Canadian authorities are sending troops to help battle wildfires that have already prompted the evacuation of thousands of people in the west, officials said Monday. 

The defense ministry said it was preparing to send up to 1,400 personnel, including a firefighting force, to help fight the blazes in the province of Saskatchewan.

Hackers shut down the Canadian intelligence agency's website Tuesday, officials said.

The intrusion came two weeks after several Canadian government websites were disrupted by the hacker collective Anonymous in protest of a new anti-terror law that critics say tramples civil rights.

Six passengers were injured on Monday during an emergency evacuation of their Canadian WestJet flight, which was diverted to Winnipeg following a "threat."

The Boeing 737 was diverted on its way between Edmonton in the western part of the country to Toronto following the threat, WestJet reported on its Twitter account, without providing details.

Twelve students including British, Canadian, Sudanese and U.S. citizens are feared to have traveled from Khartoum to Turkey to try to join the Islamic State (IS) group, their university's dean told AFP Sunday.

Another group of British students of Sudanese origin from the same private University of Medical Sciences and Technology traveled to Turkey in March and it is believed they crossed into Syria.

A convicted killer who broke out of a maximum-security New York prison three weeks ago was shot dead by authorities Friday, police said, as they continued to hunt for his fellow escapee.

Richard Matt, 49, was killed in the upstate town of Malone, less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Canada border, officials said.

One lawmaker, a clergyman aged 50, allegedly had sex with a teenage girl. Another is on trial for fraud. Dozens are accused of padding their expense accounts.

Welcome to Canada's Senate, which Prime Minister Stephen Harper once tried to abolish.

Moscow will extend its embargo on European Union agricultural products but is unlikely to go further if the EU extends sanctions as expected, economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev said Thursday.

"We'll just keep the status quo: the embargo on produce introduced in response to the sanctions regime -- of course, it's a symmetrical measure," Ulyukayev told RIA Novosti state news agency.

Canada's chief of defense staff provoked outrage Wednesday after saying that sexual harassment and assault in the military were largely due to people's biological wiring.

General Tom Lawson quickly back-pedaled, issuing an apology after sharing his views on sexual misconduct in the military with public broadcaster CBC, which aired excerpts Tuesday evening.

Canadian federal police said Wednesday they are on the lookout for two escaped prisoners from New York state after receiving several tips they may have crossed the border into Canada.

Richard Matt, 49, and David Sweat, 35, escaped almost two weeks ago from a maximum security jail in New York state, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the U.S.-Canada border.

A French former Guantanamo detainee was barred from flying to Montreal, where he was to address a conference on Western youth radicalization, he said Friday.

Mourad Benchellali told public broadcaster Radio-Canada that he was stopped in Lyon, France from boarding an Air Transat flight because of U.S. concerns the aircraft would fly through U.S. airspace.