Category Archives: Transhuman News

January 13, 2014, 7:02 a.m.

Authorities say they were able to use DNA evidence to track down a man who they say brutally beat and raped a 29-year-old woman in her apartment in 2012.

The woman, who has not been identified, woke up at 6 a.m. Oct. 27 in her Rowland Heightsapartment as Pablo Reyes Bautista, 26, attacked her, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

The break in the case came when DNA recently entered by the suspect resulted in a match from a national database.

Bautista was arrested "after an extensive manhunt" in Atwater Village, the department said. He previously lived in Rowland Heights, where the alleged attack occurred in the 1500 block of Jellick Avenue.

Bautista was charged with rape by force, aggravated mayhem and burglary, authorities said.

He is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.

Authorities are hoping that any other possible victims of Bautista will step forward and call the special victims bureau at (877) 710-5273.

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DNA evidence yields arrest in 2012 Rowland Heights rape case

UPDATE Ex-inmate, 2 others to be honored for saving life of 2-year-old Ex-inmate, 2 others to be honored for saving life of 2-year-old

Updated: Monday, January 13 2014 2:16 PM EST2014-01-13 19:16:48 GMT

A 2-year-old Pinal County girl is recovering after falling through a damaged septic tank lid and nearly drowning. Pinal County Sheriff's spokesman Tim Gaffney said the girl was walking with her mother

Henry Ricketts dove in head first to try to save a 2-year-old girl who fell into a septic tank in Maricopa. Others came to her rescue, too.

Updated: Monday, January 13 2014 9:44 AM EST2014-01-13 14:44:27 GMT

The question on many residents minds in Golconda is, when will the water come back on? Since Monday, Jan. 6 the town has been without enough water pressure in their water system to keep the town running.

The question on many residents minds in Golconda is, when will the water come back on? Since Monday, Jan. 6 the town has been without enough water pressure in their water system to keep the town running.

Updated: Monday, January 13 2014 2:24 AM EST2014-01-13 07:24:56 GMT

The plane, which was supposed to land at Branson Airport, landed at a nearby airport with a significantly shorter runway.

The plane, which was supposed to land at Branson Airport, landed at a nearby airport with a significantly shorter runway.

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DNA testing confirms grey wolf shot in Wayne County

The remains of a woman kept in an Indian church likely belong to an ancient queen executed about 400 years ago, a new DNA analysis suggests.

The DNA analysis suggests the remains are those of Queen Ketevan, an ancient Georgian queen who was executed for refusing to become a member of a powerful Persian ruler's harem. The findings are detailed in the January issue of the journal Mitochondrion.

Tumultuous lifeKetevan was the Queen of Kakheti, a kingdom in Georgia, in the 1600s. After her husband the king was killed, the Persian Ruler, Shah Abbas I, besieged the kingdom.

"Shah Abbas I led an army to conquer the Georgian kingdom and took Queen Ketevan as prisoner," said study co-author Niraj Rai, a researcher at the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India.

- Niraj Rai, a researcher at the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India

Queen Ketevan languished in Shiraz, Iran, for about a decade. But in 1624, Shah Abbas asked the queen to convert to Islam from Christianity and join his harem. She refused, and he had her tortured, then executed on Sept. 22, 1624. Ketevan the Martyr was canonized as a saint by the Georgian Orthodox Church shortly after. [Saintly? The 10 Most Controversial Miracles]

Missing relicsBefore her death, Queen Ketevan had befriended two Augustinian friars who became devoted to her. Legend had it that, in 1627, the two friars secretly dug up her remains and smuggled them out of the country. An ancient Portuguese document suggested her bones were held in a black sarcophagus kept in the window of the St. Augustinian Convent in Goa, India.

But the centuries had not been kind to the church: Part of the convent had collapsed and many valuables had been sold off in the intervening centuries. Early attempts to find her remains failed.

But starting in 2004, Rai and colleagues excavated an area they believed contained the remains and found a broken arm bone and two other bone fragments, as well as pieces of black boxes.

Rare lineageTo find out if the bones belonged to the martyred queen, the researchers extracted mitochondrial DNA, or DNA found only in the cytoplasm of an egg that is passed on through the maternal line.

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'Lost' remains of queen found