Uganda buries onetime ‘boy king’ whose death has sparked a succession battle

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Uganda's King Oyo Nyimba, who was once the world's youngest monarch, was buried on Saturday amid an acrimonious succession dispute that has rocked the royal family and gripped the nation.

The traditional monarch, who ascended the throne of Uganda’s Tooro Kingdom as an infant in 1995, died last month from cancer. He was 34.

He was buried next to his ancestors after an emotional funeral service in an Anglican cathedral in the remote city of Fort Portal, near the Congo border, concluding a nine-day mourning period.

Elders with the kingdom’s ruling clan, known as the Babiito, said Oyo, who was unmarried, never declared an heir to them, disputing the account of others in the kingdom who said he left behind a son born out of wedlock. The son has not been publicly identified, leading to sensational claims on social media of at least two possible heirs alleged to be Oyo’s children.

La facture grimpe mais Ottawa répond présent

‘Préserver ce lieu, ce n’est pas seulement préserver un bâtiment. C’est préserver notre mémoire. C’est transmettre notre histoire.” C’est sur ces mots que Ginette Lavack, députée fédérale de Saint-Boniface-Saint-Vital a annoncé un nouvel investissement fédéral de 400 000 $ au nom du ministre Marc Miller pour le Musée de Saint-Boniface.

Un beau cadeau d’anniversaire pour les 175 ans de l’édifice abritant le musée. Désigné lieu historique national par le gouvernement du Canada en 1958, celui-ci est le plus vieux bâtiment de Winnipeg et, selon le musée, la plus grande structure en rondins de chêne d’Amérique du Nord. Construit entre 1846 et 1851, il était à l’origine le couvent des Sœurs Grises, arrivées à Saint-Boniface depuis le Québec en 1844.

“Depuis 1851, cet édifice a connu plusieurs vies. Il a été un couvent, un hôpital et une école. Il a accueilli, protégé, soigné et enseigné. Il témoigne de l’histoire complexe de Saint-Boniface, de la nation Métisse de la rivière Rouge et de la francophonie,” énumère la députée fédérale, également secrétaire parlementaire de la ministre des Services aux Autochtones.

Un héritage historique et culturel également souligné par Robert Loiselle, député provincial de Saint-Boniface, qui évoque un bâtiment issu d’une époque où une grande partie de la population du Manitoba était francophone. Il a d’ailleurs tenu à rappeler le lien particulier qu’il entretient avec le site : “Sur une touche personnelle, c’est le 4 juin 1892 qu’une nouveau-née fut trouvée dans un petit panier sur le perron des Sœurs Grises : Joséphine Perron, nommée par les Sœurs Grises. Connue sous le nom de Joséphine Payette, mon arrière-grand-mère fut rapidement adoptée par sa famille Payette le lendemain.”

Multiple factors add up to difficult harvest

Earlier this month, farmers sent agriculture publications some heartbreaking photos showing how heavy rains across the Prairies had pummelled a promising harvest.

An idled combine up to its axles in a flooded Saskatchewan field, straw bales surrounded by water and field equipment stranded on the far side of a washed-out section told the obvious story.

The Sept. 6-7 event was just the latest in a series of heavy rainfall events that have plagued this year’s growing season. Similar deluges hit different regions July 15-17, Aug. 14, and Aug. 31 — some of which were accompanied by tornadoes.

“What’s made this season challenging is the intensity of these rainfalls,” said Manitoba Agriculture ag meteorology specialist Alison Sass as she reviewed the summer’s weather patterns on an extension webinar.

Bond yields are rising, reflecting fear, loathing about state of world

It can seem counter-intuitive, but rising bond yields reflect investor worry. (After all, aren’t higher yields attractive?)

At the same time, investors’ bagful of anxieties is running headlong into greater demand for borrowing than at any time in human history.

It’s a full-course meal of mayhem: trade wars, unending real wars, accelerating government budgets and big tech companies borrowing as much as they can to achieve artificial intelligence supremacy.

Don’t forget the orange zest of economic unrest: an unpredictable, often incomprehensible president of the United States.

Residental school denialism tackled head on in valuable new collection of essays

It’s been 11 years since Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) issued its landmark Final Report on Indian residential schools following four years of hearing testimony and statements from nearly 7,000 survivors and other witnesses. It also issued 94 calls to action, one of which was creating a body to measure the state’s progress on reconciliation.

It was only a year ago that the National Council for Reconciliation (NCR) was finally created, and only in late August that the NCR issued its first report card on the federal government’s reconciliation efforts.

The council acknowledges significant progress in some areas, but noted that most are largely symbolic or “soft” measures. However, topping the report’s list of risks to sustaining what gains on reconciliation have been made so far, and stalling further action, is the rise of residential school denialism.

According to the report, the organized efforts to cast doubt on Indian residential school historical records and the numbers of children who died there have had a corrosive effect on support for reconciliation, while giving the federal government political cover for inaction on the “hard” calls to action. It is therefore timely that Truth Before Reconciliation: Confronting Residential School Denialism, edited by University of Manitoba Indigenous Studies professors Sean Carleton and Niigaan Sinclair (who is also a Free Press columnist), has just hit bookstores.

Winnipeg-produced podcast Careers Under Construction keeps rolling for Pederson Group

It could have been the CEO’s corner office or a boardroom, but instead it’s a media production studio.

Eight storeys above the corner of Portage Avenue and Main Street, the 300-square-foot room in the Pederson Group’s headquarters at 201 Portage Ave. is outfitted with comfortable chairs, a plant and black drapes that block out natural light and control the acoustics.

There are three video cameras, two computers, a few microphones and a variety of portable video lights. All told, the equipment is worth more than $70,000.

It’s here where two of the Winnipeg recruitment firm’s five staff members — Justis Pederson, president and CEO, and Cassie Bezan, director of creative communications — produce Careers Under Construction, a weekly, hour-long podcast featuring interviews Pederson conducts with Manitoba business people.

What it means to be green… in a city beholden to the blue and gold

It’s not easy being green… if you’re a Winnipeg Blue Bombers season-ticket holder.

Dave Dech ordinarily arrives at his designated seat in Princess Auto Stadium fully decked out in blue and gold. That won’t be the situation this weekend, however, when the Bombers clash with their principal Canadian Football League rival, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, in the annual, sold-out Banjo Bowl game.

“No, I’ll be in green pretty much from head to toe. People sitting around us kid me, but by now they know if it’s the Banjo Bowl, Dave’s showing up in green,” says Dech, 63, possibly the biggest Saskatchewan supporter this side of Moosomin.

Not only does the married father of two grown sons have 25 Roughriders jerseys hanging in his closet — at press time, he was still mulling over which one to throw on for Saturday’s tilt — there is a main-floor lair in his and his wife Patti’s Westwood abode you’ll probably want to avoid if you suffer from prasinophobia — a fear of the colour green.

Well-preserved tooth from Pacific mastodon found in a creek in San Francisco Bay Area

Brigid Lynch was working along a wooded creek in a mountainous part of the San Francisco Bay Area when something that didn't look like the rocks she'd been studying caught her eye. It turned out to be the fossilized tooth of a Pacific mastodon.

“I keep joking it wasn’t hard to find,” Lynch, a geomorphologist at Balance Hydrologics, said Friday. “It was just sitting there in the middle of the creek, halfway in, half out of the water.”

Lynch made the discovery earlier this year while working on a habitat restoration project for the threatened California red-legged frog in a Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District preserve in San Mateo County. The public land management agency that preserves over 70,000 acres of land in the Santa Cruz Mountains region announced the find this week. The fossil has been donated to Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability.

“It’s in great condition,” said Chrissy Garcia, curator and manager of Doerr School of Sustainability’s specimen collections. “So we’ve got both the crown and the root of the fossil. You can even see root canal.”

Stage tells only half the story in marvellously meta ‘R+J: Closing Night’

Fifty years after its founding, Winnipeg’s Elizabeth Paige Theatre defied increasingly ridiculous odds to deliver an unforgettable final production of its season-opening run of Romeo and Juliet on Thursday … or did it?

AI poses threat to Indigenous culture, knowledge, creativity

When asked for information about Indigenous Peoples, AI programs most often reproduce false facts, suggest harmful stereotypes, misinterpret languages, and confuse and collapse unique histories of nations, laws, and traditions into others.

Mayoral contenders focus on recreation funding, 911, littered streets

Community centre funding, 911 and 311 services, and clamping down on litterbugs dominated the mayoral election campaign Friday, while a fourth candidate said voters would have to stay tuned for his promises.

Incumbent Scott Gillingham promised to work with the federal and provincial governments to set up a $60-million fund for community centres, that would be split three ways.

“We’ve seen again and again that when the city steps up with a serious plan and a financial commitment and puts real money on the table, other governments are willing to come to the table, too,” he said.

The fund would pay for repairs and upgrades at community centres and recreation facilities.

Pokemon thieves clear out collectibles shop

Terri Settle loved watching children walk into her collectibles shop to hunt for their favourite Pokemon cards.

After the latest break in stripped her shelves of much of the inventory, she’s not sure she’ll get to see it again.

Thieves broke into Terri’s Trinkets and Toys on Tuesday evening, punching through a grate and then the store’s bathroom wall to reach the storefront.

They made off with about $6,000 worth of merchandise, including all of the store’s Pokemon cards — about 7,000 of them — along with toys, Lego, jewelry, video games, a debit machine and personal laptop. They even took her vacuum cleaner.

Downtown no place to be after dark, huge majority of Winnipeggers say in survey

Most Winnipeggers are afraid to walk alone downtown and believe the city needs more police officers, a new survey finds.

Ottawa ends permanent residency exemption for refugees with undeclared family

OTTAWA - The immigration minister has quietly ended a policy that helped some refugees sponsor their children or partners for permanent residency, while offering refugee advocates no explanation for the change.

The temporary policy allowed certain refugees to sponsor family members who were not initially declared on their own applications.

Under current rules, a permanent resident normally is barred from sponsoring a family member if they did not name them in their documentation.

Permanent resident applicants are required to declare all immediate family members for medical and security screening purposes, even if they aren't coming to Canada.

Ebola outbreak in Congo spreads to a 7th province

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — The Ebola outbreak in Congo, the world's fastest-growing outbreak of the disease on record, has now spread to seven provinces in the African country, local authorities said. And it's showing no signs of slowing down.

According to the governor of the northwestern province of Sud-Ubangi, Jean-Rene Galekwa Vundawe, Congo’s national research institute tested a sample and found traces of the Bundibugyo virus, the rare kind of Ebola that caused the current outbreak.

The statement, which was issued on Thursday and reported by local media outlets on Friday, said the sample was from the Bulu health district in Sud-Ubangi. It did not disclose other information about the source of the infection.

Local lawmaker and former health minister Jean-Jacques Mbungani said on X on Thursday a positive case was recorded in Gwaka, a town in Sud-Ubangi province. He said the patient was a 23-year-old man and has died.

Artist’s inspired work brings Red River Métis story back to Portage and Main

Jennine Krauchi calls them the “grandmothers.” “They speak to you very silently. You never hear a word, but they speak,” Krauchi says, referring to the antique pieces of Métis needlework she’s carefully studied for years. But there are few precedents for her latest art project: a 85-foot-wide by 32-foot-high chain curtain of Métis needlework that drapes over the historic Bank of Montreal’s neoclassical facade.

Is ‘tornado alley’ moving north?

There’s a famous fictional story in which a ruby-slippered, tornado-tossed traveller takes a wide-eyed look around and declares, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Mining, mineral exploration projects ramp up, First Nations training lags

Mark Fedikow hunts for gold. Skilled labour can become a secondary search.

“You can find lots of folks on the reserves that are willing to work and learn, no question about it,” Fedikow, president of Mount Morgan Resources Ltd., said Thursday in Winnipeg.

“They need to get some training, they need to get some education in exploration.”

Fedikow and his team have been surveying roughly 7,400 acres in the Snow Lake area in northern Manitoba. They’re in “early days” of gold exploration. Results over the past two years of work have been promising, Fedikow said.

Denim-focused firm Duer sets up Winnipeg shop

A Canadian apparel brand known for its “performance jeanswear” is one of the newest tenants in Winnipeg’s largest mall.

Duer opened a retail shop in CF Polo Park at the end of August. It’s the first Manitoba storefront for the Vancouver-based company, which offers clothing for men and women, with a focus on denim.

Company founder Gary Lenett says Duer has built a demand in the province for its products through its wholesale and e-commerce channels, which drove the company’s decision to open a retail store in Winnipeg.

“We landed on Polo Park because it’s the busiest mall in the city and the best way to reach a wide group of people in one place,” Lenett said in an email.