Ukraine, Russia swap soldiers as Putin says only 'political will' in Kyiv can end crisis

Ukraine and Russia swapped soldiers who had entered each other's territory near the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv says Moscow's forces have come to the aid of pro-Russian insurgents advancing for an assault on a major port.

Ukrainian troops and local residents were reinforcing the port of Mariupol on Sunday, the next big city in the path of pro-Russian fighters who pushed back government forces along the Azov Sea this past week in an offensive on a new front.

The new rebel advance has drawn increasing concern from Ukraine's Western allies, who say its success is a result of reinforcement by armoured columns of Russian troops.

European Union leaders agreed on Saturday to draw up new economic sanctions against Moscow, a move hailed by the United States, which is planning tighter sanctions of its own and wants to act jointly with Europe.

Residents bracing for assault

Some residents of Mariupol have taken to the streets to show support for the Ukrainian government as the pro-Russian forces gain ground. Many others have fled from the prospect of an all-out assault on the city of nearly 500,000 people.

"We are proud to be from this city, and we are ready to defend it from the occupiers," said Alexandra, 28, a post office clerk wearing a ribbon in blue and yellow Ukrainian colours.

"We will dig trenches. We will throw petrol bombs at them, the occupiers," she said. "I believe our army and our (volunteer) battalions will protect us."

Ihor, 42, and his wife Lena, 40, were packing their car to flee with their five-year-old daughter. They had sheltered in Mariupol after battle came to their home city Donetsk in July.

"We will not wait for another repetition of war. We did nothing to provoke it, and we do not want to be a part of it," said Lena.

Opposing sides differ on troop swap

The swap of soldiers overnight at the frontier was a rare gesture to ease tension, but Kyiv and Moscow have given starkly opposing accounts of how their troops came to be on each other's territory.

A Russian paratroop commander said an unspecified number of Russian paratroops were swapped for 63 Ukrainian soldiers. A Ukrainian military source said the Russian soldiers numbered 15.

Kyiv and its allies in Europe and the United States say the new rebel offensive has been backed by armoured columns of more than 1,000 Russian troops fighting openly to support the insurgents. The rebels themselves say thousands of Russian troops have fought on their behalf while "on leave".

Moscow denies its troops are fighting in Ukraine and says a small party of its soldiers crossed the border by accident.

Russian Major-General Alexei Ragozin said the paratroops had been handed back after "very difficult" negotiations.

"I consider it unacceptable that our servicemen were detained by the Ukrainian side for so many days. Our lads are upset about everything that happened. They will all receive the necessary psychological and other kinds of help. The lads will all be OK."

Ragozin said Russia, by contrast, had promptly returned hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who at various times have crossed the border when squeezed by rebel forces. He said the latest group of 63 had entered Russia on Wednesday.

Kyiv has in the past said some of its soldiers crossed into Russia to escape from fighting on the Ukrainian side of the frontier, behaviour that contrasts with that of the Russians it says crossed the border to wage war in Ukraine. Ukraine's military spokesman has mocked the idea that the Russians had "got lost like Little Red Riding Hood in the forest."

Russian won't stand aside as people shot point-blank: Putin

The United States and European Union have gradually tightened economic sanctions against Russia, first imposed after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March following the ousting of Kyiv's pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych by protesters.

'Russia cannot stand aside when people are being shot at almost at point blank.'- Vladimir Putin, Russian president

So far, however, the measures have done little to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has referred to southern and eastern Ukraine as "New Russia."

On Sunday, Russian news agencies quoted Putin as saying in an interview on Russia's state TV Channel 
1 that it was up to Kyiv to halt the fighting and accusing the West of contradicting democratic values by supporting Kyiv's military action against the rebels. 

"It must be borne in mind that Russia cannot stand aside when people are being shot at almost at point blank," the Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.

Asked if it was possible to predict the end of the crisis in Ukraine, RIA news agency quoted Putin as saying: "No. It largely depends on the political will of current Ukrainian authorities."

Putin gave a typically defiant public appearance on Friday in which he described Russians and Ukrainians as "practically one people" and compared Kyiv's attempts to recapture rebellious cities with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Russia is a nuclear power that will defend its interests, and foreigners should understand that "it's best not to mess with us," he said.

Moscow has responded to sanctions by banning the import of most Western foodstuffs, stripping French cheese and Polish apples from store shelves and shutting down McDonalds restaurants. The moves reinforce a sense among Russians that they are isolated from a hostile world, as in the days of the Cold War.

More sanctions coming

Agreeing to the Western sanctions has been tricky, not least because the 28-member European Union must take decisions by consensus and many of its countries depend on Russian energy resources.

Nevertheless, the EU has gone further than many had predicted, agreeing to impose sanctions on Russia's financial and oil industries last month after a Malaysian airliner was shot down over rebel territory, killing nearly 300 people, most of them Dutch.

EU leaders agreed on Saturday to ask the executive European Commission to draw up more sanctions measures, which could be adopted in coming days after review.

The White House praised the move to "show strong support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity". But in a sign of the difficulty in achieving an EU consensus, the leader of tiny Slovakia threatened to veto any sanctions that damaged his country's national interest.

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New eruption on Bardarbunga volcano spurs red alert

A new eruption in Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano system spewed lava more than 50 metres in the air on Sunday, prompting authorities to raise their warning of the risk of ash to aviation to the highest level on Sunday.

Iceland's largest volcanic system, which cuts a 190 km long and up to 25 km wide swathe across the North Atlantic island, has been hit by thousands of earthquakes over the last two weeks and scientists have been on high alert.

In 2010, an ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, in a different region of Iceland, closed much of Europe's air space for six days.

Steam and smoke rise over a 1-km-long fissure on Bardarbunga. Another small fissure erupted on Sunday. (Marco Nescher/Reuters)

The latest eruption has not led to ash clouds, however.

"There is no ash, only lava," Eggert Magnusson at the National Crisis Coordination Centre said.

The current eruption began around 1 a.m. ET prompting the Icelandic Meterological Office to raise its aviation warning code to red from orange for the Bardarbunga area.

Red is the highest level on a five-colour scale and indicates that an eruption is imminent or under way, with a risk of spewing ash.

No flights near eruption area

Iceland's aviation authorities have declared a danger area which reaches from the ground to 6,000 feet around the volcano.

The Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management said the eruption is along a 1.5-kilometre front.

'The eruption is producing 50- to 60-metre high lava fountains.'- Armann Hoskuldsson, geologist

"The eruption is producing 50- to 60-metre high lava fountains," Armann Hoskuldsson, a geologist at the University of Iceland told Reuters.

"The lava flow from the fissure is about 10-20 times more than Friday morning."

Two days ago, a 600 metre-long fissure in a lava field north of the Vatnajokull glacier, which covers part of the Bardarbunga system, erupted.

That eruption only lasted for a few hours and was not in an area covered by ice and did not produce ash. The risk of an ash cloud is highest when there is a sub-glacial eruption as meltwater and magma mix to produce ash particles.

The new eruption is very close to Friday's and is not under the glacier.

"It is almost in the same location. The crack has only extended a little bit further to the north," Magnusson said.

Last week, scientists estimated around 400 million cubic meters of lava had flowed out from under the volcano in a long dyke. The eruption on Friday was at its tip. 

Aviation disruption unlikely

Although Sunday's fissure eruption was more powerful than the one on Friday, experts said the situation is contained and is unlikely to result in the same level of aviation chaos as in 2010.

In April of that year, the Eyjafjallajokul eruption wreaked havoc on millions of travellers. More than 100,000 flights were cancelled after officials closed Europe's air space for five days out of fear that volcanic ash could damage jet engines.

Dave McGarvie, a volcanologist at Britain's Open University, said the fissure eruptions produce only very small amounts of ash — they produce mostly lava — and are highly unlikely to cause any aviation disruption.

"It's good news in the sense that it appears to be very small, very contained," he said. "It's not spreading under the glacier — if it did, you'll get a lot of flooding."

He said Icelandic authorities are mostly concerned that the main volcano under the ice cap will erupt, but there are no signs so far that this is imminent.

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Mediator walks out of B.C. teachers' strike resolution talks

Vince Ready has left talks between the B.C. teachers' union and the provincial government in Richmond, B.C., saying the sides are too far apart to come to a resolution anytime soon.

"I don't see a resolution here before the start of school given the positions of the parties. They are a long, long ways apart," the veteran mediator said. 

He has been working as a facilitator since Thursday, when talks resumed after a summer of stalled negotiations.

Veteran mediator Vince Ready said Friday night that the parties in the teachers' dispute were far from a resolution. On Saturday he walked, saying there was no need for him as the two sides were too far apart. (CBC)

Ready said he was trying to "establish some kind of a meaningful framework for mediation."

But, the two sides' positions on wages, benefits and class composition remained "a long ways apart," he told reporters as he left a building that had housed the talks on Saturday just after 5:30 p.m. PT.

There had not been enough movement between teachers and their employer for him to justify staying involved, he said, adding he couldn't imagine anything would develop over the weekend that would allow classes to start as scheduled on Tuesday.

Ready said the next steps are up to the negotiators working for the B.C. Teachers' Federation and for the B.C. Public School Employers' Association.

Both sides have already responded to his departure.

The BC Teachers' Federation tweeted that they have neither walked away from the bargaining table nor abandoned the idea of returning to the classrooms on Sept. 2.

B.C. Premier Christy Clark said the government remains committed to negotiating a fair deal that is affordable for taxpayers. She stressed the new deal with BCTF will have to "be in line with settlements for other unions."

The government's negotiator, Peter Cameron, said he was disappointed by Ready's decision, but agreed that the two parties were far off on important issues. The wages being sought by BCTF, he said, were higher than what any other union was asking for.

Ready previously negotiated similar dispute

Ready, who is in his early 70s, has been working in mediation for more than 30 years.

He has handled more than 7,000 labour and commercial disputes in the country, according to his website.

In 2005, Ready mediated a deal between B.C. teachers and the government, ending a two-week illegal strike action.

When Ready was asked to resolve this dispute between the two sides, he initially declined the job. At the time, he said he was too busy to commit to the task.

Ready later changed his mind and accepted the mediator position.

Strike started June 17

The B.C. teachers' full strike began on June 17. Prior to that, the government imposed a lockout during a partial strike earlier in the month.

Most teachers in the province consider class size and composition to be the most important issues in the ongoing contract dispute.

Vince Ready left talks between the B.C. teachers' union and the B.C. Public School Employers' Association on Saturday. (Tim Weekes/CBC)

About a quarter of B.C. classes have four or more special needs students. More than half of classes have between one and three special needs students.

The government says it is more efficient to group students with special needs together with an education assistant who provides extra help.

In the event that school does not start as planned, the provincial government is offering parents $40 a day for each of their children that is a public school student under the age of 13.

The money will come from savings made from not having to pay teachers during the strike, said B.C. Finance Minister Mike de Jong when he announced the plan in late July.

Some of the province's teachers responded by setting up day camps and child-care services, which will begin when school was scheduled to start.

"These disputes all settle at some point," said Ready. "But, certainly there's no basis for a settlement today."

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Health Canada pulling last of citronella-based bug sprays

Health Canada is pulling the last of citronella-based bug sprays off the shelves by the end of December because of "the absence of adequate safety data." The essential oil has been used as an insect repellent in Canada for decades.

The move has left scientists who advised Health Canada on the issue befuddled by the ban. So are many consumers who prefer natural bug sprays over ones with synthetic chemicals like DEET.

'It's the basis of the ban that I don't really understand'- Sam Kacew, Toxicologist

"It's the basis of the ban that I don't really understand," says toxicologist Sam Kacew.

Insect repellents are considered pesticides so they must meet strict safety standards. In 2004, Health Canada proposed phasing out citronella-based bug sprays because of new questions about its safety.

Small manufacturers who couldn't afford to submit detailed safety data saw their lines discontinued at the end of 2012. Those who submitted what data they could and tried to challenge the ban are now to see their products phased out at the end of this year.

In 2005, Kacew sat on an independent scientific panel to review Health Canada's position. He says the panel believed the study that led the government to question citronella's safety was flawed, in part because it examined what happened when rodents ingested the oil. "Humans are not going to drink citronella," he says.

The department told CBC that "the panel supported Health Canada's approach," but Kacew refutes that. He says the team of scientists concluded that citronella was safe as long as it didn't contain methyl eugenol, an impurity that could be a potential carcinogen. "In general, most of these citronella oils that were available for us to examine did not contain impurities, and they were regarded by us to be basically safe," he says.

Companies pay the price

Montreal company, Druide, has been selling government-approved citronella sprays and lotions since 1995.

"Where I am very sad is, in the end, [Health Canada] doesn't have anything against citronella, except questions about it," says Druide's owner, Alain Renaud.

Health Canada is ordering all citronella-based bug sprays off the shelves by the end of December because of "the absence of adequate safety data." (CBC)

​

He says he spent five years proving to Health Canada that his repellent didn't contain methyl eugenol.

But Renaud says that as soon as he won that battle the government "came back and said we still have questions and we need a complete toxicological report on many generations of animals."

That may be a standard approach, but Renaud eventually gave up his fight because his company doesn't believe in animal testing, and didn't have the estimated $1 million needed to fund a large-scale scientific study.

Druide's citronella-based bug spray was a bestseller for the company, which manufactures organic personal care products.

Renaud says he's had to lay off five employees because of the ban and has lost up to a million dollars spent on marketing his product and providing research for Health Canada. "At the end of maybe, five, 10 years of fighting, [Heath Canada] gets all our energy," he says.

DEET passed Health Canada's scrutiny because the manufacturers provided the required safety data. But citronella — an extract from lemon grass —  has never been patented, which makes it an unattractive investment for costly studies.

"If the market was such that this product was generating millions of dollars, then the industry would have done something re-active to try and get [citronella] back on the market," said Kacew.

That's the problem with other essential oils as well. They may be effective as bug repellents, but no one has yet funded the studies to prove they're safe.

DIY bug spray

Tracey TieF made and sold a natural bug spray with essential oils including lavender and rosemary for seven years before Health Canada shut her down recently.

The problem was that she hadn't registered her product and done any safety studies.

"I can't afford to run my own trial," says the certified health practitioner. "I feel afraid and I feel sick about it, actually, because for me, this is a passion."

TieF now puts that passion into teaching others how to make natural bug sprays. In a tiny room at Karma Co-op in Toronto, she passes out bottles, essential oils and recipes. "I'll teach people until [Health Canada] stops me," she vows.

Aimee Alabaster says she joined the class because she wants a natural bug spray for her children. "Everything out there for the most part contains DEET, and I don't want to put DEET on my kids."

Research has suggested DEET could be harmful to the central nervous system. But Health Canada states on its website that "registered insect repellents containing DEET can be used safely when applied as directed."

Come 2015, citronella bug sprays won't be entirely out of reach, you will just have to cross the border. The product will still be available in the U.S.

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Child killed in building explosion in Paris suburb

People still trapped in rubble, says fire department spokesperson in Rosny-sous-Bois

The Associated Press Posted: Aug 31, 2014 7:54 AM ET Last Updated: Aug 31, 2014 8:00 AM ET

French authorities say a four-storey apartment building in a northeastern Paris suburb has partially collapsed after an explosion, killing a child. More people are thought to be underneath the rubble.

Speaking on i-Tele, fire department spokesman Gabriel Plus said around 10 people were forced to leave the building. The disaster occurred in Rosny-sous-Bois early Sunday morning.

A French firefighter and his dog search in the rubble of a building after an explosion collapsed it in the Paris suburb of Rosny-sous-Bois on Sunday. The explosion collapsed a four-storey building, killing a child and leaving at least 10 people trapped in the rubble, fire department officials said. (Christophe Ena/Associated Press)

Plus said that around another 10 people could still be underneath the rubble, and emergency teams were working hard to rescue people who might be trapped.

"We could still find living victims in the hours to come," he said.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has arrived at the scene but couldn't confirm a theory that the explosion was caused by a gas leak. He said that people living in the remaining two thirds of the building have been given alternative lodging, since the entire structure is perilous.

Speaking from La Rochelle Sunday at a socialist party conference, Prime Minister Manuel Valls began his speech by sending out a "message of solidarity" to the victims of the catastrophe.

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Why the U.S. avoids calling Russia's actions in Ukraine an 'invasion'

U.S. President Barack Obama chose his words carefully when asked whether Russia's recent actions in Ukraine should be considered an invasion, an indication of how the White House continues to judiciously avoid the use of that particular word fearing its geo-political ramifications.

"I consider the actions that we've seen in the last week a continuation of what's been taking place for months now," Obama told reporters.

Minutes before, the president had referred to the situation as "this ongoing Russian incursion" into Ukraine that will "only bring more costs and consequences for Russia."

'Discussion of terminology'

In an interview on Thursday with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, State Department official Jen Psaki was pressed on the point: "If there's artillery firing across the border and tanks moving and movements of soldiers, what's the difference between an incursion and an invasion?"

"I think this is a discussion about terminology" Psaki responded, adding that "what we've seen here is an escalation of aggression by the Russians, a pattern, actually, over the last several months."

Psaki was also pressed on the issue by reporters asking why the White House refused to use the term and that Ukraine itself was calling it an invasion.

However, the State Department official remained on message: "I think our focus is more on what Russia is doing, what we're going to do about it than what we're calling it," Psaki said.

U.S. President Barack Obama has ruled out military intervention in the ongoing Ukraine crisis. (Charles Dharapak/Associated Press)

​

The diplomatic tiptoeing around the word comes as pro-Russian rebels suddenly opened a new front and pushed Ukrainian troops out of a key town in strategic coastal territory along the Sea of Azov. Kyiv and Western countries say the reversal was the result of the arrival of armoured columns of Russian troops, sent by Putin to prop up a rebellion that would otherwise have been near collapse.

Other Western leaders have also avoided use of the "invasion" word, except Canada, which continues to employ tough rhetoric against Moscow.

But for the U.S. and other Western countries, careful language is not surprising, particularly with politically loaded words like invasion, which can spark historical comparisons to Hitler's invasion of Poland or Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.

Obligated to find a cure

"The more you hype it, the more you diagnose the severity of the illness, the more you're obligated, either morally, politically or practically, to find a cure," said Aaron David Miller, a foreign policy expert and scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars

"And there's a certain reality here. There's a tendency on the part of this administration to allow its rhetoric to exceed its capacity to deliver," Miller said "We're not going to be able blunt or stop Putin's objectives in eastern Ukraine any more than we could stop the aggrandizement of Crimea."

Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said officials avoid using the word for the same reason the U.S. wouldn't call Egypt's military ouster of former president Mohammed Morsi a coup or why some mass slaughters aren't referred to as genocide. 

"Some words have both legal and emotional effects. And in the case of invasion, it's emotional and political," Abrams said.

"I think they don't want to use the word invasion because it makes harder the next question: And what are you going to do about it?"

Obama and his Western allies have so far ruled out any kind of military intervention in the ongoing crisis, instead seeking to increase economic sanctions to punish Russia. Calling the crisis an invasion would raise expectations that a response to that invasion will be be robust "when the chances are that the Western response will be anything but robust," said Randall Hansen, director of the University of Toronto's Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Meanwhile,Canada isn't subject to the same expectations of military action, allowing its officials to be more bold, Hansen said.

"It's partly the freedom of not mattering," said Hansen. "The Canadian government can shout and scream as much as it likes knowing that it doesn't really have to do anything. In contrast, Obama and [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel have to measure every word because the entire world is hanging on them and have a level of responsibility that neither Harper or Baird has or will have."

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'Sailing rocks' mystery of Death Valley solved

A team of scientists say they believe they have solved the mystery of how hundreds of rocks slide mysteriously across a dry lake bed in Death Valley, Calif.

The "sailing rocks" at the Racetrack Playa, a dry lake bed, have been under investigation by researchers since the 1940s. The rocks, some weighing as much as 320 kilograms, move across the lake bed over a period of years, leaving tracks.

A team lead by paleobiologist Richard Norris from University of California, San Diego, decided to monitor a set of test rocks that were deliberately placed on the lake bed in the winter of 2011. The rocks were watched remotely using a high-resolution weather station. 

Because the stones can sit for more than a decade without moving, researchers didn't think they would have results for some time. But around the end of 2013, the rocks began moving.

"Science sometimes has an element of luck," Norris said in a release. "We expected to wait five or 10 years without anything moving, but only two years into the project, we just happened to be there at the right time to see it happen in person."

In December 2013, researchers discovered that the playa was covered with a pond of water about seven centimetres deep. Rock movement occurred shortly after.

Richard Norris and his team say movement is made possible when ice sheets that form after rare overnight rains melt in the rising sun, making the hard ground muddy and slick. (National Park Service/Associated Press)

The team was able to chronicle a set of events that set the rocks in motion.

First the playa fills with water that must be deep enough to form floating ice but shallow enough to expose the rocks. When nighttime temperatures dip, the pond forms thin sheets of ice which can move freely but are thick enough to maintain strength.  

Then, when the sun comes out, the ice melts and breaks up into large floating panels, and light winds drive these ice panels across the lake bed, pushing the rocks in front of them and leaving trails in the soft mud.

"On Dec. 21, 2013, ice breakup happened just around noon, with popping and cracking sounds coming from all over the frozen pond surface," said Norris in the study published on Aug. 27 in the journal PLoS ONE (Public Library of Science).

Rocks moved under light winds at about three to five metres per minute by ice that was only three to five millimetres thick. The rocks remained in motion for a few seconds to 16 minutes.

Previous theories have postulated dust devils or hurricane-force winds as the trigger for the sailing stones.

Researchers say they observed some rocks travelling more than 60 metres in one motion. Because they only used small test rocks, the scientists say they can't be 100 per cent sure about their theory since they haven't observed how the bigger, heavier rocks moved.

The team also concluded that climate change is having an effect on the sailing rocks.

"The last suspected movement was in 2006, and so rocks may move only about one millionth of the time," said study co-author Ralph Lorenz of Johns Hopkins University.

"There is also evidence that the frequency of rock movement, which seems to require cold nights to form ice, may have declined since the 1970s due to climate change."

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Zero-giving teacher's firing gets failing grade on appeal

A provincial appeal board that looks into the firing of teachers has found the Edmonton Public School Board "did not act fairly" when they suspended and then fired Lynden Dorval, who broke school policy by giving zeros to his students.

"Sometimes standing up for something has an effect. It actually works," Dorval said Friday. "It was just something that was the right thing to do."

Dorval, a physics teacher at Ross Sheppard High School, was suspended in May 2012 for awarding zeros for work that wasn't handed in or tests not taken, which went against the school's policy.

Four months later, Dorval received a notice that he had been fired. He appealed the dismissal to the Board of Reference, which found earlier this month that he "was treated unfairly in his dismissal."

"This board finds no evidence of deliberate misconduct by the teacher, and certainly no evidence of deliberate repeated misconduct," the decision states.

The board ordered a full repayment of pay from the date of dismissal as well as a top-up of his pension.

Dorval is now retired, so the board did not order that he be reinstated.

The board also found Dorval's original suspension in May was not justified and that he "was not permitted full opportunity" to respond to the allegations.

"The basis for the suspension appeared to be that the principal viewed any form of dissent as insubordination which was not to be tolerated, despite repeated efforts by teachers to explain why the directive interfered with their professional judgment and could result in illegitimate outcomes," the decision reads.

Edmonton Public School Board spokeswoman Lisa Austin said the ruling was disappointing and that the board would appeal.

She says the board made the decision after getting an opinion from outside legal counsel.

"They informed us that there was several grounds upon which we could appeal the decision," she said.

The school board has 30 days to file the appeal.

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2nd unruly passenger released on bail after Cuba flight returned to Toronto

The second Ontario woman charged with multiple offences after a Cuba-bound flight she was on turned back to Toronto's Pearson International Airport is out of jail. 

Both women accused of the disruptive behaviour were granted release on $2,500 bail Thursday. Lilia Ratmanski, 25, of Whitby, was released the same day, but Melana Muzikante, 26, of Vaughan, was held overnight until someone could sign for her release. 

The two are faced with charges of smoking on board an aircraft, endangering the safety of an aircraft, mischief endangering life, mischief over $5,000 and uttering threats during the incident Wednesday night.

Lilia Ratmanski, 25, of Whitby, left, and Melana Muzikante, 26, of Vaughan appear in court on Aug. 28. (Alex Tavshunsky/CBC)

On Thursday morning, police tweeted that the two accused are also facing charges of mischief over $5,000, mischief endangering life and uttering threats.

Police allege the women aboard the afternoon flight from Toronto to Varadero drank alcohol, got into a fight with each other and activated a smoke alarm by lighting a cigarette in the lavatory.

The pilot of the 737 described the two women as disruptive "in a serious manner," and reported to NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) while the plane was in U.S. airspace that the aircraft was "under threat."

Officials with NORAD's Canadian sector in Winnipeg told CBC News that they sent two Canadian Forces CF-18 fighters from CFB Bagotville in Quebec to intercept Sunwing Flight 656 and escort it back to Pearson.

The women were arrested when the plane landed, said Const. George Tudos of Peel Regional Police. 

The two may be on the hook for more than just the criminal charges, as well.

Scrambling CF-18s isn't cheap. It costs $45,000 to put a Canadian CF-18 in the air for one hour.

Airline analyst Karl Moore says it seems excessive to call in the military to escort the commercial flight over something like this, but that it is the pilot's responsibility to ensure everyone's safety.

Lilia Ratmanski, 25, is released on bail at a Brampton, Ont., courthouse on Thursday. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/Canadian Press)

"At a certain point the captain just had enough, and felt like this was something which was causing a very bad scene on board," Moore said. 

The airline said the threat the women made was considered non-credible, but that they had to follow procedure, which meant turning around and getting a military escort. 

Sunwing says it is a major cost setback to divert a plane, and in this instance they estimate that cost to be about $50,000. The airline is considering seeking restitution from the two women. 

Ratmanski is to appear in court again on Sept. 29. It is unclear when Muzikante is scheduled to next appear.

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Gaza reconstruction could take 20 years, UN-backed construction authority says

An international organization involved in assessing post-conflict reconstruction says it will take 20 years for Gaza's battered and neglected housing stock to be rebuilt following the war between Hamas and Israel.

The assessment by Shelter Cluster, co-chaired by the UN refugee agency and the Red Cross, underscores the complexities involved in an overall reconstruction program for the Gaza Strip, which some Palestinian officials have estimated could cost in excess of $6 billion.

Palestinians gather around the remains of a tower building housing offices which was destroyed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City before the current ceasefire went into effect. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

Any effort to rebuild Gaza will be hindered by a blockade imposed by Egypt and Israel since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized power in 2007. Israel has severely restricted the import of concrete and other building materials into Gaza, fearing that militants will use them to build rockets and reinforce cross-border attack tunnels.

Egypt and Norway have raised the possibility of convening a Gaza donors' conference at some point next month, but no firm arrangements have been made.

With a population of 1.8 million, Gaza is a densely populated coastal strip of urban warrens and agricultural land that still bears the scars of previous rounds of fighting.

In its report issued late Friday, Shelter Cluster said 17,000 Gaza housing units were destroyed or severely damaged during this summer's war and 5,000 units still need work after damage sustained in the previous military campaigns. In addition, it says, Gaza has a housing deficit of 75,000 units.

Palestinian officials have estimated that reconstruction efforts in Gaza may cost upward of $6 billion. (Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

Shelter Cluster said its 20-year assessment is based on the capacity of the main Israel-Gaza cargo crossing to handle 100 trucks of construction materials daily.

The latest war began after three Israeli teens were killed in the West Bank by Hamas operatives in June, prompting Israel to arrest hundreds of Hamas members there. Rocket fire from Gaza on Israeli cities then escalated, and Israel launched a massive air and later ground campaign. The fighting lasted almost two months.

Egyptian mediators tried early on to get the sides to agree to a cease-fire. Several temporary truces were broken by Gaza militants.

Over 2,100 Palestinians, most civilians, died in the war. Israel lost 71 people, all but six of them soldiers.

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Iceland aviation warning raised to red after small volcanic eruption

Icelandic authorities briefly raised the aviation warning code to red Friday after a small fissure eruption near Bardarbunga volcano, but no volcanic ash has been detected by the radar system.

The eruption took place the Holuhraun lava field, five kilometres north of Dyngjujoekull glacier, Iceland's Meteorological Office said. The event was described as being not highly explosive — and thus not producing much of the fine ash that can affect aircraft engines.

The airspace is closed three nautical miles around the eruption area up to 1,524 meters — meaning it does not affect commercial flights flying over Iceland. The aviation code for Bardarbunga was originally raised to red but was lowered to orange since there is no significant ash production, the Civil Protection Department said.

"If this eruption persists it could become a tourist attraction, as it will be relatively safe to approach, although the area is remote," said David Rothery, a professor of Planetary Geosciences at The Open University in Britain. "This event should not be seen as 'relieving the pressure' on Bardarbunga itself, nor is it a clear precursor sign of an impending Bardarbunga eruption."

The so-called fissure eruption, meaning it is a crack that opens up above a magma intrusion, is about one kilometre long and currently is not producing any significant ash.

So far the eruption shows no sign of being as disruptive as the one in 2010, when Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano erupted and sparked a week of international aviation chaos. Thousands of flights were canceled when aviation officials closed Europe's air space for five days, fearing that volcanic ash could harm jet engines.

Since Thursday night, the National Crisis Co-ordination Center and local co-ordination centers have been activated and are operating on an emergency basis. All access to the area where the eruption is occurring is closed.

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Calgary brothers join ranks of Canadians fighting for ISIS

Two more Canadians have joined the ranks of foreign fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), CBC News has learned. Both are relatively recent converts to Islam from Calgary — and they are brothers.

Gregory and Collin Gordon converted to Islam and became known to members of Calgary's Muslim community as Abdul Malik and Khalid. Between 2011 and 2012, they shared an apartment in the same downtown Calgary highrise that once housed Damian Clairmont and Salman Ashrafi.

Ashrafi was identified as a suicide bomber in an ISIS operation in Iraq last November that took the lives of 46 people. Clairmont was killed fighting in Syria earlier this year.  

Another Calgarian, Farah Shirdon, who once attended a "study group" with Ashrafi, Clairmont and the Gordon brothers, joined ISIS and was reported to have been killed in battle a few weeks ago.  

Sources in the Calgary Muslim community have told CBC News that the Gordon brothers disappeared in late 2012, around the same time that Ashrafi and Clairmont are believed to have travelled to Syria.

A prominent member of the downtown prayer hall attached to the Calgary apartment building told CBC News that Greg was quiet and courteous. When told that he had become a jihadi in Syria, the man, who wished to remain anonymous, expressed shock.

He said Greg suffered from sickle-cell anemia and "was constantly in and out of hospital."

Nabil Babiker, a doctor who fled war-torn Sudan for Canada, frequently worships at the downtown Calgary prayer hall. When shown pictures of Collin and Greg, he said he remembered them by their Arabic names.

Collin Gordon, left, and Greg Gordon, right, converted to Islam and became known to members of Calgary's Muslim community as Abdul Malik and Khalid. (Facebook)

"I don't imagine you'd do very well as a fighter, a jihadi fighter with that disease," said Babiker, who added he's surprised the Gordon brothers would flee Canada for a war zone.

"If they told me that they were going to fight, I would have told them, 'No, don't go, never go,'" he said. "By virtue of Islam, by virtue of humanity."  

Active on social media

As ISIS fighters murdered their way through Syria and Iraq, Collin embraced the terror group, posting on Facebook earlier this year pictures of what appears to be a compound belonging to Rayat Al-Tawheed — or "Banner of God" — a militant group in Syria linked to ISIS that distributes English-language recruiting materials.

Like other Western jihadis, Collin, too, is active on social media and uses the nom-de-guerre Abu Ibrahim Canadi.  

He attended the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) and at Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in Kamloops, B.C., where he studied business.

Sources told CBC News the Gordon brothers disappeared in late 2012, around the same time that two other Canadians who died fighting for ISIS earlier this year are believed to have travelled to Syria. (Twitter)

He played volleyball for both SAIT and TRU and friends say he was popular and well-liked on campus. He founded the Kamloops Social Club and threw a number of parties in the city, bringing both Canadian and international musicians to perform in the small south central British Columbian city. And then his life took a turn.

"All I know about Collin is that he moved back home [to Calgary] and started to be hardcore Muslim," said Akan (Swisslizz) Ekpenyong, a Vancouver-based hip hop artist who used to host parties with Collin in Kamloops and was his classmate.

Ekpenyong said it became increasingly difficult to communicate with Collin due to his religious beliefs — and that's when he decided to "unfriend" him on Facebook. Ekpenyong had no idea how extreme Collin would eventually become.

No one CBC News spoke with can explain how exactly Collin went from sports, hip hop and tweets about wanting to marry American rapper Nicki Minaj in early 2012, to becoming one among thousands of foreign fighters trying to establish an Islamic state in the Middle East.

Family 'deeply concerned' for brothers' safety

Heartbroken and confused, their parents told CBC News that they raised their children to be peaceful, kind and smart — and that both were well educated and never had any run-ins with the law.

Asking the media for privacy, the parents of the Gordon brothers provided the following statement to CBC News: "We would like all to know we love and miss our sons dearly. We are deeply concerned for their safety. At this time we refuse to speculate with regards to the end of their story. We continue to keep hope alive."

And while their parents are keeping hope alive, Collin's social media photos portray someone who has become well-adjusted to life as a foreign jihadi.  

In a Facebook posting a year ago, Collin Gordon is seen wearing army fatigues and a scarf wrapped around his head. (Facebook)

In a Facebook posting a year ago, he is seen wearing army fatigues and a scarf wrapped around his head. A relative commented on the photo, saying, "When your dad told me that you and Greg joined the Muslim religion he said to me I don't mind what they do as long as they don't turn al Qaeda [sic]. Seeing this picture maybe he was wrong."

Collin responded: "Al-Qaeda are Muslims and I stand by them in this life and the next as I do with any and every Muslim. But I am not affiliated with al-Qaeda physically if that's what you meant."

He didn't tell his uncle that he had joined a group that was denounced by al-Qaeda for being too violent.

A week after ISIS announced the establishment of a caliphate and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi named himself the caliph, Collin changed his Facebook profile photo to a still of al-Baghdadi. That same day he tweeted: "The promise of Allah is true," and he urged other Muslims to swear an oath of allegiance to al-Baghdadi.

His other tweets in recent months have commented on the "incredible" infrastructure of the "Islamic State," the need for "jihad" in Gaza, the recent bombing of ISIS-held territory by the United States, and the beheading of American journalist James Foley, which he referred to as "the perfection of terrorism."

In photographs that have emerged on the Twitter accounts of other jihadis in Syria, Collin can be seen cutting garlic as he prepares a meal, playing video games with other fighters and being trained on the use of M16 rifles.

In yet another photo, he is seen in the passenger seat of a car next to a jihadi watching a lecture by Australian-born radical preacher Musa Cerantonio on a smartphone. A report from researchers at King's College London identified the English-speaking Cerantonio as one of two prominent "new spiritual authorities" who are playing the role of "cheerleaders" by endorsing "violent jihad and support for jihadist organizations operating in Syria."

Unknown number of Canadian ISIS fighters

Last February, Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Michael Coulombe testified before the Senate national security and defence committee hearing that an estimated 130 Canadians had joined terror groups in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and north Africa. Coulombe estimated that 30 of them had left to join groups like ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Many experts estimate that number is now much higher.

In an editorial published recently in the Globe and Mail, Coulombe said that there is "very real prospect" that Canadians who have joined ISIS and other terror organizations overseas could attempt violent acts in Canada.

A psychologist who conducts workshops for Muslim youth in Calgary says if the Gordon brothers are Canadians, "we have to own it."

Mahdi Qasqas has seen enough young men from Calgary leave to become foreign fighters. He is now training operators at one of the city's distress centres to handle calls about extremism and radicalization. In September, he is organizing a conference aimed at curbing religious extremism in Calgary.  

It may be too late for Greg and Collin Gordon, though, as there are still no signs the men wish to return to Canada.

Instead, two months ago Collin tweeted: "Victory or Shahada [martyrdom] in the end win win."

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Is it time for higher speed limits?

In B.C., the speed limits are rising on about 1,300 kilometres of highway this summer — in a few cases up to 120 km/h.

Quebec is exploring the idea of variable speed limits — as high as 120 but only when the weather's good — as part of a pilot project on two highways this fall.

Speed limits are rising to 120 km/h on sections of three multi-lane highways in B.C. (B.C. Government)

Not to be overtaken, some Ontario motorists have mounted a campaign that would allow vehicles to be able to roll along at up to 130 km/h on some of the province's better highways.

So far there is no interest from the provincial Ministry of Transportation in seeing that happen, and in fact some provinces are even trying to slow things down.

Drivers on busy stretches of highway outside Regina and Saskatoon are having to take their feet off the accelerator after the limit was dropped to 90 km/h from 110 km/h earlier this year.

Across Canada, motorists can be forgiven for being confused: a speed that's deemed to be just fine on a nice, four- or six-lane straightaway in one province could result in fines or demerit points in others.

But determining the prime speed, the one ultimately deemed best both for safety and for getting drivers where they want to go in the most timely fashion, isn't easy. It involves a complex equation of engineering, road safety concerns and politics.

Caught in the middle

"It's a tough one for provincial governments because, politically, talking about higher limits on highways will always be more popular than talking about lowering limits, and yet the science might suggest otherwise," says Ian Jack, managing director of communications and government relations for the Canadian Automobile Association.

Maximum speed limits on various stretches of provincial highway across Canada range from 90 km/h in Prince Edward Island to 120 km/h in British Columbia. (Richard Grasley, Tara Kimura/CBC)

As a result, politicians can feel caught in the middle, and that might explain the interest in trying something like Quebec's pilot project, he says.

"I'm almost certain that the advice from bureaucrats in almost any jurisdiction would be that raising limits might not be the best idea. But then on the political level you've got to get re-elected and you've got to deal with voters, so there's that reality as well."

In Ontario, the limit for multi-lane, 400-series highways is 100 km/h, a speed one online campaign wants to see rise to 130 in rural areas, and 120 in many areas around some of the big cities.

Chris Klimek, founder of Stop100.ca, says the group has a simple goal that would bring Ontario roads in line with roads in many other jurisdictions in the U.S. and Europe.

"Our mission is basically to legalize the existing speeds, the existing practices on our roads," he says.

"Most countries are posting between 120, 130 kilometres an hour and this is exactly the sort of speeds we are driving here in Ontario when the traffic is flowing and it's uncongested.

"So we want to legalize the actions of a safe and prudent majority of drivers."

Not the autobahn

Klimek has a long list of numbers and arguments, including provincial figures that he says show how speed contributed to only 6.7 per cent of deaths on Ontario roads in 2009.

He also has comments from other jurisdictions such as Utah where speed limits were increased in test zones without an increase in the rate of fatalities.

And he rejects any suggestion that a higher limit might mean drivers would just go another 10 or 20 km/h above than that.

'Very few people have a desire to do 160, 170, so we don't have to be calling for the autobahn.'- Chris Klimek

"People are simply sticking to what feels comfortable and safe for them.

"Nobody has a death wish. People still want to get home or to their vacation location."

Klimek says that advocating for 130 in some areas is not suggesting Ontario highways should rival Germany's famed autobahn, which has sections where drivers can drive as fast as they wish.

"Very few people have a desire to do 160, 170, so we don't have to be calling for the autobahn," says Klimek.

On that, at least, he is in sync with the provincial government. Those who set the limits in Ontario have no plans to change them.

Speed limits are reviewed by the Ministry of Transportation every three to five years, and after the last review in 2012 a decision was made to leave them as they are.

"Experience in other jurisdictions indicates that fatal collisions can increase with higher limits," Bob Nichols, senior media liaison officer for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, said in an email.

"Even with today's posted speed limits, speed continues to be a major factor in collisions, injuries and fatalities on Ontario roads," he said.

"In 2011, speed contributed to 16 per cent of all fatalities and just under 10 per cent of all injuries due to motor vehicle collisions in Ontario."

Speed and distraction

In 2007, Ontario introduced a seven-day licence suspension and seven-day vehicle impounding for excessive speeding and aggressive driving, including following too closely, driving 50 km/h or more above the posted limit and weaving in and out of traffic too closely.

A study by Western University in London, Ont., along with the MTO earlier this year found that there have been about 58 fewer speed-related deaths or injuries a month for males between 16 and 24 years of age since the law took effect.

The CAA, which considers distraction the top road safety issue these days, thinks people should approach the idea of raising speed limits with caution. (UrbanImages/ Shutterstock)

"The findings of the study demonstrated measurable improvement in road safety with clear evidence of speed reductions on provincial highways, as well as a remarkable reduction in collision casualties and the number of drivers engaging in extreme speeding," Nichols said.

The Ontario Provincial Police considers speeding a form of aggressive driving and a major cause of collisions, says Sgt. Kerry Schmidt of the OPP's Highway Safety Division.

In 2013, the OPP issued 219,000 speeding tickets and investigated 253 fatal motor vehicle collisions. Forty-seven (16 per cent) of the 292 deaths in those collisions were speed-related.

Schmidt says there is "quite a spread" in speeds driven on 400-series highways.

"I know that everyone thinks that everyone is travelling far in excess of the speed limit, but if you were to actually monitor traffic and look at the speeds you'd be surprised how many people are driving at the speed limit, as well as below the speed limit."

Saskatchewan's move to reduce the speed limit on a stretch of the Trans-Canada highway, as well as Highway 12 north from Saskatoon, "was just to increase safety on those stretches of highway," says Joel Cherry, a communications consultant for the Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure.

Both stretches of road are busy and have at-grade access points.

"There was definitely pretty significant lobbying made by people in the area, and the ministry listened to their concerns," Cherry said.

Safe and responsible

Public sentiment also had an impact a decade ago when the limit for some Saskatchewan highways was increased to 110 from 100. 

At the time — 2003 — there was "significant public interest in raising the speed limits to 110, and it was determined that the design specifications of the highways could accommodate the increased speed limit," Cherry said.

"Other jurisdictions, such as Alberta, already had 110 km/h speed limits and it was observed that drivers there responded in a safe and responsible manner."

The CAA, which considers driver distraction the top road safety issue these days, thinks people should approach the idea of raising speed limits with caution.

Making decisions based on fact, and trying out pilot projects are good ideas, Jack says.

"At the same time … the overwhelming majority of evidence internationally is that speed kills, so that raising highway limits generally is likely to lead to more fatalities."

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Telecom giants to exclude seniors, veterans from paper bill fees

Canada's big telecom companies say they will keep charging customers additional fees for producing and mailing paper bills, with some exceptions.

The announcement came after executives from nearly a dozen major telecom companies — including Bell, Rogers and Telus — met with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for an all-day meeting in Gatineau, Que.

The companies said they would exempt these groups from paper billing (pay-to-pay) fees:

• Seniors.
• Individuals with disabilities.
• Military veterans.
• Customers with no internet connections.

But in a statement released after the meeting, regulators say that doesn't go far enough.

CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais said "many Canadians who will not benefit from the exemptions will be disappointed with the outcome so far."

A consumer advocacy group says Canadians are paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year in paper bills from telecom companies. This week, telecom giants said they would exclude seniors, veterans and certain other groups from such fees, but the CRTC says that's not good enough. (CBC)

Blais also praised the four companies — Cogeco Cable, MTS Allstream, SaskTel and Shaw Communications — that have opted not to charge for paper fees, saying "Canadians should keep this in mind when they select service providers."

The broadcast regulator had urged participants prior to the meeting to make firm decisions about the fees they charge, with an eye toward eliminating them altogether.

The federal government has twice promised to end pay-to-pay policies: In its October 2013 throne speech and in the 2014 budget.

According to a study released this week by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Canadians pay over $500 million a year in paper billing fees.

The advocacy group says low-income Canadians and seniors shoulder the heaviest burden, as they are less likely to have access to the internet. An estimated 15 per cent of Canadians do not have internet access at home. 

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British PM plans new laws to tackle homegrown terrorism

New

U.K. raises terror threat level to severe over Syria, Iraq concerns

Thomson Reuters Posted: Aug 29, 2014 10:16 AM ET Last Updated: Aug 29, 2014 10:38 AM ET

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday he planned to introduce new legislation to make it harder for Britons to travel to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside Islamist extremists.

Cameron, who said he would detail his plans in parliament on Monday to confiscate passports, was speaking as Britain raised its international terrorism threat level to "severe", its second highest level.

"I will be making a statement in the House of Commons on Monday. This will include further steps to stop people travelling, with new legislation that will make it easier to take people's passports away," Cameron told a news conference.

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2 women face charges for being 'unruly' on Cuba flight returned to Toronto

Two women from Ontario will face charges after their behaviour aboard a Cuba-bound flight prompted the pilot to turn back to Toronto's Pearson International Airport on Wednesday, police say.

Facing charges of endangering the safety of an aircraft and smoking on an aircraft are:

• Melana Muzikante, 26, of Vaughan.
• Lilia Ratmanski, 25, of Whitby.

Police allege the women aboard the afternoon flight from Toronto to Varadero drank most of their duty-free alcohol, got into a fight with each other and activated a smoke alarm by lighting a cigarette in the lavatory.

A spokesperson for Sunwing told CBC News the women also "made a threat against the aircraft, which was considered non-credible, given their condition."

The pilot of the 737 described the two women as disruptive "in a serious manner," and reported to NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) while the plane was in U.S. airspace that the aircraft was "under threat."

Officials with NORAD's Canadian sector in Winnipeg told CBC News that they sent two Canadian Forces CF-18 fighters from CFB Bagotville in Quebec to intercept Sunwing Flight 656 and escort it back to Pearson.

Police were called to the airport between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Wednesday. The women were arrested when the plane landed, said Const. George Tudos of Peel Regional Police. 

"The disruptive behaviour of these two individuals prompted that pilot to make a decision to come back to Pearson," said Tudos. "So obviously charges will be pending and will be in relation to their actions on board that aircraft."

The flight was preparing to take off again late Wednesday night with a new flight crew. Passengers were provided with meal vouchers and the airline apologized for the incident.

The women are expected to appear in a Brampton, Ont., court Thursday.

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Russian tanks enter Ukraine, fire missiles at border post

Two columns of Russian tanks and military vehicles fired Grad missiles from Russia at a border post in southeastern Ukraine, then rolled into the country Thursday as its overmatched border guards fled, a top Ukrainian official said.

The comments by Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Security Council, and other statements from NATO, the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine and the United States left no doubt that the Russian military had invaded southeastern Ukraine.

"Russian troops were actually brought into Ukraine," Ukraine's president declared Thursday, cancelling a foreign trip and calling an emergency meeting of his security council.

"The president must stay in Kyiv today," President Petro Poroshenko said.

UN Security Council calls emergency session

The UN Security Council is also preparing to meet in emergency session. Diplomats said Thursday that the council will meet at 2 p.m. local time at the request of Lithuania.

'The president must stay in Kyiv today.'- Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko

Alarm has grown as a top NATO official said at least 1,000 Russian troops have poured into Ukraine with sophisticated equipment and have been in direct "contact" with Ukrainian soldiers, resulting in casualties.

Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin told reporters "You're at a loss" as he walked into a morning council session and gave no further comment.

U.K. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters that "Russia will be asked to explain why Russia has its troops inside Ukraine. It's very clear that Russian regular troops are now in Ukraine."

Russian stock markets dived as fears grew that the country was escalating its role in the conflict, a move that could provoke the U.S. and European Union to impose further sanctions on Russian businesses and individuals. Russia's MICEX index dropped nearly two per cent on Thursday, and major Russian state banks VTB and Sberbank dropped more than four per cent.

1,000 Russian troops in Ukraine

Brig.-Gen. Nico Tak told reporters at NATO headquarters that the ultimate aim of Russia was to stave off defeat for the separatists and turn eastern Ukraine into a "frozen conflict" that would destabilize the country "indefinitely."

NATO estimated that another 20,000 Russian troops were right over the Russian border.

Tak said the 1,000 Russian troops operating inside Ukraine was a conservative estimate and provided satellite imaginary showing an incursion of great sophistication. He refused to specify exactly what the "contact" with Ukrainian troops was.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko cancelled his visit to Turkey and called an emergency meeting of Ukraine's security council after a 'sharp aggravation' of the conflict. (Mikhail Palinchak/The Associated Press)

Lysenko said the missiles from Russia were fired about 11 a.m. local time and about an hour and a half later, two columns, including tanks and other fighting vehicles began an attack. They entered Ukraine from Veselo-Voznesenka and Maximovo of the Rostov region in Russia.

The leader of the insurgency, Alexander Zakharchenko, said in an interview on Russian state television that 3,000 to 4,000 Russians have fought on the separatist side since the armed conflict began in April.

The U.S. government accused Russia of orchestrating a new military campaign in Ukraine, helping rebel forces expand their fight and sending in tanks, rocket launchers and armoured vehicles.

"These incursions indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway in Donetsk and Luhansk," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday. She voiced concern about overnight deliveries of materiel in southeast Ukraine near Novoazovsk and said Russia was being dishonest about its actions, even to its own people.

Russian forces, she said, are being sent 48 kilometres inside Ukraine, without them or their families knowing where they are going. She cited reports of burials in Russia for those who have died in Ukraine and wounded Russian soldiers being treated in a St. Petersburg hospital.

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Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt get married

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were married Saturday in Correns, France, a spokesman for the couple says.

Jolie and Pitt wed in a small chapel in a private ceremony attended by family and friends at Chateau Miraval. In advance of the nondenominational civil ceremony, Pitt and Jolie obtained a marriage license from a local California judge. The judge also conducted the ceremony in France.

Pitt and Jolie's civil ceremony took place in a chapel at their 17th-century chateau in the south of France. The couple reportedly leased the $60 million dollar estate in Provence in 2008 before for buying it 2011. (Philippe Laurenson/Reuters)

The couple's children took part in the wedding. Jolie walked the aisle with her eldest sons Maddox and Pax. Zahara and Vivienne threw flower petals. Shiloh and Knox served as ring bearers, the spokesman says.

Jolie and Pitt's wedding caps years of rampant speculation on when the couple would officially tie the knot. Both had publicly said that they planned to.

"It's an exciting prospect, even though for us, we've gone further than that," Pitt told The Associated Press in an interview in November 2012. "But to concretize it in that way, it actually means more to me than I thought it would. It means a lot to our kids."

This is the second marriage for Pitt, who wed Jennifer Aniston in 2000. They divorced in 2005.

Jolie was previously married to British actor Jonny Lee Miller for three years in the late '90s and to Billy Bob Thornton for three years before divorcing in 2003.

Both Jolie and Pitt are prepping movies. Jolie's second directorial effort, the World War II odyssey Unbroken, will be released in December. Pitt stars in the upcoming World War II drama Fury, due out Oct. 17.

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ISIS executes 250 Syrian soldiers after seizing air base

ISIS fighters have executed 250 Syrian soldiers captured when the group seized an air base in the province of Raqqa at the weekend, according to a video posted on YouTube on Thursday and confirmed as genuine by an Islamic State fighter.

The video showed the bodies of dozens of men lying face down wearing nothing but their underwear. Their bodies were stretched out in a long line that appeared to be dozens of metres long.

The video also showed a separate pile of bodies nearby.

"The 250 shabeeha taken captive by the Islamic State [ISIS] from Tabqa in Raqqa have been executed," read the caption posted with the video, referring to the soldiers by the name to forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad by Islamist militants fighting him.

Talking to Reuters via the Internet, an ISIS fighter in Raqqa said: "Yes we have executed them all."

'How many have you killed?'

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a radical offshoot of al Qaeda, stormed Tabqa air base on Sunday after days of clashes with the army and said it had captured and killed soldiers and officers in one of the fiercest confrontations yet between the two sides.

Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to ISIS in Sinjar town, are heading for the Syrian border. (Rodi Said/Reuters)

The capture of Tabqa, the Syrian army's last foothold in that area, and apparent killing of large numbers of its soldiers shows Islamic State's grip on the north of the country. The group has also seized territory in eastern Syria and large areas of neighbouring Iraq in recent months.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict using sources on the ground, said the soldiers who were executed had been trying to escape from the airport when they were captured by militant fighters of the Islamic State.

'Who's your father? Do you know who your father is? You can't possibly know who your father is. You're a bastard.'- ISIS interrogator

Another video posted online appeared to show the interrogation of at least one Syrian soldier in front of a group of other captured men in their underwear, as voices off camera shout sectarian insults.

The soldier identifies himself as an officer and says he is from the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, like President Bashar al-Assad and the majority of high-ranking military officers. Islamic State members are Sunni Muslims.

"Who's your father? Do you know who your father is? You can't possibly know who your father is. You're a bastard," the interrogator says, using insults suggesting that Alawites are born out of wedlock.

At one point the soldier briefly looks down at the floor and rubs his eyes, another interrogator throws a metal rod at him, making him flinch and then pay attention to the main interrogator again.

"How many have you killed? How many have you raped?" the interrogator shouts. The soldier replies: "None. I've been stationed here in the airport."

Back to hell

The interrogator asks why the soldier had been fighting on behalf of Assad and did not defect and he replies that he would have just been sent back to the army.

"They would have sent you right back to the army? And we're going to send you right back to hell: by slaughter," the interrogator says, making him chant Islamic State slogans.

Syrian state media confirmed the attack on the base but has not reported any deaths or any army members being captured. It has said Islamic State suffered heavy losses in the battle over the base.

Tabqa was the army's last foothold in an area otherwise controlled by the Islamic State militants, who aim to set up a trans-border caliphate in the Iraqi and Syrian territory they have captured.

The United States has carried out air strikes on Islamic State in Iraq and has left open the option for similar action in Syria.

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Derek Stoffel: As Gaza ceasefire holds, both sides debate who won

Now that the Israeli air raids have stopped, Baraa Abu Dagga and his family are waiting for the construction men to come rebuild their house.

"It's really hard and bad here," the 18-year-old said, reached by telephone in Khan Yunis, a city in the southern Gaza Strip. "There's nothing to do but wait, wait for help. We can't do anything else."

The Abu Dagga family's home was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike three weeks ago, during the 50-day war that saw the most intense fighting between Gaza militants and Israel's military. Baraa and his family all hold dual Palestinian-Canadian citizenship. The 18-year-old spent six years living in Hamilton, Ont., but returned to Gaza to be with his family.

A Hamas militant displays a mortar shell as he celebrates what the militants claimed as a victory over Israel, in front of a destroyed house in the Shejaia neighbourhood east of Gaza City on Wednesday. The current ceasefire appears to be holding, while both sides begin debating who won the 50-day conflict. (Majdi Fathi/Reuters)

"Everybody's happy that there's a ceasefire now," Abu Dagga said.

An open-ended ceasefire took effect on Tuesday. After several truces that did not hold during this seven-week-long conflict, there is still much skepticism, especially among Israelis, that this one will bring quiet to Gaza and Israel. But, so far, it is holding.

And so, the inevitable discussion of who won the war has begun.

The Israeli television and radio stations have trotted out the experts to make their assessments. The political leaders on both sides of the conflict are, of course, claiming victory for their side.

Palestinian-Canadian Baraa Abu Dagga and his family are waiting for the construction men to come rebuild their house in Gaza after it was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike. (Courtesy of Baraa Abu Dagga)

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday Israel had secured a "great military and political" victory over Hamas. "I can say that we dealt a heavy blow to Hamas and terrorist groups."

In Gaza, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh told a rally of thousands of supporters Wednesday night that the gains achieved by his group were "multiple, multiple" times more than the outcome of previous conflicts with Israel in 2012 and 2008-09.

"Those whose blood was spilled and the martyrs were the fuel of this victory," Haniyeh said.

Thousands of Gazans celebrated the end of the ceasefire on Tuesday night by pouring out onto the streets of Gaza City, some firing celebratory gunshots into the air.

'They got what they wanted'

Hamas's declaration that they won the war after more so many Palestinians were killed in the conflict irked some in Israel's security establishment, which pointed to the destruction of most of the tunnels used by Gaza militants to launch attacks on Israeli territory. Much of the militants' rocket supply was either destroyed or depleted in the fighting.

Yet, there are some Israelis who grudgingly agree with the Palestinian assessment.

"I think that they're right, they have a victory," Moshe Green told me while taking a break from shopping in Jerusalem's main market. "They got what they wanted. What did we get out of it? I don't know."

A public opinion poll released Thursday by the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that 54 per cent of Israelis feel there was no clear winner in the war, while about a quarter felt Israel prevailed and 16 per cent said Hamas achieved a victory.

"I don't think that any declaration who won what is important," said Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Israeli prime minister Netanyahu. "What is important is how the future will look like."

The ceasefire deal agreed to by Hamas and Israel is ambiguous, leaving much of the hard work for future negotiations. Israel will ease some border restrictions, allowing limited humanitarian aid and construction materials into Gaza.

Israeli officials say there are safeguards in the agreement to monitor where there construction goods are used, given Israeli concerns that cement and concrete could be diverted from rebuilding homes and instead used to reconstruct the tunnels destroyed by Israel's army.

A new round of talks, brokered by the Egyptians, should take place in the next month or so, if the ceasefire holds.

The discussions are expected to deal with the difficult issues, including Hamas's demand that Israel and Egypt end their blockade of Gaza's borders. Palestinians in Gaza use the word "siege" to refer to the various restrictions Israel has imposed on the coastal region, particularly on the movement of goods and people.  

Israel wants assurances that Hamas and the other Gaza militant groups are disarmed.

'We are still standing'

Medical officials in Gaza say 2,143 Palestinians were killed during the war, the majority were civilians, according to the United Nations and human rights groups. Sixty-four Israeli soldiers died, along with five Israeli and one Thai civilian.

Back in Khan Yunis, Baraa Abu Dagga told me his family is focused on rebuilding their home now that the rocket fire and airstrikes have stopped.

But he, too, couldn't help but take a run at the who-won-the-war assessments that fill the newspapers and broadcasts around the region.

"We won the war," he said. "[Israel] bombed our houses, but we are still going on. We are still standing."

The Gaza war in numbers

• Palestinians killed: 2,143 **
• Israelis killed: 69 (+1 Thai migrant worker) *
• Israeli targets struck in Gaza: 5,263 *
• Rockets fired into Israel: 4,564 *
• Rockets exploded in Israeli territory:3,641 *
• Rockets destroyed by Iron Dome: 735 *
• Buildings destroyed in Gaza: estimated 10,800 **
• Buildings damaged in Gaza: estimated 50,000 ** (including 277 schools, 270 mosques and 10 hospitals)

* - Source: Israeli military ** - Source: Palestinian sources

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Vancouver's racist real estate titles reveal city's dark history

To many people, Metro Vancouver stands for diversity, but there's a dark history behind how some local neighbourhoods and property owners dealt with minority groups.

Early immigrants to B.C. faced not only the hardship of settling into a new home, but also seemingly racist policies — Chinese and Indo-Canadians did not have the right to own property and only got the right to vote in 1947.

In Vancouver, West Vancouver and Victoria, owners tried to use restrictive land covenants to keep minorities from buying land — and many of those covenants remain in place to this day.

Realtor Wayne Hammil recently spotted a covenant in a land title dating back to 1928 when he was putting a Vancouver home up for sale.

"One of the clauses in the restrictive covenant makes reference to not selling to certain ethnic minorities in the world," said Hammil.

The covenant prevents the sale or rent of the land to people who are of Chinese, Japanese, Indian and African descent or any other Asiatic race.

"[There's a ] total irony because most of the buyers are from mainland China," said Hammil. "If this was enforced, it would preclude them from purchasing the property."

Ron Usher, general counsel for the Society of Notaries Public of British Columbia, says Sec. 222 of the Land Title Act makes the discriminating covenants void.

"I would imagine though there are probably hundreds if not several thousand lots covered by this," said Usher. "Where they find these, they've already put on the title the 'Except for Clause X' notation."

Usher says it's simple to have the offensive portion of the covenant voided through a phone call to the province's Land Title and Survey Authority.

The race-based covenants are still embarrassing because of what they stand for, he says, but getting them completely removed from the land title can be an expensive process.

Meanwhile, Hammil said his clients are trying to get the covenant removed as soon as possible from the land title.

"It's more uncomfortable and a little awkward than really substantive," said Hammil, who says the covenant serves as a reminder of how far Vancouver has come.

On mobile? Click here to see the racist land title clause

Land Title Including Discriminatory Clause (PDF)
Land Title Including Discriminatory Clause (Text)

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The '10,000-hour' rule revisited: Why practice may not make perfect

When Malcolm Gladwell published Outliers, his bestselling book proposing that practising a certain task for around 10,000 hours is necessary before one can ever achieve great success, he gave hope to millions of wannabe Bill Gateses, Carl Sagans, Tiger Woodses, Yo-Yo Mas and yes, even Malcolm Gladwells.

But he also dashed the dreams of millions of slackers hoping to justify their poor work habits, believing no matter how hard they tried, they could only get so far.

However, just in time for school, there may be a sliver of good news for the terminally lazy.

"Our data suggests that overall on average, practice is important but not nearly as important as, say, Malcolm Gladwell would claim — that it accounts for everything or almost everything," said Brooke Macnamara, an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

It was Macnamara, along with fellow psychologists Frederick Oswald of Rice University and Zach Hambrick of Michigan State University, who decided to launch a comprehensive look at the claims popularized by Gladwell by examining 88 studies that looked into the relationship between practice and performance. The psychologists wanted to find what, if any, correlation there was between the two.

What they found and recently published in the journal  Psychological Science was that while practice does play a role in one's ability to say, play chess, or the violin, it's certainly not the defining element for success.

It also depends on what the task is. For games, like chess, practice played a larger role. For this task, the researchers found it accounts for about 26 per cent of one's overall ability. Music was 21 per cent, sports 18 per cent, education four per cent and professions less than one per cent.

All this means, according to the study, is that no matter how hard one practises a particular task, they can only become so good at it, or, in some cases, remain so mediocre.

'Not everyone is going to be Carl Sagan'

It also means there's a whole lot of other stuff going into what makes someone great, Macnamara suggested. Competition (playing under pressure), starting age, personality factors like intrinsic motivation and just how smart one is  — all these factors may play a role, she said.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says practising a task for around 10,000 hours is necessary before one can achieve great success. (Brooke Williams/Little, Brown and Company/Associated Press)

"Not everyone is going to be Carl Sagan, not everyone is going to be Yo Yo Ma, not everyone is going to be Tiger Woods," she said

Gladwell, who has based much of the 10,000-hour rule on a study by Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson​, wrote that the thousands of hours Microsoft founder Bill Gates spent programming and the thousands of hours the Beatles spent playing in Hamburg, Germany, in the early 60s was a necessary part of their success. While they were all talented individuals, to be sure, and would all have been successful, none would have attained the mega-level of success without that 10,000 hours of practice.

"There's nothing special about 10,000 hours, specifically," Macnamara said. "There's not really evidence to support it."

Macnamara cited one study looking into chess masters. One person received chess master status after 3,000 hours of deliberate practice. But another had not achieved that status until he had had over 23,000 hours of deliberate practice.

Ericsson, for his part, has dismissed the results of the psychologists' study. And Gladwell, in a 2013 New Yorker article, acknowledged that the 10,000-hour rule was just an average and stressed that no one succeeds at a high level without innate talent.

An excuse to slack off?

But, surely, students can't use this study as an excuse to curb their parents' expectations?

Well, yes and no, says Macnamara.

"It depends on what you think is important. And most of us agree that education is important and people certainly improve with studying. So, is it that you want to be as good as you can be and gain as much knowledge and information as you can? Or are you saying, 'So, if I'm not going to be Carl Sagan, then I'm going to give up'?"

Macnamara said people who are trying but failing to become the next Tiger Woods or Yo Yo Ma are sometimes told their lack of success is due to their failure to work hard enough. But she says it's more likely that they just didn't have the innate talent in the first place.   

Macnamara said she has had people say they feel better, that they're not kicking themselves anymore thinking they didn't work hard enough, as they realize their limitations.

"I think the more information we have, the better decisions we can make," she said. "So, parents can understand the importance of practice while understanding that it's not everything, and they can make decisions that way, and individuals can make decisions about the time and effort and resources they want to put into their endeavours, whether it's a career or hobby."

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WHO scientist infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone moved to Germany as Canadian colleagues pulled

A scientist who was infected with Ebola while working for the World Health Organization in Sierra Leone has arrived in Germany for treatment in a Hamburg hospital, officials said Wednesday.

Hamburg Health Department spokesman Roland Ahrendt said the man would be treated in the city's UKE hospital at the UN agency's request.

He said "Hamburg has the capabilities to carry out this kind of treatment."

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib identified the patient as a man from Senegal infected while working for the agency as a consultant.

'The international surge of health workers is extremely important and if something happens, if health workers get infected and it scares off other international health workers from coming, we will be in dire straits.'- Christy Feig, WHO

The WHO is not giving the man's name or his condition, for privacy reasons.

The World Health Organization announced it has shut down a laboratory in Sierra Leone after a Senegalese health worker was infected with the Ebola virus.

Three Canadians from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg are among the six workers who have withdrawn to Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, Christy Feig, a WHO spokeswoman in West Africa, told CBC News.

Feig said the Canadian government made the call to withdraw its workers in consultation with the WHO.

The WHO has sent in a team to see if this was a routine, straightforward infection or if structural changes need to be made to keep health-care workers safe.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said late Tuesday that it's pulling its three-person mobile laboratory team home from Sierra Leone. The Canadians helped to identify infected people and send them to a treatment tent. It is believed the three were based at Kailahun, in eastern Sierra Leone, where the Senegalese health worker was infected.

"The team is being recalled because three people in their hotel complex were diagnosed with Ebola. The risk that any of the three individuals is infected is very low," a spokesman for the agency said in an email.

"None of the team members had direct contact with any of the sick individuals, and the team members are not displaying any signs of illness."

An epidemiologist who was infected with Ebola virus while working for the World Health Organization in Sierra Leone arrives in Germany for treatment. (Axel Heimken/Associated Press)

The Canadians will stay in voluntary isolation and be monitored closely on their journey home and after they return, the agency said.

To date, the WHO says more than 240 health-care workers have developed the disease in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Half of the 240 have died.

The WHO had already tried to organize having another doctor sent to the Hamburg hospital for treatment in July, but the man died before he could be transported to Germany.

The WHO is not yet sure how the infectious disease expert who arrived Wednesday was exposed to the Ebola virus.

Feig said the epidemiologist was a surveillance officer, a job that typically involves co-ordinating the outbreak response by liaising with local health workers, lab experts and hospitals but not direct treatment of patients.

"He wasn't in treatment centres normally," she said by telephone from Sierra Leone. It's possible he went in there and wasn't properly covered, but that's why we've taken this unusual measure — to try to figure out what happened."

She said the team is checking to make sure there isn't an infection risk in the living and working environment that had not been uncovered.

"The international surge of health workers is extremely important and if something happens, if health workers get infected and it scares off other international health workers from coming, we will be in dire straits," she said.

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Learn which cities may get NHL expansion teams

The NHL is considering expanding by as many as four teams, according to a pair of reports, with Toronto and Quebec City in the mix to land new franchises.

Howard Bloom of Sports Business News tweeted that the league will add four franchises "by 2017" in Toronto, Quebec City, Las Vegas and Seattle.

Bloom added that the NHL would take in $1.4 billion in expansion fees with the deals.

Also on Tuesday, Tony Gallagher of the Province, based in Vancouver, reported that an NHL team in Las Vegas is a "done deal," according to "sources close to the situation."

However, French-language TVA Sports reported that NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly denied the league is looking to expand.

"It's not in our plans," TVA Sports quoted Daly as saying in French. "There is absolutely nothing new on that."

The NHL hasn't expanded since the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild joined for the 2000-01 season.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman visited Seattle in May for an update on a proposed new arena.

In July, former NHL great Wayne Gretzky's agent denied a report that his client is among a group of investors looking to bring a team to the city.

Toronto and Quebec City have long been considered candidates if the NHL decides to expand beyond the seven Canadian-based clubs in operation.

Quebec City hasn't had an NHL team since the Nordiques moved to Denver in 1995.

Toronto, of course, is already home to the Maple Leafs, but it's possible that Canada's most populous city could support a second team, whether in the city proper or the surrounding suburbs.

Markham, Ont., just north of Toronto, has flirted with the idea of funding the construction of an NHL-sized arena, but those plans have stalled.

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Global warming likely already dangerous, may be irreversible

Global warming is here, human-caused and probably already dangerous — and it's increasingly likely that the heating trend could be irreversible, a draft of a new international science report says.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday sent governments a final draft of its synthesis report, which combines three earlier, gigantic documents by the Nobel Prize-winning group. There is little in the report that wasn't in the other more-detailed versions, but the language is more stark and the report attempts to connect the different scientific disciplines studying problems caused by the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas.

The 127-page draft, obtained by The Associated Press, paints a harsh warning of what's causing global warming and what it will do to humans and the environment. It also describes what can be done about it.

Indian farmer, Vangala Anji Reddy works in a parched paddy field at Medak district, some 60 kilometers from Hyderabad on July 31, 2014. India received nearly 35 percent below average rain fall since the start of monsoon season (June to September). (Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty)

"Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems," the report says. The final report will be issued after governments and scientists go over the draft line by line in an October conference in Copenhagen.

Depending on circumstances and values, "currently observed impacts might already be considered dangerous," the report says. It mentions extreme weather and rising sea levels, such as heat waves, flooding and droughts. It even raises, as an earlier report did, the idea that climate change will worsen violent conflicts and refugee problems and could hinder efforts to grow more food. And ocean acidification, which comes from the added carbon absorbed by oceans, will harm marine life, it says.

Without changes in greenhouse gas emissions, "climate change risks are likely to be high or very high by the end of the 21st century," the report says.

In 2009, countries across the globe set a goal of limiting global warming to about another degree Celsius)above current levels. But the report says that it is looking more likely that the world will shoot past that point. Limiting warming to that much is possible but would require dramatic and immediate cuts in carbon dioxide pollution.

The report says if the world continues to spew greenhouse gases at its accelerating rate, it's likely that by mid-century temperatures will increase by about another two degrees compared to temperatures from 1986 to 2005. And by the end of the century, that scenario will bring temperatures that are about 3.7 degrees warmer.

"The report tells us once again what we know with a greater degree of certainty: that climate change is real, it is caused by us, and it is already causing substantial damage to us and our environment," Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann wrote in an email. "If there is one take home point of this report it is this: We have to act now."

John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, is in the tiny minority of scientists who are skeptical of mainstream science's claim that global warming is a major problem. He says people will do OK: "Humans are clever. We shall adapt to whatever happens."

While projections show that the world will warm and climate will change, there's still a level of uncertainty about how much, and that makes the problem all about how much risk we accept, said MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel.

If it's soon and only a little risk, he said, that's not too bad, but when you look at the risk curve the other end of it is "very frightening."

The report used the word risk 351 times in just 127 pages.

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