Wednesday 21 November 2012

Yemen Plane Crash: Military Aircraft Crashes Into Sanaa Market, Killing 10

A Yemeni military plane crashed early Wednesday during training over the capital, Sanaa, killing all 10 people on board, security officials said.

The Russian-made Antonov aircraft plunged from the sky and crashed into an empty market in al-Hassaba district at the heart of the Yemeni capital, destroying several shops, the officials said. The market has been abandoned since clashes between the country's biggest tribal confederation and security forces in the area during last year's uprising.

The officials said the pilot tried to make an emergency landing after one of the plane's engines failed, but instead, the plane crashed and caught fire. The victims included the pilots and crew members, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Ambulances and fire engines rushed to the crash site.

There was no indication of sabotage in the crash, the officials said.

The Arab world most impoverished nation, Yemen has been challenged by a rising al-Qaida in the aftermath of the uprising that led to the ouster of the country's longtime authoritarian ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The United States considers Yemen's offshoot of al-Qaida as the world's most dangerous branch of the terror network.

Yemen's military has been engaged in a wide offensive against al-Qaida since last spring, and has managed to uproot the militants from strongholds in the south they seized during the uprising.

Since then, al-Qaida has been blamed for a series of assassinations and suicide bombings that targeted top Yemeni military, intelligence and security officials, as well as military camps and security headquarters.

Wednesday 21 November 2012

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/21/yemen-plane-crash_n_2169617.html

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Remains of Pinoy in Saudi Arabia blast identified

Doubts about the death of a Filipino in a truck blast last Nov. 1 in Saudi Arabia have been erased after his remains were identified in a DNA test, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.

A report on dzBB radio early Wednesday quoted DFA spokesman Raul Hernandez as saying the body of Florentino Santiago was identified in a DNA test by Saudi Arabia authorities using a sample given by a relative of the victim.

With the development, the report said the DFA is now working to have Santiago's remains repatriated to the Philippines, likely within a month.

Earlier this month, the DFA had cautioned kin of Santiago against expecting a miracle, after a body identified by his brother-in-law turned out to be that of a Syrian.

Hernandez had said at the time that DNA tests were still to be conducted on two more bodies, and one of them might be that of the Filipino.

Santiago was among those initially identified by the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh as one of the 22 fatalities in the tanker accident.

Wednesday 21 November 2012

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/283149/pinoyabroad/news/remains-of-pinoy-in-saudi-arabia-blast-identified

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Search for Missing Children in Mexico

A group of Central American women who spent 19 days searching for their missing children in Mexico used the tour to highlight the dangers facing migrants passing through the country en route to the United States.

The “caravan”, as it was called, covered 14 Mexican states, starting in Tabasco in the south and finishing on November 3 in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, on the Guatemalan border. The 38 mothers and other relatives of missing migrants, who came from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua, met civil organisations and government bodies to appeal for better protection for migrants, and for action on the cases of those who had disappeared.

Records from Mexico’s National Migration Institute show that Guatemalan, Honduran, El Salvadorean and Nicaraguan nationals account for most of the people who head through Mexico in the hope of entering the US. They account for 92-95 per cent of the people held in Mexico’s immigrant detention centres.

The Mesoamerican Migrant Movement, one of the groups that organised the caravan, claims that more than 70,000 migrants disappeared from 2006 to 2012.

Migrants are prey to armed gangs which use extreme violence to extort money and demand ransoms, with apparent impunity.

According to Amnesty International’s latest global report covering 2011, “Central American migrants travelling through Mexico in their tens of thousands were kidnapped, tortured, raped and killed by criminal gangs, often with the complicity of public officials. In the case of irregular migrants, fear of reprisals or deportation meant they were rarely able to report the serious abuses they experienced.”

The report said that of the hundreds of bodies discovered in mass graves in 2011, some were identified as kidnapped migrants.

In August 2012, the remains of 72 migrants, 14 of them women, were found in a clandestine grave in the San Fernando municipality of Tamaulipas state in northern Mexico. The Mexican government has accused the “Zetas”, a gang whose members formerly served in the military, of carrying out the massacre.

Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights, CNDH, carried out a survey of migrant abductions from April to September 2010, which found that 11,333 kidnappings took place just in that six-month period. The study covered both foreign nationals and Mexicans heading towards the US.

The principal motive was extortion, the commission said. "They torture migrants to obtain the phone number of their relatives in their home country or in the US, and once communication has been established with relatives, they indicate under what conditions the transaction must be done to free them," the CNDH report said.

The commission concluded that "government efforts have not been sufficient to reduce the rates of kidnapping”.

Even more worrying than claims of government inaction are the suggestions that officials turn a blind eye to migrant abductions, and may sometimes be involved.

The Mesoamerican Migrant Movement noted that the government’s position is “push the blame onto organised crime, despite numerous charges of [government] complicity, be it direct or by omission”.

For its report, CNDH gathered testimonies from migrants who said local and state-level, staff from the National Institute of Migration, and even railway personnel actively helped criminal gangs to capture migrants.

In a 2010 report on migrants in Mexico, Amnesty International said that “federal and state authorities have consistently failed to investigate abuses against migrants promptly and effectively”.

Mercedes Moreno, whose son José Leónidas Moreno has been missing since 1991, called on newly-elected Mexican president Peña Nieto to prioritise the search for the disappeared.

“What’s happening in Mexico is that [migrants] are being abused; they are being criminalised,” she said.

Officials say new improved legislation will offer much better protection for migrants transiting Mexico. On September 28, a year after a new law on migration was passed, regulations for implementing it were published.

The law decriminalises “undocumented immigration” and abolishes prison sentences for people who carry fake documents or lie about their immigration status. According to parliament’s bulletin, the law "strengthens the safety and security of national and foreign migrants, and recognises them as legal subjects".

Critics say the legislative changes will do little to protect migrants from abuse.

In an interview, Father Tomás González, who runs the LA 72 migrant shelter in Tenosique, in the southern state of Tabasco, described both the law and the regulations as “mediocre”, saying they “focus on national rather than human security”.

“Instead of sealing the borders and attending to US migration policy, they should guarantee human security for the migrants,” he said.

A working group made up of a dozen civil society said that although the regulations did incorporate some recommendations and represented an improvement in some areas, “it does not fully guarantee the human rights of the migrants who travel through and temporarily or permanently reside in Mexico”.

On October 15, the first day in the caravan’s tour, Servelio Mateo was reunited with his mother nine years after leaving his home in Lempira, Honduras. Mateo was found living at Father González’s shelter in Tenosique.

“My son left for the north nine years ago,” his mother Silvia Campos said. “Since then I’ve heard nothing from him. I’ve worn myself out crying for him. Today, I’m crying with happiness in the knowledge that he’s alive. My hopes never died.”

Wednesday 21 November 2012

http://www.groundreport.com/Politics/Search-for-Missing-Children-in-Mexico/2949497

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Bodies sent for last rites under tight vigil

Amidst tight security, bodies of victims who died in water tank collapse incident were brought in the afternoon at Sai Baba Nagar. Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel were deployed in the locality to avoid any untoward incident.

The locals and the relatives of the victims protested when the bodies were being taken for last rites and raised slogans against the administration and leaders of the ruling party. The administration had made all the arrangements for cremations and the bodies were cremated at Subhash Nagar crematorium amidst tight security.

The Bhopal Municipal Corporation continued the search operation on Monday morning in the debris of the water tank. Two JCB machines were working round the clock to ensure safe rescue of the victims and later continued to remove the rubble from the site to clear the place.

Earlier, the Sai Baba Nagar residents of the state capital witnessed tsunami like conditions after an over head tank collapsed on late Sunday night.

A victim Anil Korbata told that at around 12.30 in the night a thunderous sound was heard and after sometime the roof and one wall of his house was damaged. The cement sheet of another house along with huge water current hit my house which damaged the house. The locals worked for the whole night to rescue the victims. A fire tender vehicle came in the form of initial help from the administration but the local residents of the neighbouring colonies played pivotal role in the rescue operation. At around 2.30 in the night, two JCB machines appeared and started to remove the debris of the water tank. The victims were rushed to the hospital.

Deepak Pawar, who lives on the back side of the mosque in the locality, told that the locals heard the sound of the collapse and immediately came out of their houses, but by then everything was in a chaos. Shrieks of people were coming out of different shanties.

The colony is around 35 year old and situated on a hillock. Almost all the sides of the tank were affected in the incident as after hitting the ground, the water tank exploded and its parts shot in different directions.

Raju Narwade told that impact of the collapse was devastating as the water current with enormous force struck their houses and the rubbles of the water tank were the main destructive element in the whole incident.

Rajendra Raikwar, who lost his family members Ravi and Neha, told that the family is not greedy and they are not protesting against the administration but the family is irritated over the lull response of the administration and the other thing was the compensation which is not clear as the senior officials of administration have not conveyed anything about the compensation for the family and for the damaged house.

Deceased Puniya Bai’s son Lakhan told that at the time of incident he was present at his in-laws’ house and had gone to bring back his children and wife. The victim Puniya Bai was alone at the time of incident.

The incident of overhead tank collapse in Bhopal resurfaced the long-pending demand to dismantle and construction of over a dozen risky overhead tanks in different parts of the State capital. The city has above 40 of overhead tanks to supply water to the locals, of these over a dozen overhead tanks are in shabby condition and require immediate makeover. Demand to dismantle them and construct new overhead tanks replacing them have been made time and again by leaders and locals, but neither the BMC administration nor the district administration took heed to the demand.

The Pioneer tried to find out the conditions of overhead tanks in the city and find out that the overhead tanks located at Aishbagh, Shahjehanabad, Ashoka Garden, Sabzi Mandi, Gandhi Nagar, Qazi Camp, Govind Garden, Lal tank in BHEL, Arera Colony located tank opposite to Fracture Hospital in E-6, tank at 1100 quarters, Jawahar Chowk, Shahjehanabad, Qazi Camp, Sabzi Mandi, Sultania Zanana Hospital, Hamidia Hospital, Jumerati, Kalla-shah compound, Subhash Nagar, Itwara and Shakti Nagar are in depleted condition and need immediate attention, else the Sai Baba Nagar type incident could reoccur anytime.

Home Minister Umashankar Gupta who is also the former mayor of the city while talking to ‘The Pioneer’ while expressing serious concern over the negligence of the BMC said, “ The fingers are pointed towards the BMC for the incident and it is a matter of grave concern. The BMC should either renovate the shabby overheads or should dismantle them.”

Gupta further said that the BMC is having the technique for safe dismantling the dangerous structures, it should be utilized to ground the shabby overhead tanks and new tanks should be constructed.

Former state Congress spokesman Arif Masood said, “Last year on November 14, we had staged a daylong dharna and submitted a memorandum to the UAD Minister Babulal Gaur and Mayor Krishna Gaur demanding to dismantle the dangerous overhead tanks, we also provided the list of these tanks but no action has been taken. Had the BMC and State Government acted on it, this saddening incident could have been avoided.”

Wednesday 21 November 2012

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/bhopal/109925-bodies-sent-for-last-rites-under-tight-vigil-raf-cadre-deployed-.html

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'National Disaster Response Force not utilized properly'

The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was not utilized properly during the Monday's stampede in Adalat Ghat lane although 150 rescuers were deployed 24X7 since November 17 in the 30km stretch from Didarganj to Shahpur in Danapur covering nearly 100 ghats.

The magnitude of the stampede could have been arrested had proper assistance been provided by professionally trained persons, said an official. "Lakhs of rupees are spent on workshops and seminars on disaster management but it is totally missing when required the most, particularly during the time of extreme crisis," a senior official of the disaster management department said.

The newly set up State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) is yet to be raised properly, the official said. "Recently, around 80 persons were inducted. Around 450 ex-Navy, Army, homeguards jawans are shortlisted for undertaking professional training," he said.

The NDRF is a unit created by the Centre for the purpose of specialized response to natural and man-made disasters. The NDRF works under the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) which lays down the policies, plans and guidelines for disaster management.

On November 19 at 7.45pm when the NDRF team of Gandhi Ghat reached its camp at NIT-Patna, it was informed by the Emergency Control Room through the radio communication that about 12 persons had died near Adalat Ghat in some accident during Chhath puja. The commandant of NDRF 9 Battalion, Bihta, SS Guleria, contacted the ADM (relief), Patna, and enquired about the accident and offered the NDRF services at the place of the incident.

"I was conveyed that those who were injured and died in the accident had been taken by the local public to the PMCH. After contacting the officials of the disaster management department immediately, myself, along with AK Jha, deputy commandant, rushed to the spot. In the meantime, the NDRF ambulance was rushed to the PMCH along with 10 rescuers to donate blood to the injured, if required," Guleria told TOI. He, along with his officials, reached the spot and carried out the search operation.

In fact, by that time there was no dead body/injured person left at the place of the incident. After inquiring the local people they came to know that the accident happened due to the narrow lane, he said. "At about 8.45pm, after getting the directions from the principal secretary, disaster management and health department, Vyasji, I rushed to the PMCH but due to law and order problem at its gate, I could not go inside the hospital", he said.

At about 9pm, Guleria could enter the hospital and meet Vyasji. As per his directions, NDRF personnel went inside the hospital and found unclaimed/unidentified bodies of 4 children and one woman kept in one room. NDRF personnel arranged the shifting of the unidentified/unclaimed dead bodies to the mortuary after forcibly taking away the local people (touts) who were creating problems with mala fide intention.

Tuesday 20 November 2012

http://m.timesofindia.com/articleshow/17302436.cms

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