Sunday, February 23, 2020
Earliest interbreeding event between ancient human populations discovered
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200220141232.htm?utm
Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors interbred with a distantly related hominin 700,000 years agoDate:February 20, 2020Source:University of UtahSummary:A new study documented the earliest known interbreeding event between ancient human populations -- a group known as the 'super-archaics' in Eurasia interbred with a Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestor about 700,000 years ago. The event was between two populations more distantly related than any other recorded. The authors proposed a revised timeline for human migration out of Africa and into Eurasia. The method for analyzing ancient DNA provides a new way to look farther back into the human lineage.Share:
FULL STORY
Neanderthal and modern human skulls (stock image).
Credit: © Bruder / Adobe Stock
For three years, anthropologist Alan Rogers has attempted to solve an evolutionary puzzle. His research untangles millions of years of human evolution by analyzing DNA strands from ancient human species known as hominins. Like many evolutionary geneticists, Rogers compares hominin genomes looking for genetic patterns such as mutations and shared genes. He develops statistical methods that infer the history of ancient human populations.
In 2017, Rogers led a study which found that two lineages of ancient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans, separated much earlier than previously thought and proposed a bottleneck population size. It caused some controversy -- anthropologists Mafessoni and Prüfer argued that their method for analyzing the DNA produced different results. Rogers agreed, but realized that neither method explained the genetic data very well.
"Both of our methods under discussion were missing something, but what?" asked Rogers, professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.
The new study has solved that puzzle and in doing so, it has documented the earliest known interbreeding event between ancient human populations -- a group known as the "super-archaics" in Eurasia interbred with a Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestor about 700,000 years ago. The event was between two populations that were more distantly related than any other recorded. The authors also proposed a revised timeline for human migration out of Africa and into Eurasia. The method for analyzing ancient DNA provides a new way to look farther back into the human lineage than ever before.
"We've never known about this episode of interbreeding and we've never been able to estimate the size of the super-archaic population," said Rogers, lead author of the study. "We're just shedding light on an interval on human evolutionary history that was previously completely dark."
The paper was published on Feb. 20, 2020, in the journal Science Advances.
Out of Africa and interbreeding
Rogers studied the ways in which mutations are shared among modern Africans and Europeans, and ancient Neanderthals and Denisovans. The pattern of sharing implied five episodes of interbreeding, including one that was previously unknown. The newly discovered episode involves interbreeding over 700,000 years ago between a distantly related "super-archaic" population which separated from all other humans around two million years ago, and the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans.
The super-archaic and Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestor populations were more distantly related than any other pair of human populations previously known to interbreed. For example, modern humans and Neanderthals had been separated for about 750,000 years when they interbred. The super-archaics and Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors were separated for well over a million years.
"These findings about the timing at which interbreeding happened in the human lineage is telling something about how long it takes for reproductive isolation to evolve," said Rogers.
The authors used other clues in the genomes to estimate when the ancient human populations separated and their effective population size. They estimated the super-archaic separated into its own species about two million years ago. This agrees with human fossil evidence in Eurasia that is 1.85 million years old.
The researchers also proposed there were three waves of human migration into Eurasia. The first was two million years ago when the super-archaics migrated into Eurasia and expanded into a large population. Then 700,000 years ago, Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors migrated into Eurasia and quickly interbred with the descendants of the super-archaics. Finally, modern humans expanded to Eurasia 50,000 years ago where we know they interbred with other ancient humans, including with the Neanderthals.
"I've been working for the last couple of years on this different way of analyzing genetic data to find out about history," said Rogers. "It's just gratifying that you come up with a different way of looking at the data and you end up discovering things that people haven't been able to see with other methods."
Nathan S. Harris and Alan A. Achenbach from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah also contributed to the study.
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Utah. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Related Multimedia:
Image of an evolutionary tree including four proposed episodes of gene flow
Journal Reference:
Alan R. Rogers, Nathan S. Harris, Alan A. Achenbach. Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors interbred with a distantly related hominin. Science Advances, 2020; 6 (8): eaay5483 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay5483
Bloomberg Surrogate Was PR Guru for Bolsonaro
Arick Wierson, who is pushing the billionaire’s presidential bid, devoted himself in 2018 to softening the image of Brazil’s extreme-right leader, reports Ben Norton.
By Ben Norton
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/20/bloomberg-surrogate-was-pr-guru-for-bolsonaro/
A Michael Bloomberg surrogate pumping up the billionaire’s 2020 campaign for president helped to elect Brazil’s extreme-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro, an open supporter of military dictatorship who frequently threatens violence against his political opponents.
Arick Wierson is a public relations strategist who served as a political aide and the top communications adviser to Bloomberg when the Republican media mogul was mayor of New York City.
Wierson worked with Bloomberg for nearly nine years, he noted, “first as an aide in his 2001 political campaign, and later as his chief media advisor at City Hall.” Wierson is so close with the billionaire he sarcastically refers to himself in his Twitter profile as a “Former Media Hack for Mayor Bloomberg.”
In 2018, Wierson joined Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign, devoting himself to softening the image of the Brazilian demagogue who pledged to imprison or exile leftist rivals and said in a newspaper interview that a congresswoman was not “worth raping; she is very ugly.”
Since coming to power with the help of Bloomberg’s former chief media adviser, Bolsonaro has waged a full frontal assault on Brazil’s political system. He has signaled his real agenda by openly praising Chile’s murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet and taunting the United Nations human rights chief over her father’s torture at the hands of his military junta.
A critic on Twitter asked Wierson, “how hard is it for you to sleep at night knowing you took money to make a fascist like Bolsonaro more ‘likeable’ on a scale of ‘every night i stare into a terrifying void of my own making unable to rest’ to ‘i have no soul and sleep like a baby?’”
The Bloomberg surrogate replied succinctly, “I sleep just fine. thanks for asking.”
hobo bindle guy@hobobindleguy
· Feb 19, 2020
Replying to @ArickWierson
Arick, big fan! Quick question: how hard is it for you to sleep at night knowing you took money to make a fascist like Bolsonaro more "likeable" on a scale of "every night i stare into a terrifying void of my own making unable to rest" to "i have no soul and sleep like a baby?"
Arick Wierson@ArickWierson
I sleep just fine. thanks for asking.
2
2:16 PM - Feb 19, 2020
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Promoting Bloomberg on CNN
Although Wierson no longer appears to have an official position in the Bloomberg campaign, he is aggressively promoting him and has become a prominent advocate for the billionaire candidate in corporate media.
In his media appearances and on his social media accounts, Wierson has vigorously attacked self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, the most popular presidential candidate in the Democratic primary.
On both Twitter and Facebook, Wierson posts nonstop pro-Bloomberg propaganda. He openly fantasizes about a brokered convention, in which the DNC hands the nomination to the oligarch. A banner on his Facebook profile reads, “I’m with Mike Bloomberg 2020.”
Wierson has found a reliable platform to defend Bloomberg’s candidacy on corporate cable news media. Back in November 2019, he made the early case for the billionaire running for president in a CNN op-ed titled “Michael Bloomberg is the antidote to Donald Trump.” The piece celebrated his “serene disposition and courage” and declared that he “can resurrect America’s standing in the world.”
Then on Feb. 14, Wierson published another column for CNN promoting Bloomberg as “the ideal standard bearer for the party in 2020, representing Democrats’ best chance for taking back the White House from Trump.”
Four days later, Wierson was invited on CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, where he proclaimed that “Michael Bloomberg represents the Democratic Party’s best chance to take on Donald Trump in 2020.”
Wierson portrayed the Democratic primary as a battle between the billionaire and the self-declared democratic socialist. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a two-person race: it’s Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg,” he said.
PR for Jair Bolsonaro
In his CNN appearances, Arick Wierson advised the billionaire to avoid the presidential debates, because “Bloomberg is not exactly a warm and fuzzy guy,” he conceded, and “the chances of him coming off as dry, lacking empathy, and somewhat mechanical loom large.”
This advice echoes similar counsel Wierson gave to Jair Bolsonaro during his presidential campaign. The former Bloomberg adviser successfully convinced the far-right Brazilian leader to skip the final debate.
Wierson’s role on the Bolsonaro campaign was trumpeted by Bloomberg Media, the billionaire candidate’s personal media empire. In an October 2018 puff piece titled “Bolsonaro’s Message on Love and Peace Tested in Brazil Media,” Bloomberg.com credited Wierson with helping to soften the demagogue’s personality with a heartwarming ad about loving one another and combating hate.
Wierson tweeted out a link to the article at the time, noting that he and his colleagues at the “@jairbolsonaro campaign will be testing some novel tv strategies over next three weeks.”
Arick Wierson@ArickWierson
@jairbolsonaro campaign will be testing some novel tv strategies over next three weeks.#elesim #inovação https://lnkd.in/etE_K32
Bolsonaro's Message on Love and Peace Tested in Brazil Media
A street preacher climbs onto a crowded city bus in Brazil and starts rattling off questions in rapid-fire fashion to the sleepy commuters around him: Why do Brazilians no longer say good morning to...bloomberg.com
4:22 PM - Oct 9, 2018
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Wierson heaped praise on the far-right presidential candidate, writing on social media that Bolsonaro “is going to clarify a lot in the Manifesto. Brazil will be able to sleep in peace.” He even complained that Brazilian journalists were treating Bolsonaro unfairly — while the far-right president has gone on to threaten media outlets that exposed his dirty secrets, particularly his links to the assassination of socialist feminist activist Marielle Franco.
Bloomberg Rubs Elbows with Bolsonaro Allies
Michael Bloomberg himself has rubbed elbows with Bolsonaro henchmen like Sergio Moro, a mastermind of the political coup against Brazil’s left-wing Workers’ Party government and the jailing of its leader.
In 2018, the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce held an opulent gala dinner at which the powerful lobby group gave its top award to both Moro and Bloomberg.
As a senior judge with extensive ties to the U.S. government, Moro oversaw a Washington-backed supposed “anti-corruption” operation, known as Lava Jato, which was used to orchestrate a soft coup against Brazil’s democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff and then imprison Lula da Silva, by far the most popular candidate in Brazil’s 2018 presidential election.
After conspiring with Bolsonaro allies to bring the far-right demagogue to power, Moro was rewarded with a promotion to justice minister. Bolsonaro and Moro immediately proceeded to visit CIA headquarters.
In 2019, the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce honored Bolsonaro, selling every one of the $30,000-per-table tickets to its gala. Bolsonaro ended up not attending, however, after LGBTQ activists pressured corporate sponsors to withdraw their support, citing the extremist Brazilian leader’s raging homophobia. (When a journalist asked Bolsonaro about investigations into his son’s alleged corruption in December, the far-right president lashed out. “You have a terribly homosexual face,” he barked at the reporter.)
The links between the Bloomberg camp and Bolsonaro’s allies also reflect the role the billionaire’s own media network has played in shaping both leaders’ images.
When leaked recordings exposed how Moro blatantly politicized Lava Jato with the express intention to oust the Workers’ Party government, Bloomberg’s news agency published columns defending the supposed “anti-corruption” operation.
Bloomberg Businessweek also honored Moro in 2016 by dubbing him No. 10 in its list of the 50 most influential people of the year.
Many Bloomberg columnists sang the praises of Bolsonaro, celebrating him as the “pro-business candidate.” Among them was Admiral James Stavridis, a former commander of NATO and Bloomberg columnist, who proclaimed that the rise of “Brazil’s Bolsonaro Completes a U.S. Sweep of South America.”
The caption on the featured image did away with any pretense of subtlety: “Yankee come back.”
Op-ed for Bolsonaro Without Disclosing Connection
Arick Wierson has charted an unorthodox career path. During Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign, he frequently appeared in Brazilian media outlets, speaking Portuguese, where he was identified as the “political strategist of Michael Bloomberg.” He has even given interviews in Portuguese to Angolan state television.
Wierson writes regular columns for several websites, including Observer, the publication previously known as The New York Observer, which was run by Jared Kushner until his father-in-law Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, at which point Kushner closed down the print newspaper and transferred ownership to his family to assume duties as a White House senior adviser.
Many of Wierson’s Observer columns appear to be sponsored content for companies such as Great Clips, Anytime Fitness, Sezzle, and Revel.
Wierson’s political punditry reads like an extension of his consulting work. In an article in Observer in October 2018, on the eve of Brazil’s election, Wierson downplayed Bolsonaro’s similarities to Trump.
“Despite many attempts by the media to label Trump and Bolsonaro as twins separated at birth, the two men are as different as they are similar,” Wierson wrote. He portrayed the Brazilian demagogue as a hard-working military veteran from a modest background.
Left undisclosed was Wierson’s work as a top adviser to Bolsonaro.
The only conflict of interest revealed in the article came at the end, with the following note: “Full Disclosure: Arick Wierson is a minority shareholder in a Brazilian political consultancy, TZU, quoted in this article.”
In other words, Wierson quoted a firm he partially owns to bolster his own argument.
The consultant closed by predicting “a new ‘golden age’ of U.S – Brazilian relations, which I believe will not only help Brazil’s economy get back on track, but strengthen our mutual security concerns.”
To forge that unshakeable bond with the junta-happy Brazilian leader, Wierson clearly sees his other former boss, Bloomberg, as the perfect candidate.
ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Indictment on Political Offense Runs Counter to Extradition Treaty
The WikiLeaks publisher was indicted for a political offense, writes Marjorie Cohn, which is forbidden by the two-nation treaty.
By Marjorie Cohn
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/20/assange-extradition-indictment-on-political-offense-runs-counter-to-extradition-treaty/
The Trump administration is seeking extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States for trial on charges carrying 175 years in prison. On Feb. 24, a court in the U.K. will hold a hearing to determine whether to grant President Donald Trump’s request. The treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. prohibits extradition for a “political offense.” Assange was indicted for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a classic political offense. Moreover, Assange’s extradition would violate the legal prohibition against sending a person to a country where he is in danger of being tortured.
WikiLeaks Exposed Evidence of U.S. War Crimes
In 2010 and 2011, WikiLeaks published classified documents provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. They contained 90,000 reports about the war in Afghanistan, including the Afghan War Logs, which documented more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had previously reported.
(thierry ehrmann, Flickr)
WikiLeaks also published nearly 400,000 field reports about the Iraq War, which contained evidence of U.S. war crimes, over 15,000 previously unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, and the systematic murder, torture, rape and abuse by the Iraqi army and authorities that were ignored by U.S. forces.
In addition, WikiLeaks published the Guantánamo Files, 779 secret reports that revealed the U.S. government’s systematic violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, by abusing nearly 800 men and boys, ages 14 to 89.
One of the most notorious releases by WikiLeaks was the 2007 “Collateral Murder” video, which showed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter target and fire on unarmed civilians in Baghdad. More than 12 civilians were killed, including two Reuters reporters and a man who came to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured. Then a U.S. Army tank drove over one of the bodies, severing it in half. Those acts constitute three separate war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual.
Manning was arrested in 2010 and held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day for 11 months. She was forced to stand nude during daily inspections. The former United Nations special rapporteur on torture said her treatment was cruel, inhuman and degrading, and possibly constituted torture. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, and after she had served seven years, former President Barack Obama commuted her sentence as he left office.
Two years later, in May 2019, Manning was jailed for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury about Assange and WikiLeaks. She remains in custody.
On Dec. 31, 2019, Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, released a letter he had sent to the U.S. government expressing “serious concern at the reported use of coercive measures against Ms. Manning, particularly given the history of her previous conviction and ill-treatment in detention.” He said her incarceration amounted to torture and urged that she be released without delay.
Two days later, Manning pledged to stay the course, saying, “My long-standing objection to the immoral practice of throwing people in jail without charge or trial, for the sole purpose of forcing them to testify before a secret, government-run investigative panel, remains strong.”
Facing 175 Years in Prison if Extradited
Wall portrait of Julian Assange. (thierry ehrmann/flickr)
Meanwhile, Sweden issued an arrest warrant in 2010 for Assange on alleged rape and sexual molestation allegations. Assange was questioned by Swedish prosecutors and then left for the U.K., where he was arrested and later released on house arrest.
After Sweden’s request for extradition of Assange was granted by the U.K. Supreme Court in 2012, he was given asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he lived for seven years. A new Ecuadorian government revoked Assange’s asylum in April 2019 and allowed U.K. authorities to enter the embassy and arrest him.
In 2017, Sweden dropped its investigation of Assange. On May 1, 2019, he was sentenced to 50 weeks in jail by the U.K. court for jumping bail and now faces extradition to the United States. Assange stands charged by the Trump administration with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act and conspiracy with Manning to crack a password on a Defense Department computer. He could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.
Assange’s health has severely deteriorated. On May 31, 2019, UN Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer declared that Assange exhibited signs of prolonged exposure to psychological torture. During his years of isolation in the Ecuadorian embassy, the U.K. government denied him permission to go to a hospital for treatment, resulting in seriously worsening medical conditions.
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Melzer said.
Treaty Forbids Extradition for Political Offenses
The 2003 extradition treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. states, “Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense.” It is the “requested state” (in this case, the U.K.) that “determines that the request [by the U.S.] was politically motivated.”
Although there is no clear definition of “political offense,” it routinely includes treason, sedition and espionage, and offenses directed against state power. Assange published “true information obtained from a whistleblower, making the charges against him political in nature, rather than criminal,” Robert Mackey wrote at The Intercept.
Nils Melzer. (UN)
The Obama administration did not indict Assange because it didn’t want to establish “a precedent that could chill investigative reporting about national security matters by treating it as a crime,” according to Charlie Savage of The New York Times.
Obama could not distinguish between what WikiLeaks did and what news media organizations like the Times “do in soliciting and publishing information they obtain that the government wants to keep secret,” Savage noted. Indeed, many of the documents WikiLeaks released were published in collaboration with the Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País and Der Spiegel. The outlets published articles based on documents WikiLeaks had released, including “logs of significant combat events in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Assange is being targeted for “political offenses” because WikiLeaks published evidence of U.S. war crimes. He cannot be extradited to the United States under the terms of the U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty.
Convention Against Torture
The Convention against Torture has a provision called non-refoulement that forbids extradition to a country where there are substantial grounds to believe a person would be in danger of being tortured. Since Manning was tortured by being held in solitary confinement for 11 months, it is likely Assange would face a similar fate if he were extradited to the United States.
Moreover, a country has a duty to refuse extradition when it would violate fundamental rights, such as the right to be free from torture and cruel treatment.
The Johannesburg Principles of national security, freedom of expression and access to information, which were adopted by a group of experts in 1995, have been widely cited by judges, lawyers, journalists, academics and civil society. They provide, “No person may be punished on national security grounds for disclosure of information if the public interest in knowing the information outweighs the harm from the disclosure.”
Significantly, WikiLeaks’ publication of the Iraq War documents, including evidence of Iraqi torture centers the U.S. had established, actually saved lives. After the Iraqi government refused to grant civil and criminal immunity to U.S. soldiers, Obama was compelled to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
Deny Extradition of Assange to US
Assange’s extradition hearing will begin on Feb. 24 in Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s London courtroom. More than 70 lawyers and legal academics, as well as at least 12 former heads of state, have signed a letter that will be sent to the U.K. Home Secretary, stating, “The fact that the charges are brought under the Espionage Act further reveals that this is a matter of a pure political offence [citation omitted]. There is broad international consensus that such offences should not be subject to extradition [citation omitted].”
Veterans for Peace and the National Lawyers Guild have endorsed a petition urging the judge to deny extradition because Assange is charged with a political offense. It reads, “The essence of Assange’s ‘crime’ is that he published documents and videos which revealed the reality of US military and political actions.”
Assange has been awarded Consortium News’s Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award for “practicing the highest order of journalism – revealing crimes of the state.”
The Trump administration singled out Assange to send a clear message to journalists that they publish material critical of U.S. policy at their peril. “The extradition of Assange would mean the end of journalistic investigations into the inner workings of power,” Chris Hedges wrote at Truthdig.
By the very terms of the U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty, and consistent with the Torture Convention’s non-refoulement provision, Judge Baraister must deny Trump’s request for the Assange’s extradition to the United States.
Click here for information about how to oppose Assange’s extradition.
To sign the lawyers/academics letter to the U.K. Home Secretary, send an email to lawyers4assange@protonmail.com and you will receive a copy of the letter.
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.”
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