BC's 12 federal New Democrat members of Parliament have been handed their new critics' roles by party Leader Jagmeet Singh. He says his new lineup sees women in several crucial roles, including Environment and Climate Change. That job goes to Victoria MP Laurel Collins, who is starting her second term in Ottawa. Longtime New Democrat Don Davies is the party's health critic, while Peter Julian is NDP House Leader and Jenny Kwan is caucus chair.

The Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board says sales of commercial properties were stronger between April and June than at any time since 2017. A statement from the board says land sales were particularly healthy. It says that shows ``investors are demonstrating confidence in new development potential in the region.'' The board says the total dollar value from the sale of 726 commercial properties during the second quarter was just over 3.6-billion dollars, a 130 per cent leap over the roughly 1.6-billion recorded in the same period last year.

Closing arguments are expected next week in the trial of a man who has admitted to the murder of his girlfriend, but denies he also killed her 22-month-old daughter.Robert Leeming has pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Jasmine Lovett and not guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Aliyah (uh-LEE'-uh) Sanderson.The mother and child were reported missing in April 2019 and, a few weeks later, their bodies were found in a shallow grave in a recreational area west of Calgary. Leeming, who is 36, testified that Aliyah accidentally died after falling down some stairs and that he kil

A report says it would cost Alberta hundreds of millions of dollars more to set up and run a provincial police force, but that it eventually could provide more cost-effective law enforcement.The PricewaterhouseCoopers report says it costs Alberta about 500-million dollars a year right now to pay for the R-C-M-P. The federal government chips in 170-million dollars.The report says if Alberta decided to go it alone, it would cost about 735-million dollars each year on top of startup costs. Premier Jason Kenney's government says it will consult the public on whether to proceed.

Mounties in BC's southern Interior say officers have determined that two deaths in the Osoyoos area this week appear to have been a murder-suicide within a family. The RCMP say officers responded Tuesday to an abandoned vehicle in a rural area northwest of Osoyoos, which was linked with a home in town. They say officers found a body inside the home and a second person was found dead not far from the abandoned vehicle. Police released no further information.

The owner of the smouldering ship that lost 109 of its containers off the coast of Victoria has hired a contractor to try to recover the units loaded with cargo. The MV Zim Kingston lost the containers and caught fire last week. The coast guard says a salvage team is using thermal cameras to find remaining hot spots while firefighting operations continue in containers that hold tires. Five of the lost containers have now been spotted at the very northern tip of Vancouver Island, more than 400 kilometres away.

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization has expanded eligibility guidelines for booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines.The committee now recommends mRNA boosters to people who received two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, adults over the age of 70, front-line health-care workers with a short interval between their first two doses, and people from First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities.The latest recommendation says the emerging evidence suggests vaccine effectiveness against asymptomatic infection and mild COVID-19 disease may decrease over time, and a booster could help resto

B.C. is reporting 758 new cases of COVID-19, including two epi-linked cases, for a total of 204,330 cases in the province.There are 4,961 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, and 196,858 people who tested positive have recovered. Of the active cases, 434 individuals are in hospital and 155 are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.In the past 24 hours, 10 new deaths have been reported, for an overall total of 2,147.The new deaths include:Fraser Health: fourInterior Health: fourNorthern Health: twoFrom Oct. 13-26, they accounted for 74.0% of hospi

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company is rebranding itself as Meta, an effort to encompass its virtual-reality vision for the future. Experts point out that it also appears to be an attempt to change the subject from the Facebook Papers, a document trove that has revealed how Facebook ignored or downplayed internal warnings of the negative and often harmful consequences its algorithms wreaked across the world. Zuckerberg insists that the metaverse, what you might think of as the internet rendered in three dimensions, represents the next technological horizon for humanity. And he th