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An Egyptian court released a detailed ruling on Sunday on why it sentenced three journalists working for al-Jazeera English to three years in prison for airing what it described as “false news” and biased coverage. The case has long been criticised by press freedom campaigners and others. The ruling, published by the state news agency Mena, said Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian national, Peter Greste, an Australian journalist, and BaherMohamed, an Egyptian producer, were by default members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood group, which Egyptian authorities consider a terrorist organisation. “It has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that the al-Jazeera media...

A brilliant green fireball startled onlookers across western Canada on Nov. 20th (5:30 pm MST) when it split the evening sky and fragmented during a series of thunderous explosions. "The sky was lit up almost like daytime for 3 or 4 seconds," reports Gordon Blomgren of Alberta. Murray McDonnell of northwestern Saskatchewan says "my wife and I saw a brilliant flash of blue white light, like lightning. About one minute later a long rumbling sound shook the house." Click to play video Andy Bartlett video-recorded the event from a 10th-floor apartment in Edmonton, Alberta: The brilliant fireball appeared to be...

Big oil is taking no chances with the outcome of Alberta’s royalty review currently underway. In 2007, the industry was surprised when royalties were jacked up despite dozens of corporate presentations to the royalty review panel warning of the fragility of investment economics and the damage increased royalties would cause. Therefore producers and others with significant vested interest have already started the lobbying process. Such is the case with Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) which made a slide presentation to the new NDP Alberta government on August 20. The industry has obviously learned never to assume politicians actually understand what...

An agreement by federal party leaders to steer clear of Blue Jays games until Canadians vote on Oct. 19 drew giggles and guffaws from baseball fans after Sunday’s game. “I guess they’re bad luck,” Taylor Marr, 25, said with a laugh. The Grimsby man was surprised to hear the Jays had lost recently in games when Tom Mulcair, Stephen Harper, and Justin Trudeau were in the stands. “That’s crazy, they always win now; they never lose,” he said, shaking his head. But if keeping the Jays winning means Harper, Mulcair, and Trudeau have to avoid the stadium, so be it....

. . . Mrs. Clinton’s . . . book “Hard Choices” . . . is a road map to bring Mrs. Clinton to justice by her own hand. . . . Mrs. Clinton emphasizes, in detail, the rigorous security measures she was subject to as secretary of state . . . She specifically acknowledges security breaches of home computers by hackers. She writes that “people of good faith understand the need for sensitive diplomatic communications to protect . . . the national interest.” . . . She forcefully condemns the illegal disclosure of classified material by third parties, e.g., WikiLeaks.

A shipping container stolen from Montreal's port this week may have been found in Repentigny, Que. — but the $10 million in silver inside of it at the time of the heist is nowhere to be found. The Maersk container lifted from the port was found on Saturday afternoon on St-Paul Street in Repentigny, a small city just off the northeast tip of the island of Montreal. Search launched for semi-trailer after $10M in silver stolen from Port of Montreal It appears to have been detached from the semi-trailer — also stolen — that was carrying it, and left on...

A recent decision by the Québec government to authorize fraudulent death certificates that hide the true cause of death in cases of euthanasia represents a serious threat to transparency and accountability in the application of the Québec euthanasia regime. Acts of euthanasia carried out pursuant to Québec law are public acts funded by the state and carried out by state actors. The notion that doctors should be permitted to falsify death certificates so as to hide the true cause of death in cases of euthanasia is a troubling affront to medical ethics, transparency and accountability, says Toronto Health and Constitutional...

sources headed to the Toronto International Film Festival tell Page Six that some stars may boycott his branded Trump Toronto Hotel, which was buzzing with starry activity just a year ago. “No one’s staying at the Trump” this year, sniffed one showbiz vet. “People are not going back. Talent does not want to stay there. It’s like the Beverly Hills Hotel.” [snip] A Weinstein rep told us of its move: “It was simply based on convenience and logistics” rather than “anything to do with Mr. Trump’s politics.” Harvey Weinstein has joked to the Hollywood Reporter that his liberal mom is...

A nice catch by Sam Stein of HuffPo from Rand’s interview with Boston Herald Radio. Skip to around 11:00 for the key bit.I … did not expect a competition between Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul over who could conjure up a better Nazi allusion for Republicans. Or rather, I didn’t expect it until the election turned to foreign policy. “There have been a lot of dumb ideas put out,” Paul said, speaking with Boston Herald Radio. “One that the Mexicans will pay for a wall, [which] was probably the dumbest of dumb ideas. But putting a wall up between...

Facing a congressional subpoena, a former State Department staffer connected to Hillary Clinton's private email server has decided to invoke his Fifth Amendment right. Attorneys for Bryan Pagliano, a former State Department staffer who received a subpoena to testify and provide documents to the House Select Committee, wrote the committee notifying Committee chairman, Trey Gowdy that Pagliano would plead the fifth. Gowdy wants Pagliano to appear before the Benghazi Committee to provide documents “related to the servers or systems” operated and owned by Clinton. Mr. Pagliano’s legal counsel told the committee on Tuesday that he would plead the 5th to...

WINNIPEG, Manitoba, September 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- A renowned Canadian judge is calling for an investigation into why two Canadian abortion centers failed to report an underaged girl who was forced by her stepfather to undergo two abortions after being repeatedly raped by him, one at the former Morgentaler Clinic in Newfoundland and the other at a Winnipeg, Manitoba hospital. Retired Manitoba justice Ted Hughes told CBC News that the province of Manitoba should investigate how a 12-year-old girl with a previous record of abortion could be given another abortion and not have providers bring the child to the attention...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Having staked his reputation on strong economic management, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has decided that the best way to win re-election when the headlines say recession is to convince the country it is no longer in one. Tuesday brought the worst kind of news for a prime minister campaigning for a rare fourth term in office: government data that confirmed Canada's economy contracted for the second quarter in a row, the technical definition of recession. But Harper shrugged off the data from the first half of the year, saying Canada had a "couple of weak months,"...

Democratic strategist James Carville slammed “tool of the Koch Brothers” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), saying he “just feeds the New York Times stuff, and they put it in the paper. Just like the neocons fed the New York Times a bunch of bunk they put on the front page of the paper, basically helped start a war” on Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes.” Carville said of the Clinton email scandal, “my question is, will this rise to the level of scandal as the white house christmas card list back in the ’90s that had 140 hours...

To take down the so-called Islamic State in Syria, the influential former head of the CIA wants to co-opt jihadists from America’s arch foe. Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus. The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast....

The latest brilliant plan to curtail Isis in the Middle East? Give more weapons to current members of al-Qaida. The Daily Beast reported that former CIA director David Petraeus, still somehow entrenched in the DC Beltway power circles despite leaking highly classified secrets, is now advocating arming members of the al-Nusra Front in Syria, an offshoot of al-Qaida and a designated terrorist organization. Could there be a more dangerous and crazy idea?

Canadian Oil Sands Ltd., the largest owner of the giant Syncrude oil-sands project, said on Sunday that it has halted production after a fire damaged equipment at its synthetic crude oil processing facility in northern Alberta. The company said the fire, which occurred early Saturday and was extinguished without any injuries, affected pipes connected to a water treatment unit at Syncrude’s heavy oil upgrader on the site of its Mildred Lake oil-sands surface mine. The cause of the blaze is under investigation, it said. While the upgrader’s core machinery wasn’t damaged and the strip mine continues to operate, Canadian Oil...

TORONTO — Outside the quarantine zone Tuesday, life carried on as usual. Cars backed up. Fire trucks idled. Men (and women) went about their business. But inside the cordon, in the heart of Toronto’s financial district, things were oddly, eerily calm. A lone police officer stood on Bay Street, looking bored and chewing gum, while outside the tape, office workers looked up, craned their necks and gaped. Toronto Police blocked off a congested clump of streets in the commercial core for more than 24 hours Monday and Tuesday. The culprit: a wonky, but as it turned out perfectly safe, spire...

EXCLUSIVE: At least four classified Hillary Clinton emails had their markings changed to a category that shields the content from Congress and the public, Fox News has learned, in what State Department whistleblowers believed to be an effort to hide the true extent of classified information on the former secretary of state’s server. The changes, which came to light after the first tranche of 296 Benghazi emails was released in May, was confirmed by two sources -- one congressional, the other intelligence. The four emails originally were marked classified after a review by career officials at the State Department. But...

For all the talk about a southern border wall (ahem, Mr. Trump), Scott Walker has an additional concern: Canada. Given his support for building a U.S.-Mexico border wall to protect against terrorist threats, the Wisconsin governor was asked on NBC’s Meet the Press by host Chuck Todd if he wanted to build a northern border wall. Walker, a Republican candidate for president, said a U.S.-Canadian border “is a legitimate issue for us to look at.” “Some people have asked us about that in New Hampshire,” Walker said. “They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought...

Scott Walker on Sunday said he was considering a fence on the border with Canada: "Some people have asked us about that in New Hampshire. They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago. So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at," Walker said about building a wall along the Canada-U.S. border. Note the key phrase: "That is a legitimate issue for us to look at." Now Walker said he was misunderstood, and he wasn't...