The case of unidentified human remains found in a remote Ontario location has now been solved.

A hiker found the human remains on a cliff overlooking Montreal River Harbour, approximately an hour north of Sault Ste. Marie, on July 30, 2017, OPP said in a press release on Tuesday.

The investigation included an extensive search of the area. Clothing items, a firearm, coins and a cardboard box were located at the scene and examined, OPP said.

The man was carrying Canadian currency. It is unknown how he got to the location, but it is believed he may have taken a bus, walked or hitchhiked along the Trans-Canada Highway sometime between the spring or fall of 2016, police said.

Ontario Forensic Pathology Service determined the man was approximately 45 to 65 years old. Foul play was not suspected in his death.

Police couldn’t identify the man and released a re-enactment video on social media hoping to solve the case.

In April 2022, police submitted the man’s DNA to the DNA Doe Project for investigative genetic genealogy use in an attempt to identify him.

In September 2023, the presumptive identity was verified and used by detectives to locate living family members, OPP said.

A family member’s DNA was used to confirm the man’s identity and the family was notified of the results. The identity of the deceased man will not be shared publicly to respect the family’s wishes.

The family has finally received answers about their loved one, OPP Acting Detective Superintendent Daniel Nadeau, Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy Implementation Team, said in the press release.

“This case is another example of how technological advancements, in this instance the use of investigative genetic genealogy, can help police with historic cases,” said Nadeau. “We look forward to being able to provide more families with answers in the future, as we continue to implement this technique into our investigations.”

The House of Delegates addressed the use of forensic genetic genealogy at the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago on Monday.

Resolution 519 calls on all states to adopt legislation that regulates the use of forensic genetic genealogy to identify suspects or victims in criminal cases. It should be based on a 2021 Maryland model law that includes specific tenets to protect users of genealogical databases such as FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch.

The resolution also urges any legislation regulating the use of forensic genetic genealogy to require judicial supervision; provide the defense with access to the information; follow guidelines shared by the U.S. Department of Justice; and provide data privacy protections for genealogical database users.

Stephen Saltzburg, a delegate from the Criminal Justice Section, said in introducing the resolution that it covers the relationship between law enforcement agencies and genealogical databases that gather DNA evidence from people who are willing to provide it. Law enforcement uses this evidence to identify individuals who have committed crimes.

“The problem is it’s been kind of a Wild West,” Saltzburg said. “There are no rules about what these entities should be able to do and what kind of protections the people who provide their DNA should get.”

The Forensic Genetic Genealogy Project tracks criminal cases that have been solved using investigative genetic genealogy, according to the report accompanying Resolution 519. As of early August, the technique had been used to solve 651 criminal cases involving 313 individuals.

But the report also says few states address the use of forensic genetic genealogy by law enforcement.

On a personal note, Saltzburg said his colleague Neal Sonnett was supposed to introduce Resolution 519 to the House. Sonnett, a renowned criminal defense attorney and longtime leader in the Criminal Justice Section, died in July.

“In the two weeks before he passed, Neal asked me to say something to you,” Saltzburg said. “He wanted me to tell you that every time he got up in the House, he loved the opportunity to speak to you, to talk to you, to work with you. He loved the ABA, but he really loved the House of Delegates. And it showed.”

Salzburg played a recording of Sonnett’s voice asking the House to vote in favor of the resolution. It passed overwhelmingly.

The following is a press release issued by the Carson College of Business:

Companies may unintentionally hurt their sales by including the words “artificial intelligence” when describing their offerings that use the technology, according to a study led by Washington State University researchers.

In the study, published in the Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, researchers conducted experimental surveys with more than 1,000 adults in the U.S. to evaluate the relationship between AI disclosure and consumer behavior.

The findings consistently showed products described as using artificial intelligence were less popular, according to Mesut Cicek, clinical assistant professor of marketing and lead author of the study.

“When AI is mentioned, it tends to lower emotional trust, which in turn decreases purchase intentions,” he said. “We found emotional trust plays a critical role in how consumers perceive AI-powered products.”

In the experiments, the researchers included questions and descriptions across diverse product and service categories. For example, in one experiment, participants were presented with identical descriptions of smart televisions, the only difference being the term “artificial intelligence” was included for one group and omitted for the other. The group that saw AI included in the product description indicated they were less likely to purchase the television.

Researchers also discovered that negative response to AI disclosure was even stronger for “high-risk” products and services, those which people commonly feel more uncertain or anxious about buying, such as expensive electronics, medical devices or financial services. Because failure carries more potential risk, which may include monetary loss or danger to physical safety, mentioning AI for these types of descriptions may make consumers more wary and less likely to purchase, according to Cicek.

“We tested the effect across eight different product and service categories, and the results were all the same: it’s a disadvantage to include those kinds of terms in the product descriptions,” Cicek said.

Cicek said the findings provide valuable insights for companies.

The Commonwealth of Kentucky announced it has partnered with FamilySearch to digitize and preserve tens of thousands of primary records, such as birth, death and marriage certificates that are currently on microfilm reels.

The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA) and volunteers from the Kentucky Genealogical Society (KYGS) are now reaching out to the state’s county clerks, the official custodians of these records, to notify them of the opportunity to have their records digitized free of charge by FamilySearch.

They can take advantage of this opportunity simply by advising KDLA that their records may be digitized using a records release form.

In return, the clerks and KDLA will receive copies of the digitized records, and FamilySearch will post a copy on their free online database.

“Local records are some of the most irreplaceable resources for the discovery of documentation of the Commonwealth’s populace. Records like those of marriage, probate and land ownership have been created from each county’s origins, resulting in some of the most continuous sources of the state’s history,” said Rusty Heckaman, state archivist for KDLA.

“Together they are invaluable to the genealogist and researcher alike for the picture they can help paint of our ancestors’ lives. The participation of FamilySearch in the digitization of these records presents a huge opportunity to make these records more accessible to the public. Their increased use can only further promote the value these records hold and increase awareness of the wealth of resources in repositories like KDLA and in the courthouses throughout our state.”

In July, the King Kamehameha V Judiciary History Center (Center) launched a new digital archive providing free public access to resources from its historic collections. This collections portal is made possible through a partnership with the Permanent Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit that provides long-term digital storage for historic records to individuals and nonprofit organizations.

The Center stewards historical material dating to the Hawaiian Kingdom, the republic and territorial periods, through statehood. In addition to court-related art, objects, and artifacts, the Center’s archives hold a range of physical and digital resources, unique to the institution, that carry significant educational and historical importance for current and future generations.

Probate record of (the late) Kuhina Nui Victoria Kamāmalu (Kaʻahumanu IV): Dated October 4, 1867. Lists John O. Dominis (Legislator of the House of Nobles, husband of Princess, later Queen, Liliʻuokalani) and Mataio Kekūanaōʻa (father of Victoria Kamāmalu and last to hold title of Kuhina Nui) as co-administrators of Kaʻahumanu IV’s estate, who passed away on May 29, 1866. Later, when her father Kekūanaōʻa died on November 24, 1868, Kaʻahumanu IV’s estate passed to her half-sister Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani, who later willed it to Bernice Pauahi Bishop, aliʻi and wife of Charles Reed Bishop (document signer), which upon their death later became part of the Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate.

Curator of Collections & Programs Brieanah Gouveia explains, “The Center’s collections capture Hawaiʻi’s unique civic history, showcasing some of the people, institutions, and events that shaped law, public policy, and government in the islands over the last 200 years. Together these influences created the unique hybrid legal system, and social institutions, that characterize Hawaiʻi today.”

The Center began its partnership with Permanent in 2022, to expand public access to its collections and share the history of Hawaiʻi’s civic story with broader audiences. Since then, more than 10 Judiciary volunteers have helped scan and digitize records to prepare them for the new digital archive.

In February of this year, nonprofit Friends of the Judiciary History Center of Hawaiʻi received a grant from Permanent to hire a student intern from the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) at Mānoa’s Library and Information Science Master’s Program.

Gouveia worked with the client liaison at Permanent to interview students and draft a contract. Morgan Schmidt was the successful candidate from a round of interviews. For three months, Schmidt inventoried, organized, and created content descriptions for previously scanned material, then published them for public access.

The newly digitized resources are just a fraction of the total holdings from the Center’s archives at Aliʻiōlani Hale. In the coming months and years, many more legal records, photographs, maps and blueprints, manuscripts, newspaper articles, and more will be digitized and added to the online portal. One upcoming digitization project includes processing the papers of former Hawaiʻi Chief Justices, including the late Chief Justice William S. Richardson.

While the Hawaiʻi State Archives and UH Mānoa libraries have collections related to historic material held at Aliʻiōlani Hale, most primary sources in this archive are found only at the Center.

For information on how to access material in person, please contact the King Kamehameha V Judiciary History Center’s curator at 808-539-4995.

Those who are interested in volunteering as a collections assistant may apply by sending a letter of interest describing skills and work history, highlighting any related experience with historic collections and/or education, to Collections@jhchawaii.net.

WARNING: This article contains personal opinions. 

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

Paper. I have been drowning in it for years.

Genealogists soon learn to collect every scrap of information possible. We collect copies of birth certificates, marriage records, death certificates, census entries, military pension applications, deeds, and much, much more. I don't know about you, but I have been collecting these bits of information as paper, mostly photocopies, for years. Over the past forty+ years, I have probably spent thousands of dollars in photocopying fees!

I now have a four-drawer filing cabinet behind me as I write these words and another four-drawer filing cabinet another room. I have book shelves that are groaning under the weight of (printed) books. Since I don't have enough room for all my books, many of them are stored in boxes, and I seem to never retrieve any of those books from storage. They lie there, year after year, gathering dust and mildew, providing information to no one.

Searching for information in hundreds of stored books is so time consuming and so impractical that it almost never gets done.

In addition to the thousands of dollars spent on photocopying fees, I have spent still more on filing cabinets, manila file folders, bookshelves, and more. Then there's the books. I hate to think what I have spent for books! Postage charges alone have been more than I care to think about.

Not only have I spent a lot of money, but I have also helped destroy the environment. I am sure I am personally responsible for the loss of numerous trees that were cut down to make the paper I used. In addition, I have consumed a lot of carbon and chemical products used in the production of toner for laser printers and for photocopy machines. Then there's the ink used in inkjet printers. 

So what do I do with these pieces of paper? I file them away and very rarely, if ever, look at them again. I spent a lot of money to acquire these pieces of paper, more money to file and organize them, and now I am spending still more money to store these pieces of paper. 

Why?

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13389597. (A Plus Edition password is required to access that article.)

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

Genetic testing firm 23andMe will not go ahead with CEO Anne Wojcicki's take-private offer and has asked her to withdraw any plan to oppose any alternative deal, the company said on Friday.

In April, Wojcicki notified the company of her intention to make an offer and take the company private.

She followed it up with a non-binding proposal, disclosed in a regulatory filing on Wednesday, to acquire all outstanding shares of 23andMe not already owned by her or her affiliates for $0.40 per share.

A special committee formed by the company rejected the CEO's proposal as it saw the offer as insufficient and not in the best interests of the non-affiliated shareholders.

Wojcicki had indicated in her proposal that she was working with advisers and intended to begin speaking to potential partners and financing sources.

The committee in its response, opens new tab said it was prepared to provide her and potential investors additional time to submit a revised proposal in line with the company's expectation.

Other alternatives will be pursued to maximize value for shareholders, in the absence of a revised offer, the panel added.

23andMe, best known for its saliva-based test kits that offer users a glimpse into their genetic ancestry, went public in 2021.

On Wednesday, US Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tenn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Thom Tillis (R-NC) introduced the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act of 2024. The bipartisan legislation, up for consideration in the US Senate, aims to protect individuals from unauthorized AI-generated replicas of their voice or likeness. The NO FAKES Act would create legal recourse for people whose digital representations are created without consent. It would hold both individuals and companies liable for producing, hosting, or sharing these unauthorized digital replicas, including those created by generative AI. Due to generative AI technology that has become mainstream in the past two years, creating audio or image media fakes of people has become fairly trivial, with easy photorealistic video replicas likely next to arrive. [...]

According to Statcounter, Linux use hit another all-time high in July. For July 2024, the statistics website is showing Linux at 4.45%, climbing almost a half a percentage point from June's 4.05% high.

The following is an announcement from DigitalNC:

Anyone who has done any research with historic newspapers in North Carolina should send a thank you to the State Archives of North Carolina. Through the Archives’ decades-long efforts, newspapers from across the state have been painstakingly gathered and microfilmed, making copies available to researchers all over the world. The majority of the hundreds of thousands of microfilmed newspapers on our site were filmed by State Archives staff over the years. 

We are working with the State Archives over the next year to bring thousands of pages of newspapers dating from the early 19th century through the early 20th century to DigitalNC. For the most part, these won’t be available anywhere else online. Many are new titles for DigitalNC. Each month we’ll post a batch of around 20 titles. Note that for most of these papers, there will only be a handful of issues. 

This first month includes all of the issues in the entire group that were identified as Black newspapers. In addition, you’ll find papers from the white community from Elizabeth City, Jackson, Moyock, Murfreesboro, Potecasi, and Rich Square – Currituck, Hertford, Northampton, and Pasquotank Counties. We are excited about adding these to our site, and look forward to some truly hard-to-find additions!

Black Newspapers

• The Carolina Times (Durham, N.C.) – two rare issues from 1946
• The Colored Industrial (Lincolnton, N.C.)* – issues from 1901, 1903
• The Metrolinian (Charlotte, N.C.)* – issues from 1971
• The Queen City Gazette (Charlotte, N.C.)* – one issue from 1964
• The Raleigh Independent (Raleigh, N.C.)* – one issue from 1920
• The Weekly Journal (Charlotte, N.C.)* – one issue from 1978
• Wilmington Journal [1945-1994] (Wilmington, N.C.)* – issues from 1952
• The Wilmington Herald [1894] (Wilmington, N.C.)* – one issue from 1894

White Papers from Currituck, Hertford, Northampton, and Pasquotank Counties

• The Daily Dixit (Elizabeth City, N.C.)* – one issue from 1887
• Daily Economist (Elizabeth City, N.C.) – 1905-06-21 issue
• The Weekly Economist (Elizabeth City, N.C.) – 1877-05-02 and 1877-05-16 issues
• Elizabeth City High School Student Newspaper* – issues from 1918
• The Elizabeth-City Gazette, and Public Advertiser (Elizabeth City, N.C.) – 1807-07-31, 1807-08-13, 1807-08-20, and 1807-12-31 issues
• The Elizabeth-City Star and North-Carolina Eastern Intelligencer (Elizabeth City, N.C.) – 1825-04-30 and 1908-04-15 issues
• The Great Issue (Elizabeth City, N.C.)* – issues from 1905
• The Independent (Elizabeth City, N.C.) – 1911-02-09, 1913-09-25, 1913-10-09, 1916-09-28 issues
• Murfreesboro Index (Murfreesboro, N.C.) – 1903-10-23 and 1903-11-06 issues
• Northampton Progress (Jackson, N.C.)* – issues from 1919, 1920
• The Picayune (Moyock, N.C.)* – issues from 1923-1925
• Roanoke Patron (Potecasi, N.C.) – 1886-04-01, 1887-03-15, 1891-09-17 issues
• The Northampton County Times-News (Rich Square and Jackson, N.C.) – 1927-11-03 issue

* – Titles new to DigitalNC