Evening Update: Russian rockets kill family of four in Dnipro ahead of annexation

Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:

Rescue workers say two Russian missiles struck Dnipro, in central-eastern Ukraine, with one hitting a market behind the bus station and the other landing in a residential neighbourhood, killing a family of four with two young children. Sixty-one homes were damaged and four were completely destroyed.

Tensions are high across Ukraine, with daily rocket attacks near the borders of the four provinces that held sham referendums this week. Russia confirmed on Thursday that it will annex the four occupied areas of Ukraine on Friday based on the referendum results. Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend a ceremony on Friday, when the four regions of Ukraine will officially fold into Russia.

Investigating Nord Stream leaks

Meanwhile, Russia says that leaks spewing gas into the Baltic Sea from pipelines to Germany appear to be the result of state-sponsored “terrorism,” as a European Union official said the incident had fundamentally changed the nature of the conflict in Ukraine.

The EU is investigating the cause of the leaks in the Gazprom-led Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines and has said it suspects sabotage was behind the damage off the coasts of Denmark and Sweden.

Read more:

• TikTok’s unlikely new star is a Ukrainian refugee in Saskatchewan
• Russia’s annexation of four regions in Ukraine: What to know about Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia

Open this photo in gallery:

For one residential school survivor, making drums honours the lost children of Kamloops

It had been 60 years since Norman Retasket left Kamloops Indian Residential School as a teenager. Sixty years of struggling to move on from the past. But one day in late May, 2021, something changed for Retasket, just as it seemed to change for the rest of Canada.

He grabbed his hand drum and drove to the site of the former residential school from his home near Cache Creek, B.C., about an hour away, absorbing the news that the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation had found 215 probable unmarked graves in an orchard area on the site.

Retasket had never shared the full story of his time at the institution. Never the specifics. But in the months after learning about what the community now calls Le Estcwicwéy̓, or the Missing, he felt it was time.

Melissa Tait reports Retasket’s story: on how in the wake of unmarked grave discoveries he found meaning in making drums – and his own story of surviving the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Open this photo in gallery:

People trapped, more than two million without power in Florida as Hurricane Ian heads toward South Carolina

Rescue crews waded through flooded streets and used boats Thursday in a scramble to save people trapped after Hurricane Ian destroyed a cross-section of Florida and brought torrential rains that inundated more communities.

The destruction began to come into focus a day after Ian made landfall in Florida as one of the strongest hurricanes to hit to the U.S. The storm flooded homes on both of the state’s coasts, cut off the only bridge to a barrier island, destroyed a historic waterfront pier and knocked out electricity to 2.67 million Florida homes and businesses. At least one man was confirmed dead.

“We’ve never seen storm surge of this magnitude,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told a news conference. “The amount of water that’s been rising, and will likely continue to rise today even as the storm is passing, is basically a 500-year flooding event.”

Though downgraded to a tropical storm by Thursday morning, the National Hurricane Center said storm surge and flooding rains remained a threat as Ian crept across the Florida peninsula and emerged in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cape Canaveral. Forecasters predicted a northward turn toward South Carolina, and a hurricane warning was issued for the state’s coastline.

Read more:

• In Fiona’s wake I first found silence, then a different kind of social cohesion

Open this photo in gallery:

This is the daily Evening Update newsletter. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was sent to you as a forward, you can sign up for Evening Update and more than 20 more Globe newsletters here. If you like what you see, please share it with your friends.

ALSO ON OUR RADAR

On the brink of global recession, hopes dim for a soft landing for Canada’s economy: Canada is facing growing economic headwinds as key trading partners teeter on the brink of recession, piling worries about trade and commodity prices on top of concerns about the domestic economy.

CSIS persuaded Turkey to hide recruitment of operative who trafficked teens to Islamic State: The most senior intelligence officer in charge of covert operations at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service went to Ankara in March, 2015, to persuade Turkish authorities to stay silent about the agency’s recruitment of a Syrian human smuggler who trafficked three British teenage girls to Islamic State militants, according to three sources.

British PM Liz Truss defends tax policies amid criticism and diminishing public support: British Prime Minister Liz Truss has defended her government’s tax plan and insisted that she won’t reverse course despite plummeting public support and widespread criticism, including from former Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney.

Torstar owners ‘deadlocked’ in feud over direction of company including Toronto Star: NordStar Capital Inc. co-owner Paul Rivett is seeking a court order to wind up the company after a breakdown in his relationship with business partner Jordan Bitove, raising uncertainty about the control of Torstar Corp. and the Toronto Star newspaper.

With hard-won water rights, Indigenous tribes in U.S. consider how to manage rivers – and who profits: As Congress considers changes to leasing of water, nations like the Hualapai are poised to become powerhouses in lands where water is increasingly scarce.

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister asks Canada to follow through on signing trade deal with Taipei: Taiwan’s Foreign Minister says a trade deal with Canada is among the top ways Ottawa could help the self-governing island right now as China ramps up efforts to isolate the territory and bring it under Beijing’s control.

Famed novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga convicted in Zimbabwe after peaceful protest: The acclaimed Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, whose latest novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has been convicted of “inciting public violence” for silently participating in a protest in Harare in 2020.

MARKET WATCH

Canada’s main stock index ended down more than 1.1 per cent in broad-based declines on continued economic growth concerns, while U.S. stock markets also fell.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 207.08 points at 18,441.84.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average ended down 458.13 points at 29,225.61. The S&P 500 index was down 78.57 points at 3,640.47, while the Nasdaq composite was down 314.13 points at 10,737.51.

The Canadian dollar traded for 72.96 cents US compared with 73.21 cents US on Wednesday.

The November crude contract was down 92 cents at US$81.23 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down eight cents at US$6.87 per mmBTU.

The December gold contract was down US$1.40 at US$1,668.60 an ounce and the December copper contract was up six cents at US$3.42 a pound.

Got a news tip that you’d like us to look into? E-mail us at tips@globeandmail.com. Need to share documents securely? Reach out via SecureDrop.

TALKING POINTS

Conservatives decide to compete in the victimhood Olympics

“Members of the Conservative Party – which purports to be against cancel culture and ostentatious displays of wokeism – were utterly scandalized by a tweet that, by their telling, made them feel unsafe walking the halls of the House of Commons.” – Robyn Urback

Stop telling women what to wear – in Iran, but also here at home

“Dictating how women should dress is an indicator of a society that feels comfortable dictating how women should live, and what they can do with their bodies. This regressive thinking can only lead to regressive law – the revoking of abortion rights in the U.S., for instance.” – Marsha Lederman

Something is rotten at Canada’s broadcasting regulator

“The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has not only managed to contradict itself in two recent decisions affecting the CBC, but it stands accused of both shirking its mandate and sticking its nose where it does not belong.” – Konrad Yakabuski

LIVING BETTER

Study of experimental Alzheimer’s drug yields positive results, makers Eisai and Biogen say

An experimental Alzheimer’s drug made by Eisai Co. Ltd. and Biogen slowed cognitive and functional decline in a large trial of patients in the early stages of the disease, they said, potentially a rare win in a field littered with failed drugs.

Multiple drug makers have so far tried and failed to find an effective treatment for the brain-wasting disease that affects about 55 million people globally. A breakthrough would be a major boost to similar studies being run by Roche and Eli Lilly.

Speaking of the Eisai-Biogen drug results announced late on Tuesday night, Ronald Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s disease Research Center in Rochester, Minn., said: “It’s not a huge effect, but it’s a positive effect.”

The drug, lecanemab, slowed progress of the disease by 27 per cent compared with a placebo, meeting the study’s main goal, and potentially offering hope for patients and their families desperate for an effective treatment.

TODAY’S LONG READ

Canada’s cyber spy agency developing new policies to better support its many neurodiverse employees

Open this photo in gallery:

They are Canada’s code breakers, working in secret to thwart terrorist threats, cyberattacks and the devious ways of foreign spy agencies.

In a sleek, modernist building in Ottawa, the Communications Security Establishment decodes, translates and analyzes intercepted communications, protecting Canada from espionage, extremism, cybercrime and hacking.

Among the 3,100 analysts, linguists, mathematicians and other experts working at the CSE are many who self-identify as neurodiverse. They include people on the autism spectrum, as well as people with dyspraxia, dyslexia and other neurological conditions that were once thought of as impairments, but are now increasingly known as “neurodifferences” – cognitive variations with advantages and drawbacks.

Marie Woolf writes about the policies being developed at the CSE to better support its neurodiverse employees.

Evening Update is written by Emerald Bensadoun. 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.