Members of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation will gather later this week in Kamloops to share ideas about the upcoming delegation that will meet with the pope at the Vatican. Tk'emlups Chief Rosanne Casimir is among the Indigenous leaders chosen to attend the audience later this month but she has also been granted a one-on-one meeting with Pope Francis. She says band members should meet at 6 p-m Thursday ``with an open mind, suggestions and comments'' as she prepares for the audience. Casimir has said she intends to invite Pope Francis to Kamloops during his visit to Canada later this y

For the first time in history a foreign leader has spoken in the British Parliament. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy channelled wartime prime minister Winston Churchill's ``never surrender'' speech as he told MPs his country would fight Russia to the end in cities, fields and riverbanks. Speaking by video from Ukraine, he urged a packed House of Commons chamber to increase sanctions on Russia and to recognize Russia as a terrorist country. Two-million Ukrainians have now fled their homes.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Russian President Vladimir Putin made a mistake thinking Ukraine and NATO were weak and divided. Trudeau told reporters at a military base in Latvia that Putin has been shown how wrong he is.Article Five of the NATO treaty states that if an member is attacked, all members will consider it an act of violence against the collective. Trudeau had been asked whether a Russian attack on a NATO ally such as Latvia or Estonia or would lead Canada to declare war.

The World Health Organization now says an expert panel is strongly supporting booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines.That's a turnaround from the U-N agency's previous insistence that boosters weren't necessary and contributed to vaccine inequity. The expert group concluded that booster shots provide high levels of protection against severe disease and death from the highly contagious Omicron variant.

Over a three-day period, B.C. is reporting 997 new cases of COVID-19, for a total of 350,941 cases in the province:March 4-5: 385 new casesMarch 5-6: 327 new casesMarch 6-7: 285 new casesThere are 449 individuals hospitalized with COVID-19 and 63 are in intensive care.In the past 72 hours, 11 new deaths have been reported, for an overall total of 2,914. There have been no new health-care facility outbreaks. The outbreaks at Menno Home, Cascade Gardens Seniors Community (Fraser Health) and Sun Pointe Village (Interior Health) have been declared over, for a total of 17 facilities with ongoing ou

RCMP say a 55 year old man has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of an elderly woman on Vancouver Island. The 80 year old victim was found dead inside a home in Courtenay early yesterday morning by paramedics who called police. The Mounties say they arrested the suspect at the scene and he remains in custody. They say the victim and suspect were known to each other.

British Columbia's minister of public safety says the province has no plans to follow Alberta's lead to reduce its tax on gasoline to ease rising prices at the pumps.Mike Farnworth told a news conference Monday gas prices are driven by events outside of provincial control, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has upset energy markets around the world.Alberta has responded by reducing its tax by 13-cents per litre on both gasoline and diesel.Farnworth says there's no simple solution to the rising fuel price situation as the cost rose above $2 a litre in Metro Vancouver.He says econom

Tamara Lich, one of the principal organizers of the so-called ``Freedom Convoy'' protest that gridlocked downtown Ottawa for three weeks, has been granted bail on a $25,000 bond. Lich was initially denied bail on Feb. 22 after Ontario Court Justice Julie Bourgeois deemed her detention was ``necessary for the protection and safety of the public.'' Lich's lawyer launched a bail review, arguing that decision may have been tainted by the fact that Bourgeois ran as a federal Liberal candidates in the 2011 election and expressed that her own community had been affected by the protest. On Monday, Su

The group Dying With Dignity wants BC residents to join a campaign to stop some public health care facilities from transferring patients out -- if those patients seek a medically assisted death. Three BC chapters of the group say some taxpayer-funded health care facilities covered by the Denominational Health Association agreement refuse to provide certain procedures such as assisted deaths and instead transfer frail patients to hospitals that will provide the service. Alex Muir, chair of the Metro Vancouver chapter, says patients have a constitutionally protected right to access a medically