NEWS IMAGE COLLAGE / for 12-2009

A group of veteran pranksters have stepped forward to say they are responsible for a series of fake news releases sent out Monday that claimed Canada had committed to drastic greenhouse gas emission cuts.

A car that automaker Nissan hopes will revolutionize urban commuting made its Canadian debut in Vancouver Monday.

Ryan Kesler and Mason Raymond keyed Vancouver's attack with one goal and one assist apiece, and Roberto Luongo made 24 saves.

Two Winnipeg police officers are being credited with saving the life of a newborn after a woman who didn't know she was pregnant suddenly gave birth in her bathroom.

The season's first major storm is bearing down on B.C.'s south coast, with weather warnings in effect for many regions. Up to 20 centimetres of snow is forecast by Tuesday night.

Prairie dwellers suffered through the third straight day of bone-chilling cold Monday, as Arctic air and extreme wind chill warnings gripped Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Reports that Canadian officials have lost track of some Taliban insurgents handed over to Afghan authorities are "demoralizing" to Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan, Defence Minister Peter MacKay acknowledged on Monday.

One of the last impressions Kings goalie Jonathan Quick has of Henrik Sedin is the Canucks centre sticking his six-foot-two frame in front of the Los Angeles net and banging home a rebound for the winning goal on Nov. 26 in Vancouver.

NASA launched its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope Monday morning, a device which will be able to survey the entire sky in six months.

The British Columbia community of Grand Forks has been overrun by hundreds of deer, and just what to do about the out-of-control population is dividing residents of the Kootenay town.

All foreign ships that enter Canada's Arctic waters should report to Canadian authorities, according to a new Senate committee report.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay will not resign from cabinet over allegations that he knew suspected Taliban prisoners were tortured after being turned over to Afghan police by the Canadian military, he said Monday

A former Quebec Major Junior Hockey League player who was convicted of assault in connection with an on-ice incident will not have a criminal record.

The Conservative government has considered abandoning some of the greenhouse gas reduction goals set out in its 2007 green plan and allowing weaker targets for the oil and gas sector

A pileup involving more than 60 vehicles has been cleared from Highway 416 in Ottawa's south end, allowing the highway to reopen in both directions.

A group of anonymous environmental pranksters who released a series of hoax press releases Monday claiming Canada had committed to drastic greenhouse gas emission cuts says it will hold a press conference in Copenhagen Tuesday to explain the fake releases

Online ads selling everything from teeth whiteners to premium text messages made it into the 2009 Top 10 scams listed by the B.C. branch of the Better Business Bureau.

*Someone has way too much time their hands* "Thomas the Tank Engine is pulling girls in the wrong direction, a Canadian professor says in a new study."

EDMONTON -- When told about the Liberal-dominated Senate's revisions to the government's latest tough-on-crime bill, the former drug dealer howled with laughter. "They wanna WHAT?" he said incredulously. "It's like they're encouraging grow-ops on rese

Church bells rang out 350 times across Denmark and several other countries Sunday to encourage negotiators assembled in Copenhagen to reach a climate-change deal.

A grimy three-car train pulled out of Belgrade's railway station Sunday on the first direct trip to Sarajevo in nearly 18 years, restoring a link broken at the start of ethnic warfare in the former Yugoslavia.

A world-class zoo in Langley, B.C., is the subject of an abuse investigation after a number of current and former employees spoke out against the facility.

OTTAWA - No tweets allowed about that bagel you had for breakfast - only a twit would have a staffer tweet in their place.

TORONTO - As agricultural experts met in Copenhagen on the weekend to gingerly build consensus on agriculture's role in climate change, some farmers in Canada offered another solution to farming's cost on the environment -change the way farming is practis

EDMONTON - There's one way to deal with some of the coldest winter temperatures yet on the Prairies - outright denial.

STERLING, Conn. - A holy cow in Connecticut, perhaps? Or maybe a divine bovine?

MADOC -- "Oh my God, I just killed Rudolph!" -- A hunter's alleged confession

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev talked Saturday about ongoing negotiations for a successor to an expired nuclear weapons treaty. The Kremlin said the two sides are making "substantial progress."

Christine Nesbitt raced to victory in the 1,000 metres Sunday in Utah on a golden weekend for the long-track speedskater, while the women's pursuit team added a silver and the men's team earned bronze.

Kristi Richards of Pemberton, B.C., is off to the best start of her freestyle ski World Cup career after winning silver Saturday in women's moguls at Suomo, Finland.

WINNIPEG - Who wants a Ho-Ho-Hoegaarden? Yesterday evening dozens of people strapped on their Santa Claus suits and headed off to numerous nightclubs in the name of the holiday season.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard is thinking big. As the top soldier in Kandahar province, the Canadian commander exudes an optimism that goes well beyond the dewy-eyed enthusiasm of a man new to the job.

HALIFAX, N.S. - Mollusks from the Pacific could march into the Atlantic Ocean within decades because of the melting of Arctic sea ice, researchers in California say.

The head of Hockey Night in Canada has come out in strong support of Don Cherry after a Toronto neurosurgeon accused the commentator of contributing to serious injuries and concussions in the sport.

Vancouver is bracing for its first major snowfall of the season, and the city says it's prepared for whatever Mother Nature brings now and during the Olympics in two months.

A Halifax Regional Police officer is facing criminal charges of extortion and breach of trust. Const. Jeffrey Buchanan, 29, was arrested Saturday at 2:30 a.m. while on duty and charged early Sunday, Const. Brian Palmeter said.

Alberta's Kevin Martin built a 5-1 lead over Ontario's Glenn Howard through five ends and rode that to a 7-3 victory at the Olympic curling trials in Edmonton on Sunday afternoon.

Secret papers reveal that plans to ease the strain on the 83-year-old monarch and her 88-year-old husband, Prince Philip, are at an advanced stage.

Anti-drinking and driving ad stirs controversy

For thousands of Canadians, it's one of the year's last acts of desperation: "How can I get this Christmas gift overseas in a week without remortgaging my home?"

REGINA -- The excitement and sense of anticipation was evident as players vying for spots on Canada's team for the world junior hockey championship arrived in small groups from across the country yesterday.

How about For It All at Rexall? Just doesn't resonate like The Thrilla In Manila. Still ..."This is Ali versus Frazier," Glenn Howard said of today's 1 p.m. Roar of the Rings final against Kevin Martin

Susan O'Connor will always remember silently pleading to the rock."Please stop! Please! Please! Please stop!" As the last rock on the 10th end out of the hand of her skip, Cheryl Bernard, finally started slowing down, O'Connor started bouncing up and down

The Prairie provinces are mired in a bitter cold snap. Environment Canada has issued wind chill warnings across the region, affecting large parts of Manitoba and Alberta and almost all of Saskatchewan

Henrik Sedin set up three goals and Roberto Luongo made 39 saves as the Vancouver Canucks prevailed in a 4-3 game over the Minnesota Wild on Saturday night.

A Toronto neurosurgeon speaking at a Regina seminar about concussions in hockey says the promotion of an aggressive style of play by commentators like Don Cherry is contributing to serious injuries in the sport.

The 19-year-old man guilty of the hit-and-run deaths of a Vancouver couple has been sentenced to five years in prison.

Murder charges against alleged B.C. gangster Jamie Bacon could be thrown out of court following a revelation that jail authorities recorded telephone conversations between Bacon and his lawyer for seven months.

A chartered Greyhound bus transporting a boys' hockey team slid off a highway and down an embankment in north-central B.C. Friday afternoon

Three top employees at Metro Vancouver's transit authority have been let go from their jobs.

EDMONTON -- A three-year-old girl and her mother narrowly escaped tragedy when an SUV lost control and flattened the bus stop they were waiting in yesterday.

TORONTO -- Teenaged girls were actively recruited from local youth shelters to work at a brothel fronting as a massage parlour perched above a downtown pub, police say.

Canada's Kristi Richards won the World Cup women's moguls opener Friday in Suomu, Finland, while Alexandre Bilodeau took bronze in the men's event.

Shipping companies that operate in the Arctic may be required to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions they produce, depending on how climate-change talks go in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The global average temperature could reach a record high in 2010, according to the UK's Met Office.

A hi-tech "cryo-Egg", which will help predict sea levels changes, is to be created by experts at Bristol university.

The first images have been revealed from a telescope that can map the sky much faster and deeper than any other.

An Arkansas couple featured on the reality show "18 Kids and Counting" now has 19.

Environment Canada has predicted a high likelihood of snow for Vancouver from Friday until Wednesday next week.

Kamloops RCMP have arrested a 45-year-old man in connection with several obscene and explicit letters that were sent to local elementary schools.

The B.C. government will officially rename the Queen Charlotte Islands as Haida Gwaii under the terms of a "reconciliation" agreement signed with the Haida Nation.

Police in Newfoundland are seeking the public's help to help identify mysterious human remains and solve a cold-case murder

Canadians will soon have a fourth wireless company offering services to them after the federal government has allowed Globalive Wireless Management Corp. to start operating immediately.

Human error in operating a hydraulic door has been blamed for the death of a capybara at the Calgary Zoo, the latest in a string of incidents at the facility over the past few years.

BOUTTE, La. - A Louisiana woman is charged with getting back at her sleeping boyfriend after a fight by scalding him with a pot of boiling grits

Adolph Hitler's remains were burned and dumped in an East German river in 1970 on orders from the head of the KGB, according to a report out of Russia this week.

Diane Sawyer exited ABC's Good Morning America on Friday with an emotional moment that recalled the biggest story of her nearly 11 years on the show: meeting the children born after their fathers were killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Certain information related to the Afghan detainee affair has to be kept secret to protect lives, International Trade Minister Stockwell Day said Friday in defence of his government's decision not to release critical documents.

The latest quarterly review in Afghanistan shows the most deaths among coalition forces in one three-month period since fighting began in 2001.

A new draft proposal released Friday at the Copenhagen climate summit calls for developed countries to make deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions than current commitments.

A group of historians in Thamesville, Ont., say they'll need $1.5 million to upgrade a memorial for a native American chief who played a key role in the War of 1812.

A new award in the name of Terry Fox has been created to honour the Olympic athlete from any country who displays the most courage, humility and extraordinary athletic ability at the 2010 Winter Games.

The B.C. government has given environmental approval to two new wind farms, including one that would be Canada's first offshore wind farm.

"A few bad apples."....That's how former Toronto police chief Julian Fantino described the force's problems when six former officers were charged with conspiring to beat and rob drug dealers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

An RCMP officer in Inuvik, N.W.T., was not justified in jolting a teenage girl with a Taser in 2007, a federal police watchdog agency has concluded.

Call it a runback-raise-angle jam double takeout, or whatever terminology you want to use, the circus shot put three points on the scoreboard and put Martin's men in Sunday's final with the winner advancing to the five-ring circus in Vancouver.

Daniel Sedin scored a hat trick to help the Vancouver Canucks open a key stretch of home games with a convincing 4-2 win over the Atlanta Thrashers on Thursday night.

The UN no longer has any reason to wait to consider new sanctions on Iran if it does not respond to concerns over its nuclear programme, France says.

Police answering a 911 call about a home invasion in East Vancouver Wednesday found no break-in suspects when they arrived but did find 107,000 ecstasy tablets, some imprinted with the Olympic rings.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A record five women were among the 13 people awarded Nobel Prizes, including a writer who depicted life behind the Iron Curtain and two American researchers who showed how chromosomes protect themselves from degrading.

Canadian scientist Willard S. Boyle received the Nobel for physics Thursday, a prize he's sharing with two other physicists honoured for their work in optics.

North Korea said Friday it understands the need to resume the stalled international talks on ending its nuclear programs and it agrees to work with the United States to narrow unspecified "remaining differences."

Just over a week after announcing an increase in U.S. troop strength for the war in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama picked up his Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday.

People living in the circumpolar North should be exempt from mandatory greenhouse-gas cutbacks, according to the head of an international Inuit organization.

A suspect has been arrested in a recent Molotov cocktail attack on a cafe in east-end Montreal

Riot police had to intervene Thursday night to push back protesters at celebrations marking the arrival of the Olympic torch in Old Montreal.

Parliament was to begin its holiday recess Friday with MPs scheduled to return to the House on Jan. 25.

The reporter put on the shirt to confirm reports that security was searching visitors for Greenpeace logos.The T-shirt was brought to the attention of nearby officers who told the reporter she could not enter the buildings. They relented after she agreed

Jennifer Jones has missed out on another chance to represent Canada at the Winter Olympics.

The Vancouver Canucks' lacklustre finish to a four-game road trip prompted Alain Vigneault to implore his team to be mindful of the standings before it's too late.

The failure of a new Russian intercontinental ballistic missile during testing was the cause of the spectacular, spiraling, blue lights seen early Wednesday in the skies over northern Norway, analysts said.

There are signs a phenomenon known as Olympic aversion is already hitting the travel industry in B.C., even though the 2010 Winter Games are still more than two months away.

There is snow in the forecast for Vancouver but the city's road crews say they are ready for the first dump of the white stuff this year.

A Gold Rush-era steamboat that was found on the bottom of a Yukon lake this year has been named National Geographic's top archeological find of 2009.