QUAKE-HIT Haiti will need at least a decade of painstaking reconstruction, aid chiefs and donor nations warned, as homeless, scarred survivors struggled yesterday to rebuild their lives.

The leader of Canada’s main opposition party is set to announce on Monday whether he will seek to topple Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s minority government.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper condemned an opposition plan to gain power by ousting his government in a confidence vote, calling the manoeuvres undemocratic.

Canada’s opposition parties signed an unprecedented agreement to topple the Conservative government in a no-confidence vote next week and form a coalition government less than two months after national elections.

Canadians today began voting in an election in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper appears poised to retain his job but fail in a bid to bolster his power.

Prime minister Stephen Harper made an official government apology to native Canadians for the country’s past practice of taking aboriginal children from their families and forcing them to attend state-funded schools meant to assimilate them.

Hurricane Dean ploughed into the Caribbean coast of Mexico today as a roaring Category 5 hurricane, lashing ancient Mayan ruins and heading for modern oil installations.

Canada will build two new military facilities in the Arctic in an effort to assert sovereignty over the contested region, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said today.

A roadside bomb tore through a Nato vehicle in Afghanistan, killing six Canadian soldiers and their Afghan interpreter, officials said.

After months of fretting about getting older, US President George Bush turned 60 today.