National News

Torchbearers carried the flame to Ottawa all the way from Marathon, Ont., on Thursday to help officially kick off Ottawa Racve Weekend.

A group of local teenagers on a school hiking trip in Bruce Peninsual National Park are missing after they were separated from the main group.

By James Pomfret HONG KONG (Reuters) - Three men were charged on Friday in a Hong Kong court with possessing false documents including a check for $460 million in connection with an investigation into the city's shuttered Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange. The exchange, which operated a trading platform for gold and silver futures, surrendered its license to the Securities and Futures Commission at the weekend, saying it did not have enough trading revenues to support its operating expenses. ...

SAN FRANCISCO - It's a common sight on the nation's beaches: among the sand, sea foam and gnarled kelp lay plastic bottles, bags and other garbage.

By William Schomberg CARDIFF (Reuters) - A Bank of England policymaker said on Friday he favored small additional amounts of bond purchases over time, but not a hard-to-manage commitment to longer-term stimulus like that of the U.S. Federal Reserve. "I don't think I want to get into the American position of saying it is indefinite and then stopping," said Paul Fisher, one of the British bank's rate-setters. "I think the Americans are finding it a bit hard - as we have seen recently - to get out, because they have got this indefinite horizon. ...

A man accused of scalding his wife and leaving her to die changed his story about how his wife was burned during a police interrogation, an Ottawa court heard today.

LONDON (Reuters) - A top Federal Reserve official said on Friday U.S. inflation would have to pick up before he voted to scale back monetary policy stimulus and that this was unlikely to happen in the coming month. "Before I would be in favor of tapering I would like to see some reassurance that inflation was going to move back towards target," St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said in a CNBC interview. "I am concerned about this inflation number and we are only a little ways out from the June meeting so I don't quite see how that is going to turn around in a few weeks. ...

More than 4,000 Nova Scotia Power customers in Dartmouth were without power early Friday morning after a man climbed a transmission tower and had to be talked down by Halifax Regional Police.

LONDON - An emergency landing by a British Airways jet has briefly closed both runways at London's Heathrow Airport.

PHOENIX - As jurors in Jodi Arias' murder trial filed one by one from the courtroom after a dramatic five months of gut-wrenching testimony and gruesome photographs, three women on the panel cried and one looked to the victim's family, mouthing the word, "Sorry."

A Nova Scotia biologist says he and others in the scientific community are perplexed that the federal government has not declared bats an endangered species.

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service official who led the unit that targeted tea party groups and publicly disclosed the activity has been replaced, making her the third top IRS official moved aside since the episode was revealed two weeks ago.

TRENTON, N.J. - A New Jersey company that operates 13 TGI Fridays restaurants accused of secretly replacing premium liquor with low-quality booze says it's shocked at the allegations.

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J. - New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is co-hosting NBC's "Today" on Friday morning as part of a campaign to proclaim that the state's shore is ready for business seven months after being devastated by Superstorm Sandy.

GREENVILLE, Calif. - A magnitude 5.7 earthquake was widely felt as it rattled Northern California on Thursday night, breaking dishes and shaking mirrors off walls. But authorities said there were no immediate reports of injury or serious damage.

KATHMANDU, Nepal - A Nepalese official says five climbers are missing and feared dead on the world's third highest mountain.

Two people are dead after a crash in the RM of Portage la Prairie.

A week after bombshell allegations that Toronto Mayor Rob ford was videotaped smoking crack, the mayor's chief of staff was fired and Ford is continuing to stonewall reporters.

OTTAWA - Fraud was definitely a factor in the rash of misleading robocalls that bedevilled voters in six federal ridings in the 2011 election, but not enough of one to justify overturning the results, a Federal Court judge has decided.

CBC News has learned the details of what precipitated the firing of Mark Towhey as Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's chief of staff — and it was advice from Towhey that Ford needs to 'get help.'