Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:
Israel approves unilateral ceasefire in Gaza offensive
Developing story: Israel has announced a ceasefire in the bruising 11-day war against Hamas militants that caused widespread destruction in the Gaza Strip and brought life in much of Israel to a standstill.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced the ceasefire after a late-night meeting of his security cabinet. It said the group had unanimously accepted an Egyptian proposal, though the sides were still determining exactly when it was to take effect.
The agreement would close the heaviest round of fighting between the bitter enemies since a 50-day war in 2014, and once again there was no clear winner.
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Golf, tennis to return this weekend under Ontario’s COVID-19 reopening plan
The Ontario government has unveiled what it calls a “slow and cautious” plan to reopen the province, allowing a return to outdoor amenities such as golf courses and tennis courts over the coming long weekend but waiting until mid-June before restaurant patio dining and non-essential shopping can resume, with strict capacity limits.
Its three-step plan sets out metrics for vaccination rates that are required for each phase of reopening:
- Step one, which requires 60 per cent of adults to be vaccinated with one dose, focuses on low-risk activities, such as outdoor gatherings, dining and sports.
- Step two, estimated to begin in July, would allow personal-care services, such as hair and nail salons.
- Step three, which could start in August, permits indoor gatherings, dining and sports.
Read more:
- Canadian study to examine safety of mixing COVID-19 vaccines
- Meet the Newfoundland health care workers who answered Ontario’s plea
Impossible choices: How this Brampton community explains Canada’s COVID-19 crisis like no other
Ravish Garg exits the highway after another 15-hour day on the road. Other trucks that have been driving alongside his forge ahead to their own destinations. One will pass a humble blue WELCOME TO BRAMPTON sign staked in front of the Amazon fulfilment centre and drop off a load. It will be boxed by a worker who was sardined on a bus for 90 minutes to get to the warehouse.
Another truck will drive a kilometre and a half north to the sprawling Maple Lodge Farms processing plant – where COVID-19 has infected more than 100 employees in the past year, causing two deaths.
And then Garg, 31, will get into his car and drive to L6P, a postal code in Brampton that has the highest per-capita rate of COVID-19 cases in the province.
In January, Ontario Premier Doug Ford – speaking in Punjabi, L6P’s dominant mother tongue after English – urged people to “Ghare Raho” or stay home. Among the more than 82,000 who live there, few have had that luxury. And so many of them have wound up at the local COVID-19 assessment centre, at Brampton Civic Hospital’s ICU or at the local morgue. Read the full story here.
Brampton journalist Gundeep Singh writes on life with COVID-19 in his moving personal essay here.
And here you can read why The Globe asked this Brampton community to share its COVID-19 stories.
Bank of Canada flags debt risks as some Canadians overpay to get into hot housing market
The Bank of Canada has raised concerns about rising household debt and warned that Toronto, Hamilton and Montreal are “exuberant” with homebuyers overpaying to get into the real estate market.
The central bank warned in its Financial System Review released today that household vulnerabilities have intensified with the quality of borrowing deteriorating and speculative buying increasing.
The bank itself has played a role in stoking demand for real estate by holding interest rates at record lows over the past year, and promising not to raise rates for some time.
BBC journalist used ‘deceitful behaviour’ to secure 1995 interview with Princess Diana, investigation finds
Diana, Princess of Wales, during her 1995 interview with Martin Bashir on the BBC's current affairs program Panorama.Reuters
When Diana, Princess of Wales, sat down for an interview with the BBC’s Martin Bashir in November, 1995, it caused a global sensation and led to her divorce from Prince Charles a year later.
But now an investigation commissioned by the BBC has found that Bashir duped Diana into agreeing to the interview by using fake financial records and playing on her paranoia with tall tales about tapped phones, bugged cars, secret agents and bribes involving prostitutes.
The investigation also criticized the BBC for falling short during its own probe into the matter two decades ago of the “high standards of integrity and transparency which are its hallmark.”
ALSO ON OUR RADAR
CP Rail won’t hike bid for KCS: Canadian Pacific Railway has refused to raise its bid for Kansas City Southern, and instead appealed to the board of the U.S. railway to reject a higher offer from rival Canadian National Railway on the grounds the U.S. regulator is unlikely to approve it.
Ceasefire in Afghanistan: Tribal elders in eastern Afghanistan have achieved something that has long eluded world leaders – brokering a ceasefire between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
Stanley Cup playoffs: The puck drops tonight on Game 1 of the first-round matchup between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens - the first time they’ve met in the playoffs since 1979. Check back later tonight at GlobeSports.com for the score and highlights.
MARKET WATCH
Wall Street’s main indexes regained their footing today after a three-day slide, buoyed by gains in technology stocks as the smallest weekly jobless claims since the start of a pandemic-driven recession lifted the mood. Technology stocks helped lift Canada’s main stock index to a record high close.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 188.11 points or 0.55 per cent 34,084.15, the S&P 500 gained 43.44 points or 1.06 per cent to 4,159.12 and the Nasdaq Composite added 236 points or 1.77 per cent to end at 13,535.74.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index closed higher by 125.95 points or 0.65 per cent at 19,542.95.
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LIVING BETTER
With theatres closed and film release plans uncertain, The Globe picks the 21 best action movies of all time to deliver all those summer movie thrills. And watch here as filmmakers choose their top one-liners and best all-out action scenes.
TODAY’S LONG READ
The inside story of The Tragically Hip’s Saskadelphia, the band’s first new album since the death of Gord Downie
The Tragically HipGordon Hawkins/Handout
Rob Baker couldn’t believe his eyes. Yet, there it was in The New York Times. The Tragically Hip listed alongside Billie Holiday, Chuck Berry, John Coltrane and hundreds more, victims of a Universal Studios backlot fire a decade earlier that destroyed thousands of irreplaceable recordings. How had he, the band’s guitarist, not known about this?
A flurry of phone calls and frantic e-mails soon followed. And, while the Times report turned out to be false (the majority of the group’s master recordings had luckily been moved to Canada), the experience ultimately incited what drummer Johnny Fay now calls an “archaeological dig to discover who owns the Hip” – an exhaustive search that, two years later, has finally bore fruit in the form of Saskadelphia, the first new release by the group since the passing of its iconic lead singer, Gord Downie. It will be released starting at midnight.
The collection, which features recordings originally intended for the group’s landmark sophomore album, Road Apples, indulges in some revisionist history. Saskadelphia resurrects not only the original title of the album, rejected by the U.S. label for being “too Canadian,” but also unearths a clearer picture of the band’s original vision. Moreover, for the band members, the journey of rediscovery represents something altogether more personal. Read the full story here.
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