VANCOUVER - Public opinion pollsters in British Columbia may have predicted the wrong election.

In a province-wide mock election that ran alongside Tuesday’s real provincial vote, school children elected a third consecutive NDP government while the real election saw Christy Clark and the Liberals mount a surprising comeback, defeating the NDP and defying months of predictions.

Nearly 100,000 students cast fake ballots in an election that ran in 666 schools across B.C.

EDMONTON - The on-again-off-again deal to build a new rink for the Edmonton Oilers is on — again.

City councillors and the Edmonton Oilers agreed Wednesday to split the cost of the final $30 million needed to green light the wavy-shaped steel-and-glass structure in the city's downtown in time for the 2016-17 NHL season.

"This has been a long and difficult process," Mayor Stephen Mandel told councillors. "We need to make sure that we build a city that attracts and retains the younger generation."

OTTAWA - More than a decade after going to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Canadian government has officially declared them a terrorist group.

The Taliban has been added to the so-called list of entities, along with the Haqqani network, an Islamist group believed to be behind ongoing attacks on international coalition forces in Afghanistan.

QUEBEC - The Quebec government has tabled legislation which could impose a moratorium on exploration for shale gas in the St. Lawrence River valley during the next five years.

The bill would prohibit drilling, hydraulic fracturing — also known as fracking — as well as injection tests.

Environment Minister Yves-Francois Blanchet tabled the legislation in the national assembly on Wednesday.

The moratorium would last for five years or until new regulations on shale gas exploration are in place.

VANCOUVER - The British Columbia Green party made a historic breakthrough in the provincial election this week, powered on what appeared to be opposition to oil pipelines and concerns about global warming.

Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria professor and climate change expert, defeated four-term Liberal cabinet minister Ida Chong in the Vancouver Island riding of Oak Bay-Gordon Head on southern Vancouver Island.

"It is very, very exciting," a tired, but elated Weaver said Wednesday.

OTTAWA - Within days of being sworn into office as a Conservative senator on Jan. 26, 2009, former broadcaster Mike Duffy began making waves with a series of ribald partisan barbs aimed at various detractors of his patron, Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

KIRUNA, Sweden - Canada has officially taken over leadership of a newly broadened circumpolar world, beginning a two-year stint as head of an eight-member group of countries around the North Pole that is the primary international forum on northern issues.

OTTAWA - Canada is obstructing efforts to compensate three men who suffered torture in Syria — effectively ignoring a key recommendation from the United Nations Committee against Torture, says Amnesty International.

In a brief to the UN committee, the human rights group says it is "profoundly concerned" that Canada has not heeded the committee's call to provide redress to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.

HAMILTON - The young daughter of an Ontario man who was killed after posting his truck for sale online and taking a test drive with two men will grow up knowing how deeply he was loved, the man's wife vowed Wednesday.

Sharlene Bosma laid her anguish bare in a tearful public statement one day after police revealed that her husband Tim Bosma, 32, who had been missing since the test drive on May 6, is dead.

Canadian home prices continued to rise in April even as year-over-year sales fell three per cent, according to the latest industry data that has left economists divided over whether the market can count on a soft landing.

"I think some people are perhaps confused by the fact that we've seen a drop in sales but prices haven't fallen yet," said David Madani, an economist at Capital Economics.