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.
The Taliban condemned on Sunday a "baseless and biased" report from the U.N. Security Council highlighting rifts within the group's ranks.
The last seven months have seen a greater shift of power from the capital Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar, a Taliban heartland and the base of the group's supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.
A report -- issued earlier in June -- by the U.N. Security Council's Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team said that the Taliban governance structures remain "highly exclusionary, Pashtun-centred and repressive" toward all forms of opposition.
It also said Kandahar's return as the seat of power -- like it was during the Taliban's rule of Afghanistan in the 1990s -- circumvents senior Taliban ministers in Kabul, the center of the current government, because of the way decisions are made.
Key figures, such as the Taliban's main spokesman, have set up offices in the south of Kandahar. Monumental decrees such as those excluding women and girls from education and work were issued from the city instead of Kabul.
The report also said the group was battling internal conflict over key policies, the centralization of power and the control of financial and natural resources in Afghanistan. Ongoing power struggles are further destabilizing the situation, to the point where an outbreak of armed conflict between rival factions is a manifest risk, the report added.
The Taliban's main spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rejected the report's "accusations" of strife, saying they were baseless and demonstrated "obvious hostility" to Afghans.
Rumours of disagreement between the group's leaders are a continuation of the propaganda of the past 20 years, he said. "The publication of such biased and baseless reports by the Security Council does not help Afghanistan and international peace and security, rather, it increases worry among the people (Afghans)."
The report described the Taliban leader, Akhundzada, as "reclusive and elusive" and said he had elaborate measures to ensure his safety while holding meetings.
It also cited an unnamed U.N. Security Council member state as saying Akhundzada had survived two bouts of COVID-19, leaving his respiratory system weakened, in addition to existing kidney problems, leading to suggestions that senior Taliban figures are waiting for his health to lead to a natural succession.
"Hibatullah has been proudly resistant to external pressure to moderate his policies," the June 1 report said. "There is no indication that other Kabul-based Taliban leaders can influence policy substantially. There is little prospect of change in the near to medium term."
The Taliban say their orders align with their interpretation of Shariah, or Islamic law.
Since last November, the Taliban have barred women from most public spaces, university education, and most jobs, including at local and international nongovernmental groups. Girls have already been banned from school beyond sixth grade.
In recent days, the Taliban have also sought to exclude all foreign organizations from the education sector, a move the U.N. secretary-general's chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said Thursday would be another "horrendous step backward" for Afghan people.
Aid agencies have been providing food, education and health care support to Afghans in the wake of the Taliban takeover in August 2021 and the economic collapse that followed it.
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.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
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.
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Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
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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.