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These are the top stories:
Indian visitor-visa rejections soar as fraud rises
Refusals on visitor-visa applications from India due to fraud and misrepresentation are soaring, which Ottawa and immigration experts say is in part due to unscrupulous “ghost consultants.”
Data provided by the federal government show that the percentage of refusals due to an applicant misrepresenting themselves – through fraudulent submissions, for instance – has nearly tripled. In 2017, 0.9 per cent of all Indian visitor-visa rejections were for misrepresentation; from January to May this year, the number jumped to 2.5 per cent.
In response to the increasing number of refusals for Indian applications, the federal government rolled out an information campaign in June targeting Indians applying for visas.
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U.S. mourns a weekend racked with gun violence in Ohio and Texas, leaving 29 dead
Early Sunday morning, 24-year-old Connor Betts opened fire in an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, killing 9 people and injuring 27 more before police shot and killed him just 30 seconds after he began firing.
It was the second U.S. mass shooting in 13 hours, and the third in a week, leaving U.S. citizens – and the world – shocked and dismayed. The previous evening, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius opened fire at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, on Saturday, killing 20 people and wounding 26 others before surrendering to police at the scene. He had driven over 1,000 miles to commit what U.S. authorities are now calling a hate crime against Hispanics and a possible act of domestic terrorism.
The Globe’s David Shribman writes that post-shooting rituals have become an American art form: “While crime in the United States is down − that is a fact that seems incongruous to our experience − mass crimes have become an American affliction, and an American allegory, followed by American eulogies.”
The creator of 8chan, a website that has been shown to stoke white nationalist sentiments and violence and saw Crusius’s post go up just minutes before he opened fire, has called for the platform to be shut down.
Democrats have spoken out, calling for widespread changes to gun access and accusing President Donald Trump of stoking hate and bigotry; Trump said “hate has no place in our country” and called for change but gave no specifics.
RCMP dive team scours Nelson River for B.C. fugitives after finding wrecked rowboat
After finding an aluminum rowboat washed ashore on Friday, Manitoba RCMP’s underwater recovery team was called to Gillam, and set off on Nelson River Sunday afternoon in the ongoing search for the two triple murder suspects who have evaded police for weeks.
Inspector Leon Fiedler, the commander overseeing search efforts, said the extent of the boat’s damage prompted him to request the dive team. It is not known whether the boat was used by fugitives Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod and police have been unable to locate its owner.
Tactical officers and a sniffer dog spent the weekend combing through the shoreline and dense, insect-laden bush near where the boat was found. Overhead, a police helicopter circled and scanned the river.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Canadian farmers continue to struggle with China’s ban on exports: After relations between Beijing and Ottawa turned sour late last year over the detainment of a top Chinese executive, the hardship has mounted for farmers trying to find alternative buyers for their goods.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard seizes another foreign oil tanker: Iran says the Iraqi oil tanker in the Gulf was smuggling fuel and has detained seven crewmen in a show of power amid heightened tension with the West.
Six-year-old boy thrown from London’s Tate Modern museum: A 17-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a child was tossed from the museum’s 10th-floor viewing platform. He landed on the fifth-floor roof and was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.
Khmer Rouge’s chief ideologist dead at 93: Nuon Chea, whose brutal rule of Cambodia in the 1970s led to the deaths of about two million people, died on Sunday at the age of 93. A UN-backed court found him guilty of genocide and sentenced him to life in prison last year.
Metallica singer calls woman to chat about close encounter: A Vancouver Island woman who credits Metallica with saving her from a cougar got to thank the band personally when frontman James Hetfield reached out. “I almost peed my pants I was so excited,” she said.
Taiwan pitches Ottawa on closer relationship: As Canada’s months-long dispute with China drags on, representative Winston Wen-yi Chen said the Taiwanese people are no stranger to “bullying” from Beijing and can not only offer advice on how to deal with Beijing but also a reliable and democratic trading partner.
Protests, violence continue in Hong Kong: The city is being pushed to an “extremely dangerous edge,” the Hong Kong government said, as police moved to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters on Sunday and Beijing said it would not let the situation persist. A general strike began Monday morning.
MORNING MARKETS
Canadian markets are closed today. Global stocks fell for a sixth day as an escalation of trade tensions between the United States and China spooked markets and the yuan fell to its lowest levels in over a decade. Safe-haven assets including the Japanese yen, core government bonds and gold rallied.
At about 6:30 a.m. ET, Japan’s NIKKEI was down 1.74 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index down 2.85 per cent and the Shanghai Composite Index was down 1.62 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE was down 1.79 per cent, Germany’s DAX down 1.26 per cent and Paris’ CAC down 1.72 per cent.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
The road to real reconciliation will be paved by Canada’s youth
Michael Adams, Max Fineday and Keith Neuman: “Young people are not alone in acknowledging that Indigenous people in Canada experience discrimination; older people admit this as well. But youth stand out in the way they tend to attribute Indigenous communities’ challenges to government policies and public attitudes, rather than to Indigenous people themselves.”
We need an economic vision for the Arctic, but Canada lacks the leadership
John Higginbotham: “A national Arctic investment plan with a strong maritime emphasis could enable the communities and regional governments to flourish in this new tough, competitive environment.”
The most-read First Person columns of the past year
Can’t get enough of other peoples’ opinions? We’ve gathered the most-read First Person columns published since last summer to share with our readers one more time.
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
David ParkinsDavid Parkins/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
A new study from the Hospital for Sick Children concluded an average of one child a year dies across Canada after being trapped in an overheated vehicle, usually because a parent or caregiver forgot they were inside.
Study co-author Dr. Jolene Huber suggests a few habits parents can build to keep their children safe, including arranging to have child-care providers call and sound the alarm at unexpected absences and placing cellphones in the back seat of the car whenever a child is sitting there.
Above all, she says, “Never leave a child unattended in a motor vehicle, even for a minute.”
MOMENT IN TIME
Handout
For more than 100 years, Globe and Mail photo librarians have preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these. In August, we’re exploring the great Canadian wilderness.
In 1958, Globe and Mail columnist Bruce West nabbed a plumb summertime assignment: head north – far north – to write about oil and gas exploration. In this photo taken by West, the midnight sun gives his group more time to unload supplies at Palmer Lake, Yukon, the closest the float plane could land to the camp where workers searched for oil below the permafrost. “When I climbed out of the plane, I was greeted by the thickest and most ravenous horde of mosquitoes I had ever encountered, ” West’s July 1 dispatch reported, the 11th in a series. Despite the bugs, West also found his bird’s-eye view of the Yukon awe-inspiring: “Nowhere was there the slightest sign of life in this awesome country, extending off in endless reaches, like some lost and deserted world,” he wrote. In many parts of Canada’s North, the same could still be written. Catherine Dawson March
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Samantha McCabe