Canadian leader delays Europe trip to attend return of victim's remains
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Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin delayed a visit to Europe so he can be at the return of the remains of a Canadian officer who died in this week's fire on a submarine.
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OTTAWA (CP) - Paul Martin shrugged off criticism Sunday that he was slow to return from vacation to lead Canada's response to the worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory.
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File photo of Yasser Arafat. French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced Monday at French Europe 1 radio that Palestinian leaders have canceled their visit to ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Paris.
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The family of late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, who died in Paris last week, has decided to postpone demanding his medical records from the French authorities and
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A diagnosis of the illness of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who was flown to France for treatment yesterday will not be available for several days.
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VANCOUVER (CP) - The Foreign Affairs Department is still awaiting confirmation of the identity of a Canadian reported killed last week in war-torn Chechnya.
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US President George Bush is visiting Ottawa today, his first stop on a fence-mending tour that takes him to Europe early next year. This is his first official visit to Canada since becoming president four years ago. He skipped Canada in favour of visiting Mexico at the start of his first term in office, and cancelled a state visit to Canada last year, after Canadians got vocal about their opposition to the Iraq conflict.  As CBC News reports, the purpose of this visit may be to smooth relations damaged by the war in Iraq and trade disputes over Canadian beef and softwood lumber. Bush is also expected to ask Martin for a stronger and longer commitment to peacekeeping in Afghanistan and help with organizing elections and rebuilding political institutions in Iraq. CBC News also speculates that Bush may offer a more definitive timetable for reopening the U.S. border to Canada's cattle.
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Canada has denied a visa to South African anti-apartheid leader Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who was to be the keynote speaker at a fund-raising gala in Toronto on Tuesday, because of her criminal record.
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Canada will wait until after an inquiry before considering whether to demand compensation from Britain for a submarine which caught fire, killing one crewman, Defence Minister Bill Graham says.
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A US judge delays the extradition to France of ex-Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega to allow an appeal.
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When the mayor of Rouen, in Normandy, arranged recently to return the mummified, tattooed head of a Maori warrior to New Zealand, Franceâs Ministry of Culture stepped in to block him.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Parliament has delayed a vote on how to react to the U.S.' growing appetite for personal information about European citizens, in order to intensify its opposition. The delay follows a debate Wednesday evening in which the two other European Union lawmaking institutions both hardened their positions on the sensitive issue. The groups are drawing up a strategy for how toÂ renegotiate an agreement, over which they have been divided, with the U.S. over theÂ transfer of European air passenger data. The Parliament opposed the original agreement reached in 2004 to share the data -- 34 facts about every European entering or transiting through America by air, including credit card details and information about how and where a plane ticket was purchased. Even though the European Commission -- the E.U.'s executive branch -- and national governments in the 27 E.U. countries support strict European data protection laws, they negotiated an exemption from the rules in order to allow the U.S. to better protect itself from potential terrorist attacks. The European Parliament took the Commission and the Council of Ministers to the European Court of Justice over the passenger data agreement and forced a re-drafting of the law late last year. This agreement expires at the end of July and the E.U. will soon have to renegotiate the deal. While the Parliament is unlikely now to call for the complete scrapping of the agreement, it may well demand a shorter list of categories of data to be handed over. It may also demand that only U.S. immigration officials be granted access to the information. In a debate at the European Parliament Wednesday, Germanyâs deputy foreign minister, Guenther Gloser warned that negotiations with the U.S. will be âtortuous.â Germany holds the six-month rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc. The European commissioner in charge of justice and home affairs issues, Franco Frattini told Parliamentarians that he has demanded an explanation from his counterparts in Washington D.C. about an apparent misuse of Europeansâ data that flouts both the original passenger rights' agreement as well as its replacement agreed last year. Frattini's concerns focus on the U.S. Automated Targeting System, which has been assessing millions of people since 2002. Some members of the U.S. Congress and privacy advocates believe the program is even illegal under the more lax U.S. data protection laws. "The right to privacy for me is nonnegotiable. It has to be respected," Frattini told the parliamentarians. Frattini's and Gloserâs speeches took many members of the Parliament by surprise, according to one Parliament official actively involved in civil liberties issues. "The MEPs were due to vote on an agreed position regarding the new round of negotiations with the U.S. today, but they have agreed to postpone the vote until the next plenary session in Strasbourg," she said, asking not to be named. The next plenary session is Feb. 12-15. "There is a mixture of joy and skepticism among the parliamentarians after hearing the strong language expressed in defense of Europeans rights to privacy," she said. "It would seem that the Commission and the Council of Ministers are both coming around to the Parliament's way of thinking on this urgent issue." The text is likely to take an even stronger line as a result of the delay, she said. The U.S. has threatened to fine airlines that fail to hand over the records, and to strip them of their landing rights in the U.S. Without any agreement, the airlines will be put in a difficult position: punished if they don't hand over the information, or sued for breaching European data protection laws if they do.
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Senior Palestinian officials hoping to  come to France to visit their ailing leader Yasser Arafat have  put off their trip, the French Defense Minister said on Monday.
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Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar, who was due in Paris on Sunday to start a European tour, has postponed his visit to France due to the ongoing hostage drama involving two French journalists, Arab diplomats said Friday.
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VANCOUVER (CP) - The mystery surrounding the reported death last week of a Canadian in war-torn Chechnya deepened Friday with word another B.C. man with him apparently is missing.
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In Thailand the leaders of Canada, Sweden, Norway and Finland, which all lost citizens in the tragedy, were discussing reconstruction and efforts to identify the dead, while non-governmental organisations said ...
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Relatives of three men killed in an accident in Rotterdam are told to pay before the bodies can return to Wales.