VANCOUVER

Sex tourism charge lands man in prison for 11 years

A Canadian man has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for committing sex tourism with children and importing child pornography.

Prosecutors say the sentence is the highest so far for charges under Canada’s sex tourism law.

The B.C. Superior Court in Vancouver, British Columbia, sentenced Kenneth Klassen on Wednesday to 10 years for 14 counts of sex tourism and one year for one count of importing pornography.

Klassen had pleaded guilty to having sex with more than a dozen underage girls in Cambodia and Colombia. The prosecution said some girls were as young as 8.

He unsuccessfully challenged Canada’s sex tourism law when he argued the incidents happened in other countries where Canadian courts have no jurisdiction.

TORONTO

Ship left in ice 150 years ago found in Mercy Bay waters

Canadian archeologists have found a ship abandoned more than 150 years ago in the quest for the fabled Northwest Passage and which was lost in the search for the doomed expedition of Sir John Franklin, the head of the team said Wednesday.

Marc-Andre Bernier, Parks Canada’s head of underwater archaeology, said the HMS Investigator, abandoned in the ice in 1853, was found in shallow water in Mercy Bay along the northern coast of Banks Island in Canada’s western Arctic.

“The ship is standing upright in very good condition. It’s standing in about 36 feet of water,” he said.

The Investigator was one of many American and British ships sent out to search for the HMS Erebus and the Terror, vessels commanded by Franklin in his ill-fated search for the Northwest Passage in 1845.

MOSCOW

Smog, heat prompt health warnings to stay indoors

A cloud of harmful smog has enveloped Moscow, raising airborne pollutants to four times the norm, officials said Wednesday, and prompting doctors to urge residents to stay indoors as the city swelters in a record heat wave.

Officials have said the smog, which has plunged the Kremlin and other famous landmarks into a dull haze for days, is the capital’s worst since 2002. The cloud has drifted in from dozens of peat bog and forest fires in rural land south and east of the city, ministry officials have said.

 

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