Study challenges claim early human hunters killed off prehistoric elephants


Christy Somos

CTVNews.ca 

Writer

Published Thursday, July 1, 2021 

Visitors walk past a Mastodon skeleton display at the opening of the Royal Alberta Museum, in Edmonton on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson)


TORONTO -- A new study suggests that prehistoric elephants like the mastodon and woolly mammoth were wiped out by waves of extreme global environmental change, rather than being hunted to extinction by early humans.

The study, entitled “The rise and fall of proboscidean ecological diversity,” published Thursday in Nature Ecology & Evolution, challenges the claim that early human hunters hunted prehistoric elephants to extinction over millennia. Instead, it presents findings that the extinction of the last mammoths and mastodons at the end of the last Ice Age marked the end of climate-driven global decline among elephant species over millions of years.

An international group of paleontologists from the Universities of Alcala in Spain, Bristol in the U.K., and Helsinki, Finland, ran the study to analyse the rise and fall of elephants and their predecessors over 60 million years of evolution, according to a release.

The study explains that while today elephants are categorized into three endangered species in the African and Asian tropics, their ancestors were a group of giant herbivores known as the proboscideans, which include the extinct mastodons, stegodons and deinotheres.

By studying the fossil collections in museums across the globe, like London’s Natural History Museum to Moscow’s Paleontological institute, the research team logged and analyzed traits like body size, skull shape and teeth, and found that proboscideans fell within one of eight sets of adaptive evolutionary strategies.

“Remarkably for 30 million years, the entire first half of proboscidean evolution, only two of the eight groups evolved,” said study co-author Dr. Zhang Hanwen in the release. “Most proboscideans over this time were nondescript herbivores ranging from the size of a pug to that of a boar. A few species got as big as a hippo, yet these lineages were evolutionary dead-ends. They all bore little resemblance to elephants.”

However, the evolution of ancient elephant species changed dramatically when a migration corridor opened up through the Bering Land Bridge after the Afro-Arabian plate collided into the Eurasion continent approximately 20 million years ago.

“The immediate impact of proboscidean dispersals [migration] beyond Africa was quantified for the very first time in our study,” lead study author Dr. Juan Cantalapiedra said in the release.

Access to a new continent meant new evolutionary processes to adapt to new environments.

“The aim of the game in this boom period of proboscidean evolution was ‘adapt or die.’ Habitat perturbations were relentless, pertained to the ever-changing global climate, continuously promoting new adaptive solutions while proboscideans that didn’t keep up were literally, left for dead,” Zhang explains in the release.

The researchers found that by three million years ago, environmental disruptions from the coming Ice Ages hit the proboscideans hard, resulting in evolutionary tactics in species like the woolly mammoth, which had shaggy hair and big tusks for retrieving vegetation covered under thick snow, the study says.

By analyzing the extinction peaks, or periods of time the ancient species would be “subject to higher extinction risk,” of the proboscideans at 2.4 million years ago, 160,000 and 75,000 years ago in Africa, Eurasia and the Americas, the team discovered that the results did not correlate with the expansion of early humans and their “enhanced capabilities to hunt down megaherbivores.”

The results surprised researchers.

“We didn’t foresee this result. It appears as if the broad global pattern of proboscidean extinctions in recent geological history could be reproduced without accounting for impacts of early human diasporas,” said Zhang, adding that the study “refutes some recent claims regarding the role of archaic humans in wiping out prehistoric elephants, ever since big game hunting became a crucial part of our ancestors’ subsistence strategy around 1.5 million years ago.”

Dinosaurs were declining before asteroid death blast finished them off

Better to burn out than fade away.


Rae Hodge
June 30, 2021


Ecological factors had already begun mounting their own opposition to Cretaceous creatures, say researchers, well before the species' final betrayal by that fateful asteroidal blast.Getty Images

For decades now, paleontologists have debated whether -- if spared the fiery finality of an asteroidal death-blast -- the 160-million-year reign of the world's most fearsome creatures could've continued unbroken on a planet whose ecology had already begun turning its back on them. In a study released Tuesday, scientists assert that long before a space rock tore a 115-mile-wide crater in the Yucatán Peninsula, the fate of the dinosaurs may've already been sealed.

The new research shows how cooling climate and the decline of herbivores created a domino effect that turned the ecosystem against the Cretaceous creatures. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, comes from an international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Bristol in England and the Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier in France.

"We looked at the six most abundant dinosaur families through the whole of the Cretaceous, spanning from 150 to 66 million years ago, and found that they were all evolving and expanding and clearly being successful," the study's lead author, CNRS researcher Fabien Condamine, said in a Tuesday release.

"Then, 76 million years ago, they show a sudden downturn. Their rates of extinction rose and in some cases the rate of origin of new species dropped off."

Graphs from the study show how speciation rate (in blue) dropped off just as the extinction rate (in red) spiked in the last 10 million years of the dinosaurs' reign. Scientists say that together, this corresponds to a rapid reduction in the number of species just before the impact of the asteroid 66 million years ago.University of Bristol / Fabien L. Condamine

A swirl of variables previously dogged the quest to nail down the condition of the dinosaurs before the asteroid's impact, including incomplete fossil records, uncertainties over age-dating the fossils, and doubts about the evolutionary models. So, using more than 1,600 dinosaur records, the team ran each model millions of times to consider all possible sources of error. And, ultimately, to find out whether the analyses would converge and point toward the most probable answer.

"This means that the data are getting better all the time," said co-author Phil Currie, of the University of Edmonton. "The decline in dinosaurs in their last ten million years makes sense, and indeed this is the best-sampled part of their fossil record as our study shows"

In the end, the dinosaur data pointed toward a handful of key causes for the species' decline, according to co-author Mike Benton, of the University of Bristol.

"It became clear that there were two main factors. First, that overall climates were becoming cooler, and this made life harder for the dinosaurs which likely relied on warm temperatures," Benton said.

"Then, the loss of herbivores made the ecosystems unstable and prone to extinction cascade. We also found that the longer-lived dinosaur species were more liable to extinction, perhaps reflecting that they could not adapt to the new conditions on Earth."

In the meantime, scientists said, the scurrying of tiny burrowing mammals in the undergrowth -- the ultimate inheritors of the postapocalyptic planet we know today -- likely went unnoticed by the massive dinosaurs.

Just as, 66 million years ago, a tiny ball of fire in the sky likely went unnoticed by the Cretaceous titans until -- growing larger and hotter -- the hurtling rock immersed the dinosaurs in one all-consuming final explosion, and it was too late for them to notice anything ever again.

First published on June 30, 2021 

#CRYPTID
Mouse thought extinct for 150 years found living on island


CNNDigital
Published Wednesday, June 30, 2021 


A mouse thought to have become extinct more than 150 years ago has been found alive on an island off the coast of Western Australia, researchers have discovered. (Credit: Wayne Lawler / Australian Wildlife Conservancy via CNN)

AMY WOODYATT -- A mouse thought to have become extinct more than 150 years ago has been found alive on an island off the coast of Western Australia, researchers have discovered.

Scientists compared DNA samples from eight extinct Australian rodents and 42 of their living relatives, and discovered that the extinct Gould's mouse was "indistinguishable" from the Shark Bay mouse.

Researchers were studying the decline of the country's native species since the arrival of Europeans in Australia in 1788.

The mouse -- which will still be known by the common name "djoongari," or "Shark Bay mouse" -- was once found across the country, from south-west Western Australia to New South Wales, but was last seen in 1857. The introduction of invasive species, agricultural land clearing and new diseases destroyed the native species, researchers said, adding that climate change and poor fire management also affected population sizes.

The remaining populations of the djoongari were located on a single 42 square-kilometre island in Shark Bay, Bernier Island. One small population is not enough for a species to survive, researchers said, so the mice have been taken to two other islands to establish new populations.

"The resurrection of this species brings good news in the face of the disproportionally high rate of native rodent extinction, making up 41 per cent of Australian mammal extinction since European colonisation in 1788," lead author Emily Roycroft, an evolutionary biologist from the Australian National University (ANU), said in a statement.

"It is exciting that Gould's mouse is still around, but its disappearance from the mainland highlights how quickly this species went from being distributed across most of Australia, to only surviving on offshore islands in Western Australia. It's a huge population collapse," she added.

The team also studied seven other extinct native species, which were found to have high genetic diversity immediately before extinction, showing that their populations were widespread before Europeans arrived.

"This shows genetic diversity does not provide guaranteed insurance against extinction," Roycroft warned.

More than 80% of Australia's mammals are endemic, as result of Australia's long period of isolation from other continents. But the country has what researchers described in a 2015 paper as an "extraordinary rate of extinction." Meanwhile, a study published in 2019 found that Australia was home to 6-10% of the world's post-1500 recognized extinctions.

Roycroft said the extinction of the seven native species happened "very quickly."

"They were likely common, with large populations prior to the arrival of Europeans. But the introduction of feral cats, foxes, and other invasive species, agricultural land clearing and new diseases have absolutely decimated native species," she said.

Humans have already wiped out hundreds of species and pushed many more to the brink of extinction through wildlife trade, pollution, habitat loss and the use of toxic substances. The Earth's sixth mass extinction is happening now, much faster than previously expected -- and the rate at which species are dying out has accelerated in recent decades, scientists have warned.

The research will be published in the journal PNAS next month.

Earth's cryosphere is shrinking by 87,000 square kilometers per year

by American Geophysical Union

Sea ice melting in the Arctic Ocean. Credit: NASA/Kathryn Hansen

The global cryosphere—all of the areas with frozen water on Earth—shrank by about 87,000 square kilometers (about 33,000 square miles, an area about the size of Lake Superior) per year on average between 1979 and 2016, as a result of climate change, according to a new study. This research is the first to make a global estimate of the surface area of the Earth covered by sea ice, snow cover and frozen ground.

The extent of land covered by frozen water is just as important as its mass because the bright white surface reflects sunlight so effectively, cooling the planet. Changes in the size or location of ice and snow can alter air temperatures, change the sea level and even affect ocean currents worldwide.

The new study is published in Earth's Future, AGU's journal for interdisciplinary research on the past, present and future of our planet and its inhabitants.

"The cryosphere is one of the most sensitive climate indicators and the first one to demonstrate a changing world," said first author Xiaoqing Peng, a physical geographer at Lanzhou University. "Its change in size represents a major global change, rather than a regional or local issue."

The cryosphere holds almost three-quarters of Earth's fresh water, and in some mountainous regions, dwindling glaciers threaten drinking water supplies. Many scientists have documented shrinking ice sheets, dwindling snow cover and loss of Arctic sea ice individually due to climate change. But no previous study has considered the entire extent of the cryosphere over Earth's surface and its response to warming temperatures.

The percentage of each area that experiences ice, snow or frozen ground at some point during the year (1981–2010). Credit: Peng et al. (2021) Earth’s Future https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001969

Contraction in space and time

Peng and his co-authors from Lanzhou University calculated the daily extent of the cryosphere and averaged those values to come up with yearly estimates. While the extent of the cryosphere grows and shrinks with the seasons, they found that the average area covered by Earth's cryosphere has contracted overall since 1979, correlating with rising air temperatures.

The shrinkage primarily occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, with a loss of about 102,000 square kilometers (about 39,300 square miles), or about half the size of Kansas, each year. Those losses are offset slightly by growth in the Southern Hemisphere, where the cryosphere expanded by about 14,000 square kilometers (5,400 square miles) annually. This growth mainly occurred in the sea ice in the Ross Sea around Antarctica, likely due to patterns of wind and ocean currents and the addition of cold meltwater from Antarctic ice sheets.

The estimates showed that not only was the global cryosphere shrinking but that many regions remained frozen for less time. The average first day of freezing now occurs about 3.6 days later than in 1979, and the ice thaws about 5.7 days earlier.

"This kind of analysis is a nice idea for a global index or indicator of climate change," said Shawn Marshall, a glaciologist at the University of Calgary, who was not involved in the study. He thinks that a natural next step would be to use these data to examine when ice and snow cover give Earth its peak brightness, to see how changes in albedo impact the climate on a seasonal or monthly basis and how this is changing over time.

To compile their global estimate of the extent of the cryosphere, the authors divided up the planet's surface into a grid system. They used existing data sets of global sea ice extent, snow cover and frozen soil to classify each cell in the grid as part of the cryosphere if it contained at least one of the three components. Then they estimated the extent of the cryosphere on a daily, monthly and yearly basis and examined how it changed over the 37 years of their study.

The authors say that the global dataset can now be used to further probe the impact of climate change on the cryosphere, and how these changes impact ecosystems, carbon exchange and the timing of plant and animal life cycles.

Explore further Climate warming increases cryospheric hazards

More information: Xiaoqing Peng et al, A Holistic Assessment of 1979–2016 Global Cryospheric Extent, Earth's Future (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2020EF001969

Provided by American Geophysical Union

Global Opinions
Opinion: Canada’s record-breaking temperatures are an alarm. We must act.

Multiple fires have broken out in British Columbia and evacuation orders have been issued for the village of Lytton, which has set a new temperature record in recent days. (BC Wildfire Service / AFP) (-/AFP/Getty Images)

Opinion by
David Moscrop 

Contributing columnist

WASHINGTON POST
July 1, 2021 at 10:07 a.m. MDT

Residents of Canada’s westernmost province, British Columbia, have been living the opening pages of a post-apocalyptic novel for several days now, as a heat dome settled over the Pacific Northwest.

On Sunday, Lytton, B.C., set the country’s record for hottest temperature at 114.98 degrees (46.1 Celsius), displacing the previous record of 113 degrees (45 Celsius), set in 1937. On Monday, Lytton set the record again: 118.22 degrees (47.9 Celsius). On Tuesday, it set one for a third day in a row: 121.28 degrees (49.6 Celsius). On Wednesday, a wildfire forced the entire town to evacuate. Across the province, the heat wave is suspected of contributing to the loss of dozens of lives and stretched first responders thin. Several school districts have closed and crops have been stressed.

The ideal number of times an 84-year-old heat record should be broken in a week is zero, not three and counting. But this is what climate change has brought us. And we knew it was coming. In 2020, a study published in Science Advances warned of rising temperatures and the risks they pose to humans. The research article, titled “The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance,” found that “reported occurrences of extreme TW [wet-bulb temperature] have increased rapidly at weather stations and in reanalysis data over the last four decades and that parts of the subtropics are very close to the 35°C survivability limit, which has likely already been reached over both sea and land. These trends highlight the magnitude of the changes that have taken place as a result of the global warming to date.”


As if on cue, thus arrived the heat dome.

Years of dire warnings about climate change and its effects may have inured some of us to the alarming idea of life on a planet so deeply altered by human behavior that it is increasingly inhospitable to our survival, but the past few days have reminded millions of us what that looks like in practice. The immediate question is how governments, organizations, families and friends can take care of folks, reduce suffering and save lives, especially those of the most vulnerable among us. Following that, we must ask ourselves how we can process these extreme weather events in a way that underwrites immediate, aggressive climate action.


It is tempting to give up. The tasks ahead of us are daunting, and some of the consequences of our slow, inadequate climate measures are locked in. But nihilism serves few of us, while hope and action will serve many.

In March 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic began to sweep the world, Damian Carrington wrote in the Guardian: “There’s no ‘deadline’ to save the world.” While “deadlines can focus efforts,” he wrote, “even if this deadline is missed, it will not be too late, because every act reduces human suffering.”

That message of possibility is essential, a necessary frame if we are to mobilize in the face of tougher, more frequent challenges induced by climate change. Strategies of mitigation and adaptation can improve and save lives; as despairing as extreme weather events are, they ought not to drive us into morbid complacency. Indeed, it is an act of privilege to give in to despair while we might still create a better world.

Creating a better world, however, takes structural changes at the level of states. While we ought to be focused on improving our climate fortunes, individual behavioral changes must be secondary to national and subnational policy that retools how we govern ourselves and how we do business. Last year, Seth Klein, in his book “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency,” laid out a program for such change. Whether you appreciate the war frame or not — I do — or agree with each idea or not, the action outline gives plenty of suggestions for transformative adaptation and mitigation polices. At the very least, Klein outlined the scale at which we ought to be operating.

The heat wave in the Pacific Northwest should focus our minds — once those sweating through the heat can focus again, at any rate. The latest extreme weather event should impel us to demand more from our governments and should remind us that politicians will not do enough to address climate change and its effects on their own. They won’t jump; we’ll have to push them.

How do we begin? In Canada, election speculation is rampant, with an expected vote in the fall. That’s a good place to renew our efforts on climate, committing to making aggressive climate action the top issue and ensuring that breaking weather records doesn’t become our national pastime.

Explainer: Binance, the giant crypto exchange under regulatory scrutiny

By Tom Wilson and Huw Jones© Reuters/DARRIN ZAMMIT LUPI FILE PHOTO: The logo of Binance is seen on their exhibition stand at the Delta Summit, Malta's official Blockchain and Digital Innovation event promoting cryptocurrency, in St Julian's

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's financial watchdog has barred major cryptocurrency exchange Binance from carrying out regulated activities, the latest in a string of moves against the platform by authorities across the world.


Here are answers to some key questions on Binance, one of the world's biggest exchanges, and what the latest regulatory moves mean.

HOW BIG IS BINANCE?

Very.

Trading volumes in June were $662 billion, up almost ten-fold from July 2020, according to data from CryptoCompare. On a single day in May, daily volumes hit $92 billion, U.S. researcher Coin Metrics said.

Headed by Canadian Changpeng Zhao, Binance offers a wide range of services to users across the globe, from crypto spot and derivatives trading to tokenised versions of stocks.

It also runs an exchange that allows users to trade directly with each other. Its own cryptocurrency, Binance Coin, is the fourth-biggest in the world.

Binance is growing in popularity in Britain, where its app has been downloaded 1.8 million times in 2021, and 2.2 million times in total, according to mobile data firm Sensor Tower.

WHERE'S IT BASED?

It's unclear.

Binance's corporate structure is opaque, with its holding company widely reported to be registered in the Cayman Islands. A Binance spokesperson declined to comment on its location, saying it was "decentralised" and that it "works with a number of regulated entities around the world".

Binance has built up a huge following across the world, with channels on the Telegram social media app for users in more than 30 countries.

AND IT'S COMING UNDER SCRUTINY FROM REGULATORS?

Yes - in Britain and elsewhere.

Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said last week Binance's UK arm cannot conduct any regulated activity, without saying why it took the action.

Crypto trading is generally unregulated in Britain, though some activities such as offering crypto derivatives do require permission.

Regulators including the FCA are increasingly worried over the standard of anti-money laundering checks at crypto exchanges and the risks crypto trading poses to consumers.

Japan's regulator said last week Binance was operating in the country illegally, while Germany's watchdog said in April it risked being fined for offering tokens connected to stocks. In May, Bloomberg reported Binance is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service.

Yet national regulators often struggle to rein in crypto exchanges based elsewhere, lawyers said.

"It's very difficult," said Simon Treacy, senior lawyer at Linklaters. "(The FCA) don't have jurisdiction over the whole of Binance's operations, so they use the point where they do have jurisdiction and put pressure on the business there."

The Binance spokesperson said it takes its compliance obligations very seriously and is committed to following all regulatory requirements wherever it operates.

HOW WILL THE UK MOVE IMPACT BINANCE?

Its influence may be limited.

Beyond a loud warning to investors, the FCA has done all it can under its limited powers over an offshore exchange, experts say.

"At the moment the method is to emphasise risks to investors in the UK of these services rather than to regulate them outright," said Barney Reynolds, a lawyer at Shearman & Sterling.

UK investors can still access Binance via its main website, which the FCA does not have powers over.

Still, the FCA's demand that Binance seeks its permission to offer regulated services means it would be an offence to suggest to investors it was regulated in the UK.

Binance will also have to rethink plans announced last year to offer crypto trading services using pounds and euros on a platform regulated by the UK.

Google said this week it would only allow FCA-authorised entities to run ads for UK-based financial products on its website, after repeated FCA calls to crack down on online fraud.

Concern at banks over investment scams and fraud involving crypto exchanges may also impact Binance. Britain's Natwest Group last week capped the daily amount customers can send to exchanges, including Binance.

(Reporting by Tom Wilson and Huw Jones; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

Canada Day dawns as country reckons with horrific legacy of residential schools

OTTAWA — The country's second pandemic-shaded Canada Day is underway, with events again scaled back due to COVID-19, or cancelled as Canadians reckon with the horrific legacy of residential schools on Indigenous Peoples.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Groups, organizations and municipalities have decided against holding special events today after hundreds of unmarked graves were found at residential school sites in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

Cowessess First Nation last week said that ground-penetrating radar detected 751 unmarked graves at the former Marieval Indian Residential School, not long after the discovery of what are believed to be the remains of 215 children in Kamloops, B.C.

And then on Wednesday, the Lower Kootenay Band said a search using ground-penetrating radar had found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site close to a former residential school in Cranbrook, B.C.

Canadian Heritage plans to still go ahead with virtual Canada Day events like last year, with an online music show featuring English, French and Indigenous artists, but the flag atop the Peace Tower will be at half-mast to honour the Indigenous children who died in residential schools.

In his Canada Day message, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reflected on how the pandemic has changed daily lives, taught hard lessons, and kept many apart as part of the sacrifices needed to keep communities and neighbours safe and healthy.

But he also noted the horrific findings at the sites of former residential schools that Trudeau said have "rightfully pressed us to reflect on our country's historical failures" and injustices that still exist for many people in Canada.

Video: Carr addresses the reported discovery of unmarked graves at Cowessess First Nation (cbc.ca)

"While we can't change the past, we must be resolute in confronting these truths in order to chart a new and better path forward. Together, we have a long way to go to make things right with Indigenous peoples," said Trudeau, who plans to spend the day with his family.

"But if we all pledge to do the work – and if we lead with those core values of hard work, kindness, resilience, and respect – we can achieve reconciliation and build a better Canada for everyone."

New polling suggests a recent rethinking of this country's history, with the dominant narrative of European settlers discovering Canada making way for Indigenous Peoples being the First Peoples of the land.

Polling from firm Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies found that one in every two respondents said Indigenous Peoples "discovered Canada," while one-in-three said it was Jacques Cartier.

Association president Jack Jedwab says that among other findings point to recent events and more people beginning to understand the presence of Indigenous Peoples prior to what we have conventionally thought of as the discovery and settlement of Canada.

The same poll found about six in 10 respondents held a positive view of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, whose likeness has been removed from various public displays over his role in setting up the residential school system.

"People are aware of what's going on, clearly, about the horrible tragedy about residential schools," Jedwab said of the results. "But I don't think that as many people as we think are making the connection to Sir John A. Macdonald."

The survey of 1,542 Canadians in an online panel took between June 18 and 20, but can't be assigned a margin of error because online panels aren’t considered truly random samples.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 1, 2021.

Canada: More unmarked graves found near indigenous residential school run by church

Canada's First Nations have found a third group of unmarked graves at an assimilation school in recent weeks. 

This time 182 human remains have been detected.

 Previous discoveries amounted to nearly 1,000 dead


A woman mourns beside a memorial in Vancouver for indigenous children discovered in unmarked graves at the Kamloops residential school last month

A First Nations group in Canada's British Columbia said Wednesday it found 182 bodies using radar detection equipment near the site of a former residential school for indigenous children.

St. Eugene's Mission School near Cranbook was operated by the Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s.

The Lower Kootenay Band said in a news release that the search yielded the remains in unmarked graves 90 centimeters to 1.2 meters deep (approximately three to four feet). It is believed the remains belong to bands of the Ktunaxa nation and other nearby First Nation peoples.

Third such morbid discovery

Wednesday's discovery follows two similar discoveries at two other church-run schools in Canada in recent weeks.

A memorial in front of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School after the remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found

First, 215 children were discovered in unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, also in British Columbia, in May.

Last week, 751 more bodies were detected at a school in Marieval in Saskatchewan.

Community members place solar lights next to flags marking the spots where remains were discovered at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School on the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan
Canada's residential schools for 'cultural genocide'

Until the late 20th century, the children of Canada's First Nations were forcibly enrolled in 139 residential reform schools. There they were physically and emotionally abused by teachers and principals who refused them the right to speak their language and practice their culture.

A commission of inquiry established that Canada had committed "cultural genocide" and conceded 4,000 had died in the process of forced assimilation.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last Friday addressed the issue, calling it a "harmful government policy."

Joe Biden to nominate Amy Gutmann ambassador to Germany, reports say

If confirmed by the Senate, Amy Gutmann will be the first woman to serve as US ambassador to Germany. The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, she is currently president of the University of Pennsylvania.


Amy Gutmann would be the first woman US ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany

US President Joe Biden will nominate Amy Gutman, currently the president of the University of Pennsylvania, as ambassador to Germany, according to German government sources.

Gutmann, 71, whose father was a Holocaust survivor, would also be the first woman appointed ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, were confirming a report in Der Spiegel magazine. US diplomat Rozanne Ridgway served as the US ambassador to East Germany in the 1980s.

Gutmann's appointment requires confirmation by the US Senate and approval by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier before she can take up the post. If confirmed by the US Senate, Gutmann would replace current Charge d'Affaires Robin Quinville; the US Embassy has been without an official ambassador since June 2020.

Relations on the mend

A change at the top of the US Embassy to Germany comes after several troubled years with former President Donald Trump's ambassador of choice. The previous Berlin envoy, Richard Grenell, stirred controversy with a combative approach to relations and vowed to support right-wingers in Europe.

He had also accused Germany of undermining NATO's nuclear deterrent and criticized Germany's involvement in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. Grenell returned to the US to become Trump's director of national intelligence before resigning as ambassador in June 2020.
'An experienced bridge builder'

"With Amy Gutmann, Joe Biden is relying on an experienced bridge builder. She is taking on a difficult legacy after Richard Grenell," Johann Wadephul, deputy parliamentary leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative alliance, told Reuters news agency.

Gutmann has headed the University of Pennsylvania since 2016 and is an expert in democratic processes and ethics. She also served as chair of former President Barack Obama's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

In a 2013 interview, she told the university's newspaper that her Jewish father's experiences in Nazi Germany had had a "profound influence" on her.

"It's true that his whole family would have disappeared from the face of the earth had it not been for what he did," Gutmann told The Daily Pennsylvanian. Despite ongoing differences, relations between Germany and the United States have improved substantially since Biden took office.

 

Russia: Jehovah's Witnesses receive long prison sentences

Two Jehovah's Witnesses received prison sentences of seven and eight years in Russia's far east. Russia declared Jehovah's Witnesses an extremist organization, outlawing it in 2017.

    

Sixty Jehovah's Witnesses are currently serving prison sentences or are under arrest in Russia

Two men who belong to the Jehovah's Witnesses religious group received prison sentences of seven and eight years Wednesday in the far eastern Russian city of Blagoveshchensk.

Dmitry Golik, 30, and Alexei Berchuk, 43, received seven and eight-year terms in a penal colony. The US-based religious movement released a statement calling it "a new record for cruelty."

Judge Tatyana Studilko handed down a sentence that matched the prosecutor's request in the case. Berchuk received the longest sentence handed down to any Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia to date.

The Jehovah's Witnesses said Berchuk's apartment was wiretapped in 2018 following a raid on seven members of the group in the city of Blagoveshchensk. Russian outlet Mediazona reported that the group alleges Berchuk and his wife have been under surveillance for six months.

An extremist group Putin says is not comprised of terrorists

Sixty Jehovah's Witnesses are currently serving time or are under arrest in Russia. In 2017, Russia outlawed the religious group, labeling it an extremist organization.

In February, two Jehovah's Witnesses were sentenced to prison. Alexander Ivshin, 63, was sentenced to 7.5 years by a court in Krasnodar, and Valentina Baranovskay received a two-year term.

The group was founded in the US in the last 19th century. While the Russian Orthodox Church considers the group "a destructive sect," Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2018 that the Jehovah's Witnesses should not be considered terrorists.

Yet, members of the group continue to face persecution.

ar/sms (AFP, local media)

Generation Equality Forum gets underway in Paris

The opening of the largely virtual forum at the Elysee Palace will include remarks from Emmanuel Macron and Kamala Harris. The conference has been initiated by the UN body fighting to empower women.



Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka said the forum is focused on tackling all areas where women have been "short-changed''

Governments, companies and philanthropists vowed to invest billions of dollars to boost gender equality at an international conference convened by UN Women on Wednesday.

US Vice President Kamala Harris told those in attendance at the Generation Equality Forum, which was largely held online, that our pledges will "yield tangible results."



An initiative of UN Women marking 25 years since the 1995 Beijing women's conference, the forum was postponed last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

One of the core aims of the forum is to fast-track programs that will help achieve gender equality and generate millions of dollars to reach that long-sought goal quickly, UN Women's Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told The Associated Press.


Watch video03:21Promoting gender equality in India by focusing on boys

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donation

Among the private donors, government officials and civil society leaders gathered, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced Wednesday it would spend $2.1 billion (€1.77 billion) to advance global gender equality.

The foundation said it would spend the money in the next five years on health and family planning programs, economic empowerment projects, as well as several other initiatives.

Ahead of the conference, UN Women's Mlambo-Ngcuka said the underfunding of programs "leaves a lot of women in a situation where they will never really realize their true and full potential."

What the three-day forum is about, she said, is tackling and funding all areas where women have been "short-changed."

Topics such as forced marriage, gender-based violence, education and experiencing the devastating impacts of climate change are at the heart of the conference, Mlambo-Ngcuka said.


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'We know the answers'

"Many of the problems that women face in 2021, we know the answers,'' she continued. "The fact is that we are not doing what is right by women is a true reflection of people who really don't care or understand the pain that women go through."

The opening of the meeting at the Elysee Palace will include remarks from French President Emmanuel Macron, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the presidents of South Africa and Argentina and US Vice President Kamala Harris.

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