Following border clashes between India and China at Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, the US said that it “strongly opposes” any unilateral attempt to advance territorial claims.
US State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters at the daily briefing that the US is “closely” monitoring the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the aftermath of clashes and is in “close contact” with its Indian “partners”.
Price declined to detail conversations with India but stated, “We are glad to hear that both sides appear to have quickly disengaged from the clashes,” Price said and went on to appeal to the two countries to discuss their boundary disputes utilising the existing bilateral channels.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also expressed similar sentiments. “We are glad to hear that both sides appear to have quickly disengaged from the clashes. We are closely monitoring the situation. We encourage India and China to utilise existing bilateral channels to discuss disputed boundaries,” she said.
Price was responding to questions about clashes between contingents of the Indian Army and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the Tawang sector last week.
The Chinese soldiers, numbering about 300, came armed with tasers, knuckle dusters and other weapons – but not guns as per a bilateral pact not to use arms in the border. The Indian side deployed reinforcements and “compelled” them to return to their posts, said the Indian defence minister.
The largely unmarked LAC has seen several such clashes, of late with Galwan in Ladakh region in 2020 when 20 Indian soldiers were injured at the time and many Chinese soldiers too killed or injured.
Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Indian American member of the House of Representatives, expressed concern over the clashes and said, “I’m disturbed to learn of the latest show of aggression by the Chinese Communist Party through its violation of Indian territory with its armed forces.”
He said the clashes are a reminder of the growing belligerence of the Chinese Communist Party and the need for the United States to continue to work with India in the region to counter Beijing’s aggression.
The incident on Dec 9, 2022 happened when Chinese troops in Yangtse in the Tawang sector in Arunachal Pradesh clashed with three different battalions — Jammu and Kashmir Rifles, Jat regiment and Sikh Light Infantry — were present at the location in a bid to change the status quo in the border territory.
The update shows that there is 67% increase in Medical Colleges from 387 to 648 or 87% increase in MBBS seats from 51,348 to 96,077 and 105% increase in PG seats from 31,185 to 64,059. Currently, there are 22 AIIMS approved with 19 AIIMS of them having undergraduate courses.
A total of 96,077 MBBS seats are available in the country out of which 51,712 in Government Medical Colleges and 44365 in Private Medical Colleges. There are 49,790 PG seats of National Medical Commission (NMC) available in the country, out of which 30,384 in Government Medical Colleges and 19,406 in Private Medical Colleges.
There are also 12,648 Diplomate of National Board (DNB) / Fellowship of National Board (FNB) PG seats out of which 4185 in Government institutions and 8463 in Private institutions. In addition, 1621 PG seats are in College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPS), said a statement.
There is an increase of 67% in Medical Colleges from 387 before 2014 to 648 as of now. Further, there is an increase of 87% in MBBS seats from 51,348 before 2014 to 96,077 as of now and increase of 105% in PG seats from 31,185 before 2014 to 64,059 as of now. The measures/steps taken by the Government to increase the opportunities for medical studies and expansion of medical education in the Country include: –
Central Sector Scheme for establishment of new medical college by upgrading district/ referral hospital under which 94 new medical colleges are already functional out of 157 approved.
Central Sector Scheme for strengthening/ upgradation of existing State Government/Central Government Medical Colleges to increase MBBS and PG seats.
Central Sector Scheme for “Upgradation of Government Medical Colleges by construction of Super Specialty Blocks”. A total of 60 projects are complete out of 75 approved.
Under the Central Sector Scheme for setting up of new AIIMS, 22 AIIMS have been approved. Undergraduate courses have started in 19 of these.
Relaxation in the norms for setting up of Medical College in terms of requirement for faculty, staff, bed strength and other infrastructure.
DNB qualification has been recognized for appointment as faculty to take care of shortage of faculty.
Enhancement of age limit for appointment/ extension/ re-employment against posts of teachers/Dean/Principal/ Director in medical colleges upto 70 years.
As per information received from the State Government of Madhya Pradesh, the State in order to promote education in regional languages has taken a decision to impart medical education in Hindi as a pilot project.
The Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar stated this in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.
Amid border incursions with the Chinese soldiers coming with barbed sticks near the LAC on December 9, satellite images show that China has built villages on their side. As per a bilateral pact, weapons are not to be borne by soldiers on the border.
Along the India-China border abutting Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang, the PLA army has also constructed a road, Indian Army sources told media on Tuesday, a day after a clash between troops of both sides last week became public.
On the clash, sources said that as many as 300 Chinese troops had arrived near the LAC on December 9 to gain control over the peak of a 17,000-feet-high mountain but the Indian troops foiled their attempt, the source said.
Meanwhile, China’s first statement on the clash has come, with its Foreign Ministry said that the situation on its border with India is “stable”. Responding to reports of clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) near Tawang, China maintained that the situation on the border is stable.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said: “As far as we understand, the situation on the China-India border is overall stable. Continuous talks are going on, on the border issue through diplomatic and military channels.”
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday told Parliament that Indian troops successfully thwarted an attempt by Chinese soldiers to transgress the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector.
In a statement which the Defence Minister read out in both Houses of Parliament, he said that Indian troops in a brave and resolute manner pushed back the Chinese troops back to their positions after a physical scuffle, in which minor injuries were suffered by both sides in Yangtse area of Tawang sector.
However no fatalities were reported on the Indian side during the incident, Rajnath Singh informed the House. He said that subsequently a flag meeting between Indian and Chinese commanders was held on December 11, where the Chinese side was told to refrain from such actions and maintain peace and tranquility along the border.
The matter has also been taken up through diplomatic channels with China. Rajnath Singh expressed confidence that the House stands united in supporting Indian soldiers in their efforts as the Lok Sabha witnessed a pandemonium when he read out the statement.
Earlier in the day, Rajnath Singh had chaired a high-level emergency meeting with CDS Lieutenant General Anil Chauhan, Army chief General Manoj Pande and NSA Ajit Doval.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said, “No doubt that China has its eyes on Tawang. We’ve to be very alert there. I think what our Army did yesterday had the support of entire country.”
The clash between Indian and Chinese troops on December 9 took place at the 17,000 feet at Yangtse, some 35 km north-east of Tawang in western Arunachal Pradesh.
A source informed that there have been injuries to both Indian and Chinese soldiers and six of the injured Indian soldiers had been admitted to the military hospital at Guwahati, but here is no reports of any serious injury or death.
China has been repeatedly trying to take control of the 17,000-feet-high peak but Indian Army sources said that India has a firm control of the peak, which provides a commanding view on both sides of the border. Currently, Indian Air Force aircraft are patrolling the skies of Arunachal.
As the winter is setting in, the Delhi government is taking up the Winter Action Plan to rescue the homeless from the chill and provide them accommodation and food in ‘Rain Baseras’.
Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Tuesday reviewed the plan with senior officials of various departments concerned. The Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DSUIB) has set up 15 rescue teams, each equipped with a vehicle, for surveillance and rescuing homeless people.
The Delhi government has also set up a 24×7 centralised control room and issued helpline numbers to join Rain Basera or night shelter.
To ensure that no one is left out in the cold during the peak winter season, the government has established food and lodging facilities for homeless people across 195 shelter homes which have the capacity of accommodating over 17,000 people, said Sisodia.
An official said that people can inform the DUSIB about the homeless through this helpline and DUSIB’s rescue team will reach the location to take the homeless to the nearest shelter.
About the night shelter facility, Sisodia said: “The Delhi government is determined to provide a dignified life to every person residing in the capital, including homeless people.
He also said that the government is planning to increase the capacity of these shelters, if needed, in the winter.
The DUSIB officials are responsible for managing the night shelter facility across the capital primarily, along with the existing facilities of food, lodging and medical care at the ‘Rain Baseras’.
So far, over 1,500 homeless people have been rescued by these teams in the past few weeks. Out of total 195 night shelters for homeless people in Delhi, 19 are for families, 17 for women, four for drug addicts, and three are recovery shelters.
Sky watchers can witness a meteor shower peaking between Tuesday night and well into the early hours of Wednesday, Dec 12-13 night as the Geminid meteor shower comes around this time of the year when several meteoroids, left behind by ‘rock comet’ 3200 Phaethon, enter the earth’s atmosphere.
While Bengaluru-based Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium is organising an event to watch the night sky with naked eye between 10pm tonight till 4:30am Wednesday under expert advice and supervision after paying Rs. 500 per head, the winter night has become suddenly cloudy by evening that many may be left disappointed.
Following the Cyclone Mandous in Chennai and Andhra Pradesh coast, Bengaluru is under constant spell of rain in the last four days and the morning Sun soon disappeared on Wednesday.
However, people in other ares with clear sky can see meteors unless hindered by pollution and a cloudy sky, with a bright moon to add to that. However, if you are in luck, you will be able to observe around 30 to 40 meteors lighting up the night sky each hour, especially between 2am and 3am. Telescopes are not necessary for this event as they limit the view of the sky.
In a massive show of anger, more than 80 political parties and social organisations staged a silent march in Pune on Tuesday to protest the repeated slurs on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
Several major areas of the city, including wholesale markets observed a shutdown and more than two lakh protesters joined the march sporting saffron flags, black banners and posts, demanding the removal of Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari for his recent utterances vilifying great icons of the state.
Maha Vikas Aghadi members Congress, Shiv Sena-UBT, Nationalist Congress Party, around three dozen Maratha, Shiv Premi and Muslim organisations, the royal descendent Chhatrapati Udayanraje Bhosale and a large number of women walked in the silent march from Deccan to Lal Mahal areas of the city.
However, the ruling Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party and Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena kept off the protest demonstration, where a massive police contingent of over 7,500 personnel was deployed to ward off any untoward incidents.
Bhosale questions
Shivaji’s descendent Bhosale asked the media that when Nupur Sharma (who made derogatory remarks on the Prophet Mohammed in May) was removed by the party, what prevented it from ousting the Governor for his utterances against the Chhatrapati, and initiating action against all others who keep making derogatory comments on icons which hurt public sentiments.
MVA’s leaders in the procession included Shiv Sena-UBT Deputy Leader Dr. Raghunath Kuchik, Sushma Andhare, Sena-UBT city chief Sanjay More, NCP’s city President Prashant Jagtap, office-bearers Rupali Patil, Deepak Mankar and Ankush Kakde, Ajinkya Palkar, Congress city chief Ramesh Bagwe, office-bearers Arvind Shinde, Sangeeta Tiwari, Mohan Joshi, Balasaheb Dabhekar, and the Sambhaji Brigade was represented by Santosh Shinde, Vikas Pasalkar, and Prashant Dhumal.
Other major groups which joined were the CPI, Maratha Mahasangh, Dalit Panthers, RPI, Aam Aadmi Party, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, over two dozen non-political, social, business organisations, youths, women and Muslim front groups.
Bhagat Singh Koshiyari
The MVA leaders have rejected the Governor’s letter (December 6) clarifying his position to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and insisted that he had not apologised for his remarks against Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj or Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, hence he has lost the moral right to continue in his post.
Among other things in his letter, Koshyari said that he “cannot even dream” of insulting the great personalities as contended and sought Shah’s “guidance” in the matter.
The state has been rocked by a series of agitations and protests against the Governor for his recent utterances that have irked the state polity and top leaders also objected to him sharing the stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Nagpur on Sunday.
Besides the Governor, other BJP leaders like state ministers Chandrakant Patil, Mangal Prabhat Lodha, Union Minister Raosaheb Danve, have been accused of making objectionable statements against the state’s icons.
Joining the Big Tech layoff season, networking major Cisco has reportedly started laying off 5 per cent of its workforce, which is more than 4,000 employees as a part of its “rebalancing” act and “rightsizing certain businesses”.
Silicon Valley Business Journal reported that many workers took to TheLayoff.com and Blind portal to post about the job cuts at the company. “Impacted by Cisco layoffs!” one company employees said on Blind while another sought “Looking for immediate (software engineering) referrals. Any help would be sincerely appreciated. Thanks.”
However, Cisco did not directly comment on severance packages but said in a statement that “we didn’t take this decision lightly, and we will offer those impacted extensive support, including generous severance packages”.
In its first quarter earning report (Q1 2023) last month, Cisco reported $13.6 billion in revenue, up 6 per cent year over year. Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO of Cisco, merely said that he would “be reluctant to go into a lot of detail here until we’re able to talk to them. I would say that what we’re doing is rightsizing certain businesses”.
Cisco Chief Financial Officer Scott Herren had described the move as a “rebalancing” act.
To save the northern white rhinoceros from extinction, the BioRescue team is racing to create lab-grown egg and sperm cells of the critically endangered subspecies. The team has now reported a milestone in Science Advances: they have generated primordial germ cells from stem cells – a world’s first.
Thirty-three-year-old Najin and her daughter Fatu are the last surviving northern white rhinos on the planet. They live together in a wildlife conservancy in Kenya. With just two females left, this white rhino subspecies is no longer capable of reproduction – at least not on its own. But all hope is not lost: according to a paper published in the journal Science Advances, an international team of researchers has successfully cultivated primordial germ cells (PGCs) – the precursors of rhino eggs and sperm – from embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
The last two surviving females live in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya./CREDIT:Jan Stejskal, Safari Park Dvůr Králové
This represents a major milestone in an ambitious plan. The BioRescue project, which is coordinated by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since 2019, wants to save the northern white rhino from extinction. To this end, the scientists are pursuing two strategies – one of them trying to generate viable sperm and eggs from the skin cells of deceased rhinos. The idea is to implant the resulting embryos into closely related southern white rhino females, who will then carry the surrogate offspring to term. And so the northern white rhino subspecies, which humans have already effectively wiped out through poaching, may yet be saved thanks to state-of-the-art stem cell and reproductive technologies.
First success with an endangered species
To get from a piece of skin to a living rhinoceros may be a true feat of cellular engineering, but the process itself is not unprecedented: the study’s co-last author Professor Katsuhiko Hayashi leads research labs at the Japanese universities of Osaka and Kyushu in Fukuoka, where his teams have already accomplished this feat using mice. But for each new species, the individual steps are uncharted territory. In the case of the northern white rhinoceros, Hayashi is working in close cooperation with Dr. Sebastian Diecke’s Pluripotent Stem Cells Technology Platform at the Max Delbrück Center and with reproduction expert Professor Thomas Hildebrandt from Leibniz-IZW. The two Berlin-based scientists are also co-last authors of the current study.
“This is the first time that primordial germ cells of a large, endangered mammalian species have been successfully generated from stem cells,” explains the study’s first author, Masafumi Hayashi of Osaka University. Previously, it has only been achieved in rodents and primates. Unlike in rodents, the researchers have identified the SOX17 gene as a key player in rhinoceros PGC induction. SOX17 also plays an essential role in the development of human germ cells – and thus possibly in those of many mammalian species.
The southern white rhino embryonic stem cells being used in Japan come from the Avantea laboratory in Cremona, Italy, where they were grown by Professor Cesare Galli’s team. The newly derived northern white rhino PGCs, meanwhile, originated from the skin cells of Fatu’s aunt, Nabire, who died in 2015 at Safari Park Dvůr Králové in the Czech Republic. Diecke’s team at the Max Delbrück Center was responsible for converting them into induced pluripotent stem cells.
Next step: cell maturation
Masafumi Hayashi says that they are hoping to use the cutting-edge stem cell technology from Katsuhiko Hayashi’s lab to save other endangered rhino species: “There are five species of rhino, and almost all of them are classified as threatened on the IUCN Red List.” The international team also used stem cells to grow PGCs of the southern white rhino, which has a global population of around 20,000 individuals. In addition, the researchers were able to identify two specific markers, CD9 and ITGA6, that were expressed on the surface of the progenitor cells of both white rhino subspecies. “Going forward, these markers will help us detect and isolate PGCs that have already emerged in a group of pluripotent stem cells,” Hayashi explains.
The BioRescue scientists must now move on to the next difficult task: maturing the PGCs in the laboratory to turn them into functional egg and sperm cells. “The primordial cells are relatively small compared to matured germ cells and, most importantly, still have a double set of chromosomes,” explains Dr. Vera Zywitza from Diecke’s research group, who was also involved in the study. “We therefore have to find suitable conditions under which the cells will grow and divide their chromosome set in half.”
Genetic variation is key for conservation
Leibniz-IZW researcher Hildebrandt is also pursuing a complementary strategy. He wants to obtain egg cells from 22-year-old Fatu and fertilize them in Galli’s lab in Italy using frozen sperm collected from four now deceased northern white rhino bulls. This sperm is thawed and injected into the egg in a process known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). However, Hildebrandt explains that Fatu is not able to bear her own offspring, as she has problems with her Achilles tendons and cannot carry any additional weight. Her mother Najin, meanwhile, is past child-bearing age and also suffers from ovarian tumors. “And in any case, since we only have one donor of natural eggs left, the genetic variation of any resulting offspring would be too small to create a viable population,” he adds.
The team’s top priority, therefore, is turning the PGCs they now have at their disposal into egg cells. “In mice, we found that the presence of ovarian tissue was important in this crucial step,” Zywitza explains. “Since we cannot simply extract this tissue from the two female rhinos, we will probably have to grow this from stem cells as well.” The scientist is hopeful, however, that ovarian tissue from horses could come in useful, as horses are among the rhinos’ closest living relatives from an evolutionary standpoint. If only humans had taken as good care of the wild rhino as they had of the domesticated horse, the immense challenge now facing the BioRescue scientists could perhaps have been avoided altogether.
A fast, needle-free malaria detection tool developed by a University of Queensland-led team could help save hundreds of thousands of lives annually.
Malaria is usually detected by a blood test, but scientists have devised a method using a device that shines a beam of harmless infrared light on a person’s ear or finger for five-to-10 seconds, it collects an infrared signature that is processed by a computer algorithm.
International team leader, Dr Maggy Lord from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, said the technology would revolutionise how malaria is fought globally.
The malaria detection tool collects an infrared signature for a mobile phone to process./CREDIT:The University of Queensland
“Currently it’s incredibly challenging to test large groups of people, such as the population of a village or town – you have to take blood from everyone and mix it with a reagent to get a result,” Dr Lord said.
“But with this tool we can find out very quickly whether a whole village or town is suffering from, or carrying, malaria.
“The technique is chemical-free, needle-free and detects malaria through the skin using infrared-light – it’s literally just a flash on a person’s skin and it’s done.
“The device is smart-phone operated, so results are acquired in real time.”
The researchers believe the technology is the first step to eliminating malaria.
Tiger Mosquito of Asia is adaing to survive the state of Illinois’s harsh winters / CREDIT: JAMES GATHANY/CDC
“According to the World Health Organisation malaria report, in 2020 there were an estimated 241 million cases worldwide and more than 600,000 died from malaria,” Dr Lord said.
“Most of the cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, where 90 per cent of deaths are children under five years old.
“The biggest challenge in eliminating the disease is the presence of asymptomatic people in a population who act as a reservoir for transmission by mosquitos.
“The World Health Organisation has proposed large-scale surveillance in endemic areas and this non-invasive, affordable and rapid tool offers a way to achieve that.”
The technology could also help tackle other diseases.
“We’ve successfully used this technology on mosquitoes to non-invasively detect infections such as malaria, Zika and dengue,” Dr Lord said.
“In our post-COVID world, it could be used to better tackle diseases as people move around the globe.
“We hope the tool could be used at ports of entry to screen travellers, minimising the re-introduction of diseases and reducing global outbreaks.
“It’s still early days, but this proof-of-concept is exciting.”
UQ collaborated with the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Brazil, led by Dr Rafael Maciel de Freitas, who applied the tool to detect malaria in patients in the Amazon region.
The work was funded by Fiocruz INOVA Ideias Inovadoras, Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and by Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
Based on genome sequence data from six individuals excavated from the base of a medieval well at a site in Norwich, UK, a revised radiocarbon analysis of the assemblage has been prepared with these individuals being part of a historically attested episode of antisemitic violence on 6 February 1190 CE.
Researchers found that four of these individuals were closely related and all six have strong genetic affinities with modern Ashkenazi Jews. They identified four alleles associated with genetic disease in Ashkenazi Jewish populations and infer variation in pigmentation traits, including the presence of red hair.
“Simulations indicate that Ashkenazi-associated genetic disease alleles were already at appreciable frequencies, centuries earlier than previously hypothesized, they wrote. These findings provide new insights into a significant historical crime, into Ashkenazi population history, and into the origins of genetic diseases associated with modern Jewish populations.
After March 1349, the Jewish community of Erfurt was wiped out in a pogrom when the archbishop of Mainz, who had granted Jews the right to live and work in the medieval German city, tried the pogrom’s ringleaders, local merchants and city council members who owed money to Jewish money lenders. The city’s Christian population was forced to pay restitution.
Five years later, a new Jewish community took root in the narrow, winding streets and by 1354, the city funded new houses and a synagogue, drawing Jews from across Europe to Erfurt. “That must have convinced them it would never happen again,” says Karin Sczech, an archaeologist who works for the city.
For 100 years, Erfurt’s Jews flourished. In 1454, the town council revoked the rights of Erfurt’s Jewish population, forcing them to leave town. The city built a granary on top of their cemetery, destroying hundreds of graves and repurposing Jewish tombstones to build its stout stone walls, reports said.
Before the remains were reburied last year at a nearby cemetery, their DNA was extracted and it showed the origins of the Ashkenazim, the major Jewish population that emerged in Germany in the Middle Ages and later expanded into central and Eastern Europe.
The latest study on DNA from the six individuals from the Middle Ages unearthed in Norwich offers clues to where the Ashkenazim came from centuries earlier, and what happened along the way. The studies confirm that today’s Ashkenazi Jewish population, which numbers more than 10 million people spread around the world, has roots in about a few hundred who survived a population bottleneck in Europe more than 1000 years ago.
The Erfurt study, which appears today in Cell, is the first major study of a medieval Jewish population from a genetic perspective. “We just got a really nice angle from genetic resources that we didn’t have before,” says Elisheva Baumgarten, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who was not involved with the study. “The cumulative evidence can tell us more than history alone—that to me is the really exciting part.”
The mystery remains: Were the Jews of Erfurt belong to the Roman era? Or were they the descendants of some pioneers who crossed the Alps around 800 C.E. to found tight-knit communities along the Rhine, near modern-day Frankfurt?
“Ashkenazi Jews emerge in the Rhineland as migrants,” says Leonard Rutgers, a historian at Utrecht University and a co-author on the Cell paper. “But if they came from elsewhere, where did they come from?”
“Whether they’re from Israel or New York, the Ashkenazi population today is homogenous genetically,” says Hebrew University geneticist Shai Carmi.
An Orthodox rabbi approved plans to sample loose teeth, but not bones, from Jewish graves.KEITH PRUFER
Earlier, Carmi was pessimistic about studying DNA from ancient Jews. “I thought this would be impossible,” he says, “because there would be no permission to sample.” Searching for ancient DNA for analysis would mean grinding up tiny bits of bone for sequencing. Destructive sampling would also be needed for radiocarbon dating. “It’s a hard rule in Judaism that you don’t disturb the dead,” says Alexander Nachama, chief rabbi of the Jewish Community of Thuringia and head of the modern-day Jewish community in Erfurt.
Carmi pressed ahead, contacting historians and archaeologists in Europe to see whether suitable samples existed. “The historians thought I was crazy,” Carmi says. But a few got back to him—including Sczech, who had received rabbinical permission to measure bones from the Erfurt cemetery to determine their sex and ages at death, techniques that don’t harm the skeletal material. Carmi was able to sample the loose teeth of 38 individuals from the cemetery before the bodies were reburied in a 2021 ceremony.
The DNA results from Norwich and Erfurt both confirm that modern Ashkenazim are descended from a small founding population. Based on modern Jewish DNA, some researchers had speculated this founder group emerged from a population crunch in the 13th and 14th centuries, when the religious fervor of the Crusades and false accusations that Jews spread the Black Death sparked violent pogroms. But the new data point to a different scenario that played out earlier.
In the Norwich individuals—which DNA shows included three sisters and a young boy with red hair and blue eyes—geneticists found the same disease markers seen in modern Ashkenazi populations, at about the same frequencies.
At the same time, small differences among the dozens of Erfurt genomes suggested medieval Ashkenazi communities weren’t completely homogeneous, despite the earlier bottleneck.
That mixture of east and west “is exactly what we get from the genetic results,” Sczech says: After first branching out from a single, small founding population into small communities across Europe, including medieval Great Britain, the medieval Ashkenazim apparently mixed back together in places like Erfurt generations later.
The role of Jews as bankers, craftspeople, traders, and money lenders would have put them in constant contact with their Christian neighbors. In Erfurt, as in many medieval cities, synagogues, ritual baths, and Jewish houses were in the heart of town, right next to the city hall and at the intersection of two major roads.
Archival records show Jews and Christians went into business together and Christians served as wet-nurses to Jewish children. “Jews and Christians were constantly in each others’ lives. But it looks like they didn’t have children together,” Baumgarten says. “We as modern people don’t have the words to describe that complex sense of belonging.”
“It’s fair to say Jewish history is one big sequence of bottlenecks,” Rutgers says. But the Erfurt data suggests a brighter possibility: that long before the Erfurt Jews were laid to rest, somewhere in Europe a few dozen people flourished, passing their genes and culture to millions of people living today despite a history of brutal persecution.
A 5.2-magnitude earthquake jolted Dhaka on Monday, with the epicentre at 520 km away from Agargaon Seismic Centre in Dhaka at 9:02 a.m., according to athe Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD).
Kazi Zebunnesa, a meteorologist from BMD, told media that the epicentre of the earthquake was at a depth of 10 km in the Bay of Bengal and the reports of casualty and damage are still expected to be reported.
Bangladesh, which sits in a seismic zone, is prone to tremors.
