Lok Sabha Elections: 55.20 percent voting in Punjab till 5 pm

The City of Surrey is providing its police service with what it says is one of the largest rewards in Canadian policing history in response to dozens of extortion attempts in the community. It says the $250,000 fund comes as the Surrey Police Service actively investigates 44 extortion cases, including 27 that involved shootings. Mayor Brenda Locke says at a briefing that the extortions are a threat to the city's way of life and many people are living in fear. She says the extortionists are ``thugs and criminals'' who ``do not belong'' in Surrey. Chief Const. Norm Lipinski says a

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney is painting a bleak picture of what will happen if Albertans are forced to vote on a referendum on separation, calling it a deeply divisive, non-violent version of a civil war. Kenney, Alberta's premier from 2019 to 2022, says a small minority of angry people should not be able to push a separatist agenda that impacts everyone in the province. He says it's deeply divisive and would divide families, friends and communities if it goes forward. Premier Danielle Smith's United Conservative government is officially lowering the required threshold for

British Columbia's Finance Minister Brenda Bailey says the first quarterly update for the 2025/26 fiscal year will update B.C.'s economic landscape and her government's three-year-fiscal plan. Bailey, who will present her update this morning at the provincial legislature in Victoria, says the update will also include reporting on revenue and spending in the first quarter of the fiscal year. The final update for the last fiscal year pegged B.C.'s deficit at $7.3 billion, $564 million lower than original projected number in budget 2024, and $1.8 billion lower than the third-quarter forecast. Bai

Canada's Camryn Rogers defended her women's hammer throw world title in dominant fashion. Rogers, from Richmond, B.C., broke her own Canadian record with a throw of 80.51 metres on Monday to take the gold medal at the world athletics championships. Silver medallist Zhao Jie of China was well back of Rogers with a throw of 77.60 metres. Another Chinese thrower, Zhang Jaile, was third at 77.10 metres. The 26-year-old Rogers now has two world championship gold medals to go with her Olympic title at the 2024 Paris Games. It was Canada's second gold at the world championships after E

Premier Danielle Smith's Alberta Next panel is in Airdrie tonight, as she marches through a final stretch of town halls surveying the public on the province's relationship with the federal government. It's the eighth of 10 in-person town halls scheduled for the panel, which has been travelling across Alberta since mid-July to address grievances Smith says are fostering separatist sentiment. The event in the Calgary bedroom community comes hot on the heels of a town hall in Lethbridge, where Smith met a mostly friendly crowd that cheered mentions of separation and widely supported th