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  • Bad Astronomy identifies the most distant globular cluster known to exist around the Milky Way Galaxy, PSO J174.0675-10.8774 some 470 thousand light-years away.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at the strange ring of the Kuiper Belt dwarf planet Haumea.

  • Crooked Timber looks at an ill-constructed biography of Eric Hobsbawm.

  • D-Brief notes an experiment that proves antimatter obeys the same laws of quantum mechanics as regular matter, at least insofar as the double-slit experiment is concerned.

  • Earther notes that life in Antarctica depends critically on the presence of penguin feces.

  • Imageo looks at awesome satellite imagery of spring storms in North America.

  • The Island Review interviews Irene de la Torre, a translator born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, about her experiences and thoughts on her insular experiences.

  • Joe. My. God. notes a new deal between Gilead Pharmaceuticals and the American government to make low-cost PrEP available to two hundred thousand people.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which The Great Gatsby reflects the norms of the Jazz Age.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money is rightly critical of the Sam Harris suggestion that white supremacism is not an ideology of special concern, being only a fringe belief.

  • Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution solicits questions for an upcoming interview with demographer of religion Eric Kaufmann.

  • Russell Darnley at Maximos62 shares cute video of otters frolicking on the Singapore River.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel asks when the universe became transparent to light.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares photos of his blooming flower gardens.

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  • Centauri Dreams notes a strange corridor of ice beneath the surface of Titan, a possible legacy of an active cryovolcanic past.

  • D-Brief notes one study suggesting that, properly designed, air conditioners could convert carbon dioxide in the air into carbon fuels.

  • Dead Things reports on the discovery of an unusual human skull three hundred thousand years old in China, at Hualongdong in the southeast.

  • Gizmodo notes the identification of a jawbone 160 thousand years old, found in Tibet, with the Denisovans. That neatly explains why the Denisovans were adapted to Tibet-like environments.

  • JSTOR Daily examines Ruth Page, a ballerina who integrated dance with poetry.

  • Language Hat shares a critique of a John McWhorter comment about kidspeak.

  • Victor Mair at Language Log shares a well-researched video on the Mongolian language of Genghis Khan.

  • Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how Donald Trump, in his defiance of investigative findings, is worse than Richard Nixon.

  • James Butler at the LRB Blog writes about the bombing of London gay bar Admiral Duncan two decades ago, relating it movingly to wider alt-right movements and to his own early coming out.

  • Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen notes a recent review article making the case for open borders, disproving many of the claims made by opponents.

  • Paul Mason at the NYR Daily explains why the critique by Hannah Arendt of totalitarianism and fascism can fall short, not least in explaining our times.

  • Corey S. Powell at Out There explains how, and why, the Moon is starting to get serious attention as a place for long-term settlement, even.

  • Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog explores the fund that she had in helping design a set of scientifically-accurate building blocks inspired by the worlds of our solar system.

  • Drew Rowsome reports on the new restaging of the classic queer drama Lilies at Buddies in Bad Times by Walter Borden, this one with a new racially sensitive casting.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the massive boom of diversity at the time of the Cambrian Explosion.

  • Towleroad features the remarkable front cover of the new issue of Time, featuring Pete Buttigieg together with his husband Chasten.

  • Window on Eurasia considers if the new Russian policy of handing out passports to residents of the Donbas republics is related to a policy of trying to bolster the population of Russia, whether fictively or actually.

  • Arnold Zwicky considers the various flowers of May Day.

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  • At NOW Toronto, Rebecca Campbell pays tribute to her friend, and collaborator, the activist Justin Haynes.

  • Transit Toronto notes the four generations of TTC streetcars on display in the Beaches Easter Parade tomorrow.

  • NOW Toronto criticizes the politics of bike lanes in Toronto.

  • NOW Toronto noted how badly Scarborough will be served by the Doug Ford subway plans.

  • Happily, Toronto is one of the top cities for students in the world. blogTO reports.

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  • Architectuul features a photo essay made by Evan Panagopoulos in the course of a hurried three-hour visit to the Socialist Modernist and modern highlights of 20th century Kiev architecture.

  • Bad Astrronomer Phil Plait notes how the latest planet found in the Kepler-47 circumbinary system evokes Tatooine.

  • Centauri Dreams looks at tide and radiation, and their impacts on potential habitability, in the TRAPPIST-1 system.

  • Citizen Science Salon looks at how the TV show Cyberchase can help get young people interested in science and math.

  • Crooked Timber mourns historian David Brion Davis.

  • The Crux looks at how the HMS Challenger pioneered the study of the deeps of the oceans, with that ship's survey of the Mariana Trench.

  • D-Brief looks at how a snowball chamber using supercooled water can be used to hunt for dark matter.

  • Earther shares photos of the heartbreaking and artificial devastation of the Amazonian rainforest of Brazil.

  • Gizmodo shares a beautiful Hubble photograph of the southern Crab Nebula.

  • Information is Beautiful shares a reworked version of the Julia Galef illustration of the San Francisco area meme space.

  • io9 notes that, fresh from being Thor, Jane Foster is set to become a Valkyrie in a new comic.

  • JSTOR Daily explains the Victorian fondness for leeches, in medicine and in popular culture.

  • Language Hat links to an interview with linguist Amina Mettouchi, a specialist in Berber languages.

  • Language Log shares the report of a one-time Jewish refugee on changing language use in Shanghai, in the 1940s and now.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the horror of self-appointed militias capturing supposed undocumented migrants in the southwestern US.

  • Marginal Revolution reports on the circumstances in which volunteer militaries can outperform conscript militaries.

  • At the NYR Daily, Christopher Benfey reports on the surprisingly intense connection between bees and mourning.

  • Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw, responding to Israel Folau, considers free expression and employment.

  • The Planetary Society Blog shares a guest post from Barney Magrath on the surprisingly cheap adaptations needed to make an iPhone suitable for astrophotography.

  • Peter Rukavina reports on the hotly-contested PEI provincial election of 1966.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains what the discovery of helium hydride actually means.

  • Understanding Society's Daniel Little praises the Jill Lepore US history These Truths for its comprehensiveness.

  • Window on Eurasia reports on the growing divergences in demographics between different post-Soviet countries.

  • Arnold Zwicky starts with another Peeps creation and moves on from there.

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  • JSTOR Daily notes a study examining how we can be nostalgic for the music of our parents.

  • Hornet Stories notes the new album and tour of Carly Rae Jepsen.

  • This Crack Magazine interview with Grimes has been getting a lot of attention, not necessarily positively mind.

  • Hornet Stories highlights the innovative and queer-fronted Lebanese band Mashrou' Leila.

  • Adam Wallis at Global News has an extended feature interviewing the surviving members of the Cranberries about their career and their final album, In The End.

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  • Bad Astronomy notes the detection of the birth of a neutron star binary system in the distant galaxy of IV ZW 155.

  • Centauri Dreams examines the potential for M-class red dwarfs to support planets with life.

  • Crooked Timber notes the death of the science fiction master Gene Wolfe.

  • D-Brief notes that the TESS spacecraft has confirmed its discovery of its first exoplanet, HD 21749 c 52 light-years away.

  • Language Hat considers a fascinating question: Who wrote Aladdin?

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the shameless foolishness of Donald Trump with regards to the Notre-Dame tragedy.

  • Marginal Revolution links to a paper noting the significant cost, in medieval Europe, of the construction of cathedrals even in rich areas like Ile-de-France.

  • Towleroad notes that the Pete Buttigieg campaign has released its design toolkit to the public for downloading.

  • Window on Eurasia notes the impediments put in place in Russia to limit the presence of immigrants on labour markets.

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  • Bad Astronomy shares Hubble images of asteroid 6478 Gault, seemingly in the process of dissolving.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the experience of living in a body one knows from hard experience to be fallible.

  • Gizmodo notes new evidence that environmental stresses pushed at least some Neanderthals to engage in cannibalism.

  • Hornet Stories notes the 1967 raid by Los Angeles police against the Black Cat nightclub, a pre-Stonewall trigger of LGBTQ organization.

  • Imageo notes the imperfect deal wrought by Colorado Basin states to minimize the pain felt by drought in that river basin.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the cinema of Claire Denis.

  • Language Log reports on the work of linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, a man involved in language revival efforts in Australia after work in Israel with Hebrew.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money wonders if the Iran-Contra scandal will be a precedent for the Mueller report, with the allegations being buried by studied inattention.

  • Marginal Revolution makes a case for NIMBYism leading to street urination.

  • Justin Petrone at North! looks at a theatrical performance of a modern Estonian literary classic, and what it says about gender and national identity.

  • Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw makes the case for a treaty with Australian Aborigines, to try to settle settler-indigenous relations in Australia.

  • John Quiggin looks at the factors leading to the extinction of coal as an energy source in the United Kingdom.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that we are not yet up to the point of being able to detect exomoons of Earth-like planets comparable to our Moon.

  • Window on Eurasia notes the occasion of the last singer in the Ket language.

  • Arnold Zwicky shares some cartoon humour, around thought balloons.

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  • A formal inquest into the stage collapse that killed one person at a Radiohead concert at Downsview Park in 2012 is only now taking off. CBC reports.

  • The May opening of a new exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe's work at the Olga Korper Gallery, reported by NOW Toronto, is very exciting.

  • blogTO notes a new graphic novel to be put out by Dirty Water Comics dealing with the anti-Semitic Christie Pits Riot of 1933.

  • Queen Video's last location, in the Annex, is finally closing, with plenty of its titles now available to be bought before it shutters its doors at the end of April. Global News reports.

  • NOW Toronto reports on Museum II, a show part of the Myseum Intersections Festival looking at the impact of war and trauma on spaces.

  • Karon Liu, writing at the Toronto Star, explores with WeChat influencer Joanna Luo a whole universe of Chinese restaurants and social networking that was almost unknown to many Torontonians like myself.

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  • Montréal may yet get a new park to commemorate victims of the Irish famine of the 1840s. CTV reports.

  • CityLab reports on the new spectacular Hudson Yards development in Manhattan.

  • The nightclubs of Atlanta in the 1990s played a critical role in that decade's hip-hop. VICE reports.

  • CityLab reports that, dealing with a housing crisis, city authorities in Barcelona have taken to finding the owners of empty buildings.

  • Guardian Cities reports on how civic authorities in Copenhagen hope to create an offshore archipelago, a sort of floating Silicon Valley.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes new evidence that the Pathfinder probe landed, on Mars, on the shores of an ancient sea.

  • The Crux reports on tholins, the organic chemicals that are possible predecessors to life, now found in abundance throughout the outer Solar System.

  • D-Brief reports on the hard work that has demonstrated some meteorites which recently fell in Turkey trace their origins to Vesta.

  • Colby King at the Everyday Sociology Blog explores sociologist Eric Klinenberg's concept of social infrastructure, the public spaces we use.

  • Far Outliers reports on a Honolulu bus announcement in Yapese, a Micronesian language spoken by immigrants in Hawai'i.

  • JSTOR Daily considers the import of the autobiography of Catherine the Great.

  • Language Hat reports, with skepticism, on the idea of "f" and "v" as sounds being products of the post-Neolithic technological revolution.

  • Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen is critical of the idea of limiting the number of children one has in a time of climate change.

  • Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reflects on death, close at hand and in New Zealand.

  • Strange Company reports on the mysterious disappearance, somewhere in Anatolia, of American cyclist Frank Lenz in 1892, and its wider consequences.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel identifies five types of cosmic events capable of triggering mass extinctions on Earth.

  • Towleroad reports on the frustration of many J.K. Rowling fans with the author's continuing identification of queer histories for characters that are never made explicit in books or movies.

  • Window on Eurasia has a skeptical report about a Russian government plan to recruit Russophones in neighbouring countries as immigrants.

  • Arnold Zwicky explores themes of shipwrecks and of being shipwrecked.

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  • Steve Munro takes a look at future transit connections for the waterfront centered on Union Station.

  • The location of the vast parking lot of Yorkdale Mall is under consideration for transformation into a new high-rise neighbourhood. CBC reports.

  • Sully's Boxing Gym, on Dupont in Dovercourt Village, is fighting to--if not remain in its current location--survive somewhere. The Toronto Star reports.

  • Metrolinx has offered to restore direct bus service to York University if that university, in turn, paid students nearly one million dollars to compensate them for their added transit costs. The Toronto Star reports.

  • blogTO identifies five particularly odd objects found underground in Toronto, here.

  • Toronto Life reports on David Silber, a Scarborough-born man who has become one of the world's most remarkable and innovative chefs.

  • The Ottawa Citizen reports on the tragic death of musician Justin Haynes, who came to my attention with his moving writings in NOW Toronto on the affordable housing crisis.

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  • Justin Haynes writes at NOW Toronto about the exceptional difficulty of finding affordable housing in Toronto for people on ODSP.

  • CBC Toronto reports on the life of Crystal Papineau, a homeless woman who died in a tragic accident in Bloorcourt.

  • Transit Toronto notes that Yonge and Eglinton is going to be disrupted for the next two months by Eglinton Crosstown construction.

  • Toronto Life looks at Brooke Lynn Hites, the first Canadian contestant on RuPaul's Drag Race.

  • Samantha Edwards writes at NOW Toronto about the concern that our city's boom in condo construction might also lead to loneliness. What is to be done?

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  • D-Brief considers the possibility that human food when eaten by bears, by shortening their hibernation periods, might contribute to their premature aging.

  • The Everyday Sociology Blog considers the political power of sports and of music.

  • Far Outliers notes the rising bourgeoisie of Calcutta in the 1990s.

  • Steve Roby at The Fifteenth makes the case for Discovery as worthy of being considered Star Trek, not least because it is doing something new.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing notes how our tendency to track our lives through data can become dystopian.

  • JSTOR Daily notes that Illinois is starting to become home to resident populations of bald eagles.

  • Language Log takes a look at Ubykh.

  • Lawyers, Guns and Money notes a Trumpist Canadian border guard.

  • The New APPS Blog notes how helicopter parenting is linked to rising levels of inequality.

  • The NYR Daily considers Jasper Johns.

  • At Out of Ambit, Diane Duane considers the rhythms and cycles of life generally and of being a writer specifically.

  • Otto Pohl looks at how people from the different German communities of southeast Europe were, at the end of the Second World War, taken to the Soviet Union as forced labourers.

  • Steve Maynard writes at Spacing, in the aftermath of the death of Jackie Shane, about the erasure and recovery of non-white queer history in Toronto.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains what would happen if someone fell into a blackhole.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that the number of immigrants to Russia are falling, with Ukrainians diminishing particularly in number while Central Asian numbers remain more resistant to the trend.

  • Arnold Zwicky notes the telling omission of sexual orientation as a protected category re: hate crimes.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the newly-named Neptune moon of Hippocamp, and how it came about as product of a massive collision with the larger moon of Proteus.

  • Centauri Dreams also reports on the discovery of the Neptune moon of Hippocamp.

  • Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes how the attempt to revoke the citizenship of Shamima Begum sets a terribly dangerous precedent for the United Kingdom.

  • D-Brief notes new evidence suggesting the role of the Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions in triggering the Cretaceous extinction event, alongside the Chixculub asteroid impact.

  • Far Outliers notes the problems of Lawrence of Arabia with Indian soldiers and with Turks.

  • L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing takes issue with the state of philosophical contemplation about technology, at least in part a structural consequence of society.

  • Hornet Stories shares this feature examining the future of gay porn, in an environment where amateur porn undermines the existing studios.

  • JSTOR Daily considers the spotty history of casting African-American dancers in ballet.

  • Language Hat suggests that the Académie française will soon accept for French feminized nouns of nouns links to professionals ("écrivaine" for a female writer, for instance).

  • The LRB Blog considers the implications of the stripping of citizenship from Shamima Begum. Who is next? How badly is citizenship weakened in the United Kingdom?

  • Marginal Revolution notes the upset of Haiti over its banning by Expedia.

  • The NYR Daily notes the tension in Turkey between the country's liberal laws on divorce and marriage and rising Islamization.

  • Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel looks at the moment, in the history of the universe, when dark energy became the dominant factors in the universe's evolution.

  • Towleroad remembers Roy Cohn, the lawyer who was the collaborator of Trump up to the moment of Cohn's death from AIDS.

  • Understanding Society's Daniel Little takes a look at Marx's theories of how governments worked.

  • Window on Eurasia looks at the existential pressures facing many minority languages in Russia.

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  • Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait considers the possibility that the remarkably low-density 'Oumuamua might be a cosmic snowflake.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about the challenges of free-lance writing, including clients who disappear before they pay their writers for their work.

  • Centauri Dreams notes that observations of cosmic collisions by gravitational wave astronomy are becoming numerous enough to determine basic features of the universe like Hubble's constant.

  • D-Brief notes that the Hayabusa2 probe is set to start mining samples from asteroid Ryugu.

  • Dangerous Minds remembers radical priest and protester Philip Berrigan.

  • At the Everyday Sociology Blog, Irina Seceleanu explains why state defunding of public education in the United States is making things worse for students.

  • Far Outliers notes how many of the communities in South Asia that saw soldiers go off to fight for the British Empire opposed this imperial war.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at the decidedly NSFW love letters of James Joyce to Nora Barnacle. Wasn't Kate Bush inspired by them?

  • Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how the failure of the California high-speed rail route reveals many underlying problems with funding for infrastructure programs in the United States.

  • Marginal Revolution notes the creepy intrusiveness of a new app in China encouraging people to study up on Xi Jinping thought.

  • The Planetary Society Blog looks at what is to be expected come the launch of the Beresheet Moon lander by Israeli group SpaceIL.

  • Daniel Little at Understanding Society considers the philosophical nature of the Xerox Corporation.

  • Window on Eurasia notes that the Russian Orthodox Church seems not to be allowing the mass return of its priests who lost congregations to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to Russia.

  • Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell considers the astute ways in which El Chapo is shown to have run his business networks.

  • Arnold Zwicky looks at two recent British films centering on displays of same-sex male attraction, The Pass and God's Own Country.

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  • CBC's Q recently interviewed Jeremy Larter about his new film, Pogey Beach.The Journal-Pioneer reported on the rescue renovation of an old farm house in the PEI community of Sea View.

  • CBC Prince Edward Island notes that the show Anne with an E is hosting auditions for a Mi'kmaq character.

  • CBC Prince Edward Island pays tribute to the life of Neil Harpham, a taxi pioneer who recently benefitted from assisted dying.

  • CTV's W5 recently examined the controversies surrounding the controversial PEI immigration program intended to attract investor-immigrants.

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  • The upload of the TTC from Toronto to Ontario may well prove which level of government can do a better job of building transit, the city or the province, Ben Spurr notes at the Toronto Star.

  • Businesses in Toronto's Port Lands welcome increased development, for understandable reasons. The Toronto Star reports.

  • NOW Toronto notes that John Tory neglects mental health as not a cause but a consequence of homelessness, given the extraordinary stresses that imposes on people.

  • Jamie Bradburn looks at how Toronto responded to the death of former prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier back in 1919.

  • Cheryll Case at the Broadbent Blog notes the negative effect that the Finch and Eglinton LRTs can have on affordable housing in northwestern Toronto, where Toronto's black populations are most concentrated.

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  • I am not quite sure I buy the argument of Nick Cave at Vice's Motherboard that artificial intelligence will never be able to write a great song.

  • Roads and Kingdoms shares a soundtrack of Lisbon pop songs, in a variety of genres.

  • CBC reports on the remarkable recovery of a collection of Yiddish-language songs from the Second World War that led to a Grammy nomination.

  • Rolling Stone reports< on the work that went into the last, and final, album of the Cranberries following the untimely death last year of Dolores O'Riordan.

  • At Global News, Alan Cross writes about the psychological and even therapeutic effects of different sorts of music.

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  • Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the evidence for the massive collision that left exoplanet Kepler 107c an astoundingly dense body.

  • The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly tells her readers the secrets of the success of her relationship with her husband, Jose.

  • Centauri Dreams notes what the New Horizons probe has found out, of Ultima Thule and of Pluto, by looking back.

  • The Crux shares the obituaries of scientists from NASA for the Opportunity rover.

  • D-Brief reports that NASA has declared the Opportunity rover's mission officially complete.

  • Dead Things introduces its readers to Mnyamawamtuka, a titanosaur from Tanzania a hundred million years ago.

  • Drew Ex Machina shares a stunning photo of Tropical Cyclone Gita, taken from the ISS in 2018.

  • Far Outliers notes how the Indian Army helped save the British army's positions from collapse in the fall of 1914.

  • Joe. My. God. notes a Christian group in the United States trying to encourage a boycott of supposedly leftist candy manufacturers like Hershey's.

  • JSTOR Daily looks at why covenant marriage failed to become popular.

  • Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money explains the hatred for new Congressperson Ilham Omar.

  • The Planetary Society Blog links to ten interesting podcasts relating to exploration, of Earth and of space.

  • Drew Rowsome interviews Tobias Herzberg about Feygele, his show in the Rhubarb festival at Buddies in Bad Times.

  • Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps looks at the evidence, presented by (among others) Geneviève von Petzinger, suggesting that forty thousand years ago cave artists around the world may have shared a common language of symbols.

  • Window on Eurasia suggests that the policies of Putin are contributing to a growing sense of nationalism in Belarus.

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  • NOW Toronto reports on the potential of Indigenous films and television shows to gain international markets, so long as they get needed funding.

  • Activists seeking to promote the Mohawk language and culture have received needed government funding, Global News reports.

  • CBC Montreal notes the visit of a chef from the Six Nations of the Grand River to Montréal to share Iroquois cuisine there, and more.

  • A Mi'kMaq community in Gaspésie does not want to preserve the Maison Busteed, a historic house belonging to an early settler who reportedly cheated them of their land, to the dismay of some local history activists. CBC reports.

  • The remains of Nonosabasut and Demasduit, two of the last of the Beothuk of Newfoundland, are going to be transfer from Scotland to a new home in Canada, at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. CBC reports.

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