Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:
No Canadians appear on a published list of people allowed to cross today from the Gaza Strip into Egypt, although Global Affairs Canada says it remains in contact with more than 200 Canadians, permanent residents and their eligible family members in the embattled territory.
Yesterday, 234 Canadians travelled into Egypt as the Rafah crossing reopened after a two-day closing. It was the largest number to leave the territory since Israel declared war after Hamas’s initial attack.
The war, now in its sixth week, began on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants stormed into Israel, killing an estimated 1,200 people and taking roughly 240 others as hostage. Israel has retaliated with daily air and land strikes, and the Hamas-run health authority says casualties in the territory have topped 11,000.
People carry Palestinian man, who was wounded in an Israeli strike, as they arrive at Nasser hospital, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, November 13, 2023.MOHAMMED SALEM/Reuters
Today, Israeli tanks took up positions at the gates of Gaza’s main hospital, the primary target in their battle to seize control of the northern half of the Strip, where medics said patients including newborns were dying for lack of fuel, with at least 650 patients still inside.
Israel says the hospital sits atop tunnels housing a headquarters for Hamas fighters using patients as human shields, which Hamas denies. The Palestinian Health Ministry of Gaza said 32 patients, including three babies, have died since Shifa’s emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday. U.S. President Joe Biden said Monday that Shifa “must be protected.”
The Israeli military has urged Palestinians to go south on foot. But its stated goal of separating civilians from Hamas militants has come at a heavy cost: More than two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes.
Also read:
- Israeli hostage families urge women’s groups to speak up
- ‘From the river to the sea’ chant sparks free-speech debate after Calgary protester charged
- Opinion: Netanyahu’s tough approach to Gaza may wipe out Hamas, but at what cost?
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More tech companies disappearing from TSX as Q4 agrees to $257-million buyout
Today, another Toronto technology company said it signed an agreement to end its own two-year run as a public company. Q4 Inc., a company that sells digital tools that public companies use to host shareholder meetings, is the sixth Toronto Stock Exchange-listed tech company to do so out of the 20 that went public from mid-2020 through late 2021.
It’s a continuation of a trend: Tech companies that flocked to the TSX during the pandemic-era bubble are reversing course. Every single one of the 20 companies that went public as tech valuations soared during the first 20 months of the pandemic have had their shares subsequently trade below their issue price at one point, and most are still well below those levels.
British PM Sunak fires Suella Braverman after protest comments, adds David Cameron as Foreign Secretary
Former prime minister David Cameron has returned to the front row of British politics as Foreign Secretary, seven years after a humiliating defeat in a referendum that led to Britain leaving the European Union.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak replaced several senior ministers, including home secretary Suella Braverman, who caused an outcry last week by describing pro-Palestinian demonstrations as “hate marches” and criticizing London’s Metropolitan Police force for being too soft on protesters. Sunak is expected to call an election next year.
- Opinion: Breaking Britain isn’t a disqualifying résumé detail for its new foreign minister
ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Residential schools: For more than 140 years, two children of Sioux leaders lay in a Pennsylvania cemetery far from their Dakota homes. After the Kamloops tragedy, their relations redoubled efforts to bring them back and find ways to heal.
Secret Canada: The Ontario watchdog responsible for hearing freedom of information disputes is restricting the number of files it will process for some individuals with multiple appeals, a move experts say could curtail access to public records.
Cost of living: The average asking price for a rental unit in Canada reached $2,178 last month, a 9.9-per-cent year-over-year increase and continuing a trend that in which asking rents have hit new highs for six months in a row.
APEC summit: The most consequential part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in San Francisco this week may well be a meeting on the sidelines between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping – their first in a year.
Football: The Montreal Alouettes and Winnipeg Blue Bombers will square off in the CFL championship game, marking the first time the two franchises have met in the Grey Cup. On Monday, event organizers announced that next Sunday’s contest was sold out.
Listen to The Decibel: The Globe and Mail’s postsecondary education reporter joins the podcast to explain what’s driving Quebec’s move to increase tuition for out-of-province students and whether anglophone schools’ students are headed for financial disaster.
MARKET WATCH
S&P 500 takes a pause ahead of U.S inflation data
The S&P 500 closed Monday’s session slightly lower as investors held their breath before a crucial inflation reading that could provide clues as to how long the U.S. Federal Reserve will keep interest rates elevated. Canada’s main stock index managed to close modestly higher thanks to a boost in energy stocks as oil prices ticked up.
The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index closed up 54.68 points at 19,709.15. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 54.77 points to 34,337.87, the S&P 500 lost 3.69 points to 4,411.55 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 30.37 points to 13,767.74.
The Canadian dollar traded for 72.43 cents US, according to XE.com, compared with 72.36 cents US on Friday.
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TALKING POINTS
Interest rates aren’t going back to their pre-COVID lows, and that’s a good thing
David Parkinson: “Low rates were a self-destructive party that went on for far too long. Yes, as Ms. Rogers said in her speech, consumers and investors have to prepare for a rate future that doesn’t look like the past. But we needn’t fear it. This is not bad news.”
Watch out, premiers: Accountability creep is pushing politics further away
Campbell Clark: “If they don’t want their jurisdiction to creep away with it, they’d better watch out, because the social-media, team-fan nature of modern politics increasingly makes political issues national.”
The crisis of abuse in Canadian sport affects us all
Kim Shore: “Those of us harmed by the Canadian sport system have a vision to prevent abuse, platforms to amplify our messages and allies to support us. And we are not going anywhere until the next generation of Canadian athletes is safe.”
LIVING BETTER
Boosting diet quality can enhance results, study suggests
New findings from the Stanford University school of medicine suggest that the combination of sticking to a given diet and eating a high-quality diet provide additive benefits for losing weight. And if implemented together, you’ll achieve superior weight loss results.
What helps optimize diet quality? More often, choose fish, poultry, beans and lentils and nuts for protein. Include vegetables at every meal. Replace refined grains, replace highly processed snacks, and substitute sugary drinks.
TODAY’S LONG READ
Brian Menounos positions the band saw for ice subsampling at the Canadian Ice Core Laboratory in Edmonton, Alberta on October 27, 2023.Kelsey McMillan/The Globe and Mail
As B.C.’s glaciers disappear, scientists race to capture data from ice cores
This is the second of a three-part series following glacier researchers from B.C.’s Coast Mountains to the lab as they try to unearth climate history.
Ice cores from the polar regions offer archives of Earth’s climate history. But the mountain glaciers in Western Canada provide a different kind of record. They have witnessed climate events that can help forecast the future in the region. Recorded in the ice are hundreds of years of temperatures and precipitation, and the scale and frequency of wildfires before modern fire suppression tactics began. The Globe and Mail spoke with experts to help us learn how this research will lead to a better understanding of the deadly heat waves and catastrophic floods and fires enveloping Western Canada. But glaciers have been rapidly shrinking and this year, the pace of change is accelerating.
Evening Update is written by Sierra Bein. If you’d like to receive this newsletter by e-mail every weekday evening, go here to sign up. If you have any feedback, send us a note.