The latest: Japan says at least 621 Diamond Princess passengers have tested positive for coronavirus. Health officials allowing some passengers with negative COVID-19 tests to disembark. Crew members who worked through quarantine expected to stay on ship. Global Affairs says the number of Canadian who tested positive for virus has increased to 43.  Hundreds of people began…

Canada came within a whisker of losing its place in a United Nations peacekeeping mission in the fall of 2018 because of the military’s inability to consistently deploy enough women to meet the world body’s guidelines. For the Liberal government, the political optics would have been horrible had the UN’s department of peacekeeping carried out…

Whether in a business bureaucracy or in government, there are few higher compliments than saying someone is a safe pair of hands. The characterization does not imply that the person so described is perfect; it simply means they have proven themselves to be one of that rare and valuable group in any organization that tends to not…

Government air strikes have hit hospitals and refugee camps in northwest Syria and killed about 300 civilians as President Bashar al-Assad’s forces press an assault against the last rebel stronghold, the United Nations said on Tuesday. UN officials said relief agencies were overwhelmed by the humanitarian crisis as nearly one million civilians, most of them women…

U.S. President Donald Trump has gone on a clemency blitz, commuting what he called a “ridiculous” 14-year prison sentence for former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and pardoning former New York Police Department commissioner Bernie Kerik, among a long list of others. Others who got a break from Trump include financier Michael Milken, who served two years…

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg on Tuesday qualified for this week’s Democratic presidential debate in Nevada, putting him on the same stage as his rivals for the first time in the race for the party’s nomination. The debate in Las Vegas on Wednesday will be the ninth in the contest for who will challenge…