BC's chief coroner says at least 486 sudden and unexpected deaths have been reported to the agency during the extreme heat wave in the province. Lisa Lapointe says that's a 195 per cent increase over the approximately 165 deaths that would normally occur in the province over a five-day period. Lapointe says it's still too early to determine the exact cause of death but it's believed likely that the increase is attributable to the extreme weather BC has been experiencing. She also says the number of sudden deaths is preliminary and will increase as coroners enter death reports into the system.

British Columbia's top doctor is encouraging people to continue wearing masks in all indoor places, even as they're no longer mandatory starting Canada Day. Dr. Bonnie Henry says masks remain an important layer of protection until more people have immunity from two doses of vaccine, which nearly 31 per cent of residents aged 12 and over have received. Dr. Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix say in a joint statement that 44 new cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed, for a total of nearly 148,000 cases. Of the 816 active cases, 108 people are hospitalized, and 34 of them are in intensive care.

Mandy Bujold has won her appeal to box in the Tokyo Olympics. On Tuesday, Bujold said on Twitter that the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that the International Olympic Committee's Boxing Task Force must include an accommodation for women who were pregnant or postpartum during the qualifying period. ``We did it!'' she said in the post. The 11-time Canadian flyweight champion appealed to the CAS after her qualifying tournament in Argentina was scrapped due to COVID-19. The 33-year-old from Kitchener, Ont., and her lawyer Sylvie Rodrigue lost their original appeal to the IOC in May, leavin

Evacuation orders and alerts are now posted for three wildfires in the Lillooet, Kamloops and Fort St. John areas, as the wildfire season takes hold. Orders and alerts were issued last night as a fire near Pavilion, just north of Lillooet, flared to 50 square kilometres, while residents of 18 addresses around Sparks Lake, north of Kamloops, have also been ordered out. More than 100 other properties in the same area are under an evacuation alert because of a 23-square kilometre fire there. An alert was also posted by the Peace River Regional District in response to a 30-square kilometre blaze

Metro Vancouver residents are being urged to conserve water as daily consumption across the region reached near-record levels over the weekend. A statement from Metro Vancouver says daily water consumption hit 1.79 billion litres on Sunday, just shy of the all-time high set in 2009, when almost two billion litres were used on a single summer day. Metro Vancouver says that, as of yesterday, drinking water reservoirs are within normal levels, but the continued hot, dry weather, along with unchecked demand for wate, will quickly deplete the region's storage reserves. Lawn watering restrictions a

Bill Cosby has been freed from prison after Pennsylvania's highest court overturned his sexual assault conviction. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned comedian Bill Cosby's conviction for sexually assaulting Canadian Andrea Constand. It is a stunning reversal of fortune for the comedian once known as ``America's Dad.'' The state Supreme Court said Wednesday that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor's agreement not to charge Cosby. The 83-year-old Cosby served nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence.

Vancouver's fire department says resources are being stretched to the breaking point as crews respond to calls related to the heat wave and the overdose crisis, just as the pandemic is winding down. Captain Jonathan Gormick of Vancouver Fire Rescue Services says three times the number of calls are coming in compared with earlier this year, and extra crews are being brought in for critical response roles. He says that in addition to cardiac, heat and overdose emergencies, crews also responded to a fire at Wreck Beach yesterday involving the BC Wildfire Service. Gormick says response times are

The Lower Kootenay Band in British Columbia says a search using ground-penetrating radar has found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site close to a former residential school. In a news release, the band says the community of aqam began using the technology last year to search a site near Cranbrook that is close to the former St. Eugene's Mission School, which was operated by the Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s. It says the search found the remains in unmarked graves, some as shallow as 90 centimetres to 1.2 metres. The release says it's believed the remains are those o

The B.C. Wildfire Service is dealing with two out-of-control blazes in the Interior that have prompted evacuation alerts.The McKay Creek fire was discovered Tuesday burning about 23 kilometres north of Lillooet, and has grown to approximately 50 square kilometres as a result of the hot and dry conditions.The Squamish-Lillooet Regional District has issued an evacuation alert for a large area of West Pavilion Road.The Sparks Lake fire covers 23 square kilometres in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District about 15 kilometres north of Kamloops Lake. An evacuation order has been listed for nine prope