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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says it's not an isolated incident that over 200 children were found buried at a former Indigenous residential school. Trudeau's comments come as Indigenous leaders are calling for an examination of every former residential school site - institutions that held children taken from native families across the nation. The remains of 215 children were confirmed this month at Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into Canadian society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.
Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has asked a court to halt the hourly night-time checks to which he has been subjected in his penal colony where he's imprisoned. Speaking Monday in a video link from the prison, Navalny charged that he has done nothing that would warrant the authorities' decision to perform the hourly checks. He argued that the interruptions "effectively amount to torture." He told the judge that "you would go mad in a week" if subjected to such regular wake-ups. Navalny was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from the nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. That's an accusation Russian officials reject.
To fight a rise in cases caused by the coronavirus variants, France and England have moved Monday to increase vaccinations. France is now allowing all adults to receive COVID-19 vaccinations. President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, were vaccinated on Monday. In Britain, health officials opened London's Twickenham rugby station as a mass vaccination site that accepted walk-ins. Britain is experiencing a rise in coronavirus cases as it tries to contain a fast-spreading virus variant that was first identified in India. Via remote, I'm Marissa Melton, VOA News.
