World's oldest mammal revealed as 'shrew-like' animal that lived with dinosaurs 225 million years ago

Wyatte Grantham-Philips, USA TODAY 

 9/9/2022

The world's oldest known mammal has been identified using dental records – predating what scientists previously thought was the first mammal to walk the Earth by millions of years – according to new research.

In the study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Anatomy on Monday, Brazilian and British researchers from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, London's Natural History Museum and King’s College London confirmed that the Brasilodon quadrangularis was the earliest mammal with fossil records of the animal's teeth sets.

The Brasilodon was a tiny, "shrew-like" animal that measured almost 8 inches long. Dental records for the mammal date back more than 225 million years – meaning the Barsilodon existed at the same time as some of the oldest dinosaurs, but 25 million years after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, according to a Natural History Museum news release.

"Dated at 225.42 million years old, this is the oldest known mammal in the fossil record contributing to our understanding of the ecological landscape of this period and the evolution of modern mammals," Martha Richter, scientific associate at the museum and senior author of the paper, stated in the release.

Before the discovery about the Brasilodon's age, scientists had previously confirmed that the Morganucodon, another small, rodent-like creature, was the world's earliest mammal.

The Morganucodon's oldest fossils, which are isolated teeth, date back 205 million years. So, the Brasilodon is believed to be roughly 20 million years older.
Why teeth? Scientists use fossils to identify prehistoric mammals

To date, mammalian glands (such as those that produce milk) have not been persevered in any recovered fossils. Scientists have to turn to "hard tissues," such as bones and teeth that fossilized, "for alternative clues," the Natural History Museum notes.

The Brasilodon was identified as a mammal because of its two sets of successive teeth. When analyzing three lower jaws of different growth stages in particular, the researchers concluded that the Brasilodon's first set of teeth (which started developing before birth) were later replaced with an "adult set."



When did modern humans first walk the Earth? Oldest remains of modern humans are much older than thought, researchers say

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Two sets of teeth characterize mammals, the researchers note. In contrast, reptiles, for example, see teeth replaced many times throughout their lives.

"The evidence from how the dentition was built over developmental time is crucial and definitive to show that Brasilodons were mammals," Moya Meredith Smith, contributing author and professor at King’s College London stated. "Our paper raises the level of debate about what defines a mammal and shows that it was a much earlier time of origin in the fossil record than previously known."

Humans evolved with their microbiomes – like genes, your gut microbes pass from one generation to the next

Taichi A. Suzuki, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Microbiome Science, Max Planck Institute for Biology 

Ruth Ley, Director, Department of Microbiome Science, Max Planck Institute for Biology

THE CONVERSATION - Yesterday 

When the first humans moved out of Africa, they carried their gut microbes with them. Turns out, these microbes also evolved along with them.


The gut microbiome may also play a role in personalized medicine.© nopparit/iStock via Getty Images Plus

The human gut microbiome is made up of hundreds to thousands of species of bacteria and archaea. Within a given species of microbe, different strains carry different genes that can affect your health and the diseases you’re susceptible to.

There is pronounced variation in the microbial composition and diversity of the gut microbiome between people living in different countries around the world. Although researchers are starting to understand what factors affect microbiome composition, such as diet, there is still limited understanding on why different groups have different strains of the same species of microbes in their guts.

We are researchers who study microbial evolution and microbiomes. Our recently published study found that not only did microbes diversify with their early modern human hosts as they traveled across the globe, they followed human evolution by restricting themselves to life in the gut.

Microbes share evolutionary history with humans

We hypothesized that as humans fanned out across the globe and diversified genetically, so did the microbial species in their guts. In other words, gut microbes and their human hosts “codiversified” and evolved together – just as human beings diversified so that people in Asia look different from people in Europe, so too did their microbiomes.

To assess this, we needed to pair human genome and microbiome data from people around the world. However, data sets that provided both the microbiome data and genome information for individuals were limited when we started this study. Most publicly available data was from North America and Western Europe, and we needed data that was more representative of populations around the world.

So our research team used existing data from Cameroon, South Korea and the United Kingdom, and additionally recruited mothers and their young children in Gabon, Vietnam and Germany. We collected saliva samples from the adults to ascertain their genotype, or genetic characteristics, and fecal samples to sequence the genomes of their gut microbes.

For our analysis, we used data from 839 adults and 386 children. To assess the evolutionary histories of humans and gut microbes, we created phylogenetic trees for each person and as well as for 59 strains of the most commonly shared microbial species.

When we compared the human trees to the microbial trees, we discovered a gradient of how well they matched. Some bacterial trees didn’t match the human trees at all, while some matched very well, indicating that these species codiversified with humans. Some microbial species, in fact, have been along for the evolutionary ride for over hundreds of thousands of years.

We also found that microbes that evolved in tandem with people have a unique set of genes and traits compared with microbes that had not codiversified with people. Microbes that partnered up with humans have smaller genomes and greater oxygen and temperature sensitivity, mostly unable to tolerate conditions below human body temperature.

In contrast, gut microbes with weaker ties to human evolution have traits and genes characteristic of free-living bacteria in the external environment. This finding suggests that codiversified microbes are very much dependent on the environmental conditions of the human body and must be transmitted quickly from one person to the next, either passed down generationally or between people living in the same communities.

Confirming this mode of transmission, we found that mothers and their children had the same strains of microbes in their guts. Microbes that were not codiversified, in contrast, were more likely to survive well outside of the body and may be transmitted more widely through water and soil.

Gut microbes and personalized medicine

Our discovery that gut microbes evolved right along with their human hosts offers another way to view the human gut microbiome. Gut microbes have passed between people over hundreds to thousands of generations, such that as humans changed, so did their gut microbes. As a result, some gut microbes behave as though they are part of the human genome: They are packages of genes that are passed between generations and shared by related individuals.

Personalized medicine and genetic testing are starting to make treatments more specific and effective for the individual. Knowing which microbes have had long-term partnerships with people may help researchers develop microbiome-based treatments specific to each population. Clinicians are already using locally sourced probiotics derived from the gut microbes of community members to treat malnutrition.


Gut bacteria could be used to help treat various diseases and conditions.

© Artur Plawgo/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Our findings also help scientists better understand how microbes transition ecologically and evolutionarily from “free-living” in the environment to dependent on the conditions of the human gut. Codiversified microbes have traits and genes reminiscent of bacterial symbionts that live inside insect hosts. These shared features suggest that other animal hosts may also have gut microbes that codiversified with them over evolution.

Paying special attention to the microbes that share human evolutionary history can help improve understanding of the role they play in human well-being.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

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PORRIDGE

New revelation about ancient eating habits could tell us a lot about the present, researchers say

Danya Gainor CNN


The breakfast habits of ancient Scots may not have been too different from ours, new research has found.

Shards of Neolithic pottery were found at Loch Bhorgastail, one of the ancient human-made islands. - F. Pedrotti

It’s Scottish lakes that get the credit for preserving this culinary snapshot of the diets and habits of humans living thousands of years ago, revealing that they enjoyed hot-cereal-like porridge, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.

The finding comes via preserved bits of food DNA in Neolithic-era pottery that was submerged in the lake water. Commingled ancient wheat and dairy residues, which ultimately provided the first direct evidence of porridge-like foods on humans’ menu, had been virtually absent from the prehistoric record. Now, archaeologists have a clear idea of the culinary practices of a 6,000-year-old community, which can offer key insights about the present.

“It is important to learn about people’s past food procurement practices and culinary traditions to help us understand who we are today,” said Lara González Carretero, a lecturer in bioarchaeology at the University of York in the United Kingdom, via email.

Food choices can reveal a lot about a community’s socioeconomic pressures, contact with other cultures and migration, as well as ritual behavior, added Carretero, who was not involved with the study. “Understanding all these aspects of past societies would allow us to shed light on the socio-cultural changes and patterns that populations in a particular area went through and how these have shaped who these populations are today,” she said.

These learnings can also inform alternatives to modern food systems, potentially making them more sustainable through the application of knowledge and food production techniques gleaned from the past, Carretero said.

Excavations at four different sites along the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland revealed dozens of pieces of Neolithic pottery stored underwater among ancient human-made islands known as crannogs, which look almost like houses on stilts. Using highly sensitive biomolecular techniques and what scientists call an organic residue analysis on the deposits in the pots, the UK-based team of researchers behind the study were able to identify what the artifacts once contained and reconstruct foodways of the past.

The unglazed pottery had absorbed small traces of animal, wheat, dairy fats and oils that had been cooked inside of them. The residues were locked in place due to the preservative qualities of the freshwater environment they were part of for so long, according to the researchers.

“The fats and oils are very resilient to being washed away,” said study coauthor Lucy Cramp, associate professor of archaeology at the University of Bristol in the UK. “Imagine cooking bacon in a frying pan, and if you just left that in cold water with no detergent for weeks, it’s still going to be really greasy.”

This microscopic “grease” is what holds the Scottish recipes of 4000 BC.
No mixing and matching

This early Scottish community might have been full of picky diners, as they were very intentional about which pots were used for certain foods, the study found.

Researchers rarely identified cereals, the type of residue from domesticated grasses like wheat and barley, in the same pots as traces of animal meat.

Dozens of pottery pieces were stored underwater among these 

artificial islands known as crannogs. - B. Mackintosh

The research team also found a direct correlation between the size of a pot’s rim and its designated contents. Vessels less than 10 inches in diameter were used almost exclusively for dairy products. Those larger than about 12 inches held meat, with the occasional coappearance of dairy and plants.

“Once you have that combination, even if it’s only wheat and milk, you’re getting a little bit of a sense of how they constructed their food world and their diet,” said study coauthor Duncan Garrow, professor of archaeology at the University of Reading in the UK. “It just brings you a little bit closer to them.”

Mount Everest is teeming with life, from fungi to butterflies

Jude Coleman

 

© Photograph By J Dong Lei, Nature Picture Library 

The Tibetan snowcock (pictured in Tibet) is one of the species recorded on Mount Everest.

In the spring of 2019, Tracie Seimon would lie awake listening to the deep rumble of cracking ice. The glacier she was sleeping on at the base of Mount Everest was shifting beneath her tent.

Seimon, a molecular biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City, spent three weeks trekking around that glacier. She hoped to create a snapshot of biodiversity in one of the planet’s most extreme environments—a mountain more than five miles high that’s prone to subzero temperatures, limited oxygen, and intense storms.

But despite its inhospitable nature, the world’s tallest peak is teeming with life. Seimon and her team found 16 percent of Earth’s taxonomic orders—a classification including families, genera, and species—on just Mount Everest’s southern flank. They recently published their findings in the journal iScience.

“You feel very small as you're venturing up into the mountains,” says Seimon. “It’s incredible.”

She adds that most trekkers aren’t aware of the abundant life around them.

Mount Everest’s base camp sits atop the Khumbu Glacier, where Seimon’s team lived during part of the study in tents alongside summit-seeking hikers. The colorful cluster of tents sees around 40,000 people every year, which can be disruptive to the surrounding ecosystem, says co-author Anton Seimon, an atmospheric scientist at Appalachian State University and a National Geographic Explorer.

In addition to the foot traffic, climate change is also straining the mountain, which is why researchers wanted to create a baseline for its biodiversity. Understanding what life exists on Mount Everest now will help scientists track changes in the future.

It’s “been a fascinating experience and a privilege to be part of the effort,” says Anton, who is married to Seimon.

Finding life in meltwater

The team went to Mount Everest as part of the Perpetual Planet initiative, a research collaboration between the National Geographic Society and Rolex studying Earth’s forests, oceans, and mountains. In addition to studying biodiversity, other teams set up new weather stations and collected ice cores. Like most researchers and hikers on Everest, their work was supported by a team of sherpas who carried equipment, maintained camp, and guided the scientists across the mountain.

Seimon’s key to finding signs of life was collecting DNA from pools of thawed water. All living things routinely shed environmental DNA, or eDNA, into the surrounding air, water and soil. Scientists can match up a snippet of unknown eDNA with existing data to find out what organism it came from, in the same way that a library barcode tells librarians information about a book. (Learn how eDNA is revealing secrets of animals’ lives.)

The researchers focused on Everest’s highest ponds and streams, located between 14,700 and 18,000 feet in the high-alpine zone and beyond. In total, the team collected just over five gallons of water from 10 water bodies around the Khumbu region. From that, they identified 187 different orders, one sixth of all of Earth’s taxonomic orders.

A taxonomic order is a classification that helps scientists chart how individual organisms are distantly related to each other. For example, humans are classified as Homo (genus) and sapiens (species), but also fall under the family Hominidae and the order Primate, which also includes lemurs, monkeys, and apes.

In some cases, researchers could identify organisms more specifically down to the genus level; but because so little data exists about Mount Everest’s inhabitants, there was often not enough information to cross reference the DNA in such detail.

Seimon says that Mount Everest and other high mountain ecosystems are understudied.

“The global landmass that exists above 14,700 feet is less than three percent of the global land surface landmass,” she says. “It was very exciting to find as much biodiversity as we found up there.”

Looking deeper on Everest

Among the organisms swimming, flying, and scurrying on Mount Everest’s seemingly barren slopes were tardigrades and rotifers, two hardy microscopic critters that can survive even in the vacuum of space. Butterflies, mayflies, and other flying insects were also present, in addition to various fungi, bacteria, and plants.

“It's the top of the world and it’s so inaccessible,” says Kristine Bohmann, a biologist from University of Copenhagen who works with airborne eDNA and was not involved in the research. She says the work shows that studying biodiversity doesn’t always require a full team of taxonomists and can sometimes be done simpler and more efficiently, even in harsh environments. (Meet the animals that thrive in extreme mountain conditions.)

More research will help create a better record of diversity on Mount Everest and document specific organisms. Performing future studies in different seasons may yield more biodiversity, and show which genera and species live on the mountain in different climatic conditions.

Having created a baseline, one of Seimon’s next goals is to compare the data with future sampling, particularly to document the effects of climate change on Everest’s biodiversity. Their work can help inform future studies, paving the way for more research on the roof of the world.

Mass trial of Cambodian opposition members charged with treason

Yesterday 

Cambodian opposition party activists and former lawmakers have been put on trial for treason, the latest mass trial of opponents of the country’s long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen.


Prisoners arrive by police truck at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, Cambodia, on September 15, 2022 

[File: Heng Sinith/AP Photo]

© Provided by Al Jazeera

A total of 37 defendants were summoned to the court in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Thursday, though only three were physically present as the majority were either in exile abroad or in hiding, defence lawyer Sam Sokong said.

The hearing was the third mass trial targeting members of the popular opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which in 2013 came close to defeating Hun Sen’s party.

The Clooney Foundation for Justice, established by lawyer Amal Clooney and her actor husband George Clooney, said on Thursday that the conviction in an earlier mass trial that involved Cambodian-American lawyer Theary Seng was “a travesty of justice”.

“Theary Seng was convicted not because of what she did, but because she supported democratic change in Cambodia,” the foundation said in a statement.

“Expressing political views should not have been the basis for criminal charges, let alone a conviction and prison sentence. Cambodia must stop misusing its laws to criminalize dissent,” the foundation said.

The CNRP was banned just ahead of the 2018 general election by a court that ruled the opposition party had plotted to overthrow Hun Sen, whose authoritarian rule has kept him in power for 37 years.

Cambodian courts are widely understood to be under the influence of Hun Sen.

The disbanding of the opposition allowed his party to sweep all seats in the 2018 election, effectively turning Cambodia into a one-party state.

The allegations of treason mostly stem from an abortive attempt by a top CNRP leader, Mu Sochua, to return to Cambodia from self-exile abroad.

The defendants are accused of committing treason by helping organise the trip.

Among those charged is the party’s co-founder and longtime Hun Sen opponent, Sam Rainsy, who currently lives in France.

The trial, which started in 2020 but was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, involved more than 100 defendants who were divided into three separate trial groups for manageability.

More than 80 people were convicted in the first two mass trials earlier this year, receiving sentences of up to 10 years.

In March, the court convicted 21 people and sentenced them to between five and 10 years in prison for treason and conspiracy to commit treason and incitement to commit a felony.

Those convicted included opposition leader Sam Rainsy, his wife Tioulong Saumura, six former lawmakers and other party supporters.

The same court in June convicted Cambodian-American lawyer, Theary Seng, and 60 opposition supporters of treason, handing down prison sentences ranging from five to eight years.

Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round

Tendai Dube, AFP South Africa - Yesterday 

Photos circulating on social media are being shared alongside claims that Zimbabweans were caught smuggling medication from South Africa back home. The pictures are genuine, taken by the South African army during recent busts. However, it was the other way round: the images show Zimbabweans caught trying to smuggle contraceptives and other goods into South Africa. The misleading claim piggybacks on rising jingoism targeting foreigners, especially Zimbabweans, in South Africa.

“Zimbabweans collecting medication from south African clinics pretending to be sick and smuggling it to zim (sic),” reads a Facebook post published on September 7, 2022.

The post includes three photographs: one of a carry bag filled with blister packs containing medication, and another two showing men and soldiers in the bushveld surrounded by large packages sealed in plastic.


Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckA screenshot of the misleading claim, taken on September 12, 2022

The same claim about the images was retweeted thousands of times on Twitter.

Some social media users believed the claim and expressed support for Phophi Ramathuba, the political head of health in South Africa’s Limpopo province who was filmed ranting at a Zimbabwean patient in a state medical facility, saying foreigners were placing additional pressure on the country’s public healthcare system.



Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckA screenshot of comments on the Facebook post, taken on August 13, 2022

The claim, however, is misleading.

Vice versa

A reverse image search of the picture with the tablets led to a statement posted on Facebook by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) describing recent successes with various anti-smuggling operations, one of which included a seizure of pills ─ the same ones in the picture shared with the misleading claim.

According to the statement, the pills were being smuggled into South Africa ─ not out.

“At Echo 2 our soldiers confiscated what is called Control L Hormonal Contraceptives pills valued at R423 916.00 (approximately $24,000) which were being smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe,” reads the SANDF statement, published on September 5, 2022.

The statement detailed other recent busts of illegal goods, including sneakers and firearms, and included the two photos of large, black packages.




This illicit trade of medication from Zimbabwe to South Africa is not new. An April 2021 report by non-profit news agency GroundUp said it was spurred by demand from Zimbabwean women in South Africa who preferred to use familiar brands rather than local options.

Traders also told GroundUp that women turned to this illegal market to avoid long queues at clinics.


Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckScreenshot from the GroundUp article published in April 2021

The article includes a photo of the packaging for Control contraceptive pills. The box carries the Zimbabwean health ministry’s logo in the bottom left corner.


Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckPhoto of the contraceptive pack published by GroundUp

The same pill is listed on the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council website as a contraceptive.



Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckA comparison of the pills distributed in Zimbabwe (L) and those seized in the bust

Mauritanians Protest Law Requiring Arabic Language Lessons

Joseph Hammond, Zenger News - Yesterday 

Opposition groups have vowed to keep protesting against a law they say will threaten the future of non-Arabic culture in Mauritania. The Mauritanian government says that the new law, passed this summer, is much-needed educational reform.

"[This will] put an end to the alarming deterioration of the national education system," the National Education Minister Mohamed Melainine Ould Eyih said earlier this year in a public appearance.

The law passed in July calls for primary-level classes to be taught in a local vernacular. It also requires the teaching of Arabic to non-Arabic speakers and of at least one national language to Arabic speakers.

Organization of the Officialization of National Languages (OLAN) was founded in March 2022 and claims to have hundreds of active members.

"The day after the publication by the government of the content of the bill, we found it so unfair and so clear about its desire to endorse the choice of the Arabic language as the absolute language of the country;" said Dieynaba Ndiom, awareness officer of OLAN. "The treatment that this bill reserved for other languages is so vague and minimalist that we immediately recognized the Arabization project that has always been supported by the state."

Four languages are recognized by the Mauritanian constitution: Arabic, Pulaar, Soninke, and Wolof. Only Arabic is official, and French is widely spoken. The OLAN movement protested the passage of the law with some of its members being arrested and others injured in a series of clashes with the police. It was unclear if any Mauritanian security forces were injured in the mostly peaceful protests. According to a video posted on social media, some protestors against the law made it into Mauritania's parliament during the consideration of the bill.

"The preservation of cultural and linguistic diversity is at stake. Each of us has the right to fully live our cultural identity, and the assimilation project hatched by the Mauritanian system is criminal and unacceptable," Ndiom said.


OLAN members confront Mauritanian security forces during a

 protest over the country's new language law on July 25, 2022,

 in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. 

OLAN via Zenger© OLAN via Zenger

Mauritania's cultural demographics make it a bridge between North Africa and West Africa. Five major ethnic groups make up the country. Since its independence in 1960 from France, the cohabitation of its ethnic components has often been a source of cultural tensions.

Mauritania's linguistic policies have always been seen as discriminatory by speakers of minority languages. Several linguists has also noted that in certain societies, a "prestige" language or dialect is often promoted at the expense of others.

In the 1980s, the government of Mauritania forcibly deported over 70,000 members of the Fulani, Toucouleur, Wolof, Soninke and Bambara ethnic groups.

Protestors against a new language law gather outside the parliament building in Nouakchott, Mauritania, on July 25, 2022. Speakers of minority languages worry that the law will lead to discrimination. 

OLAN via Zenger© OLAN via Zenger

"The linguistic and cultural diversity that we observe today in Mauritania is a heritage built over the last two millennia, under extremely powerful empires that have existed on this part of the continent," said Mouhamadou Sy, a Mauritanian affairs expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Sy points out that Mauritanian identity should draw inspiration from more than the country's Arab cultural ties. For instance, the capital of the empire of Ghana, called Koumbi Saleh, was located in the southeast of present-day Mauritania. During its heyday, the Mali Empire was one of the wealthiest in the world. Other empires and states have also left their imprint on Mauritania's cultural heritage, he said.

"Many sub-Saharan languages reigned over this country long before the arrival of Arabic in the 15th century. All these languages, including Arabic, are a national heritage and a wealth for the present-day country. Contrary to the Arabization that the State has always wanted to promote at the expense of its diversity, we can well adopt a multilingual system like that of Switzerland, which corresponds most to our social and historical reality," Sy said.

OLAN activists have vowed to continue to raise awareness of the issue. The next protest is scheduled for late September.

Life Inside a Catholic-Run Residential School for Canadian Indigenous Children

A new edition of "The Education of Augie Merasty:

 A Residential School Memoir"

 is available from University of Regina Press.

© Provided by Time

Joseph ‘Augie’ Merasty - Yesterday - TIME

In late May of 2021, when spring was unfurling across the country, Canadians awakened to the discovery near Kamloops, British Columbia of 200 dead Indigenous children in unmarked graves. More grizzly discoveries would continue across the country tied to the nation’s history between 1881 and 1996 of forcing more than 150,000 Indigenous children to attend residential schools that were rife with abuse. The numbers of presumed corpses, mostly children, are now in the thousands. When the headlines emerged, announcing these unmarked gravesites one after another, it felt as though all of Canada had been summoned to a mass exhumation. Doubtless, the people most deeply traumatized by this nightmare were First Nations and Métis, but many of us in all walks of life have still not awakened from this nightmare. How could these schools, which were largely Catholic-run institutions, have operated for so long with such impunity? How could this have happened?

The late Joseph Auguste (Augie) Merasty, laborer, taxi driver, security guard, boxer, trapper, hunter, fisherman, town drunk, visual artist and memoirist has some answers to these questions. His memoir of life and abuse in these schools The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir was published in 2015. The excerpt below sheds light on the experiences Merasty had at St. Therese Residential School in Saskatchewan, Canada, which he attended from 1935-1944. — David Carpenter, editor of The Education of Augie Merasty

***

I was born in 1930 at Sturgeon Landing and baptized there by Father Aquinas Merton, who was also the principal at St. Therese Residential School from 1927, when the school was opened. Two of my sisters and my brother, Peter, were the first three to walk inside the school. Annie and Jeanette were the names of my two sisters. There were also six uncles and the same number of aunts who attended the school in its first year.

All those sisters and cousins, uncles, and many other unrelated people from other villages told me what had happened. Good and bad, positive or negative, were told to me and others when we got to school eight years later, and they all told basically the same stories. So one has to assume they were speaking the truth.

We used to enjoy going out miles away from the school, going on picnics, either to the beach or going fishing at the rapids north of the school. It felt so nice to get out of the enclosed playground. Most of the time, we were forced to stay within the yard, which was surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence. It felt like getting out of prison.

I really can’t recall just how many times I was made to pay for minor offences. I was once made to walk about twenty miles in –40°F weather with a fellow student, Abner Joseph, back to where we walked the day before, across the big lake with a strong wind blowing. I imagine the wind chill factor was about –60°F. Just because we lost one mitten each. We were very nervous and scared all the way, as we were only about eleven or twelve years old at the time. And we saw some fresh wolf tracks about six miles out on the lake and kept our eyes busy looking every which way, expecting to see some wolves following us.We came back without the lost mittens as the wind and snow had covered everything that could be lost. That was January 1941, and it was that meanest of all nuns, Sister St. Mercy, who had forced us to walk in that god-awful weather, only to come back empty-handed. We, of course, got the strap, twenty strokes on both hands.

Sometimes for punishment we were made to kneel on the cold cement floor from 8:30 p.m. until almost midnight, after everyone had gone to bed upstairs. We would fall asleep on the cold cement floor before Sister Mercy came or sent for her co-worker Sister Joy to tell us to go to bed upstairs. Then we were woken up early in the morning to go to church. We were usually awakened at 7:30 a.m., like it or not. All we used for toothpaste was salt, which the sister carried in a saucer. Salt, something we didn’t even get to use at mealtime. Yet the cows and horses were getting all they wanted in blocks in the fields.

They really enjoyed causing pain and other kinds of suffering as punishment for the smallest infractions. I think they were paranoid in the position they had, being masters of a lower race of creatures, Indians, as we were called.

“Indians from the bush, what can you expect?” was Sister Mercy’s favourite phrase.

They wanted to show who was superior, and no rule or order was to be broken or spoken against. They wanted to impress upon us that all this was for our own good and the will of God, and that the order of nuns, brothers, and fathers of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) were to some degree servants of God on Earth, and we must take any punishment without complaints. To be disobedient was a sin in the eyes of God.

Every morning at breakfast, we ate rotten porridge and dry bread that was hard as cardboard. We always watched an impeccably white-clothed cart eight feet long being wheeled to the Fathers’ and Brothers’ dining room. Right through the centre of the refectory for all us boys and girls to turn and watch, licking our chops, all the beautiful food going past us ten feet away. It happened almost on a daily basis. Our keepers, one on the girls’ side and one on the boys’ side, banged on their clappers, and we were told to get back to our porridge and don’t turn our heads again or it would be detention or another kind of penance.

I always wondered why our keepers and teachers talked about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and all the love they had for mankind, and Jesus being born in poverty and we should try to emulate him and learn to take punishment for our wrongs to pay here on Earth and not later in hell or purgatory. Apparently they didn’t know it was suffering enough to see all that beautiful food being wheeled by and only getting a smell of it. I know they never practised what they preached, not one iota.

Whenever there were visits from the head Catholic cleric in the district or visits from chiefs or members of council from any Indian reserve, they used to make us dress in our best clothing, provide concerts, and they even served us some edible food, beef stew or something. And they treated those northern visitors with good food and everything nice, and of course that chief or counsellor would get up at the end of the concert and speak from the stage facing all 110 children, telling us how lucky we were to be looked after in such a school as St. Therese Residential, and we should be thankful to God and to the administration for such blessings.

Oh, God, I used to think, what hypocrisy. Somebody sure pulled the wool over their eyes, because that is how it was meant to look, and it happened time after time.

Lawmakers, activists seek answers over fate of fishermen forced back to N.Korea

By Josh Smith and Soo-hyang Choi - 

SEOUL, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Activists and South Korean lawmakers are pressing North Korea to confirm the fate of two fishermen who were forcibly sent back from the South in 2019 after being accused of murder.

The administration of former President Moon Jae-in deported the two men back to North Korea after it concluded that they were "dangerous criminals" who had killed 16 other colleagues, and subsequent unconfirmed reports have suggested they were executed shortly after being deported.

A United Nations investigator has said that the forcible repatriation violated human rights principles. Neither Moon, who has kept out of the public eye since leaving office, or North Korea has commented on the case.

New President Yoon Suk-yeol pushed to reinvestigate the case, accusing the previous government of trying to curry favour with Pyongyang amid denuclearisation negotiations and efforts at rapprochement. Senior former officials are under investigation, while Moon's party says the inquiries are politically motivated.

Some rights activists, South Korean lawmakers and defectors say it is still unclear what happened to the men, and are pushing to discover if they are still alive.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Ha Tae-keung, a member of Yoon's conservative party who formerly sat on the parliamentary intelligence committee, identified the two men as Woo Beom Sun and Kim Hyun Wook.

Both were shown in photos released by the Yoon administration earlier this year being dragged across the border by South Korean security officials, with Woo in particular resisting.

Ha's office said he was releasing their identities for the first time in an attempt to get more information from the defector community, and to pressure North Korea to break its silence about their fate.

"Whether they are alive is still not confirmed three years after their forced repatriation to the North," Ha and three other lawmakers wrote in a joint statement. "Only the international community's open and united voice can bring about change in the North Korean authorities' attitude."

An official with the Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the North, said they had no information to share regarding the fate of the repatriated fishermen.

In July, Yonhap news agency cited an unnamed South Korean government official who said that the two men had been executed just days after they were sent back.

Others have cast doubts on those reports.

One South Korean pastor, who has worked for decades helping North Koreans defect, told Reuters that based on his sources, he believes that the fishermen may still be alive in a political prison camp.

The pastor and a defector told Reuters that there are also questions over the crime the two men were accused of committing. Citing contacts in the North, they say there seems to be little public talk of 16 missing fishermen, who would have left behind families and friends.

Referring to the two fishermen, Lina Yoon, senior Korea researcher at the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, said: "Knowing their name and birthdate makes it much easier for other governments and international mechanisms to make official requests about their whereabouts and hold accountable the North Korean government for their fate."

She added: "The North Korean government should immediately disclose their whereabouts.” (Reporting by Josh Smith and Soo-hyang Choi, editing by Mark Heinrich)

Argentina’s pensioners suffer under weight of soaring inflation

Teresa Bo - Yesterday 11:21 AM

Buenos Aires, Argentina – Villa Lugano, a collection of large social housing complexes in Argentina’s capital, was founded in the 1900s by a Swiss man who dreamt of building a neighbourhood that would compare with his home in Lugano, Switzerland.


Pedestrians walk past people sleeping outside a bank, in Buenos Aires’ financial

 district, Argentina, July 2022 [File: Agustin Marcarian/Reuters]© Provided by Al Jazeera

Today, it has become a symbol of the country’s working class – and it’s where I recently met Stella Maris Acosta and Walmiran Aramburu, two pensioners living off the minimum monthly instalment of about $170 each.

In a country where the monthly inflation rate has hit approximately 7 percent, their income is not enough to survive on. Stella Maris and Walmiran live in a modest apartment and they are struggling to pay the bills.

“The only dream I had was owning a home and now look at us,” Stella Maris told me. “I am still paying for the mortgage, utility services, plus all the medicines we need – we cannot buy enough food.”

She then stood up and went to the refrigerator, proudly displaying some of the vegetables that she said she picks out of the rubbish, drops into vinegar and cleans up before eating. “People throw away food but it can be preserved and used,” said Stella Maris. “I can turn this tomato into sauce, bake it and other things.”

Argentina is an agricultural powerhouse that produces food for 400 million people – yet amid soaring inflation and the daily struggles of people like Stella Maris and Walmiran, many here say the country’s ruling class has failed them over and over again.

People are used to living with high inflation; it’s been a problem for decades. But with the rate expected to hit 100 percent by the end of 2022, Argentines are hoping for miracles.

Unions are strong and they are pushing for wages to keep up with inflation. This year, deals have been reached for 65-percent salary increases and that’s one of the reasons why the government is still in control. There is anger, yes, and the government has lost support. But they are still in power.


The problem is that pensioners – who number about 7 million, of which 86 percent are getting the minimum amount every month – can rarely take to the streets and demand a better income.

“Inflation, what it does is that you pay the new prices with an old salary. It happens to all workers,” Eugenio Semino, a public defender for the elderly in Buenos Aires, told Al Jazeera.

He explained that even though labour unions have agreed to salary increases, that jump is already outpaced by the projected inflation, which “will be close to 100 [percent]”.

Argentina’s government knows there is a big battle ahead over inflation. The problem is that until recently, President Alberto Fernandez and Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner could not agree on the antidote to fight it.

Alberto Fernandez had been trying to reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund to cut down on subsidies and government spending, while Fernandez de Kirchner opposed many of his policies and insisted that inflation needed to be fought differently. But when she was president of Argentina until 2014, she, too, was unable to find a solution.

Now, Sergio Massa is the new minister of the economy – the third to take up the post in August alone after a string of government shakeups.

A seasoned politician with presidential ambitions, he has promised to jumpstart the troubled economy. Massa just came back from Washington, DC, where he made a desperate attempt to find investors and support for many of his policies. But whether his plan succeeds remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Argentina’s pensioners continue to struggle under the weight of the crisis.

Stella Maris has been working since she was 15. She has worked as a maid and a nurse, but now suffers from diabetes. Walmiran, who came to Argentina from Uruguay in the 1970s, worked as a doorman all his life. He, too, has health problems now, including epilepsy.

Despite these challenges, Stella Maris and Walmiran still go out every day to try to make an extra living. They search rubbish bins for bronze, copper, aluminium, and food. If they are lucky, they can make an extra $80 every month by selling the recyclable materials.

They say Argentina’s political class has failed them. They are forced to take to the streets to survive as inflation continues to soar. But they are not humiliated by it. They say it’s a job and for now, it’s the only thing they can do to help them make it until the end of the month.