#NUMISTICS
Man with metal detector finds 222-year-old coin near church
October 25, 2020

EMBDEN, Maine (AP) — A man with a metal detector has found a long-hidden, 222-year-old coin under a few inches of soil outside a church in Maine.

Shane Houston, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was on a metal-detecting trip with a friend from New Hampshire when he found the coin earlier this month, the Bangor Daily News reported.

The copper penny, dated 1798, comes from the first decade of American-minted money in North America.

He said it was found on the grounds of a church in Embden where he had permission to use his metal detector.

The penny is not in pristine condition. Houston said it might fetch $200 but he has no intentions of selling it.

On the same trip, he also found an 1818 penny, a full wagon wheel and a musket ball. The ammunition was measured at 0.75 caliber, making it British in origin.

Abortion rights protests block city streets across Poland

By Joanna Plucinska, Anna Koper

WARSAW (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Poles blocked city streets in cars, on bicycles and on foot on Monday on the fifth day of protests against a Constitutional Court ruling that amounts to a near-total ban on abortion in the predominantly Catholic country.

People protest against the ruling by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal that imposes a near-total ban on abortion, in Warsaw, Poland October 26, 2020. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

Carrying banners reading “Enough”, “I won’t be your martyr” and “I want choice, not terror”, protesters gathered in several dozen towns and cities in defiance of coronavirus restrictions.

“I will be here until the end,” said Piotr Wybanski, 31, in one of Warsaw’s main thoroughfares. Speaking of his five sisters, mother and grandmother he said: “I came here with my fiancee and I fight for all of them.”

“I need to fight for the future of my daughter,” said Justyna, 37, who declined to give her family name.

Scuffles erupted between protesters and far-right groups who broke through a police cordon separating them in front a church elsewhere in Warsaw, prompting the police to use pepper spray. In the city of Wroclaw, abortion rights activists used flares.

The court ruling last Thursday fuelled an unprecedented backlash against the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, which is seen as having close links with the conservative nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government.

It has also heightened criticism of PiS, which came to power five years ago on a promise to instil more traditional values.

Crowds gathered again near the house of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski in an affluent Warsaw neighbourhood, as police in vans with flashing lights kept them away and a helicopter hovered overhead.

After the ruling goes into effect, abortion will be banned in the case of foetal abnormalities and will be legal only in the case of rape, incest or a threat to the woman’s health.

Critics say the court has acted on behalf of the party, which has in the past stepped back from efforts to tighten abortion rules. PiS denies that.

The Constitutional Court was part of the government’s sweeping overhaul of the justice system which the European Commission says subverted the rule of law by politicising courts. The government says the court is independent.

MILITARY POLICE

In the capital and elsewhere, groups formed around church buildings, with local media reporting far-right groups were gathering to protect them. Late in the evening, flares were launched close to the PiS headquarters in central Warsaw.

The government has called for a halt to the protests because of a rising number of coronavirus cases overwhelming the health care system, though except for isolated scuffles with the police the protests have been largely peaceful.

“What’s happening in recent days is absolutely unacceptable,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s chief of staff, Michal Dworczyk, told private radio RMF. “Pandemic rules are being broken.”

The government said military police would be called in to help enforce pandemic rules, which include an obligation to wear face masks in public, from Wednesday. The defence ministry said on Twitter the decision was not connected with the protests.

Poland recorded 10,241 new coronavirus cases on Monday, compared with a record of 13,632 on Friday.

More protests are planned across Poland later this week, including a mass gathering in Warsaw on Friday.

Additional reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Agnieszka Barteczko and Jakub Stezycki; Writing by Justyna Pawlak; Editing by Nick Macfie and David Holmes

Polish protesters disrupt church services over near-total abortion ban

By Alicja Ptak, Kuba Stezycki

WARSAW (Reuters) - Thousands of activists disrupted church services across Poland on Sunday, chanting during mass and spraying slogans on walls to protest against a court ruling that amounts to a near-total ban on abortion.

In the first large-scale demonstrations directly targeting churches in the predominately Catholic country, crowds carried posters depicting a crucified pregnant woman and handed out protest cards to priests.

A Constitutional Court decision outlawing abortions due to foetal defects has now triggered four days of demonstrations.

The ruling ended the most common of the few legal grounds left for abortion in Poland and set the country further apart from the European mainstream.

In southern city of Katowice, a 7,000-strong crowd of mostly women gathered in front of the cathedral, chanting “this is war” and “human law, not ecclesiastical law”. State news agency PAP said police used tear gas after officers were attacked.

Three dozen protesters interrupted a mass in the western city of Poznan, chanting “we are sick of this” and holding banners with slogans including “Catholic women also need their right to abortion” in front of the altar.

“Our rage should be directed towards politicians, but also towards senior church figures as they have also added to this women’s hell that the authorities are preparing,” said Mateusz Sulwinski, one of the protest organizers in Poznan.


The leaders of the protests have accused Poland’s conservative ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), of pressing the court to tighten restrictions to appeal to the party’s base and to please the influential Church. The party denies that.

Church leaders have also denied wielding political power.

“The Church does not constitute the law in our homeland and these are not the bishops who decide on the compliance or non-compliance of laws with the Polish Constitution,” Polish archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki said in a statement.

“However, the Church cannot stop defending life, nor can it abandon the proclamation that every human being must be protected from conception until natural death.”

A spokesman for the government could not be reached for comment.

In Krakow, protesters hung black underwear and clothes on lines between trees - a reference to early protests against tightening of abortion restrictions where people wore black to show their supp

In Warsaw protesters sprayed “abortion without borders” on one church, according to state news agency PAP. At another church “you have blood on your hands” was daubed on the wall.

Some people give priests cards with a bolt symbol symbolising their protest instead of the traditional donation during mass.

“I’m here today because it annoys me that in a secular country the church decides for me what rights I have, what I can do and what I’m not allowed to do,” said media worker Julia Miotk, 26, protesting in front of a church in Warsaw.

The protests started on Thursday despite bans on gatherings of more than five people imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Activists said they were planning more protests on Monday afternoon.

Offers of free food to needy English children put government in awkward spot

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) - Businesses and charities across England offered free meals for children on Monday, in a public relations fiasco for the Conservative government which voted last week not to provide food vouchers for poor families during a school holiday.

Some 1.3 million children are eligible for free lunches at schools in England. Following a campaign by a soccer star to provide extra support during the coronavirus crisis, the government gave their families food vouchers for the summer school holiday. But last week it voted not to do the same during a weeklong school break at the end of October.

Family-run cafes, fish and chip shops, bakeries, pubs, football clubs, hotels and a Sikh temple are among businesses, charities and places of worship that have since responded by announcing plans to give away meals.

“We haven’t got much money but we are not prepared to stand back and worry about children not getting a meal over half-term,” said the Oceans of Fun soft play centre in the city of Nottingham, offering eligible children free hot or cold meals.


Marcus Rashford, a 22-year-old Manchester United soccer forward who has spoken of sometimes going hungry as a child, has spearheaded the campaign.

“Those who have rallied around our communities, please continue to do so, you are the real pride of Britain,” he said, using his Twitter feed to publicise dozens of offers of free food. A petition he launched on Oct. 15 to end child food poverty in Britain had attracted close to 900,000 signatures.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended the government, saying it was providing support through other means such as an increase in welfare benefits and funding for local goverments.


“We will do everything in our power to make sure that no kid, no child goes hungry this winter during the holidays,” Johnson said, describing Rashford’s efforts as “terrific”.

“The debate is how do you deal with it,” Johnson said.

Under pressure from angry constituents, several Conservative lawmakers have broken ranks and called for a rethink. 

Bolivia parliament recommends charges against ex-interim president

Bolivia's outgoing parliament on Thursday approved a motion recommending that ex-interim president Jeanine Anez and her ministers face justice for responsibility over last year's unrest which left around 30 people dead   

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© - Conservative former senator Jeanine Anez assumed power as interim president after Evo Morales fled following weeks of protests over his winning an unconstitutional fourth term and allegations of fraud

The Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, meeting in joint session, approved a parliamentary report on the "massacres of Senkata, Sacaba and Yapacani, which recommends a judgment of responsibility against Jeanine Anez for genocide and other offenses", according to the Senate's Twitter account.


Parliament also approved the criminal indictment of 11 ministers.

A parliamentary commission, controlled by the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party of ex-president Evo Morales, spent months investigating incidents that took place in several regions of the country between October and November 2019, which left about 30 dead.

It presented its report on Tuesday, a little over a week after new socialist President Luis Arce, the MAS candidate, took power.

An investigation by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (CIDH) found that 35 people were killed in these incidents.

The unrest came after Morales won an unconstitutional fourth term in an election that sparked weeks of protests and charges of fraud.

Morales was forced to resign on November 10 before going into exile in Mexico and then Argentina.

Conservative former senator Anez assumed power as interim president after Morales fled.

Senate president Eva Copa, a member of MAS, specified that the report would be submitted to the Bolivian prosecution for opening possible proceedings.

She is also counting on the fact that the report will likely be approved by the new parliament, where the MAS retains its majority and which is due to take office next week.

jac/rsr/ob/mtp/je

Democrats prefer 'scalpel' over 'jackhammer' to reform key U.S. internet law

By Nandita Bose

© Reuters/REUTERS FILE PHOTO FILE PHOTO: 

A combination photo from files of Facebook Google and Twitter logos

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Big Tech's decisions to block some posts and videos while letting other content viewed as inflammatory proliferate have drawn the ire of Republicans and Democrats alike, raising the prospect that a 24-year-old U.S. law that fostered the internet's explosion will be pared back.

While many Republicans call for the repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Democrats would prefer targeted, surgical revision of the law protecting Facebook and Twitter from being sued for content posted by users.

President Donald Trump and top Republicans, angered by what they allege is tech companies' censorship of conservative ideas, say the legal shield has outlived its usefulness. That thinking was on full display at a hearing held to discuss the law on Wednesday.

Democrats have also taken aim at the law because they claim it fails to tackle widespread misinformation and hate. But they argue the law is important to free speech online and want a more deliberate and moderate approach to reform.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has called for "revoking" the law, but many believe he will be more receptive to ideas from congressional Democrats if he wins the election.

Multiple Democratic lawmakers said in interviews that they oppose repeal of Section 230, which allows companies to take down or leave material on their platforms without the risk of facing lawsuits.

"Repealing it outright is not viable," Representative Anna Eshoo, a Democrat from California said. She has introduced legislation to remove tech companies' liability protections if their algorithms amplify harmful, radicalizing content that leads to offline violence. She advocated using "a scalpel instead of a jackhammer to reform the critical statute."

The approach has also found support from Virginia's Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, according to a staffer. Manchin's bill, which is co-sponsored by Republican John Cornyn, aims to stop the sale of opioids and illicit drugs online by amending 230 protections. It requires companies to report suspicious activity to law enforcement or be held liable for that failure.

An aide to Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon who originally co-authored Section 230, said the senator urges caution on steps that could limit free speech online. "He isn't saying no one can ever change a word of Section 230, but that politicians need to be very careful when it comes to tinkering with foundational laws around speech and the internet," the aide said.

Meanwhile tech trade groups over the past year began an aggressive lobbying effort against changing the law and view calls for repeal as draconian.

"I do expect the more extreme statements on wanting a full repeal to die down... the Democrats are walking that kind of rhetoric back," said Carl Szabo, general counsel for Netchoice - a trade group that counts Google, Facebook and Twitter among its members.

A MODERATE APPROACH

There is an array of proposals on Capitol Hill. Most of the bills that have found Democratic sponsors seek to change protections for harmful conduct on online platforms like crime, rather than on user speech.

Legislation from Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham goes after online child pornography. Companies that do not detect such images would lose their 230 immunity. The legislation, however, has been criticized by civil rights groups as infringing privacy of ordinary users. https://reut.rs/3munhZA

Democratic Senator Brian Schatz and Senate No. 2 Republican John Thune propose another bill that would require platforms to explain their content screening practices in everyday language, notify users of content rejection within 14 days and allow appeals.

Matt Perault, director at the Duke University's Center for Science and Technology Policy, said the U.S. election has given momentum to calls for revoking Section 230, which would radically alter the nature of online expression.

"No matter the outcome of the election, I think Section 230 reform will be on the agenda next Congress," Representative Eshoo said.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Chris Sanders and Cynthia Osterman)


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Father still on the hook for unpaid support, even though child now an adult, top court rules

Special to Financial Post 

In its first family law decision of the year, the Supreme Court of Canada recently dealt with the issue of retroactive child support. Given the relative infrequency with which a family law case makes its way to the highest court in the land, the decision is unquestionably an important one. All nine judges of the Supreme Court reached a unanimous decision in Michel v Graydon which clears the way for a parent’s claim for child support that should have been paid in years gone by

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© Provided by Financial Post 

The message from the Supreme Court is loud and clear: proper child support, which is the right of a child, must be paid.

The facts of the case are fairly straightforward. The B.C. couple was in a common-law relationship. They are the parents of one child, born in December 1991. They separated in 1994 following which the child lived with the mother and the father agreed to pay child support of $341 per month, based on his declared annual income of just under $40,000.

When the child support agreement was reached, the father’s income was, in fact, approximately $6,000 higher than his declared income. As years went by, the father’s income continued to exceed his declared income, yet he continued to pay only $341 per month to the mother. At the high-water mark, the father’s annual income reached $80,000, or double the income on which the support order was based. In April 2012, child support was terminated when the child completed post-secondary studies.

Three years later, the mother commenced court proceedings against the father in which she sought $23,000 on account of the father’s underpayment of child support since 2001.

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Not surprisingly, the father resisted the mother’s claim. He took the position that the court lacked jurisdiction to make such an order since the child was no longer a “child” under the applicable legislation. In other words, the father said the ship had sailed on the mother’s opportunity to make such a claim since it was made too late.

The father’s refusal to correct his underpayment of child support was made despite his awareness and acknowledgement that the mother and child were living in poverty when he was underpaying child support.

In September 2016, Judge Garth Smith of the British Columbia Provincial Court heard the mother’s claim for increased child support. Judge Smith ordered the father to pay $23,000 on account of his underpayment of child support. In making the order, Judge Smith found the child “lived in poverty for many years and may not have had to if (the father) had paid child support in accordance with his annual income as it fluctuated.”

In accordance with the Judge’s order, the $23,000 payment was to be divided equally between the mother and the adult child.

The father successfully appealed from the trial judge’s decision. Thereafter, the mother unsuccessfully appealed to the Court of Appeal for British Columbia followed by her successful appeal to the Supreme Court, which resulted in Judge Smith’s decision being restored.

The Supreme Court noted that the fact the child was no longer a “child” under the applicable B.C. legislation at the time the mother commenced court proceedings was not a bar to her claim for retroactive child support.

Writing for the majority of the Court, Justice Russell Brown was critical of the father’s conduct, noting that “failure to disclose material changes in income undermines the child-support regime imposed by the ( Child Support ) Guidelines . The record here also indicates that (the father) knew about his daughter’s financial circumstances and made disparaging remarks about her standard of living instead of modifying his child-support payments to assist her.”

In her concurring reasons, Justice Sheilah L. Martin noted that child-support obligations “arise upon a child’s birth or the separation of their parents. Retroactive awards are a recognized way to enforce such pre-existing, free-standing obligations and to recover monies owed but yet unpaid. Such a debt is a continuing obligation which does not evaporate or fade into history upon a child’s 18th or 19th birthday or their graduation from university.”

Justice Martin continued by underscoring the purpose and importance of permitting retroactive child support, noting that such an order “enhances access to justice, reinforces that child support is the right of the child and the responsibility of the parents, encourages the payment of child support, acknowledges that there are many reasons why a parent may delay making an application, and recognizes how the underpayment of child support leads to hardship and contributes to the feminization of poverty. In short, allowing recipient parents to make claims for historical child support is in the best interests of children and promotes equality and access to justice for all.”

In what will likely become a compass for future claims for retroactive child support, Justice Martin noted that the “courtroom doors should not be closed because certain categories of debts owed to children are classified as coming too late.”

The message from the Supreme Court is loud and clear: proper child support, which is the right of a child, must be paid. Failure to do so will not be condoned by the court and will likely be corrected by a retroactive award for support.

Adam N. Black is a partner in the family law group at Torkin Manes LLP in Toronto.

ablack@torkinmanes.com

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Election commissioner probe into UCP leadership race continues with reprimand, court order

Drew Anderson CBC 28/10/2020

© CBC Jeff Callaway, above, was a candidate for the leadership of the UCP. His chief financial officer, Lenore Eaton, has been given a letter of reprimand, in addition to earlier fines, for allegations of irregular donations to the 'kamikaze' campaign.

Alberta's election commissioner continues to investigate the 2017 United Conservative Party leadership contest, handing down a letter of reprimand to "kamikaze" candidate Jeff Callaway's chief financial officer and obtaining a court order compelling the owner of an Edmonton banquet hall to appear for an interview.

The CFO, Lenore Eaton, was served the letter for accepting "contributions not belonging to contributor."

Eaton has already been fined $10,000 for "knowingly" making a false statement on the campaign's returns and for accepting money from a corporation — Energize Alberta. Corporate donation are banned in Alberta.


Eaton was also the CFO for Energize.

The commissioner, in earlier findings, alleges $60,000 was given to the campaign by Calgary businessman Robyn Lore through his corporation Agropyron, and then distributed to individual donors who donated to the campaign under their own names.

Lore and Agropyron have been fined $25,000 for the alleged contributions.

Those fines were slated for a judicial review on Sept. 21, but Lore's lawyer told CBC News it was adjourned to set a date for a special application "which entails a lengthier hearing."
Eaton maintains innocence

Energize Alberta, also controlled by Lore, was fined $18,373 but has failed to pay those fines, according to the commissioner's website.

"Ms. Eaton maintains her innocence and denies that she had any knowledge of illegal financial contributions," said her lawyer, Cory Wilson, in response to questions from CBC News.

"She volunteered for a campaign and trusted the people around her."

Callaway ran his campaign in collaboration with the race's eventual winner, Jason Kenney, now the premier, in order to attack the latter's main rival, former Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean.

Callaway then dropped out of the race and endorsed Kenney.

Both men deny they colluded.

However, CBC News has obtained emails and documents that outline the collaboration, including a resignation speech emailed to Callaway's team from Kenney's then-deputy chief of staff and current director of issues management, Matt Wolf.
Roger Sarna ordered to appear

A separate investigation into the leadership race is also ongoing within the commissioner's office.

Bhupinder "Roger" Sarna, owner of the Aria Banquet Hall in Edmonton, was fined $20,000 this summer for obstructing an investigation of the election commissioner.

His fine has now been reduced to $4,000, but he has also been ordered by the Court of Queen's Bench to appear for an interview with the investigators.

Sarna did not return a request for comment on Wednesday, and did not returns calls when CBC News first reported on his fines.

The banquet hall owned by Sarna is tied to an ongoing election commissioner investigation into the 2017 United Conservative Party leadership contest.

Tariq Chaudhry hosted two Eid events there for Kenney.

The events happened in 2017, as Kenney was running for the leadership of the newly formed UCP, and in 2018, as he set his sights on the premier's office.

While the details of the fine against Sarna aren't known, details of Chaudhry's complaints are well established. 

Alleged payment of memberships

Chaudhry sent a letter of complaint to the election commissioner in December 2018, alleging he signed up hundreds of new party members to vote for Kenney as leader — and paid for many of their memberships, himself, in violation of party rules.

He also said in the letter he was never reimbursed for the banquets he was asked to organize.

Receipts show he paid $21,076 to Aria Banquets for the two events: one in September 2017 and another in June 2018.

He also says he paid $6,000 out of his own pocket in membership fees for 600 of the 1,200 new members he signed up.

Chaudhry alleges in a sworn affidavit that he attempted to give the money for the members he signed up directly to Kenney at one of the events he hosted.

"Mr. Kenney asked the $6,000 I had be paid in cash and told me he would arrange from someone to pick up the same at my home at another time," he wrote.

Party rules forbid paying for the memberships of others.

Communication stopped

Chaudhry says Kenney and the party stopped returning his calls and texts after he hosted the second event.

None of Chaudhry's allegations have been proven in court.

CBC News has confirmed an email was sent to Chaudhry at that time by Dave Jennings, an investigator at the office of the election commissioner.

"I've recently been assigned a file relating to your complaint to our office regarding Jason Kenney's campaign(s) in 2017 and 2018," reads the email, dated July 30, 2019.

"Specifically, the allegations are that he had you buy UCP memberships and put on events that were not properly paid back or claimed/expensed."

The email says Chaudhry is not under investigation.

The RCMP are also investigating allegations of fraud the 2017 leadership race.

CBC News recently confirmed that Wolf, the premier's director of issues management, was interviewed this summer, but the premier's office said he was not considered a subject of the investigation.

Alberta must move ahead with federal COVID tracing app, advocacy group says
CBC/Radio-Canada 

A group of doctors and concerned citizens is calling on the provincial government to immediately adopt the federal COVID-19 tracing app.

Masks4Canada says Alberta's case numbers are rising at an alarming rate, and while the group welcomes new limits on social gatherings — announced for Calgary and Edmonton earlier this week — it believes the province needs to do more.

"Forty per cent of people who've acquired COVID recently, we don't know where they've acquired it from," said Dr. Tehseen Ladha, a pediatrician specializing in public health at the University of Alberta.

"And so having something like the federal app, which would allow people to be notified if they've been in the proximity of someone who has COVID, would be a very effective way to contact trace, and it would address some of our capacity issues with contact tracing."

Province says it is seeking a smooth transition

Speaking Wednesday, Health Minister Tyler Shandro said the province will end up adopting the federal app.

Shandro said the province wants to ensure it does not lose the 247,000 users who have downloaded Alberta's ABTraceTogether app.

"The issue right now is to be able to talk to the federal government about how those 247,000 people can be transitioned to the federal government's app," he said.

"I want to make sure there's a transition that's smooth and has the smallest bleed of users."

© CBC News Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro says the province will adopt the federal government's COVID-19 tracing app but wants to ensure it doesn't 'bleed' the 247,000 users currently using the Alberta app.

Alberta and British Columbia are the only provinces that have yet to sign on to the federal app.

The province set new records for the number of active cases on both Monday and Tuesday this week, with the total now sitting at 4,738.
'Let's get something in place'

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi and the chief of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, Tom Sampson, also called on the province to get on with activating that federal government's app.

"We know the provincial app doesn't work properly on most devices and nobody is using it, at all," Nenshi said as he and Sampson held a media briefing Wednesday about the new restrictions introduced this week by the province.

"Let's get something in place."

Alberta Health has said it is working with Ottawa to sort out how to transition users from the province's tracing app to the national one.

Meanwhile, Masks4Canada said in a release that it believes a 15-person limit on social gatherings is still too large.

"New cases announced today reflect public health measures in place two weeks ago. Therefore rapid, proactive public measures are imperative," the release said.
Other recommendations

The group made several other recommendations — including moving to a provincewide mask mandate and officially acknowledging there is evidence of airborne spread of the virus.

Ladha says she is concerned the virus is being allowed to spread in overly crowded environments such as restaurants and gyms.

"We're not proposing a full lockdown, but we feel that if we don't implement some mandatory measures immediately, then we're headed to a place where a more severe lockdown would be needed," she said.

Dr. Joe Vipond, an ER physician in Calgary and a co-founder of Masks4Canada, said the contact tracing system in Alberta needs help.

"We're not hearing any reports of successes from the government and so we need to look at other options," he said. "Really, this is the only other option that's out there right now."

Nenshi said he heard in question period that some ministers were mocking the federal app as "[Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau's app."

"Stop it. We don't need that kind of partisanship here," he said. "We gotta keep people safe and I just hope we go ahead and sign off on it as soon as possible."

 

New bird genomes give insight into evolution of genomic diversity

FACULTY OF SCIENCE - UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN

Research News

 

The Bird 10,000 Genome Project (B10K) is a large international project co-led by University of Copenhagen, China National Genebank at BGI-Shenzhen, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Rockefeller University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In a study published today in Nature, the B10K achieved its family phase milestone releasing genomic resources for 363 bird species including 267 new genomes, and illustrating how these resources give improved resolution on genomic evolution analyses.

The paper also established a new pipeline to analyze the unprecedented scale of genomic data, which revealed a detailed landscape of genomic sequence gains and losses across bird lineages. The study showed that the passerine birds, the largest extant order of bird species, possessed genomic features that differed from other bird groups. Passerine genomes also contain an additional copy of the growth hormone gene. The songbirds, a group of Passeriformes, have lost a gene called cornulin, which might have contributed to the evolution of their diverse pure-tone vocalizations. Dense genomic sampling also facilitated the detection of signals of natural selection down to the single-base level, which may not be possible with few genomes.

- "Such detection power was only possible when the species were densely represented in the comparative genomic analyses," said Guojie Zhang, a principal investigator on the B10K and head of the Villum Centre for Biodiversity Genomics at Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen. "These genomes allow us to explore the genomic variations among different bird groups and help to understand their diversification processes".

The large collaborative effort involved over 150 researchers from 125 institutions in 24 countries. To sequence the bird genomes, the project heavily relies on tissue samples stored in museums around the globe. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum of Denmark, and the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science contributed the majority of the samples for the project. This allowed them to sequence genomes from rare and endangered birds, which will be important resources for conservation actions.

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Rats also capable of transmitting hantavirus

Evidence of infection caused by Asian virus found in Germany

CHARITÉ - UNIVERSITÄTSMEDIZIN BERLIN

Research News

 

A group of researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have confirmed Germany's first-ever case of animal-to-human transmission involving a specific species of virus known as the 'Seoul virus'. Working alongside colleagues from Friedrich-Loeffer-Institut (FLI), the researchers were able to confirm the presence of the virus in a young female patient and her pet rat. Their findings, which have been published in Emerging Infectious Diseases*, may influence the way in which we deal with both wild and domesticated rats.

Following multiple outbreaks earlier in the 21st century, hantavirus disease syndromes have gained increasing levels of public attention and were made notifiable in Germany in 2001. The Puumala and Dobrava-Belgrade viruses, for instance, which are common across central Europe and can be spread by numerous types of mice, usually cause acute fever. Occasionally, infection may result in HFRS (hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome), an illness characterized by fever, low blood pressure and acute kidney failure. The Seoul virus, in contrast, which is mainly found in Asia and transmitted exclusively by rats, is far more likely to cause severe disease. Even outside Asia, however, there have been numerous reports of rat-to-human transmission of this highly virulent virus.

For the first time, a team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Jörg Hofmann, Head of the National Consultant Laboratory for Hantaviruses at Charité's Institute of Virology, has been able to describe an autochthonous (i.e. acquired in Germany) case of Seoul virus infection transmitted by a rat. Working in close collaboration with a team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Rainer G. Ulrich at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI) in Greifswald and colleagues at both local and regional health authorities, the researchers were able to identify the virus in samples from a young female patient from Lower Saxony and her pet rat. "The virus originally comes from Asia and was probably carried to Europe by wild rats on ships. However, it had not previously been observed in Germany," says the study's first author, Prof. Hofmann. The infected rat, which had been bred for domestic life, is likely to have been imported from a different country.

After developing symptoms of acute kidney failure, the young patient required intensive care treatment and was hospitalized for several days. Serology testing quickly confirmed a suspected diagnosis of hantavirus infection. The species of hantavirus responsible, however, remained unclear.

Working at Charité's specialist hantavirus laboratory, Prof. Hofmann and his team of researchers developed a special molecular diagnostic technique capable of identifying the Seoul virus in samples collected from the patient. Using the same technique, experts at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut were able to confirm that the patient's pet rat had been infected by the same virus. Explaining the results, Prof. Hofmann says: "Both viral sequences - the patient's and the rat's - were identical. This confirms that the disease was transmitted by an animal to a person - which means it is a zoonotic disease."

"Until now, only contact with mice would result in a suspected diagnosis of hantavirus infection. It will now be necessary to consider the possibility of infection after contact with either wild or domesticated rats as well," caution the study's authors. "The fact that this pathogen has been confirmed in a pet rat also means that the virus is capable of being exported, via the trade in these animals, practically anywhere in the world." Those keeping rats are therefore advised to exercise caution.

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*Hofmann J et al. Autochthonous rat-borne Seoul virus infection in a young patient with acute kidney injury, Germany. Emerg Infect Dis (2020), DOI: 10.3201/eid2612.200708