Timely runs evade Mizzou baseball in 4-2 loss to No. 22 Tennessee

Israel should "refrain" from sending in forces to take control of a zone in south Lebanon, France's foreign minister told AFP on Tuesday, warning that such a move would have "major humanitarian consequences".

"We urge the Israeli authorities to refrain from such ground operations, which would have major humanitarian consequences and would exacerbate the country's already dire situation," Jean-Noel Barrot said in an interview with AFP.

His comments came after Israel earlier said its military would take control of south Lebanon up to the Litani River, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border.

Lebanon was pulled into the Middle East war when the Tehran-backed Hezbollah militant group began firing rockets into Israel on March 2 to avenge the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel has since launched strikes across Lebanon, killing at least 1,072 people and displacing more than a million others in more than three weeks of fighting. It has also sent ground troops into the country's south.

Barrot, who visited Lebanon and Israel last week, called on Israel to seize a "historic opportunity" for dialogue with Lebanon's government, saying that Beirut was "turning its words into action" to counter Tehran's interference in the country.

He noted that during his visit to Lebanon on March 19, President Joseph Aoun called for a truce and the opening of negotiations with Israel to stop the war between it and Hezbollah.

"There is a moment to seize, it is historic, and that moment is now," Barrot said, calling for "high-level political dialogue" with the Lebanese government.

Lebanon's government has acted against Iranian interests and withdrew its approval of the Iranian ambassador's accreditation on Tuesday, a decision Barrot hailed as "courageous".

Iranian ambassador Mohammad Reza Sheibani was told to leave Lebanese territory by Sunday.

"I wish to commend the statements and actions of the Lebanese government...which this morning took a courageous decision by expelling the Iranian ambassador," Barrot said.

Hezbollah strongly objected to the move, calling on the government to reverse it.

It was "no small matter" that Lebanon's government had also expelled "a number of representatives of the Revolutionary Guards" in the country, Barrot said, referring to the Islamic republic's ideological army.

Beirut has accused Iran's Revolutionary Guards of commanding Hezbollah's operations in its war against Israel, having decided on March 5 to ban all activity by the organisation in the country.

The government also took the unprecedented step of imposing a ban on Hezbollah military activities and called on the group to hand over its weapons to the state.

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The UN Human Rights Council will hold a rare urgent debate on Wednesday on Iran's strikes on countries across the Gulf region and their impact on civilians.

The session, approved on Tuesday, was requested by Bahrain on behalf of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Jordan -- to the infuriation of Tehran, which branded them "detached from reality".

The United Nations' top rights body will discuss "the recent military aggression launched by Iran against Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates... targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, which has resulted in the loss of innocent lives", according to the debate title.

The war erupted on February 28 when the United States and Israel began their attacks on Iran, with Tehran in turn striking targets in Israel and Gulf nations.

"Our countries are not party to the armed conflict, nor have we taken part in military aggression or attacks," Bahrain's ambassador Abdulla Abdullatif Abdulla told the council on Tuesday.

"These Iranian attacks have targeted civilians, civilian infrastructure, leading to very many innocent victims."

Abdulla said the GCC and Jordan had tried to ensure that dialogue prevailed, and had affirmed they would not attack Iran.

"Despite this, we are continuing to be targets of direct attacks," he said, calling the strikes "unjustified and unjustifiable".

The countries brought forward a draft resolution, which the 47-member council will vote on.

The draft resolution "condemns in the strongest terms the egregious attacks" by Iran, condemns Tehran's actions aimed at closing the Strait of Hormuz and voices "grave concerns at the Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure".

It demands Iran "cease all unprovoked attacks" against the GCC states and Jordan, and "provide full, adequate, effective and prompt reparation for all injury and damage... caused by its internationally illegal wrongful acts".

It does not mention Israel or the United States.

- 'Lawful targets': Tehran -

Tehran said the request was "wilfully ignoring the ongoing war of aggression launched against Iran by the US and Israeli regimes".

Holding such a debate was "manifestly unjust, legally untenable and fundamentally detached from reality", Iran's representative told the council.

"It is obvious that if the littoral states of the Persian Gulf and Jordan had not permitted their territories to be used by the US military forces for acts of aggression, US military bases and facilities in the region would not have become lawful targets.

"These states have, at a minimum, facilitated acts that qualify as aggression," and therefore cannot claim isolation from Iran's right of self-defence.

"Iran did not initiate this conflict... Don't confuse the culprits with the victims," the representative said.

Council president Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro said he had received a letter from Iran, China and Cuba requesting another urgent debate.

That request, on the "protection of children and educational institutions in international armed conflicts", refers to the airstrike on a school in the southern city of Minab, calling it a "grave breach of international humanitarian law and international human rights law".

Suryodipuro said the request would be discussed by the council bureau later on Tuesday.

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Russia fired almost 1,000 drones at Ukraine over the last 24-hours, unleashing one of its largest-ever daytime attacks, killing at least eight people and hitting the UNESCO-protected city centre of Lviv, officials said Tuesday.

Two people were killed and a maternity hospital damaged in a drone strike on the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, with another person killed in the central Vinnytsia region -- part of an assault that followed an overnight barrage on residential buildings in several cities that killed another five people.

In Lviv, a western city far from the front, an AFP reporter saw a column of flames rising from a building next to the 17th-century St. Andrew's Church and Bernardine Monastery in the city centre, which was struck during evening rush hour.

Firefighters were working to put out the blaze at the apartment building, whose roof had been smashed in and windows blown out.

First responders and locals were seen sheltering inside a church in mid-attack, waiting for the all-clear to go back outside.

A spokesman for Ukraine's air force told AFP it was one of the biggest-ever daytime attacks on Ukraine.

"On such a large scale, it's basically the first time. I don't recall there being such daytime strikes with this number of drones," said the spokesman, Yuriy Ignat.

Russia fired 550 drones during the day on Tuesday, following 392 overnight, Ukraine's air force said in a statement.

Moscow has typically fired its barrages overnight in the four-year war, which started with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

- 'More protection needed': Zelensky -

The daytime strikes on the centre of Ivano-Frankivsk killed two people and wounded four, including a six-year-old child, regional head Svitlana Onyshchuk said on social media.

Around 10 residential buildings and a maternity hospital were damaged, she said.

In the Vinnytsia region, one person was killed and 11 wounded, the regional head said.

In Lviv, at least 13 people were hospitalised.

Unverified video from the city shared widely on social media showed a drone careering down into a building near a church in the city centre, erupting into a ball of flames on impact.

Earlier, in Kyiv, AFP reporters saw locals -- including a mother with her toddler -- sheltering in the metro at lunchtime during a rare midday air alert.

The attacks came with Ukraine concerned that it could struggle to repel relentless Russian aerial strikes as its supplies of US air defence systems dwindle amid the war in the Middle East.

"These numbers clearly show that more protection is needed to save lives from Russian strikes," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.

A third round of US-brokered talks between Moscow and Kyiv aimed at ending Russia's invasion has been derailed by the war in the Middle East.

Ukraine sent a delegation to the United States last weekend in a bid to revive the negotiation process, but the effort yielded no immediate result.

Kyiv has been seeking to trade its anti-drone technology and expertise for conventional air defence missiles, which it urgently needs, and has dispatched around 200 of its military experts to Gulf countries facing Iranian drone attacks.

- Housing, infrastructure hit -

Overnight, Russian missiles and drones rained down on residential areas and transport and energy infrastructure across Ukraine, local authorities said.

Five people were killed and dozens wounded in strikes across the central Poltava region, the eastern city of Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.

AFP reporters in Zaporizhzhia -- repeatedly battered by Russian attacks -- saw a fire raging across multiple floors in a high-rise residential block, windows and balconies blasted out and grey smoke bellowing from the building.

The nighttime attack also cut a key power line connecting neighbouring Moldova to Europe, forcing the country to declare a state of emergency.

Another power line to the southern Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was also cut, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported.

Russia has occupied large swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine in a gruelling campaign that has forced millions of people to flee their homes.

In Russia, authorities in the western Kursk region said a Ukrainian strike on a farm had killed one person and wounded 13.

On the battlefield, Russia's army said it had captured a Ukrainian village in the Kharkiv region.

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Soaring fuel prices due to the Middle East war and snarled supply chains are already hurting businesses, business survey data published Tuesday showed.

Now in its fourth week, the war sparked by US and Israeli strikes on Iran has seen global oil prices soar by more than 40 percent as Tehran has effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz through which a fifth of oil and liquefied natural gas supplied flowed before the conflict began.

Economists have warned that if they persist higher energy prices could trigger a fresh surge in inflation and slow economic growth.

The Purchasing Managers' Indices compiled monthly by S&P Global are the data equivalent of the canary in the coal mine. 

They survey managers who have their thumbs on the pulse of businesses across many industries, and often reveal changes in business conditions months before official government data.

The latest batch of PMI surveys, which included the period since the war broke out on February 28, showed that businesses activity is already slowing and prices rising.

The initial reading for the composite US PMI dipped to an 11-month low of 51.4 points in March from 51.9 points in February, with services taking a hit while manufacturing edged higher. 

A reading above 50 points indicates economic growth.

"The flash PMI survey data for March signal an unwelcome combination of slower growth and rising inflation following the outbreak of war in the Middle East," said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence. 

"Companies are reporting a hit to demand from the additional uncertainty and cost of living impact generated by the conflict," he added.

- Stagflation threat -

Williamson said that the price component of the surveys indicated inflation rising back to around four percent "hinting at a growing risk of the US moving into an environment of stagflation."

Stagflation is a period of little or no economic growth and high inflation, which poses a quandary for central bankers as raising interest rates to reduce inflation is a sure recipe to trigger a recession.

Meanwhile the eurozone PMI dropped to 10-month low of 50.5 in March, down from 51.9 in February, signalling a near stop in growth and weakening demand.  

"The flash Eurozone PMI is ringing stagflation alarm bells," said Williamson.

Analysts said the data is a warning signal.

"The risk is that the PMI data, which is a lead indicator, is the start of a wave of weaker economic data to come down the line," said Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB.

- Growth at near stop -

Christophe Boucher at ABN AMRO Investment Solutions said the impact of the war in Iran is visible in the PMI data in three ways: a slowdown in the growth in services, an increase in manufacturing prices and a degradation in the global outlook.

Services is by far the main largest economic sector, and in the United States the services PMI dipped to an 11-month low of 51.1.

In Europe it fell to 50.1, a 10-month low.

Germany however saw manufacturing output jump to a four-year high thanks in part a major public investment programme to boost the economy. 

But "the problem with German industry is that it is extremely dependent upon access to fossil fuels" which raises concern that it will also face headwinds, said Christopher Dembik, investment strategist at Pictet Asset Management. 

In France, the private sector registered its strongest contraction since October at 48.3 points.

The same slowdown trend was observed in PMIs in Britain and Australia. 

- Inflationary spiral -

The survey found war-related shipping issues were a key cause of longer supply delivery times. 

In the eurozone, input prices increased at the fastest pace since February 2023, with both manufacturing and services facing steeper inflation, due to higher energy prices.

In the United States, input prices rose at the fastest rate in 10 months, and companies passed the higher costs to clients, with selling prices jumping at the fastest rate in over three-and-a-half years.

ABN AMRO's Boucher said it is important to watch for companies passing on higher costs to clients.

"What seems to be the most important to monitor, particularly in case of an extended conflict, is the risk of the transmission of inflation in the services sector which would signal the second-round effects," he said. 

While Iran and Israel traded strikes on Tuesday, there was still cautious optimism that talks US President Donald Trump evoked on Monday to justify postponing threatened attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure might lead to a deescalation.

"With the Ukraine conflict in 2022 it took five weeks to realize that it wasn't temporary and was becoming structural," Pictet AM's Dembik told AFP, referring to the rise in energy prices triggered by Russia's invasion of its neighbour.

"Today, with some twenty days of fighting, we're still in the middle of the zone of uncertainty," he added.

Jack Allen-Reynolds, deputy chief eurozone economist at Capital Economics, said "if energy prices remain high, worse could be to come."

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US oil giant ConocoPhillips has been urging President Donald Trump's administration to provide extra protection around assets in Qatar where the company has invested significantly, its chief executive said Tuesday.

CEO Ryan Lance's comments at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston come as war rages on in the Middle East, after US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 triggered Tehran's retaliation.

In addition to bringing commercial shipping to a virtual halt through the vital Strait of Hormuz, Iran has also attacked energy infrastructure in the region.

"We're obviously a big investor in Qatar, so a lot of my conversations with the administration is really pleading to try to get extra protection around the US-owned assets in Qatar," Lance said.

"As they protect naval and air force bases and our servicemen and embassies and US citizens, putting US assets on that list to protect there in Qatar is very important," he added.

Lance also said that his company had to evacuate a number of staff over the last few weeks, adding that the situation has been difficult to assess.

Oil prices have soared since the war began, with the price of a barrel of international benchmark Brent crude surging by more than 40 percent.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Brent prices hovered above $104.30 per barrel.

Normally, around a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

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(The Center Square) - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development launched a fair-housing investigation into the Washington State Housing Finance Commission Tuesday over its race-based Covenant Homeownership Program, a letter first obtained by The Center Square shows.​

Craig Trainor, assistant secretary of HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, notified Steve Walker, executive director of the state Housing Finance Commission, on Tuesday, “pursuant to the Fair Housing Act.” Congress passed the law in 1968 following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It prohibits discrimination in real estate based on protected classes, including race and national origin.

“In the commission’s view, it appears that some Washingtonians ‘are more equal than others,’” Trainor wrote in a letter to Walker, quoting a famous line from George Orwell’s 1945 novel Animal Farm. “This government-sponsored housing experiment appears to dole out spoils based on race and ancestry.”

The state Legislature passed a bill in 2023 that created the Covenant Homeownership Program to provide home loans limited to racial minorities. It was framed as a way to address the state’s “history of housing discrimination due to racially restrictive real estate covenants,” according to the state's final bill report.

Real estate covenants are legally binding rules in a property deed that control how the property can be used and maintained. The Fair Housing Act prohibits restrictive covenants based on race, color, religion or national origin, and the state’s 1969 Washington Law Against Discrimination made them legally null.

“This admittedly ‘groundbreaking’ program is remarkably generous,” Trainor wrote Tuesday to Walker.​

The Covenant Homeownership Program offers 0% interest loans for down payments and closing costs.​

The commission handed out $60.2 million in loans, funded by a $100 document recording assessment on real estate transactions, to 547 homebuyers in the first year. According to the program’s frequently asked questions website, the $100 fee generates $75 million to $100 million annually for these loans.

Democrats expanded eligibility in 2025 for first-time homebuyers with household incomes at or below 120% of the Area Median Income; however, that buyer must have a living or deceased parent, grandparent or great-grandparent that lived in Wahsington state before 1968 who's “Black, Hispanic, Native American/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Korean or Asian Indian.”​

The program’s income limit in King County, including Federal Way, Seattle and Bellevue, is $188,500.

The 2025 expansion also provides loan forgiveness to homebuyers with incomes below 80% of AMI after five years of living in the home. To receive assistance under the program, the buyer must work with a “Commission-trained lender to prequalify for a mortgage loan and establish [their] eligibility.”

“Expanding this program is a step toward closing the homeownership gap between Black and white households in our state,” Rep. Jamila Taylor, D-Federal Way, wrote in a news release after Gov. Bob Ferguson signed her expansion into law. “It’s not the only solution … but it is meaningful progress.”

Trainor argued in his letter that the commission doesn’t treat “European, Japanese, Arab, and Jewish ancestry” as equal to the races eligible for the program, which the commission touches on in its FAQ.

“Some of the groups discriminated against continue to show much lower homeownership rates compared with the general white population,” according to the FAQ, which cites a state-funded study into the impacts of discrimination on homeownership. “For other groups (such as Jewish residents), the data is limited when it comes to documenting the lasting impacts of historical discrimination.”​

Walker is already facing a federal lawsuit over the program, but has told lenders to continue as normal until a final ruling. A federal judge denied the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction last month.​

Trainor told Walker that publicly available information about the program suggests that it’s unlawful.

He argued that the prohibition of racial housing covenants in 1968 predates the commission's creation, and that “it does not appear” that Washington state issued or denied loans based on race before 2024.​

“Let me be clear: Illegal discrimination on the basis of race is morally reprehensible, socially perverse, and destructive of America’s pluralistic polity,” he wrote. “The Trump administration will not tolerate it.”​

Trainor quoted Chief Justice John Roberts in the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, where Roberts argued that, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” and again in 2022 when Roberts ruled in another case that, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

The HUD official says he has directed the Office of Special Investigations to look into Washington state for fair housing violations, and that, should the investigation find that the commission violated the law, the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity may file a complaint and charges of discrimination. ​

Trainor asked that the Washington State Housing Finance Commission preserve any relevant records.

Another Washington state subsidy program called the Community Reinvestment Program offers similar loans “to address racial, economic, and social disparities created by the … war on drugs.” It’s currently facing allegations that the nonprofits controlling the taxpayer-funded loans awarded them to members of their own families, according to reporting by independent journalist Brandi Kruse and The Center Square.​

“DEI is dead at HUD. Those who ignore the law and violate the rights of Americans for political purposes will not continue,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner wrote in a statement. “I will not stand for illegal racial and ethnic preferences that deny Americans their right to equal protection under the law.”

“HUD will work to ensure Washington state follows the law and provides equal opportunity for all citizens seeking assistance under the Commission’s programs. Under President Trump’s leadership, HUD will vigorously enforce the Fair Housing Act and ensure all Americans have an equal shot at the American dream,” Turner concluded.

Walker did not immediately respond to The Center Square's request for comment before publishing. 

CERN scientists on Tuesday pulled off the unprecedented feat of transporting antiprotons by road, successfully test-driving the world's first antimatter delivery system, with an eye to one day supplying research labs across Europe.

"The particles returned... so this was a success," CERN physicist Stefan Ulmer told reporters after the large truck came back from a 10-kilometre drive around the campus of Europe's main physics laboratory.

While that might not sound like a big distance, Ulmer, a spokesman for CERN's BASE experiment probing the asymmetry between matter and antimatter in the universe, said it marked the "starting point to a new era".

Visible matter and its mysterious twin antimatter are believed to be almost identical, except their charges and magnetic properties are reversed. 

Scientists today still wonder why our universe contains far more matter than antimatter, when the Big Bang should have created an equal amount.

When antimatter comes in contact with matter it annihilates, disappearing in a flash of energetic particles.

Moving antimatter particles about is therefore a major challenge -- one that has now seemingly been overcome.

- Antimatter factory -

"It's fantastic!" said Francois Butin, the technical coordinator of CERN's so-called antimatter factory -- the only place in the world where antiprotons can be produced, stored and studied.

"This opens up so many possibilities," he told AFP. 

The antimatter factory's particle accelerator and decelerator generate fluctuations that impact the measurements, limiting their precision.

To overcome this problem, scientists have found a way to trap antiprotons inside a special ion trap, allowing them to be transferred to other, quieter facilities where they can be studied with greater precision. 

"We want to understand something about the fundamental symmetries of nature, and we know that if we do these experiments outside of this accelerator facility, we can measure 100 to 1,000 times better," Ulmer said.

To prepare for the world's first attempt at antimatter transport, a cloud of 92 antiprotons were captured and stored in a portable cryogenic Penning trap.

They were cooled to 8.2 Kelvin, or -268 Celsius to slow them down, while a strong vacuum system ensures they do not annihilate by colliding with the residual gas in the trap.

- 'Big success' -

Tensions were running high as dozens of CERN scientists sporting hard hats gathered at the antimatter factory to watch as what looked like a large filing cabinet, containing the 850-kilogramme trap, was gingerly lifted by a giant yellow ceiling crane and transported across the lab.

They had practiced these careful manoeuvres previously, but then came the groundbreaking step: loading the giant box onto a flatbed truck, and taking it for a spin.

"The most critical part is on the road, because there you have additional vibrations," Marcus Jankowski, responsible for safety in CERN's experimental physics department, told AFP.

The truck, emblazoned with "Antimatter in Motion" on its sides and flanked by a yellow van and red car with flashing lights, slowly made its way through the CERN campus.

Ulmer followed in his car, the whole time keeping an eye on a monitor on his phone indicating the antimatter's vital signs, where the characteristic frequency that antiprotons vibrate at takes the M-shaped form of two peaks.

The height of the peaks indicates the number of antiprotons in the trap, he explained, warning that if the shape shifts into a single peak, that would indicate that the antiprotons had annihilated.

During the drive, the shape seemed to alter some, but Ulmer later explained that it was the detector's resonant frequency that had shifted by a few hertz.

"The particles are still at the same position," he said jubilantly after the drive.

"Everything went smoothly... It's a very big success." 

Eventually, CERN aims to send antiprotons to a range of labs across Europe, starting with its dedicated precision laboratory in Dusseldorf, an eight-hour drive away in Germany.

"This means we’d have to keep the trap's superconducting magnet at a temperature below 8.2K for that long." Christian Smorra, head of the BASE-STEP experiment, said in a statement.

The greatest challenge, he said, would meanwhile be when the antimatter arrives at its destination: "to transfer the antiprotons to the experiment without them vanishing".

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Chile's new hard-right President Jose Antonio Kast on Tuesday withdrew Santiago's support for former socialist president Michelle Bachelet as candidate for the post of UN secretary general.

Kast's leftist predecessor Gabriel Boric had in February backed two-term president Bachelet's attempt to become the first woman to head the United Nations, in a move also supported by leftist-led Brazil and Mexico.

A foreign ministry statement on Tuesday however said Santiago "has decided to withdraw Chile's backing for ex-president Michelle Bachelet as candidate for the post of secretary general of the United Nations."

"The fragmentation of candidacies among Latin American states and the differences with some of the key players shaping this process render this candidacy and its eventual success unviable," the ministry said, while adding it would not back another contender if Bachelet were to seek to stay in the race.

Even without having Chile’s backing, Bachelet, 74, can still proceed with her candidacy, as she retains Brazil's and Mexico's backing.

Each potential candidate must be formally nominated by a state or group of states, but not necessarily by their country of origin.

Bachelet, a pediatrician by profession, is the only woman to have served as president of Chile (2006–2010 and 2014–2018), under the Socialist Party's banner.

She has been hoping to succeed Portugal’s Antonio Guterres, 76, who will conclude his second term at the UN helm on December 31.

As well as president, Bachelet previously served as executive director of UN Women (2010–2013) and later as UN high commissioner for human rights (2018–2022).

To date, no woman has held the post of UN secretary general.

An unwritten rule has it that the top UN post rotates among the world's main regions, and now it's the turn of Latin America.

The only previous Latin American UN secretary general was Peruvian diplomat Javier Perez de Cuellar, who served between 1982 and 1991.

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There is a limit on how many times a mammal can be cloned before suffering "mutational meltdown", Japanese scientists have discovered, after making 1,200 clones over two decades that started off with a single mouse.

The 58th generation of mice did not survive, establishing for the first time that mammals cannot be cloned an infinite number of times, the scientists said in a study published on Tuesday.

It had been hoped that this method, which involves making clones of other clones, could have a range of uses in the future, including saving endangered species or mass-producing animals for their meat.

"We had believed that we could create an infinite number of clones. That is why these results are so disappointing," the study's senior author Teruhiko Wakayama of the University of Yamanashi told AFP.

It was Wakayama's team that cloned the first mouse in 1997, a year after the famous Dolly the Sheep became the first-ever mammal clone.

For the new research, the scientists first cloned the original female mouse in 2005.

Once a mouse reached three months old, they were cloned again, resulting in three or four new generations every year.

Over the next 20 years, they carried out more than 30,000 cloning attempts that created over 1,200 mice.

The process involves removing the DNA-containing nucleus of a cell from a donor animal and implanting it into an unfertilised egg from which the nucleus has been removed.

- 'Critical turning point' -

In the first few years, the method's success rate steadily rose -- reaching over 15 percent at one point -- and the mice appeared to all be identical. 

This gave the scientists hope that they could make clones indefinitely.

However there was a "critical turning point" around the 25th generation, according to the study published in the journal Nature Communications.

After that point, harmful genetic mutations built up over the generations, and each new set of mice was less likely to survive.

By the 57th generation, only 0.6 percent survived. Despite their accumulating mutations, these mice were still healthy.

However all the mice in the 58th generation died shortly after birth.

"There were no visible abnormalities in the pups, and the cause of death is unknown," Wakayama said.

The scientists sequenced the genomes of some of the clones, finding that they had three times more mutations than mice born via sexual reproduction. 

They also had larger placentas -- and some were missing a copy of their X chromosome.

"It was once believed that clones were identical to the original," Wakayama said, but this was clearly not the case.

Wakayama admitted his team has "no idea" how to overcome this problem, suggesting that  perhaps the answer was to develop a better cloning method.

- The importance of sex -

Importantly, when the later clones -- even in the 57th generation -- mated with male mice, they had healthy offspring with fewer mutations.

This discovery demonstrates "that sexual reproduction is indispensable for the long-term survival of mammalian species," the study said.

It also supports a theory called Muller's ratchet, which "predicts that in asexual lineages, deleterious mutations inevitably accumulate, ultimately producing mutational meltdown and extinction," the study said.

The research "provides the first empirical demonstration" that this meltdown occurs in mammals, it added.

The finding could also rule out all sorts of scenarios involving clones that have been dreamt up in science fiction.

For example, Wakayama joked that this finding meant it would have been impossible to create so many clone troopers in the Star Wars prequel "Attack of the Clones".

It could also affect any plans to preserve Earth's genetic resources in a vault in the hope of re-cloning a new population following some catastrophe in the future, the study pointed out.

Wakayama is also working on new ways to collect cells from animals without harming them, as part of efforts to bring endangered species back from the brink.

His team has already successfully made clones from cells found in urine -- and are currently working to do the same with faeces.

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A 600-year-old grape seed discovered in the toilets of a medieval French hospital is genetically identical to the grapes still being used to make pinot noir wine, scientists said Tuesday.

The seed reveals that people in France have been cultivating this immensely popular variety of grape since at least the 1400s, the scientists said in a new study.

It is not possible to say whether the fruit was "eaten like table grapes or whether people made wine from it at the time", study co-author Laurent Bouby told AFP.

But the research provides a link between modern France -- one of the world's largest wine-producing and -consuming countries -- and its distant wine-loving past.

Another study co-author, Ludovic Orlando, pointed out that the Hundred Years' War between England and France finally wrapped up in the mid-1400s.

And the brief life of France's patron saint, Joan of Arc, was also in the 15th century.

"She could have eaten the same grapes as us," the paleogeneticist at the University of Toulouse told AFP.

The seed was found in a toilet in a 15th-century hospital in Valenciennes in northern France. At the time, toilets were sometimes used as rubbish bins, the researchers explained.

The study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, involved sequencing the genome of 54 grape seeds dating from the Bronze Age -- from around 2,300 BC -- to the Middle Ages.

It confirms that generations of winegrowers had been using what are today called "clonal propagation" techniques, such as preserving cuttings of particular grape varieties for 600 years, the researchers said.

Ancient texts had offered indications this was happening, "but outside of paleogenomics, it is very difficult to characterise this technique", said Bouby of the Institute of Evolutionary Science of Montpellier.

But the new research found evidence this technique was being used in many areas as far back as the Iron Age, around 625–500 BC.

- Aged like fine wine -

The oldest grapes analysed in the study were from wild vines in the French region of Nimes dated to around 2,000 BC.

Domesticated vines then started to appear between 625 and 500 BC in France's southern Var region.

This lines up with when colonising Greeks were believed to have introduced viticulture -- cultivating grapevines -- to France, after founding the city of Marseille.

Orlando said it was already known that wine was traded at the time by the Greeks and the Etruscans, because of wine jugs called amphora that lasted through the centuries.

But the DNA of the grape seeds, particularly those from the ancient Roman period, revealed long-distance exchanges of domesticated grape varieties from places including Spain, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East.

It also showed there was plenty of genetic mixing of domesticated grape varieties and local wild vines during the Roman period, particularly in northern France.

In the future, "it would be very interesting to work closely with historians who have access to texts describing certain winegrowing techniques" to find out more, Orlando said.

Pinot noir, which is often associated with France's Burgundy region, is the fourth most widely grown grape in the world, according to the study.

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