Daily Archives: September 1, 2014

Nelvana/YTV/CNS/CN/BTT/DNA/Viacom/KC
Taken from Yumi catches Ami Dexter Dee Dee and Lazlo on Liketoon Movie Network.

By: Javier Eduardo Andres Torres Nuez

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Nelvana/YTV/CNS/CN/BTT/DNA/Viacom/KC - Video

Published: Monday, 9/1/2014

BY JENNIFER FEEHAN BLADE STAFF WRITER

For more than a decade after he broke into a Toledo home, raped and hogtied a woman whod been asleep in her bed, Aaron Lamont Beamon got away with the violent crime.

It would take time and the nations massive database of DNA samples to catch up with Beamon.

Now 39, he is to be sentenced Sept. 9 in Lucas County Common Pleas Court after pleading guilty in June to rape, kidnapping, burglary, and robbery in connection with the Oct. 15, 2001, attack on the 21-year-old victim.

She was living with her parents at their home, said Jennifer Liptack-Wilson, an assistant Lucas County prosecutor assigned to the case. Everyone had left for school and work, and she was in bed sleeping.

The victim didnt know her attacker and wasnt able to see his face.

We were never able to find him, but we came to find him because vaginal swabs were taken as part of a rape kit, entered into [the DNA database], and finally we got a hit, Ms. Liptack-Wilson said.

In cases with few other clues to go on, it can be like hitting the lottery.

We see these miracles every day, said Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, whose office oversees the testing of DNA evidence through its Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

Continue reading here:
DNA database helps crack cold cases

Only now have scientists involved in the practice disclosed that a study of the childrens long-term health is finally under way.

It is quite extraordinary, says British fertility pioneer Professor Lord Winston. Not only the lack of follow-up, but the way the whole thing was run. This was not about preventing deadly diseases, this was mainly about getting older women pregnant via a rather dubious method, trying to rejuvenate older eggs.

He is among many scientists who make a clear distinction between those experiments now outlawed and the proposals to allow three-parent babies in this country, which would be regulated.

Lord Winston believes there is a clear case for the plans to help those with a high risk of having children who inherit disorders such as muscular dystrophy caused by faults in the mothers mitochondria, the structures that supply energy to the bodys cells. The therapy can dramatically reduce the risk of children inheriting disorders of the heart, brain and muscle.

I think the case is self-evident and reasonable, says the emeritus professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London. This is about something that is unusual and will benefit a small number of patients. I know there are some people who think it is a slippery slope, that the next thing will be choosing intelligence or blond hair, but I dont think that. For 20 years, its been scientifically possible to have sex selection of embryos; we still dont allow it in Britain apart from for heritable diseases.

Scientists behind the technique emphasise that the DNA in question lies outside the nucleus of the cell, with no bearing on the childs personality or appearance.

None the less, ministers are braced for a fierce debate in the Commons and later in the Lords, as MPs and peers consider the regulations within a wider ethical and philosophical context.

Some opponents ask what right scientists have to play God. Others are set to explore more subtle moral questions: should doctors and scientists take decisions that could have an unknown impact on generations hundreds of years down the line?

There are also questions of identity. Under British law, egg and sperm donation can no longer be anonymous those born of such conceptions have the legal right to know where they came from, when they reach adulthood. But when it comes to mitochondrial transfer, second mothers will remain anonymous, under the draft regulations. Those who support the proposals point out that the third-party DNA contribution, while critical, is minuscule.

But critics suggest this is an attempt to diminish the significance of the contribution. Others suggest that such children ought to have the right to thank the woman who secured their health.

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Three-parent babies: good or bad?

As the state's highest court upheld this week a Harford County rape conviction based on DNA collected from the arm of a police station chair, a veteran judge issued a stark warning about the consequences of the ruling.

"The majority's approval of such police procedure means, in essence, that a person desiring to keep her DNA profile private, must conduct her public affairs in a hermetically sealed hazmat suit," Judge Sally D. Adkins wrote in a dissenting opinion.

The rapist, Glenn Joseph Raynor, had challenged his conviction, arguing that police were wrong to swab his genetic material from the chair after he had refused to consent to giving a sample. But four judges of the Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling that police are free to scoop up DNA wherever they may come across it.

Raynor's attorney could not be reached for comment.

The case reflects the continuing debate in Maryland and across the nation about the use of DNA and other technology to solve crimes. Forensic and digital evidence can be powerfully persuasive at trial, but some privacy advocates worry that it could be abused especially as the technology to analyze the information improves.

Writing for the majority in Raynor's case, Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera said the way police got Raynor's DNA and what they did with it is just like how they might have acted if they got his fingerprints.

"The police would have analyzed the fingerprints to reveal their identifying characteristics and compared them to any fingerprint evidence collected at the victim's home," she wrote. "The only distinction that reasonably can be drawn is that the DNA test results in the present case directly linked Petitioner not merely to the crime scene but also directly and with certainty to the rape of the victim."

But Adkins looked at the decision as giving police the unfettered ability to scoop up DNA and use it, and said people should be given better privacy protections over information that can be collected even without physically intruding on their body or property.

"The ongoing debate regarding cloud technology and collecting intangible data depicts the tremendous intrusions that can occur without a physical invasion," she wrote.

Adkins compared the issue to another battle over technology and crime fighting that is brewing over the use of cell tower location information. One federal appeals court has already required police to get a warrant before collecting that data; lawyers for two convicted Baltimore robbers are seeking a similar ruling.

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Judge warns privacy of DNA at stake after ruling

BY FRANK MAIN AND RUMMANA HUSSAIN Staff Reporters August 28, 2014 2:14PM

Police Cmdr. Glenn Evans | Sun-Times file photo

storyidforme: 71153971 tmspicid: 25045338 fileheaderid: 12606463

Updated: August 29, 2014 2:19AM

Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez said Thursday that a backlog at the Illinois State Police crime lab was responsible for a nearly one-year delay in processing key DNA evidence that has led to charges against a Chicago Police commander for allegedly putting a gun in a suspects mouth.

Glenn Evans, commander of the Harrison District on the West Side, allegedly put his .45-caliber pistol deep down the suspects throat last year. Evans also allegedly held a Taser to the mans groin and threatened to kill him unless he led officers to the gun he was allegedly carrying.

Evans, 52, one of police Supt. Garry McCarthys most trusted commanders, was charged Wednesday with official misconduct and aggravated battery, both felonies. He was released Thursday without having to post bond and was able to avoid reporters when he was allowed to go through a ceremonial door rarely used at the courthouse.

A Cook County Sheriffs lieutenant who let Evans leave through the door will be disciplined. Evans was supposed to go out the regular doors used by the public, and the lieutenant disobeyed the orders, a sheriffs spokeswoman said.

According to prosecutors, the key evidence against Evans is a match between DNA evidence swabbed from his gun and DNA evidence taken from the mouth of the suspect, Rickey J. Williams, 24.

Evans arrested Williams for reckless conduct on Jan. 30, 2013, after a chase in the Grand Crossing District on the South Side, where Evans was commander before moving to the Harrison District on the West Side. Evans said he saw Williams on the street with a gun. Williams was hiding in vacant house when he was nabbed.

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Alvarez: Crime lab backlog held up DNA evidence on Evans gun

Genetic analysis of present-day Arctic residents as well as ancient human remains reveals a previously unknown mass migration into the Americas from Siberia and shows that an isolated Arctic culture known as the Dorset disappeared without a genetic trace centuries ago.

"One might almost say, kind of jokingly and very informally, that the Dorsets were the 'hobbits' of the Eastern Arctic, a very strange and very conservative people that we're only just getting to know a little bit," said William Fitzhugh, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and one of the authors of the research appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The Dorset people are known only by what they left behind, including primitive stone tools and beautiful wooden and ivory figurines. The DNA analysis suggests that their ancestors came to Arctic Canada and Greenland from Siberia about 4,500 years ago, and lived in chilly isolation for more than three millennia.

The research was based on analysis of more than 150 DNA samples from ancient and present-day humans from Greenland, Canada, Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, and Siberia.

Previously, researchers had thought the Dorset were descended from migrants who came to the New World earlier, but the DNA analysis shows that their ancestors were not part of the three previously known waves of migration that go back as far as 15,000 years. Instead, they appear to represent part of a separate Paleo-Eskimo wave of migration.

Hairs from Greenland trace migration history

The new study also confirms that the Arctic region's modern-day Inuit peoples are descended from the migrants who came after the Dorset. This wave, known as the Thule or Neo-Eskimo migration, occurred about 1,000 years ago. There was virtually no evidence of genetic or cultural interaction between the Dorset and the Thule peoples. Within a couple of centuries of the Thule hunters' arrival, the Dorset had vanished, living on only as "gentle giants" in the tales told by the Inuit.

"The real mystery is therefore why the Dorset disappeared so completely," University of Waterloo anthropologist Robert Park said in a Science commentary.

This carved ivory human figure in the form of a harpoon head is presumed to associated with the Dorset culture. It was found on Canada's Igloolik Island by archaeologist Sue Rowley.

Some have suggested that the Thule invaders wiped out the Dorset people, and Fitzhugh acknowledged that it could have been "an example of prehistoric genocide." The Thule people had developed advanced bows and arrows, whale-hunting tools and dogsleds technologies in which the Dorset were deficient. The Thule also favored a military-style discipline that might have contrasted with the Dorset culture's simpler ways.

Continued here:
DNA Traces the Tale of Arctic's Long-Gone 'Hobbits'

Saturday August 30, 2014 04:00 PM

As Marylands highest court upheld a rape conviction based on DNA collected from the arm of a police station chair, a veteran judge issued a stark warning about the consequences of the ruling.

The majoritys approval of such police procedure means, in essence, that a person desiring to keep her DNA profile private, must conduct her public affairs in a hermetically sealed hazmat suit, Judge Sally D. Adkins wrote in a dissenting opinion.

The rapist, Glenn Joseph Raynor, had challenged his conviction, arguing that police were wrong to swab his genetic material from the chair after he had refused to consent to giving a sample. But four judges of the Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling that police are free to scoop up DNA wherever they may come across it.

The case reflects the continuing debate about the use of DNA and other technology to solve crimes. Forensic and digital evidence can be powerfully persuasive at trial, but some privacy advocates worry that it could be abused especially as the technology to analyze the information improves.

Writing for the majority in Raynors case, Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera said the way police got Raynors DNA and what they did with it is just like how they might have acted if they got his fingerprints.

The police would have analyzed the fingerprints to reveal their identifying characteristics and compared them to any fingerprint evidence collected at the victims home, she wrote. The only distinction that reasonably can be drawn is that the DNA test results in the present case directly linked Petitioner not merely to the crime scene but also directly and with certainty to the rape of the victim.

But Adkins looked at the decision as giving police the unfettered ability to scoop up DNA and use it, and said people should be given better privacy protections over information that can be collected even without physically intruding on their bodies or property.

The ongoing debate regarding cloud technology and collecting intangible data depicts the tremendous intrusions that can occur without a physical invasion, she wrote.

Read the rest here:
DNA ruling endangers privacy, Maryland judge warns