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One striking discovery related to MS, a chronic disease of the brain and spinal cord that is considered an autoimmune disorder in which the body mistakenly attacks itself.

The researchers identified a pivotal migration event about 5,000 years ago at the start of the Bronze Age when livestock herders called the Yamnaya people moved into Western Europe from an area that includes modern Ukraine and southern Russia.

They carried genetic traits that at the time were beneficial, protective against infections that could arise from their sheep and cattle. As sanitary conditions improved over the millennia, these same variants increased MS risk.

links:

• archive of reuters piece: https://archive.ph/aXcpn
• more depth: https://phys.org/news/2024-01-ancient-human-dna-hints-multiple.html
• 50+ page paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.23.509097v1.full

A Japan Airlines plane carrying hundreds of passengers burst into flames on landing at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on Tuesday after it was in collision with another aircraft involved in earthquake relief efforts.

JAL flight 516 ignited after flying into Haneda from the northern Japanese city of Sapporo at 5:47 p.m. local time (3:47 a.m. ET)

All crew members and passengers, including eight children under the age of two, were safely evacuated from the passenger plane, according to the airline. One person on the Coast Guard plane escaped, but five are unaccounted for.

The Japan Coast Guard (JCG) confirms to CNN that one of its aircraft, likely a fixed-wing MA722, collided with commercial flight 516 on the runway.

A JCG spokesman told CNN that the JCG aircraft was headed from Haneda airport to a JCG airbase in Niigata prefecture to help with relief efforts following a 7.5-magnitude earthquake on Monday.

Note that this isn't ALL the hostages -- just 50 in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. archive.org link

A statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said 50 women and children will be released over four days, during which there will be a pause in fighting.

For every additional 10 hostages released, the pause would be extended by another day, it said, without mentioning the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange.

Hamas said the 50 hostages would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children who are held in Israeli jails. The truce deal will also allow hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel aid to enter Gaza, the Palestinian group said in a statement.

Ghost Archive Link -- Live coverage getting updated. Bullet Points:

• The Israeli Army escorts Times journalists to Al-Shifa, a focus of its invasion.
• Israel says a 2nd hostage’s body was found near Al-Shifa, as pressure grows over the captives.
• Israel says it will allow some fuel into Gaza for the U.N. and other operations.
• Despite lack of evidence, U.S. insists Hamas was operating under Al-Shifa.
• Jordan signals that it won’t sign a water deal with Israel in protest of the war.

Excerpts:

Almost 48 hours after entering Gaza’s largest medical complex, the Israeli military escorted journalists from The New York Times through a landscape of wartime destruction Thursday night to a stone-and-concrete shaft on its grounds with a staircase descending into the earth — evidence, it said, of a Hamas military facility under the hospital.

But Col. Elad Tsury, commander of Israel’s Seventh Brigade, said Israeli forces, fearing booby traps, had not ventured down the shaft at the hospital, Al-Shifa. He said it had been discovered earlier in the day under a pile of sand on the northern perimeter of the complex.

Senior U.S. officials said Friday that they remain confident that Hamas and Palestinian militants have been operating under the Al-Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza, even as the Israeli military has struggled to produce proof to back its assertion that Hamas was using the hospital and its patients as human shields.

Jordan’s foreign minister has signaled that his country, one of the driest in the world, will not sign a new water-for-energy deal with Israel because of the Israeli military’s continued bombardment of Gaza.

Excerpt:

Diwali holds profound cultural and spiritual importance in India. Celebrated with exuberance, this five-day festival culminates in major festivities on its third day, symbolising the conquest of light over darkness and good over evil. During Diwali, homes and streets come alive with vibrant rangoli, intricate designs made from colored powders or flower petals.

See also: https://www.cnn.com/travel/diwali-festival-of-lights-explained-cec/index.html

Scientists have filmed an ancient egg-laying mammal named after Sir David Attenborough for the first time, proving it isn't extinct as was feared.

An expedition to Indonesia led by Oxford University researchers recorded four three-second clips of Attenborough's long-beaked echidna.

Spiky, furry and with a beak, echidnas have been called "living fossils".

...

Previous expeditions had struggled to reach the parts of the Cyclops Mountains where the echidnas live because of the belief of local Papuans that they are sacred.

"The mountains are referred to as the landlady," Madeleine Foote from Oxford University says. "And you do not want to upset the landlady by not taking good care of her property."

This team worked closely with local villages and on a practical level that meant accepting that there were some places they couldn't go to, and others where they passed through silently.

See Also: https://phys.org/news/2023-11-elusive-attenborough-echidna-rediscovered-indonesia.html

Among the more unusual findings was a new kind of tree-dwelling shrimp.

"We were quite shocked to discover this shrimp in the heart of the forest," said Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou, the team's lead entomologist, theorizing that the region's heavy rainfall creates an environment humid enough for the shrimps to live on land.