China's science ministry has ordered that people involved in the controversial baby gene-editing experiment halt their activities, a government official told state media Thursday. The ministry "firmly opposes the baby gene-editing incident and has already demanded that the relevant organisation suspend the scientific activities of relevant personnel," a ministry official said, according to state broadcaster CCTV. The National Health Commission is investigating the claims.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller's team believes a conservative author and conspiracy theorist tipped off Donald Trump's confidant Roger Stone months before WikiLeaks released thousands of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, according to a document newly made public.
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A young boy upstaged Pope Francis on Wednesday, escaping from his mother and running onto the papal podium at a general audience, tugging on the hand of a Swiss guardsman and playing behind the pontiff's chair. Pope Francis told her to let him carry on playing. As she left the stage, a smiling Francis leaned towards Bishop Georg Ganswein sitting next to him and whispered: "He is Argentinian.
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At the risk of oversimplifying, there are two broad “Russian collusion” theories. The other just got a slight boost yesterday when Jerome Corsi provided to the Washington Post what appears to be a draft statement of offense from the special counsel’s office. The James Bond theory is fading.
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Robert Mueller's office is aware of emails sent to Trump confidant Roger Stone tipping him off about "very damaging" data dumps Wikileaks released during the 2016 presidential election, a draft court document has revealed. The emails, detailed within in draft court documents, were sent by right-wing commentator Jerome Corsi to Mr Stone — who was serving as a campaign adviser to Donald Trump — two months before the data dumps were published online. Mr Stone has denied any involvement in the release of the emails.
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Russia seized the Ukrainian vessels and their crews on Sunday near Crimea, the Ukrainian region which Moscow annexed in 2014, over what it said was their illegal entry into Russian waters, which Ukraine denies. Some of Ukraine's Western allies have also raised the possibility of imposing new sanctions on Russia over the episode, which could deliver a blow to the Russian economy. Putin said he also still hoped to meet Trump at the G20, while the Kremlin said the meeting was still being prepared and Washington had not informed Moscow it was off.
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Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, on Thursday declined to come to Ukraine's aid after its president appealed for help to block Russian aggression. Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, appealed to Nato on Thursday, asking for naval support in the standoff with Russia and accused the neighboring state of wanting to annex the Sea of Azov. Speaking to German newspaper Bild, Mr Poroshenko called Germany one of Ukraine's “closest allies” and urged it - together with other Nato countries - to deploy naval ships to aid his country after Russia fired on and seized three Ukrainian vessels near Crimea on Sunday. “We simply cannot accept this aggressive policy, originally there was Crimea, then eastern Ukraine, now the Sea of Azov,” he said in the interview. Mrs Merkel blamed Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, for the tensions, but warned that there is “no military solution” to the conflict in the region. Crimean bridge map “We ask the Ukrainian side too to be sensible because we know that we can only solve things through being reasonable and through dialogue," Mrs Merkel said during her opening speech at the annual German-Ukrainian economic forum in Berlin on Thursday. Nato, which Ukraine hopes to join, called on Russia to release the captured vessels and the crews, but didn’t say it had any plans to send its naval forces to the region. The incident over the weekend marked the most serious escalation of the conflict between the states since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Russian officials insist that the Ukrainian vessels breached its border on Sunday morning and later attempted dangerous manoeuvres in Russia’s territorial waters. Mr Putin defended Russia’s actions on Wednesday, accusing Mr Poroshenko of organising a provocation in an attempt to boost his poor ratings ahead of the next year’s presidential elections. Recent polls suggest that roughly 10 percent of the electorate would vote for the incumbent president. Ukraine has denied any wrongdoing and imposed martial law in the country’s regions bordering Russia for 30 days. Mr Poroshenko called on Europe to introduce new sanctions and re-think Nord Stream-2, an undersea pipeline project that would increase Russia’s gas direct supplies to Germany. Ukraine, which currently earns transit fees from piping Russian gas to Europe, has objected the project. Ihor Voronchenko, the Ukrainian Navy Commander, said Thursday that Kiev would also seek a ban on passage for Russian vessels through the Bosporus Strait. Meanwhile, Russian state media reported that the country’s Black Sea Fleet had deployed a battalion of S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, the fourth one, to north Crimea, and also plans to build a new missile early-warning radar station there. Crimean courts put all 24 captured Ukrainian servicemen suspected of breaching the Russian state border under pre-trial two-month arrest. Ukraine's infrastructure minister, Volodymyr Omelyan, on Thursday accused Russia of imposing a de facto blockade on two Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov by preventing ships from leaving and entering the sea via the Kerch Strait. The Kremlin’s spokesman denied any restrictions for shipping in the area, saying that no problems had been reported. Mrs Merkel said she was going to discuss the crisis with Putin during the G20 summit, which starts Friday in Argentina.
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Hotter summers will drive a spike in violence, suicide and self harm, the authors of a major study into the health impacts of climate change have warned. More than 150 experts from fields including climate science, health, engineering, agriculture and transport have assessed the implications of global warming on populations and warned that sweltering summers could have unexpected side effects. The new Countdown on Health and Climate Change report published in The Lancet warns that climate change ‘aggravates’ risks to mental health and wellbeing and increases aggression, violence, self-harm and suicide. Extreme events could also spark psychological problems such post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), adjustment disorder, and depression. Speaking at a briefing in Central London Dr Nick Watts, Executive Director of the Lancet Countdown, said: “Heat also has effects in terms of what it does to our mental health. “We know that in periods of hot weather there are spikes in violence, suicide and depression. “This is most evident in a few countries like Australia but we’re now developing ways of considering that across the world.” How hot is 2018 compared to previous summers? Research suggests that extreme heat can seriously impact brain chemistry, damaging neurotransmitters which regulate emotion. Heat is also known to increase testosterone production, which can promote aggression. Studies in the US and Australia have found that increases in mean temperature by just 1C can see suicides rise more than two per cent and increase the number of people attending A&E through self harm by 0.7 per cent. Adelaide researchers also found rising temperatures led to significant increases in admissions to A&E for assaults and an increase in ambulance call-outs by four per cent, while mental health admissions increased by six per cent. A study in 2015 found droughts lead to an increase in farmers committing suicide while last year soaring temperatures was linked to collective violence. This week a climate change report from the Met Office warned that heatwave summers such as experienced in Britain this summer would become normal in the coming decades, with temperatures rising by more than 5C. Heatwave | Read more Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “When it comes to heatwaves in the UK, a sense of triviality often prevails – ‘bumper summer temperatures’ or ‘barbecue weather’ are more likely headlines than any focusing on the threat to our health. “GPs and our teams witnessed the effects of this summer’s heatwave first-hand, and they are anything but trivial.” The report found that on average, everyone on Earth was exposed to an additional 1.4 days of heatwave between 2000 and 2017 compared with the period 1986-2005. And while average global temperatures rose by 0.3 per cent between 1986 and 2017 the impact on human populations was much greater. The average temperature increase people were exposed to over the same period was 0.8C. Heat rising above physiological limits also made sustained work more difficult or impossible, the authors said. In 2017, 153 billion hours of labour were lost due to heat exposure, an increase of 62 billion hours since 2000.
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The European Union is aiming to de-escalate tensions between Kiev and Moscow this week after Russia seized three Ukrainian navy ships and their crew, worrying about putting fuel on the fire, diplomats and analysts say. The bloc is aware of the risk of playing hardball against Russia, which has been locked in a low-level militarised conflict with Ukraine for nearly five years. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Bild newspaper she wanted Ukraine to be "sensible" and help lower tensions through dialogue.
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DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria's air defenses confronted an aerial "aggression" over the country's south late Thursday, shooting down several targets and preventing them from carrying out their mission in the first such attack since Syria received a Russian air defense system last month, state TV said.
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California attorney general Xavier Becerra said Wednesday that his office is “monitoring” the use of force against a caravan of migrants and the possible closure of the southern border and considering filing a legal challenge. “We have been approached by folks who have expressed complaints,” Becerra told Reuters in an interview. Becerra, a Democrat and former member of Congress, suggested that president Trump’s threat to close the border in response to the influx of central American migrants arriving in caravans might provide a legal avenue to challenge the administration, provided the border closure affects a California resident.
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The Indonesian authorities have concluded that the Lion Air plane that crashed last month killing 189 people was not fit to fly and should have been grounded after recurring technical problems. The Boeing 737 MAX vanished from radar about 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, on October 29, slamming into the Java Sea at 450 miles per hour moments after the pilot had asked to return to the airport. Data from the jetliner, presented in preliminary findings by accident investigators on Wednesday, showed the pilots fought to prevent the crash from the moment the plane took off as the 737’s nose was repeatedly forced down, apparently by an automatic system receiving incorrect sensor readings. The information from the flight data recorder reveals that the crews successfully battled to raise the nose over two dozen times before finally losing control. The National Transport Safety Committee (KNKT) did not pinpoint a definitive cause of the accident, with a final crash report not likely to be filed until next year. However, it admonished Lion Air, the nation’s largest budget carrier, for repeatedly putting the plane back into service despite failing to fix a problem with the airspeed indicator in the days leading up to the fatal flight. Jakarta plane crash: Flight Lion Air JT610 Its previous flight, on the eve of the crash, was from Denpasar in Bali to Jakarta. The pilots had reported the same problem but had de-activated the anti-stall system and continued to fly manually. “During [that] flight, the plane was experiencing a technical problem but the pilot decided to continue,” Nurcahyo Utomo, aviation head of the KNKT told reporters. The report outlines the maintenance procedures that were carried out in response. “In our opinion, the plane was no longer airworthy and should not have continued,” he said, according to the BBC. The report itself does not explicitly spell out that conclusion. Instead it urges the airline to improve its safety culture, including to increase pilots’ knowledge of emergency procedures, and to better document repair work on its planes. The initial findings will also heighten concerns there were problems with key systems in one of the world's newest and most advanced commercial passenger planes. Investigators have previously said the doomed aircraft had problems with its airspeed indicator and angle of attack (AOA) sensors, prompting Boeing to issue a special bulletin telling operators what to do when they face the same situation. An AOA sensor provides data about the angle at which air is passing over the wings and tells pilots how much lift a plane is getting. The information can be critical in preventing an aircraft from stalling. Boeing 737 MAX | Who has ordered the plane? The KNKT has retrieved one of the plane's black boxes - the flight data recorder - but is yet to locate the cockpit voice recorder, which will give more details of how the pilots acted to tackle the problem. Indonesia's aviation safety record has improved since its airlines, including national carrier Garuda, were subject to years-long bans from US and European airspace for safety violations, although the country has still recorded 40 fatal accidents over the past 15 years. Lion Air’s parent group, which also operates Batik Air and Wings Air, has captured half the domestic market in less than 20 years of operation to become Southeast Asia's biggest airline, but it has been dogged by a dubious safety record and an avalanche of complaints over shoddy service. Last week a searing investigation by the New York Times, based on interviews with dozens of Lion Air’s management personnel and flight and ground crew members, as well as investigators and aviation analysts, painted a picture of a carrier that allegedly prioritised growth over safety. Fifteen major safety lapses have been documented in recent years, including a crash that killed 25 people. Government safety investigators alleged that the company’s political ties have allowed it to circumvent their recommendations and play down safety fears. BREAKING: Indonesian national transport safety committee says no engineer briefed the pilot of crashed Lion Air flight JT610 of the multiple serious flight problems experienced on previous flights. The onus was on him to read the maintenance log— amanda hodge (@hodgeamanda) November 28, 2018 In one incident described by the Times, a government inspector had grounded a plane in the city of Makassar, eastern Indonesia, over problems with its hydraulic system. The airline went over his head to gain permission to fly from officials in Jakarta and the flight took off anyway. But Boeing has also come under fire for possible glitches on the 737 MAX - which entered service just last year. Several relatives of the crash victims have already filed lawsuits against Boeing, including the family of a young doctor who was to have married his high school sweetheart this month. Authorities have called off the grim task of identifying victims of the crash, with 125 passengers officially recognised after testing on human remains that filled some 200 body bags.
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