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+8 +1
U.N. to Probe Whether Iconic Secretary-General Was Assassinated
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will propose reopening an inquiry into allegations that Dag Hammarskjold, one of the most revered secretaries-general in the organization’s history, was assassinated by an apartheid-era South African paramilitary organization that was backed by the CIA, British intelligence, and a Belgian mining company, according to several officials familiar with the case.
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+20 +1
Austin Scrambles with Fallout of Closed DNA Lab
More than a month after the Austin Police Department was forced to abruptly shut down its DNA testing lab, it remains unclear whether any criminal convictions will be thrown out because of improper testing. By Khorri Atkinson.
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+36 +1
Police 3D-printed a murder victim's finger to unlock his phone
Police in Michigan have a new tool for unlocking phones: 3D printing. According to a new report from Flash Forward creator Rose Eveleth, law enforcement officers approached a professor at Michigan State earlier this year to reproduce a murder victim’s fingerprint from a prerecorded scan. Once created, the 3D model would be used to create a false fingerprint, which could be used to unlock the phone. Because the investigation is ongoing, details are limited, and it’s unclear whether the technique will be successful.
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+25 +1
Hundreds of genes seen sparking to life two days after death
The discovery that many genes are still working up to 48 hours after death has implications for organ transplants, forensics and our very definition of death. By Anna Williams. (June 21, 2016)
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+25 +1
Peek Into Tiny Crime Scenes Hand-Built by an Obsessed Millionaire
A National Geographic photographer’s work shows the eerie precision of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.
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+27 +1
The False Promise of DNA Testing
The forensic technique is becoming ever more common—and ever less reliable.
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+16 +1
Surprise nuclear strike? Here’s how we’ll figure out who did it
Post-detonation forensics may help provide answers if the nuclear nightmare becomes a reality. By Richard Stone. (Mar. 11)
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+33 +1
400,000-year-old fossils from Spain provide earliest genetic evidence of Neandertals
Previous analyses of the hominins from Sima de los Huesos in 2013 showed that their maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA was distantly related to Denisovans, extinct relatives of Neandertals in Asia. This was unexpected since their skeletal remains carry Neandertal-derived features. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have since worked on sequencing nuclear DNA from fossils from the cave, a challenging...
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+23 +1
Were the Mysterious Bog People Human Sacrifices?
Sometime around 60 A.D., a man was led into a marsh outside Cheshire, England to be killed. He was in his mid-twenties, stood about 5’ 7’’ tall, and had a trimmed beard, mustache, and brown hair. Except for an armband made out of fox fur, he was naked. It’s likely that he was accompanied, and restrained, by two or more individuals.
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+40 +1
Scientists claim New York police forced them to fake DNA tests to convict more suspects
Scientists Shannon Morris, Melissa Lee and Kevin Rafferty are suing the crime lab that they were fired from at New York State police department. When the two tried to correct errors they saw in the lab, they say they were silenced and others retaliated against them because the errors were working out in their favor to garner more prosecutions.
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+6 +1
DNA evidence uncovers major upheaval in Europe near end of last Ice Age
DNA evidence lifted from the ancient bones and teeth of people who lived in Europe from the Late Pleistocene to the early Holocene—spanning almost 30,000 years of European prehistory—has offered some surprises, according to researchers who report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on Feb. 4, 2016. Perhaps most notably, the evidence shows a major shift in the population around 14,500 years ago, during a period of severe climatic instability.
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+22 +1
Where the bodies are buried
Whether you’re alive or dead, Sue Black knows who you are – as dozens of murderers and war criminals have discovered. By Helen Lewis. (Jan. 23)
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-1 +1
Is it still possible to get away with a heist?
The Hatton Garden raid was meticulous in its planning, dazzling in its complexity – yet still the burglars were caught. In this interconnected age, is the Hollywood-style heist now a thing of the past? It was, said the counsel for the defence, a crime fit for the big screen. The men who gathered on Friday evenings at the Castle pub in Islington to plan the Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary were classic outer London characters, ageing members of the...
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+26 +1
Why Rape Was Impossible: A Look at the Terrifying Medical Logic of 18th Century [UK] Law
Women lied. That was a fact, and it didn’t need examination. By Therese Oneill. (Oct. 5)
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+25 +1
Forensic Entomology is More than Just Blow Flies and Beetles
Fans of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and similar TV shows know that forensic entomology involves the use of insects and other arthropods in legal matters, including homicide cases.
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+43 +1
“I think this is the guy”—The complicated confidence of eyewitness memory
Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton have every reason to be enemies. In 1984, an intruder broke into Thompson’s apartment and raped her. She identified Cotton as the rapist in both a photo array and a live lineup. Although Cotton proclaimed his innocence, he was arrested, tried, and convicted. The prosecution’s case rested mainly on Thompson’s identification, and during the trial she testified that she was “absolutely sure”...
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+36 +1
IS blamed for mass Yazidi grave found near Sinjar, Iraq
A booby-trapped mass grave containing the bodies of at least 110 people from the minority Yazidi sect has been found in northern Iraq, officials say. The grave was found close to the town of Sinjar after it was recaptured from the so-called Islamic State (IS) group earlier in November. IS captured Sinjar in August 2014, with reports of massacres and enslavement and rape of Yazidi women and girls. This is said to be the sixth mass grave found in or near the town.
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+30 +1
Forensic Pseudoscience
This past April, the FBI made an admission that was nothing short of catastrophic for the field of forensic science. In an unprecedented display of repentance, the Bureau announced that, for years, the hair analysis testimony it had used to investigate criminal suspects was severely and hopelessly flawed.
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+46 +1
Bronze Age Skeletons Were the Earliest Plague Victims
The Black Death notoriously swept through Europe in 1347, killing an estimated 50 million people. Yet DNA from Bronze Age human skeletons now shows that the plague had first emerged at least as early as 3,000 BC. The earlier outbreak probably did not spread as ferociously, the analysis reveals—but it may nonetheless have driven mass migrations across Europe and Asia.
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+40 +1
Your Relative’s DNA Could Turn You Into a Suspect
The three men who showed up at Michael Usry’s door last December were unfailingly polite. They told him they were cops investigating a hit-and-run that had occurred a few blocks away, near New Orleans City Park, and they invited Usry to accompany them to a police station so he could answer some questions. Certain that he hadn’t committed any crime, the 36-year-old filmmaker agreed to make the trip.
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