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Fredericton police collect cards, flowers left at makeshift memorial outside station

The start of a new week marks a time for Fredericton to begin healing as a community, the city’s police chief said Sunday, as officers cleaned up a makeshift memorial dedicated to two constables gunned down earlier this month. The move to collect the cards and flowers came a day after the regimental funeral for Constables Robb Costello and Sara Burns, a service attended by thousands of police officers and first responders from across the continent. Fredericton’s police chief also addressed the legal process that is just beginning to play out in the wake of the deadly Aug. 10 shooting. Matthew Vincent Raymond, 48, will appear in court Aug. 27 to face four charges of first-degree murder and police have asked the public not speculate about the case or the alleged shooter’s motives.

Trump denies top White House lawyer has turned on him by co-operating with Russia probe

In a series of tweets on Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump denounced the New York Times for a Saturday story saying White House Counsel Don McGahn has co-operated extensively with the special counsel and denied that his top lawyer had turned on him. The Times said Mr. McGahn had shared detailed accounts about episodes at the heart of Robert Mueller’s inquiry into whether President Trump obstructed justice. Trump went on to say that he had “allowed” McGahn, who could offer rare insight for the special counsel into the President’s thinking, to testify.

Meanwhile, jurors in the fraud case of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort will return to work today after being sent home for the weekend following two days of deliberations without reaching a verdict. Here, our Washington correspondent tells us four things we learned from the Manafort trial and what we should be on the lookout for ahead of this week’s proceedings.

Rescue efforts forge ahead as rain abates in India’s flood-hit Kerala state

Torrential rain finally let up in India’s flood-hit Kerala state on Sunday, providing some respite to thousands of marooned families, but authorities fear an outbreak of disease among about 725,000 people crammed into relief camps. More than 300 people have died this week after incessant downpours led to the southwestern state’s worst flooding in a century. Canadians, like Prasad Nair, who migrated to Toronto from Kerala in 2003 and is now president of the Mississauga Kerala Association, say they fear for friends and relatives left stranded by the disaster. “The house that I lived in during my childhood has been fully submerged in water for five days,” he said. Nair said the association will continue to fund-raise for the destruction caused by the flooding, but urged the Canadian government to pledge to donate, especially to rebuild, as officials estimate over 10,000 kilometres of roads have been damaged.

Rogers launches long-delayed internet-TV service, Ignite TV, as telecom battle heats up

After years of false starts and an expensive write-down, Rogers Communications Inc. has finally launched an internet-based television service in a bid to woo more high-paying customers, and stem the flow of “cord-cutters” from cable TV. Dubbed Ignite TV, it comes with a diminutive set-top box (smaller, because the data and content all reside in the cloud), a voice-activated remote and also features an all-in-one hub of content, making it simple to find TV shows and movies whether they’re on traditional stations, on-demand services or Netflix. Rogers has begun rolling out the new product to customers across its service footprint in Ontario and will launch in Atlantic Canada next year. (For subscribers)

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Pakistani community leader blames Maxime Bernier tweet on multiculturalism for vandalism at Winnipeg park

Rashid Ahmed, a leader in the Pakistani community of Winnipeg, says a sign at Jinnah Park was sawed off from the bottom and the city later took the sign away entirely. Earlier in the week, Conservative MP Maxime Bernier criticized the park’s name, which honours the founder of Pakistan, as an example of what he called “extreme Liberal multiculturalism,” comparing it to a decision to remove a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald from outside Victoria city hall. Ahmed told CTV that he and other community members believe the tweet motivated the vandalism. “You always find some people in a community who put two sides against each other. I think that is what happened here,” he said.

MORNING MARKETS

Stocks rise

Global stocks rose on Monday amid optimism over planned trade talks between the United States and China, while Turkey’s lira fell after its credit ratings were downgraded and shots were fired outside the U.S. embassy in Ankara. There were no casualties. Tokyo’s Nikkei shed 0.3 per cent, but most other exchanges around the world are on the rise. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.4 per cent, and the Shanghai Composite 1.1 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were up by between 0.6 and 1 per cent by about 5:10 a.m. ET. New York futures were also up. The Canadian dollar was at about 76.5 US cents.

WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

Crazy Rich Asians was made for the Western gaze

“Representation itself is not enough. What matters is the substance of the representation. It is a pity that this film, which so valiantly employs diverse Asian talent, still does not allow “Asians” to truly act and speak for themselves." - Jeffery C. J. Chen, PhD candidate in history at Stanford University

Erdogan’s authoritarian quackery

“Those who refuse to recognize the world as it is – whether they are viewing it from Turkey, the United States, Venezuela, or a host of other countries – eventually lose the position that their denial of reality was supposed to protect." - Nina Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs at The New School and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute

Nature over nurture, with an asterisk

“For almost every human condition out there, there are studies tying it to one’s genes. This makes it easy to think that the science is moving in one direction, or that pretty soon we’ll be able to predetermine with a high level of probability what life holds in store for all of us based entirely on our genes. That no amount of math tutoring can alter junior’s fate.” - Konrad Yakabuski (For subscribers)

LIVING BETTER

Nature vs. nurture: Study on twins shows athletic destiny not set at birth

Results from a new study explore the physical differences between a pair of identical twin brothers over the course of 30 years, and offer a crucial reminder of how malleable our bodies really are. Your genes matter, but what you do with them may matter even more. One twin was a 52-year-old endurance junkie who worked as a high-school track coach and logged 63,458 kilometres of running between 1993 and 2015. The other was a truck driver who didn’t exercise at all. One of the more surprising results that researchers found came from an examination of the twins' muscle fibres, commonly believed to be very highly genetic. The running twin had 94 per cent slow-twitch fibres, ideal for an endurance athlete, while the non-runner twin had just 40 per cent slow-twitch fibre.

MOMENT IN TIME

Will that be cash, or Chargex? Fifty years ago, the revolution of credit began. On Aug. 19, 1968, unsolicited Chargex cards were mailed out to about one-million people in Toronto and Montreal. The Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Toronto-Dominion Bank and Banque Canadienne Nationale encouraged customers to use these “multipurpose” cards instead of relying on department-store cards. A Globe and Mail story from the time noted interest rates on unpaid balances could be “as much as 1.5 to 2 per cent a month.” Eventually, the cards caught on, and in an image from 1974, Globe photographer Jack Dobson reminds us of those old, messy carbon slips customers once signed. In 2016, at least 89 per cent of Canadians owned one credit card, and most carry balances: The average debt per Canadian is $3,954. - Shelby Blackley

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