Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
A heavy snowfall and a 6-hour flight delay. Dogs on the runway. Armed Taliban gatekeepers. Two angry men fighting over baggage. That was my return to Kabul after more than a decade.
Stopped by a zealous airport official, or maybe he was Mukhabarat—security forces, disguised as a civilian. You can never tell.
You must fill out these forms. Name, passport, local address, one photo, who invited you to Afghanistan? We already have visas. You must fill this out. Okay, okay.
He was pleasant enough and polite. Not pushy, or stern. Didn’t look Taliban. You must keep this and show it on the way out, he said, not as a warning, but advice. Believe me, it will be better for you.
Leaning in closer and lowering his voice. Could you give me some “tipping” he asked. For my helping you. Tipping? I stammered, considering the 10 pound note in my pocket. The only cash I had.
Please, he said, I am not getting paid and I need to buy food for my family. Not sure if he was telling the truth, but he walked away with my 10 pounds.
Others approached. Do you need a car? Are you with the UN? You need help maybe? Welcome, said a middle-aged Taliban man, singled out by his black turban. A paj, and no mistaking who wears them. Where are you from, he asked? One of the feared men in the shadows, now in the light of an airport arrival lounge, and smiling.
It is still hard to comprehend they again control Afghanistan. Pretending to make nice, or is it for real?
Exhausted, upset stomach after 36 hours and little sleep. No driver. Where is our driver? I can be of assistance maybe, says another man in English. He used to be a translator. That work disappeared with the arrival of the Taliban.
He was certainly an educated man but left to his own survival instincts now, like millions of other out-of-work men and women. There are no jobs for the men and women aren’t allowed to work. Bitter combination.
Every voice seemed to carry a tone of need. It never used to be like that. Not in such numbers. Proud Afghans lowered in life to scrounging, if not begging.
I’m sorry, I answered, as we walked towards the parking lot. We already have a translator. I wish I could help. Here, he said, stepping forward with his name and number scrawled on a scrap of paper. In case anything changes. I am available.
To a hotel that I’ve stayed in before, a very smart hotel by any standards of the world. It was attacked at least twice by the Taliban, with suicide bombers and armed fighters who hunted through the halls and the sauna looking for westerners to kill.
It is sealed off from the street and armoured like a fortress now, with heavy metal gates and layers of security that weren’t in place when I was last there.
The paradox of the reconfigured Afghanistan suddenly becomes obvious. Just outside the main gate, armed Taliban now stand as defenders of the place they once terrorized. Ready to fight any new enemies of their country who might come to harm and kill the guests inside. Like me.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Auston Matthews will miss the Maple Leafs' must-win Game 6 against the Boston Bruins.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.