Eleven British Muslims were jailed on Friday for planning what a court heard was an Al-Qaeda-backed plot to carry out a string of bombings that they hoped would rival 9/11 and the 2005 London attacks. The conspiracy involved at least six of the plotters travelling to Pakistan for terror training, with the eventual aim of setting off eight rucksack bombs in crowded areas and possibly other timed devices.

By Randall Palmer and Alastair Sharp MONTREAL/TORONTO (Reuters) - Chiheb Esseghaier, a Tunisian doctoral student in Quebec, ran afoul of his research institute's administration two years ago when he tore down posters for the charity United Way showing naked men and women with the slogan "Underneath, we are all equal." "We met with him to discuss with him and to try to understand why he did that. We explained that we don't do that here," said Julie Martineau, a spokeswoman at the INRS research centre at Varennes, south of Montreal.

Below are the main cases of destruction of cultural heritage during conflicts, following the collapse of the minaret of the ancient Umayyad mosque in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Wednesday: - MALI: In Timbuktu, nicknamed "the City of 333 Saints" and listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, militants from Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith), which follow the hardline Wahhabi strain of Islam, began destroying cultural treasures last June believing them to be "haram" or forbidden.

By Allison Martell TORONTO (Reuters) - One of two men accused in an alleged al Qaeda-backed plan to derail a passenger train in Canada appeared in court on Wednesday and disputed the authority of Canadian law to judge him, saying the criminal code was not a holy book. Chiheb Esseghaier, a Tunisian-born doctoral student, faces charges that include conspiracy to murder and working with a terrorist group.