“Shortly before the departure of the train, which links Zurich to Vienna, two carriages collided for unknown reasons,” fire service official Reinhold Ortler told O1 radio.

A spokesman for Austria’s national rail company OBB said 35 to 40 people were injured in the night train accident.

A demolished couchette car stands on a platform after two train carriages collided at the main railway station in Salzburg, Austria, on April 20, 2018. Up to 40 people were injured, most of them lightly, when two train carriages collided in the Austrian city of Salzburg, rescuers and the rail company said. / AFP PHOTO

The Red Cross said most of the wounded had only suffered light injuries.

The train was not moving and the accident occurred as two carriages were being coupled together.

Rescue workers take care of injured train passengers after two train carriages collided at the main railway station in Salzburg, Austria, on April 20, 2018. Up to 40 people were injured, most of them lightly, when two train carriages collided in the Austrian city of Salzburg, rescuers and the rail company said. / AFP PHOTO

Policemen and rescue workers take care of injured train passengers after two train carriages collided at the main railway station in Salzburg, Austria, on April 20, 2018. Up to 40 people were injured, most of them lightly, when two train carriages collided in the Austrian city of Salzburg, rescuers and the rail company said. / AFP PHOTO

The spear-fishing Bajau people regularly free-dive to depths of up to 230 feet (70 meters), with only weights and a wooden mask.

They spend up to 60 percent of their work day diving for fish, spearing octopus and gathering crustaceans — an amount of time rivaled only by sea otters — and can stay underwater up to 13 minutes at a time, said the report in the journal Cell.

Intrigued by this unusual ability, American researcher Melissa Ilardo, then a post doctoral candidate at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, wondered if they had genetically adapted somehow to be able to spend more time underwater than other people.

She spent several months in Jaya Bakti, Indonesia, with the help of a translator, getting to know the Bajau and another nearby group that did not dive, the Saluan.

“I spent my whole first visit to Jaya Bakti introducing myself, the project, and the underlying science,” she told AFP.

“I wanted to be sure that they understood exactly what I was asking of them so they could help to direct the project to reflect their interests. They were very curious and excited about the research.”

Before her second visit, she learned some Indonesian in order to be able to communicate directly with the Bajau.

– Scans and gene tests –

She took genetic samples and did ultrasound scans, which showed that Bajau had spleens about 50 percent larger than the Saluan.

Spleens are important in diving — and are also enlarged in some seals — because they release more oxygen into the blood when the body is under stress, or a person is holding their breath underwater.

Spleens were larger in the Balau people whether they were regular divers or not, and further analysis of their DNA revealed why.

Comparing the genomes of the Bajau to two different populations, the Saluan and the Han Chinese, scientists found 25 sites that differed significantly.

Among them was one site on a gene known as PDE10A, which was determined to be linked to the Bajau’s larger spleen size.

In mice, “PDE10A is known for regulating a thyroid hormone that controls spleen size, lending support for the idea that the Bajau might have evolved the spleen size necessary to sustain their long and frequent dives,’ said the study.

More research is needed to understand how thyroid hormone affects human spleen size.

The findings could boost research in medicine by helping researchers understand how the body reacts to a loss of oxygen in various contexts, from diving to high-latitude climbing to surgery and lung disease.

“This really tells us how valuable and important indigenous populations are around the world that are living extreme lifestyles,” said co-author Eske Willerslev, a professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Willerslev admitted he initially urged Ilardo not to pursue the research for her PhD thesis, believing it was too risky and that she may find nothing.

“She said she wanted to do it anyway and that paid off. Melissa was right and our concerns were wrong.”

Ilardo said she was aware of the risks but “believed so strongly in this project,” that she had to push on.

“The Bajau and other Sea Nomads are simply extraordinary and I wanted to be able to prove that to the world,” said Ilardo, now a US National Institutes of Health postdoctoral scholar at the department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Utah.

Trains, trams, buses and even some flights at the city’s Tegel airport will be halted when a police bomb squad starts defusing the British 500-kilogramme (1,100-pound) bomb unearthed on a building site.

Authorities have declared an exclusion zone with an 800 metre (875 yards) radius around the site located just north of the central railway station, a transport hub that on a normal day is used by 300,000 passengers.

The exclusion zone covers the train station, an army hospital, the economy ministry, an art gallery and a museum as well as part of the BND intelligence service’s new headquarters.

Many thousands of residents and employees will have to stay clear of, or leave the area by 9:00 am local time (0700 GMT), and not return until the bomb is safely defused.

Angela Merkel’s chancellery building and the Reichstag (parliament) lie just a few hundred metres to the south of the no-go zone and therefore can keep operating as usual.

More than 70 years after the end of the war, unexploded bombs are regularly found, a potentially deadly legacy of the intense Allied bombing campaign against Nazi Germany.

Some 3,000 are believed to still lie buried in Berlin, a city of three million people, where bomb disposal squads are well-practiced in defusing them and other ordnance.

It was unclear how long the bomb disposal squad would take to disable the bomb found during construction work on Heidestrasse in the district of Mitte.

“It depends on how long the evacuation takes and of course the condition of the bomb,” police spokesman Martin Halweg told the Tagesspiegel daily.

Police, who issued the warning Wednesday, have asked residents to stay with family or friends or head to one of two emergency shelters set up at nearby schools.

They said the bomb was “safe for now”, reassuring nearby residents that “there is no immediate danger”.

Urban transport operators prepared for large-scale disruptions around the central hub.

Trains will run straight through the central railway station without stopping from 0800 GMT, and all rail traffic there will cease from 0930 GMT, said operator Deutsche Bahn.

President Donald Trump’s White House announced an update to its policy on arms transfers to promote US exports and jobs, and specifically to loosen the rules on selling unmanned warplanes.

Trump’s chief trade advisor, Peter Navarro, said the move was designed to reverse former president Barack Obama’s “myopic” decision to limit even US allies’ access to drone technology.

Allowing US arms firms to directly market drones instead of forcing foreign customers to apply to the government would, he said, allow them to compete against sales of Chinese “knock-offs.”

“The administration’s UAS export policy will level the playing field by enabling US firms to increase their direct sales to authorized allies and partners,” he said, referring to “Unmanned Aerial Systems”.

Navarro said US weapons and aerospace exports are worth a trillion dollars a year, support 2.5 million well-paid jobs and form a key plank of Trump’s ambition to wipe out America’s trade deficit.

But he said the market for drones alone could grow to $50 billion in a decade and that officials are “seeing Chinese replicas of American UAS technology deployed on the runways in the Middle East.”

As an example, he cited China’s Wing Loong 2 medium-altitude, long-endurance drone.

This reconnaissance and missile platform was on display to potential clients at the 2017 Paris Air Show but is, he said, “a clear knock-off” of US firm General Atomics’ MQ-9 Reaper.

“The fact is our allies and partners want to buy American,” Navarro said, noting that Trump was putting his “America First” slogan at the heart of arms sales policy.

– Drone assassins –

“Partners who procure American weaponry are more capable of fighting alongside us, and are also more capable of protecting themselves with fewer American boots on the ground.”

The United States pioneered the use of unmanned aircraft, some of them flown by pilots half-a-world away through satellite links to a ground station, for spotting missions and missile strikes.

They have been deployed both by the US military in support of overt deployments in the so-called war on terror and by the CIA for covert targeted strikes to kill suspected militants.

Critics of their deployment say that, because they can be used without putting American pilots in harm’s way, they encourage commanders and presidents to resort more easily to lethal force.

Despite the accuracy of missiles guided by drone-mounted lasers, many hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians have been killed in US strikes in South Asia, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.

But US officials defend the technology, arguing that its proper use allows commanders to study targets more carefully and to carry out precision raids, minimizing the threat to allies and civilians.

“We have been very, very focused… on trying to give our partners, our strategic partners overseas, the ability to avoid civilian casualties,” senior US diplomat Tina Kaidanow said.

In publishing the new regulations, the White House did not identify any possible new clients for US drones.

But the announcement came shortly after a three-week US tour and arms buying spree by de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose forces lead a coalition supporting Yemen’s government against Iran-backed rebels.

The White House has been criticized by both global rights watchdogs and US Congress lawmakers from both parties for allowing its Saudi ally to bomb Yemen, where the coalition has been criticized over civilian casualties.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is already one of the United States’ main arms clients, and it is part-way through making good on what Trump dubbed last year in Riyadh a $110 billion deal.