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At least 4 buildings burned at Jasper Park Lodge, others damaged: Fairmont memo
The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge said Thursday afternoon most of its structures are 'standing and intact,' including its iconic main lodge.
Chinese researchers said Thursday they had found a batch of new coronaviruses in bats including one that may be the second-closest yet, genetically, to the COVID-19 virus.
According to the researchers, their discoveries in a single, small region of Yunnan province, southwestern China show just how many coronaviruses there are in bats and how many have the potential to spread to people.
Weifeng Shi of the University of Shandong and colleagues collected samples from small, forest-dwelling bats between May, 2019 and November, 2020. They tested urine and feces as well as taking swabs from the bats' mouths.
"In total, we assembled 24 novel coronavirus genomes from different bat species, including four SARS-CoV-2 like coronaviruses," the researchers wrote in a report published in the journal Cell.
One was very similar, genetically to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that's causing the current pandemic, they said -- a viral sample called RpYN06 taken from a horseshoe bat species called Rhinolophus pusillus.
It would be the closest strain to SARS-CoV-2 except for genetic differences on the spike protein, the knob-like structure that the virus uses when attaching to cells, they said.
"Together with the SARS-CoV-2 related virus collected from Thailand in June 2020, these results clearly demonstrate that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 continue to circulate in bat populations, and in some regions might occur at a relatively high frequency," they wrote.
Researchers are trying to find where SARS-CoV-2 came from. Although a bat is a likely source, it's possible the virus infected an intermediary animal. The SARS virus that caused an outbreak in 2002-2004 was tracked to an animal called a civet cat.
"Bats are well known reservoir hosts for a variety of viruses that cause severe diseases in humans and have been associated with the spillovers of Hendra virus, Marburg virus, Ebola virus and, most notably, coronaviruses. Aside from bats and humans, coronaviruses can infect a wide range of domestic and wild animals, including pigs, cattle, mice, cats, dogs, chickens, deer and hedgehogs," they wrote.
Most of the samples came from species of horseshoe bats. In 2017, researchers sampling a cave in Yunnan found viruses very close genetically to the SARS virus in horseshoe bats.
Three of the samples described in Thursday's report were also close to SARS genetically.
"Our study highlights the remarkable diversity of bat coronaviruses at the local scale, including close relatives of both SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV," they wrote. The bat species they sampled are common across Southeast Asia, including southwest China, Vietnam, Laos and elsewhere.
Although there's some controversy about the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, a World Health Organization report said the most likely source is an animal -- probably a bat.
People hunt and eat bats, and bats can infect other animals that are also hunted and eaten by people. Viruses can infect people when they handle or slaughter the animals.
The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge said Thursday afternoon most of its structures are 'standing and intact,' including its iconic main lodge.
Scotiabank says it has fixed a technical issue that impacted direct deposits on Friday morning.
Police in Mississauga are conducting a full-scale search of the city’s biggest park for a non-verbal toddler who went missing Thursday evening. Sgt. Jennifer Trimble told reporters Friday morning that there has been no trace of three-year-old Zaid Abdullah since 6:20 p.m., when he was last seen with his parents in Erindale Park, near Dundas Street West and Mississauga Road.
Saskatchewan’s Court of Appeal has denied a political group that opposes so-called “gender ideology” intervener status in a legal dispute over the province’s controversial pronoun law.
Orillia OPP arrested and charged a driver with impaired driving after flashing their high beams.
A powerful Mexican drug cartel leader who eluded authorities for decades was duped into flying into the U.S., where he was arrested alongside a son of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, according to a U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the matter.
Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk's estranged daughter, publicly refuted several recent anti-trans statements her Tesla CEO and X owner father has made about her.
French transport was thrust into chaos Friday just hours ahead of the Olympics 2024 opening ceremony after a series of co-ordinated 'malicious acts' upended high-speed train lines.Here's what happened and what we know so far.
A new study published Thursday in the journal JAMA Network Open has found that the ending in the 2023 blockbuster film 'Barbie' had an influence on online search interest in terms around gynecology, the branch of medicine that deals with women’s reproductive health.
As fire threatened people in Jasper National Park, Colleen Knull sprung into action.
Video posted to social media on Thursday morning appears to show the charred remains of a Jasper, Alta., neighbourhood.
A Saskatchewan-born veteran of the Second World War was recently presented with France's highest national order.
A local First Nations elder and veteran is helping to bring the Ojibwe language to a well-known film for the first time.
A cat who fled her Montreal home nearly a decade ago has been reunited with her family after being found in Ottawa.
A woman in Waterloo, Ont. is out thousands of dollars for a car crash she wasn’t involved in.
A swarm of bees living in a lamppost in Winnipeg’s Sage Creek neighbourhood has found a new home for its hive.
Around 100 acres of Manitoba Crown Land near the Saskatchewan border is being returned to the Métis community.
Nova Scotia is suspending the licensed Cape Breton moose hunt for three years due to what the province is calling a “significant drop” in the population.