NEWS IMAGE COLLAGE / for 12-2008

U.S. researchers believe they have identified a wintering ground for the North Atlantic right whale, an endangered species.

Jarome Iginla scored twice including the winner and Mike Cammalleri added a pair of his own on top of three assists as the Calgary Flames celebrated the new year by beating the rival Edmonton Oilers 6-4

A massive fire swept through an upscale Bangkok nightclub on New Year's Eve, killing at least 59 people and injuring at more than 200 others.

Victoria-based Viking Air believes it can save the Canadian government $1.5 billion and put as many as 350 people to work if it can convince the federal government that it has the right plan to upgrade and modernize the country's aging fleet of Buffalo se

Israel ramped up preparations Wednesday for a possible ground assault of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, amassing more troops at the border after it rebuffed a possible ceasefire.

From a rockslide that shut-down the Sea-to-Sky Highway for five days while crews blasted boulders to clear the road, to snowstorms that grounded airplanes and made travel a nightmare, it was a year of strange weather.

HALIFAX -- Despite a recent spate of storms and the resulting wave of power outages, officials with Nova Scotia's electric utility were confident the company could deal with another powerful storm that was expected to bring blizzard conditions across much

With only a few hours to go until voting stops, Newfoundland's Gros Morne National Park and the Maritime's Bay of Fundy are in a tight race to represent Canada in the international "New 7 Wonders of Nature" contest.

One of the three survivors of Sunday's avalanches near Fernie, B.C., fought back tears Wednesday as he recounted his "gut-wrenching" decision to leave eight friends who died under the snow.

A young man who went missing Sunday while snowboarding on Mount Seymour in North Vancouver is being treated in hospital for frostbite to the hands and feet.

John Tavares scored three times, including into an empty net, to lead Canada in a wild 7-4 comeback over the United States at the world junior hockey championships in Ottawa on New Year's Eve.

Czech forward Peter Cajanek scored a hat trick and Moscow Dynamo hung on for a 5-3 win over Canada on Wednesday in the final of the Spengler Cup in Davos, Switzerland.

Tokarski will start in goal when Canada plays the United States at the 2009 world junior hockey championship on Wednesday night and although it is not a must-win game, the stakes are high.

"I could say right now that if the Mexican government was to give me a pardon, I would go back," Brenda Martin wrote in an article titled I Languished in a Mexican Prison, published online at the social media website Orato.

The eight victims were well equipped for the outdoors with avalanche beacons, shovels and probes. But it's unclear if they had the most important tool they needed--information about the avalanche threat.

With Roberto Luongo sidelined until at least the All-Star break, the Vancouver Canucks solidified their goaltending situation as they have acquired Jason LaBarbera from the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for a 7th round pick in the 2009 NHL Entry draft.

The bodies of three Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan were transported along the Highway of Heroes on Tuesday, as mourners looked on from overpasses and waved Canadian flags.

Vancouver police are warning people to be aware of their surroundings after a 59-year-old woman was beaten and robbed while walking home from a SkyTrain station Monday night.

Jonathon Kalinski's first NHL goal, early in the second period, stood up as the winner as the Philadelphia Flyers beat the host Vancouver Canucks, 3-2 on Tuesday night.

Researchers in Canada and the United States are closely watching the Alsek River, worried that a moving glacier nearby could block the river and potentially flood a village in Alaska.

LONDON - A Second World War hero who fought valiantly in North Africa despite severe wounds has died 68 years after he was "posthumously" awarded Britain's highest combat honour by officials who thought he had been killed.

TORONTO - Ruined outings and cold that set teeth clattering even as Arctic ice disappeared at alarming rates gave Canadians more than their share of weather-related reasons to grumble over the past year.

CHICAGO - The National Hockey League is looking at holding its annual awards show in Las Vegas.

The Royal Canadian Air Farce makes its final flight on CBC Television on Wednesday.

Wondering why George W. Bush went from being one of the most popular U.S. presidents in history to record low disapproval ratings? Blame the weather, two former White House insiders have told the magazine Vanity Fair.

Thousands of people in the province are rushing to prove their Mi'kmaq ancestry so they can join a landless band set to form in late 2009.

As the Taliban's snowbirds frolic in camps in Pakistan, experts reflect on the protagonists in Afghanistan

Israel is considering suspending its offensive on Hamas-ruled Gaza for 48 hours to give Hamas militants an opening to halt their rocket fire, but the threat of a ground offensive remains if the truce does not hold, Israeli officials said Tuesday.

AT THE GREENWICH PRIME MERIDIAN, England - Eager to say goodbye to the worst economic year since the Great Depression? You'll have to wait a second.

TORONTO -- The Barenaked Ladies' cover of the old "Hockey Night in Canada" theme song will debut on TSN on New Year's Eve.

Hydro One is working to restore power to some 68,000 of its customers who are still in the dark after a series of weekend windstorms.

WASHINGTON -- A new NASA report says that the seat restraints, suits and helmets of the doomed crew of the space shuttle Columbia didn't work well

A dinosaur fossil field discovered this year in eastern China is being touted as the largest of its kind on earth, according to a Chinese paleontologist.

A set of genes helped to make the 1918 flu pandemic strain so deadly by giving the virus the ability to copy itself in lung tissue, scientists have found.

A Maritime treasure is up against Mount Everest and the Grand Canyon to become one of the new seven natural wonders of the world.

Former Northwest Territories premier Nellie Cournoyea was among three northerners to join the Order of Canada on Tuesday.

The owner of two horses rescued from the remote B.C. mountains says he wants his horses back, but at least one of the rescuers thinks the animals should go to a new home.

Whether it was frozen, flooding or falling, water and its incarnations were at the heart of Canadian weather woes in 2008, according to Environment Canada's annual roundup.

An eighth man's body has been found at the site of two avalanches that roared down a mountainside in Fernie, B.C., on the weekend.

The father-in-law of a missing snowmobiler tearfully thanked the public for its support Tuesday morning, and reiterated he hopes his son-in-law will be found alive after the bodies of seven other snowmobilers were recovered this week following two B.C. av

Tens of thousands of Ontario residents are still without power following a major windstorm, and parts of the province remain under warning for more high winds.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Blame bad luck for the deaths of nine Canadian soldiers in southern Afghanistan this month, say military officials at Kandahar Airfield.

Team Canada improved to 3-0 at the world junior championships on Monday night with a 5-1 victory over a hard-working German side in Ottawa.

The latest potential saviour for the NHL's Vancouver Canucks flew into town on Monday afternoon and was hustled past a pile of local media at the airport to be whisked away by van.

A wind warning is in effect for Metro Vancouver, and more than 25,000 BC Hydro customers in the Lower Mainland are without power Monday due to downed power lines.

Canada picked up the win it needed Monday at the Spengler Cup, and now faces a showdown with Moscow Dynamo for a berth in the final.

Rescue crews have found six bodies in the aftermath of two avalanches in a backcountry area near Fernie, B.C.

It was a week of groundbreaking developments in Canada's efforts to send much-needed aerial backup to troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

VANCOUVER, B.C. - Thousands of airline passengers stranded. Roads impassable because of snow. Power failures by the dozen.

New Brunswick's endangered bald eagle population is soaring to heights unseen in decades, new estimates from the Department of Natural Resources show.

For the first time ever, hunters in Arviat were asked not to hunt polar bears in a bid to help conserve what is said to be a dwindling population. Then the community, home to about 2,200 people, was invaded by bears sauntering up the coast.

The Conservative government has decided that U.S. aerospace giant Sikorsky won't have to pay $36 million in late penalties even though the maritime helicopter it is building for the Canadian Forces is being delivered two years late.

Four separate investigations are now underway into the death of 83-year-old Juliette Bombardier, whose body was found outside her Kamloops care home on Friday morning

Passengers on SkyTrain got the ride of their lives Saturday afternoon when they were forced to take the trip with the doors open.

A man who helped dig a kilometer-long trench through deep snow to rescue two stranded horses says the animals shouldn't go back to their original owner.

Israel declared the areas abutting the Gaza Strip a closed military zone on Monday, barring civilians and journalists from the region.

Sunday night, the Vancouver Canucks built a 3-0 lead through two periods and cruised to victory over a visiting Ottawa team that barely competed.

Team Canada continued on with the punishment that the Germans handed out the night before, scoring eight power play goals en route to a 15-0 victory over Kazakhstan at the World Junior Hockey Championship on Sunday.

OTTAWA - Like many a weary reveller, Canada's national police force will enter 2009 with a list of earnest resolutions in hand and an honest desire for self-improvement top of mind.

Through the ups and downs of a trying first few years in the major leagues, Justin Morneau was always able to count on the steady guidance of veterans like Torii Hunter and Johan Santana

Premier Danny Williams has taken on prime ministers and oil executives. He's bulldozed his way through each conflict, helping bolster his staggering popularity in Newfoundland and Labrador. But his latest gambit - rushing through legislation to seize m

OTTAWA - As Canada enters its fourth full year of fighting in southern Afghanistan, new figures prepared for the Defence Department show the number of wounded soldiers has climbed to over 360.

Two days after soundly beating the Czech Republic 8-1 at the World Junior Hockey Championship, Canada's National Junior Team returns to the ice to face Kazakhstan at SBP Arena this afternoon.

WINNIPEG - The new chairman of a secretive pro-life Parliamentary caucus is pledging to rekindle the abortion debate in Canada and bring "more value" to the lives of unborn children.

Israel called up 6,500 reserve soldiers and moved tanks, infantry and armoured units to the Gaza border

VANCOUVER -- Gang violence appears to be on the rise in B.C. as gangs war over control of the lucrative drug trade, but there are few places where the increase has been more severe than in Prince George.

The environment was top of mind for much of this year, with mostly gloom and doom science stories about everything from shrinking ice at the poles, to the ever-expanding hole in the ozone layer making headlines around the world and causing us to wonder wh

At least 200,000 people are without electricity in southwest and central Ontario as wind gusts of up to 100 kilometres per hour sweep across the province.

Two Canadian soldiers killed this weekend in Afghanistan are on their way home, after a solemn twilight ramp ceremony at Kandahar Airfield Sunday evening.

Israeli jets carried out a second day of air strikes on the Gaza Strip on Sunday, a day after at least 280 people died in missile attacks that targeted mainly Hamas security compounds.

The Vancouver Canucks are struggling, having lost their last two games, but their opponent in Sunday's home game is worse off.

Two Canadian soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb west of Kandahar city on Saturday, bringing to three the number of Canadian troops killed there since Friday.

The Vancouver Canucks will be without the services of Taylor Pyatt for an indefinite period of time after the winger suffered a broken right foot in Friday's loss to the Edmonton Oilers.

The death toll has risen past 225 following Israeli air strikes Saturday on dozens of Hamas security compounds in the Gaza Strip while hundreds of Israeli troops were said to be heading to the border in preparation for a possible ground invasion of the Pa

Venezuela will seize several gold mining concessions that previous governments granted private operators, in a bid to supplement falling oil prices with proceeds from state-controlled gold, President Hugo Chavez said Saturday.

Former Toronto Maple Leafs forward John Pohl scored the shootout wnner to lead host HC Davos to a 6-5 win over Canada in a wild game on Saturday in Switzerland.

A consumer advocate group says it has received about 50 complaints a day about Air Canada since Christmas Eve, when bad weather triggered days of flight delays and cancellations across the country

For the past few days, officials with the City of Vancouver and authorities at the Vancouver School Board have been discussing opening the doors to Kitsilano Secondary School, on the city's west side, over the Christmas break

MEXICO CITY - A Mexican beauty queen detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations has been stripped of her crown in the Hispanoamerican Queen pageant

TORONTO - Palestinian-Canadians mourning the deaths of more than 200 people Saturday in Gaza are urging Ottawa to send aid in the wake of Israeli air strikes

Ontario has a $26-billion decision to make in 2009 -- Who will construct the province's next generation of nuclear electricity generating plants?

Junior coach looking to keep expectations high in early round games

An all-Canadian moon rover is just one project being considered as the head of the Canadian Space Agency puts the final touches on a long-term plan to chart its future course.

BOZEMAN, Mont. - A researcher at Montana State University says Jell-O, ultrasound, microwaves and electroshocking are among possible solutions to eliminate lake trout in Yellowstone National Park.

SYDNEY, Australia - A radical conservationist group said it lobbed 25 bottles of rotten butter at Japanese whalers in the remote and icy Antarctic Ocean.

PHOENIX -- In Arizona, seeing Joe Arpaio on TV is nothing new. But the self-described "America's toughest sheriff" now has a national platform to pursue lawbreakers that stretches beyond the 5 o'clock news.

SASKATOON -- Three people have been injured in a knife attack at a Saskatoon apartment complex.

SASKATOON -- Monique Haakensen is not just another university student who claims to have spent her academic years occupied by beer

Ottawa says it wants to make sealing more humane by restricting how hunters use the controversial hakapik club. The government faces pressure from the European Union, which has threatened to ban imports of Canadian seal products next year.

In a year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Campbell said his Liberal government can do better when it comes to helping children, but its main focus is on giving programs time to develop and take root.

Dale Wasserman, who wrote the Broadway hits One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Man of La Mancha, has died at age 94 from congestive heart failure.

It seems like a long time ago, but it was only Sept. 7 when Stephen Harper decided it was preferable to ignore his own fixed-date election law rather than permit the 39th Parliament to return for its fall sitting.

There has been an ample number of amusing and absurd moments in world politics over the last 12 months (we'll leave the horrible ones for now).

Defence Minister Peter MacKay joined Canadian troops at a solemn ramp ceremony at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan Saturday, as the casket of Pte. Michael Bruce Freeman was loaded onto a military aircraft to begin the journey home.

A series of Israeli air strikes on dozens of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip have killed more than 100 people, according to local medical officials.

Edmonton Oilers built a 3-0 lead and then held on by their fingernails for a 3-2 win on the road against the Vancouver Canucks on Boxing Day

TORONTO -- After a cell phone goes skinny dipping in a portable coffee mug, many are likely to think it worthy of a repair instead of financing a new one.

Ohlund, 32, is playing out his option on a four-year contract that pays him $3.5 US million this season

VANCOUVER, B.C. - American conservation groups are adding their voices to concerns over a coalbed methane project in the southeast region of B.C.

Environment Canada is warning British Columbians to expect a "mixed bag" of weather conditions this weekend, as snow, rain and heavy winds are all in the forecast.

John Tavares is certainly living up to his billing at the World Junior Hockey Championship, scoring Canada's first two goals on the power play and assisting on another as the defending gold medalists soundly beat the Czech Republic 8-1 in their opening ga

Canada is off to a strong start in defending its Spengler Cup championship after beating Energie Karlovy Vary 3-1 in Friday's tournament opener in Davos, Switzerland.

A Mexican beauty queen arrested in a truck filled with weapons was ordered jailed pending an investigation into possible drug trafficking and gun charges, authorities said Friday.

Pardo had US $17,000 cash saran-wrapped to his legs and stuffed inside a girdle he was wearing, Raney said. The killer also had purchased a plane ticket for a flight from Los Angeles to Canada on Christmas morning, he said.

A British Columbia company believes it has developed just the right product for a thirsty world, one that produces fresh, clean drinking water out of thin air.

The U.S. dominated their world junior tournament opener on Friday, beating Germany 8-2.

Indonesian reefs once thought to be devastated because of the 2006 tsunami have come back much more quickly than expected, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society said Friday.

Petitclerc, 39, who won five gold medals and set three world records while competing in her final Paralympic Games this summer in Beijing, has been voted The Canadian Press female athlete of the year. She becomes the first Paralympian to receive the award

Several hundred New Brunswick Power customers in New Brunswick were still without power on Boxing Day. As of 3:30 p.m. AT, more than 800 homes and businesses in Moncton were without power.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A roadside bomb has killed another Canadian soldier and wounded three others west of Kandahar city.

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - The victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami were honoured by thousands of mourners Friday who prayed, burned candles and shared meals on beaches from Indonesia to India.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- He probably hasn't dated in two decades, but the survival of a species may depend on whether Tam can get lucky soon.

British Columbia's Lower Mainland is in for more snow Friday, which could again create headaches for travellers.

Israel reopened its border with Gaza on Friday to allow deliveries of humanitarian aid, despite continued rocket and mortar fire from the coastal strip and growing expectations of a large-scale Israeli military campaign against Palestinian militants.

To some entrepreneurs, the wild and icy seas between Australia and Antarctica could become a money spinner by engineering nature to soak up carbon dioxide and then selling carbon credits worth millions of dollars.