In the months leading up to her death, Julie Winnefred Bertrand, the world’s oldest woman, had started to withdraw from the world around her.
The 115-year-old Montrealer had taken to sleeping for long stretches, sometimes 48 hours at a time, and often dozed through family visits.
Once social and involved in activities at her Ahuntsic nursing home, [...]

Sheila and Victor Holmes have no special plans for Valentine’s Day today. But then, for the long-married couple, every day is a kind of Valentine’s Day.
They put notes sometimes into each others’ lunch bags to say “Love you” or “Have a nice day” or “Miss you.”
If one is out shopping and sees something the other [...]

A British parachutist who survived a fall of 4,572 metres in New Zealand after his chute failed to open has released amazing footage of his near-death plummet filmed by a camera attached to his helmet.
“Everyone says your life flashes before you eyes but for me … it didn’t really happen,” Michael Holmes told British television [...]

The first thing you see in the sprawling shrine of Ayatollah Khomaini on a recent Wednesday afternoon is the small crowd of visiting Iranians, mostly poor villagers, gathered around his Plexiglas-walled tomb, offering banknotes and prayers to the man who launched the world’s first and only Islamic revolution.
Look across the half-built shrine in the outskirts [...]

1989: Ayatollah sentences author to death
Iranian Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini has issued a death threat against British author Salman Rushdie and his publishers over the book Satanic Verses.
Scotland Yard is providing the author with specialist protection and advice and all 11,000 staff at publishers Viking have received internal memos about the potential danger.
Security has been [...]