisis underway in Europe.

VICE.COM discovered suspected labor camps populated with North Korean workers in Siberia.

Police in Amsterdam are complaining over new rules banning them for smoking cannabis while off-duty, claiming they are an infringement of personal liberty. Officers in the Dutch capital, famous for its liberal drugs laws, have been told they must set the

Our Canadian sports story of the year is the rebirth of the Winnipeg Jets, a team remembered as a footnote in NHL history until the Atlanta Thrashers resurfaced in Winnipeg as the Jets.

Chimpanzees should hardly ever be used for medical research, a prestigious scientific group told the U.S. government Thursday -- advice that means days in the laboratory may be numbered for humans' closest relatives.

Weighing just 9 1/2 ounces, Melinda Star Guido is among the smallest babies ever born in the world. Most infants her size don't survive, but doctors are preparing to send her home by New Year's.

After nearly nine years, 4,500 American dead, 32,000 wounded and more than $800 billion, U.S. officials formally shut down the war in Iraq -- a conflict that U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said was worth the price in blood and money, as it set Iraq o

The word, an adjective that means practical and logical, was looked up so often on Merriam-Webster's online dictionary that the publisher says "pragmatic" was the pragmatic choice for its 2011 Word of the Year.

A soon-to-be-released phone app that will help users translate Maritime slang has eastern Canadians scratching their heads.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is accusing Defence Minister Peter MacKay of living like a king while attending conferences in Europe.

Paul Buchanan wants you to know he's not just a crazy hockey dad giving his beloved sport yet anothe... - Latest News - Winnipeg Free Press.

The US military's F-35 fighter program, already suffering repeated delays, faces a spate of technical problems that the Pentagon expects will slow the pace of production, officials said Wednesday.

Internet users with no scientific training have helped discover a new type of galaxy and crack a problem in protein biochemistry that stumped experts, thanks to the power of the internet.

A B.C. dog owner is under investigation after a German shepherd puppy was discovered tied up in a yard with a collar so tight it had become deeply embedded inside a smelly, gaping wound in her neck.

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau lost his temper and called Environment Minister Peter Kent a "piece of sh**" during question period in the House of Commons Wednesday while Kent responded to questions about the Kyoto Accord.

Two teams of scientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva say they detected 'tantalizing hints' of the elusive Higgs boson, or 'God particle,' but no definitive proof.

"It is rare that you have eureka moments in science, but it happened four times on this supernova," says Andy Howell, coleader of PTF's SN Ia team: "The super-early discovery; the crazy first spectrum; when we figured out it had to be a white dwarf; and t

Years of astronomical observations show an enormous gas cloud spiralling in toward the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's centre.

Directors file suit to halt government bill pending resolution of legal battle

A wandering baby fur-seal wriggled through the cat-door of a Bay of Plenty house - and made himself at home on the couch.

CTV Toronto - Astronomers say they've caught a rare cosmic snapshot of a fiery meteor hurtling through the sky just east of Toronto on Monday evening.

CTV Toronto - The son of a Niagara Falls motel owner says his family is struggling to move forward after a group of teenagers trashed 22 of their rooms, causing thousands of dollars in damage.

Police in Regina say someone broke into a sporting goods store and took about 50 guns.

The House of Commons has passed a bill that would expand the chamber by 30 seats and give fairer representation to the country's fastest growing provinces.

The news that Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby will be sitting out of play indefinitely is leaving many worried that the hockey phenom's career might never be the same again - or even perhaps that it's coming to an end.

A music executive died Monday after being shot last week by a rampaging gunman in the heart of Hollywood, a hospital spokeswoman said.

A pair of Vancouver Island men have been found guilty of animal cruelty charges for starving a horse that they later hanged to death, but the SPCA says the court ruling doesn't go far enough.

Canadians keep taking on more debt even as they get poorer, a new Statistics Canada report shows.

CTV Toronto - Police carried out dozens of raids across Ontario on Tuesday morning, arresting 60 alleged gang members, as part of a massive crackdown on organized crime.

Former prime minister Jean Chretien is warning Liberals that the Conservatives and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have a hidden agenda to move Canada further to the right on contentious issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

Illegal downloaders beware! A new website called youhavedownloaded.com is collecting information about what files you are downloading from file-sharing site.

House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer says he has no power to deal with calls in Liberal MP Irwin Cotler's riding that said he is stepping down.

Around 50 right-wing Israeli extremists have infiltrated and attacked the Ephraim Regional Division Headquarters in the West Bank.

Conservation authorities have successfully captured a large black bear that had been standing on top of a garbage truck in downtown Vancouver.

Stephen Harper's holiday card bears an uncanny resemblance to last year's, raising the question whether he reused the Christmas photo.

Saadi Gaddafi, playboy son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, was supposed to live in exile on a beachfront property with views of yachts and fishing boats in the Bahia de Banderas and the lights of Puerto Vallarta twinkling in the distance.

The next Derek Boogaard is out there, somewhere, dropping his gloves and literally trying to punch his ticket to the National Hockey League. It could be Spokane Chiefs captain Darren Kramer, who got into 47 fights in the Western Hockey League last season.

With Tuesday's release of results from two different experiments in search of the God Particle, excitement and rumours are growing about a scientific discovery that would rival any in living memory

The bromance between Pedro and Buddy, the potentially homosexual African penguins that made headlines last month when Toronto Zoo keepers said they would be split up for reproductive purposes, has come to an end.

North Korea has warned of "unexpected consequences" if South Korea goes ahead with plans to light up a Christmas tower near the border.

According to first-hand accounts by several sources in Jordan, during the last few hours foreign military groups, estimated at hundreds of individuals, are spreading near the Jordanian and Syrian border. Another report received from our source in Amman id

A new study suggests that a violent collision with an asteroid might have set the planet Mercury spinning oddly in its orbit.

Former Parti Quebecois cabinet minister Daniel Paille has been elected the new leader of the Bloc Quebecois.

Union Jack will fly Sunday in commemoration

Collection of recipes and survival tips such as saving crumbs in a jar is a surprise hit as country struggles to make ends meet

No woman or sub-Saharan African had won the prize since 2004, when the committee honoured Wangari Maathai of Kenya.

Police identified a part-time college student Friday as the Virginia Tech gunman who shot a police officer to death and then killed himself.

Following a Toronto Star investigation, provincial Education Minister Laurel Broten has announced sweeping changes to how the Ontario College of Teachers deals with verbally, physically and sexually abusive teachers.

Mayor Rob Ford plays a bellicose Cannon Doll in an amusing cameo in The Nutcracker ballet at the Four Seasons Centre.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Moscow to protest election results in what was the largest political protest in the Russian capital since the fall of communism in 1991.

Ryan Braun, the National League�s Most Valuable Player, has reportedly tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug. According to a report by ESPN, Braun is disputing the test results through arbitration. If the positive test is upheld, the Milwauke

What Kurt Browning had to say about Patrick Chan feeling under-appreciated and bellyaching about how hockey players get all the attention in Canada spoke volumes

The soaring popularity of a fat-rich fad diet has depleted stocks of butter in Norway creating a looming Christmas culinary crisis

Twin, residential high-rises connected in the middle by what Dutch design firm MVRDV unveiled as a "pixelated cloud" calls to mind what many are saying is a "macabre" tableaux depicting the 9/11 attacks

From Shine from Yahoo! Canada: That pain that you feel at the end of a long night-no, it's not a hangover and it's not exhaustion.