[Dalsan Radio] 2 Kenyan pilots, a Kenyan flight engineer and 3 Somalia national were on Monday killed when their plane was hit and crashed near Bardale in Somalia. The cargo plane a Eubreur 120 registered 5Y AXO belonging to African Express was crashed 5km to Bardale Airstrip.

[Dalsan Radio] A plane carrying aid supplies for use in the fight against the coronavirus crashed in Somalia on Monday, killing all six people on board, the Somali transport minister said.

[Nation] Kenya has asked Somalia to investigate "unclear circumstances" under which a light aircraft was shot down in Bardale area, Baidoa.

[Shabelle] The Somali health ministry on Monday confirmed 34 new cases of a novel coronavirus, bringing the total number of infections to 756.

[East African] Somalia has launched a portal through which the public and international donors and partners can get information on how donor money is utilised as a step towards instilling transparency.

[Shabelle] Kenya on Tuesday called for an urgent investigation into the fatal crash of a private cargo plane in Somalia amid unconfirmed reports it may have been shot down.

[Shabelle] The Somali health ministry on Tuesday confirmed 79 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total number of infections to 835.

[Dalsan Radio] The International Rescue Committee has warned that many cases are going untested and undetected. Somalia has faced decades of violence and cycles of drought and floods, leaving its health care system ill-equipped to respond to this outbreak. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has been preparing for the spread of coronavirus by training health care staff to screen patients for symptoms and safely isolate potential cases.

[Dalsan Radio] The African Union Mission in Somalia, AMISOM, expresses its heartfelt condolences to the families of those who perished in the plane crash of 4th May, 2020. The aircraft which left Baidoa, had six people on board and was approaching Bardale, south of Somalia and 300km northwest of the capital Mogadishu when it crashed.

[Nation] The porous Kenya-Somalia border is proving a challenge in management of the Covid-19 coronavirus disease for counties such as Wajir.

[East African] Somalia and Djibouti's covid-19 cases could become the new worry for regional neighbours already fighting their local battles against the scary virus disease.

[Shabelle] The African Union and the UN have welcomed the decision by leaders from Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia to investigate Monday's plane crash in southwest Somalia which killed six people on board.

[Shabelle] At least 16 people have died while more than 200,000 others have been affected by torrential rains and riverine floods since the Gu (April-June) rains started in Somalia a month ago, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Wednesday.

[Nation] Mogadishu -Somalia's confirmed cases of Covid-19 were on Thursday night hurtling towards 1,000 after 55 more people contracted the virus disease.

[Dalsan Radio] The United States Embassy in Mogadishu calls on the Somali Government and people to allow and encourage transparent reporting on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to facilitate the critical efforts to protect and preserve the health and safety of the people of Somalia.

Australia's most populous states have held back from relaxing coronavirus restrictions although other states began allowing small gatherings and were preparing to open restaurants and shops.

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Turkey supports the embattled Tripoli government against rebel forces from the east led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter.

As the coronavirus death toll surpasses 250,000 and the world scrambles to find a vaccine, a new scientific task force is headed to the wilderness to try and stop the next pandemic.After decades of patchy global investment into researching the linkages between animal and human health, more than 40 scientists will embark on an Australian government-funded programme that will teach veterinary surgeons in Southeast Asia and the Pacific how to detect infectious diseases – before they make the leap…

A delayed rotation of US Marines to a defence base in Australia’s northern city of Darwin will go ahead based on strict adherence to Covid-19 measures, Australia’s defence minister said after speaking with her US counterpart.Up to 2,500 US Marines had been scheduled to arrive in April, in a major defence alliance cooperation exercise, but this was postponed in March because of the coronavirus pandemic.The remote Northern Territory, which has recorded just 30 Covid-19 cases, closed its borders…

Calls for Australian businesses to diversify away from China as their main trading partner are nothing more than a “zombie economic idea” that is being used as a political tool to expedite the decoupling of the two countries, according to a report by the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.The debate about Australia’s over-dependence on China for its livelihood has ramped up recently, triggered by the interruption of supply chains during China’s…

Australia’s economy has become too reliant on China as a result of a government push for domestic industry to maximise exports to the world’s second largest economy, industry submissions to a government inquiry say.Business groups also singled out Australian government policies, including management of bilateral relationships with Indonesia and India, as hurting access to alternative markets.While some Australian export industries are not reliant on demand from China, companies like those in…

Signs of a growing split between Australia and the United States over an unproven theory that the coronavirus came from a Wuhan laboratory have emerged, amid claims the US embassy may have leaked a dossier linked to the allegations.The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday reported that Canberra was increasingly concerned the Trump administration’s promotion of claims that the novel coronavirus began in a lab could undermine its push for an independent inquiry into the origins of the pandemic and a…

A throwback video of a tarot reader predicting Ranbir Kapoor's relationship with Alia Bhatt back in 2012 is going viral

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Brad Pitt and Alia recently made headlines for their growing closeness

'Australia is “gum stuck to the bottom of China’s shoe”, huh? Ok, well, it’s time for Australia to rethink trade and other agreements with China if they don’t like criticism'

ADB joined the governments of Tonga and Australia in an inauguration ceremony today to officially mark the completion of upgrading work of the Mataki’eua water supply system as part of the ADB-supported Nuku’alofa Urban...

Thanks to investment from Australia and ADB, a new clean water plant in Ebeye, in the north-west corner of the Marshall Islands, is changing lives.

Music and driving are a powerful combination, and JBL automotive sound is designed to connect consumers to their vehicles at an emotional level. From Italy-based creative agency Garage Italia to leading auto manufacturers who leverage JBL’s audio ...

In this year's mostly virtual commencement ceremonies, thousands of American graduates are adorning their mortarboards with the slogan "Gowns 4 Good" after donating their gowns to healthcare workers...

Gymnasts all around the world are making the best of things as they try to keep fit while gyms are closed due to the coronavirus and Italy is no exception.

Olympic medallist Marco Lodadio of Italy transforms his garden swing into the rings gymnastic apparatus.

It may have been a long wait to get back into the water, but for 77-year-old Sydneysider Carol Raleigh, her return to ocean swimming was the "antidote" to get through the coronavirus pandemic.

Gowns 4 Good, a charity started by frontline physician assistant Nathaniel Moore, is asking graduates to donate their gowns to more than 77,000 frontline responders on Gowns4Good.net.

Some rocks in Tasmania, Australia, look out of place. Now an analysis suggests they were once part of the rocks that form the Grand Canyon in the US

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As recently as 110 years ago, Aboriginal Australians used dingoes to help hunt kangaroos even though the canines are feral and difficult to train

Gowns 4 Good, a charity started by frontline physician assistant Nathaniel Moore, is asking graduates to donate their gowns to more than 77,000 frontline responders on Gowns4Good.net.

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Some 65,000 years ago, early humans washed up on the lost continent of Sahul, which contained Australia. Now clues hint it was no accident but rather the first great maritime expedition

Gymnasts around the world have been trying to stay fit amid tough restrictions during the COVID-19 crisis, and Italy is no exception.      With the country's gym clubs and training facilities closed for more than two months as part of government measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus, gymnast Marco Lodadio, a silver medallist in the rings event at the 2019 world championships, turned his garden into a fitness studio.      Without the sophisticated faci

Tom Hanks has sent a letter and a Corona brand typewriter to an Australian boy who wrote to him about being bullied over his name, Corona, Australian television networks reported on Thursday.

Priest Don Giuseppe Castelvecchio hasn't been able to conduct services in his San Fiorano church for two months. In the town where restrictions are easing, his sermons delivered from a loud speaker in a car are a welcome relief. Joe Davies reports.

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Geranylgeranoic acid (GGA) originally was identified in some animals and has been developed as an agent for preventing second primary hepatoma. We previously have also identified GGA as an acyclic diterpenoid in some medicinal herbs. Recently, we reported that in human hepatoma-derived HuH-7 cells, GGA is metabolically labeled from ¹³C-mevalonate. Several cell-free experiments have demonstrated that GGA is synthesized through geranylgeranial by oxygen-dependent oxidation of geranylgeraniol (GGOH), but the exact biochemical events giving rise to GGA in hepatoma cells remain unclear. Monoamine oxidase B (MOAB) has been suggested to be involved in GGOH oxidation. Here, using two human hepatoma cell lines, we investigated whether MAOB contributes to GGA biosynthesis. Using either HuH-7 cell lysates or recombinant human MAOB, we found that: 1) the MAO inhibitor tranylcypromine dose-dependently downregulates endogenous GGA levels in HuH-7 cells; and 2) siRNA-mediated MAOB silencing reduces intracellular GGA levels in HuH-7 and Hep3B cells. Unexpectedly, however, CRISPR/Cas9-generated MAOB-KO human hepatoma Hep3B cells had GGA levels similar to those in MAOB-WT cells. A sensitivity of GGA levels to siRNA-mediated MAOB downregulation was recovered when the MAOB-KO cells were transfected with a MAOB-expression plasmid, suggesting that MAOB is the enzyme primarily responsible for GGOH oxidation and that some other latent metabolic pathways may maintain endogenous GGA levels in the MAOB-KO hepatoma cells. Along with the previous findings, these results provide critical insights into the biological roles of human MAOB and provide evidence that hepatic MAOB is involved in endogenous GGA biosynthesis via GGOH oxidation.

ABSTRACT

RepA is a bacterial protein that builds intracellular amyloid oligomers acting as inhibitory complexes of plasmid DNA replication. When carrying a mutation enhancing its amyloidogenesis (A31V), the N-terminal domain (WH1) generates cytosolic amyloid particles that are inheritable within a bacterial lineage. Such amyloids trigger in bacteria a lethal cascade reminiscent of mitochondrial impairment in human cells affected by neurodegeneration. To fulfill all the criteria to qualify as a prion-like protein, horizontal (intercellular) transmissibility remains to be demonstrated for RepA-WH1. Since this is experimentally intractable in bacteria, here we transiently expressed in a murine neuroblastoma cell line the soluble, barely cytotoxic RepA-WH1 wild type [RepA-WH1(WT)] and assayed its response to exposure to in vitro-assembled RepA-WH1(A31V) amyloid fibers. In parallel, murine cells releasing RepA-WH1(A31V) aggregates were cocultured with human neuroblastoma cells expressing RepA-WH1(WT). Both the assembled fibers and donor-derived RepA-WH1(A31V) aggregates induced, in the cytosol of recipient cells, the formation of cytotoxic amyloid particles. Mass spectrometry analyses of the proteomes of both types of injured cells pointed to alterations in mitochondria, protein quality triage, signaling, and intracellular traffic. Thus, a synthetic prion-like protein can be propagated to, and become cytotoxic to, cells of organisms placed at such distant branches of the tree of life as bacteria and mammalia, suggesting that mechanisms of protein aggregate spreading and toxicity follow default pathways.

IMPORTANCE Proteotoxic amyloid seeds can be transmitted between mammalian cells, arguing that the intercellular exchange of prion-like protein aggregates can be a common phenomenon. RepA-WH1 is derived from a bacterial intracellular functional amyloid protein, engineered to become cytotoxic in Escherichia coli. Here, we have studied if such bacterial aggregates can also be transmitted to, and become cytotoxic to, mammalian cells. We demonstrate that RepA-WH1 is capable of entering naive cells, thereby inducing the cytotoxic aggregation of a soluble RepA-WH1 variant expressed in the cytosol, following the same trend that had been described in bacteria. These findings highlight the universality of one of the central principles underlying prion biology: No matter the biological origin of a given prion-like protein, it can be transmitted to a phylogenetically unrelated recipient cell, provided that the latter expresses a soluble protein onto which the incoming protein can readily template its amyloid conformation.