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Monday, 11 December 2017

Tasmanian tigers were in poor genetic health, study finds

Tasmanian tigers in captivity — Image captionThe last Tasmanian tiger died in a zoo in 1936

Tasmanian tigers suffered from limited genetic diversity long before they were hunted to extinction, a study of DNA has found.

Australian scientists sequenced the genome of the native marsupial, also known as the thylacine.

It showed the species, alive until 1936, would have struggled to survive even without human contact.

The research also provides further insights into the marsupial's unique appearance.

"Even if we hadn't hunted it to extinction, our analysis showed that the thylacine was in very poor [genetic] health," said lead researcher Dr Andrew Pask, from the University of Melbourne.

"The population today would be very susceptible to diseases, and would not be very healthy."

Tasmanian tiger: The enduring belief in an extinct animal

He said problems with genetic diversity could be traced back as far as 70,000 years ago, when the population is thought to have suffered due to a climatic event.

The researchers sequenced the genome from a 106-year-old specimen held by Museums Victoria.

They said their study, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, is one of the most complete genetic blueprints of an extinct species.

A Tasmanian tiger figurine in a museum — Image captionThe research provides insights into the thylacine's appearance

Tasmanian tigers numbers declined when humans arrived in Australia tens of thousands of years ago, and again when dingoes appeared.

In the end they were pushed to the island of Tasmania, and hunted to extinction in the 19th and 20th centuries. Being isolated from the mainland was a key factor in having a limited gene pool, researchers said.

Species similarities

The study also offered further clues into the appearance of the species, which was the largest apex predator marsupial to survive into the 20th Century.

Tasmanian tigers had pouches like kangaroos where they carried their young, but the species was closer in resemblance to dogs.

The scientists found that thylacine skulls bore similarities to the grey wolf and red fox, despite the animals not sharing a common ancestor since the Jurassic period.

"Given the two species are so distantly related, the fact they have skulls almost indistinguishable from one another is incredibly amazing," Dr Pask said.

He called it an exceptional example of convergent evolution - where species which are not closely related evolve to look similar.

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Trump sex harassment accusers demand congressional inquiry

Media captionJessica Leeds is calling on Congress to open an inquiry into President Trump

Three women who accused President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct have demanded a congressional inquiry.

At a New York City news conference, the trio accused Mr Trump of groping, fondling, forcibly kissing, humiliating or harassing them.

Three of them - Jessica Leeds, Samantha Holvey, and Rachel Crooks - detailed their allegations shortly beforehand live on television.

The White House said the women were making "false claims".

Trump obscene remarks were real - TV host

Monday morning's press conference was organised by Brave New Films, which last month released a documentary, 16 Women and Donald Trump, about the claims made by multiple women.

Image caption(L-R) Jessica Leeds, Samantha Holvey, and Rachel Crook

Ms Leeds, Ms Holvey and Ms Crooks originally went public separately with their allegations a month before last year's US presidential election.

The claims have been given a new lease of life by the harassment scandals that have engulfed high-profile public figures since October's fall of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

On NBC News on Monday, Ms Holvey said Mr Trump had ogled her and other competitors in 2006 at the Miss USA beauty pageant, which he owned.

The former Miss North Carolina, who was 20-years-old at the time, said "he lined all of us up" and was "just looking me over like I was just a piece of meat".

"It left me feeling very gross," Ms Holvey told NBC host Megyn Kelly.

She later told the reporters: "They've investigated other Congress members, so I think it only stands fair that he [Mr Trump] is investigated as well

"This isn't a partisan issue, this is, how women are treated every day."

Ms Leeds, now in her 70s, says that when she was 38 she sat next to Mr Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York and he sexually assaulted her.

Ms Leeds said: "He jumped all over me."

She said she came forward because: "I wanted people to know what kind of person Trump really is, and what a pervert he is."

Media captionSpeaking in 2016, Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos accuses Donald Trump of 'thrusting his genitals' at her

Ms Crooks said she was kissed on the lips by Mr Trump outside a lift in Trump Tower when she was a 22-year-old receptionist at a real estate company there.

"I was shocked," she said. "Devastated."

The White House said on Monday: "These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts, were addressed at length during last year's campaign, and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory.

"The timing and absurdity of these false claims speaks volumes and the publicity tour that has begun only further confirms the political motives behind them."

The president rejected such allegations last year and vowed to sue the accusers, though no lawsuit has yet been filed.

But over the weekend Mr Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said his accusers "should be heard".

Speaking to CBS News, Mrs Haley said she was "incredibly proud of the women who have come forward".

Meanwhile, there Democratic senators - Cory Booker of New Jersey, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York - called on Mr Trump to resign over the allegations.

During his successful run for the presidency last year, Mr Trump was heard boasting of grabbing women's vaginas in a leaked videotape.

EU governments complicit in migrant torture in Libya, says Amnesty

A picture taken on June 27, 2017 shows Libyan coast guardsmen standing in a dinghy carrying illegal immigrants during a rescue operation of 147 people who were attempting to reach Europe — Image captionMigrant boats are regularly intercepted by the Libyan coastguard

European governments are knowingly complicit in the torture and abuse of refugees and migrants in Libya, Amnesty International has alleged.

In an effort to stem migration, the EU is actively supporting a "system of abuse and exploitation" on Libyan shores, the group said in a report.

EU funds are going to authorities working with militias and people smugglers, the report says.

The EU has provided ships, training and funding to the Libyan coastguard.

Libya is the main thoroughfare for migrants trying to reach Europe. Arrivals in Italy - the main destination for boat crossings - fell sharply following the provision of EU funds to the Libyan coastguard.

Libyan migrant detention centre: 'It's like hell'

But Amnesty says the coastguard is working with criminal gangs and people smugglers who are guilty of a range of abuses, with the knowledge of EU officials.

It alleges that the drive to stem migration has resulted in "mass, arbitrary and indefinite detention" of refugees and migrants.

Media captionDetainee Hennessy: "I feel like a dead person"

Refugees and migrants intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard are sent to detention centres run by Libya's general directorate for combating illegal migration (DCIM).

Amnesty said about 20,000 people were currently detained at these centres, and it had testimony showing detainees were subject to "torture, forced labour, extortion, and unlawful killings" at the hands of authorities, traffickers, and militias.

Map showing Central Mediterranean migrant routes

"Tens of thousands are kept indefinitely in overcrowded detention centres where they are subjected to systematic abuse," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty's Europe Director.

"European governments have not just been fully aware of these abuses; by actively supporting the Libyan authorities in stopping sea crossings and containing people in Libya, they are complicit in these abuses."

Media captionMany trying to reach Europe have ended up inside Libyan detention centres

When a BBC correspondent visited a detention centre earlier this year, detainees described violence and abuse and conditions "like hell" and "even worse than jail".

Speaking to Amnesty, one man from the Gambia who was detained for three months said he was starved and beaten.

"They beat me with a rubber hose, because they want money to release me. They call the family while beating [you] so the family send money," he said.

The human rights group said it believed it had enough evidence to take EU governments to court.

Libya has spiraled into lawlessness since Nato-backed forces overthrew long-serving ruler Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011, with a myriad armed militias vying for control

Charles Jenkins: US soldier who defected to North Korea dies

Former US soldier Charles Robert Jenkins waves upon arriving at a Jakarta hotel from North Korea in this 9 July 2004 file photo. — Image captionMr Jenkins walked across the DMZ and surrendered to North Korean soldiers there when he was 24

A former US sergeant who defected to North Korea and became Pyongyang's prisoner for nearly 40 years has died.

Charles Jenkins, 77, lived in Japan where he had settled with his family after his 2004 release.

He was among four US soldiers who defected in the 1960s and later became North Korean film stars, but was the only one who was released.

The others reportedly died in North Korea, including James Dresnok who was said to have died of a stroke in 2016.

Charles Jenkins died on Sado island on Monday, where he was living with his wife Hitomi Soga, also a former prisoner of North Korea.

The US defectors who became film stars in North Korea
Ten things: North Korea's film industry
The Australian who shot a North Korean propaganda film

He collapsed outside his home, Japanese media reports said, and later died of heart problems in hospital. His wife said in a statement that she was "very surprised" by his death and "cannot think of anything", according to AFP news agency.

A plan that went wrong

Mr Jenkins had led an extraordinary but also difficult life in North Korea, which he would later chronicle in a memoir and several interviews.

In 1965, while stationed with the US army in South Korea by the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), Mr Jenkins decided to abandon his unit and defect to the North, fearing he would be killed in patrols or sent to fight in the Vietnam War.

He said he thought that once in North Korea, he could seek asylum with the Russian embassy, and eventually return to the US in a prisoner swap.

One January night, Mr Jenkins said he downed several beers, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to North Korean soldiers there. He was only 24 years old.

But Russia did not grant him or the other Americans asylum. Instead, they were held as prisoners by the North Koreans.

"Thinking back now, I was a fool. If there's a God in the heaven, he carried me through it," said Mr Jenkins in a 2005 interview with US broadcaster CBS.

The men were forced to study the teachings of then-leader Kim Il-sung; did translation work; and taught English. But they also became minor celebrities when they acted in North Korean propaganda films, starring as Western villains.

Mr Jenkins said his captors often beat him, and conducted medical procedures on him that were sometimes unnecessary or brutal, including cutting off a US Army tattoo without anaesthesia, an experience which Mr Jenkins has described as "hell".

'Oyasumi' and 'Goodnight'

But one spark in his life was Ms Soga, who was abducted from Japan to teach North Korean spies her language.

Hitomi Soga speaks during a press conference one day before Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's one-day-trip to Pyongyang at a Tokyo hotel 21 May 2004 with other four former abductees. — Image captionMs Soga, seen here in a 2004 file picture, was taken from Sado island

In 1980, North Korean officials moved her in with Mr Jenkins. Within two weeks they were forced to marry, according to Mr Jenkins, but they eventually fell in love, bonded by their mutual hatred of their captors.

"Well, I'll put it like this. I looked at her one time. I wasn't letting her go," he told CBS.

In his memoir, Mr Jenkins said that every night before they went to bed, he would say "oyasumi" (Japanese for goodnight) to his wife and she would respond in English.

"We did this so we would never forget who we really were and where we came from," he wrote.

The couple had two daughters, Mika and Brinda. Mr Jenkins said that as foreign prisoners, they were treated better than ordinary North Koreans and given rations, even during the famine that swept North Korea in the 1990s.

In 2002, Ms Soga was freed after negotiations by the Japanese government. Pyongyang then allowed Mr Jenkins to leave two years later, along with their daughters.

The family reunited under intense scrutiny from the press in Japan, where there was widespread sympathy.

US army deserter Charles Jenkins (L), accompanied by his wife Hitomi Soga (2nd L) and daughters Mika (2nd R) and Brinda (R), receives flower bouquets upon his arrival at Sado island in Niigata prefecture, 300km north of Tokyo, hometown of his Japanese wife Hitomi Soga as he left a US base 7 December 2004. — Image captionMr Jenkins and his family left North Korea in the early 2000s

In Japan, he surrendered to the US army, almost four decades after he had defected, and was court-martialled.

He was eventually given a 30-day prison sentence, and a dishonourable discharge.

'North Korea wants me dead'

The family settled in Sado island, Ms Soga's hometown, and Mr Jenkins eventually found work as a greeter in a tourist park.

But he had to cope with the culture shock of adapting to the modern world, after spending so many years in an isolated country.

He claimed he had never touched a computer, let alone used the internet, and was surprised to see many women serving in the army as well as black people working as policemen, according to CBS.

In this handout photo from U.S. Army, alleged U.S. Army deserter Sergeant Charles R. Jenkins (R) receives training on a computer from Staff Sgt. Andrew Rogerson, the U.S. Army Garrison Japan training noncommissioned officer and Jenkins's supervisor, at Camp Zama in 17 September 2004 in Zama, Japan — Image captionMr Jenkins was given computer training by the US army while waiting for his court martial in 2004

He also suffered from lingering complications from medical procedures he received in North Korea and had to be hospitalised after his release, he told the Los Angeles Times in one of his last media interviews published in August.

Even while living in freedom, Mr Jenkins still remained afraid of his former captors, and was constantly worried that he or his family would eventually be assassinated.

"North Korea wants me dead," he told the paper.

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