![](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.6925018.1718283774!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_800/image.jpg)
Rare surgery in Montreal allows 9-year-old girl to live normal life
A rare surgery at the Montreal Children's Hospital is allowing a nine-year-old girl to keep her adrenal glands and live a normal life.
A Russian court on Tuesday convicted top opposition leader Alexei Navalny of fraud and contempt of court, sentencing him to nine more years in prison in a move that was seen as an attempt to keep President Vladimir Putin's biggest foe behind bars for as long as possible.
The new sentence follows a year-long crackdown by Putin on Navalny's supporters, other opposition activists and independent journalists in which authorities appear eager to stifle all dissent.
Navalny's close associates have faced criminal charges and left the country, and his group's political infrastructure -- an anti-corruption foundation and a nationwide network of regional offices -- has been destroyed after being labeled an extremist organization.
The 45-year-old Navalny, who in 2020 survived a poisoning with a nerve agent that he blames on the Kremlin, is already serving 2 1/2 years in a penal colony east of Moscow for a parole violation. The new trial was held in a makeshift courtroom at the facility.
In a Facebook post by his team shortly after the sentence, the usually sardonic Navalny said: "My space flight is taking a bit longer than expected."
He added that neither he nor his comrades "will simply wait," announcing that his Anti-Corruption Foundation will become an international organization that will "fight (Putin) until we win."
"We will find all of their mansions in Monaco, their villas in Miami, their riches everywhere -- and when we do, we will take everything from the criminal Russian elite," the foundation's new website said.
His new conviction is on charges of embezzling money that he and his foundation raised over the years and of insulting a judge during a previous trial. Navalny, who will appeal the ruling, has rejected the allegations as politically motivated.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price condemned the court's "sham ruling" as "the latest in a series of attempts to silence Navalny and other opposition figures and independent voices."
Germany also denounced the verdict, with its Foreign Ministry calling it "part of the systematic instrumentalization of the Russian judicial system against dissidents and the political opposition."
It wasn't immediately clear whether Navalny must serve the new nine-year sentence in addition to the 2 1/2 years, or where he will serve it. Prosecutors originally asked for a 13-year sentence. The judge also imposed a fine of 1.2 million rubles (about $11,500).
Navalny's Twitter account responded to the nine-year sentence by citing "The Wire" television series: "Well, as the characters of my favorite TV series `The Wire' used to say: `You only do two days. That's the day you go in and the day you come out.' I even had a T-shirt with this slogan, but the prison authorities confiscated it, considering the print extremist."
Even his lawyers, Olga Mikhailova and Vadim Kobzev, were detained shortly after they commented to reporters on the ruling, although Mikhailova told the Medizona news outlet that the police let them go without any charges.
Navalny's supporters criticized the decision to move the trial, which opened about a month ago, to the prison, instead of holding it in Moscow. They said it effectively limited access to the proceedings for the media and supporters.
He appeared at hearings in prison garb and made several elaborate speeches, decrying the charges as bogus.
Navalny fell ill while on a domestic flight in 2020 and was diagnosed with being poisoned by a chemical nerve agent Novichok, although Russian officials vehemently denied his accusations that they had any role. He was transferred for treatment to Germany, where he recovered for five months.
He was arrested upon returning to Russia in January 2021, triggering the biggest protests seen in the country in recent years. The next month, a Moscow court ordered him to prison for violating terms of his parole on a 2014 embezzlement conviction that the European Court of Human Rights deemed to be "arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable."
Authorities then unleashed the sweeping crackdown on his organization, associates and supporters. Last month, Russian officials added him and a number of his colleagues to a state registry that labeled them extremists and terrorists.
Several criminal cases have been launched against Navalny individually, leading his associates to suggest the Kremlin intends to keep him behind bars indefinitely.
Navalny's closest ally and longtime strategist Leonid Volkov tweeted Tuesday from abroad that the plan will fail. "Putin plans and has been planning a lot of things: to make Russia one of the top-five world economies, to take over Kyiv in 96 hours, to kill Navalny with Novichok. His plans have always failed. So will these nine years," Volkov said.
A rare surgery at the Montreal Children's Hospital is allowing a nine-year-old girl to keep her adrenal glands and live a normal life.
Your father's diet before you were born could have played a role in your health, a new study has found.
As Canadians continue to struggle with the extremely high cost of buying a home in some of the country’s major urban centres, a new global report is underscoring just how expensive some of those markets are.
There's growing evidence that the number of great white sharks is on the rise along Canada's East Coast, where plans are in the works to post warning signs for beachgoers for the first time.
Eighty countries jointly called Sunday for the "territorial integrity" of Ukraine to be the basis for any peace agreement to end Russia’s war, though some key developing nations at a Swiss conference did not join in.
Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly insists there are no "traitors" in the Liberal caucus, after a report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) alleged there are MPs and senators who are “semi-witting or witting participants” in foreign interference efforts.
The Edmonton Oilers' offence exploded in Game 4 to beat the Florida Panthers 8-1.
Nine people were injured, including two young children and their mother, after a shooter opened fire at a splash pad in a Detroit suburb where families gathered to escape the summer heat Saturday. Law enforcement tracked a suspect to a home, where the man died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.
Donald Trump blamed immigrants for stealing jobs and government resources as he courted separate groups of Black voters and hardcore conservatives in battleground Michigan on Saturday.
Fancy Pokket owner Mike Timani has decided to create a 220-foot long flat bread to celebrate its 35th anniversary.
If certain goals that are in the Paris Climate Accord aren't met, the existence of polar bears in the Hudson Bay may come to an end.
In an attempt to invite one of the most popular recording artists in the world to the land of living skies – the City of Swift Current has offered to rename itself in honour of Taylor Swift.
More than a dozen dogs arrived by Cargojet early Thursday morning to the People for Animal Wellbeing Shelter to find a permanent place to call home in New Brunswick.
Peggy's Cove, N.S., is one of the most famous locations in the Maritimes. Recent visitors were treated to more than just the iconic landmark.
Hundreds of fans lined up to meet the Trailer Park Boys in Dartmouth, N.S., Tuesday, as Ricky, Bubbles and Julian promoted their new brand of potato chips.
Car break-ins plague Canadians across the country, but instead of worrying about theft, a northern Ontario woman is cleaning up a big mess that she says will not be covered by insurance after a black bear broke into her Honda Civic and took a nap.
Members of a Hutterite colony in southern Alberta have potentially built the world's tallest structure made of Popsicle sticks.
A dog who spent the first three-and-a-half years of his life suffering and almost a year at a shelter has found his forever home, according to the BC SPCA.