RESEARCHERS who picked up and analysed wild chimp droppings said today they had shown how the AIDS virus originated in wild apes in Cameroon and then spread in humans across Africa and eventually the world. Their study, published in the journal Science, supports other studies that suggest people somehow caught the deadly human immunodeficiency virus from chimpanzees, perhaps by killing and eating them. "It says that the chimpanzee group that gave rise to HIV ... this chimp community resides in Cameroon," said Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama, who led the study. "But that doesn't mean the epidemic originated...