'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.
Construction workers with heavy machinery have started work on Poland's border with Belarus on a US$394 million wall to stop migrants pushed across by Belarus in what the European Union calls a "hybrid attack."
Reporters were allowed Thursday to see the work in the village of Tolcza, near the closed border crossing of Kuznica in eastern Poland.
Border guards and the military patrolled as excavators and cranes prepared the ground for the metal wall that Poland's right-wing government says will serve the interests of all of the EU. Bloc member Poland is opposed to taking in large numbers of migrants.
"The Belarusian side is ready to do anything when it comes to provocations, so we have to be ready for any kind of event," said Maj. Arkadiusz Tomaszewski, deputy commander of the Border Guard in Ku┼║nica, where clashes with migrants and Belarusian security officers took place last year.
The 5.5-meter (18-foot) high metal wall topped with barbed wire will run more than 180 kilometers (115 miles) along the land part of the border, which also includes the Bug River. Cameras and electronic alarm systems are to be added.
Two construction companies will work on it around the clock. It is due to be completed in June, at a cost of some 1.6 billion zlotys ($394 million.)
European nations, facing a continuing inflow of migrants and refugees, are debating stepping up external border protection, tightening travel rules within Europe's passport-free Schengen zone and introducing stricter rules for returning migrants to their countries of origin.
During the 2015 massive inflow of migrants to the EU, Hungary drew condemnation when it built a wall on its borders with Croatia and Serbia to block migration routes.
Pressure from thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa on Poland's and Lithuania's wooded borders with Belarus began in the summer, leading to clashes with Poland's border guards. The migrants are mostly headed for Germany.
Last year, Lithuania started building a wall on its frontier with Belarus, while Poland sealed its border with Belarus using razor wire, increased the number of guards and restricting access to the frontier.
The EU says the migrants are being used by Belarus' authoritarian leader to destabilize the 27-member bloc in retaliation for its sanctions on Minsk following an election widely seen as rigged, and a clampdown on opposition protests.
At least 12 migrants have died in the wooded border area and conditions have got worse in sub-freezing winter temperatures.
Critics and environmentalists say the wall will fail to stop migrants, but will harm one of Europe's last pristine woodlands, the Bialowieza forest.
Natalia Gebert, from the Grupa Granica (The Border Group) that brings aid to migrants and asylum-seekers in Poland, says the wall "stops only the disabled, the weak, the sick."
"It doesn't stop desperate people who are fleeing danger from trying to cross," Gebert told The Associated Press.
She said that in the first three weeks of 2022 the group received requests for help from nearly 350 people, including 51 children.
Kalina Czwarnog of the Ocalenie (Deliverance) Foundation said the money for the wall could be better spent on ways of managing migration in a "humanitarian way and in line with international law."
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.