Herpes virus confirms ancient human 'out-of-Africa' migration saga

Washington: A new study of the full genetic code of a common human virus has offered proof of the "out-of-Africa" pattern of human migration, which earlier had been documented by anthropologists and studies of the human genome. 

Senior author Curtis Brandt, a professor of medical microbiology and ophthalmology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said that the virus under study, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), usually causes nothing more severe than cold sores around the mouth. 

Brandt said that the virus under study, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), usually causes nothing more severe than cold sores around the mouth. 

Brandt and co-authors Aaron Kolb and Cecile Ane compared 31 strains of HSV-1 collected in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, and the result was fairly stunning. 

He said that the viral strains sort exactly as you would predict based on sequencing of human genomes. 

Brandt asserted that they found that all of the African isolates cluster together, all the virus from the Far East, Korea, Japan, China clustered together, all the viruses in Europe and America, with one exception, clustered together. 

He said that what they found follows exactly what the anthropologists have said, and the molecular geneticists who have analyzed the human genome have said, about where humans originated and how they spread across the planet. 

Brandt said that the researchers broke the HSV-1 genome into 26 pieces, made family trees for each piece and then combined each of the trees into one network tree of the whole genome. 

The study has been published online in the journal PLOS ONE. 

China Smog Photos Show How Bad Its Air Pollution Problem Has Become

China has a serious smog problem. So much so that the northern city of Harbin, home to about 11 million people, was forced to cancel classes, close down the airport and suspend certain bus routes Monday.

According to The Associated Press, fine particulate matter readings taken in Harbin indicate that air pollution in the area is 40 times higher than the international safety standard set by the World Health Organization.

While visibility in the capital of the Heilongjiang province was less than 50 meters (164 feet), Harbin was not the only city in the region affected by smog. In the southeastern city of Shenyang, some 300 miles from Harbin, a heavy haze partially obscured a 75-story skyscraper from view. (Head over to The Daily Beast to see a comparison to a normal view of the landmark.)

Air pollution has been an ongoing problem in the country, with thick and heavy smog often forcing local governments to suspend transportation services and shutter businesses. Earlier this month, China announced that it would offer millions in rewards to regions that could successfully reduce air pollution levels.

See photos that illustrate the extent of air pollution in Harbin in the series (courtesy of Getty) below.

Las Vegas nightclub shooting kills 1, injures 2

A man who wanted his money back after paying to enter a Las Vegas nightclub shot three people, killing one, when the club management refused to make a refund, police said on Monday.

The suspect, who was wounded when several patrons and club employees wrestled him to the ground during a resulting melee, was hospitalized early Monday but will be taken into custody as soon as he was released, said Jose Hernandez, an officer with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

"Right now he is facing several charges, including murder," said Hernandez.

Police did not identify the gunman.

The incident began about 5:30 a.m. when the suspect entered an after-hours club at the Bally's resort on the Las Vegas strip. After initially hesitating over whether to pay the cover charge required for entry, the man did pay and entered the club, but he quickly became dissatisfied and asked club employees for a refund, police said.

An argument ensued and the man pulled out a handgun and began shooting. A club manager, a club security officer and a club patron who tried to tackle the gunman to the ground were all shot.

Hernandez said one of the three men shot died after being taken to the hospital.

Plan Aims to Fix Sewers, but Its Cost to Residents Leaves a Bad Taste

LONDON — On a particularly hot summer day in 1858, the smell of raw sewage from the River Thames became so unbearable that legislators had the curtains of the Houses of Parliament soaked in chloride of lime. When that failed to repel the odors, members of Parliament simply abandoned the place.

The leader of the House and chancellor of the Exchequer, Benjamin Disraeli, “was seen fleeing from the chamber, his handkerchief to his nose,” according to Stephen Halliday in his history, “The Great Stink of London.”

At the time, nearly all of London’s sewage ended up in the Thames, which was also one of the city’s main sources for drinking water, and the city endured three cholera epidemics, which killed more than 31,000 people. The Thames stank famously, and many doctors and politicians believed that it was the stench itself that caused cholera.

Pressure grew to follow the recommendation of a prominent civil engineer, Joseph W. Bazalgette, to build a system of tunnels that would catch the sewage and divert it farther downstream, below the capital, and construction soon got under way. The tunnels of the 1,100-mile system — lined with 314 million bricks meticulously laid by Victorian masons — remain in surprisingly good condition today.

Built for a city half London’s current size, however, the system is now overflowing. As often as once a week, raw sewage is forced into the Thames, a sharp change from the 19th century, when the newly built system overflowed less than once a year.

The increasing flow of raw sewage — the result of the loss of green spaces to absorb rainwater as much as population gain — violates European environmental law, the European Commission said in 2009, and the government has promised to act.

But in an era of austerity and strained budgets, it is not the government that is paying the $6.6 billion bill but Thames Water, a private company with shareholders. The government is to underwrite the risk, which means that it will act as the financier of last resort in the case of major problems during the construction, but it will otherwise not pay for the new system.

There is a catch, of course: it is actually the customers of Thames Water who are paying for the project with higher water bills, a prospect almost as horrendous to today’s Londoners as the river’s stench was to their 19th-century forebears. Water bills for Thames Water’s 14 million customers in and around London are to rise to as much as $700 annually from $570 for the foreseeable future, the company said. The money will be used to repay the initial investors, who will also own the new system. And even then, the tunnel will remain the property of the company, a prospect that further rankles.

A variety of local politicians and industry experts say the plan is akin to pouring money down the drain, that construction estimates are far too low, and that there are cheaper and less disruptive alternatives. “The costs might end up at 10 billion pounds,” or about $16.16 billion, said Nicholas Botterill, council leader of Hammersmith and Fulham, districts in southwest London, “and I don’t want the country to waste that much money.”

It would also be unpleasant for people living close to the construction sites, he said. Even the engineer who initially planned the new sewage tunnel, Chris Binnie, is now saying two smaller and far less costly tunnels might suffice.

Mr. Bazalgette’s system cost about $6 million, now the equivalent of about $6 billion, according to Thames Water, but it transformed central London. For example, he narrowed the Thames by building Victoria Embankment, an elegant road and walkway that housed not only the sewerage tunnel but also one of the first subways.

The scope of today’s planned project is no less intimidating. The new tunnel would run mainly beneath the Thames to intercept sewage before it reached the river and to transport it to sewage treatment plants. The tunnel would be more than 15 miles long, more than 200 feet deep and large enough to fit three London double-decker buses next to one another.

Ann Rosenberg, a retired BBC journalist, lives a block away from one of the planned construction sites for the sewer in Parsons Green. “The thing that sticks in my throat,” she said, “is that I will be paying for this until I die, and then my children will pay for this tunnel, which none of us will own but which will go into the asset base of Thames Water and its investors.”

Ms. Rosenberg is also concerned about other problems. “It’s going to be intolerable and will affect people’s health,” she said from her three-bedroom house, where she has lived for 30 years. “They talk about large vehicles every 15 minutes. It will impact our air quality.”

Michael Gerrard, the managing director of the sewerage project for Thames Water, said Londoners have to contribute to their city’s future. “If you want London to grow you must invest in the infrastructure,” he said. “If nothing is done you’ll have a public health issue.”

Thames Water does not deny that there will be some disturbance and said it would pay for the double glazing of residents’ windows to protect against the noise or even move residents should the construction become unbearable. But details of when and under what circumstances such help would be offered remained vague.

“There will be disruptions and costs and people want it to go away, but I don’t have the power to do that,” Mr. Gerrard said. “I wish there were alternatives.”

Ms. Rosenberg and others say there are. Mr. Binnie, who recommended the new sewer in 2006, now argues that two smaller sewers would suffice and cut costs by about $2.4 billion. New ways to treat sewage and prediction of total sewage flows have changed over the last six years, and Thames Water should at least revisit its options, he said.

One of those options, according to Clean Thames Now and Always, a nonprofit organization that opposes the supersewer, is to create more green spaces in the city that could naturally absorb rainwater instead of pushing it down the sewer. Another is to improve the water quality by injecting oxygen into the river.

“We want the project to be looked at again,” said Mr. Botterill, the council leader. “We want a better environmental, social and economic solution. Everybody who looks at this seriously comes to the conclusion that it’s not the best solution.”

Thames Water has said that such ideas are both ineffective and short term. It would take new green spaces the size of 40 Hyde Parks to start alleviating the sewage problem, the company said. “And anyway,” said Phil Stride, a Thames Water executive, “you’re not going to make everyone happy all the time.”

Greek police appeal over mystery blonde girl

Greek police are trying to discover the identity of a young blonde girl who was found living on a Roma settlement with a family she did not resemble.

DNA tests revealed the child, called Maria and aged about four, was not related to the couple she lived with.

The little girl is now being looked after by a charity. Her photo has been released to help find her family.

Officials believe she may have been a victim of abduction or child trafficking.

Police are appealing internationally as the girl looks like she might be from northern or eastern Europe.

The charity, Smile of the Child, told the BBC that the girl was frightened and neglected when she arrived in their care but that in overall good health and was now more relaxed.

It said it had received many calls since the appeal was launched.

A spokesman for the British couple Kate and Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal in 2007, said the case gave them "great hope" that she would one day be found alive.

Raid

Police raided the Roma camp, near Farsala in central Greece, to search for drugs and weapons.

They noticed the lack of resemblance between the blonde-haired, green-eyed, pale-skinned little girl and her parents, and found further discrepancies when they investigated the family's documents.

The couple had registered different numbers of children with different regional family registries.

The woman claimed to have given birth to six children within a 10-month period.

When questioned about how they came to have Maria, the couple gave "constantly changing claims," Thessalia Province Police Director Vassilis Halatsis said.

"The girl might have been abducted from a hospital, or given up by an unmarried mother," the officer said.

"So far we do not have a declared disappearance of a child of this age in Greece. Through Interpol, we will request assistance from the other European countries."

The 39-year-old man and his 40-year-old wife have been arrested on suspicion of abducting a minor.

The president of Smile of the Child, Kostas Yannopoulos, said the girl was being used to beg on the streets.

Snowden leaks: France summons US envoy over spying claims

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has summoned the US ambassador over newspaper claims that the US spied on millions of phone calls in France.

France has labelled such activity between allies as "unacceptable".

Le Monde says the data, based on leaks from ex-intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, suggest the US NSA agency monitored businesses and officials as well as terrorism suspects.

The intercepts were apparently triggered by certain key words.

The paper says the National Security Agency (NSA) spied on 70.3 million phone calls in France in just 30 days between December 10 last year and January 8, 2013.

The agency also apparently captured millions of text messages.

It was unclear whether the content of the calls and messages was stored, or just the metadata - the details of who is speaking to whom.

And the paper did not say whether the operation, codenamed US-985D, was still in progress.

Mr Fabius announced that he had summoned the US ambassador to discuss the claims "immediately".

Interior Minister Manuel Valls had earlier said the allegations were "shocking", and added: "If an allied country spies on France, this is totally unacceptable."

The BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris says the outrage is largely for public consumption, because the French government has been accused of running its own snooping operation similar to the US.

Le Monde reported in July that the French government stores vast amounts of personal data of its citizens on a supercomputer at the headquarters of the DGSE intelligence service.

Connections inside France and between France and other countries were all monitored, Le Monde reported. Emails, text messages, telephone and internet browsing records are stored for years, it said.

The latest revelations follow claims in the German media that US agents hacked into the email account of former Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Edward Snowden, a former NSA worker, went public with revelations about US spying operations in June.

The information he leaked led to claims of systematic spying by the NSA and CIA on a global scale.

Targets included rivals like China and Russia, as well as allies like the EU and Brazil.

The NSA was also forced to admit it captured email and phone data from millions of Americans.

Mr Snowden is currently in Russia, where he was granted a year-long visa after making an asylum application.

The US wants him extradited to face trial on criminal charges.

Two Girls Among Four Dead in Attack on Egypt Church Wedding (1)

Egypt boosted security at churches after gunmen killed four people during an attack on a wedding ceremony, the latest attack on the country’s minority Christians following the ousting of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

The shooting outside St. Mary’s Church in the Warraq district of Giza left eight-year-old and 12-year-old girls dead and drew condemnation from both the military-backed government and the Muslim Brotherhood organization that has been the target of a crackdown since Mursi was removed from power on July 3. Four people were subsequently arrested, the state-run Ahram Gate website reported.

Yesterday’s attack also left 17 others injured, Health Ministry spokesman Mohamed Fathallah said in a phone interview today. Prime Minister Hazem El Beblawi condemned the incident and described it as a “criminal cowardly act,” according to an e-mailed statement.

Dozens of Christian buildings were attacked in August as Egypt erupted in violence after police broke up sit-ins by Islamist supporters of Mursi. About 10 percent of the country’s approximately 85-million population is Coptic Christian, a community which analysts say is blamed by some Egyptians for supporting Mursi’s ouster.

“Such despicable acts won’t succeed in dividing the nation’s Muslims and Christians” El Beblawi said, pledging police would do everything possible to bring the perpetrators to justice.

‘Sectarian Violence

The shooting is emblematic of the rifts in Egypt society. Christians who had already complained of discrimination under ousted President Hosni Mubarak say that the ouster of Mursi and the targeting of the Brotherhood will further stoke sectarian tensions and leave them more vulnerable.

“The attack is part of the recent escalating sectarian violence against Copts in the country” says Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a group in Cairo that monitors civil liberties. The shooting “is the first of its kind recently in Cairo, and also the fact that it’s doesn’t involve only looting churches or Christians houses, but also” seeks to kill Christians. Ibrahim says the attack was revenge for Christians supporting Mursi’s ouster.

At least 15 cases of kidnapping of Christians for ransom were reported in the last two weeks in the southern province of Minya, according to Ibrahim.

The Muslim Brotherhood, from which Mursi hails, also condemned the violence, blaming the incident on the lack of police protection, according to an e-mailed statement.

The nature of the recent assaults sets them apart from the more common religious tension that occasionally boils over into violence between Muslims and Christians, over such things as land disputes and love affairs.

Hurricane Raymond strengthens, seen missing Mexican coast

The first major hurricane of the Eastern Pacific season strengthened as it came to a halt off Mexico early on Monday but forecasters expected it to head out to sea later in the week and miss the coast.

Communities on Mexico's southern Pacific coast battened down the hatches on Sunday night as Hurricane Raymond rumbled slowly toward Acapulco, where storms wrecking homes, roads and cars and stranded tourists last month.

The Miami-based National Hurricane Center upgraded Raymond in the early hours of Monday to category three from category two, saying winds speeds had picked up to 120 miles per hour.

But it had stopped moving about 100 nautical miles off Mexico, was likely to remain stationary on Monday, then move westwards out to sea by late Tuesday or Wednesday.

"Guidance no longer brings the hurricane inland and if this trend continues the warnings for Mexico could be altered," the NHC said on its website.

Heavy rainfall would continue over south-central Mexico during the next few days, causing life-threatening flash floods and mud slides, it said.

Late on Sunday, authorities closed schools in Acapulco, the port of Lazaro Cardenas and other parts of the southwestern coastline of Mexico threatened by Raymond.

Mexico has no major oil installations in the path of the hurricane.

Hurricane alerts were issued from Acapulco, which lies in Guerrero state, to Lazaro Cardenas to the northwest in Michoacan state.

Angel Aguirre, the governor of Guerrero, urged people to leave areas at high risk of flooding, and Michoacan's government said all maritime activity and road travel should be avoided.

Mexico suffered its worst floods on record in mid-September when tropical storms Manuel and Ingrid converged from the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, killing more than 150 people and causing damage estimated at around $6 billion.

Acapulco, whose economy relies heavily on tourism, reported its worst hotel occupancy rates on record after those storms and was only just beginning to recover.

Up to 15 cm (6 inches) of rain could hit the coast, Mexico's national meteorological service (SMN) forecast.

Mexico's Gulf Coast is also facing heavy rains due to the advance of a cold front from the north, the government said.

The flooding, mudslides and displacement of thousands of people caused by the recent storms have heightened the risk of waterborne illness in Mexico. The country has recorded its first local transmission of cholera in just over a decade.

Five killed in Pakistan train bombing

At least five passengers were killed and 16 wounded when a train was bombed and derailed in restive southwest Pakistan on Monday, officials said.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the bombing, but arid western Baluchistan province is home to several separatist insurgents besides the Taliban and banned sectarian groups.

The train was travelling from the garrison city of Rawalpindi to the provincial capital, Quetta. Several carriages were destroyed in the explosion, which took place 200 km (124 miles) from Quetta, one of Pakistan's most violent cities.

"The explosives had apparently been planted on the railway tracks as the explosion created a crater several feet deep," said provincial government official Asad Gillani.

Most of the passengers were returning to Quetta after celebrating holidays at home, said another official. There were three brothers among the dead.

Separatist insurgents in Baluchistan accuse the government of exploiting the mineral-rich region while leaving inhabitants in poverty.

Maria mystery deepens with claims her father came to visit

Neighbours of a Roma couple accused of keeping a kidnapped toddler at their encampment in Greece claimed last night that her real father had come to look for her soon after she was taken away by police.

The four-year-old, known only as Maria, is the subject of an international police inquiry after Greek police released her photograph at the weekend, appealing for her parents to come forward.

A Roma couple from the village of Farsala in central Greece are due in court today accused of abducting her from her natural parents, whom police believe are either from northern or eastern Europe – in a case that has invited comparisons with the missing British girl Madeleine McCann.

Last night, though, fellow residents of Farsala's ramshackle gipsy quarter claimed that the couple had a long-standing arrangement with a Bulgarian family to look after the girl, who had lived in Farsala since she was a baby.

Babis Dimitriou, the chairman of the Farsala village Roma association, told The Daily Telegraph: "There was a Bulgarian husband and wife who were working around Greece in temporary jobs, who used to stay here sometimes.

"At one point they left the girl to be raised by the family here in the village.

"The family raised the child as if it was their own, although her father would come back every now and then to see her. The last time he visited was only five days ago, after the arrests had been made.

"All the other Roma here were telling the Bulgarian man to explain to the police that the girl was his, but he has now disappeared." While Mr Dimitriou's account was backed by other residents, Greek police are continuing to investigate the possibility that the blonde, blue-eyed child had been taken without her parents' consent.

Several other theories are emerging as to the origins of the girl.

A couple from Thessaloniki have gone to the police and said that Maria could be their daughter, after their child was reported to have died at birth. The couple claim that they exhumed the coffin and found the body was missing.

"We suspected that our child had fallen victim to traffickers, and was not dead as initially we had been told," the father told Greece's Star newspaper. He had never seen her body, he said.

"And since then we have been looking for our child," he said. Their child was born in 2009 – making her the same age as Maria – and the father, who has near relatives in Scandinavia, said there were many common features and characteristics with his family and Maria. A son, born since they lost their daughter, has the same coloured eyes.

The father said that they were waiting for the results of the DNA tests, and if Maria was their lost child they would take her back. If not, they would carry on their search.

Another theory is that Maria was put up for adoption, but then rejected owing to "problems" with her eyes.

The police have refused to comment on the claims.

The arrested couple allegedly gave police varying accounts as to how she came to be with them, at one point claiming that she had been abandoned outside a supermarket, and at another saying that she been given to them by her Bulgarian mother. Yesterday, a British expert on missing persons inquiries said that the appeal through Interpol had generated a huge response.

Charlie Hedges, the manager for missing and abducted children at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, part of the newly-formed National Crime Agency, said: "The responses to this particular inquiry have run into the thousands, with quite a few calls from families wondering if this girl may be theirs.

"The challenge in this case is to find out from a four-year-old girl what her original background is, as she may not have that much knowledge of it herself." Yesterday, the family of Ben Needham, a British toddler who disappeared from his grandparents' home on the Greek island of Kos in 1991, said they hoped the case might offer new leads to his disappearance.

Mr Hedges said that while the UK Missing Persons Bureau was checking its databases for children who might be Maria, there was as yet "no specific lead to the UK".

It has been speculated that forensic anthropologists could be used to help identify roughly where the girl came from by studying her facial features, although last night, an expert in the field said that would be difficult.

Prof Sue Black, of the University of Dundee, said: "There is no way in which facial appearance can pin people to a particular part of the world any more because we are so cosmopolitan." Instead, she said that social, linguistic or cultural anthropologists could try to tease out whether the girl knew any words of a particular language.

The encampment where Maria was found is one of three on the outskirts of Farsala, a town of 18,000 people about 200 miles north-west of Athens.

Police carried out a drug raid there on Wednesday, and discovered her living in a single-storey shack on a street where barefoot children play among chickens, cats and dogs.

Yesterday, locals insisted that the girl had been well looked after, with her adoptive mother taking her to a local clinic occasionally for treatment for an eye problem.

"This gipsy mother was the only mother this girl has ever had," said Christos Lioupis, a Greek farmer with many Roma friends locally. "The biological mother was not her real one because she abandoned the girl." A Greek television station interviewed a man calling himself Kostas, who claimed to be the brother of the arrested man and said the girl was very loved and cared for. "We got this girl in a very nice way," he said. "We raised her. We got her. She was given to us and we raised her." However, the director of the Greek charity that is now caring for Maria said he suspected that she had been used for begging by her adoptive Roma family.

Costas Giannopoulos, the director of the Child's Smile organisation, told the BBC: "They will use this little girl in the streets to beg because she was blonde and cute." Authorities alleged that the Roma mother claimed to have given birth to six children in a total of less than 10 months, while 10 of the 14 children that the couple registered as their own are unaccounted for.

Greek television also broadcast a video, said to have been handed to police by the arrested couple, in which the girl was shown dancing in a backyard.

Her hair appeared to be darker than in the pictures which emerged following her release, suggesting it had possibly been dyed to disguise her.

A spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, who have been searching for their daughter since she vanished from their holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007, said the discovery of the girl in Greece gave them renewed hope that they would find Madeleine alive.