German police may be planning to widen the search for Madeleine McCann after they found “clues” in photos belonging to prime suspect Christian Brueckner. Investigators have so far gone through more than 8,000 photographs owned by Brueckner, which led them to Barragem do Arade reservoir, which was searched last week. It is unclear which other areas may be searched. The reservoir is about 35 miles from Praia da Luz in the Algarve, Portugal, where McCann went missing while on holiday in 2007.
A “relevant clue” was discovered after police dug eight deep holes in the reservoir area and took soil samples for forensic testing in Germany, according to German prosecutor Christian Wolters. Brueckner, who is currently serving a prison term for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal, is regarded as the prime suspect in the case. Last year, Portuguese police named him as the kidnapper and killer of McCann. The suspect denies any involvement.
The McCann family welcomed the latest searches. In a statement, the family said: “We want to thank the police forces involved for their continued efforts in the search for Madeleine… We are grateful and hope that it is not too late to find answers.” The search of Barragem do Arade reservoir and surrounding woodlands has cost an estimated £500,000. In 2019, the Metropolitan Police were granted a further £350,000 to continue their own search for the missing girl, who would now be 18.
A 15-year-old student has been charged with murder after starting a fire at a government boarding school in Mahdia, Guyana in May, allegedly in a fit of anger over her phone being confiscated. The fire resulted in the deaths of 20 girls aged between 12 and 18, mostly from remote Indigenous communities. The dorm administrator had locked them in their rooms to prevent them from sneaking out. Despite rescue efforts, 14 of the girls and the dorm administrator's five-year-old son died, while a further six died later in hospital. Guyanan President Irfaan Ali has declared three days of national mourning.
A German student has been found guilty of six serious attacks on neo-Nazis after founding a criminal organisation. The woman, who has been named only as Lina E., was sentenced to five years and three months in prison. Her three male co-defendants were sentenced to around three years in prison each. State prosecutors said the four carried out a series of attacks on neo-Nazis in Thuringia and Saxony between 2018 and 2020. The group is believed to have raided a neo-Nazi bar and attacked a notorious far-right extremist with hammers and batons. Other neo-Nazis were also left with broken bones and other injuries after the attacks. Much of the prosecution's case rested on the testimony of a member of her group who turned state's witness: 30-year-old Johannes D. Before the Dresden Higher Regional Court, he said that the four defendants had trained specifically for attacks on right-wing extremists.
Playwright and sometime screenwriter Neil LaBute is looking back over his career, which was marked by a string of powerful plays in the US and the UK at the turn of the century. Works such as the movie In the Company of Men were marked by their willingness to tackle taboo subjects such as male exploitation, and have been accused of promoting misogyny. LaBute rejects that, arguing that he uses the inner lives of his characters to shine a light on all sorts of bad behaviour as distinct from promoting it himself. LaBute is now aged 60 and has increasingly seen his work adapted for cinema or the short film. The Shape of Things, directed by Michael Fentiman and featuring Joel Blackman, Enyi Okoronkwo, Hannah Britland and Lily Lowe-Myers, started yesterday at London's Park Theatre.
Will the Precautionary FDA Slow‐Walk Approval of a Promising New Gene Therapy?
Cato
23-05-31 17:03
Biotech start-up, Verve Therapeutics, has developed an injectable base editing gene therapy that turns off the PCSK9 gene. This could help to lower LDL, “bad cholesterol” levels in patients - a significant driver of cardiovascular disease. The development of this technology has the potential to reduce the need for people to take long-term medication. However, the clinical trial in the US has been paused by the FDA requesting Verve to modify the trial protocol and provide more data. The start-up has already completed a preclinical trial on monkeys, which resulted in a 70% reduction in LDL levels after two weeks. With trials on humans now approved in the UK and New Zealand, some argue why not in the US? Congress has previously considered eliminating the FDA’s ability to restrict truthful speech by manufacturers on their products, allowing American consumers to purchase drugs approved from foreign regulatory bodies. Israel, the European Union, Australia, and Switzerland currently operate on this reciprocal policy reform.
Consumer insights and market researcher GfK has urged businesses to embrace data-led strategies to achieve customer-first delivery excellence at every stage of the process. The research group's customer success management approach is based on four pillars — a data analytics platform; human insight; industry expertise and quantitative analysis; and support and feedback to ensure optimal results and value gain. Companies must endow all stakeholders with the correct information and understanding to build loyalty in uncertain times.
Russian prisoners were recruited from their penal colonies by Yevgeny Prazhugin, head of the Wagner Group, and sent to Ukraine to fight as mercenaries in exchange for amnesty and, for some, a monthly pay of 200,000 rubles ($2,400). However, many of the prisoners did not survive the violent clashes with Ukrainian troops, a tactic known as the “meat grinder”. These prisoners included 22-year-old Andrei Kargin, who was sent to the front in Ukraine despite a history of lung and back problems, and died in service. Prizougin established seven Wagner cemeteries across southern Russia, the largest of which is located in Bakinskaya, where Andrei’s body rests.
Family members of those killed in or recruited by the Wagner Group often have no idea of the fate of their loved ones, and are largely reliant on a monthly pay packet as the sole indication of their wellbeing. With no official statements from the Wagner Group about the fate of the dead, many of the victims’ families are left to conjecture. While larger amounts of pay may make life more comfortable in Russia, for Larissa, Andrei’s aunt, it is the lack of information surrounding his death that causes the greatest pain.
Despite numerous attempts to find out what happened to her nephew, and visits to state agencies and social media appeals, Larissa has received no official death certificate or any other formal acknowledgment of Andrei’s existence or his cause of death. Instead, his death continues to cause her misery and frustration as she wonders about the circumstances surrounding his recruitment into the Wagner Group and his death in Ukraine.
Canada has extradited military veteran Matthew Dupre to Thailand to face charges of being an international gangland hit man. Dupre was charged with the murder of Canadian resident Jimi Sandhu in Phuket in February 2022. Dupre is accused of being one of two hooded gunmen who shot Sandhu, a member of the United Nations gang, dead. Sandhu, a convicted murderer, was deported from Canada in 2016 for “serious criminality.” Gene Karl Lahrkamp, 36, a fellow Canadian Forces veteran, was also accused but was killed in a small plane crash last April. No date has been set for Dupre's trial.
There has been much speculation over whether the third season of Ted Lasso will be its last. The soccer-club comedy has had much success in recent years and has won numerous awards. Despite recently receiving criticism over a drop in the show's quality, the third season has still been able to tackle tough issues such as anxiety, social media toxicity, and racism whilst retaining the show's basic values of family, community, tolerance, second chances, and forgiveness. The future of Ted Lasso remains uncertain, but the show has already become a valuable addition to the world of television.
Survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre are awaiting a crucial court decision in a legal battle more than 100 years in the making. A lawsuit from three plaintiffs, who were all small children during the attack that killed as many as 300 Black people and left thousands homeless, aims to correct the records of history and establish a fund for survivors and their descendants. Defendants have filed several motions to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that the court does not have jurisdiction to right century-old wrongs. A decision from Judge Caroline Wall of Tulsa County District Court is expected shortly.
Vera Putina, who claimed in 1999 to be the biological mother of Vladimir Putin, has died at the age of 96. Putin is said to have viewed the claims as so potentially damaging that orders were given to suppress the story. Putin himself has always maintained that he was born and brought up in St Petersburg, and that both his parents died of cancer in the late 1990s. No independently verified facts about Putin's childhood have ever been established.
Timothy Bliefnick has been found guilty of first-degree murder, two counts of murder and one count of home invasion of his estranged wife. A game show appearance featuring the convicted murderer was unearthed as part of the trial's opening arguments, years after it had been aired. On an episode of Family Feud, Bliefnick talked about a regret on his wedding day that was used to provide insight into his now-convicted crime. He will face sentencing on 11 August and could be sentenced to life in prison.
Organised crime groups are gaining a foothold in the Brazilian Amazon, putting the region at risk of becoming engulfed in conflict, warns Alexandre Saraiva, a former senior federal police chief. He says he fears that drug-trafficking mafias could spawn a situation similar to the Rio de Janeiro conflict. Saraiva warns of dire consequences for the rainforest and its inhabitants if criminal gangs become like the rebel factions in neighbouring Colombia. "We will have areas of conflagration, of major conflict between groups which are fighting over areas of illegal gold and timber extraction. In the middle of this, we will have Indigenous victims. And we will face immense logistical difficulties in combating this."
Saraiva’s alert comes ahead of the first anniversary of the killings of British journalist Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous expert, whose deaths exposed widespread environmental devastation and the growing reach of organised crime groups in the Amazon. A year after their deaths, media organisations and more than 50 journalists have joined a collaborative investigation into organised crime and resource extraction in the Brazilian Amazon.
Figures reveal that last year, with over 8,000 deaths, the intentional lethal violent crime rate in the Brazilian Amazon’s nine states was more than 50% higher than in the rest of the country – a murder rate similar to that of Mexico. Brazil’s two most powerful crime factions, São Paulo’s PCC (First Capital Command) and Rio’s CV (Red Command), now operate in all nine Amazon states, as do at least 15 other regional crime groups, including Os Crias, the Família do Norte and Class A Command. Amazon murder rates have soared as drug factions have arrived in the region, even as they fell elsewhere in Brazil.
Researchers from organisations including Baylor College of Medicine and Illumina have discovered how to use AI to predict genetic mutations that cause disease in humans. After creating a genetic database of 800 primates across 233 species, an AI system was trained on the DNA of 454,000 humans participating in the UK Biobank project. PrimateAI-3D was more accurate than other techniques at identifying genetic risks of developing health problems such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, and was successful at finding rare genetic variants that confer a high risk of common disease.
Lawyer arrested in connection with sexual assaults in Boston 15 years ago waives extradition
The Toronto Star
23-06-01 17:50
New Jersey lawyer Matthew J Nilo has been arrested in regards to a series of sexual assaults that occurred in Charlestown, Boston between 2007 and 2008. Nilo, 35, was identified as a suspect with the help of forensic genetic genealogy, which takes into account public DNA analysis, genealogy and historical records.
Rufus Gifford, Chief of Protocol at the State Department and former US ambassador to Denmark, has said he believes he would not be where he is today without being gay. In an interview, he said his sexuality has defined every part of his life. Despite knowing officials from countries with anti-LGBTI+ policies, he said he does not confront them, leaving that to policymakers, but argues representation matters. He hopes that being an openly gay man in his position gives “closeted gay LGBTI+ staff permission to be more public”. After uncertain years as a homosexual teenager in Massachusetts, Gifford turned to politics after his acting ambitions failed. He worked as a political consultant and was hired by the campaign team of John Kerry, running for the Presidency as a Democrat in 2004. Barrack Obama’s victory in 2008 gave Gifford his break when he was made Finance Director for Obama’s re-election campaign and was rewarded with an ambassadorship.
DNA submitted to a genealogy website has led to the arrest of a New Jersey attorney who is facing multiple rape charges in Massachusetts. DNA submitted by members of Matthew Nilo's family to a genealogy database is thought to have provided the DNA sample used to identify him. The four related victims were attacked at various points between 2007 and 2008. Genealogy database users can unexpectedly identify relatives without their consent as unwitting "informants", but such databases can give investigators a powerful tool in pursuing a range of criminals, including those involved in the cold case murders.
Dr Morris Wortman, a fertility doctor from New York, who was accused of using his own sperm to impregnate several patients, has died in a plane crash. Wortman was being a passenger in an experimental aircraft that crashed on Sunday afternoon. The pilot, Earl Luce Jr also died. The crash, which is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, saw the wings of the Wittman W-5 Buttercup become detached from the fuselage before it landed in an orchard after crashing. Wortman, who was often the target of anti-abortion protesters, was being sued by the daughter of his patient after she discovered he had used his sperm in the 1980s while telling her the donor was a local medical student.
Researchers have performed the most comprehensive genomic study to date on a group of primates that includes lemurs and people. The scientists sequenced and examined the genomes of 233 primate species, or nearly half of the primate species currently alive, and found that most had greater genetic diversity than humans. The scientists discovered certain traits that were unique to humans as well the origins of some human diseases, and used the data to train an AI programme to predict disease-causing genetic mutations in humans. The study demonstrated that the genome data can identify the primates most in need of protection.
A new documentary series explores the case of Natalia Grace, the disabled Ukrainian girl who was adopted by a family in Indiana in 2010. The Barnetts adopted Natalia after hearing that she was six years old and suffering from spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita. However, the family’s relationship with Natalia quickly deteriorated when she showed signs of having menstruated and pubic hair. Meanwhile, the Barnetts apparently discovered evidence suggesting that Natalia was far older than they had been led to believe. They also claimed that Natalia had threatened them with knives and attempted to poison and harm them. In 2012, Indiana authorities agreed to alter Natalia’s original birth date of 2003 to 1989, effectively changing her status to that of a legal adult. The new Curious Case of Natalia Grace documentary is now being streamed on Discovery+.
