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WASHINGTON (AP) - Stepped-up inspections at the Canadian and Mexican borders have led to lines nearly as long as they were after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The longer lines of people driving into the United States from Mexico or Canada, some returning U.S. citizens, have appeared over the past month or two at several ports of entry. The wait to cross became so long this month at Blue Water Bridge, which connects Port Huron, Mich., with Point Edward/Sarnia, Ontario, that the Ministry of Transportation in Ontario set up portable toilets along the road. "Many motorists have become stranded in...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian War Museum has bowed to pressure from veterans and agreed to change a controversial exhibit critical of Allied bombing of German cities in World War Two. The decision had some historians crying foul that a public outcry could force a change but others said the exhibit had given an inaccurate impression of the bombing campaign, which killed 600,000 Germans. The exhibit refers to how the value and morality of the bombing campaign remains bitterly contested. The museum in Ottawa is still deciding how to revise it, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday. "Although Bomber Command and...

Army News video: RCA training for gun line defence SHILO, Manitoba - Royal Canadian Artillery provides fire support and defence from advancing enemy.

Middle class wants to escape drug cartels, corrupt authorities Manuel Lanveros could have come to Canada through normal immigration channels as a skilled immigrant. Instead, the Mexican citizen simply hopped on a plane and asked for refugee asylum here because, he says, he couldn't afford to risk his life on the two-year wait. An architect with 15 years of experience, Lanveros represents a new wave of Mexican refugees who contradict the desperate day-labourer stereotype: educated, upper-middle-class professionals who claim corrupt authorities are failing to protect them from drug cartels, abusive spouses or gay bashers. According to the Immigration and Refugee...

Canadian Catholic News OTTAWA, Canada (CCN) – A recent Canadian Press-Decima Research Poll shows Canadians are divided on the role God played – or did not play – in the creation of humans. But that does not mean the Intelligent Design controversy raging in the United States will come to Canada. According to the poll released July 3, 26 percent of Canadians believe “that God created human beings pretty much in their present form within the last 10,000 years or so,” while 34 percent said “human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but...

Read email before watching video These are some examples of the fight in Afghanistan.. These video shots are not made through the shooter's telescopic sight... they are made looking through the spotter's scope. The spotter lies right next to the sniper and helps the sniper to find and home in on the target. The sniper is using a 50 caliber rifle. A 50 cal. round is about 7-8 inches long and the casing is about an inch in diameter. The bullet itself is one-half inch in diameter and roughly one and one-half inches long. Pay close attention to the beginning...

Canada's foreign minister said Wednesday he has asked his American counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, to ensure that a 20-year-old Canadian captive at Guantánamo Bay be granted better access to his family, legal counsel and educational materials. Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said he contacted Rice last week about the case of Omar Khadr, who has been in U.S. custody since he was 15 and is accused by the U.S. government of being a terrorist. ''I asked specifically about his well-being and for a medical and psychological assessment to be done,'' MacKay said. ``We're going to continue to provide consular access as...

A bomb was detonated outside a Jewish community center in Montreal, Canada, during the weeklong Jewish holiday of Passover, police reported Wednesday

Residents in Bingham County have started a local chapter of the Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition, which is collecting signatures to once again try to get an initiative to ban gray wolves from Idaho on the ballot. The group failed to gather enough signatures to get a similar initiative on the ballot last year. Coalition Chairman Ron Gillett of Stanley said the group's new goal is to gather 100,000 signatures. He also has instructed petition carriers to make certain that everyone who signs is a registered voter. In 2006, the group collected more than 40,000 signatures in six weeks before running out...

"MEXICO - A B.C. construction worker jailed for more than two years in Mexico over a building contract that went sour says he's been wrongly imprisoned by a corrupt system. "Get me out of here," a frustrated Peter Kimber said yesterday from his prison cell in Huatulco, where he suffers from kidney problems and other ill health. He said he has endured dozens of beatings and atrocious conditions because he can't pay bribes to get out. "I want somebody to actually help save what's left of my life," he said. "I've tried it on my own for two years and...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Immigrants to the small Quebec town of Herouxville must not stone women in public, burn them alive or throw acid on them, according to an extraordinary set of rules made public by the local council. The declaration, published on the town's Web site, has deepened a debate in the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province over how tolerant Quebecers should be towards the customs and traditions of immigrants. "We wish to inform these new arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here," said the declaration, which also...

NEW WESTMINSTER, British Columbia - A Canadian pig farmer confessed to killing 49 women and was caught before he could reach his goal of making it an even 50, prosecutors told jurors at the start of his murder trial Monday. Robert William Pickton, 56, has been charged with killing 26 women, mostly prostitutes and drug addicts who vanished from Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside neighborhood in the 1990s. Prosecutor Derrill Prevett stunned the courtroom by saying that Pickton told investigators, including an undercover officer planted in his jail cell, that he had slain 49 women. "I was going to do one...

TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada's Arctic, scientists said. The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometers (497 miles) south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada's remote north. Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake. (Watch the satellite images that clued in ice watchers) Warwick Vincent of...

The head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday his agency will start removing federal protection from gray wolves in Montana and Idaho by January, regardless of whether Wyoming has submitted an acceptable plan to manage its own wolves by then. Wyoming's plan is tied up in lawsuits, and Fish and Wildlife Director Dale Hall said his agency is moving ahead with Idaho and Montana, where management plans are already in place. ( Canadian ) Wolves were reintroduced to the northern Rocky Mountains a decade ago after being hunted to near-extinction, and now number more than 1,200 in...

<p>After a long hiatus because of a boating accident in which her fiance drowned, Loreena McKinnett is finally back with a just released CD, 'An Ancient Muse'.</p> <p>You can see streaming video footage of “Caravanserai” (from 'An Ancient Muse') performed live at the Alhambra in Granada, Spain (September 2006). It’s an exciting taste of the PBS Great Performances live concert TV special to come in March 2007, 'Nights from the Alhambra'.</p>

Sunni Arab militant groups suspected of ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have established training camps east of Baghdad that are turning out well-disciplined units willing to fight American forces in set-piece battles, American military commanders said Thursday. American soldiers fought such units in a pitched battle last week in the village of Turki, 25 miles south of this Iraqi Army base in volatile Diyala Province, near the Iranian border. At least 72 insurgents and two American officers were killed in more than 40 hours of fighting. American commanders said they called in 12 hours of airstrikes while soldiers shot...

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Taliban vow to retake Panjwai redoubt GRAEME SMITH From Monday's Globe and Mail KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — The Taliban fighter who passed through Kandahar city this weekend seemed remarkably calm and happy, considering the horrors he has seen in the past two weeks. The 37-year-old watched friends torn apart by bombs and shredded by gunfire. More agonizingly for a proud warrior, he saw foreign soldiers seize control of the farmland where he grew up. Hundreds of insurgents had dug trenches to defend Panjwai District, but they ran away when confronted with an onslaught of air power and a grinding advance by...

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Canadian soldiers should join local forces fighting Taliban insurgents inside Pakistan, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says, making a tentative first attempt at raising the explosive issue of foreign troops trespassing on Pakistani territory. Mr. O'Connor held meetings with several military and intelligence officials in Islamabad yesterday in which he urged his counterparts to step up their actions against the insurgents who emerge from hideouts in Pakistan to attack Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan. "Among other things, I suggested that some Pakistan officers be stationed with our troops in Kandahar and Canadian troops be stationed on the Pakistan...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18, 2006 – The Army has authorized award of the Bronze Star Medal for Service to the living Canadian veterans of the 1st Special Services Force for their service to the U.S. Army during World War II. The unit was known as “the Devil’s Brigade” during the war and was one of the first U.S. special operations forces units in the war. The unit included U.S. Army soldiers and soldiers of the 2nd Canadian Parachute Battalion and 2nd Canadian Special Service Battalion of the Special Operations Group. From 1942 to 1944, about 2,500 soldiers served in the unit...