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What could be better to celebrate Ontarios 150th birthday than with a free, live concert with some of the provinces best bands such as the Skydiggers and USS, near one of Barries favourite historic landmarks?

And if youd like to throw in a little Tea Party with that, playing some of the tunes that made them famous two decades ago, hey, so much the better.

The ONtour concert series makes a stop this Sunday evening, starting at 6, at Allandale Station Park, providing what organizers call the soundtrack of Summer 2017.

The Tea Party guitarist Jeff Martin, drummer Jeff Burrows and keyboard man Stuart Chatwood have been with us off and on since 1990, and Chatwood tells BarrieToday the city of the Spirit Catcher is something of a second home for him and his mates.

Barrie is really the heartland of the bands support, which is central Ontario, but we havent had an opportunity to give the people of a Barrie a proper rock show since we headlined Edgefest back in the 90s at Molson Park.

Chatwood is also excited at the intergenerational feel the band provides.

Many younger people in the crowd have not had an opportunity to see an authentic rock act and there are not that many rock acts touring anymore. Tool doesnt play Toronto too often and Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and many others, sadly, dont exist now. I hope the fact that the show is free will bring out a lot of fans eager to hear the band for the first time.

The Allandale show will be the Partys second ONtour date, and Stuart says previous gigs raised the bar.

We played an incredible show with USS last Sunday in Sault Ste. Marie. They blew the crowd away with their energy.As weve been around for 25 years, we are quite comfortable in our shoes, so were in a position to embrace other acts without feeling jealous or insecure.

Chatwood says the bands sound evolved since getting back together in 2011. Musically, we have all become better players and the fact that we are a little older has translated to us not being afraid of what people think of us, so in that sense it has brought freedom.

When we meet new fans they describe our sound as power trio rock with world music influences and Im pretty good with that as a starting point.

We see nothing wrong with taking your music seriously and putting passion into your music.

Moreover, 2017 marks the 20th anniversary of the Partys Transmission album, a pivotal piece for Chatwood and the two Jeffs.

We moved into a more keyboard heavy sound, which meant a little less guitar, and this was disappointing for myself on some levels as the band broke on the strengths of Jeff (Martin)s guitar prowess.Jeff (Martin) was producing the band and it was under his direction that we forged into world music heavily on Edges of Twilight and move into more electronics on Transmission."

When the concerts gain momentum, the crowd no longer calls for just one song. Stuart says fans tend to want to hear the whole shooting match, consisting of 10 albums across 25-plus years.

The requests come in for music from our whole catalogue which is a nice statement to its appeal. People argue over their favourite album by The Tea Party, and I think thats just an incredible compliment.

The ONtour series of free concerts hits Allandale Station Park, Sunday evening with USS taking the stage at 6:15 p.m., Skydiggers at 7:25 p.m. and The Tea Party at 8:45 p.m. To learn more, click here.

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Stop by Allandale for a little Sunday 'Tea Party' - BarrieToday

Ukraine separatists who are Russian-backed rebels fighting against Kiev announced on Tuesday the creation of a new "state" called Malorossiya to take the place of Ukraine and have its capital in their territory.

The proposed country -- which Agence France-Presse says in this report has no chance of getting off the ground -- would be founded after a referendum and given a tsarist-era name meaning "Little Russia" that once described most of the area covering modern-day Ukraine.

A constitution presented by rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko said representatives from the insurgents' self-declared Donetsk and Lugansk "People's Republics" and other regions had agreed to "declare the establishment of a new state, which is the successor of Ukraine."

The document -- released by the separatists' news agency -- said rebel bastion Donetsk would become the capital, while Kiev would be reduced to the status of a "historical and cultural centre."

The surprise proposal is likely to draw scorn from Ukraine's pro-Western authorities in Kiev, who have been locked in a conflict with the Moscow-supported rebels since 2014 that has cost the lives of some 10,000 people.

It was not immediately clear why the rebels decided to put forward the new plan, but it is likely a gambit aimed at pushing forward their case in a stalled peace process.

A peace deal brokered by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany in 2015 has hit a wall as clashes drag on along the volatile frontline.

The latest move by the rebels could throw the troubled plan even further into doubt.

It echoed language used by Moscow in the early days of the conflict that promoted fears Russia was looking to annex swathes of mainland Ukraine after its seizure of the Crimea peninsula.

The Kremlin used the tsarist-era name "Novorossiya" (New Russia) to refer to the areas the rebels had seized, but the term was later dropped.

Ukraine and the West insist that Moscow has funneled troops and arms across the border to fan the flames of the war in Europe's backyard.

Moscow has denied the allegations despite overwhelming evidence that it has been involved in the fighting and its explicit political support for the rebels.

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Ukraine Separatists Declare New 'State' Called Malorossiya

BBC News

Five Ukraine troops die in fierce clash with Donetsk rebels BBC News The Ukrainian military says five of its soldiers died in heavy rebel shelling of Ukrainian army positions at Avdiivka just north of rebel-held Donetsk. Three Ukrainian troops died earlier when a mine blew up, the military said. The US Department of ... Clashes kill six Ukraine soldiers in spike of violenceAljazeera.com 9 Ukrainian soldiers killed in bloodiest day of fighting in 2017Business Insider US condemns deadliest day of violence in Ukraine this yearABC News The National Interest Online -RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty -Yahoo Singapore News all 117 news articles »

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Five Ukraine troops die in fierce clash with Donetsk rebels - BBC News

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Ukraine Bans Auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers Wall Street Journal (subscription) Ukraine's central bank has banned PricewaterhouseCoopers from conducting bank audits in the country after finding PrivatBank, the country's top lender, developed a more-than-$5-billion hole in its books while under the accounting firm's supervision.

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Ukraine Bans Auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Accounting firm PwC has had a 2017 to forgetbut it just got even worse.

First there was the embarrassing gaffe at this year's Oscar's ceremony, which led to the wrong winner being announced for the Best Picture award, the climax of the evening.

But in business and reputation terms, much worse has followed that. In March, it settled with the administrators of collapsed investment firm MF Global , which had been suing PwC for $3 billion in damages from what it claimed was poor accounting.

Then in June, the U.K.'s Financial Reporting Council started an investigation into its audits of telecom company's BT plc's operations in Italy . BT has taken a charge of nearly $700 million against the unit, which was raided in May by Italian police on suspicion of fraud.

Read : PwC Is Keeping Its Job Handing Out the Oscars Envelopes

Now, it's being tarred and feathered by Ukraine due to its auditing of the country's second-largest bank, PrivatBank, which collapsed last year. The collapse necessitated a multi-billion dollar bailout, indirectly funded by the International Monetary Fund.

The National Bank of Ukraine, the country's central bank, said late Thursday it had revoked the license of PwC to audit local banks, saying that it had verified "misrepresented financial information in the financial statements" of Privat.

PwC, which had audited the bank for over a decade, said it was "very disappointed" by the decision.

"We do not believe that the reasons given by the NBU justify its decision," the firm said in an e-mailed statement, adding that it will "examine all options for reversing this decision."

Read : Ukraine Blames Russian Security Services for Recent Cyber Attack

The NBU's action catches PwC squarely in the middle of a battle for control of the country and its economy, one that has been fought out between various governments and an often shadowy business elite over a quarter of a century.

Last month, the Ukrainian government had said it could need up to another $1.5 billion to fill the holes in Privat's balance sheet, created by bad loans made to its owners and their associates. That's on top of a $4.2 billion capital shortfall disclosed in the bank's 2016 report.

Any losses that can't be recovered from the bank's borrowers will have to be covered, ultimately, out of a $17.5 billion IMF loan package, to be repaid, ultimately, by taxpayers.

Ukraine's bailout was agreed to in haste after Russia's invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014 finally exposed the fragility of an economy and financial system run through with corruption. Its currency, the hryvnia, has lost over two-thirds of its value against the dollar since 2014, further exacerbating poverty in what was already one of the poorest countries in Europe.

The IMF had insisted on an exhaustive clean-up of the banking system as a condition for the loan. Many had doubted it would enforce those conditions thoroughly, given that the U.S. and EU, whose governments effectively control IMF policy, wanted to stop the country being broken up by Vladimir Putin's Russia. But the NBU took to the task with relish, closing over 80 institutions thatin realitywere little more than piggy-banks for their owners.

Read : Trump: I Wouldnt Have Appointed Sessions If Id Known About Russia Recusal

The NBU taking Privat into special administration at the end of 2016 was widely seen as the strongest proof to date of its seriousness. Privat was not only the biggest locally-owned bank, with over 20% of all retail deposits in the country and processing more than 60% of its electronic transfers. It was also backed by the man widely seen as the most powerful of all the oligarchs in the anti-Russian west of the country, Ihor Kolomoysky.

Kolomoysky had been politically untouchable for years, and it was he who bankrolled the militias that stopped the advance of Russian-backed rebels through eastern Ukraine in 2014. But the IMF's pressure meant that President Petro Poroshenko was forced to sacrifice a relationship that had previously worked to his advantage. That led to him firing Kolomoysky from his position as a regional governor and ejecting his managers from notionally state-controlled companies like pipeline operator Ukrtransnafta .

Kolomoysky and his partner Hennady Boholyubov have repeatedly denied the NBU's claims. More recently, they have sued the government and the NBU in a Kiev court to have themselves reinstated as owners of the bank, claiming that the NBU's seizure was unnecessary and unlawful. Their case was somewhat weakened when the government, in reaction, leaked a letter to Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, at the end of 2016, admitting that the bank could not carry on operating without state support, urging the government to take it over and promising not to interfere with its future management.

Kateryna Rozhkova, the NBU deputy governor who has presided over the crackdown, isn't letting things rest yet. In a statement on the Privat case e-mailed to Fortune , she said that: "There will also be a thorough investigation whether criminal offenses have been committed. If they have, those responsible must be brought to justice.

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A Miserable 2017 for PriceWaterhouseCoopers Just Got Worse - Fortune