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ARIZONA

Study finds HIV century ago

TUCSON | U.S.-led scientists estimate the human immunodeficiency virus began spreading between 1884 and 1924, about 30 years earlier than previous estimates.

Led by University of Arizona assistant professor Michael Worobey, the researchers discovered the world’s second-oldest genetic sequence of a strain of HIV known as HIV-1 group M. The sequence was recovered from a lymph-node tissue biopsy taken in 1960 from a woman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The oldest-known HIV-1 group M genetic sequence is from a 1959 blood sample of a man also from central Africa. The scientists said a comparison of the 1959 virus and the 1960 virus led them to conclude the genetic divergence between the HIV sequences required more than 40 years.

The researchers said they also used other HIV-1 genetic sequences to estimate probable rates of the evolution of the HIV-1 group M strain. According to their calculations, HIV began spreading among humans between 1884 and 1924, about the same time large urban population centers were being established in west-central Africa.

The study appears in the journal Nature.

ARKANSAS

School shooter pleads to theft

BENTONVILLE | One of two young men who killed four students and a teacher at a middle school a decade ago faces up to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to theft and marijuana possession.

Mitchell Johnson, now 24, entered his plea Tuesday before a Benton County circuit judge. Sentencing was set for Nov. 14.

He was accused of taking a debit card left by a disabled man at the gas station where he worked. Police said that when Johnson was arrested Feb. 2, he was in possession of marijuana.

In March 1998, Johnson, then 13, and classmate Andrew Golden, 11, stole guns from Golden’s grandfather and opened fire at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro. It was one of a series of school shootings that shocked the nation in the late 1990s.

CALIFORNIA

Rock slide destroys cabins in Yosemite

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