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The victims of last week's so-called crossbow killings in the Toronto district of Scarborough were the mother and two brothers of the man charged with three counts of first-degree murder. A court-ordered publication ban put in place after Brett Anthony Ryan, 35, was charged in the triple homicide Friday prevented CBC News from publishing the names of the victims until now.

A topless woman protesting the Conservative government’s anti-terror bill was ejected from the House of Commons on Monday during a discussion about honouring Vietnamese refugees. The protester, Neda Topaloski with the Canadian wing of the international Femen movement, was in the sitting in public gallery, with two guards standing nearby on either side of her, she said. One of the security guards stepped out briefly, so seeing an opportunity, she took off her shirt. The officers gave chase and Ms. Topaloski ran about the gallery, screaming: “C-51 is war on freedom.”

People with grievous and irremediable medical conditions should have the right to ask a doctor to help them die, Canada's highest court says in a unanimous ruling.. The Supreme Court of Canada says a law that makes it illegal for anyone to help a person commit suicide should be amended to allow doctors to help in specific situations. The ruling only applies to competent adults with enduring, intolerable suffering who clearly consent to ending their lives. The court has given federal and provincial governments 12 months to craft legislation to respond to the ruling; the ban on doctor-assisted suicide stands...

B.C.'s Minister of Advanced Education has revoked his consent for the proposed law school at Trinity Western University. . . .The school, which would be built at the university's Langley campus, had become a lightning rod for controversy because of a line in the university’s covenant that requires all students, administrators and faculty to abstain from "sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman."A legal challenged launched against Mr. Virk and TWU by two Canadian law firms said the minister had "created a two-tiered system of legal education" when he granted consent. After some deliberation, the law...

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says all candidates running for nomination to represent the Liberal Party in 2015 will have to support the party's pro-choice position, but that the same rule does not apply to sitting MPs. "I have made it clear that future candidates need to be completely understanding that they will be expected to vote pro-choice on any bills," Trudeau said Wednesday following his party's weekly caucus meeting in Ottawa. Trudeau said that rule, however, does not apply to current members of Parliament because they were vetted under a different nomination process.

An increasing number of electric-vehicle driving employees at Silicon Valley companies are finding it hard to access car-charging stations at work, creating incidents of "charge rage" among drivers. Installation of electric vehicle charging ports at some companies has not kept pace with soaring demand, creating thorny etiquette issues in the workplace, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer for German software company SAP, says the company's 16 charging stations are now not nearly enough for the 61 employees who drive electric vehicles. Graf says cars are getting unplugged while charging, creating animosity between employees. A charge...

A Toronto barbershop has found itself at the centre of a human rights complaint after its barbers refused to cut a woman's hair. Faith McGregor, 35, went to the Terminal Barber Shop on Bay Street, back in June looking for a haircut. But she was turned away. The barbers, who are all Muslim, told her their religion didn't allow them to cut the hair of a woman who is not a member of their family. McGregor filed a human rights complaint.

A stage at Toronto's Downsview Park has collapsed in advance of a scheduled Radiohead concert, killing one person and injuring at least three, according to Toronto EMS. Calls came in to emergency crews at about 4 p.m. ET. One person was transported to Sunnybrook Hospital in serious condition while two others assessed at the scene have minor injuries. CBC's Maria Nunes was driving by the park when she noticed the commotion. From her vantage point. she could see five ambulances, two police cars and a firetruck. The 7:30 p.m. concert is cancelled. Gates had been scheduled to open at 5...

An international manhunt for a Canadian suspect intensified today as authorities identified the victim of a gruesome killing and dismemberment as Lin Jun, a Chinese student who was studying in Montreal. Montreal police have confirmed Lin, 33, was killed about a week ago. Authorities believe he was in a relationship with Luka Rocco Magnotta, a self-styled porn star who fled Canada last weekend, and is now wanted for first-degree murder and carrying out an indignity to a human body. Montreal authorities believe Magnotta killed Lin and videotaped the act, before mailing body parts to political parties in Ottawa.

OTTAWA — A man who once dated notorious sex-killer Karla Homolka now stands accused of murder himself after the grisly discovery of a torso in Montreal, whose severed foot and hand were mailed to the Conservative and Liberal party offices in Ottawa. Montreal police have confirmed that Luka Rocco Magnotta — also known by the aliases Eric Clinton Newman and Vladimir Romanov — had dated Homolka. . . . An extensive online profile depicts Magnotta as an alleged former stripper and porn star, who gained notoriety for posting videos of killing kittens online. Various glamour shots show a young man, who is wanted...

An Ontario teachers' union is calling for an end to new Wi-Fi setups in the province's 1,400-plus Catholic schools. The Ontario English Catholic Teacher's Association says computers in all new schools should be hardwired instead of setting up wireless networks. It also says Wi-Fi should not be installed in any more classrooms. In a position paper released on Monday, the union — which represents 45,000 teachers — cites research by the World Health Organization. Last year the global health agency warned about a possible link between radiation from wireless devices such as cellphones and cancer. Some believe wireless access to...

The Shafias will appeal their first-degree murder convictions based on what their lawyers consider prejudicial evidence presented at their trial. Hamed Shafia’s lawyer, Patrick McCann, has already filed application with the Ontario Court of Appeal on behalf of his client and told CBC the other two lawyers involved with the case will likely do the same. “He is quite determined to pursue it and continue the fight, so to speak,” McCann said Tuesday. Echoing reports made in his closing arguments in the trial, the Ottawa-based lawyer said statements from the victims made to their boyfriends and teachers, who testified in...

The federal government is considering changes to the law that will make it easier for foreign same-sex couples who married in Canada to obtain divorces, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Thursday. . . . Ottawa was pressed to clarify its position on gay marriage after an apparent about-face on the issue surfaced in a Toronto divorce case. A lesbian couple who married in Canada seven years ago and recently filed for divorce was told by a Department of Justice lawyer that their marriage was not legal. The stated reason was that because the partners live in Florida and England, where same-sex marriage remains...

The U.S. delegation will not offer an apology for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki when it attends a ceremony in Japan on Friday marking the 65th anniversary of the attacks, which brought World War II to an end. State Department spokesman Noel Clay said no apology will be offered by the delegation, to be led by U.S. Ambassador John Roos, at the ceremony in Hiroshima. "As Assistant Secretary [P.J.] Crowley stated, at this particular point, we thought it was the right thing to do," Clay said in an e-mail on Thursday. "Ambassador Roos will attend the ceremony to...

German cannibal Armin Meiwes is back in court where an appeal is being heard almost 15 months after he was imprisoned for eight and a half years. Prosecutors are pressing for him to be jailed for life, while his defence wants the sentence cut to five years. Meiwes was jailed for manslaughter in January 2004 for killing and eating a willing victim he met via the internet. The judge denied the prosecutors' call for a murder conviction, which would have meant a 15-year jail sentence. Both the prosecution and the defence appealed against the manslaughter verdict. His defence team say...

TORONTO - A man from New Brunswick who called off a shooting spree after a chance encounter with a friendly dog appeared in court in Toronto on Thursday to face several weapons charges. The 43-year-old man, who turned himself in to police on Wednesday afternoon, said he'd loaded his car with guns and ammunition in New Brunswick before setting out with plans of randomly shooting people in Toronto. On arriving in east-end Toronto, the man reportedly went into a nearby park to load his weapons. There, he told police, a playful dog approached him. That encounter apparently changed his mind....

U.S. to cut softwood lumber duty: B.C. minister CTV.ca News StaffCanada's softwood lumber industry will see U.S. duties on its products cut by half starting in January, B.C.'s forests minister says.Mike de Jong characterized the ruling as preliminary at this point, but said it pointed in the right direction.The duty is currently 27 per cent. That would be reduced to 13 per cent, he said.A federal official said the final determination won't come until December.The U.S. Commerce Dept. is being required to acknowledge its initial numbers for calculating duties were not correct, de Jong said.But duties have gone down in...

TORONTO -- A gay married couple said they were refused entry into the United States after a U.S. customs official at the Toronto airport wouldn't accept their customs clearance form as a family. Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell said they abandoned their trip to Georgia because the customs official insisted that they fill out individual forms as single people. After complaining to a customs supervisor, Bourassa said, the couple were told that they wouldn't be allowed into the United States as a family because the country doesn't recognize same-sex marriages.

Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel is applying for refugee status in order to return to Canada. He was handed over to Canadian immigration officials by U.S. authorities on Wednesday. Zundel, 63, had been in custody in Tennessee for allegedly over-staying a temporary U.S. visa. He publicly questions whether the extermination of millions of Jews during the Second World War ever happened. He was once described by the U.S. Jewish Anti-Defamation League as "Canada's leading pro-Nazi and Holocaust-denial propagandist," Zundel had been living in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains in Sevierville, about 30 kilometres east of Knoxville, for the last...

Gun control: Schools ban even the word Sarah RuttanThe Ottawa Citizen The Upper Canada District School Board has removed the word gun from all spelling tests in its schools as a result of a complaint by parents of a Grade 1 student. Every Monday, Chloe Sousa, 7, comes home from Lombardy Public School with a list of 10 words to learn, and each Friday her class is tested on these words. By last week, the class had worked its way through the alphabet to the letter G. Amanda and Mark Sousa, who consider themselves to be pacifists and who are...