Recycling firm battles Jakarta's plastic waste emergency

Thu, September 8, 2022 


As Indonesia's capital Jakarta grapples with overflowing plastic waste and pollution pours into the sea, one burgeoning business is trying to turn rubbish into revenue.

Tridi Oasis Group, which employs 120 people, has recycled more than 250 million bottles since it was founded six years ago.

"I don't see discarded plastic as trash. For me, it is a valuable material in the wrong place," 35-year-old founder Dian Kurniawati told AFP.

Indonesia has pledged to reduce plastic waste by 30 percent over the next three years -- a mammoth task in the Southeast Asian nation of nearly 270 million people where plastic recycling is rare.

The country generates approximately 7.8 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, with more than half mismanaged or disposed of improperly, according to the World Bank.

Kurniawati's company receives plastic from recycling centres across the greater Jakarta area -- which has 30 million people -- at its factory in Banten province outside the city.

Then the company exports recycled plastic to European countries and also distributes it locally to be processed and used as packaging or textiles.

Kurniawati resigned from her consultant job to start the firm, tackling head-on the massive challenges faced by the world's fourth most populous country in dealing with the plastic crisis.

As one of the initiators of the "Beach Clean Up Jakarta" movement, she saw how Jakarta is littered with plastic waste and was frustrated that little was being done to change the situation.

- 'Our problem' -

Hundreds of piles of crushed clear plastic bottles sit piled neatly in the Banten factory, ready to be sorted to make sure no labels or caps are left behind.

The bottles are then cleaned thoroughly to eliminate contamination before being cut into small flakes, ready to be transported to clients for processing and reuse as packaging or textiles.

Fajar Sarbini, a 24-year-old employee, hopes more Indonesians will start recycling.

"People throw away their waste mindlessly, they should at least sort out sharp materials so they won't hurt garbage collectors," he said.

Jakarta does not have a municipal collection system for household waste and has no incineration facilities.

With green trends rising and the will of younger generations to live more sustainably growing, the country is not without hope.

"Indonesia is catching up and the acceleration is quite fast because we got help from social media and youth campaigns," Kurniawati said.

But she said the waste problem facing the country is enormous and the regulation to encourage plastic to be recycled is lacking.

"Plastic waste is our problem and solving it takes a concerted effort from everybody," she said.

"It can't be solved by just the government or recycling companies."

dsa/jfx/skc/mca/ser

Germany to introduce 'green card' to bolster workforce

Faced with a critical shortage of skilled labor, Germany is planning to introduce its version of a green card. It aims to make it easier for non-EU nationals to come to find work.

Sowmya Thyagarajan came to Germany from India in 2016, and now runs her own software company

The German government is introducing its own version of a "green card", the Chancenkarte (literally "opportunity card"), in an attempt to plug its desperate labor shortage. Industry associations have been complaining for some time, and the Labor Ministry has suggested the shortfall is slowing economic growth.

The new "opportunity card," presented by Labor Minister Hubertus Heil in the German media this week, will offer foreign nationals the chance to come to Germany to look for work even without a job offer, as long as they fulfill at least three of these four criteria:

1) A university degree or professional qualification

2) Professional experience of at least three years

3) Language skill or previous residence in Germany

4) Aged under 35 

The criteria are not unlike those used in Canada's points system, though that uses a more complex weight system. And there will be limits and conditions, the minister from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD)  emphasized in media interviews this week. The number of cards will be limited by the German government on a year-by-year basis, according to demand on the labor market, he explained.

Germany has disadvantages in attracting skilled workers: Language and bureaucracy top the list

"This is about qualified immigration, an unbureaucratic process, and that's why it's important that we say that those who have the opportunity card can earn a living while they are here," Heil told the WDR public radio station on Wednesday.

There are certainly some improvements here, according to Sowmya Thyagarajan. She came to Hamburg from India in 2016 to do a Ph.D. in aviation engineering and is now CEO of her own German company, Foviatech, which creates software for streamlining transportation and healthcare services.

"I think this points system could be a very good opportunity for people coming from abroad to work here," she told DW. "Especially due to the depleting young population in Germany." At the moment, Thyagarajan said, her company gives preference to Germans and EU nationals when recruiting, simply because of the bureaucratic hurdles involved for anyone else.

Labor Minister Hubertus Heil wants to boost immigration of skilled labor

New points, new hurdles

Some are not impressed with Heil's opportunity card at all. "It's setting up unnecessarily high hurdles and makes the system more complicated," said Holger Bonin, research director at theInstitute of Labor Economics (IZA) in Bonn.

To Bonin, Heil's points system will simply require more bureaucracy.

"Why don't they make it much simpler? Give people a visa to look for work, and if they don't find anything within a certain amount of time they have to leave?" he said. "To add extra points to that just makes it more complicated — if these criteria are important to employers, they can decide that during the recruitment. They won't need a card as a pre-selection."

Indeed, Bonin argues that some of the criteria Heil names might not actually be that important to employers in Germany: For instance, if they're an international company that communicates mostly in English, they won't care whether applicants can speak German or have lived in Germany.

That is borne out by Thyagarajan, who had a varying assessment of how useful the four criteria were: Qualifications and language skills were both important, she said, but she was less certain about the practicality of age restrictions. "Age of less than 35, I'm not sure about that — you don't have to be young, it really depends on how they're actually skilled." As for the three years' experience, Thyagarajan is also skeptical, since in some cases a degree provides the necessary expertise: "For some job profiles you don't require experience, but for some, you do indeed have to be experienced."

Cultural and structural problems

Germany's skilled labor shortage has been an issue for some time. Gesamtmetall, the Federation of German Employers' Associations in the Metal and Electrical Engineering Industries, says that two out of every five companies in its sector are seeing production hindered by a lack of staff. The Central Association for Skilled Crafts in Germany (ZDH) says that the country is missing around 250,000 skilled craftspeople.

The number of skilled people emigrating to Germany from non-EU countries to work has risen over the last few years, but it is still relatively low. According to the Mediendienst Integration, the number of qualified workers entering Germany was just over 60,000 in 2019, just 12% of all migration from non-EU countries to Germany in that year.

Germany has a few cultural disadvantages compared to other Western nations hoping to attract skilled workers: German is less universally spoken than English. "Skilled workers are almost always looking to get into countries that speak English," Thyagarajan said. "To some extent, it's important (that our employees speak German), because this is Germany, at least a working proficiency."

Another issue is that German employers traditionally set a higher store by certificates and qualifications, and these are often not recognized in Germany, or take months to approve. "Those problems won't be solved by introducing an opportunity card," Bonin said.

There are other systemic problems for German employers: Germany's federal system means different local authorities sometimes recognize different qualifications, and Germany's reliance on paper bureaucracy, with employees, often needing translations of their certificates approved by notaries. This too is a concern that Heil is attempting to tackle.

"I think it's very, very necessary that, apart from a modern immigration law, to thin out the bureaucratic monster of recognizing qualifications," he told WDR. To that end, he said, he would like to see a central agency that can approve qualifications quickly and back offices in Germany that can support overworked consulates abroad.

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.

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• Date 08.09.2022

Canada's Trudeau set to announce inflation relief for low incomes - source

By Steve Scherer

Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau speaks a day after multiple people in the province of Saskatchewan were killed and injured in a stabbing spree, in Ottawa.

© Reuters/PATRICK DOYLE

VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to unveil measures on Thursday to provide inflation relief to low-income families, a government source said, confirming reports in domestic media.

Inflation eased to 7.6% in July from an almost four-decade high of 8.1%. But the Bank of Canada is still concerned about rising prices and is promising further interest rate hikes after increasing them to their highest level in 14 years on Wednesday.

Trudeau's Liberal government will boost a tax-free quarterly payment that helps individuals and families with low and modest incomes offset sales tax, which is called the goods and services tax (GST) in Canada, said the source, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

The exact scope of the increase will be announced later on Thursday by Trudeau on the sidelines of a Cabinet retreat in Vancouver at 1230 pm ET (1630 GMT).

The government will also provide a C$500 ($381) onetime top-up to a housing benefit that is provided to low earners who need help paying rent, and it will provide initial details for a dental-care plan for low-income families.

These last two measures were part of an agreement Trudeau made with the opposition New Democrats Party (NDP) in March, and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is also due to speak about the measures later on Thursday.

Trudeau's Liberals were left a minority of seats in parliament after last year's election, and the NDP support agreement means that the government could survive until the end of the legislature in 2025, while most minority governments have tended to last only a couple years.

One of the keystones of the agreement is setting up a national dental care system, and on Thursday the government will announce that it will pay for part of the dental visits for children under 12 in households that earn less than C$90,000 per year, the source said.

It is the first step in setting up a permanent dental care plan, according to the source.

($1 = 1.3127 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Murder At Sea: North Korea Killings Roil Politics In South

By Kang Jin-kyu
09/09/22 

Critics accuse South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol of reopening old cases involving the North for political gain

When North Korean soldiers found a South Korean fisheries official in their territorial waters, they shot him dead and burned the body -- an incident so shocking it later prompted Kim Jong Un to apologise.

Details are sketchy -- and mostly classified -- but exactly how and why the official came to be floating in a life jacket above the sea border known as the Northern Limit Line in September 2020 has become a bitter political debate in the South.

Was the 47-year-old official, Lee Dae-jun, a would-be defector fleeing gambling debts, as the government of then-president Moon Jae-in said citing intelligence it then sealed for 30 years?

Or is that version of events actually a high-level smear campaign and cover-up, as the new government of Yoon Suk-yeol has claimed in raiding an ex-spy master's house and launching legal action over the former administration's handling of the case?

The intelligence services claim that their former chief, Park Jie-won, destroyed evidence showing Lee had no plans to move to Pyongyang.

Park told AFP the charges were "political revenge on the former administration", dismissing the allegations as unfounded.

Seoul's new administration has also reopened enquiries into a second explosive case, in which two North Korean fishermen who confessed to killing 16 crewmates at sea were deported in 2019.

Dramatic video showing the pair being dragged seemingly unwillingly through the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and returned to the North was released by Yoon's conservative government.

Moon's government at the time said the brutal nature of the killings meant the men were not entitled to the usual protections afforded to North Korean defectors and could not be considered refugees.

The political fight over the two cases highlights the risks of interpreting classified intelligence and the law in highly partisan ways, analysts say.

Critics argue the hawkish Yoon, who is struggling with record-low approval ratings just months after becoming president, is engaging in old-school red-baiting in a bid to salvage his popularity with disgruntled voters.

"For conservatives, these two cases are an example of liberals taking a subservient approach to the North," lawyer and columnist Yoo Jung-hoon told AFP.

But "the timing of the probe that came right after the change of power raises questions of a political motive behind it," he added.

Supporters of Yoon, a former prosecutor who won a close election in March vowing to get tough on Pyongyang after years of failed diplomacy, say he is simply trying to solve the cases.

"It would be a bigger problem if prosecutors chose to ignore the allegations and bury the cases fearing it would be called a 'political investigation'," Shin Yul, a professor at Myongji University, told AFP.

Legal experts say the cases have exposed contradictions in the country's constitution.

Trying the fishermen in South Korean courts would have been unprecedented, as it was unclear whether local courts had jurisdiction.

One clause of South Korea's constitution describes the country's territory as "the Korean peninsula".

Yoon has suggested that clause meant the men should have been considered South Korean citizens and tried at home.

But the next clause pledges to work for "peaceful reunification" with the North, recognising the reality that there are two distinct countries on the peninsula.

"Seoul has to take a realistic approach when dealing with the North," said Kim Jong-dae of the Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies.

Yoon's administration has accused Moon's government of sending the fishermen "straight to death row" by repatriating them to the North.

But critics say the president has prioritised "revenge politics" over dealing with more pressing policy issues such as spiralling inflation and a plunging currency.

Seeking to prosecute officials while not presenting "smoking gun" counter-evidence in either case looks suspicious, said Kim Jong-dae.

"The administration is charging ahead with punitive governance with prosecutors on the forefront," he said.

"It's one thing to raise questions and demand answers about how the former government handled the two cases. But investigating ex-officials is a totally different thing that inevitably raises suspicions of political motives."

The killing of South Korean official Lee Dae-jun prompted a rare apology from North leader Kim Jong Un

One of two alleged North Korean mass murderers (C, in black) appears to resist as authorities try to hand him over to Pyongyang officials in 2019

Park Jie-won, ex-director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, told AFP claims of destroyed evidence were 'political revenge on the former administration'

CLIMATE CRISIS

Heatwave batters Spain's Mediterranean mussel crop

Author: AFP|Update: 09.09.2022 

"There's nothing left," says Javier Franch after a savage summer heatwave decimated this year's mussel crop in northeastern Spain / © AFP

"There's nothing left here," sighs Javier Franch as he shakes the heavy rope of mussels he's just pulled to the surface in northeastern Spain. They are all dead.

With the country hit by a long and brutal heatwave this summer, the water temperature in the Ebro Delta, the main mussels production area of the Spanish Mediterranean, is touching 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).

And any grower who hasn't removed their molluscs in time will have lost everything.

But that's not the worst of it: most of next year's crop has also died in one of the most intense marine heatwaves in the Spanish Mediterranean.

By the end of July, experts said the western Mediterranean was experiencing an "exceptional" marine heatwave, with persistently hotter-than-normal temperatures posing a threat to the entire marine ecosystem.

"The high temperatures have cut short the season," says Franch, 46, who has spent almost three decades working for the firm founded by his father, which has seen production fall by a quarter this year.

The relentless sun has heated up the mix of fresh and saltwater along Catalonia's delicate coastal wetlands where the River Ebro flows into the Mediterranean.

On a scorching summer morning in Deltebre, one of the municipalities of the Delta, the mussel rafts -- long wooden structures with ropes attached which can each grow up to 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of mussels -- should be teeming with workers hurrying around during the busy season.

The heat has wiped out an estimated 150,000 kilograms of commercial mussels and 1,000 tonnes of young stock / © AFP

But there is hardly any movement.

"We lost the yield that was left, which wasn't much, because we were working to get ahead so we wouldn't go through this," explains Carles Fernandez, who advises the Ebro Delta's Federation of Mollusc Producers (Fepromodel).

"But the problem is that we've lost the young stock for next year and we'll have quite a high cost overrun."

- Millions in losses -

The heat has wiped out 150 tonnes of commercial mussels and 1,000 tonnes of young stock in the Delta, initial estimates suggest.

And producers are calculating their losses at over one million euros ($1,000,000) given they will now have to buy young molluscs from Italy or Greece for next year.

"When you have a week when temperatures are higher than 28C, there can be some mortality, but this summer it has lasted almost a month and a half," with peak temperatures of almost 31C, says Fepromodel head Gerardo Bonet.

Producers in the Ebro Delta say they've never known such devastation

 among their young stock for next year / © AFP

Normally, the Ebro Delta's two bays produce around 3,500 tonnes of mussels, and 800 tonnes of oysters, making Catalonia Spain's second-largest producer, although it remains far behind the output of Galicia, the northwestern region on the colder Atlantic coast.

For years now, the harvest in the Delta has been brought forward, cutting short a season that once ran from April to August.

- 'Tropical' Mediterranean -

Hit by coastal erosion and a lack of sediment supply, the rich ecosystem of the Ebro Delta -- a biosphere reserve and one of the most important wetlands of the western Mediterranean -- is particularly vulnerable to climate change.

And this extreme summer, when Spain endured 42 days of heatwave -- a record three times the average over the past decade, the AEMET national forecaster says -- has also left its mark below the surface of the water.

"Some marine populations which are unable to cope with temperatures as high as these over a long period of time are going to suffer what we call mass mortality," says marine biologist Emma Cebrian of the Spanish National Research Council (CISC).

"Imagine a forest, it's like 60 or 80 percent of the trees dying, with the resulting impact on its associated biodiversity," she says.

The scorching temperatures on land have generated a marine heatwave at sea / © AFP

The succession of heatwaves on land has generated another at sea which -- pending analysis of all the data in November -- may turn out to be "the worst" in this area of the Mediterranean since records began in the 1980s.

Although marine heatwaves are not a new phenomenon, they are becoming more extreme with increasingly dire consequences.

"If we compare it with a wildfire, one can have an impact, but if you keep having them, it will probably mean the affected populations are not able to recuperate," Cebrian said.

Experts say the Mediterranean is becoming "tropicalised", and mollusc grower Franch is struck by the mounting evidence as his boat glides between empty mussel rafts in a bay without a breath of wind.

He is mulling an increase in his production of oysters, which are more resistant to high temperatures, but which currently represent just 10 percent of his output.

But he hopes it will help ensure his future in a sector that employs 800 people directly or indirectly in the Ebro Delta.

"(The sector) is under threat because climate change is a reality and what we are seeing now will happen again," he says worriedly.

Crime, far-right set tone in Swedish nail-biter vote

Johannes LEDEL
Thu, September 8, 2022 


Sweden's right-wing parties hope to unseat the ruling Social Democrats in Sunday's general election, relying for the first time on far-right support in a tight race where crime tops the agenda.

The anti-immigration and nationalist Sweden Democrats were long treated as pariahs on the Scandinavian country's political scene, but they have gradually been welcomed into the right-wing bloc in the past few years.

Recent opinion polls have suggested they could surge to become the second-biggest party in parliament -- meaning their backing will be essential if the right wants to form a government.

Sweden, currently in the delicate process of joining NATO, has since 2014 been governed by the Social Democrats which have dominated Swedish politics since the 1930s.

Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, who took over the post just nine months ago after seven years as finance minister, enjoys strong support among voters.

Some 55 percent want her to remain in the job, compared to 32 percent for her challenger from the conservative Moderates, Ulf Kristersson, according to a poll from late August.

Andersson has earned voters' respect for steering the country with a steady hand, leading it into a long-unthinkable NATO membership application in May following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Sweden had until then been militarily non-aligned for two centuries.

Most polls put the left- and right-wing blocs in a near deadlock, crediting the left with 49.1 to 50.1 percent of voter support and the right with 49.2 to 49.9 percent.

To form a government the Social Democrats can rely on support from the Greens, Left and Centre parties, while the Moderates, Christian Democrats, Liberals and Sweden Democrats make up the right-wing bloc.

Both blocs are however beset by internal divisions that will make the process of forming a government tricky.

- Gang violence -

The election campaign has been dominated by issues close to right-wing voters, with crime, immigration and skyrocketing electricity prices overshadowing the welfare state and the economy.

"Inflation has soared and the same is true for crime and shootings, and these are contextual factors that should benefit the right-wing opposition," Patrik Ohberg, a University of Gothenburg political scientist, told AFP.

Sweden has struggled to combat escalating gang shootings attributed to battles over the drugs and weapons market, and the country now tops European statistics for firearm deaths.

While the violence was once contained to locations frequented by criminals, it has spread to public spaces such as parks and shopping centres, sparking concern among ordinary Swedes in a country long known as safe and peaceful.

Addressing the mother of a 12-year-old girl killed by stray bullets in a gang-related 2020 shooting, Andersson and Kristersson both lamented the soaring violence during a televised debate on Wednesday.

"No other country in Europe has what we have," Kristersson said.

"What we are seeing in Sweden is horrible," Andersson concurred.

Since January 1, 48 people have been killed by firearms in Sweden, three more than in all of 2021. There are also frequent bombings of homes and cars and grenade attacks.

- 'Enormous shift' -

The end of the Sweden Democrats' political isolation, and the prospect of it becoming the biggest right-wing party, is "an enormous shift in Swedish society", said Anders Lindberg, an editorialist at left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet.

Born out of a neo-Nazi movement at the end of the 1980s, the Sweden Democrats entered parliament in 2010 with 5.7 percent of votes.

The party's anti-immigration stance and defence of Swedes' cherished welfare state has appealed to the working class and pensioners.

Its rise has come alongside a large influx of immigrants, with the country of 10 million taking in almost half a million asylum seekers in a decade.

While Kristersson remains Andersson's challenger for the post of prime minister, having the far-right overtake the Moderates as the biggest party on the right would be a heavy blow for him.

If the right bloc were to win a majority, the Sweden Democrats could demand cabinet positions rather than just provide informal backing in parliament.

"We want to have a maximum of influence, so it's clear that our point of departure is to be in the government", the Sweden Democrats' leader Jimmie Akesson told AFP.

"Otherwise it's going to be costly for the government to have us on board."

Opening the door to the Sweden Democrats may turn out to have been a costly gamble for Kristersson.

"If the Moderates lose the election and become the third-largest party, they will change party leader," Stockholm University political science professor Jan Teorell told AFP.

bur/po/jll/pvh

AFRICAN, ARAB, TUNISIAN

Jabeur defeats Garcia, becomes first Arab woman to reach US Open final

NEWS WIRES - Yesterday 

Ons Jabeur executed a stunning 6-1 6-3 demolition of Caroline Garcia in the U.S. Open semi-finals on Thursday, ending the Frenchwoman's hot streak to reach her second Grand Slam final in a row.



Jabeur wrested the momentum immediately, breaking Garcia in the first game before taking the first set in a blistering 23 minutes, with six aces and 11 winners, and will next face either top seed Iga Swiatek or Aryna Sabalenka.

Garcia upped her level in the second set but was without the most reliable tool in her arsenal - her big serve - and struggled on the return, failing to set up a single break point opportunity.

Jabeur, who became the first Arab woman to reach a Grand Slam final at Wimbledon this year and is known as Tunisia's "Minister of Happiness", shouted with joy after she sent an unreturnable serve over the net for the win.

"In the second set I was trying, she was playing much better but I'm really glad she didn't break me at the end because it was going to be tough," she said after the match.

Jabeur had a rocky run-up to the year's final major, exiting early from San Jose and retiring in her Toronto opener with abdominal pain, but was all smiles on Arthur Ashe, where she has emerged as a crowd favourite.

"It feels amazing. After Wimbledon there was a lot of pressure on me and I'm really relieved that I can back up my results," said Jabeur, the first North African woman to reach the final in New York.

"The hard court season started a little bit bad but now I'm very happy that I made it to the finals here."

(REUTERS)

Canada rampage suspect death prompts fresh investigation
By ROB GILLIES and ROBERT BUMSTED

yesterday

1 of 19

Police and investigators gather at the scene where a stabbing suspect was arrested in Rosthern, Saskatchewan on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022. Canadian police arrested Myles Sanderson, the second suspect in the stabbing deaths of multiple people in Saskatchewan, after a three-day manhunt that also yielded the body of his brother fellow suspect, Damien Sanderson.

(Heywood Yu/The Canadian Press via AP)


ROSTHERN, Saskatchewan (AP) — The last suspect in a horrific stabbing rampage that killed 10 and wounded 18 in western Canada is dead following his capture, but how he died after being taken into custody has prompted fresh investigations.

One official said Myles Sanderson, 32, died from self-inflicted injuries Wednesday after police forced the stolen car he was driving off a highway in Saskatchewan. Other officials declined to discuss how he died .

“I can’t speak to the specific manner of death. That’s going to be part of the autopsy that will be conducted,” Assistant Commissioner Rhonda Blackmore, commander of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Saskatchewan, said at a news conference Wednesday night.

The other suspect, Sanderson’s 30-year-old brother, Damien Sanderson, was found dead Monday near the scene of the bloody knife attacks inside and around the James Smith Cree First Nation reserve early Sunday. Both men were residents of the Indigenous reserve.

Blackmore said Myles Sanderson was cornered as police units responded to a report of a stolen vehicle driven by a man armed with a knife. She said officers forced Sanderson’s vehicle off the road and into a ditch. He was detained and a knife was found inside the vehicle, she said.

Sanderson went into medical distress while in custody, Blackmore said. She said CPR was attempted on him before an ambulance arrived and he was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

“All life-saving measures that we are capable of were taken at that time,” she said.

Blackmore gave no details on the cause of death. But an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, earlier said Sanderson died of self-inflicted injuries, without elaborating.

Video and photos from the scene showed a white SUV alongside the road with police cars all around. Air bags had deployed in the SUV. Some photos and video taken from a distance appeared to show Sanderson being frisked.

Members of Saskatchewan’s Serious Incident Response Team went to the arrest site and will review Sanderson’s death and police conduct.

The federal public safety minister, Marco Mendicino, also stressed that the events will be investigated.

“You have questions. We have questions,” he told reporters during a Cabinet retreat in Vancouver, British Columbia, adding: “There will be two levels of police who will be investigating the circumstances of Myles Sanderson’s death.”

Mark Mendelson, a former Toronto police detective, said the police are bound by police service laws that govern the work of internal affairs when there is a death in police custody. Mendelson said police can’t comment yet on how the interaction took place or on what the officers saw or what he said to them.

“They have to at least wait until the forensic autopsy is concluded and hopefully the pathologist will come up with a cause of death. If it’s drugs, then toxicology is going to take sometime,” he said. “If it’s a stab wound that didn’t leak through his clothes then we should hear that. Everybody wants answers.”

His death came two days after the body of Damien Sanderson was found in a field near the scene of the knife rampage. Police are investigating whether Myles Sanderson killed his brother.

Darryl Burns, who lost his sister Gloria Burns to the attack, hugged Damien Sanderson’s widow at a news conference Wednesday, telling her that the family was ready to forgive.

“Damien was caught up in the life,” Darryl Burns said. “He was caught up in a moment. But hearing the stories of Damien. He tried to stop it, he tried to stop it, but he paid with his life.”

Sobbing, his widow muttered, “That’s not my husband.”

Chief Robert Head of Peter Chapman Band said the community was like a “war zone” in the immediate aftermath of the attack. He said four helicopters were swooping down to transport the wounded and dying to medical treatment.

“Right now, we still have 14 families that are in the hospitals there,” he said, noting that one of his first cousins was among the dead.

Blackmore said that with both men dead, “we may never have an understanding of that motivation.”

But she said she hoped the families of the stabbing victims will find some comfort “knowing that Myles Sanderson is no longer a threat to them.”

The stabbings raised questions of why Myles Sanderson — an ex-con with 59 convictions and a long history of shocking violence — was out on the streets in the first place.

He was released by a parole board in February while serving a sentence of over four years on charges that included assault and robbery. But he had been wanted by police since May, apparently for violating the terms of his release, though the details were not immediately clear.

His long and lurid rap sheet also showed that seven years ago, he attacked and stabbed one of the victims killed in Sunday’s stabbings, according to court records.

Tribal leaders at the news conference criticized the decision to release Myles Sanderson back into the community.

“The system itself is broken,” said Chief Wally Burns of James Smith Cree Nation. “The parole board let this young fellow out, this young man. And they didn’t notify any of our community members or our leadership or even our local detachment. All that we knew was that after the fact. This tragedy could have been avoided.”

The leaders declined to answer questions on the crime itself but called for more resources for mental health and substance abuse services and more control to police themselves.

Mendicino, the public safety minister, has said there will be an investigation into the parole board’s assessment of Sanderson.

“I want to know the reasons behind the decision” to release him, Mendicino said. “I’m extremely concerned with what occurred here. A community has been left reeling.”

The Saskatchewan Coroner’s Service said nine of those killed were from the James Smith Cree Nation: Thomas Burns, 23; Carol Burns, 46; Gregory Burns, 28; Lydia Gloria Burns, 61; Bonnie Burns, 48; Earl Burns, 66; Lana Head, 49; Christian Head, 54; and Robert Sanderson, 49. The other victim was from Weldon, 78-year-old Wesley Patterson.

Authorities would not say if the victims might be related.

Court documents said Sanderson attacked his in-laws Earl Burns and Joyce Burns in 2015, knifing Earl Burns repeatedly and wounding Joyce Burns. He later pleaded guilty to assault and threatening Earl Burns’ life.

Many of Sanderson’s crimes were committed when he was intoxicated, according to court records. He told parole officials at one point that substance use made him out of his mind. Records showed he repeatedly violated court orders barring him from drinking or using drugs.

___

Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City contributed to this report.

Retailers pull lobster from menus after 'red list' warning

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Some retailers are taking lobster off the menu after an assessment from an influential conservation group that the harvest of the seafood poses too much of a risk to rare whales and should be avoided.


Whales can suffer injuries and fatalities when they become entangled in the gear that connects to lobster traps on the ocean floor. Seafood Watch, which rates the sustainability of different seafoods, said this week it has added the American and Canadian lobster fisheries to its “red list” of species to avoid.

The organization, based at Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, said in a report that the fishing industry is a danger to North Atlantic right whales because “current management measures do not go far enough to mitigate entanglement risks and promote recovery of the species.”

Thousands of businesses use Seafood Watch's recommendations to inform seafood buying decisions, and many have pledged to avoid any items that appear on the red list. A spokesperson for Blue Apron, the New York meal kit retailer, said the company stopped offering a seasonal lobster box prior to the report, and all of the seafood it is currently using follows Seafood Watch's guidelines. HelloFresh, the Germany-based meal kit company that is the largest such company operating in the U.S., also pledged shortly after the announcement to stop selling lobster.

“HelloFresh is committed to responsible sourcing and follows guidelines from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program,” said Saskia Leisewitz, a spokesperson for HelloFresh.

Seafood Watch assigns ratings of “best choice,” “good alternative” and “avoid” to more than 2,000 seafood items based on how sustainably they are managed. The organization's recommendations have been influential in the past, such as when it red-listed the Louisiana shrimp fishery, prompting efforts to better protect sea turtles. The fishery was later removed from the red list.

The lobster fishing industry has come under scrutiny from Seafood Watch because of the threat of entanglement in fishing gear. The North Atlantic right whales number less than 340 and entanglement is one of the two biggest threats they face, along with collisions with ships, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other groups have said. The population of the giant animals, which were decimated during the commercial whaling era generations ago, has fallen in recent years.

Members of the lobster fishing industry, which is also coping with increased federal fishing restrictions to protect the whales, pushed back against the Seafood Watch rating. The lobster industry in Maine, where most of the U.S.'s lobster comes to land, has not had a documented interaction with a right whale in almost two decades, said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen's Association.

“Lobster is one of the most sustainable fisheries in the world due to the effective stewardship practices handed down through generations of lobstermen. These include strict protections for both the lobster resource and right whales,” McCarron said.

American and Canadian lobster fishermen target the same species, the American lobster, which is popular as live seafood and in processed products such as lobster rolls and lobster ravioli. The vast majority of the world's American lobster comes to the shore in New England and eastern Canada, and the crustaceans are both a key piece of the economy and a cultural marker in both places.

The U.S. lobster fishery is also one of the most lucrative in the country and was worth more than $900 million at the docks in 2021, when fishermen caught more than 130 million pounds (59 million kilograms) of the crustaceans.

Seafood Watch partners with numerous major seafood buyers on its recommendations. Some of the buyers, such as Compass Group and Cheesecake Factory, did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. A spokesperson for one, Mars Petcare, said the company doesn't have lobster in its supply chain.

Environmental groups said Seafood Watch's decision places a spotlight on the fishery and the need to do more to protect whales.

“Fishery managers must increase protections to save North Atlantic right whales so seafood retailers, consumers, and restaurants can put American lobster and crab back on the menu,” Oceana campaign director Gib Brogan said.

Patrick Whittle, The Associated Press

Buffy Sainte-Marie is out of this world

Chris Knight - National Post

There’s a great story about Canadian First Nations singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie being accidentally quoted in a 2004 edition of the magazine Smithsonian. Lyrics to her famous anti-war song Universal Soldier had been found scratched on a cot in an old Vietnam War troopship, and mistakenly identified as free verse from an unknown soldier.


Buffy Sainte-Marie is the subject of a new documentary called Carry It On.

Scores of readers fired off angry letters to the august publication to say that it was in fact the work of Scottish pop legend Donovan. And then scores more had to weigh in even more angrily with the news that the haunting song had in fact been written and first recorded by Sainte-Marie on her debut album It’s My Way!, a year before Donovan’s admittedly better known cover.

Sainte-Marie isn’t angry about the misattribution. In fact, during a freewheeling Zoom call with the 81-year-old member of Saskatchewan’s Piapot Cree Nation, her overwhelming emotions are joy, wonder and curiosity.

Hearing that my unofficial second beat after movies is space travel, she launches into the story of how she went to the Kennedy Space Center in 2002 to perform in honour of John Herrington, the first Native American astronaut. She sang Starwalker, Moonshot and Up Where We Belong, the last co-written for the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. It made her the first Indigenous person to win an Oscar. She’d have gladly spent our half-hour chat on matters astronomical.

Sainte-Marie is the subject of Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On, a new documentary from First Nations director Madison Thomas. The film has its world premiere Sept. 8 at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Brimming with celebrity interviews including Joni Mitchell, Taj Mahal and Robbie Robertson, Carry It On charts Sainte-Marie’s twisty road to success that included a spot on the TV western The Virginian in 1968 – she refused to perform unless all the other “Indians” were played by real First Nations performers – and several years on Sesame Street, where she not only taught young viewers about First Nations people, but helped normalize breastfeeding by doing it on the air with her infant son, in front of Big Bird no less.

But the bulk of her fame comes from her music, an eclectic mix that includes elements of folk, rock, country and more traditional First Nations styles. I ask if she has a name for it.

“I don’t,” she replies. “It just pops into my head. Because I like all kinds of music. I mean, I like Chinese music and Azerbaijani, you name it. And so whatever I hear, I try to reproduce it. But yeah, I write bluegrass and love songs and blues and raunchy stuff, everything.”

Saint-Marie says she listened to everything from Elvis to Tchaikovsky while growing up, though she notes that in Massachusetts (she was abandoned and then adopted as a baby), “it was almost impossible to hear Indigenous music of any kind. However, Kaw-liga the Wooden Indian was real popular. Ugh.” The 1952 country song by Hank Williams has not aged well.

With degrees in teaching and what was then called Oriental philosophy – basically world religions – from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Sainte-Marie planned to become a philosophy professor, and probably would have been among the coolest ones ever in that profession. Instead, she tried her hand at performing in New York’s Greenwich Village, where she quickly found fame (and sold the rights to Universal Soldier to Donovan for $1).


Sainte-Marie in concert. She’ll be performing at the Toronto festival.© TIFF

Sainte-Marie will be performing live on the first night of the Toronto festival on an outdoor stage a block from the TIFF Bell Lightbox. As an entertainer and an activist, she tries to balance her concerts with a mix of messages.

“Somebody might come to hear Until It’s Time For You To Go but they don’t want to listen to that Universal Soldier crap,” she says, tongue in cheek. “Somebody else will come to hear only Indigenous stuff and they think that love songs are kind of a waste of the moment. So for me, because I like it all, I get to choose.”

She continues: “I’m totally aware of the power of a song. And I’m really aware of the diversity in my catalogue. So when I do a live show, I try to guide the audience into hearing the tougher emotional content. I’m not trying to punish them or scold them. I’m trying to inform them, and I wouldn’t ever leave them in that position of heartbreak. So it’s very deliberate that I’d follow a hard-hitting song with something genuinely positive, because I really believe in stability, and helping people to know without having to hurt them.”

Sainte-Marie has some powerful, hard-hitting songs that include Now That the Buffalo’s Gone, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and My Country ’Tis of Thy People You’re Dying. She sings about genocide in that last song, written in the 1960s, and I was surprised to find clips of her talking about the 15th-century Doctrine of Discovery many years before it became part of the conversation in Canada during the recent visit by the Pope.

“I really like Pope Francis, I think he’s just wonderful,” she says. “And I think he could do something really, really important. The Catholic Church feels as though they have already abandoned the Doctrine of Discovery. And they have apologized. But the next step that only he could do would be to go to the United Nations and encourage the nations of the world to give it up. Because it’s still hurting Indigenous people all over the world.”

My time is up, but Saint-Marie wants to tell me something else. After her gig at the Toronto festival she’s off to St. Catharines on Sept. 10 for a concert, and then to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on Sept. 16 for a celebration of her music, with performances by numerous musicians. “It’s like a tribute show,” she says. “And [astronaut] Roberta Bondar is going to introduce the song Moonshot! Nobody else will care, but you’ll get it.”

Time to let the legend go and get ready. She’s got a lot of singing, entertaining and educating to do.

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On has its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 8, with additional screenings Sept. 9 and Sept. 17, and a wider theatrical release later in the year. Saint-Marie will perform on the Slaight Music Stage at the festival at 7 p.m. on Sept. 8.