#WASHINGTON -Muddy footprints left on a Kenyan lakeside suggest two of our early human ancestors were nearby neighbours some 1.5 million years ago.

The footprints were left in the mud by two different species “within a matter of hours, or at most days,” said paleontologist Louise Leakey, co-author of the research published Thursday in the journal Science.

Scientists previously knew from fossil remains that these two extinct branches of the human evolutionary tree – called Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei – lived about the same time in the Turkana Basin.

But dating fossils is not exact. “It’s plus or minus a few thousand years,” said paleontologist William Harcourt-Smith of Lehman College and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the study.

Yet with fossil footprints, “there’s an actual moment in time preserved,” he said. “It’s an amazing discovery.”

The tracks of fossil footprints were uncovered in 2021 in what is today Koobi Fora, Kenya, said Leaky, who is based at New York’s Stony Brook University.

Whether the two individuals passed by the eastern side of Lake Turkana at the same time – or a day or two apart – they likely knew of each other’s existence, said study co-author Kevin Hatala, a paleoanthropologist at Chatham University in Pittsburgh.

“They probably saw each other, probably knew each other was there and probably influenced each other in some way,” he said.

Scientists were able to distinguish between the two species because of the shape of the footprints, which holds clues to the anatomy of the foot and how it’s being used.

H. erectus appeared to be walking similar to how modern humans walk – striking the ground heel first, then rolling weight over the ball of the foot and toes and pushing off again.

The other species, which was also walking upright, was moving “in a different way from anything else we’ve seen before, anywhere else,” said co-author Erin Marie Williams-Hatala, a human evolutionary anatomist at Chatham.

Among other details, the footprints suggest more mobility in their big toe, compared to H. erectus or modern humans, said Hatala.

#Mozambican zama zamas emerged from a disused Stilfontein mine, describing gruelling conditions and forced labour under gang control. Miners recount coerced labour, brutal treatment, and survival struggles as authorities crack down on underground operations.

A fugitive wanted in the U.S. for a pair of bombings is arrested in the U.K. after 20 years on the run.

A suspected animal rights extremist wanted in the U.S. for bombings in the San Francisco area was arrested in Britain after more than 20 years on the run from the law, officials said Tuesday.

Daniel Andreas San Diego, one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, was arrested Monday in a rural area in northern Wales, the National Crime Agency said. He was ordered held in custody after appearing Tuesday in Westminster Magistrates’ Court and faces extradition.

San Diego, 46, is charged in the U.S. with planting two bombs that exploded about an hour apart in the early morning of Aug. 28, 2003, on the campus of a biotechnology company in Emeryville, California. He’s also accused of setting off another bomb with nails strapped to it at a nutritional products company in Pleasanton, California, a month later.

The bombings didn't injure anyone, but authorities said the bomb at the biotechnology company was intended to harm first responders.

A group called Revolutionary Cells-Animal Liberation Brigade claimed responsibility for the bombings, citing the companies’ ties to Huntingdon Life Sciences. Huntingdon was a target of animal rights extremists because of its work with experimental drugs and chemicals on animals while under contract for pharmaceutical, cosmetic and other companies.

“Daniel San Diego’s arrest after more than 20 years as a fugitive for two bombings in the San Francisco area shows that no matter how long it takes, the FBI will find you and hold you accountable,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to express your views in our country, and turning to violence and destruction of property is not the right way.”

In 2009, San Diego became the first person suspected of domestic terrorism to be added to the FBI’s Most Wanted #Terrorist List. A reward of $250,000 (200,000 pounds) was offered for information leading to his arrest.

Photos of him appeared on billboards from California to New York, including Times Square, the FBI said. He was featured on the TV program “America’s Most Wanted” several times.

San Diego grew up in an upper-middle class suburb of Marin County north of San Francisco. His father was the city manager of nearby Belvedere, a wealthy enclave.

San Diego had worked as a computer network specialist, was a skilled sailor and was known to carry a handgun, the FBI said.

The FBI had San Diego under surveillance on Oct. 6, 2003 when he parked his car near downtown San Francisco, and vanished into a transit station — not to be seen again.

There had been numerous sightings reported around the world and investigators announced searches at times as far apart as Massachusetts and Hawaii.

The NCA said it arrested San Diego at a property near woods in the Conwy area of Wales, a coastal area some 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) from San Francisco. No other details were provided.

#Mexico suggests it would impose its own tariffs to retaliate against any Trump tariffs.

President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested Tuesday that Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own, after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose 25 per cent import duties on Mexican goods if the country doesn't stop the flow of drugs and #migrants across the border.

Sheinbaum said she was willing to engage in talks on the issues, but said drugs were a U.S. problem.

"One tariff would be followed by another in response, and so on until we put at risk common businesses," Sheinbaum said, referring to U.S. automakers that have plants on both sides of the border.

She said Tuesday that Mexico had done a lot to stem the flow of migrants, noting "caravans of #migrants no longer reach the border." However, #Mexico's efforts to fight drugs like the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl -- which is #manufactured by Mexican cartels using chemicals imported from China -- have weakened in the last year.

Sheinbaum said Mexico suffered from an influx of weapons smuggled in from the United States, and said the flow of drugs "is a problem of public health and consumption in your country's society."

Sheinbaum also criticized U.S. spending on weapons, saying the money should instead be spent regionally to address the problem of migration. "If a percentage of what the United States spends on war were dedicated to peace and development, that would address the underlying causes of migration," she said.

Sheinbaum's bristly response suggests that Trump faces a much different Mexican president than he did in his first term.

Back in late 2018, former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was a charismatic, old-school politician who developed a chummy relationship with Trump. The two were eventually able to strike a bargain in which Mexico helped keep migrants away from the border -- and received other countries' deported migrants -- and Trump backed down on the threats.

But Sheinbaum, who took office Oct. 1, is a stern leftist ideologue trained in radical student protest movements, and appears less willing to pacify or mollify Trump.

"We negotiate as equals, there is no subordination here, because we are a great nation," Sheinbaum said, while adding, "I think we are going to reach an agreement."

But Gabriela Siller, director of economic analysis of the financial group Banco Base, fears the personality clash could escalate things into brinkmanship; Trump clearly hates to lose.

"Trump may have just tossed the threat out there, as he does," Siller said. "But Mexico's response, that we're going to respond to you with tariffs, that will make Trump really impose them."

It's not clear how serious Trump's threat is. The U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement forbids just imposing tariffs on other member countries. And it's not clear whether the economy could even tolerate sudden levies on imports: Auto plants on both sides of the border rely on each other for parts and components, and some production lines could screech to a halt.

#West seeks to destabilize global order, Russia’s intelligence chief says.

"Euro-Atlantic elites are trying to convince the rest of the world that the only alternative to Western power is chaos, and for this purpose, they deliberately seek destabilization in key regions of the planet," Sergey Naryshkin said

#MOSCOW, November 24. A UK mercenary, identified as James Scott Rhys Andersen, was taken prisoner in Russia’s Kursk area, a military source told to #GlobalNews.

"A mercenary from Britain has been taken prisoner in the Kursk area," the person said.

A #Telegram channel called Troyka posted a video of a question-and-answer exchange with the captive. The man said in the video that he served in the 22nd Signal Regiment of the #UK armed forces from 2019 to 2023. After he was dismissed from service, he applied to join the #Ukrainian Foreign Legion because of #financial and family issues.

#SouthAfrica, #DA councillor from the Bluff in #Durban, Zoë Solomon, is facing a criminal investigation for signing a proof of address letter with fake information, which led to an alleged criminal getting bail, News24 can exclusively reveal.

A powerful airstrike killed at least four people in central Beirut early on Saturday, the health ministry said, shaking the Lebanese capital as Israel pressed its offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

A federal judge on Friday rejected the US Securities and Exchange Commission's request to sanction Elon Musk after he failed to appear for court-ordered testimony for the regulator's probe into his $44-billion takeover of Twitter.

American politics for #Texas.
"Many of them live on fixed incomes, many of them live below or at the poverty level," she says. "And they've already lived under one Donald Trump administration. And under that administration their lives were better, they had more money to spend on their family, they could buy more groceries, they could live more comfortably and securely."

Starr County is “like a microcosm for the Democrats' struggles with working class voters of colour and Latino Hispanics nationwide," says Álvaro Corral, a political science professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

When Republicans started making inroads in the valley, many Democrats thought it was just a unique area in a red state, Corral says, instead of taking a deeper look at the root causes.

"These were areas that were early warning signs that the party should have heeded a bit more seriously," Corral says.

Corral says it “throws a wrench in the story" that as the country becomes more diverse, it will lean more Democrat. It means the party will have take a long hard look at how it will connect with Hispanic voters in the future, he says.

Early exit polls show that Trump not only flipped the Rio Grande Valley in Texas red. He also made inroads in heavily Puerto Rican areas of Pennsylvania and improved his standing with Hispanic voters along Florida’s Interstate 4 corridor — home to people of Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Colombian and Puerto Rican origin.

Trump was the first Republican since 1988 to win Miami-Dade County, where there is a large Cuban population.

Some experts say if the realignment of #Hispanic voters sticks, it could reshape American politics. But not everyone is sold on Trump in southern #Texas.