New COVID origins data point to raccoon dogs in China market

The canines, named for their raccoon-like faces, are often bred for their fur and sold for meat in animal markets across China. (AFP)
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Updated 18 March 2023
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New COVID origins data point to raccoon dogs in China market

  • The data show that some of the COVID-positive samples collected from a stall known to be involved in the wildlife trade also contained raccoon dog genes

BEIJING: Genetic material collected at a Chinese market near where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified show raccoon dog DNA comingled with the virus, adding evidence to the theory that the virus originated from animals, not from a lab, international experts say.
“These data do not provide a definitive answer to how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important to moving us closer to that answer,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday.
How the coronavirus emerged remains unclear. Many scientists believe it most likely jumped from animals to people, as many other viruses have in the past, at a wildlife market in Wuhan, China. But Wuhan is home to several labs involved in collecting and studying coronaviruses, fueling theories scientists say are plausible that the virus may have leaked from one.
The new findings do not settle the question, and they have not been formally reviewed by other experts or published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Tedros criticized China for not sharing the genetic information earlier, telling a press briefing that “this data could have and should have been shared three years ago.”
The samples were collected from surfaces at the Huanan seafood market in early 2020 in Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were found in late 2019.
Tedros said the genetic sequences were recently uploaded to the world’s biggest public virus database by scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
They were then removed, but not before a French biologist spotted the information by chance and shared it with a group of scientists based outside China that’s looking into the origins of the coronavirus.
The data show that some of the COVID-positive samples collected from a stall known to be involved in the wildlife trade also contained raccoon dog genes, indicating the animals may have been infected by the virus, according to the scientists. Their analysis was first reported in The Atlantic.
“There’s a good chance that the animals that deposited that DNA also deposited the virus,” said Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah who was involved in analyzing the data. “If you were to go and do environmental sampling in the aftermath of a zoonotic spillover event … this is basically exactly what you would expect to find.”
The canines, named for their raccoon-like faces, are often bred for their fur and sold for meat in animal markets across China.
Ray Yip, an epidemiologist and founding member of the US Centers for Disease Control office in China, said the findings are significant, even though they aren’t definitive.
“The market environmental sampling data published by China CDC is by far the strongest evidence to support animal origins,” Yip told the AP in an email. He was not connected to the new analysis.
WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, cautioned that the analysis did not find the virus within any animal, nor did it find any hard evidence that any animals infected humans.
“What this does provide is clues to help us understand what may have happened,” she said. The international group also told WHO they found DNA from other animals as well as raccoon dogs in the samples from the seafood market, she added.
The coronavirus’ genetic code is strikingly similar to that of bat coronaviruses, and many scientists suspect COVID-19 jumped into humans either directly from a bat or via an intermediary animal like pangolins, ferrets or racoon dogs.
Efforts to determine the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic have been complicated by factors including the massive surge of human infections in the pandemic’s first two years and an increasingly bitter political dispute.
It took virus experts more than a dozen years to pinpoint the animal origin of SARS, a related virus.
Goldstein and his colleagues say their analysis is the first solid indication that there may have been wildlife infected with the coronavirus at the market. But it is also possible that humans brought the virus to the market and infected the raccoon dogs, or that infected humans simply happened to leave traces of the virus near the animals.
After scientists in the group contacted the China CDC, they say, the sequences were removed from the global virus database. Researchers are puzzled as to why data on the samples collected over three years ago wasn’t made public sooner. Tedros has pleaded with China to share more of its COVID-19 research data.
Gao Fu, the former head of the Chinese CDC and lead author of the Chinese paper, didn’t immediately respond to an Associated Press email requesting comment. But he told Science magazine the sequences are “nothing new. It had been known there was illegal animal dealing and this is why the market was immediately shut down.”
Goldstein said his group presented its findings this week to a WHO advisory panel investigating COVID-19’s origins.
Michael Imperiale of the University of Michigan, a microbiology and immunology expert who was not involved in the data analysis, said finding a sample with sequences from the virus and a raccoon dog “places the virus and the dog in very close proximity. But it doesn’t necessarily say that the dog was infected with the virus; it just says that they were in the same very small area.”
He said the bulk of the scientific evidence at this point supports a natural exposure at the market, and pointed to research published last summer showing the market was likely the early epicenter of the scourge and concluding that the virus spilled from animals into people two separate times. “What’s the chance that there were two different lab leaks?” he asked.
Mark Woolhouse, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Edinburgh, said it will be crucial to see how the raccoon dogs’ genetic sequences match up to what’s known about the historic evolution of the COVID-19 virus. If the dogs are shown to have COVID and those viruses prove to have earlier origins than the ones that infected people, “that’s probably as good evidence as we can expect to get that this was a spillover event in the market.”
After a weeks-long visit to China to study the pandemic’s origins, WHO released a report in 2021 concluding that COVID-19 most probably jumped into humans from animals, dismissing the possibility of a lab origin as “extremely unlikely.”
But the UN health agency backtracked the following year, saying “key pieces of data” were still missing. And Tedros has said all hypotheses remain on the table.
The China CDC scientists who previously analyzed the Huanan market samples published a paper as a preprint in February suggesting that humans brought the virus to the market, not animals, implying that the virus originated elsewhere. Their paper didn’t mention that animal genes were found in the samples that tested positive.
In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Energy had assessed “with low confidence” that the virus had leaked from a lab. But others in the US intelligence community disagree, believing it more likely it first came from animals.
Experts say the true origin of the pandemic may not be known for many years — if ever.


Belarus opposition leader freed from jail after US mediation

Updated 21 June 2025
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Belarus opposition leader freed from jail after US mediation

  • His wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said the US helped broker the deal and thanked US President Donald Trump
  • Tikhanovsky, 46, had been imprisoned for more than five years

WARSAW: Belarus’s top jailed opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky was freed alongside over a dozen other political prisoners on Saturday in a surprise release hailed as a “symbol of hope.”

His wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who took the mantle of the opposition after his jailing, said the United States helped broker the deal and thanked US President Donald Trump.

Tikhanovsky, 46, had been imprisoned for more than five years.

He planned to run against incumbent Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in the August 2020 presidential election, but was arrested and detained weeks before the vote.

Svetlana — a political novice at the time of his arrest — took his place in the polls.

She posted a video on Saturday of her embracing Tikhanovsky after his release with the caption: “FREE.”

“It’s hard to describe the joy in my heart,” she said in a post on X.

Thirteen others were released, including Radio Liberty journalist Igor Karnei, who was arrested in 2023 and jailed for participating in an “extremist” organization.

They have now been transferred from Belarus to Lithuania, where they are receiving “proper care,” Lithuanian foreign minister Kestutis Budrys said.

The announcement came just hours after Lukashenko met US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Minsk, the highest profile visit of a US official to the authoritarian state in years.

Belarus, ruled by Lukashenko since 1994, has outlawed all genuine opposition parties and is the only European country to retain the death penalty as a punishment.

The eastern European country still holds over 1,000 political prisoners in its jails, according to Viasna.

Swedish-Belarusian citizen Galina Krasnyanskaya, arrested in 2023 for allegedly supporting Ukraine, was also freed, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said.

The release comes amid a broader warming of relations between the United States and Belarus’s chief ally Russia under Trump.

Since taking office, the Republican has engaged in direct talks with Vladimir Putin, ending his predecessor’s policy of isolating the Russian president.

Tikhanovsky was for years held incommunicado, and in 2023 his wife was told that he had “died.”

In a video published by Viasna on Saturday, he appeared almost unrecognizable, his head shaven and face emaciated.

Tikhanovsky was sentenced in 2021 to 18 years in prison for “organizing riots” and “inciting hatred” and then to 18 months extra for “insubordination.”

A charismatic activist, Tikhanovsky drew the ire of authorities for describing Lukashenko as a “cockroach” and his campaign slogan was “Stop the cockroach.”

Lukashenko claimed a landslide victory in the 2020 election, a result that sparked massive opposition protests which authorities violently suppressed.

The Belarusian autocrat claimed a record seventh term in elections earlier this year that observers blasted as a farce.

Fellow Belarusian political activists and foreign politicians welcomed the release.

Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the “free world” needed Tikhanovsky.

“My sincerest joy goes out to you, Tikhanovskaya and your entire family,” he wrote on X.

Former Belarusian culture minister Pavel Latushko, who supported the 2020 protests against Lukashenko, said all those released had been jailed illegally and hailed Tikhanovsky’s release as an “important moment.”

European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen hailed Tikhanovsky’s release and called for Belarus to free its other political prisoners.

“This is fantastic news and a powerful symbol of hope for all the political prisoners suffering under the brutal Lukashenka regime,” she said on X.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Tikhanovsky’s release was “fantastically good news.”

“At the same time, we must not forget the many other prisoners in Belarus. Lukashenko must finally release them,” he said on X.


Pakistan recommends Trump for Nobel Peace Prize

Updated 21 June 2025
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Pakistan recommends Trump for Nobel Peace Prize

  • Some analysts in Pakistan said the move might persuade Trump to think again about potentially joining Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani government has decided to formally recommend US President Donald Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for his “decisive diplomatic intervention” during last month’s India-Pakistan military standoff, it said on Saturday.

The statement came after Trump took credit for a peace deal negotiated in Washington between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda and complained he had been overlooked by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for his mediating role in conflicts between India and Pakistan, as well as Serbia and Kosovo.

Trump campaigned for office as a “peacemaker” who would use his negotiating skills to quickly end wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Both conflicts are still raging five months into his presidency.

Indian officials have denied that Trump played any part in their country’s ceasefire with Pakistan.

In a post on X, the Pakistani government said President Trump demonstrated “great strategic foresight and stellar statesmanship through robust diplomatic engagement with both Islamabad and New Delhi which de-escalated a rapidly deteriorating situation last month.”

It continued: “This intervention stands as a testament to his role as a genuine peacemaker and his commitment to conflict resolution through dialogue.”

The military standoff between the two nuclear-armed neighbors was triggered by a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan. Islamabad denied complicity.

The four-day standoff raised fears of wider conflict between the South Asian rivals who have fought multiple wars, including two over the disputed region of Kashmir. Trump offered to mediate the Kashmir dispute between the neighbors.

On Friday, the US president predicted that Washington would be able to negotiate trade deals with both India and Pakistan.

“We did a very great job with India and Pakistan, and we had India in, and it looks like we’re going to be making a trade deal with India,” he told reporters in New Jersey. “And we had Pakistan in, and it looks like we’re going to be making a trade deal with Pakistan. And it’s a beautiful thing to watch.”

The Pakistani government said it acknowledged and admired Trump’s offers to help resolve the longstanding Kashmir dispute that lies at the “heart of regional instability.”

“Durable peace in South Asia will remain elusive until the implementation of United Nations Security Council resolutions concerning Jammu and Kashmir,” it said.

The government added this it hopes Trump’s “pragmatic diplomacy and effective peace-building” will help resolve various ongoing crises in the Middle East.

“Pakistan remains hopeful that his earnest efforts will continue to contribute toward regional and global stability, particularly in the context of ongoing crises in the Middle East, including the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Gaza and the deteriorating escalation involving Iran,” it said.

 


Eight dead in Brazil hot air balloon accident

Updated 21 June 2025
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Eight dead in Brazil hot air balloon accident

  • “Eight fatalities and 13 survivors,” governor Jorginho Mello said
  • An investigation was launched

SAO PAULO: At least eight people were killed Saturday when a hot air balloon with 21 passengers caught fire in southern Brazil, said the governor of Santa Catarina state, where the incident occurred.

“Eight fatalities and 13 survivors,” governor Jorginho Mello said on X.

Videos taken by bystanders and carried on Brazilian television showed the moment when the balloon erupted in flames above the coastal town of Praia Grande. The weather conditions were clear.


The basket carrying the passengers plummeted dozens of meters to the ground in flames.

An investigation was launched to determine the cause of the accident.

Praia Grande, on the Atlantic coast, is a popular destination for hot-air ballooning in Brazil.

That was the second fatal balloon accident in the country in just a few days. Less than a week ago, a woman died during a ride in southeastern Sao Paulo state.


Suicide blast kills 20 anti-militant fighters in Nigeria

Updated 21 June 2025
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Suicide blast kills 20 anti-militant fighters in Nigeria

  • Police have confirmed 10 people were killed and said the overall toll could be higher
  • They have also overrun military bases, killing soldiers and carting away weapons

KONDUGA, Nigeria: A suicide attack in Nigeria’s Borno state by a woman allegedly acting for Boko Haram insurgents has killed at least 20 anti-militant fighters, militia members told AFP on Saturday.

Police have confirmed 10 people were killed and said the overall toll could be higher.

Boko Haram and its rival, the Daesh West Africa Province (Daesh-WAP), have in recent months intensified attacks on villages in Borno and neighboring states.

They have also overrun military bases, killing soldiers and carting away weapons.

Late on Friday, a woman allegedly detonated explosives strapped to her body at a haunt for vigilantes and local hunters assisting the Nigerian military in fighting “militants” in the town of Konduga, the militia told AFP.

“We lost 20 people in the suicide attack which happened yesterday around 9:15 p.m. (2015 GMT) while our members were hanging out near the fish market,” said Tijjani Ahmed, the head of an anti-militant militia in Konduga district.

Konduga is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Maiduguri, the capital of the northeastern state of Borno.

Surrounding villages have been repeatedly targeted by suicide bombers said to be acting for Boko Haram, a group of armed Islamic militants that has been active in the area for at least 16 years.

Konduga town itself had seen a lull in such attacks in the past year.

“Eighteen people died on the spot, while 18 others were injured. Two more died in hospital, raising the death toll to 20,” Ahmed said.

Sixteen were wounded, with 10 of them nursing severe injuries in two hospitals in Maiduguri, he said.

The dead were buried in a mass funeral on Saturday, an AFP reporter saw.

Corpses wrapped in white cloths — some covered in bamboo mats — were laid out in rows on the ground on wooden biers ahead of the burial.

The alleged bomber was dressed as a local heading to the crowded nearby fish market.

She detonated her explosives as soon as she reached the shed used by the militia fighters as a hangout, said militia member Ibrahim Liman.

He gave the same toll as Ahmed.

Borno state police spokesman Nahum Daso told AFP that 10 bodies had been recovered from the “suicide attack.”

He said the toll could be higher as “details are sketchy.”

Konduga’s fish market, which is usually busy at night, has been the target of a series of suicide attacks in the past.

“I was in the market to buy fish for dinner when I heard a loud bang some meters behind me,” Konduga resident Ahmed Mallum said.

“I was flung to the ground and I couldn’t stand. I just lay down,” Mallum said.

The conflict between the authorities and Boko Haram has been ongoing for 16 years.

In that time, more than 40,000 people have died and around two million have been displaced from their homes in the northeast, according to the United Nations.

The violence has spread to neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, prompting a regional military coalition to fight armed militant Islamic groups.


Where does India stand on the Israel-Iran conflict?

Updated 21 June 2025
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Where does India stand on the Israel-Iran conflict?

  • Middle East situation shows India deviating from its traditionally pro-peace foreign policy, experts say
  • Indian foreign ministry called both sides ‘to avoid any escalatory steps,’ engage in dialogue

NEW DELHI: India is on a path of non-involvement in the growing conflict in the Middle East, experts said on Saturday, as they warned Delhi’s silence could have serious implications for the region.

Israeli attacks on Iran started on June 13 when Tel Aviv hit more than a dozen sites — including key nuclear facilities and residences of military leaders and scientists — claiming they were aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

After Iran retaliated with ballistic missile strikes against Israel, the two countries have been on a tit-for-tat cycle of bombing.

Israel’s attacks on Iran have reportedly killed at least 639 people and wounded 1,329 others, while Iranian missile strikes have killed 24 people and injured hundreds more in Israel.

India has yet to join other Asian nations — such as China, Japan, Pakistan and Indonesia — in condemning Israel’s initial strikes against Iran.

It was also the only country in the 10-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization which did not endorse a statement issued by the bloc, condemning Israel’s military strikes on Iran. SCO is a political and security body that includes China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Central Asian nations.

In a statement, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs urged “both sides to avoid any escalatory steps” and engage in dialogue and diplomacy “to work towards de-escalation.”

“India enjoys close and friendly relations with both the countries and stands ready to extend all possible support,” the ministry said.

Talmiz Ahmad, an Indian diplomat who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE, described the statement as “a very low-key remark and is meant for the record.”

“India is not interested in engaging itself with serious matters pertaining to regional diplomacy. India is not interested in pursuing ways in which we could promote security and stability,” he said.

Historically, India’s ties with countries in West Asia — a region that includes the Middle East — have been bilateral and transactional, lacking engagement “with the region in a collective sense.”

“With regard to the Israeli-Iran issue we have taken a position of non-involvement … (but) silence in this matter where Israel has initiated a conflict that could have potentially horrendous implications for the region, is another and is something which India should be very concerned about,” Ahmad said.

“There is no justification whatsoever for India to be so indifferent to the flames that are now gathering speed and strength right in our neighborhood.”

India is Israel’s largest arms buyer and Israel is India’s fourth-largest arms supplier. According to a report from Reuters, India has imported military hardware worth $2.9 billion over the last decade.

Delhi also has strategic interests in Iran and has invested around $370 million in a port development project in the Iranian port of Chabahar, aimed at hastening trade and connectivity links to Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Moreover, there are over 10,000 Indian nationals living in Iran, the majority of whom are students. Delhi has prioritized safely evacuating them since Israeli attacks began last week.

Peace in the region should be within India’s strategic interest, according to Delhi-based foreign policy scholar and researcher N. Sai Balaji, who highlighted the 9 million Indians living and working in West Asia.

“Not only that these (9 million) Indians contribute to billions of dollars in terms of remittances (but) India’s energy needs are met from West Asia,” Balaji told Arab News. “Any conflict with Iran or any conflict in West Asia does not only destabilize its financial stability in forms of remittances but also energy security.”

He said the Indian government was “taking sides clearly by not calling out the aggression of Israel.”

“India is not only abdicating its historic responsibility but also changing its foreign policy to accommodate Israel,” Balaji added.

Sudheendra Kulkarni, who served as an advisor to India’s former premier Atal Bihari Vajpayee, said the country had shifted its traditional approach in foreign policy.

“India has always stood for peace in the world … Therefore, it is deeply painful that Narendra Modi’s government has deviated from this traditionally pro-peace foreign policy of India,” Kulkarni told Arab News.

“It is wrong for the government to keep silent in the face of Israel’s naked aggression against Iran … Under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Israel is the aggressor. It has violated international law. Iran is the victim. Iran has the right to defend itself.”