Morning Update: Rogers board to discuss fallout from chair’s failed attempt to oust CEO

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Rogers board to discuss fallout from chair’s failed attempt to oust CEO

The Rogers Communications Inc. board of directors will meet to discuss chair Edward Rogers’s future interactions with the company’s management in light of his thwarted attempt to oust the telecom giant’s chief executive, says a source familiar with the plans.

The Globe reported last Friday that Rogers unsuccessfully attempted to remove company CEO Joe Natale from the top job and replace him with the company’s chief financial officer, Tony Staffieri, according to three sources familiar with the situation. One of the sources said Mr. Rogers was also planning to oust other members of the company’s executive leadership team.

News of the power struggle at Canada’s largest wireless carrier comes as Rogers seeks regulatory approval of its deal to acquire Shaw Communications Inc. for $26-billion, including debt

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A four-star dilemma atop of the Canadian Armed Forces

Canada’s top military commander wants his job back, saying he retains the moral authority to once again lead the Canadian Forces after an investigation into a sexual-misconduct allegation cleared him of any charges.

The federal government, however, has placed him on administrative leave pending its own review after a probe by military police was concluded. Admiral Art McDonald said what should matter most is that he submitted himself to a process that resulted in him being cleared.

“I’ve been exonerated,” Admiral Art McDonald said in his first interview since he stepped aside from his position early this year when the investigation began.

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Ahead of the NHL regular season, every Canadian team’s ceiling is limitless

The little things matter in Canadian hockey. It’s the big things – say, winning – that escape us. That makes this moment, just hours before the start of the NHL season, the most wonderful time of the year. It’s the time when the ceiling of every Canadian team is theoretically limitless. Sports columnist Cathal Kelly took a look at what’s to be expected. Bonus: He also shares his thoughts on how the Kraken will fare.

Also read:

• An excerpt from Over the Boards by Hayley Wickenheiser: Life lessons from Canadian hockey great
• For prospects from Canada’s East Coast, the path to the NHL is clearer than ever before
• After their Stanley Cup hopes were dashed in particularly harsh fashion, the Leafs and Oilers need to rebound quickly

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ALSO ON OUR RADAR

KGB archives show Freeland drew the ire of Soviet intelligence: Today we know Chrystia Freeland as Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. In her days as an exchange student, however, she was the subject of denouncements in the Soviet press and even warranted a feature in top-secret KGB documents because of her role in the Ukrainian independence movement. She even had a code name: Frida.

Facebook’s harm to young women shouldn’t be a surprise: For years now, researchers have been documenting the damage that apps such as Instagram do to a vulnerable teenager’s mental health. But it would be simplistic to blame that rise solely on social media. Separately, Facebook’s power to influence an election could be ‘really dangerous,’ says one critic.

Toronto’s Citizen Lab uncovered the hacking of Princess Haya: Bill Marczak is a senior researcher with the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and a leading expert in Pegasus, the sophisticated spyware that’s commonly used by repressive regimes to monitor political opponents and journalists. In the midst of a phone-hacking investigation involving a political activist from the United Arab Emirates, he realized hackers were targeting Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, the ex-wife of Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Canadian among winners of Nobel Prize for economics: Guelph, Ont.’s David Card, of the University of California at Berkeley, was awarded one half of the prize for pioneering research on labour-market impacts of minimum wage, immigration and education, and for creating the scientific framework to draw conclusions from studies that can’t use traditional methodology.

Poll shows hardening position on China among Canadians: The release of two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, has not warmed public opinion toward China. In fact, in a new Nanos Research poll, more than 75 per cent of Canadians think the federal government should ban Huawei Technologies from this country’s 5G telecommunications networks.

MORNING MARKETS

A selloff in global stocks continued this morning on signs that soaring energy prices had put a dampener on economic growth, while inflation and policy-tightening fears sent short-dated U.S. Treasury yields to 18-month highs.

Oil prices rose further, with Brent crude at almost $89 a barrel. Coal has scaled record peaks and, while gas prices are off recent highs, they remain four times higher in Europe than at the start of the year.

WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

Justin Trudeau needs to bring in new faces to revive a faded cabinet

“Mr. Trudeau still needs to be ruthless enough to let go some of his current ministers, bring in new faces and, especially, find ministers who can provide more dynamic direction in key portfolios. First and foremost, he needs a defence minister who actually thinks they are responsible for the conduct of the military, unlike Mr. Sajjan, who repeatedly sloughed off responsibility for the military’s repeated mishandling of sexual harassment.” - Campbell Clark

Ontario’s top court says anti-Black racism should be considered in the legal system. That’s a start

“The most surprising thing about the Ontario Court of Appeal’s landmark decision in R. v Morris isn’t that the legal system has confirmed that the corrosive effects of anti-Black racism may be important for judges to consider when sentencing Black defendants. It’s that it took so long to make explicit that sentencing courts must receive, understand and act on evidence of this kind, when that had already long been settled by law.” - Lisa Kerr, assistant professor at Queen’s University’s Faculty of Law.

TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON

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LIVING BETTER

Will eating nuts make me gain weight?

Nuts are calorie-dense due to their high fat content – one half-cup of peanuts, for instance, delivers 444 calories – but new research suggests the worry over nuts and weight gain is undeserved. A large review of studies, published last month in the journal Obesity Reviews, found that eating a handful of nuts every day, which is recommended for heart health, did not lead to weight gain. What’s more, the findings suggest that eating nuts may actually help prevent gaining excess body fat.

MOMENT IN TIME: OCT. 12, 1999

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NBA great Wilt Chamberlain dies

Everything about Wilton Norman Chamberlain was big. Wilt the Stilt, also known as Goliath, or the Big Dipper, was 7 foot 1, weighed 300 pounds and scored more than 31,000 points in his National Basketball Association career. He once notched 100 points in a single game, and over his career played 47,859 minutes without once fouling out. He was known for his dominating strength, scoring ability, eloquence and alleged sexual prowess – he once claimed to have had sexual encounters with 20,000 women, although he later recanted: “The number was to make a statement … not necessarily 20,000 different people.” But it was Chamberlain’s heart, (which would have weighed about a pound) that killed him. Chamberlain had been retired for 26 years when Los Angeles paramedics found him dead at his mansion in Bel Air on this day in 1999. He was 63. “He had congestive heart failure,” his agent, Sy Goldberg, said. “He had deteriorated relatively quickly over the last month or so.” Chamberlain had been rumoured to have had heart problems for years, but always denied it. He once said, “No one cheers for Goliath,” but he is remembered as one of the greatest basketball players in history. Philip King

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