CBC News politics

A source close to what could be Peter MacKay's Conservative leadership campaign says the former Harper cabinet minister's decision on whether to run won't depend on what ex-Quebec premier Jean Charest does next.

There was a time when the sounds of war were a daily occurrence at the sprawling airbase in Erbil, in northern Iraq. That was in the fall of 2014, when Canadian special forces troops arrived to help Kurdish fighters to repulse what seemed, at the time, to be the unstoppable onslaught of Islamic State extremists. The sounds of battle returned in the early hours Wednesday with an Iranian ballistic missile attack — one of two in Iraq.

Iran has fired more than a dozen missiles targeting at least two airbases in Iraq that host U.S. and coalition military personnel, the Pentagon confirmed Tuesday evening, and warned the United States and its allies against retaliating.