At least 4 buildings burned at Jasper Park Lodge, others damaged: Fairmont memo
The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge said Thursday afternoon most of its structures are "standing and intact," including its iconic main lodge.
A woman who travelled to Syria as a teenager to join the Islamic State group lost her appeal Friday against the British government's decision to revoke her U.K. citizenship, with judges saying that it wasn't for them to rule on whether it was “harsh” to do so.
Shamima Begum, who is now 24, was 15 when she and two other girls fled from London in February 2015 to marry IS fighters in Syria at a time when the group's online recruitment program lured many impressionable young people to its self-proclaimed caliphate. Begum married a Dutch man fighting for IS and had three children, who all died.
Authorities withdrew her British citizenship soon after she surfaced in a Syrian refugee camp in 2019, where she has been ever since. Last year, Begum lost her appeal against the decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a tribunal which hears challenges to decisions to remove British citizenship on national security grounds.
Her lawyers brought a further bid to overturn that decision at the Court of Appeal, with Britain's Home Office opposing the challenge.
All three judges dismissed her case and argued she had made a “calculated” decision to join IS even though she may have been “influenced and manipulated by others.”
In relaying the ruling, Chief Justice Sue Carr said it wasn't the court's job to decide whether the decision to strip Begum of her British citizenship was “harsh” or whether she was the “author of her own misfortune.”
She said the court's sole task was to assess whether the decision to strip Begum of her citizenship was unlawful.
“Since it was not, Ms Begum's appeal is dismissed,” the judge added.
Carr said any arguments over the consequences of the unanimous judgment, which could include a bid to appeal at Britain's Supreme Court, will be adjourned for seven days.
Begum's lawyer indicated that a further challenge was on the cards.
“I think the only thing we can really say for certainty is that we are going to keep fighting,” Daniel Furner said outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
“I want to say that I'm sorry to Shamima and to her family that after five years of fighting, she still hasn't received justice in a British court and to promise her and promise the government that we are not going to stop fighting until she does get justice and until she is safely back home,” he added.
Begum's legal team argued that the decision by Britain's then interior minister Sajid Javid, left her stateless and that she should have been treated as a child trafficking victim, not a security risk.
Javid said he welcomed the ruling which “upheld” his decision.
“This is a complex case but home secretaries should have the power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it,” he said.
Britain's Conservative government claimed she could seek a Bangladeshi passport based on family ties. But Begum's family argued that she was from the U.K. and never held a Bangladeshi passport.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the government will “always take the strongest possible action to protect our national security and we never take decisions around deprivation (of citizenship) lightly.”
A number of campaigners voiced their disappointment after the ruling and said the solution rests with the government shouldering its responsibility.
“It is now a political problem, and the government holds the key to solving it,” said Maya Foa, director of the Reprieve human right campaign group. “If the government thinks that Shamima Begum has committed a crime, she should be prosecuted in a British court. Citizenship stripping is not the answer.”
The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge said Thursday afternoon most of its structures are "standing and intact," including its iconic main lodge.
Scotiabank has acknowledged technical difficulties affecting direct deposits as clients report missed payments Friday morning. On Friday morning, the bank's client services phone line was playing an automated message assuring customers that work was underway to rectify the outage.
Police in Mississauga are conducting a full-scale search of the city’s biggest park for a non-verbal toddler who went missing Thursday evening. Sgt. Jennifer Trimble told reporters Friday morning that there has been no trace of three-year-old Zaid Abdullah since 6:20 p.m., when he was last seen with his parents in Erindale Park, near Dundas Street West and Mississauga Road.
Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk's estranged daughter, publicly refuted several recent anti-trans statements her Tesla CEO and X owner father has made about her.
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Saskatchewan’s Court of Appeal has denied a political group that opposes so-called “gender ideology” intervener status in a legal dispute over the province’s controversial pronoun law.
A hearing in the case of Justin Timberlake being accused of driving while intoxicated was held Friday, where an attorney for the singer disputed his arrest in June.
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A new study published Thursday in the journal JAMA Network Open has found that the ending in the 2023 blockbuster film 'Barbie' had an influence on online search interest in terms around gynecology, the branch of medicine that deals with women’s reproductive health.
As fire threatened people in Jasper National Park, Colleen Knull sprung into action.
Video posted to social media on Thursday morning appears to show the charred remains of a Jasper, Alta., neighbourhood.
A Saskatchewan-born veteran of the Second World War was recently presented with France's highest national order.
A local First Nations elder and veteran is helping to bring the Ojibwe language to a well-known film for the first time.
A cat who fled her Montreal home nearly a decade ago has been reunited with her family after being found in Ottawa.
A woman in Waterloo, Ont. is out thousands of dollars for a car crash she wasn’t involved in.
A swarm of bees living in a lamppost in Winnipeg’s Sage Creek neighbourhood has found a new home for its hive.
Around 100 acres of Manitoba Crown Land near the Saskatchewan border is being returned to the Métis community.
Nova Scotia is suspending the licensed Cape Breton moose hunt for three years due to what the province is calling a “significant drop” in the population.