Lawyers for Carlin Q. Williams, 39, filed a petition in Carver County District Court near Minneapolis on Monday objecting to probate of the estate left by Prince, who according to the performer's sister, Tyka Nelson, left behind no will and no surviving offspring. The petition seeks a hearing and a court order for genetic testing of DNA samples obtained from the late music star.
A mentally disabled Connecticut man whose 1992 murder and rape conviction was overturned earlier this year after he spent a quarter century in prison can never be tried again for the crimes, a Connecticut judge ruled on Friday. Prosecutors had asked a state Supreme Court judge to leave open the possibility of another trial for Richard Lapointe, 69, drawing fire from his defense attorneys who said new DNA evidence proved him innocent. Lapointe spent 26 years behind bars for the 1988 rape and murder of his ex-wife's grandmother, 88-year-old Bernice Martin.
By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – Patients with colon and other cancers who have a specific defect in genes needed for DNA repair are far more likely to respond to a new class of drugs such as Merck & Co’s Keytruda, which enlist the immune system to attack tumors, a new study has shown. The small study, financed not by Big Pharma but by swimmers who raised charitable donations, tested Keytruda in patients with advanced colon and rectal cancers and found 92 percent of patients with the genetic defect had their disease controlled compared with 16 percent who did not carry the defect. The findings, announced on Friday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago, point to a new way to predict who will respond to the treatments, which are known as PD-1 inhibitors and can cost $150,000 a year.