By SIRI AGRELL, Toronto Globe and Mail

The British bride-to-be who called PrivateFly this past weekend had not slept for two days. She had flown to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on a last-minute getaway before her wedding in London this week, and found herself stranded there when a cloud of volcanic ash shut down international air travel indefinitely.

HAMILTON, Ontario - At a sold out dinner in Hamilton this week, former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin said that Americans she encounters often mistake her for a Canadian because of her distinctive manner of speech.

Over the past 10 years, Hollywood marketing guru Robert Thorne has been responsible for licensing the images of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and Hilary Duff, helping transform the tween sensations into billion-dollar brands.

And so it might seem unlikely that his next project involves the Vatican.

They both have been colonized, oppressed and exploited. They have lived through brutal dictatorships and U.S. invasions.

First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the problems at home.

Well-educated professionals, even those who have control over the hours they work, are likelier to say their jobs interfere with their personal lives. According to a new study, it's "the stress of higher status."

James Cameron might be laughing all the way to the bank, but his record-setting 3-D film, "Avatar," is receiving criticism from a bizarre cast of characters, who accuse it of being everything from a racist throwback to the source of their overwhelming depression.

As Starry Bush-Rhoads and her husband, John, drove along a remote Oregon road on Christmas Day, their SUV struggling through freshly fallen snow, the familiar female voice of their GPS system informed them that they had just shaved two minutes off their trip home to Reno, Nev.

Wanted: a large piece of property, preferably tropical and empty, with room for 300,000 inhabitants.

Amid reports that Sarah Palin has "gone rogue" -- ignoring advisers and slamming her party's campaign tactics -- some have begun to discuss her as a political contender after Nov. 4."She's no longer playing for 2008; she's playing 2012," Democratic pollster Peter Hart told CNN.

Since his wife was tapped as John McCain's running mate, Todd Palin has been presented as a macho but modern stay-at-home dad who shuttles the couple's five kids to their activities and once finished a snowmobile race with a broken arm -- a man as comfortable on the oil fields and fishing grounds of Alaska's north shore as he is attending official functions as "first dude.&quot