National News

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed on what you need to know today...

Canada's current wildfire season is devastating evidence of the effects of climate change, scientists say, but some conspiracy theorists aren't convinced by the thousands of square kilometres of burnt ground.

The BC Wildfire Service has confirmed it temporarily reassigned crews fighting fires in the province's Shuswap region after protesters showed up at an RCMP roadblock Wednesday evening in what police say was an effort to "overwhelm" the blockade.

The mother of a 13-year-old girl found dead in a British Columbia park six years ago has told a murder trial how she gave her a last hug, hours before the girl's death.

YELLOWKNIFE — Wildfires continued to disrupt communication services Thursday in the Northwest Territories while crews braced for a tough two days fighting the blaze threatening the capital city of Yellowknife.

OTTAWA — Azerbaijan's foreign ministry argues Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is undermining peace in the Nagorno-Karabakh region by referring to the area with the name used by Armenian secessionists.

OTTAWA — Keith Spicer, Canada's first commissioner of official languages, died Thursday in Ottawa at 89.

EDMONTON — After two decades in the oilpatch, Shawn Hubbard was tired of layoffs and uncertainty about the future. "I was pretty much done with that after 20 years," he said. "Getting the rug pulled out from under you gets tiresome.

MONTREAL — Quebec university administrators, professors and students are rejecting an idea by the federal housing minister that Canada could cap the number of international study permits it issues as a way to ease the country's housing shortage.

OTTAWA — Discussions about a public inquiry on foreign interference have stretched well into the summer, as House leaders put aside political jabs that dominated Parliament for much of the year in exchange for "collaborative" chats from hotel rooms a