Canada: AP

WHAT'S AT STAKE: The election is for the 308 seats in Parliament's lower House of Commons. At least 155 seats are needed to form a majority government and gain a five-year mandate.

TORONTO - The Canadian dollar posted its steepest one-day decline against the U.S. greenback Friday, dropping by 4.5 American cents.

OTTAWA - A government report released Thursday said the cost of Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan could eventually hit $15.7 billion by 2011, a much higher price tag than the government had announced in the past.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Environmentalists are taking the Canadian government to court, demanding it use the country's Species at Risk Act to protect killer whales off British Columbia.

NEW YORK - You may want to try this at home. Suresh Joachim of Toronto, and Claudia Wavra of Germany, claim to have broken the world record for continuous movie watching, after seeing 57 films in 123 hours in a plastic-glass house in New York's Times Square.

TORONTO - A man accused of beheading and cannibalizing a fellow bus passenger in Canada has been declared fit to stand trial, his lawyer said Monday.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A lawsuit filed by Antigua's ousted police commissioner shows it's not always a tropical idyll when a veteran officer from Britain or Canada chooses to spend the twilight of his career working in the Caribbean.

TORONTO - A Canadian man wrongly convicted of raping and murdering his 4-year-old niece filed a $12 million lawsuit Thursday against the disgraced pathologist whose testimony played a key role in sending him to prison.

TORONTO - Public health officials in Canada announced Thursday that they are looking for 27 people who may have been exposed to tuberculosis from an infectious passenger during a bus trip in late August.

TORONTO - Canada's top five political leaders will face off in an election debate Thursday, but their stiffest competition may come from the U.S. vice presidential candidates.

TORONTO - The Ontario government said Wednesday it would compensate victims after a judicial inquiry concluded poor oversight and the inadequate training of a Canadian pathologist led to the wrongful convictions of several people accused of killing children.

NEW YORK - Janet Jackson was released from a Montreal hospital just two hours after she arrived, a spokeswoman for the facility said Tuesday, but it was still not clear why she was admitted.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who touts her state's proximity to Russia as part of her foreign policy experience, has not met with Russian leaders or delegations, negotiated any Russian issues or visited the country, according to an Associated Press review of records from the governor's office.

WASHINGTON - The United States on Tuesday slapped sanctions on members of Colombia's main rebel group who represent the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in 11 foreign countries, including Mexico and Canada.

MACHIAS, Maine - It threatened to be the first hurricane in 17 years to make landfall in Maine. Instead, Kyle delivered little more than a glancing blow equivalent to that of a classic nor'easter.

LOS ANGELES - Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds did a little rushing into it after all. The couple married this weekend, according to publicist Meredith O'Sullivan. She did not provide details.

BRAMPTON, Ontario - A Canadian man accused of participating in military exercises and firearms training as part of a group authorities say plotted to storm Parliament and behead the prime minister was found guilty Thursday.

REGINA, Saskatchewan - An expelled 16-year-old student entered a Christian high school during chapel Tuesday and put a pellet gun to the pastor's head before the principal grabbed the gun and police arrested him, officials said.

WHITE RIVER, Ontario - Police charged a man Monday with an attack on a Greyhound bus in northern Ontario that left a passenger hospitalized, just weeks after a suspect was accused of stabbing and beheading a fellow traveler on a Greyhound.

TORONTO - A U.S. Army soldier who fled to Canada after learning his unit was being deployed to Iraq won a last-minute stay of deportation Monday.

TORONTO - Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday that his government was taking steps to bolster Canada's presence in the Arctic amid concerns about Russian intentions in the frigid zone.

WASHINGTON - Wall Street finally found reason to rally Thursday, soaring on a report that the Bush administration was considering setting up a government agency to soak up bad loans and mortgages. But it was far from clear that the government had settled on any solution to the worst crisis on Wall Street in decades.

SAN FRANCISCO - For six years, and for no pay, Dennis Edney has represented Omar Khadr, the next prisoner at Guantanamo Bay to face trial in a military tribunal system that the lawyer calls a sham.

FRANKFURT, Germany - The world's major central banks banded together on Thursday to inject as much as $180 billion into money markets in a bid to stave off the growing global financial crisis.

TORONTO - A food company said Wednesday it has reopened a processing plant that was shut down for nearly a month after it was linked to tainted meat that caused a bacteria outbreak that killed 17 people across Canada.

TORONTO - A 16-year-old found with a gunshot wound outside a Toronto high school was arrested and charged as he recovered at the hospital after police determined he was injured during a botched robbery, police said Wednesday.

BAR HARBOR, Maine - With fuel prices soaring, energy was the hot topic at a meeting of governors from energy-hungry New England states and leaders in eastern Canada, where there's a surplus of energy.

TORONTO - A suspected Syrian terrorist who has spent seven years in mostly segregated custody in Canada is claiming that his indefinite detention without charge or trial amounts to cruelty, his lawyer said Sunday.