'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
A spate of explosions and fires has turned Russian-occupied Crimea from a secure rear base into a new battleground in the war, demonstrating both the Russians' vulnerability and the Ukrainians' capacity to strike deep behind enemy lines.
Nine Russian warplanes were reported destroyed at an airbase in Crimea last week, and an ammunition depot on the peninsula blew up on Tuesday.
Ukrainian authorities have stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility, preferring to keep the world guessing, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alluded to Ukrainian attacks behind enemy lines after the latest blasts, which Russia blamed on "sabotage."
Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and has used it as a staging ground for attacks on the country in the war that began Feb. 24. Ukrainian authorities have vowed to recapture Crimea and other occupied territories.
"The invaders will die like dew in the sun," Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address Wednesday, said of the effort to retake Crimea and other areas.
The explosions represent the latest setback for Moscow, which began its invasion with hopes of taking Kyiv in a lightning offensive but soon became bogged down in the face of fierce resistance. As the war nears the six-month mark, the two sides are engaged in a grinding war of attrition, fighting village to village, largely in the country's east.
The attacks in Crimea may mark the opening of a new front that would represent a significant escalation in the war and could further stretch Russia's resources.
"Russian commanders will highly likely be increasingly concerned with the apparent deterioration in security across Crimea, which functions as rear base area for the occupation," Britain's Defense Ministry wrote on Twitter.
As a result of the airfield attacks, Russia is moving dozens of warplanes and helicopters to deeper positions in Crimea and to Russian bases elsewhere, Ukrainian military intelligence reported.
Tuesday's explosions ripped through an ammunition site near the town of Dzhankoi, forcing the evacuation of about 3,000 people. Munitions continued to explode Wednesday and authorities fought the fires with a helicopter, said Crimea's regional leader, Sergei Aksyonov. He said a search for the perpetrators was underway.
The Kommersant business paper also reported explosions Tuesday at a Crimean base in Gvardeyskoye. There was no confirmation from the Russians.
The British intelligence report said Gvardeyskoye and Dzhankoi are home to two of the most important Russian military airfields in Crimea.
Just over a week ago, explosions rocked the Russians' Saki air base on Crimea and destroyed planes on the ground. Moscow suggested that the blasts were accidental, caused perhaps by a careless smoker, but Ukrainian authorities mocked that explanation and hinted at their involvement.
Last month, a small explosive device carried by a makeshift drone blew up in a courtyard at the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, wounding six people and prompting the cancellation of ceremonies there honoring Russia's navy.
In other developments Wednesday, two civilians were reported killed and seven wounded by Russian shelling of several towns and villages in the Donetsk region in the east that is the current focus of the Kremlin offensive.
In the south, Russian warplanes fired cruise missiles at the Odesa region overnight, wounding four people, according to regional administration spokesman Oleh Bratchuk. In Mykolaiv, also in the south, two Russian missiles damaged a university building but injured no one.
Russian forces also shelled Kharkiv and the surrounding region in the northeast, killing at least six people, wounding at least 16 and damaging residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, authorities said.
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv for a meeting Thursday with Zelenskyy and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said Guterres will raise the topic of food and grain shipments, nuclear power plant safety and the recent prison explosion that killed scores of captured Ukrainian fighters, and will "do what he can to essentially lower the temperature as much as possible."
The last time the U.N. chief came to Ukraine, in April, Russia launched a missile strike on Kyiv.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Rookie goalie Arturs Silovs will start in net for the Canucks as Vancouver kicks off a second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers Wednesday night.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.