Chunks of hail in the grass following a big storm in the Duggan neighbourhood of Edmonton in July.Edmonton went through another stormy day yesterday, after a lightning storm lit up the night there earlier this week.

Summer storms aren't anything new to Edmonton, or anywhere in the Prairies, of course. They're just a sometimes costly, oftentimes dangerous fact of life there.

This week's storms are due to a low pressure system moving through the Prairies. On Tuesday, a lee-side trough set up just east of the Rockies. This trough, which is a region of lower air pressure and higher instability, sets up on the eastern side of the Rockies due to winds blowing down the eastern side of the mountains and heating up. Humid air blown in from the southwest mixes with these warm winds from the mountains and this kicks up storms.

Yesterday was a similar situation, except that there was a cold front added to the mix. Winds blowing down from the mountains did their usual thing of warming up and mixing with humid air. The cold front — which is like a tall, steep wedge of air ploughing across the

Prime Minister Harper announced $275,000 in federal funding to find the doomed Franklin expedition.I can disagree with Prime Minister Stephen Harper on a lot of things but I share his fascination with the lost Franklin Expedition, and agree we should spend taxpayer dollars to find it.

Harper used his annual swing through northern Canada to announce Thursday that Ottawa will ante in $275,000, the lion's share of funding for the latest effort led by Parks Canada to find the remains of the two ships from Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition. The rest of the money will come from private partners.

"Why do we search for the Franklin? The wreckage of the Franklin expedition is a national historic site designated some time ago — it is the only undiscovered national historic site, we feel an obligation to discover it," Harper said in his announcement at Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, according to The Canadian Press.

One of the cells inside Ila Prison located just outside Oslo is shown in this undated handout picture.Those of you who think the Canadian prison system coddles criminals will be gobsmacked to learn what awaits Anders Breivik, who massacred 77 of his fellow Norwegians last year in the name of racial purity.

Friday is judgment day for Breivik, when a Norwegian court decides whether he is mentally fit to go to prison or insane, and so put under the care of psychiatrists.

According to The Associated Press, those hoping Breivik will be tossed in a hole to rot will be disappointed.

No matter what the court's decision is, Breivik will spend his days in a suite of cells built just for him.

AP says Breivik, 33, will be incarcerated in Ila Prison, which has prepared for either outcome. A one-person psychiatric ward — costing between US$340,000-$510,000 — with its own staff of 17 has been built in case he's declared criminally insane. It features a nine-square-metre cell (about 96 square feet) with a bathroom and access to recreational and educational opportunities.

If he's found mentally fit, AP

Tropical Storm Isaac is seen in the Caribbean the late afternoon of August 22, 2012.I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that — if they haven't already — the Maritime provinces really need to sit up and take notice of Tropical Storm Isaac and newly-named Tropical Storm Joyce, as their timing looks to put them hand-in-hand as they promenade up the East Coast next week.

Isaac should be upgraded to hurricane status just as it makes landfall in Haiti on Friday night. Haiti and Cuba will slow it down a bit and downgrade it back to a Tropical Storm, but it should be back up to hurricane strength by the time it passes to the west of Florida on Monday and Tuesday.

Just upgraded this afternoon, Tropical Storm Joyce is right behind Isaac, but rather than follow in his footsteps, Joyce is projected to head towards the East Coast before taking a hard-right to pass to the east of Bermuda by Tuesday morning.

By the time these two storms reach Canada, with Isaac on land and Joyce over the sea, they could could have a big impact on the Maritime provinces.

[ Related: Alarming

A new Statistics Canada study found that older unemployed workers spent as much time on average on the job hunt as their younger counterparts.One of the things that jumped out at me about a new Statistics Canada study of how the unemployed look for work is that Darwin operates in the labour market.

The study found that older unemployed workers spent as much time on average on the job hunt as their youthful counterparts, but the young were more flexible on how they went about it. And it seems to have got them jobs quicker.

According to The Canadian Press, those aged 55 to 64 spent an average of 13 hours a week looking for work, about the same as those aged between 20 and 34.

However, older unemployed workers were more likely to use old-school methods to find something, such as job ads.

Only about 18 per cent of the older group used the Internet or an employment office kiosk in their job searches, compared with 23 per cent of the younger group.

The young were also more likely to take the bit in their teeth and contact employers directly — 49 per cent versus 42 per cent.

These don't seem like large gaps but suggest to me that

The Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito has been proven to be a vector associated with transmission of the West Nile virus, according to the CDC.In an average year, there are about 300 cases of West Nile virus reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by August. This year there have been 1,118 cases reported, with 42 deaths.

"We're in the midst of one of the largest West Nile outbreaks ever seen in the United States," said Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the Division of Vector-borne Infectious Diseases at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. "The peak of West Nile virus epidemics usually occurs in mid-August, but it takes a couple of weeks for people to get sick, go to the doctor and get reported. Thus we expect many more cases to occur."

In Canada, reports are on the rise, with 49 confirmed cases so far in Ontario, 5 in Manitoba, 2 in Quebec, 1 in Saskatchewan and 1 in Alberta.

"I suspect this year will be another outbreak year, maybe even as big as 2007 or 2003 given the early activity in Ontario," said Dr. Bonnie Henry, Director of Communicable Disease Prevention and Control Services at the B.C. Centre for

A handout photo of Guang Hua Liu released by Peel Regional Police is shown at a press conference in Mississauga, Ont.. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Peel Regional Police - HOOn Tuesday, Peel Regional Police identified remains recovered from a river in Mississauga and a creek in Scarborough as those of 41-year-old Guang Hua Liu.

Liu, 41, was reported missing on August 11th.

The media has been scrambling to piece together her story. Who was Guang Hua Liu? And how did she meet such a horrific fate?

This is what we know so far:

Liu was a Canadian citizen of Chinese descent.

She was mother of three. Her two youngest children live with Liu's ex-husband in China, while she lived with her adult son, Danny, in a townhouse she purchased in Scarborough in 2008.

Acquaintances told reporters she had a boyfriend named Ken.

According to the National Post, she lived a quiet life, rarely entertaining guests or getting to know her neighbours. Some of her neighbours didn't even recognize her picture in the news.

[ Related: Body-parts slaying clue may lie in security tapes ]

Jean, Liu's next door neighbour, knew Liu as "Heather." Jean claims Liu was renting out her basement

What's that in our air? Turns out a good percentage of the dust we breathe could be coming from other continents.A new study has found that up to half the pollution that is impacting North America's air quality and accelerating climate change on our continent could be coming from overseas.

The research team, including scientists from the University of Maryland, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Universities Space Research Association, examined satellite data and determined that airborne particles and pollutants can, and have been, carried to North American by winds from Europe, Africa and Asia.

However, pollution from industrial sources and power generation wasn't the main problem.

"People have been concerned about how an emerging Asian economy and increased man-made pollution will influence North American air quality and climate, but we found that dust makes large contributions here," said Hongbin Yu of the University of Maryland, according to Science Daily. "So we cannot just focus on pollution. We need to consider dust."

Storms in the Sahara and Gobi deserts can loft dust high into the