Thursday 20 September 2012

Update Mexico pipeline fire: Toll rises to 29

The death toll in a pipeline fire at a distribution plant near the U.S. border has risen to 29, Mexico’s state-owned oil company said Wednesday. At least 46 others were injured, and more might be missing.

Juan Jose Suarez, director of the state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos company, told local media earlier in the day that at least five workers had not been seen since the blast. On Tuesday, the company, known as Pemex, said in its Twitter account that a total of seven people were unaccounted for.

President Felipe Calderon said the quick reaction of emergency teams prevented a “real catastrophe,” by controlling the fire before it reached the huge tanks of a neighbouring gas processing plant.

The enormous fire Tuesday hit a distribution centre near the border with Texas that handles natural gas coming in from wells and sends it to a processing plant next door.

“The timely response by oil workers, fire-fighters and the Mexican army was able to control the fire relatively quickly and avoid a real catastrophe of bigger proportions and greater damages if the fire had spread to the center for gas processing, which is right there,” Calderon said in a speech in Mexico City.

The blast and ensuing fire left charred tanks and a mound of tangled steel at the walled plant near the border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas.

Two of the injured were reported in serious condition.

Dr. Jaime Urbina Rivera, deputy medical director of Hospital Materno Infantil de Reynosa just a few miles from the plant, said his hospital had received nine injured workers with first and second-degree burns covering 10 percent to 40 percent of their bodies, with the burns concentrated on their backs and legs. They all arrived conscious, he said.

Pemex officials said the blast appeared to have been caused by an accidental leak, and there was no sign so far of sabotage. The Mexican Attorney General’s Office opened an investigation into the explosion Wednesday, sending more than 20 investigators into the site, which was blocked to the press.

The facility’s perimeter walls, topped with razor wire as a security measure in a country that has seen thieves, saboteurs and drug gangs target oil installations, presented an obstacle for plant workers trying to flee.

Esteban Vazquez Huerta, 18, who was inside the plant when the fire erupted, managed to find a gap in the wire, scale a wall and escape. “We had to climb the wall from that side because the fire, the heat was reaching us,” Vazquez Huerta said Wednesday as he stood outside the plant, waiting for word of missing co-workers.

Until the final moments before the explosion there was no sign anything was amiss, Vazquez Huerta said.

Pemex said workers from contracting firms, such as Vazquez Huerta, and its own employees were performing routine maintenance at the plant, where pipelines from gas wells in the Burgos basin converge. The plant feeds gas next door to separate liquid hydrocarbons from the gas. The production is for domestic Mexican use.

Vazquez Huerta said that suddenly the pipes where he was working, about 300 to 400 yards (meters) from the explosion, began to sound like they were repressurising, after being closed for maintenance.

There was a blast and he and two co-workers began running. A second explosion knocked them to the ground, but they got up and continued running. They found a space along the back wall that wasn’t topped with razor wire and boosted each other over.

Investigators were interviewing other workers to find out more details that could help determine what caused the leak.

“We don’t have memory of another event of this kind,” he said.

People arrived at the federal prosecutors’ regional office to identify the bodies of relatives.

Gustavo Cruz said his 31-year-old brother, Jaime Cruz, died in the arms of another family member who worked in the plant.

“He was very happy” working there, Cruz said.

Calderon said that the government will carry out an exhaustive investigation of the cause of the fire.

The blast forced the closure of the wells and the evacuation of people at ranches and homes within three miles (five kilometres) of the gas facility, which is about 12 miles (19 kilometres) southwest of Reynosa.

Calderon sent condolences to the victims’ relatives and vowed to make sure those injured receive help.

Pipelines carrying gasoline and diesel in Mexico are frequently tapped by thieves looking to steal fuel, and those sometimes cause spills or explosions. But thieves seldom target gas pipelines.

In December 2010, authorities blamed oil thieves for an oil pipeline explosion in a central Mexico city near the capital that killed 28 people, including 13 children. The blast burned people and scorched homes, affecting 5,000 residents in an area six miles (10 kilometres) wide in San Martin Texmelucan.

Thursday 20 September 2012

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article3917014.ece

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Paternity Testing: 50% Nigerian first born children belong to other men – Expert: incidences recorded at Dana investigation

Geneticists claim rising cases of deceptions, infidelity and adultery among couples have made the need to popularise Deoxyribonucleic Acid testing otherwise known as DNA test inevitable, BUKOLA ADEBAYO writes

Deoxyribonucleic Acid, also known as DNA testing is still not a very popular procedure in Nigeria. However, experts say there is a need to increase awareness on the dynamics of the test .

The importance of DNA testing came to the fore after a Dana plane crashed in Lagos on June 3 killing all 153 passengers including crew members on board and others on ground.

Most of the bodies were burnt beyond recognition. To ensure that the right bodies were given to the right family, the right compensation given to the deserving spouse, child, sibling or relative, the Lagos State Government directed the Forensic and Pathology team of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja headed by Prof. .John Obafunwa to carry out DNA testing on the deceased and their families to erase all doubts.

This decision, according to a source at the Forensic unit unravelled many mysteries. No one was more surprised than the two children of Mr. Taiwo Akinsanya (not real names) when they were told that their DNA profile did not match that of their father, who had died in the plane crash.

One of the distraught children, who spoke with our correspondent at the unit when the hospital refused to release the bodies to them, challenged the credibility of the whole exercise and accused the officials of conniving with their extended relatives to cause chaos in the family.

“I demand that the tests be repeated. They have been compromised by some relatives. They do not want to release the body to us and our mother who could have claimed the body died two years ago. They are raising unnecessary suspicion within the family.”

As the drama unfolded, a reliable source at the unit told our correspondent that following the DNA testing, some bodies could not be released, due to cases of mismatch and until proven otherwise, the bodies would be kept by the hospital.

The source said, “Another family was almost torn apart when the DNA testing of all the three siblings did not match that of the deceased and their grandparents were dead. It was also an emotional exercise for the families as paternity disputes continued to arise.”

Experts have said there is need to increase awareness and facilities for DNA testing in the country, as statistics have revealed that more children are living with parents that are not biologically theirs.

According to a forensic geneticist, Dr. Abiodun Salami, 30 per cent of fathers are unknowingly nurturing and investing in children who are not biologically theirs. Salami, who is also the Chief Medical Director, DNA Centre, Lagos, revealed that 50 per cent of the all paternity tests carried out in his laboratory came out negative and mostly affected were first born children.

He said, “Several surveys have shown that approximately three men in 10 are living under the deception that they are the fathers of another man’s children and with advances in genetic testing, they are more likely than ever to find out the shocking truth. Half of the paternity disputes and tests we carried out in two years showed that the fathers were not biologically related to their children especially when the dispute arose on paternity of first born children.

“We have seen cases of paternity disputes where even the two men claiming paternity to a child are excluded as the biological fathers from test results leaving the mother to look elsewhere for the child’s biological father. I have witnessed shocking cases where men discover that three or four children out of five they had were not fathered by them.”

Salami attributed the increase in paternity disputes and deceptions to infidelity, adultery and increase in sexual recklessness among Nigerian couples.

“This percentage is increasing because of sexual recklessness. Recent trends in sexual health especially in Nigeria suggest that unprotected sex and multiple partners’ relationships are a common occurrence. Another issue is poor family planning among women. Most first born pregnancies are still unplanned.

“I have seen and discussed with women who for one reason or other decide in their own wisdom to give another man’s child to their husbands without the husband’s knowledge.

“As a geneticist, I deal on a daily basis with the fall-out of adultery and other manifestations of selfish behaviour of spouses to their partners. Reproductive deception is morally similar to rape,” he said.

Naturally, when a case of paternity dispute arises in a family, relatives, husbands are quick to accuse the woman. It is assumed that a mother should be able to accurately disclose who the biological father of her child is.

However, Salami noted that only a DNA test could be used to confirm who fathered a child.

According to him, more babies are increasingly being switched without their mothers’ knowledge by nurses, birth attendants and health workers in hospitals.

He noted that baby switches were happening at a disturbing rate in Nigerian hospitals and the geneticist attributed these mix-ups to avoidable errors or malfeasance.

Salami condemned the use of corresponding ID bracelets between mothers and their babies, the most prevalent method in Nigerian hospitals ,which he said, often lead to mix-ups since such bracelets could fall off babies’ ankles or wrists and lead to nurses misreading infants to mothers’ bracelet information.

Apart from the ID mix-ups, he said bed mix-ups by health workers often happen especially in general wards especially after babies have been removed for bathing or treatment.

Salami, sharing an experience said, “I witnessed a case where a friend gave birth to a child and I went to visit, only for the father who was present at the delivery of the baby to come back to the hospital in the evening to say, to the surprise of everyone present that the baby the hospital presented was not his baby because his baby was born with dreadlocks just like him.

“He had to escort the doctors to identify his baby inside one of the cribs. This happened right inside one of the biggest and well known hospitals in Ikeja, Lagos.

“In the light of some of these shortcomings, we encourage maternal DNA testing because if we exclude her, we have established a case of infidelity against her, whereas her baby was switched at the hospital.”

He also urged mothers who doubt or suspect that their babies have been switched to voice their concerns as such cases could be investigated and documented for future references.

“Many people get home and look at a child and wonder if they brought home the right baby. In some reported cases, mothers have voiced their concerns while at the hospital, but did not get the chance to find out the truth until years later through DNA tests.

“To an ordinary person, this may look rare or even sound strange as most cases of babies switched at birth are either undocumented or unknown,” Salami added.

However, as beneficial as paternity DNA testing is, the importance of the DNA testing is still unpopular and often times regarded as irrelevant in Nigeria.

Salami said that most Nigerians often use physical resemblance to fathers as a test of paternity.

“Unfortunately, Nigerians still use physical attributes to determine the paternity of a child. We have seen numerous cases where a child resembles a father, but accurate DNA test results show that such child and father are not related.

“Determination of paternity using physical attributes has led to a situation where illegitimate children have caused untold hardships to families,” he explained.

Shedding more light on the importance of the test as a means of identification, a haematologist with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, who pleaded an anonymity because he is not the hospital’s official spokesperson, called on government to provide DNA testing and banking (storing) facilities.

He said with these facilities, families could still make DNA verification after parties involved are dead.

Olowoshelu said a sample of the deceased tissues that had been stored could be used and if no biological samples from the alleged father are available, grand parentage testing could be a viable option.

“ If one or both paternal grandparents are unavailable for testing, other family relationship tests–such as genetic reconstructions and siblings’ tests, using the deceased brothers or sisters may be performed to indirectly determine a child’s paternity,” he said.

Earlier, Salami stated that poor DNA profiling and documentation due to lack of facilities and personnel had made this procedure a luxury to many Nigerians. He noted that such stored samples could help solve legal and financial disputes.

“Nigerians must take DNA testing and profiling and banking seriously. There are different reasons to establish paternity including the need to lay claims to a financial support.

“Government must provide DNA testing facilities such that we can have reference DNA for individuals should their remains need to be identified especially for those in high-risk employment such as the military, police, pilots, air hostesses and even those that fly the Nigerian airspace on regular basis.

“We can bank their DNA as a reference in cases of future paternity tests should some parties contest or make claims on inheritances that are not theirs,” he said.

Thursday 20 September 2012

http://myondostate.com/w3/paternity-testing-50-nigerian-first-born-children-belong-to-other-men-expert-2-incidences-recorded-at-dana-investigation/

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Polish family claims Russia 'mixed up' remains of Smolensk victims

Anna Walentynowicz, who as the forefront of the Solidarity movement in its struggle against communist rule, died along alongside Lech Kaczynski, the then Polish president, and 94 others when their plane crashed near Smolensk in western Russia in April 2010.

Since the disaster there have been strong suspicions that Russian authorities failed to indentify the bodies correctly.

Walentynowicz's presumed body was exhumed on Monday and her son Janusz has now said that the remains are "not the body of my mother".

"That's my opinion, and the doctors' opinions all the results of the examination will come later," he said. "But I know what I saw in Moscow, I know my own mother, and the person I saw today on the autopsy table was certainly not the person I recognised as my mother."

Piotr Walentynowicz, Anna's grandson, was also adamant.

"I do not recognise that body as my grandmother's body," he said.

The exhumation had been carried following requests from the family and prosecutors to check the veracity of the Russian autopsy reports carried out in the days after the official government plane slammed into the ground as it tried to land in dense fog.

The force of the impact was so great that some of the bodies were torn apart making formal identification difficult.

Pathologists also exhumed the body of Teresa Walewska-Przyjalkowska, another crash victim, to scotch or confirm suspicions, that the two bodies had been confused. This week's exhumation brings the total to five, and the prosecutor's office has confirmed that another four will take place.

If the results of the new autopsies reveal that Russian pathologists made mistakes then they could result in calls to exhume President Kaczynski and his wife Maria, who also died in the crash. The late presidential couple were interred in Krakow's Wawel Castle, the Polish equivalent of Westminster Abbey, and any exhumation would be carried out in the full glare of the media.

Thursday 20 September 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/9555681/Polish-family-claims-Russia-mixed-up-remains-of-Smolensk-victims.html

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15 Die in Southwest Nigeria Truck Crash

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Police in Nigeria's southwest say at least 15 people have died in a crash involving two trucks and many other vehicles.

Ogun state police spokesman Olumuyiwa Adejobi said Wednesday a truck driver collided head-on with cars and motorbikes on a highway leading to the commercial capital of Lagos on Tuesday.

He said the truck driver was trying to avoid hitting a truck coming from another road at a major intersection, but that his speed was too high.

Adejobi said the junction, which has no traffic lights, is notoriously dangerous.

Ogun State Federal Road Safety Commander Ayobami Omiyale said authorities could not immediately give a tally of those who had been killed and injured because they were taken to different hospitals.

Crashes are common on Nigeria's poorly maintained road network.

Thursday 20 September 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/09/19/world/africa/ap-af-nigeria-truck-crash.html?_r=0

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