Beijing (AFP) - The Chinese scientist behind the world's biggest cloning factory has technology advanced enough to replicate humans, he told AFP, and is only holding off for fear of the public reaction.

Boyalife Group and its partners are building the giant plant in the northern Chinese port of Tianjin, where it is due to go into production within the next seven months and aims for an output of one million cloned cows a year by 2020.

But cattle are only the beginning of chief executive Xu Xiaochun's ambitions.

In the factory pipeline are also thoroughbred racehorses, as well as pet and police dogs, specialised in searching and sniffing.

Boyalife is already working with its South Korean partner Sooam and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to improve primate cloning capacity to create better test animals for disease research.

And it is a short biological step from monkeys to humans -- potentially raising a host of moral and ethical controversies.

"The technology is already there," Xu said. "If this is allowed, I don't think there are other companies better than Boyalife that make better technology."

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In the factory pipeline are thoroughbred racehorses, as well as pet and police dogs, specialised in …

The firm does not currently engage in human cloning activities, Xu said, adding that it has to be "self-restrained" because of possible adverse reaction.

But social values can change, he pointed out, citing changing views of homosexuality and suggesting that in time humans could have more choices about their own reproduction.

"Unfortunately, currently, the only way to have a child is to have it be half its mum, half its dad," he said.

"Maybe in the future you have three choices instead of one," he went on. "You either have fifty-fifty, or you have a choice of having the genetics 100 percent from Daddy or 100 percent from Mummy. This is only a choice."

Xu, 44, went to university in Canada and the US, and has previously worked for US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and in drug development.

- Snuppy the cloned dog -

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Boyalife Group and its partners are building a giant cloning factory in Tianjin, which will aim for …

Presenting cloning as a safeguard of biodiversity, the Tianjin facility will house a gene bank capable of holding up to approximately five million cell samples frozen in liquid nitrogen -– a catalogue of the world's endangered species for future regeneration.

Boyalife's South Korean partner Sooam is already working on a project to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction by cloning cells preserved for thousands of years in the Siberian permafrost.

Sooam also serves a niche market recreating customers' dead pet dogs, reportedly for $100,000 a time.

Sooam founder Hwang Woo-Suk was a national hero with his own postage stamp before being embroiled in controversy a decade ago after his claims to be the first in the world to clone a human embryo were discredited.

Hwang, who created Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, in 2005, lost his university position, had two major papers retracted, and was accused of crimes ranging from violation of bioethics laws to embezzling research funds.

Earlier this year he was quoted in South Korea's Dong-A Ilbo newspaper saying that his firm was planning a cloning joint venture in China "because of South Korea's bioethics law that prohibits the use of human eggs".

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The factory is aiming to produce "cloned" beef from breeding genetically identical super-c …

"We have decided to locate the facilities in China in case we enter the phase of applying the technology to human bodies," he was quoted as saying.

- 'Weird experiments' -

For now, Xu seeks to become the world's first purveyor of "cloned" beef, breeding genetically identical super-cattle that he promises will taste like Kobe and allow butchers to "slaughter less and produce more" to meet the demands of China's booming middle class.

Cloning differs from genetic modification, but its application to animals would enable the firm to homogenise its output.

"Everything in the supermarket looks good –- it’s almost all shiny, good-looking, and uniformly shaped. For animals, we weren't able to do that in the past. But with our cloning factory, we choose to do so now," Xu said.

"Remember, this is a food. We want it to be uniform, very consistent, very premium quality," he added.

There is controversy over whether cloned beef is safe for human consumption -- research by the US Food and Drug Adminstration says that it is, but the European parliament has backed a ban on cloned animals and products in the food chain.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization has yet to review the issue.

Han Lanzhi, a GMO safety specialist at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said Boyalife’s claims about the safety, scope and timeline of their operations were alarming -- and implausible.

"To get approval for the safety of cloned animals would be a very drawn-out process, so when I heard this news, I felt very surprised," she said.

"There must be strong regulation because as a company pursuing its own interests, they could very easily do other things in the future," she added.

Xu sought to be reassuring, telling AFP: "We want the public to see that cloning is really not that crazy, that scientists aren’t weird, dressed in lab coats, hiding behind a sealed door doing weird experiments."

'Clone factory' scientist eyes human replication

Inside Edition CBS
Marine Guilty of Killing Filipino Woman After Learning She Was Transgender

OLONGAPO, Philippines (AP) — A Philippine court on Tuesday convicted a U.S. Marine of killing a Filipino last year after he discovered she was a transgender woman in a hotel while he was on a break after participating in joint military exercises in the country.

Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton was convicted of homicide by first strangling Jennifer Laude and then dunking her head into a toilet bowl in the hotel they had checked into after meeting in a disco bar in October 2014 in Olongapo, a city northwest of Manila. He was sentenced to 6-12 years in jail and credited with time already spent in detention, said court clerk Gerry Gruspe.

The court also ordered Pemberton, who has been detained at a Philippine military camp for about a year, to pay Laude's family 4.6 million pesos ($98,000) in damages.

Laude's mother, Julita, said that while she was happy the verdict detailed everything that had transpired, she was not pleased with the length of the jail term because she had hoped Pemberton would be convicted of murder, a more serious crime than homicide.

"But the important thing is he will be jailed," she said, crying. "My son's life is not wasted."

The Laude family's private lawyer, Harry Roque, said that "this is a bittersweet victory because it is not murder," adding that "if what he did isn't cruelty, I don't know what is."

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Protesters display placards during a rally near the Presidential Palace in Manila to await the verdi …

Witnesses had testified that Pemberton squeezed Laude's neck, dragged her to the toilet and dunked her head into the bowl. Two of Pemberton's U.S. Marine colleagues testified that Pemberton told them, "I think I killed a he/she."

The judge said she downgraded the murder charge to homicide because conditions such as cruelty and treachery had not been proven.

The killing sparked anger in the Philippines and reignited calls by left-wing groups and nationalists for an end to America's military presence in the country at a time when the U.S. is reasserting its dominance in Asia and Manila has turned to Washington for support amid an escalating territorial dispute with China.

Half a block from the court, dozens of left-wing protesters rejoiced after the verdict was announced by burning an effigy of Uncle Sam and yelling "Justice for Jennifer!" Police officers, fire trucks and iron railings were used to prevent them from getting closer to the courthouse.

Pemberton, an anti-tank missile operator from New Bedford, Massachusetts, was one of thousands of American and Philippine military personnel who participated in the joint exercises last year. He and a group of other Marines were on leave after the exercises and met Laude and her friends at a bar in Olongapo, a city known for its nightlife located outside Subic Bay, a former U.S. Navy base. At least two witnesses testified that Laude was a sex worker.

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U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton, center, accused of killing of Filipino transgender Je …

Pemberton and Laude left the bar and checked in together at a nearby hotel. About 30 minutes later, Pemberton walked out, leaving the room's door ajar, according to hotel staff.

Pemberton testified in August that he had choked Laude during a fight that erupted when he discovered she was a transgender woman, but said she was still alive when he left her in a shower, according to his lawyer, Rowena Garcia Flores.

Lawyers for Laude's family, however, said Laude was dead when Pemberton left her. Police have said that Laude had apparently been drowned in a toilet.

In the decision, Regional Trial Court Judge Roline Ginez-Jabalde ordered Pemberton temporarily jailed at the New Bilibid Prison, a national penitentiary in suburban Muntinlupa City.

The judge said an agreement between the U.S. and the Philippines was ambiguous and failed to state in which facility within the Philippine military headquarters Pemberton would be detained and which government agency would have supervision. She ordered that he be brought to the national penitentiary, in accordance with local laws, until it is decided where he should be permanently held.

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Protesters display placards during a rally near the Presidential Palace in Manila to await the verdi …

Pemberton's lawyers made an impromptu appeal against him being brought to the national penitentiary. After meeting with the lawyers and government representatives, the judge allowed Pemberton to be detained for five days at the military headquarters pending a permanent detention site, said Roque, the Laudes' lawyer.

The case has revived a debate over which government should have custody of U.S. military personnel who run afoul of local laws under a Visiting Forces Agreement the two allies signed in 1998.

The agreement, which allows U.S. forces to conduct military exercises in the Philippines, says that the Philippines can prosecute American service members, but that the U.S. has custody over them "from the commission of the offense until completion of all judicial proceedings."

However, the Philippine Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that convicted U.S. personnel must serve their sentences in the Philippines.

In a compromise last year, the U.S. agreed to have Pemberton detained in a compound at Philippine military headquarters in suburban Quezon City guarded by U.S. Marines with an outer ring of Filipino forces.

Left-wing activists and nationalist Filipinos have cited the custody provision of the VFA as proof that the accord was lopsided in favor of the U.S. and undermines the sovereignty of the Philippines, which was an American colony until 1946.

___

Cerojano reported from Manila.

By David Rohde

(Reuters) - Human Rights Watch called on the Obama administration on Tuesday to investigate 21 former U.S. officials, including former President George W. Bush, for potential criminal misconduct for their roles in the CIA's torture of terrorism suspects in detention.

The other officials include former Vice President Dick Cheney, former CIA Director George Tenet, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Human Rights Watch argued that details of the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation program that were made public by a U.S. Senate committee in December 2014 provided enough evidence for the Obama administration to open an inquiry.

"It’s been a year since the Senate torture report, and still the Obama administration has not opened new criminal investigations into CIA torture," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "Without criminal investigations, which would remove torture as a policy option, Obama’s legacy will forever be poisoned."

Representatives for Bush and Tenet declined comment. Representatives for Cheney, Ashcroft and Rice could not immediately be reached for comment.

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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) flag is displayed on stage during a conference on national sec …

Former Bush administration officials and Republicans have argued that the CIA used "enhanced interrogation techniques" that did not constitute torture. They argue that the Senate report was biased.

"It's a bunch of hooey," James Mitchell, one of the architects of the interrogation program told Reuters nearly a year ago after the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's findings. "Some of the things are just plain not true."

In a video released in conjunction with the report, "No More Excuses" "A Roadmap to Justice for CIA Torture," the president of the American Bar Association calls for a renewed investigation as well. In June, the ABA sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch also saying that the details disclosed in the Senate report merited an investigation.

"What we’ve asked the Justice Department to do is take a fresh look, a comprehensive look, into what has occurred to basically leave no stone unturned into investigating possible violations," said American Bar Association President Paulette Brown. "And if any are found to take the appropriate action as they would in any other matter."

CIA interrogators carried out the program on detainees who were captured around the world after the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacked plane attacks on the United States.

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In this June 27, 2006 file photo, reviewed by a U.S. Department of Defense official, U.S. military g …

In 2008, the Bush administration opened a criminal inquiry into whether the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations. After taking office in 2009, the Obama administration expanded the inquiry to include whether the interrogation program’s activity involved criminal conduct.

In 2012, the Obama administration closed the criminal inquiry. Then Attorney General Eric Holder said that not enough evidence existed for criminal prosecution, including the death of two detainees.

Human Rights Watch argued that the Senate report contained new information that showed detainees were tortured in violation of U.S. and international law, including rectal feedings and unauthorized forms of "waterboarding," which makes the person feel as though they are drowning.

Laura Pitter, Human Rights Watch’s senior national security counsel and the lead author of the report, said that calls from some Republican Presidential candidates for the revival of the CIA interrogation techniques made the need for a renewed inquiry that much more important.

"Until the inherent criminality of these acts is made clear," she said, "there is a danger that future administrations will use the same tactics again."

(Reporting by David Rohde in New York; Editing by Grant McCool)

Jerusalem (AFP) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted for the first time Tuesday that Israeli forces have been operating in Syria, where the Iran-backed regime is battling rebels including the jihadist Islamic State.

"We occasionally carry out operations in Syria to prevent that country from becoming a front against us," Netanyahu told reporters during a visit to northern Israel.

"We also do everything to prevent weapons, particularly lethal ones, being moved from Syria to Lebanon," he added.

Netanyahu did not provide further details and his comments were the first public recognition that Israel has been active in conflict-riddled Syria.

Several purported strikes have occurred in recent months, targeting alleged Iranian arms transfers from Syria to Lebanon and destined for Israel's arch-foe, the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah.

But these strikes were not officially acknowledged by Israeli authorities.

Israel opposes the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which has been battling an armed rebellion since March 2011, but has sought to avoid being dragged into the war in neighbouring Syria.

Russia, an ally of the Assad regime along with Iran, launched an air campaign against his opponents in late September.

On Sunday, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said a Russian warplane had recently entered Israeli-controlled airspace from Syria but the intrusion was resolved without incident.

"It was apparently an error by the pilot who was flying near the Golan," Yaalon said.

Israel seized most of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed the territory in a move never recognised by the international community.

Yaalon said Israel and Russia had made arrangements to avoid clashes over Syria, with the agreement said to include a "hotline" and information sharing.

Netanyahu echoed his comments on Tuesday, saying the Israeli and Russian military forces "are in close coordination to avoid such incidents".

Their remarks came in the aftermath of the downing by Turkey over a Russian warplane which Ankara said had entered Turkish airspace -- a claim denied by Moscow.

Netanyahu admits Israeli forces are in Syria

In recent months, Israeli forces have targeted alleged Iranian arms transfers destined for Hezbollah.
Coordinating with Russia