Good morning,
Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland made personal appeals to persuade the Ukrainian government to not arrest and imprison former president Petro Poroshenko when he returned home in mid-January, two sources in Ottawa and one in Kyiv say.
After the Canadian intervention, the Ukrainian leadership decided to de-escalate a burgeoning internal crisis at a time of heightened tension with Russia, the Ukrainian source told The Globe and Mail.
The Globe has also learned that there is a Liberal government cabinet split about the feasibility of supplying small arms to Ukraine’s army, with some members expressing concerns about exacerbating tensions with Moscow.
Ukraine's former President Petro Poroshenko speaks to supporters and media outside the Kyiv District Court of Appeal on Jan. 28, 2022.Chris McGrath/Getty Images
This is the daily Morning Update newsletter. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for Morning Update and more than 20 other Globe newsletters on our newsletter signup page.
Military response to Ottawa protest ‘not in the cards,’ Trudeau says
Justin Trudeau said sending the military into the streets of Ottawa to help resolve the ongoing demonstrations is “not in the cards” as police grapple with how to resolve a protest that has no end in sight.
Thousands of demonstrators descended on Parliament Hill and surrounding streets last weekend, with trucks and cars blocking major intersections and forcing many downtown businesses to close. Police estimate between 8,000 and 15,000 protesters were downtown on Saturday. While that number has been dwindled, police are expecting more this weekend.
So far, Trudeau said, there have not been any requests for military aid, but that the federal government would look at requests that come from the city or province.
More coverage:
- Interim Conservative Leader Candice Bergen advocated against asking protesters to leave Ottawa
- MPs call on GoFundMe staff to testify about efforts to screen out hate campaigns
- Opinion: What’s happening in Ottawa is an assault on democracy
What does the Beijing Olympics’ machine-made snow tell us about climate change and the future of winter sports?
There’s something about this Winter Olympics that sets it apart from all others: Basically none of the snow fell from the sky.
When the Games end, roughly 2.5 million cubic metres of machine-made snow will cover the ski and snowboarding venues. Previous Winter Games, stretching back to Lake Placid in 1980, have made use of snowmaking machines, known as snow guns or snow cannons.
White ribbons will run through otherwise parched, brown terrain. That fact has underscored the impacts of climate change on high-performance winter sports and the mountains and glaciers that sustain them. It has also raised questions about the effects of machine-made snow on nature and athlete safety.
More Olympics coverage:
- Daily Olympic guide: Opening ceremonies set to begin, Canada off to shaky start in figure skating
- Ice dance, the Winter Olympics sport that balances artistic flair and technical precision ‘on a tiny little blade’
- What to watch at the Beijing Olympics: Everything you need to know about the 2022 Winter Games
- Listen to The Decibel: Sports, politics and a cocktail-making robot
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
ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Conservatives need to move quickly to replace Erin O’Toole, party president says: Federal Conservatives need to move quickly to elect a permanent replacement for Erin O’Toole because a minority Parliament means an election could come relatively soon, says party president Robert Batherson. The timing of a leadership race will be decided by a leadership-organizing committee that has yet to be appointed.
Meta faces historic drop as stock tanks: Shares of the company formerly known as Facebook saw a historic plunge Thursday after the social-media giant reported a rare profit decline because of a sharp rise in expenses, wobbly ad-revenue growth, competition from TikTok and fewer daily U.S. users on its flagship platform. With shares tumbling more than 23 per cent, Meta lost $215-billion in its overall value.
- Tech crash helps Canada dominate global stock markets and shed its backwater status
Provinces and territories urged to put forward an education recovery plan: Provinces and territories have failed to assess the impact of school disruptions on students’ education during the pandemic, and to plan for how they will be supported, according to advocacy group People for Education.
Stray director flies to Istanbul to save her street-dog star: When Hong Kong filmmaker Elizabeth Lo, who directed Stray, a documentary about street dogs in Istanbul, heard that the star of her film was at risk of being rounded up because of a new government order, she flew to Turkey in hopes of being reunited with Zeytin. On one of her last days in the city, she stumbled across Zeytin at a café, snoozing, indifferent to any danger or the search under way for her.
MORNING MARKETS
Shares in Europe and Asia were mostly higher Friday after a historic plunge in the stock price of Facebook’s parent company yanked other tech stocks lower on Wall Street. Major U.S. indexes are still on track for weekly gains, helped by strong earnings reports from companies like Apple, Exxon, UPS and Google’s parent Alphabet. The Canadian dollar was trading at 78.55 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
The Conservatives need an affable, relatable new leader more than a right-wing one
“It’s a tough thing for members of any party to see outside their bubbles to predict how a leader will connect with the public. That insular phenomenon explains why, for example, Conservatives will hear angels sing when they hear Pierre Poilievre make his 12th joke about the Prime Minister wearing blackface, not realizing that much of the rest of the country simply hears a partisan Poindexter trying to make his pals laugh.” - Robyn Urback
Thunder Bay’s policing crisis is a reflection of Canada’s policing issues
“Indigenous peoples fill the jails across Canada, but we are not represented on the other side of the courtroom. There are few First Nations judges, clerks, police officers – not to mention police board members. Don’t appoint one First Nations person to a board or position of leadership and expect serious change. Do not tokenize. Change the culture. Read the reports after the inquests and investigations. And do better.” - Tanya Talaga
Playing Wordle has united word nerds. So, what’s next?
“It might be something of a letdown in the short term, to see Wordle bought up by a bigger fish, but word nerds shouldn’t lose heart. As Jotto and Lingo before it, Wordle will likely be one in a long line of logic-based word puzzles to come.” - Fraser Simpson
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
The Globe and Mail
MOMENT IN TIME: Feb. 4, 1945
Yalta Conference opens
With their foreign secretaries behind them, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin sit on the patio of Livadia Palace, Yalta, Crimea, Feb. 4, 1945. Standing, from left: Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, and Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov.The Associated Press
Germany was on the brink of defeat, with Soviet troops just 60 kilometres from Berlin, when Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in the Crimean town of Yalta. Top of mind for Roosevelt was the war in the Pacific, with an invasion of Japan promising to be a brutal, island-by-island operation. Stalin agreed to send forces – in exchange for a sphere of influence in Manchuria. On the subject of Europe, the three leaders – apparently having learned nothing from the Treaty of Versailles – agreed that Germany should pay reparations, and Roosevelt and Churchill also granted the Soviets a say in the affairs of Eastern European countries bordering Russia. James Byrnes, a member of the U.S. delegation, later observed: “It was not a question of what we would let the Russians do, but what we could get the Russians to do.” Of course, all that changed by the first day of the Potsdam Conference in July. Roosevelt was dead, Harry Truman was U.S. president – and only the day before, the U.S. had successfully tested a terrifying new weapon. Reparations would be counterproductive, Truman argued, and an invasion of Japan looked increasingly unnecessary. The U.S. was suddenly in the driver’s seat. Massimo Commanducci
Subscribers and registered users of globeandmail.com can dig deeper into our News Photo Archive at tgam.ca/newsphotoarchive
Read today's horoscopes. Enjoy today's puzzles.
If you’d like to receive this newsletter by e-mail every weekday morning, go here to sign up. If you have any feedback, send us a note.