Category Archives: Transhuman News

When Truth is All You Have

By Jim McCloskey with Philip Lerman

Doubleday. 300 pp. $26.95

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In early 1979, Jim McCloskey was in his mid-30s, safely home from Vietnam and settling into a successful career as a consultant. Yet his life felt emotionally empty, so he turned to romance, dividing his time between a not-yet-divorced woman and a Times Square prostitute named Brandy whom he genuinely adored.

Worried that his personal life was "reaching rock bottom," he returned to his Presbyterian church and began studying the Bible. But Augustine's prayer comes to mind: "Lord, make me chaste, but not yet" McCloskey ventured into Times Square again and, Brandy being unavailable, picked up another woman, only to awaken later to find his wallet gone.

"That was the moment I got up, looked in the mirror, and finally said to myself, what the hell way is this to live your life?"

From this salty beginning, the modern innocence movement was born.

Nearly a decade before the Innocence Project freed a single prisoner, and five years before Errol Morris produced "The Thin Blue Line," McCloskey exonerated his first inmate and launched the nation's first organization devoted to reinvestigating wrongful convictions.

In the 37 years since he founded Centurion Ministries, McCloskey has won the exonerations of 63 men and women two on death row within days of execution, others imprisoned for decades, adding up to 1,330 years spent paying for crimes they didn't commit.

The reason you may not have heard of McCloskey or Centurion Ministries, as you probably have Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld and the Innocence Project, is that Centurion takes on the cases with no DNA, the hardest ones that require years of knocking on doors and poring over documents without biological evidence to score an easy home run. McCloskey is Paul Drake in a world of CSI, a gumshoe investigator without a lab.

"When Truth Is All You Have," a memoir of McCloskey's life and work, is a riveting and infuriating examination of criminal prosecutions, revealing how easy it is to convict the wrong person and how nearly impossible it is to undo the error. It upends our naive and complacent view of prosecutions or at least White views, since minorities have long had no such illusions and demonstrates, case by case, what "a cruel, mindless, mean machine the justice system can be."

It is also a story of faith, in which McCloskey's belief in the legal system, and in God, is put on trial and often found wanting.

In the fall of 1980, McCloskey was beginning his second year at Princeton Theological Seminary when he began serving as student chaplain at Trenton State Prison. It housed the most dangerous criminals in New Jersey, including Jorge de los Santos, an admitted heroin addict who had been convicted of murder. The inmate insisted that he was framed for the crime and finally persuaded McCloskey to read the trial transcript during his Thanksgiving holiday. When McCloskey returned after the break, he told de los Santos that he believed he might be innocent.

"What are you going to do about it?" de los Santos asked. "Are you just going to go back to your nice little safe seminary and pray for me? . . . I need someone to free me from this hell on earth. Whether you like it or not, you are that man."

McCloskey put seminary on hold and spent the next year reinvestigating. He discovered that the state's case relied on a drug addict and a jailhouse informant, and that the informant had lied on the stand with the knowledge of the prosecutor. McCloskey found a lawyer to bring the case to trial, and in July 1983, Jorge de los Santos walked out of prison, exonerated.

By this point McCloskey had earned his master's of divinity, and he had to choose between the pulpit and the prisoners. He chose the prisoners. He was floored and outraged at the corruption he found in the criminal justice system. But he also felt alive, called to a divine adventure.

"I was living a film noir life," he recalls. "I was Humphrey Bogart, tracking down the Maltese Falcon; I was Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade all wrapped up in one."

It wasn't all glamour, as he pored over musty documents with a glass of bourbon in one hand and a yellow highlighter in another, but he had found his purpose. With a $10,000 gift from his parents, he launched his organization from his bedroom in Princeton. He called it Centurion Ministries, reminiscent of the Roman centurion in the Book of Luke who looks up at Jesus hanging on the cross and says, "Surely, this one was innocent."

For the first time in his life, McCloskey knew his purpose: to free innocent people in prison.

"I believed this was destiny, that this was why God put me on earth. That everything that came before, all the ups and downs in my life, was in preparation for this work."

And he was good at it. The unlikeliest people talked to him: jailhouse informants, perjured or frightened witnesses and their families, friends of the actual perpetrators, detectives with doubts, immigration officials.

"This friendly, paunchy guy with a sense of humor and a smile on his face walks up with his little clerical collar on, and people just naturally let their guard down," he writes with some amazement. He listened without judgment, and these conversations became confessionals as he helped people "release the guilt of hiding a lie year after year after year."

Early on, McCloskey attracted the attention of the New York Times and "60 Minutes" when his investigation exonerated Nate Walker, who was serving a life sentence for allegedly raping a white woman. Within days of the "60 Minutes" episode, hundreds of letters poured through McCloskey's mail slot from convicted rapists and murderers, forcing him (and later his small band of staff and volunteers) to decide who deserves a second chance and who does not. It was a Godlike role, deciding life and death.

The responsibility weighed on McCloskey, and it reveals one of the most disturbing aspects of the innocence movement: the sheer randomness of it. How many innocent people are serving time but can't attract the attention of overwhelmed investigators like McCloskey and his staff? What if no DNA was found at the crime scene, putting their cases largely off limits to the Innocence Project? For that matter, how many cases pique the interest of local or national news media, pressuring the courts to reconsider the verdict? There are far more innocent prisoners than investigators, and McCloskey believes tens of thousands of them languish in prison.

The details of each story in the memoir differ, but the themes are the same. Jailhouse informants who have incentive to lie for the prosecution often play starring roles at trial. Witnesses are intimidated into giving false testimony. Innocent people confess after hours of questioning. Forensic evidence other than DNA ballistics, bite marks, hair analysis is often about as accurate as flipping a coin.

Prosecutors hide evidence and put lying witnesses on the stand. Police develop tunnel vision, become obsessed with one suspect and ignore exculpatory evidence.

"Once some poor innocent soul is singled out, and law enforcement is convinced of his guilt, the train has left the station," McCloskey writes. "There is no turning back. Truth has been left behind."

Read more:
Taking on the hardest cases without DNA and setting the innocent free - theday.com

Thursday's Access Utah episode.

You swab your cheek or spit into a vial, then send it away to a lab somewhere. Weeks later you get a report that might tell you where your ancestors came from or if you carry certain genetic risks. Or the report could reveal a long-buried family secret and upend your entire sense of identity.

In The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are, journalistLibby Copelandinvestigates what happens when we embark on a vast social experiment with little understanding of the ramifications. Copeland explores the culture of genealogy buffs, the science of DNA, and the business of companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, all while tracing the story of one woman, her unusual results, and a relentless methodical drive for answers that becomes a thoroughly modern genetic detective story.

Libby Copeland is an award-winning journalist and author who writes from New York about culture, science, and human behavior. As a freelance journalist, she writes for such media outlets as The Atlantic, Slate, New York, Smithsonian, The New York Times, The New Republic, Esquire.com, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Glamour.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she was a 2010 media fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution. Her article for Esquire.com, Kates Still Here, won Hearst Magazines 2017 Editorial Excellence Award for reported feature or profile. She previously won first prize in the feature specialty category from the Society for Features Journalism (then called AASFE). She lives in Westchester, NY, with her husband and two children.

Read the rest here:
Revisiting Genealogy And DNA Testing With Libby Copeland On Thursday's Access Utah - Utah Public Radio

Earth is the only planet (and the only body in the universe) we can be certain life exists on, if you count out that accidental tardigrade spill on the Moon. That doesn't necessarily mean we are a cosmic anomaly. If there is life on other planets, there may be a way to find out how it could have evolved before it is ever even found.

Astrobiologist Betl Kaar realized figuring out how the machinery of life works means that you have to work backwards. She decided to break it by using ancestral sequencing to find out how evolution shaped organisms here on Earth and could shape alien life-forms. She has now found that the process of evolution is surprisingly terrible at multitasking. It just handles the most immediate problem, then moves to the next one without having finished its work on the previous one. Cells dont resolve issues like we do, which gives us a glimpse at how evolution and natural selection happen on Earth and could occur on other planets.

In rapidly evolving populations, natural selection may not be able to improve all modules simultaneously because adaptive mutations in different modules compete against each other, Kaar said in a study she led, which was recently published in PNAS, adding that adaptation in some modules would stall, despite the availability of beneficial mutations.

Cellular modules are molecules that interact to carry out functions within the cell, such as signal transmission and metabolic functions. Translation machinery (TM) is a complex metabolic pathway that creates proteins from information encoded in cells, influencing how living things evolve. It morphs information into proteins that become parts of molecules which can actually do things for the cell and the organism. Kaar and her team studied what happened when E.coli cells were evolutionarily undone and then had to re-evolve. Enter ancestral sequencing. She genetically engineered the microbes with ancient evolutionary proteins going back as far as 700 million years.

No, this doesnt mean that resurrecting ancient life-forms Jurassic Park style is actually possible. That would take much more than just a single cell, and much of the dinosaur DNA that has been preserved has broken over the millennia and is too far gone to pull something like that off, though maybe the movie'sMr. DNA (pictured) would disagree.

Translation machinery itself is basically a living fossil. It is thought to have been around for over 3.5 billion years of evolution, but despite that, it obviously never learned how to perfect itself. Kaar wanted to twist and finally break TM to see how the cells would evolve in response. In the beginning, it seemed that improvements in the warped TM were evidence of natural selection doing what it was expected to do. That didnt last. Before the cells could fully evolve a solution to restore their broken translational machinery, other cellular modules took precedence. Mutations appeared randomly. Natural selection was supposed to result in the squashing of those mutations, but instead, the process was just as random, though it did lean towards mutations that gave the E.Coli bacteria the best chance at survival.

Cellular modules may not be fully optimized by natural selection despite the availability of adaptive mutations, said Kaar.If environmental fluctuations are sufficiently frequentsome modules may remain stalled for long periods of time despite being improvable, at least in the absence of recombination.

Evolutionary stalling has been theorized before, but this is the first time it has ever been proven. The process of evolution can really only handle one thing at a time, and that one thing is the problem that is first to get its attention at the expense of every other issue. Other positive mutations would have seen advancement if the evolutionary process was able to multitask, but those are left behind in what Kaar and her colleagues call evolutionary stalling.The only way to at least somewhat resolve this is the internal exchange of genetic material otherwise known as recombination. This phenomenon happens when that material is transferred between multiple chromosomes or regions of the same chromosome, but she wanted to observe what ended up happening to the E.Coli without it.

Kaar is not stopping there. For her, the ultimate experiment would be breaking down life to its prebiotic origins and then putting it back together to see how life first formed on Earth and could have possibly emerged elsewhere in the cosmos. Now we can only wait to see what Perseverance unearths on Mars.

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DNA nearly a billion years old is being warped to figure out how life could evolve on other planets - SYFY WIRE

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The break in the long-standing probe came to light after the Quay County Sun made an open-records request to New Mexico State Police on the 71-page investigative report it submitted to Rose in June.

Tucumcari Fire Chief Mike Cherry, left center, speaks with state fire marshal investigator Sammy Anaya after a fire burned Tucumcari Animal Hospital and killed more than 70 animals in May 2012. (Eastern New Mexico News)

Implicated in the report was Kevin Ronnie Garcia, 28, of Tucumcari. When the Quay County Sun contacted Garcia on Friday to ask him about the report, he acknowledged setting the fire as a spur-of-the-moment thing, but he said his memories of that night were fuzzy because hed been drinking.

Garcia is awaiting adjudication on felony counts of false imprisonment and possession of a stolen vehicle, along with other charges, that were filed in December and April. He has been released on his own recognizance and is wearing a GPS ankle monitor. His next court date is in September.

According to online court records, Garcia has had run-ins with the law since 2009, mostly moving violations or misdemeanors.

The blaze at Tucumcari Animal Hospital on the citys north side was reported at 3:54 a.m. May 21, 2012.

Dr. Jean Corey, the longtime veterinarian at the clinic, arrived at the scene shortly after Tucumcari firefighters.

They didnt want me to go inside, Corey recalled Saturday during an interview in the Tucumcari Animal Hospitals new home in a rented office trailer next to the burned remnants of the old building. But I went in and tried the best I could to save some of them, get some of them out that we could.

One dog Corey rescued from a kennel in the burning building died a few days later.

Corey said that when she finally accounted for all the animal deaths from the fire, the total was more than 70. All died of smoke inhalation.

She said most of the pets that died were dogs and cats, but the fire also claimed two birds, a rabbit and a tankful of fish.

Corey said she had kept several abandoned animals as her own at the clinic, but the one she was fondest of was Blue, a blue-gray cat.

He was the clinic cat, she said. He was everybodys favorite.

Blue perished in the fire.

Investigators found a trail of blood leading from a broken window at the clinic where a burglar apparently gained entry and cut himself. State Police took several samples of the blood and submitted them to the state DNA database.

State fire marshal investigator Sammy Anaya said in his report that several windows were broken to hasten the fires spread. He stated someone poured an ignitable liquid on the office furniture and trash cans and set them afire in an office area.

The State Police report said officers checked into several possible suspects. It said one name stood out Garcias. Garcia refused a State Police request to submit a DNA sample, the report said, and he never was charged in connection with the fire.

In December, Garcia was arrested in Tucumcari after being accused of receiving stolen property and unlawful carrying of a deadly weapon. Because one of the charges was a felony, he was required to submit to a DNA swab that would be forwarded to the states DNA database.

State Police said they learned in March that Garcias DNA was a match for DNA found at the animal hospital fire in 2012.

In April, Garcia was taken to the State Police office in Tucumcari for questioning, and police executed a search warrant to obtain new DNA from him.

Garcia initially denied his role with the fire and insisted someone was trying to frame him.

When told Garcias DNA and no one elses was found at the scene, he confessed to starting the fire, records show.

Honestly, what happened was I was messed up on coke and drunk and broke in, Garcia said, according to the report.

Asked why he broke into the animal clinic, he said probably just money or whatever.

Honestly, I just broke in because I wanted some money for some more bud (marijuana) and beer, Garcia said.

Read more here:
Confession in Tucumcari vet clinic fire that killed 70 animals - Albuquerque Journal

In looking for a way out of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list, theImran Khan-led government in Pakistan ended up admitting that Dawood Ibrahim, India's most-wanted mobster since 1994 and prime accused in the 1993 Bombay bombings, lives in Karachi's White house. Pakistan had until now spent years denying that it shelters theD-Company chief, with a reward of $25 million over his head and wanted on charges of terrorism, murder, extortion, targeted killing, drug trafficking, and various other cases.

Pakistan's admission came in a list of severe financial sanctions that the country imposed on 88 banned terrorist outfits and their leaders, including Hafiz Saeed Ahmad of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Mohammad Masood Azhar of the JeM, Dawood Ibrahim, and others.

The list, according to Pakistani authorities, mentions Dawood Ibrahim's address as "White House, Near Saudi Mosque, Clifton" in Karachi, Pakistan. It also lists several other properties for the mobster and drug dealer, including one"House Nu 37 - 30th Street - defence, Housing Authority, Karachi" and"Palatial bungalow in the hilly area of Noorabad in Karachi".

The Pakistan government has also ordered the seizure of all properties and freezing of all bank accounts of global terrorist Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, following new restrictions issued by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Islamabad issued two notifications on August 18 announcing sanctions on key figures of terror outfits and the seizure of all movable and immovable properties of these outfits and individuals, and freezing of their bank accounts.

These terrorists have been barred from transferring money through financial institutions, purchasing of arms and travelling abroad, Pakistani media reported, adding that the notifications ratified a complete ban on all leaders and members of defunct Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) hiding in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas.

Some of the individuals who have been named in the list of sanctions are -- Saeed, Azhar, Mullah Fazlullah (alias Mullah Radio), Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Muhammad Yahya Mujahid, Abdul Hakeem Murad (wanted by the Interpol), Noor Wali Mehsud, Fazal Raheem Shah of Uzbekistan Liberation Movement, Taliban leaders Jalaluddin Haqqani, Khalil Ahmad Haqqani, Yahya Haqqani, and Ibrahim and his associates.

Some of the terrorist organisations named in the list include -- the now defund TTP, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, JeM, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Tariq Geedar group of TTP, Harkatul Mujahideen, Al Rasheed Trust, Al Akhtar Trust, Tanzim Jaish-al Mohajireen Ansar, Jamaat-ul Ahrar, Tanzim Khutba Imam Bukhari, Rabita Trust Lahore, Revival of Islamic Heritage Society of Pakistan, Al-Haramain Foundation Islamabad, Harkat Jihad Al Islami, Islami Jihad Group, Uzbekistan Islami Tehreek, Daesh of Iraq, Emirates of Tanzim Qafqaz working against Russia, and Abdul Haq of Uyghurs of Islamic Freedom Movement of China.

Dawood Ibrahim has been designated as a global terrorist in 2003 by India and the United States with a reward of US $25 million on his head for his role in the 1993 Bombay bombings. In 2011, he was named number three on "The World's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives" by the FBI. His crime syndicate spreads across Asia, Europe and Africa, with over 40% of its earnings coming from India.

Read more from the original source:
Did Pakistan just admit that Dawood Ibrahim is alive in Karachi? - DNA India

A suspected ISIS operative, who was arrested following a brief exchange of fire, had planned terror strikes in high footfall areas of the national capital, Delhi Police disclosed said on Saturday (August 22, 2020).

Addressing a press briefing, PS Kushwah, DCP (Special Cell), Delhi Police, said, Two pressure cooker IEDs were recovered from Mohammad Mustakeem Khan, alias Abu Yusuf, a resident of Balarampur in Uttar Pradesh.

Khan had planned a terror strike in the national capital on August 15 but could not do so due to heavy security arrangements, DCP Kushwah said.

Sharing more information, he said, The Special Cell has arrested the ISIS operative after a brief exchange of fire late night. The 36-year-old man is called Yusuf aka Abu Yusuf. He has various alias. Pressure cooker IEDs have been recovered from him. He was going to install them at heavy footfall area here.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, his movement was restricted. Around 15th August, he had an intention to make an attempt (of attack) in Delhi but due to security arrangements here he was not successful, the DCP Special Cell said.

He said Khan was in touch with ISIS handlers who instructed him to plan terror strikes in India.

Mustakeem Khan, alias Abu Yusuf, was in direct touch with his ISIS commanders. He had passports made in the name of his wife and 4 children. Earlier, he was being handled by Yusuf Alhindi who was killed in Syria. Later, Abu Huzafa, a Pakistani, was handling him. Huzafa was also later killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan, the DCP Special Cell told reporters.

The suspected ISIS operative was arrested by Delhi Police's Special Cell on Friday night from the section of the Ridge Road between Dhaula Kuan and Karol Bagh. The police recovered two Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), weighing approximately 15 kilograms in two pressure cookers, from his possession. Besides, a pistol was also recovered from him post-firing.

Khan had been under watch for the last year, the DCP told reporters. Our operation had been on for the last one year, Kushwaha said.

He was remanded to seven-day police custody. According to reports, Special Cell officers are taking him to Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh, for further investigation.

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Arrested ISIS operative had planned terror attack in crowded areas on August 15: Delhi Police - DNA India