With a frost warning in effect in parts of Canada, an Ottawa area farmer reportedly sent a helicopter to hover over his apple orchard overnight Monday in an unusual effort to save his crop.

Temperatures in the Ottawa region fell to -2 degrees Celsius (28 Fahrenheit) at about 3 a.m. (0700 GMT) early Tuesday morning.

Canada announced Tuesday it is restoring diplomatic relations with Somalia, more than two decades after severing ties with the strife-torn African nation.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird made the announcement after meeting in Ottawa with Augustine Mahiga, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Somalia.

Canada will boycott meetings of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament when Iran takes over the body this month, an official announced Tuesday, saying it makes a "mockery of disarmament issues."

Tehran will assume the presidency of the disarmament conference from May 27 until June 23 under an alphabetical rotation among the 65 member states.

A Palestinian man who lived in Canada for the past 26 years has been deported to Lebanon over a 1968 attack on an Israeli airliner, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced Monday.

Issa Mohammed immigrated to Canada using a false alias in 1987, after being convicted by a Greek court of storming a civilian airliner and killing a passenger and later being released from jail in a hostage exchange.

Canada is looking to criminalize cyber-bullying, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Friday, after a pair of teenage suicides provoked by unrelenting online harassment.

"The Internet is in most ways a great development for our society," Harper said at a round-table on ways to protect youth from cyber-bullying.

A heat wave is threatening to take the bloom off one of the world's largest garden festivals, as more than one million colorful tulips in Canada's capital began wilting Tuesday.

More than 100 heat records were broken across the country, according the weather office, while Ottawa posted a near-record 27 degrees Celsius (80.6 Fahrenheit) just as the Canadian Tulip Festival was getting underway.

Canadian-born former Guantanamo inmate Omar Khadr plans to appeal his conviction for war crimes after two similar cases were quashed, the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper reported on Saturday.

Khadr, 26, was repatriated to a high-security jail in Canada last September after spending 10 years in the U.S.-run prison following his arrest in Afghanistan as a teenager in 2002.

Iran rejected as "ridiculous" on Tuesday a claim by Ottawa that two foreigners arrested in connection with a plot to derail a passenger train in the Toronto area were backed by Tehran-supported al-Qaida.

"This is the most hilarious thing I've heard in my 64 years," Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying, adding that any suggestion that al-Qaida is linked to Iran "is truly ridiculous."

Two foreign nationals have been arrested in Canada in connection with what federal police said Monday was a plot backed by al-Qaida to derail a passenger train in the Toronto area.

"Today's arrests demonstrate that terrorism continues to be a real threat to Canada," Public Safety Minister Vic Toews warned.

Authorities are investigating a Canadian's possible death in Mogadishu after reports said he led a recent attack by Shebab Islamists on the main courthouse in the Somali capital.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police "is aware there are media reports linking a Canadian to terrorist attacks in Mogadishu," Sergeant Greg Cox told Agence France Presse.