Stories we’re watching: Leafs hire 28-year-old as assistant GM

Here are five of the top stories making headlines this afternoon:

Leafs hire 28-year-old Kyle Dubas as assistant general manager. The Leafs are serious about shaking up their management and signified as much Tuesday by hiring Dubas, who spent the last three seasons as an OHL general manager for the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. He started that gig at the tender age of 25 and is credited with using his stats knowledge to help turn the team around. Also Tuesday, the Leafs fired old assistant GM Claude Loiselle and VP of hockey operations Dave Poulin. In other Canadian sports news, multiple sources are reporting Andrew Wiggins will be signed to the Cavaliers today.

Suspect in Calgary stabbings appears in court, sent for second psychiatric assessment. Matthew de Grood, 22, appeared in a Calgary court Tuesday where a judge set his preliminary trial date for March and ordered a 30-day psychiatric assessment to determine his mental state at the time of the alleged crime. De Grood has already undergone one assessment, which found him fit to stand trial, in that he understood the charges against him and was able to instruct his legal council. Zackariah Rathwell, 21; Lawrence Hong, 27; Joshua Hunter, 23; Jordan Segura, 22; and Kaiti Perras, 23 were stabbed to death at a Calgary house party on April 15.

Air Canada, other airlines, cancel flights to Tel Aviv amid ongoing violence in Israel. As the Israeli military continues its ground offensive in Gaza, and after a rocket landed near the Tel Aviv airport, major airlines are cancelling flights into Israel. Air Canada has cancelled at least one scheduled flight into Tel Aviv, while the U.S. federal Aviation Administration has banned all airlines from flying into Tel Aviv for the next 24 hours. In Ottawa, Palestinian-Canadians and their supporters marched onto Parliament Hill, calling for peace and for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to end his support for the Israeli government. Ceasefire negotiations brokered by the U.S. and Egypt were ongoing Tuesday, with the possibility of restarting peace talks between Palestine and Israel also on the agenda.

Bodies of some plane crash victims headed to Netherlands as EU pushes new sanctions on Russia. The EU decided upon visa freezes and monetary sanctions against those officials deemed responsible for Russian actions in Ukraine Tuesday, while stopping just short of further economic sanctions against the country. Meanwhile, the bodies of many of the victims aboard a Malaysia Airlines plane that was shot down over a rebel-controlled area of eastern Ukraine were on their way to the Netherlands by Tuesday. The bodies had been held by Russian rebels on a refrigerated train car. However, the site of the plane crash in eastern Ukraine reamins unsecured, five days after the plane was shot down.

Nigerian President meets with families of kidnapped schoolgirls, vows to return them. President Goodluck Jonathan met with families of the kidnapped girls for the very first time since the young women were taken by Islamic militants in April. In the meeting, he vowed to return the still-missing girls unharmed. Jonathan has avoided this meeting for months, and only consented after activist Malala Yousafzai met with some of the parents of the missing girls and then requested the meeting with the president.