Dogs May Have Evolved From Two Different Wolf Populations

AND AT LEAST ONE FOX POPULATION

A massive new wolf family tree dating back 100,000 years could help researchers understand where dogs were first domesticated

Sarah Kuta
SMITHSONIAN
Daily Correspondent

June 30, 2022

Scientists are studying ancient wolves to better understand the domestication of dogs. Pixabay

Scientists—and plenty of doting dog owners—have long wondered when and where wolves began their evolution to become humanity’s best friend.

And though they haven’t fully solved it, researchers have now added a big, new piece to the dog domestication puzzle. Today’s modern dogs may have descended from two separate populations of ancient wolves: one in eastern Asia and another in the Middle East, according to a new paper published this week in Nature.

While two distinct domestication events are possible, another explanation is that dogs were domesticated in one location, then later bred with wolves elsewhere, intermixing their DNA.

“We can’t tell [the two different] scenarios apart,” says Anders Bergström, an evolutionary genomicist at the Francis Crick Institute and an author of the study, to the New York Times' Emily Anthes. “But we can say that there were at least two source populations of wolves.”

Many dog owners have wondered about how wolves evolved into docile family pets. 

Sarah Kuta

Researchers generally agree that modern-day dogs evolved from grey wolves (Canis lupus) at least 15,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. But nearly everything else about the domestication of dogs is a mystery, including when, where and with what group of humans wolves began to evolve into dogs. Past research has concluded that dogs may have been first domesticated in Asia, Europe, the Middle East or, possibly, in multiple locations.

This new paper doesn’t pinpoint the exact location of dog domestication, but it does offer some important insights into wolf genetics. More than 80 researchers from 16 countries joined together for this research, which involved sequencing the genomes of 66 ancient wolves and analyzing six additional previously sequenced genomes from archival remains. The wolves analyzed in this study lived in Europe, Siberia and North America over the last 100,000 years.

With the sequenced genomes in hand, the researchers used computer software to compare and contrast the 72 animals with the genome of today’s dogs, creating an ancient genetic family tree.

As a whole, the research creates a much more “detailed picture of wolf ancestry, including around the time of dog origins,” Bergström says in a statement, which will undoubtedly help scientists get one step closer to figuring out exactly when and where dogs were domesticated.

“Having this many ancient wolf genomes is a huge advance in the field,” Adam Boyko, a canine geneticist at Cornell University who was not involved in the study, tells the New York Times. “I’m sure other researchers are going to love to get their hands on it and explore some of their own pet theories.”

Despite the diversity of wolf DNA, the researchers didn’t find a singular ancient wolf that is directly related to all modern dogs. But they did learn that dogs are more similar genetically to ancient wolves in Asia than wolves in Europe, which builds on previous research that suggests dogs likely originated somewhere in Asia.

The samples “help narrow down the place of origin,” says Yohey Terai, an evolutionary biologist at Japan’s Graduate University for Advanced Studies who was not involved in this paper, to Science’s Michael Price.

"Dogor," an 18,000-year-old wolf pup that was included in the study Courtesy of Sergey Fedorov

To more directly link dogs with an ancient wolf population, researchers simply need more specimens from all around the world, particularly from samples from the southern hemisphere. But that’s challenging because DNA is best preserved in colder climates, hence the more abundant samples from the northern hemisphere used in this study.

“There are still big parts of the map where we don’t have many samples,” Bergström tells the New Scientist’s Jason Arunn Murugesu.

The scientists were also surprised to learn how genetically connected the various wolf populations remained over tens of thousands of years around the world, which suggests the canines likely traveled and mated periodically. That may have allowed wolves to survive the end of the Ice Age, while many other mammals went extinct, per the New York Times.

In addition, the study answered a question that had been perplexing researchers since archaeologists uncovered an 18,000-year-old pup in Siberia in 2019: Was it a wolf or a dog? After studying its genetics, the scientists determined it was a wolf.

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.

The first dogs evolved from wolves in Asia — and maybe the Middle East — a study of ice age DNA suggests

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Wed, June 29, 2022 

"Dogor," an 18,000-year-old wolf puppy from Yakutia that was included in the study.Sergey Fedorov

• Ice age Siberian wolf DNA is similar to early and modern dog DNA, a study of 100,000 years of wolves found.

• The finding adds to evidence that dogs were domesticated in Central Asia during the last ice age.

• The study also found genetic links between a subgroup of dogs and ancient wolves in the Middle East.

Dogs are one of humankind's greatest historical mysteries. Nobody is quite sure where they came from, but a new analysis of ancient wolf DNA points to somewhere in Asia.

A cohort of geneticists, led by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, analyzed the genomes of 72 ancient wolves that were excavated across Europe, Siberia, and North America. The DNA spanned 100,000 years and 30,000 generations of wolves.

Then the researchers compared the wolf DNA to genomes of modern and ancient dogs. The dogs were most similar to gray wolves in Siberia about 13,000 to 23,000 years ago — during the last ice age.

A person holds a dog at the 2022 NYC Pride parade, in New York City, on June 26, 2022.Brendan McDermid/Reuters

"That's consistent with a wolf population from Central Asia leading to the origin of dogs," Adam Boyko, a canine geneticist at Cornell University, who was not involved in the study, told Insider. His own research analyzing the genomes of village dogs across the world — the semi-feral kind that aren't bred for particular traits — has pointed to the same region as the origin of dog domestication.

"Now we've got this mirror image dog-wolf analysis, both pointing to Central Asia as an origin," he said. Still, he cautioned, "I don't think that the final story has been written yet."

Ancient dogs in the Middle East, Africa, and Southern Europe also show ancestry from wolves in the Middle East, in addition to their Central Asian roots. That could indicate either a second instance of domestication in the Middle East, or dogs there interbreeding with wild wolves.

The researchers published their study in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

The new genetic history of ancient wolves shows evolution in real time

"Dogor" has a full set of teeth.Sergey Fedorov

With their new library of ancient DNA, the researchers could see wolves changing over the ages.

"This is the first time scientists have directly tracked natural selection in a large animal over a time-scale of 100,000 years, seeing evolution play out in real time rather than trying to reconstruct it from DNA today," Pontus Skoglund, study author and leader of the Francis Crick Institute's ancient genomics lab, said in a press release.

They saw one gene variant, which affects the development of skull and jaw bones, go from an anomaly to showing up in every wolf's DNA over a period of 10,000 years. Scientists think that variant is present in all wolves and dogs today.

The work is similar to the ancient DNA analysis that has revealed how genetic mutations, like the one that allowed humans to digest lactose, emerged in humans and spread across the globe.

Rescued pugs Jinny Lu and China Su sit in a stroller before the World's Ugliest Dog contest in Petaluma, California, on June 24, 2022.Nathan Frandino/Reuters

Like Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, dogs and wolves have mingled and interbred as long as the two species have existed. That's made it difficult for scientists to trace genetic traits passing from one species to the other, and even more difficult to pinpoint when and where dogs were first domesticated.

No modern-day wolf population is more genetically similar to dogs' ancestors than any other modern-day wolf population. Overall, ancient wolves are more similar to other ancient wolves on the other side of the continent than they are to modern-day wolves living in the same areas. Ancient wolves traveled great distances and bred, sharing their genes across those distances.

An Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus) exercises at Basondo Animal Refuge, in Kortezubi, Spain, on February 8, 2021.Vincent West/Reuters

"This connectivity is perhaps a reason why wolves managed to survive the ice age, while many other large carnivores vanished," Skoglund said.

That connectivity also makes an especially tangled ball of genetic yarn for researchers to unravel as they try to link dog domestication to a single wolf population. This study adds to the evidence for a single instance of domestication somewhere in Asia.

The Francis Crick Institute researchers are now turning their attention to genomes from other locations that weren't included in this study, in hopes of narrowing down where exactly domestication happened.

Trumpet, a bloodhound, appears after winning best in show at the 146th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, in New York City, on June 23, 2022.Jeenah Moon/Reuters

Boyko has still more questions about the domestication of Asian gray wolves, including how humans in the area at that time fit into the picture.

"After that happened is when we had the domestication of wheat, and the domestication of cats, and the domestication of cattle and pigs and all of the other species that go with being a modern human," Boyko told Insider.

"But dogs were the first. To what extent do we need domestic dogs before we had agriculture? Or is it just by chance that it happened in that order? It's kind of interesting to think about, staring into your dog's eyes and wondering what actually brought the wolf out of the den and into the campsite."

SETI
Humans are making it hard to listen for aliens


Anjali Nair

Denise Chow
Sat, July 2, 2022

Dan Werthimer has spent more than four decades trying to eavesdrop on aliens.

A pioneering researcher in the field of astronomy known as SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Werthimer's work involves scanning the cosmos with huge, ground-based radio telescopes to look for strange or unexplained signals that may have originated from alien civilizations.

If it sounds a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, that's because it sort of is.

In recent years, however, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has become even more complicated. Increasing demands for mobile services and wireless internet have crowded the radio spectrum, creating interference that can skew data and add "noise" to scientific results.

"Earth is just getting more and more polluted," said Werthimer, chief technologist at the Berkeley SETI Research Center. "With some radio bands, it's already impossible to do SETI because they're so full of television transmitters, WiFI and cellphone bands."

As wireless technologies continue to grow, the problem will only get worse, Werthimer said, potentially jeopardizing one of the key ways that scientists have to search for intelligent life in the universe.

Werthimer was recently one of the authors of a pre-print study led by Chinese researchers that identified a radio signal that several news outlets mistakenly reported as having characteristics of an alien civilization. The signal was actually found to have been radio interference, Werthimer clarified.

Focused SETI research began in earnest in the 1980s, and was cemented in popular culture with the 1985 novel "Contact" by Carl Sagan, which was later adapted into a film in 1997 starring Jodie Foster.

At its heart, SETI research aims to answer the question: Are we alone in the universe? In the decades since scientists first started listening for alien signals, improvements in telescope technology and data processing have bolstered the search, Werthimer said.

"We used to listen to one channel, and now we're listening to 10 billion channels," he said. "The technology and science keeps improving."

Those leaps in technology, however, have come with their share of challenges. More satellites are being launched into low-Earth orbit than ever before as a result of falling launch costs and cheaper materials to build spacecraft. Society's growing reliance on wireless internet and GPS navigation also means more competition for radio frequencies.

"It's valuable spectrum and people want more and more of it for everyday activities," said Paul Horowitz, an emeritus professor of physics and electrical engineering at Harvard University and a prominent SETI researcher. "All that means is the radio spectrum is a mess these days."

For SETI scientists, having relatively clear and unobstructed channels to scan the cosmos is invaluable. Errant human interference not only creates more work for researchers to filter out, but can present itself as a falsely intriguing signal.

It's a conundrum that astronomers are all too familiar with, said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

To avoid red herrings, scientists often rely on repeatability, which can involve studying the same target for extended periods to compare observations. Other times, researchers use what is known about human-caused interference to winnow down their results.

"At the same time that all these satellites are being launched, our knowledge about what's in space is also increasing," said Siemion, who is also a principal investigator for Breakthrough Listen, a 10-year, $100 million initiative to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life that was launched in 2015 by Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.

He added that increased situational awareness in space makes it easier to identify satellites and other forms of human interference.

"It helps us know that we're not fooling ourselves by looking at a signal from a satellite and thinking that it's from a distant celestial source," Siemion said.

Advancements in machine learning are also making it faster and easier for scientists to filter interference out of their data, said Bruce Betts, chief scientist at The Planetary Society, which has been involved with SETI research since the organization was founded in 1980.

Betts said these improvements in processing should ensure that SETI research can continue in the years ahead.

"Even if you have more sources of interference, they're still going to follow certain frequency patterns and certain timing patterns," he said. "Adding hundreds of more satellites that all produce the same interference is really annoying, but you can develop systems to remove that."

As the field of SETI research has evolved, so too have other ideas for how to avoid interference in the future. Werthimer, Horowitz and others, for instance, are investigating ways to search for alien civilizations in the optical part of the spectrum.

Others have suggested installing a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, where it would be shielded from interference from Earth. While technically feasible, such a project would carry significant costs, Horowitz said.

"SETI has struggled with almost zero government support for the last few decades, so nobody is going to want to do that in a fiscally constrained time period," he added.

Yet in spite of technical and funding challenges, interest in SETI research has grown over time, according to Betts. Much of that can be attributed to the tantalizing possibility of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, he said.

"More than most other discoveries, it would reframe a lot of our philosophical views of the universe," he said. "Yeah, it's a needle in the haystack, but if you find that needle, you’ve got one of the most profound discoveries in history."

CURSE MAGICK

Charges dropped against man who nailed Putin doll to sacred tree in Japan as part of death curse



Michelle De Pacina
Thu, June 30, 2022 

The charges against the elderly man who was arrested for nailing a straw doll bearing the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin onto a sacred tree in Japan have been dropped.

Mitsunobu Hino, 72, was arrested last month on suspicion of property damage and trespassing in the area of Matsudo’s Mikazuki Shrine.

Hino was accused of hammering two holes measuring 1.6 inches deep into the sacred castanopsis tree by nailing the straw doll to it. The “wara ningyo” doll, which is used in Japan as a part of a supernatural ritual to wish death or harm to a person, also came with a note that read, “Vladimir Putin, born 7 October 1952. Pray for his extermination.”

Hino was released from police custody on June 27 after investigators said the shrine had withdrawn the charges for property damage.

“The victim has withdrawn the complaint,” a spokesperson for the Chiba Public Prosecutor’s Office’s Matsudo division said, according to SoraNews24.

The reason for the disposition has not been disclosed.

Other Putin straw dolls have been found at more than 10 shrines in Matsudo since May. The police believe the acts were all done by Hino due to the similarity in the dolls’ sizes and the handwriting on the dolls’ accompanying notes. If evidence against Hino surfaces, the other shrines may still file complaints against him.

SNAFU

Navy report: Multiple errors poisoned Pearl Harbor water





Adm. John Aquilino, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command commander, speaks at a news conference at Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii on Thursday, June 30, 2022. A Navy investigation released Thursday revealed that shoddy management and human error caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor's tap water last year, poisoning thousands of people and forcing military families to evacuate their homes for hotels. 

(AP Photo/Audrey McAvoy)More

AUDREY McAVOY
Thu, June 30, 2022 

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — A Navy investigation released Thursday revealed that shoddy management and human error caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor's tap water last year, poisoning thousands of people and forcing military families to evacuate their homes for hotels.

The investigation is the first detailed account of how jet fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, a massive World War II-era military-run tank farm in the hills above Pearl Harbor, leaked into a well that supplied water to housing and offices in and around the sprawling base. Some 6,000 people suffered nausea, headaches, rashes and other symptoms.

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After months of resistance, the military in April agreed to an order from the state of Hawaii to drain the tanks and close the Red Hill facility. A separate report the Defense Department provided to the state Department of Health on Thursday said December 2024 was the earliest it could defuel the tanks safely.

The investigation report listed a cascading series of mistakes from May 6, 2021, when operator error caused a pipe to rupture and 21,000 gallons (80,000 liters) of fuel to spill when fuel was being transferred between tanks. Most of this fuel spilled into a fire suppression line and sat there for six months, causing the line to sag. A cart rammed into this sagging line on Nov. 20, releasing 20,000 gallons (75,700 liters) of fuel.

The area where the cart hit the line isn't supposed to have fuel, and so the officials who responded to the spill didn't have the right equipment to capture the liquid.

“The team incorrectly assumes that all of the fuel has been sopped up," Adm. Sam Paparo, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told reporters at a news conference. About 5,000 gallons (19,000 liters) wasn't recovered.


"Meanwhile, over the course of eight days, that fuel enters into this French drain that is under the concrete and seeps slowly and quietly into the Red Hill well. And that fuel into the Red Hill well is then pumped into the Navy system,” Paparo said.

Red Hill officials thought that only 1,618 gallons (6,125 liters) had leaked in the May spill and that they recovered all but 38 gallons (144 liters). They noticed that one of the tanks was short 20,000 gallons (75,700 liters) but believed it had flowed through the pipes and didn't realize it had flown into the fire suppression line. They didn't report the discrepancy to senior leadership.

After the November spill when people started getting sick, the military moved about 4,000 mostly military families into hotels for months while they waited for their water to be safe again.

The spill contaminated the Navy's water system. Fuel didn't get into the Honolulu municipal water supply. But concerns the oil might migrate through the aquifer and get into the city's wells prompted the Honolulu Board of Water Supply in December to shut down a key well serving some 400,000 people. The agency has been asking residents to conserve water because of this and unusually dry weather.

The report said officials defaulted to assuming the best about what was happening when the spills occurred, instead of assuming the worst, and this contributed to their overlooking the severity of situation.

Paparo said the Navy was trying to move away from that. He called it an ongoing process “to get real with ourselves” and “being honest about our deficiencies.”

He recommended that the Navy review operations at 48 defense fuel storage facilities worldwide.

“We cannot assume Red Hill represents an outlier, and similar problems may exist at other locations,” Paparo wrote in the report.

The vice chief of naval operations has assigned the head of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, a four-star admiral, to determine disciplinary measures for those in uniform. Recommendations regarding civilian employees will be sent to their supervisors, Paparo said.

The report said the investigation revealed that poor training and supervision, ineffective leadership and an absence of ownership regarding operational safety also contributed to the incident.

“The lack of critical thinking, intellectual rigor, and self-assessment by key leaders at decisive moments exemplified a culture of complacency and demonstrated a lack of professionalism that is demanded by the high consequence nature of fuel operations,” the report said.

In particular, the investigation highlighted a February 2021 decision by the commanding officer of Fleet Logistics Center Pearl Harbor to remove uniformed military oversight from day-to-day operations at Red Hill. The report said this significantly increased the risks of fuel handling operations.

It also noted key leaders at the scene of the November 2021 spill failed to exercise a sense of urgency, critical thinking, forceful backup and timely and effective communication demanded “by the seriousness of the situation.”

U.S. Rep. Kaiali'i Kahele said the Navy repeatedly said Red Hill was a vital part of U.S. national defense yet it was left for decades without proper oversight. He said this shows a lack of leadership, investment and gross negligence.

“The Navy’s report states that the fuel leaks at Red Hill on May and November 2021 were preventable. This is shocking and deeply concerning," Kahele, a Democrat from Hawaii, said in a statement.

David Henkin, an attorney for Earthjustice, which has been filing legal challenges against the facility, said the Navy has failed to learn from its mistakes.

“Rather than act swiftly to remove the more than 100 million gallons of toxic fuel that remain perched over Oahu’s sole source aquifer, the Navy proposes to take another two and a half years — until the end of 2024 — to defuel the Red Hill tanks,” he said. "That is completely unacceptable.”

A Third of Global GDP Now Generated

in Non-Democracies

Tom Orlik (Economist), Scott Johnson (Economist) and Björn van Roye (Economist)

Fri, July 1, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- A more fragmented global economy appears to have arrived, with a third of output now generated in non-democratic countries, according to calculations by Bloomberg Economics. In different ways and to different degrees, Brexit, the US-China trade war, the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have moved the world away from free-market principles, toward a messier system where narrow nationalism and fractious geopolitics loom large in trade and investment decisions. It’s far from clear where that process will end: A new Cold War between democratic and autocratic states is one possibility. A multipolar world with rival power centers in Washington, Beijing, Brussels and New Delhi is another.

DR Congo drug manufacturing plan sparks safety concerns

Emmet Livingstone
Sat, July 2, 2022 

Sitting at his desk overlooking a pharmaceutical factory floor on the outskirts of the Congolese capital Kinshasa, Joss Ilunga Dijimba, 52, cracked a jovial smile.

"It's not easy doing business in Congo," he said.

His family was forced to relocate the factory in the 1990s to survive bouts of mass looting. And nowadays, there are onerous taxes, customs duties, and problems retaining talented staff.

His company, which employs about 40 people and produces generics such as paracetamol, is one of a tiny number of drug manufacturers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an impoverished nation roughly the size of Western Europe.

But a government plan to require hospitals and NGOs to buy more locally produced drugs could soon boost the fledgling pharmaceutical industry -- despite fears in some quarters that safety standards are far below international norms.

Several NGOs, some of which provide medical care in the DRC's conflict-torn east, have requested opt-outs.

At the small Pharmagros plant, behind barbed-wire walls near the Congo river, men in hairnets and white coats formulate medicines with imported precursor using lab equipment in airconditioned rooms.

"Promoting local industry's a good thing," said Dijimba, a University of Texas graduate, insisting that several Congolese firms, including his, maintained high standards.

"It could grow the middle class."

About 73 percent of the DRC's population of 90 million lives on under $1.9 a day, according to the World Bank. Most products in the African country are imported.
- 'At your own peril' -

The Congolese government has designated 35 drug molecules, including paracetamol, that medical facilities will be required to purchase in locally made form.

The government wants to stimulate business without banning imports, said Donatien Kabamb Kabey, the pharmaceuticals director at the DRC's health ministry.

He explained that all the molecules can be replaced with imported equivalents, suggesting that ibuprofen could replace paracetamol, for example.

Although not yet implemented, the policy already appears to be working.

Fifteen new pharma businesses are setting up in the DRC ahead of the new rules, Kabey said, which will add to the existing 24.

The policy was partly designed to encourage factories to return after fleeing the country in the 1990s, he added, when unpaid soldiers went on the rampage towards the end of ex-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko's reign.

But experts warn that Congolese-made medicines face a major challenge: reassuring doctors and patients that they meet regulatory standards.

"When you go to the private sector in Congo, you do it at your own peril," said Ed Vreeke, who runs the Belgium-based independent pharmaceutical auditing firm Quamed.

"They know darn well that the quality they produce is not good."

Vreeke said Congolese regulators had improved, but the country lacked the massive resources needed to properly perform audits, check labels, and inspect the chemical composition of drugs for safety.

Kabey, whose department at the health ministry oversees inspections, said standards had improved "enormously" in recent years, but did not provide further details.

He said the government was establishing a national quality-control lab.
- 'A huge thing' -

Shoddy or falsified medicines kill hundreds of thousands of people every year, according to the World Health Organization, mostly in poor countries.

The DRC's hot and humid climate also poses storage problems.

A 2021 study of both imported and locally produced eye drops sold in Kinshasa, for example, showed that three out of the seven products tested were substandard. The one sample manufactured in the DRC was contaminated.

Outside a pharmacy in Kinshasa's upmarket Gombe district, clutching a bag of medicines, 29-year-old corporate lawyer Joelle Mamputu said she didn't pay attention to where drugs were made but said she had "no prejudice".


However, a 52-year-old public servant named Olivier said there was "quite a difference" between Congolese and foreign drugs.

He added he would buy Congolese drugs were the quality the same.

Despite official assurances, major international NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and Medecins du Monde (MDM) have requested opt-outs from the purchasing requirements, several humanitarian workers said.

MSF declined to comment.

MDM confirmed it had asked for an exemption due to concerns over quality and capacity to meet demand.

"It's a huge thing," said one humanitarian who asked for anonymity, explaining that the new rules will affect all non-governmental organisations, hospitals and pharmacies.

Many aid workers understand the need to promote enterprise, he said, but there are internal disagreements about whether to compromise on quality.

"We need to have high quality standards for everyone, but the reality of the country is that sometimes it's impossible".

eml/ri

North Korea claims 'alien things' at the border caused COVID-19

Pyongyang's state newspaper says not to touch objects falling near the border.

ByJoohee Cho and Hakyung Kate Lee
July 01, 2022, 

SEOUL, South Korea -- Authorities in North Korea have instructed its people to avoid “alien things” falling near its border with South Korea.

North Korea’s state newspaper Rodong Sinmun published a news report on where the COVID-19 virus came from and pointed the finger at materials that flew in from South Korea. The paper said that two local townspeople showed COVID-19 symptoms after touching "alien things" at the border.

“State Emergency Epidemic Prevention Headquarters saw to it that an emergency instruction was issued stressing the need to vigilantly deal with alien things coming by wind and other climate phenomena and balloons in the areas along the demarcation line and borders,” Rodong Sinmun said Friday.

The influx of non-native objects, especially from the southern half of the Korean peninsula, has put North Korea’s border at the highest level of alert for the longest amount of time since the two Koreas separated in 1953. Sending propaganda leaflets and materials in air balloons has been common practice from both sides but Seoul has made it illegal in 2020.

(MORE: Defectors in Seoul send balloons carrying medicine to COVID-19-struck North Korea, defying law in South)

“It appears to be an attempt to raise suspicion among North Korean citizens about the propaganda leaflets, an attempt to spread the false idea that the leaflets are carrying COVID-19,” Hyung Joong Park, head researcher at the Korea Institute of National Unification, told ABC News.

Park also explained that they are forming the narrative that COVID was caused not by failures by the Party but by a premeditated move from the outside.

A worker in a protective suit disinfects a store in Pyongyang, North Korea, June 27, 2022.
Kyodo News via Getty Images

North Korea has reported over 4,750 cases of "fever" on Friday and claims that, as of Thursday evening, since the pandemic began more than 99.827% of the people who had "fever" have recovered. There is an extremely limited number of COVID test kits in North Korea as the regime has refused to accept foreign assistance to help identify patients.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry responded to North Korea’s accusation and that they see zero possibility of viruses entering North Korea through leaflets from the South, explaining that the timing of the North’s claim of contact with "alien materials" at the beginning of April does not match the timing of leaflet-sending that activists in South Korea say took place in late April.

“South Korea’s Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization is on the same page that it is impossible to be infected with COVID-19 through the virus remaining on the surface of an object, not to mention there isn’t any officially confirmed case of COVID-19 infection through mail or other supply,” Cha Duck Chul, the deputy spokesperson of South’s Unification Ministry told reporters Friday.

On Tuesday, the defector group Fighters For North Korea based in Seoul claim to have flown 20 unauthorized balloons carrying masks, pain relief pills, and doses of Vitamin C in order to send support to pandemic-hit North Korea.


“Accusing the balloon and leaflets from South Korea of spreading virus lays a foundation for North Korea taking extreme measures against balloon launches on the grounds that it is a national security threat,” John Delury, professor at Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies, told ABC News.

ABC News' Eunseo Nam and Hyerim Lee contributed to this report.

N. Korea suggests balloons flown from South brought COVID-19


 People watch a TV screen showing a news program reporting with an image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, at a train station in Seoul, South Korea on May 16, 2022. North Korea suggested Friday, July 1, 2022 its COVID-19 outbreak began in people who had contact with balloons flown from South Korea, a highly questionable claim that appeared to be an attempt to hold its rival responsible amid increasing tensions. 

(AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)More

HYUNG-JIN KIM
Fri, July 1, 2022 a

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea suggested Friday its COVID-19 outbreak began in people who had contact with balloons flown from South Korea — a highly questionable claim that appeared to be an attempt to hold its rival responsible amid increasing tensions over its nuclear program.

Activists for years have flown balloons across the border to distribute hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets critical of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and North Korea has often expressed fury at the activists and at South Korea’s leadership for not stopping them.




Global health authorities say the coronavirus is spread by people in close contact who inhale airborne droplets and it’s more likely to occur in enclosed, poorly ventilated spaces than outdoors. South Korea’s Unification Ministry said there was no chance South Korean balloons might have spread the virus to North Korea.

Ties between the Koreas remain strained amid a long-running stalemate in U.S.-led diplomacy on persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions in return for economic and political benefits. South Korean and U.S. officials have recently said North Korea is ready for its first nuclear test in five years amid its torrid run of weapons tests this year.

The state media report said North Korea’s epidemic prevention center had found infection clusters in the town of Ipho near its southeastern border with South Korea and that some Ipho residents with feverish symptoms traveled to Pyongyang. The center said an 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year kindergartener had contact with “alien things” in the town in early April and later tested positive for the omicron variant.

In what it called “an emergency instruction,” the epidemic prevention center ordered officials to “to vigilantly deal with alien things coming by wind and other climate phenomena and balloons” along the inter-Korean border and trace their sources to the last. It also stressed that anyone finding “alien things” must notify authorities immediately so they could be removed.

The reports did not specify what the “alien things” were. But laying the blame on things flown across the border likely is a way to ease public complaints about its handling of the pandemic while repeating its objections to the ballooning activities of North Korean defectors and activists in South Korea, observers say.

Leafletting campaigns were largely halted after South Korea's previous liberal government passed a law criminalizing them, and there were no public balloon attempts made in early April.

An activist who is standing trial for past activities flew balloons carrying propaganda leaflets across the border in late April after halting them for a year. Park Sang-hak floated balloons twice in June, switching the cargo on those attempts to COVID-19 relief items such as masks and painkillers.

Police are still investigating the recent leafleting activities by the activist, Cha Duck Chul, a deputy spokesperson at the South’s Unification Ministry, told reporters Friday.

Cha also said the consensus among South Korean health officials and World Health Organization experts is that infections via contact with the virus on the surface of materials is virtually impossible.

In its previous dubious statements on COVID-19, North Korea also claimed the virus could spread through falling snow or migratory birds. Its pandemic-related restrictions even included strict bans on entering seawater.

Analyst Cheong Seong-Chang at South Korea’s Sejong Institute said North Korea wants its people to believe the coronavirus originated from leaflets, U.S. dollars or other materials carried across the border by the balloons.

Cheong said North Korea will likely sternly punish anyone taking such South Korean items covertly. He said North Korea could also try to shoot down incoming South Korean balloons, a move that would prompt South Korea to return fire and would sharply escalate animosities between the countries.

North Korea is infuriated by the leafletting campaign because it’s designed to undermine Kim’s authoritarian rule over a population that has little access to outside information. In 2014, North Korea fired at propaganda balloons flying toward its territory and South Korea returned fire, though there were no casualties.

North Korea's latest announcement on the virus contradicts the outside view that it spread after North Korea briefly reopened its northern border with China to freight traffic in January and it surged further following a military parade and other large-scale events in Pyongyang in April. Some outside experts have accused Kim of being largely responsible for the outbreak because he organized those events to boost public loyalty to the ruling Kim family amid economic hardships.

After maintaining a widely disputed claim to be coronavirus-free for more than two years, North Korea on May 12 admitted to the COVID-19 outbreak, saying an unspecified number of people in Pyongyang were diagnosed with the omicron variant.

North Korea has since reported about 4.7 million fever cases out of its 26 million population but only identified a fraction of them as COVID-19. It says 73 people have died, an extremely low fatality rate. Both figures are believed to be manipulated by North Korea to keep its people vigilant against the virus and prevent any political damage to Kim.

___

Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.

'They're everywhere': microplastics in oceans, air and human body

Author: AFP|

Update: 03.07.2022 

Scientific studies are increasingly detecting microplastics in some human organs

/ © AFP/File

From ocean depths to mountain peaks, humans have littered the planet with tiny shards of plastic. We have even absorbed these microplastics into our bodies -- with uncertain implications.

Images of plastic pollution have become familiar: a turtle suffocated by a shopping bag, water bottles washed up on beaches, or the monstrous "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" of floating detritus.

Millions of tonnes of plastic produced every year, largely from fossil fuels, make their way into the environment and degrade into smaller and smaller pieces.


"We did not imagine 10 years ago that there could be so many small microplastics, invisible to the naked eye, and that they were everywhere around us," said Jean-Francois Ghiglione, a researcher at the Laboratory of Microbial Oceanography in France.

"And we could not yet envisage finding them in the human body".

Now scientific studies are increasingly detecting microplastics in some human organs -- including "the lungs, spleen, kidneys, and even the placenta," Ghiglione told AFP.

It may not come as much of a shock that we breathe in these particles present in the air, in particular microfibres from synthetic clothing.

"We know that there's microplastics in the air, we know it's all around us," said Laura Sadofsky, from the Hull York Medical School in the UK.

Millions of tonnes of plastic produced every year, largely from fossil fuels, make their way into the environment / © AFP/File

Her team found polypropylene and PET (polyethylene terephthalate) in lung tissue, identifying fibres from synthetic fabrics.

"The surprise for us was how deep it got into the lungs and the size of those particles," she told AFP.

In March, another study reported the first traces of PET found in the blood.

Given the small sample of volunteers, some scientists say it is too early to draw conclusions, but there are concerns that if plastics are in the bloodstream they could be transported to all organs.

- Breathing in plastics for years -

In 2021, researchers found microplastics in both maternal and foetal placental tissue, expressing "great concern" over the possible consequences on the development of the foetus.

But concern is not the same as a proven risk.

"If you ask a scientist if there is a negative effect, he or she would say 'I don't know'," said Bart Koelmans, professor in Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality at Wageningen University.

"It's potentially a big problem, but we don't have the scientific evidence to positively confirm what are the effects, if any."

One hypothesis is that microplastics could be responsible for certain syndromes that weaken human health.

It is likely that humans have been eating, drinking and breathing in plastics for years

 / © GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

While scientists have recently identified their presence in the body, it is likely that humans have been eating, drinking and breathing in plastics for years.

In 2019, a shock report by the environmental charity WWF estimated that people are ingesting and inhaling up to five grams of plastic per week -- enough to make a credit card.

Koelmans, who contests the methodology and results of that study, has calculated the amount is closer to a grain of salt.

"Over a lifetime, a grain of salt per week is still quite something," he told AFP.

While health studies on humans have yet to be developed, toxicity in certain animals reinforces concerns.

"Small microplastics invisible to the naked eye have deleterious effects on all the animals that we have studied in the marine environment, or on land," said Ghiglione.

He added that the array of chemicals found in these materials -- including dyes, stabilisers, flame retardants -- can affect growth, metabolism, blood sugar, blood pressure and even reproduction.

In March, a study reported the first traces of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) found in the blood / © AFP/File

The researcher said there should be a "precautionary" approach, urging consumers to reduce the number of plastic-packaged products they buy, particularly bottles.

Earlier this year, the United Nations began a process to develop an internationally binding treaty to tackle the global plastic scourge.

It has warned that the world is facing a pollution crisis to match the biodiversity and climate crises.

While the health implications from plastics are not known, scientists do know the impacts of indoor and outdoor air pollution, which experts from the Lancet Commission on pollution and health have estimated caused 6.7 million people to suffer an early death in 2019.

Some 460 million tonnes of plastics were used in 2019, twice as much as 20 years earlier. Less than 10 percent was recycled.

Annual production of fossil-fuel-based plastics is set to top 1.2 billion tonnes by 2060, with waste exceeding one billion tonnes, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said last month.

"People cannot stop breathing, so even if you change your eating habits you will still inhale them," said Koelmans.

"They're everywhere."

SPIRIT ANIMAL

Rare leucistic orca spotted off California coast

An orca whale with leucism, which causes a loss of pigmentation, was seen by whale watchers near the Farallon Islands. There are believed to be only a few orcas with this condition.

 

A pair of orcas are hunting great white sharks to eat their livers, causing the species to flee the coast of South Africa

Joshua Zitser

Sat, July 2, 2022 

People inspect the carcass of a great white shark.Cari Roets/Marine Dynamics, Dyer Island Conservation Trust

• A pair of orcas are preying on great white sharks off the coast of South Africa, according to a new study.

• The orcas have ripped out the livers and hearts of great white sharks, the study said.

• In response to the attacks, the study said that the great white sharks are migrating en masse.

A pair of orcas has been terrorizing great white sharks off South Africa's coast since 2017, causing them to flee en masse, according to a new study.

The study, published in the African Journal of Marine Science, suggests the menacing orcas might have scared great white sharks away from their habitat on the Gansbaai coast on South Africa's Western Cape.

A team of researchers from Marine Dynamics and the Dyer Island Conservation Trust noticed that over five and a half years, 14 sharks had been tracked fleeing the area in which the orcas are present.

Visual sightings of the great white sharks have also decreased, per the study.

Using tagging data and long-term sightings, researchers also noticed that great white sharks had started washing ashore.

Eight great white sharks washed ashore between 2017 and 2020, according to the data. Seven of them had their livers ripped out, with some also having had their hearts removed, the study said.

A researcher inspects the carcass of a great white shark.Cari Roets/Marine Dynamics, Dyer Island Conservation Trust:

The wounds are distinctively made by the same pair of killer whales, according to the study. The orcas are likely to have killed more sharks that are yet to wash up ashore, the study said.

The attacks have triggered the sharks' "flight" instinct, causing a mass migration away from the marine predators, according to the study.

Alison Towner, a senior white shark biologist at the Dyer Island Conservation Trust, said: "What we seem to be witnessing though is a large-scale avoidance strategy, mirroring what we see used by wild dogs in the Serengeti in Tanzania, in response to increased lion presence."

A team of researchers take the measurements of a great white shark that washed ashore.Cari Roets/Marine Dynamics, Dyer Island Conservation Trust

Towner continued: "The research is particularly important, as by determining how large marine predators respond to risk, we can understand the dynamics of coexistence with other predator communities."

Towner observed that the decrease in the number of great white sharks has other effects on the sea's fragile ecosystem. It has triggered an emergence in the area of the bronze whaler shark, which the great white shark typically eats, Towner said. These sharks, however, are also being targeted by orcas, per the study.

Insider previously reported the first evidence on a pod of orcas hunting and killing adult blue whales.

An orca feasting on a blue whale that it just killed in the first documented killing of its kind.CETREC WA

Marine scientists from Cetrec WA (Cetacean Research) were able to detail how orcas swam inside the mouth of blue whales to eat their tongues. Researchers saw large chunks of skin and blubber having been gouged from the body of a blue whale and most of the dorsal fin having been bitten off, Insider's Bethany Dawson reported.

New Research

Great White Sharks Are Completely Terrified of Orcas

A new study shows the apex predators will flee their hunting grounds and won’t return for up to a year when killer whales pass by


Jason Daley
SMITHSONIAN
Correspondent

April 22, 2019

Orcas kill great white sharks, then eat their calorie-dense livers. 

Michael Weberberger/Getty Images

It’s pretty much common wisdom that the top predator in the ocean is the great white shark (that is, if there isn’t a remnant population of megalodon hidden somewhere in the deep). But a new study reveals that the massive shark is not the ocean’s top apex predator: that title rightly belongs to orcas, also known as killer whales.

The revelation comes from a paper in Nature Scientific Reports by senior research scientist Salvador Jorgensen at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and his colleagues. Ed Yong at The Atlantic reports that over the years, while studying great white sharks, Jorgensen and his team began to notice that when killer whales entered the scene, the sharks made an exit, and in many cases did not return for months. In particular, in 2009 the team radio-tagged 17 sharks around Southeast Farallon Island in Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, a marine and wildlife refuge off the coast of California. The sharks happily munched on young elephant seals in the waters around the island, which they regularly do between September and December. But when a pod of orcas entered the waters for just a couple of hours, the sharks high-tailed it out of there and most didn’t return that season.

To understand if that situation was common or the whole thing was a fluke, Jorgensen and his team looked deeper in the data, examining information about 165 great white sharks tagged in the Farallones between 2006 and 2013. They compared that with whale, shark and seal surveys collected in the marine sanctuary collected over 27 years.

What they found was a standard pattern. When orca whales entered the area, the sharks bolted from Southeast Farallon and nearby islands. “When confronted by orcas, white sharks will immediately vacate their preferred hunting ground and will not return for up to a year, even though the orcas are only passing through,” Jorgensen says in a press release.

Sarah Sloat at Inverse reports that if the whales get within two miles of the islands, the sharks will pack up and leave. In an average year, researchers are able to document 40 elephant seals eaten by sharks. But in years where the orcas make an appearance, which they did in 2009, 2011 and 2013, that number drops by 62 percent from the previous year. For the seals it can be a win-win situation. If the whales simply pass by and don’t stop to snack but still clear out the sharks, the young seals can chase fish in relative security.

So why are the sharks, which can grow up to 18 feet long, so afraid of orcas? Yong reports that most of what we know about white shark/orca encounters doesn’t end well for the sharks. In 1997, during the first interaction ever recorded, fishermen near Southeast Farallon witnessed a pair of orcas kill a young great white that tried to nose in on the sea lion they were eating. The orcas bashed him to death then ate his liver.

In 2017, five corpses of great white sharks washed up on the beaches of South Africa, all with their livers almost surgically removed. It was the work of orcas, which kill the sharks then make a wound near the calorie-dense shark liver. They then squish the yummy treat out of the shark and leave the rest of the corpse. “It’s like squeezing toothpaste,” Jorgensen tells Yong.

Researchers are beginning to understand how the instinct to avoid predators creates a “landscape of fear” that can have wide-ranging impacts on ecosystems. This new study shows that the concept also applies in the oceans. “We don't typically think about how fear and risk aversion might play a role in shaping where large predators hunt and how that influences ocean ecosystems,” Jorgensen says in the press release. “It turns out these risk effects are very strong even for large predators like white sharks—strong enough to redirect their hunting activity to less preferred but safer areas.”

Let’s just hope those safer hunting grounds aren’t too close to shore.

Jason Daley is a Madison, Wisconsin-based writer specializing in natural history, science, travel, and the environment. His work has appeared in Discover, Popular Science, Outside, Men’s Journal, and other magazines.

KILLER DOLPHIN NOT AS SCARY

A MONIKER AS KILLER WHALE

Is A Killer Whale a Shark?

Killer whales are often grouped in with and given a “shark” label because they seem hungry, toothy, and sometimes even violent enough to have been a good understudy for “Jaws.”

Even their name can be considered the scariest one of the larger sea creatures! Saying this, killer whales – also known as orcas – are not sharks at all!

In fact, they are members of the dolphin family.

The Dolphin Family

Before we go into why exactly an orca is a dolphin, it is best to know what makes a dolphin in the first place!

The second fun fact of the day (after the fact that orcas are not sharks) is that dolphins and whales technically belong to the same family.

However, this family has suborders, which allows for a distinct separation between what we consider dolphins and porpoises, and what we consider whales. 

The Odontoceti suborder classifies all dolphins and porpoises, including orcas! The Mysticeti suborder is composed of what we believe to be whales.

Additionally, dolphins and porpoises belong to the same subcategory, though there are significantly less species of porpoises than dolphins.

What Makes an Orca a Dolphin?

An orca is technically considered a dolphin due to similar physical characteristics. Orcas are similar to dolphins in that they have teeth, a rounded head and a beak, and streamlined bodies.

Orcas and dolphins both also have what is known as a melon. A melon is a fatty deposit on what we would consider the forehead of the orcas head, and makes their heads look dome-like.

Only dolphins in the Odontoceti subcategory have melons; whales do not. The melon is a really important organ of dolphins and orcas in that it greatly aids in echolocation.

The melon has varying densities throughout, and acts to focus the sound waves before they travel through the water as a form of communication.

Orcas also only have one blowhole. As dolphins have one blowhole and whales have two, this is further proof that orcas belong in the dolphin subcategory.

Killer Whales vs Shark

While killer whales may not be sharks and are in fact dolphins, it is well known that sharks are terrified or killer whales.

Sharks are known to evacuate their hunting areas for times up to one year if they even see a killer whale nearby.

Marine biologists are beginning to rethink their former conclusion that the apex predator of the ocean is the great white shark, and are reassigning that title to the orca. 

The reason for this has been observed by many people who have watched shark and orca encounters.

When sharks get in the way of orcas, orcas are known to beat the sharks until they die, and then feast on their livers. Orcas don’t seem to ever eat the rest of the shark.

Takeaways

Orca whales are not sharks by a long shot. If anything, they are very scary dolphins that sharks run at the sight of! Their anatomy also resembles that of a dolphin, albeit a good amount larger.

Saying this, it is important to note that there has never been a recorded fatality of a human-caused by an orca whale attack in the wild.

So while sharks may be afraid of these creatures, there is no reason for you to be so long as you are respectful of them and their environments.