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These are the top stories:
Three dead, including shooter, 12 injured in Toronto mass shooting
Two people are dead and another dozen injured after a lone gunman walked along Toronto’s busy Danforth Avenue on Sunday night, randomly shooting pedestrians before opening fire on crowded restaurants. The 29-year-old shooter was found dead in a nearby alley after an exchange of gunfire with police, though it remains unclear if he died by suicide. His identity has not been released. The Special Investigation Unit is leading the case and has assigned six investigators and three forensic investigators.
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Senate quietly loosens accountability rules for reporting Senator hospitality costs
The Senate has quietly relaxed its rules to allow senators to use their hospitality budgets to pay for better accommodations without needing to submit monthly housing expenses. Critics say the rule changes, which the Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration passed on June 14, is a return to a system similar to that which caused the Senate spending scandal in 2013. Senators were informed of the decision on July 12 in a memo from Pierre Lanctot, the Red Chamber’s chief financial officer, which said they could now use hospitality expenses to help pay for their apartments, condominiums or Ottawa houses. According to two senior Senate sources, the CIBA committee made the change because some senators wanted nicer places to live in Ottawa. NDP MP Charlie Angus, who noted that the Senate sits on average about 90 days a year, said senators were “playing shell games with taxpayers’ money.”
Canada to provide home to hundreds of humanitarian workers rescued in Syria
Canada has committed to taking up to 250 of the estimated 400 refugees evacuated from southwestern Syria overnight on Saturday. The rescue effort was led by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and performed at the request of Canada, Britain and Germany, in an effort to save predominantly “White Helmet” volunteers who’d spent years in rebel-held areas amid the Syrian civil war. Many of those rescued have now been moved to Jordan and will eventually be taken in by Canada and other countries. Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Chrystia Freeland, said in a statement this weekend that she’d “called for global leadership to support and help these heroes.” A senior government source also told The Globe and Mail that the final number of refugees Canada will take in ultimately depends on how many other countries accept.
Statistics Canada to resume releasing data on unfounded cases today
For the first time in 15 years, Statistics Canada will release data on crime reports deemed unfounded by police today. The information will be available at 8:30 a.m. ET through Statscan’s The Daily. The data release comes after a 20-month Globe investigation, Unfounded, that surveyed more than 870 police jurisdictions across Canada. The project revealed that one in five reports of sexual assault were dismissed as baseless or unfounded – a rate far higher than for other types of criminal cases. StatsCan also consulted with more than 60 experts and trained more than 400 police personnel on the new reporting strategy after The Globe’s investigation. Police will no longer classify incidents as “unsubstantiated” and now have new options for classifying unsolved cases.
Children being harmed by food additives: U.S. Pediatric society
In a statement published today, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said it found growing evidence that many chemicals used to colour, preserve or package food pose dangers to children. It specified that health risks like obesity and hormone disruption have been linked to commonly used chemicals found in food and packaging items like plastic wrap and metal cans. Young people still developing can be more susceptible to the disruptive effects, according to Leonardo Trasande, lead author of the statement and an associate professor at the New York University School of Medicine. The AAP is now calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to increase scrutiny on the regulation of these chemicals, many of which have slipped into the food supply due to administrative oversights.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Controversial rental electric scooters may soon come to Canada
The city of Calgary is set to approve a two-year pilot project today that would allow companies to rent out up to 10,000 transportation devices − starting with bikes and aiming to include electric scooters starting in the first quarter of next year. The move prompts questions over how the latter transportation devices, which have been controversial in the U.S., will affect Canadian cities. Electric scooters, which are essentially two-wheeled skateboards with a handlebar and the ability to travel at speeds up to 24 km/h, have been banned in multiple U.S. cities after enraging pedestrians for cluttering sidewalks and posing a risk to those travelling by foot. Scooter companies have also posted jobs in Vancouver and Toronto, where they have begun negotiating with city officials to expand their rental services.
MORNING MARKETS
Markets unsettled
U.S. and Canadian markets are poised for a negative opening Monday as continuing trade worries unsettle markets and recent comments from U.S. president Donald Trump about the Fed, interest rates and Iran keep traders on edge. Tokyo’s Nikkei tumbled about 300 points, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 31 points and the Shanghai Composite was up 30 points at 8 a.m. ET. In Europe, London’s FTS 100 and Germany’s DAX were down about 20 points, while the Paris CAC 40 was down about 30 points. The Canadian dollar was at 76.17 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
A bus ride gone bad prompts reflections on immigration, mental health and humanity
“The swift actions of passengers also served as humbling reminder that immigrants and refugees − who came to this tiny Nordic country, just as they come to Canada, to escape war, poverty and oppression, and to taste freedom − bring with them a panoply of skills and abilities that we rarely see, especially when these individuals end up with menial jobs, well below their skill level. It is not newcomers we have to fear, but the assumptions we make about them. It is not their values that we should worry about, but how we fail to value their potential.” - André Picard
When sexual-assault acquittal is not vindication
“Our justice-based responses to survivors of sexualized abuse of power rely extensively on a cumbersome, expensive and slow criminal-justice response whose default is incarceration, which many survivors do not even want for those who abuse them; that is often insensitive to the needs of survivors, and indeed inflicts further damage on them through the ordeal of cross-examination; and that routinely fails to deliver what most of them seek, which is simple validation.” - David Butt, Toronto-based criminal lawyer
Donald Trump’s Finland summit performance hangs heavily over U.S. mid-term elections
“The summit unnerved Mr. Trump’s putative Capitol Hill allies − who, as their appearances on the Sunday political shows demonstrated, were less reluctant than ever to air the qualms they have suppressed in public for months. Moreover, it spawned new waves of worry among Republican voters, many of whom are more congenial to the GOP establishment than the Trump true believers. The true impact of the Russia issue will be evident in the critical mid-term elections that will decide the fate of the Senate and the House, both currently controlled by Republicans. After Helsinki, the White House is dreading an unfavourable outcome.” -David Shribman
LIVING BETTER
Yes, hot yoga is awesome. Science says so
Despite its intensity, hot yoga has been growing in popularity for years. But for the first time, a study from the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University confirms the scientific reasoning behind why this trend works. Exercising in high temperatures boosts endurance and improves athletic performance long term, as the national women’s field-hockey team experienced during its training to qualify for the 2016 Río Olympics. More on why sweating while you stretch is so beneficial here.
MOMENT IN TIME
Parking in Peggys Cove, 1963
For more than 100 years, photographers, photo editors and photo librarians working for The Globe and Mail have amassed and preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography. Every Monday, The Globe will feature one of these images.
In July, 1963, Peggys Cove, N.S., had a population of 50. (As of 2011, it’s around 640.) It’s a tiny piece of the island coast, but by then, the small picturesque fishing village had become a major Maritime tourist attraction. The Globe’s Bruce West called it an “Unchanging Cove,” saying, “Its visitors change by the hundreds every summer’s day, but Peggys Cove itself has somehow managed to achieve a kind of serene indifference to the thundering herds of painters, photographers and ordinary sightseers who make the pilgrimage to its rocky shores each year.” The cove was equally indifferent to visitors' parking arrangements. Spots along the tiny roads were few and far between. Soon, local owners of those limited spaces began charging for their use: 10 cents a car, paid via tin box, on the honour system. – Jacqueline Houston
Subscribers and registered users of globeandmail.com can dig deeper into our News Photo Archive at tgam.ca/newsphotoarchive.
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Audrey Carleton