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Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean walks along a line of sailors for the period of any inspection of the Guards at a dedication of the Queen’sitting Colour ceremony held at the Halifax Garrison Grounds. (Mike Dembeck/Canadian Press)

Considered a once-in-a-generation event, the Canadian navy believed a new flag without interruption Saturday during a spectacle steeped in pomp and pageantry at the Halifax Garrison Grounds.

Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean, the commander-in-chief of the Canadian forces, presided over the formality known as the Queen’s Colour and formally delivered a unaccustomed flag to the navy.

In 1959, Queen Elizabeth presented her colour, or flower-de-luce, to the Canadian vessels, replacing the same presented decades earlier by the agency of her father, King George VI.

The late Queen Mother presented another colour in 1979, incorporating Canada’s new maple leaf flag. The navy has uttered that flag was looking tired and faded.

“The colour is a flag which is a symbol of the Canadian ships of war’s constancy and address to our sovereign the queen, Queen Elizabeth, to our country Canada, and to all Canadian citizens,” related Comm. Brian Palmer.

“It is a part visible that we can see, we promenade it on special occasions … and we contribute it a great honour because of its generous symbolism to the shipping.”

In an address to 500 sailors and officers from across the country, Jean contrasted her girlhood fear of Haitian military with the boast she feels wearing the uniform in the place of example commander-in-chief of Canada’sitting armed forces.

“I grew up subordinate to the yoke of a ruthless term, at which place the military uniform came to symbolize the brutal repression of the people, tyranny and massacres,” Jean told the assembled ranks.

Jean proud to wear navy uniform

“You can accompany how far I have come, from the brat who maxim her parents, her group of genera, her friends grappling with the horrors of oppression … And I have power to say before you things being so with ideal certainty that it is an honour and a source of illustrious boast for me to wear your uniform.”

The old flag was marched off the field by an honour guard where it volition have existence laid to others in the National Military Cemetery in Ottawa.

The new flag, which is kept at defence headquarters in Ottawa, is the similar being of the kind which the 1979 translation.

The navy’s Queen’s Colour is a silken white flag through the Canadian flag in the upper corner, the Royal Cypher for Canada in the midmost point and the navy’s sign in the lower edge. The edge of the colour is trimmed in gold.

The observance, watched by various thousand from the slope of Citadel Hill, also included a 21-gun salute and a fly-past by three helicopters including two Sea Kings and a Cormorant. Gen. Walt Natynczyk, the chief of defence staff, Nova Scotia’sitting Lt.-Gov. Mayann Francis and newly elected Premier Darrell Dexter were amidst the dignitaries in being there.

With files from The Canadian Press

Air France and KLM were fined $4 million and $5 million, respectively, despite fixing common air cargo rates of more routes. (Remy de la Mauviniere/Air Canada)

Three related international airlines have been fined a total of $10 million for fixing air cargo rates attached greater amount of routes out of Canada, the Competition Bureau said Friday.

Air France, KLM and Martinair pleaded guilty to fixing surcharges on air cargo exported from Canada between April 2002 and February 2006, the bureau declared in a word release.

KLM and Air France are withdrawn brands operated by the same gathering, and KLM owns Martinair.

The Canadian fines are in addition to ones already levied by other countries against the three airlines and many others for fixing cargo rates.

The U.S. Justice Department has fined 15 airlines more than $1.6 billion US, and three executives had been sentenced to prison epoch, the deparment announced in April.

Air France-KLM agreed to pay a $350 the multitude US, “the maintainer highest fine ever levied in a criminal antitrust prosecution,” the province uttered highest year.

In Australia, Air France-KLM was fined about $5.6 million Cdn earlier this year, and Martinair well-nigh $4.5 the masses Cdn. Australian regulators also nailed Singapore Airlines, Qantas and British Airways PLC.

Airlines co-operated with Competition Bureau

In Canada, the surcharges totalled $31.5 million during the time the airlines communicated with competitors about the amount and timing of the surcharges.

However, the bureau does not know how much of the $31.5 the great body of the people was the result of the conspiracy and how much was legitimate, a spokeswoman said.

The fines would consider been higher had the airlines not co-operated with the place of business’s continuing investigation of other carriers, before-mentioned Melanie L. Aitken, Interim Commissioner of Competition.

“Had these companies not co-operated, the bureau would be seized of recommended harsher penalties against these companies, including significantly higher fines,” said Aitken

The companies benefitted from the bureau’s leniency program, which gives a mitigate. to companies that approach the regulators in season during an sifting.

Getting conspirators to co-operate “is one of the place of business’s in the highest degree weapons to rencounter these stealthy criminal anti-competitive agreements,” the news release said.

KLM was fined $5 very great number, Air France $4 million and Martinair $1 the multitude.

The counting-room began its investigation from an unnamed party disclosed the intrigue. The troop made a “confidential immunity perseverance,” which means it may possess got immunity from pursuit.

The airlines were convicted in Federal Court of violating the part of the Competition Act that makes somewhat agreement between competitors to set prices a criminal offence if it results in an undue lessening of competition in Canada.

Travellers infer onward the Palestinian side of the Rafah verge crossing on Saturday. (Eyad Baba/Associated Press)Egypt reopened its border through Gaza on Saturday to bate students, visa holders and those in need of imperative medical handling to retirement or return to the blockaded territory.

Over the next three days, more 5,000 people are expected to use the Rafah march intersection.

Trucks carrying therapeutical supplies will be allowed into Gaza during the temporary reopening.

Both Egypt and Israel sealed Gaza’s borders two years past, when the Palestinian political and militant group Hamas consolidated its control over the province. Hamas seized the security offices of antagonist organization Fatah in June 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliamentary elections.

Israel has allowed food and humanitarian aid to enter Gaza during the stop up..

Egypt has largely kept up the restrictions, though it periodically opens the Rafah crossing to allow aid in and students and therapeutical cases in a puzzle.

Two prominent paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland officially announced their disarmament Saturday in a long-sought peacemaking move that followed four decades of attacks in equalization of Irish Catholics.

Progressive Unionist Party leader Dawn Purvis, centre, appears with civic representatives of the Ulster Volunteer Force during a news conference in Belfast on Saturday. (Reuters)

The Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association announced their arsenal had been permanently decommissioned and was in the process of heart destroyed.

Dawn Purvis, the leader of the UVF-linked Progressive Unionist Party, called it a “momentous twenty-four hours” and told the BBC the “strife is over.”

“Eventually, Loyalists and Republicans new wine sit down as antidote to the richness of our country, if we call to be patriots,” she declared.

In a separate statement, the UDA said: “The dark days are now behind us and it is time to move on. There is not one paragraph for guns and violence in the new society we are edifice. It is era to work for a better future.”

The two Protestant groups together killed approximately 1,000 for the most part Catholic civilians between 1966 and 1994, when a ceasefire was declared. They were in addition feeble armed and funded than their avowed enemy, the Irish Republican Army, bound the UDA and UVF attempted to match IRA killings in tit-for-tat attacks on Catholics.

The UVF was responsible in favor of the clash’sitting single out most deadly bear the essential character of, a four-pronged car bomb attack in 1974 that killed 33 people in Dublin and Monaghan.

Canadian connection

Retired Canadian general John de Chastelain, one of the greater forces behind the historic decommissioning, refused to assure reports that he’d participated in a secret ceremony earlier this month in which the UVF claims to have handed in addition guns, ammunition and explosives.

However, Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said he expected to receive a report soon from de Chastelain confirming both groups had destroyed their arms caches.

Ahern credited de Chastelain, named in 1997 to subject up an betwixt nations array chief Northern Ireland’s disarmament, and his decommissioning body with doing to a greater degree than ever thought in posse.

“The people of this isle will have being evermore in their debt,” Ahern said.

Previously, between 2001 to 2005, de Chastelain oversaw the total disarmament of the IRA, the major outlawed Catholic group.

With files from The Associated Press

Nortel Networks’s final demise for the reason that a stock emporium darling came at rest Friday whenever the prior tech giant was delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange on a constant basis.

The decisive price: 18.5 cents per common parcel out.

Compare that to 2000, then Nortel dominated Canada’s benchmark stock emporium with a share price of $124.50 and was valued at $400 billion, with 95,000 employees around the globe.

The TSX had announced the delisting earlier in the week in a advice release simply titled “Changes in Stock List.” Nortel shares were hanging from trading wholly of last week and last changed hands on the TSX on June 19.

Business observers worried that Nortel’s demise leaves a gap in Canadian research and evolution, apart from the concern of losing such a longstanding business icon.

Tyler Chamberlin, every co-aid professor who researches the technology industry at the University of Ottawa’s management school, called the close of Nortel’s slow cattle-market fall “a surpassingly, self-same sad day according to just surrounding everybody in and around this collection.”

Nortel peaked in a state of being liable to the hand of CEO John Roth, who dramatically restructured the company, turning it from a telephone technology firm to a builder of the internet.

The tech darling’s demise started in October 2000, posterior global sales began sliding. The situation was further complicated by an accounting scandal that saw the withdrawal of CEO Frank Dunn in April 2004 .

Shares of Nortel were pendent last week in the wake of the Ottawa-based set’s court-supervised restructuring, which includes selling part of its wireless-network business to Nokia Siemens for $650 the multitude US.

Many vocation analysts concur that selling off the company’s most treasure asset — the wireless business — strongly reduces any chance of a serious restructuring.

“When you take a bribe for off the crown jewels,… you know that the amusement is over,” said Ian Lee, an assistant professor at Carleton University’session calling discipline.

Nortel is also in talks to vend other talents of its business.