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The DOJ announced it is finalizing a rule to collect DNA samples from illegal immigrants who are in federal custody... the DNA Fingerprint Act requires a federal agency to “collect DNA samples from individuals who are arrested,... facing charges,... or convicted... or from non-US persons who are detained under the authority of the US. The Office of Special Counsel reported to President Donald Trump and Congress in a letter last August that Customs and Border Protection had failed to comply with the law and collect DNA samples Until now, 'non-U.S. persons have been exempt' from the sample collection following an...

The Department of Justice today issued a final rule to implement the Attorney General’s authority provided by the bipartisan DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005 to authorize the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect DNA samples from certain non-United States persons it detains.  Once implemented, this rule will facilitate federal, state, and local investigative and crime reduction efforts.“Today’s rule assists federal agencies in implementing longstanding aspects of our immigration laws as passed by bipartisan majorities of Congress,� said Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen.  “Its implementation will help to enforce federal law with the use of science.�As a result...

The Trump administration plans to begin taking DNA samples from migrants crossing the border or held in detention for use in a federal criminal database, a significant expansion of immigration laws that is certain to raise privacy concerns. The new rule, posted by the Justice Department on Friday and set to take effect in April, will require immigration officers to collect cheek swabs from what could amount to hundreds of thousands of unauthorized immigrants taken into federal custody each year, including migrants at the border and people asking for asylum. The move, which is sure to face court challenges, injects...

Gene drives use genetic engineering to create a desired mutation in a few individuals that then spreads via mating throughout a population in fewer than 10 generations. In theory, such a mechanism could be used to prevent malarial mosquitoes from transmitting disease, or possibly to wipe out an invasive species by disabling its ability to reproduce. Though scientists have had success proving the concept in the lab, they have found that wild populations invariably adapt and develop resistance to the scheme. And when gene drives work, they are all or nothing—without nuance—they spread to all individuals, which can be a...

Palaeontologists have announced the discovery of organic material in 75-million year old dinosaur fossils. The team claims to have found evidence of cartilage cells, proteins, chromosomes and even DNA preserved inside the fossils, suggesting these can survive for far longer than we thought. The researchers, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and North Carolina State University, made the discovery in skull fragments of Hypacrosaurus, a duck-billed herbivore from the Cretaceous period. These particular specimens were “nestlings”, meaning that at time of death they weren’t yet old enough to leave the nest. Inside the skull fragments, the team spotted evidence of...

Dinosaur DNA Found! February 28, 2020 | David F. Coppedge Deep-timers had a big enough problem with collagen and melanosomes. But DNA should be long gone. 75 million years? No way! Could this be the last straw? For two decades now, especially since 2005, creationists have been challenging deep-timers (those who believe life is hundreds of millions of years old, and earth is 4.5 billion years old) with dinosaur soft tissue. Secular reports have been coming in regularly about soft tissue in fossils: feathers, melanosomes, collagen, various proteins, and materials in dinosaur bones that look like stretchy blood vessels and...

Nearly a decade into his life sentence for murder, Lydell Grant was escorted out of a Texas prison in November with his hands held high, free on bail, all thanks to DNA re-examined by a software program. "The last nine years, man, I felt like an animal in a cage," Grant, embracing his mother and brother, told the crush of reporters awaiting him in Houston. "Especially knowing that I didn't do it." Now, Grant, 42, is on a fast-track to exoneration after a judge recommended in December that Texas' highest criminal court vacate his conviction. His attorneys are hopeful a...

Scientists examining the genomes of West Africans have detected signs that a mysterious extinct human species interbred with our own species tens of thousands of years ago in Africa, the latest evidence of humankind's complicated genetic ancestry. The study indicated that present-day West Africans trace a substantial proportion, some 2% to 19%, of their genetic ancestry to an extinct human species – what the researchers called a "ghost population." "We estimate interbreeding occurred approximately 43,000 years ago, with large intervals of uncertainty," said University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) human genetics and computer science professor Sriram Sankararaman, who led the...

A British man once struck down by coronavirus has described how the horror symptoms of the deadly disease almost killed him. Simon Parker, 47, thought he was suffering from a common cold when he fell ill on Boxing Day in 2016. But he became severely ill over the next few days and by New Year's Eve couldn't even breathe - forcing him to desperately call 999. He was taken from his home in Kingswear, Devon, to a hospital where he was put into an induced coma.

<p>Lawyers for a woman who accuses President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s are asking for a DNA sample, seeking to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress she says she wore during the encounter.</p> <p>Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers served notice to a Trump attorney Thursday for Trump to submit a sample on March 2 in Washington for “analysis and comparison against unidentified male DNA present on the dress.”</p>

Full title: Four ancient skulls unearthed in Mexico suggest that North America was a melting pot of different peoples and cultures 10,000 years ago The first humans to settle in North America were more diverse than previously believed, according to a new study of skeletal fragments. US scientists analysed four skulls recovered from caves in Mexico that belonged to humans that lived sometime between 9,000 to 13,000 years ago. The researchers were surprised to find a high level of diversity, with the skulls ranging in similarity to that of Europeans, Asian and ...

Sales for some at-home DNA testing kits are on the decline amid consumer privacy concerns. 23andMe, the home DNA-testing company, is laying off about 100 people, nearly 14 percent of its staff, the company confirmed to FOX Business Friday. The company cut staffers in its operations department in charge of growing and scaling the company as fewer people pay for genetic test results which can reveal things about their heritage or how prone they are to health conditions like type 2 diabetes or celiac disease, according to a CNBC report. The declining sales came as a surprise for CEO Anne...

Posing as a family used to be a surefire way for illegal immigrants to gain quick release into the United States. But measures at the border are slowly shutting down the illegal immigrants’ tactics and ferreting out fake families. Children are being rented, sold, and recycled by smuggling organizations to circumvent a loophole in U.S. law that requires anyone with a child to be released within 20 days. A recent case in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, demonstrates the evolving tactics of those trying to easily get into the United States. Border Patrol agents were processing a woman with a...

A swarm of special agents knocked on the door of the sprawling South Valley home where 23-year-old Angel Gurule lived with his parents, wife and several dogs. It had been a little more than four years since a woman — on a Christmas Eve afternoon jog along a Bosque path — was thrown to the ground and violently raped by a stranger who tackled her from behind. Gurule, who was charged with the rape Wednesday, apparently had no idea he was on investigators’ radar. Let alone that his second cousin twice removed — a man in his 60s who lives...

When scientists ran DNA analysis on a sediment core taken from the floor of the Arctic ocean back in 2010, they found something surprising. A previously unknown organism belonging to the strange domain of microbes called Archaea appeared to have genomic characteristics associated with a totally different domain - Eukaryota. They named their discovery Lokiarchaeota, after the Loki's Castle hydrothermal vent near Greenland where it was found; but doubt shadowed the finding. Could the sample have been contaminated by something else in the core? Now, thanks to the work of Japanese scientists, those doubts can be put to rest. For...

Despite exhaustive work by detectives, the murder of Pamela Maurer was left unsolved for more than four decades. Last year, a relatively new form of genetic sleuthing began to put together the pieces of the mystery in a matter of days. DuPage County investigators provided genetic material preserved from the Maurer crime scene to Maryland-based Parabon NanoLabs. Pamela’s body was found in Lisle in January of 1976. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. She was last seen alive the night before her body was found, when she told friends she was going to a restaurant to buy a soft...

Today it's a desert. Two hundred thousand years ago, perhaps it was home. The San people of southern Africa carry one of the oldest maternal DNA lineages on Earth. Now, researchers think they know the precise place our earliest maternal ancestor called home. (Image credit: Shutterstock) Two hundred thousand years ago, the earliest shared ancestors of every living human on Earth rested their feet at a verdant oasis in the middle of Africa's Kalahari Desert. Here, in a patchwork of now-extinct lakes, forests and grasslands known as the Makgadikgadi paleowetland, our greatest grandmothers and -grandfathers hunted, gathered and raised families...

The U.S. government on Monday launched a pilot program to collect DNA from people in immigration custody and submit it to the FBI, with plans to expand nationwide. The information would go into a massive criminal database run by the FBI, where it would be held indefinitely. A memo outlining the program published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security said U.S. citizens and permanent residents holding a “green card” who are detained could be subject to DNA testing, as well as asylum seekers and people entering the country without authorization. Refusing to submit DNA could lead to a misdemeanor...

Loveless likely died around 1916 at age 46, the organization said. He appears to have been killed and dismembered. Before his death, Loveless had been arrested at least twice for bootlegging and escaped custody by sawing through jail bars, the organization said Around that time Clark County Sheriff Bart May said Loveless killed his wife with an ax and was incarcerated in what was then Freemont County. He escaped again, this time using a saw he hid in his shoe, the organization said. He was never seen again. About 12 years later, a mummified hand was found, along with an...

On Monday, December 30, 2019, the President signed into law: H.R. 150, the “Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency Act of 2019 or the GREAT Act,” which requires the Office of Management and Budget, jointly with the executive department that administers the most programs issuing Federal awards each year, to establish government-wide data standards for information reported by grant recipients and issue guidance directing Federal agencies to apply those standards; H.R. 777, the “Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act of 2019,” which authorizes appropriations to the Department of Justice for each of Fiscal Years 2019-2024 in the amount of $151 million for...