Ancient mummy DNA reveals surprises about genetic origins of Egyptians

Stephan:  DNA research is transforming our understanding of our past, even our distant past. In the process it is correcting all kinds of misapprehensions. Here is the latest on ancient Egyptian.

Scientists have recently, for the first time, extracted full nuclear genome data from ancient Egyptian mummies
Credit: bpk/Aegyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, SMB/Sandra Steiss)

For the first time, scientists have extracted full nuclear genome data from ancient Egyptian mummies. The results offer exciting insights into how different ancient civilizations intermingled and also establishes a breakthrough precedent in our ability to study ancient DNA.

 The international team of scientists, led by researchers from the University of Tuebingen and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, sampled 151 mummified remains from a site called Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt along the Nile River. The samples dated from 1400 BCE to 400 CE and were subjected to a new high-throughput DNA sequencing technique that allowed the team to successfully recover full genome-wide datasets from three individuals and mitochondria genomes from 90 individuals.
“We wanted to test if the conquest of Alexander the Great and other foreign powers has left a genetic imprint on the ancient Egyptian population,” explains one of the lead authors of the study, […]

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Russia steps up spying efforts after election

Stephan:  This story of Trump his administration and the Russians just keeps getting weirder. Here is the latest.

Russian New York retreat
Credit: NBC

Russian spies are ramping up their intelligence-gathering efforts in the US, according to current and former US intelligence officials who say they have noticed an increase since the election.

The officials say they believe one of the biggest US adversaries feels emboldened by the lack of a significant retaliatory response from both the Trump and Obama administrations.
“Russians have maintained an aggressive collection posture in the US, and their success in election meddling has not deterred them,” said a former senior intelligence official familiar with Trump administration efforts.
Russians could also be seeking more information on Trump’s administration, which is new and still unpredictable to Moscow, according to Steve Hall, retired CIA chief of operations.

1,400 mayors: If Trump won’t lead on climate action, we will

Stephan:  Here is some excellent news. The American government is so corrupt at the federal level, and the Trump administration and the Republican dominated congress so benighted that nothing is being done about climate change, rather the opposite; to the contempt of the world in general. But at the mayoral level government actually has to govern and do things to make society work, or chaos insues. The good news is 1,400 mayors have stepped up, as this report describes.

U.S. Mayors Conference
Credit: U.S. Mayors

The nation’s mayors sent a strong message to the Trump administration: If the federal government won’t take the lead on fighting climate change, they will.

At their annual summit that concluded Monday, the bipartisan U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represents more than 1,400 mayors nationwide, passed several resolutions pushing back against President Donald Trump’s policies on climate change. It included a call to Congress and the president to commit to environmental initiatives such as the Paris climate agreementand the Clean Power Plan. The country’s largest coalition of cities also passed a landmark resolution supporting cities’ transitions to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035. The resolution was passed unanimously, the Guardian reported.

“If the federal government doesn’t act, it doesn’t mean we don’t have a national policy; the federal government doesn’t occupy the only place on this,” conference president and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu told the New York Times on Monday. […]

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Seattle Program Will Allow Residents to Make Taxpayer-Funded Donation to Any Candidate of Their Choice

Stephan:  Here is some more excellent news. Happily I live in Washington State, a blue value state (the east side of the state is Red although happily most of the population is on the west side of the mountains). Seattle is very Blue value and has done something quite exemplary. Here's the report.

If money amplifies the voices of wealthy Americans in politics, Seattle is trying something that aims to give low-income and middle-class voters a signal boost.

The city’s new “Democracy Voucher” program, the first of its kind in the US, provides every eligible Seattle resident with $100 in taxpayer-funded vouchers to donate to the candidates of their choice. The goal is to incentivize candidates to take heed of a broad range of residents – homeless people, minimum-wage workers, seniors on fixed incomes – as well as the big-dollar donors who often dictate the political conversation.

This August’s primary is the trial run for the program. But before Seattle can crow about having re-enfranchised long-overlooked voters, it must contend with conservative opposition.

The experiment comes at a time of seemingly new possibilities for campaign financing. Bernie Sanders demonstrated that small donors can float a campaign, with 99% of his donations coming from individual donors, 59% of which were considered small donations.

Last fall, South Dakota voters approved a program similar to Seattle’s, joining more than a dozen other states with some form of public financing, usually a matching fund for small campaign donations. Cities such as Portland, […]

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Frank Amedia: Trump ‘Receives Downloads’ That He’s ‘Beginning To Understand Come From God’

Stephan:  Here's another glimpse into the strange parallel universe of the Theocratic Right. This story is so weird I will let it speak for itself. I am running the piece because I think it is important to understand what is going on in the Great Schism Trend.

Pastor and Trump supporter Frank Amedia

Frank Amedia, who was a volunteer “Christian policy liaison” for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign before launching a project with fellow “prophets” to create a “POTUS Shield” around Trump’s presidency, visited televangelist Jim Bakker’s program this week to discuss various prophecies he has received around Trump.

Amedia told Bakker that he had heard from God that God had given Trump a “breaker anointing” that had allowed him to break up the Republican and Democratic parties and the news media, so North Korea had better watch out.

“So, you know, North Korea, you’d better be on your toes because you’re up against a breaker anointing of God,” he said. “This isn’t about politics, this isn’t government as usual, this isn’t even militaristic, God has raised up…a breaker anointing. Anything that God opposes him against, he breaks up. He broke up the Republican Party…he broke up the Democratic Party, he broke up the news media. Everything that comes against him, he has a hammer against. So, I’m telling you, […]

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