Here are some of the week’s genealogy news tidbits:

• We wrote about ethical wills (last statements concerning personal values rather than property) in the September 2008 Family Tree Magazine. (Family Tree Magazine Plus members can read the article here.)

Ready to get started on one? Personal historian Dan Curtis is offering a free, seven-part online course on writing an ethical will for your heirs.

• The 2010 Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, five days of family history classes happening Jan. 11 to 15, is taking registration. Learn more about the schedule, registration fees and course descriptions on the Utah Genealogical Association website.

• We don’t hear a lot of news about Chinese genealogy in the United States, but there’s an article about China’s ancestral halls on the Wall Street Journal website. (Thanks to Tom Kemp of GenealogyBank for sharing this link.)

Discover more resources for Chinese genealogy in these Genealogy Insider posts.

• The new Amelia Earhart movie is getting tepid reviews (from what I’ve seen, anyway), but the real-life details of her 1937 disappearance might be more interesting. Ancestry.com’s “Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad” collection contains a case file of correspondence concerning an investigation into the theory that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were imprisoned in Saipan. Find out more about the case on Ancestry.com’s blog and on Ancestry.com’s “What really happened to Amerlia Earhart?” page.

• Genetic genealogy company DNA Consultants has added a blog to its revamped website; posts review news and research on dna testing and popular genetics. That involves some complex scientific terms and concepts, so put on your genetic genealogist hat when you visit.