Tuesday 10 September 2013

Guatemala bus crash: Dozens killed and injured


At least 43 people have been killed after a bus plunged 200m (660ft) into a ravine in western Guatemala, rescue workers said.

The crash happened in San Martin Jilotepeque, some 65km (40 miles) from the capital, Guatemala City.

At least 40 people are thought to have been injured in the accident.

The bus had been travelling from Chimaltenango to San Martin Jilotepeque. The cause of the crash remains unknown.

Mario Cruz, spokesman for the local volunteer fire department, said about 90 people had been on board the bus which had an official capacity of 54 passengers.

The dead included at least three babies, he added.

The mayor of San Martin Jilotepeque, Otto Vielman, said it appeared that the bus had crashed against a wall of rocks and then fallen from a cliff.

The rescue operation was hampered by a fast-flowing river and emergency crews installed cables to carry stretchers over the water. The long arm of a mechanical digger was also used to lift people across the river.

Local residents volunteered to help the rescue operation and pictures from the scene showed some onlookers in tears as bodies were lined up alongside the crushed wreckage of the bus.

Local resident Carlos Jose Perez said many of those on the bus had been taking farm produce to market.

"The people here are really in mourning," he said.

Several of the injured were transferred to local hospitals and some to Guatemala City.

Investigators do not yet know what caused the crash or what was the final destination of the bus, which was traveling south toward Guatemala City. Rescue workers said conditions were dry and mostly sunny and that the bus was likely over capacity.

"The bus was overloaded," said Sergio Vasquez, a volunteer firefighter at the site.

He said 38 people died at the scene, including six children and 12 women. Five more died at hospitals, he said.

Local television said many passengers were vendors taking farm produce to market.

The government declared three days of national mourning.

The last major bus accident in Guatemala occurred in 2008 when an overcrowded bus slid off a highway and down a 15-meter (50-foot) slope some 65 km (40 miles) southeast of the capital, killing 53.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24021845

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23 killed in Nigeria road accident


At least 23 people have been killed in a road accident in Nigeria's Katsina state, an official said Tuesday.

The accident took place when a bus carrying 24 passengers rammed into a bridge at Yar'randa village in the Charanchi area few minutes after its collapse Monday night, Xinhua reported citing Deputy Commissioner of Police Bala Senchi.

Witnesses said the bridge collapsed due to heavy downpour.

"Some 10 bodies have been recovered and deposited at the mortuary of General Hospital Kankia, while the search for 12 others is ongoing," Senchi said, adding that two survivors have been identified.

Government officials including a representative of Nigeria's minister of works visited the accident site Tuesday to take stock of the situation.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/2013/09/10/403--23-killed-in-Nigeria-road-accident-.html

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Rana Plaza survivors still suffering


Rafiqul Islam cannot recall how many people he pulled from the rubble of Rana Plaza, the eight-story factory complex that collapsed in April, killing more than 1,100 people. But he knows how many he cut out with a hacksaw blade — eight. He did so in spaces so cramped that at one point he became trapped himself.

Those 18 days as a volunteer rescue worker left their scars. Islam has suffered memory lapses and had a series of violent outbursts, and wound up losing his job. Now he wanders alone most days, not sure where to go — until the voices bring him back to the place where he saved so many people and lost himself.

“I hear them still, calling for me,” he says, staring into a mound of broken concrete, torn fabric and twisted iron. Nearly five months after the deadliest incident in garment manufacturing history, the suffering is far from over for the victims, their relatives and the rescue workers. Many families have received only part of their promised financial compensation.

And activists and health-care professionals decry a lack of psychological and financial support for scores of survivors and rescue workers stricken with invisible handicaps.

“After the Rana Plaza tragedy, people are so concerned with the physical impact, but they are completely ignoring the psychological,” said Abdus Sabur, an adviser to the Sajida Foundation, a leading Bangladeshi social development organisation. “Mental health is not taken seriously at all in this country.”

According to the Solidarity Centre, a nonprofit group affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the Bangladeshi government has paid settlements to dependents of 777 of the 1,131 confirmed dead in the disaster, in amounts ranging from $1,250 to $5,000. An additional 36 garment workers who lost limbs or were paralysed have received between $15,000 and $18,750 each.

Smaller amounts have come from a British chain, Primark, which used a supplier in Rana Plaza, and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, which represents the $20 billion-a-year industry. A group of Western clothing brands are also discussing providing a lump-sum payment for the suffering experienced by the victims of Rana Plaza.

So far, none of the 4,000 families affected by the Rana Plaza disaster have received the full payments promised by the government or association, says the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies, a labor advocacy organisation.

Survivors are struggling to cope with not just physical and financial burdens but also with deep emotional wounds. Razibul Rahman Kari, 20, a sewing machine operator, was luckier than most when the factory complex collapsed April 24 on the outskirts of Dhaka. Pinned by a heavy slab, he eventually managed to dig himself out with the help of a local man.

But spending hours in the dark amid muffled screams took its toll: The young man has fresh scars on his wrists from cutting himself with a knife while locked in his bedroom. Sometimes when his mother has tried to bring him food, she said, he has beaten her. Without his $70-a-month salary to support them, the family relies on handouts.

The Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed, a large private facility in Savar, has worked beyond its capacity to care for Rana Plaza’s injured. But because of a dearth of trained mental health professionals, patients with symptoms of acute psychological trauma receive “a minimum” of counseling before they are discharged, said Hossain Mehedi, a doctor at the centre.

Other victims may refrain from seeking help because of the social stigma attached to mental problems, Sabur said. Majeda Begum, 23, another garment factory employee, grapples with severe headaches, disorientation and a paralysing fear of closed indoor spaces. She lives within walking distance of the rehabilitation centre, which provides her with free medication — but that’s only if she manages to show up, and these days she tends to get lost.

‘Am I gonna be psycho?’

As the government struggled to organise a relief operation at Rana Plaza after the disaster, many local residents rushed to the factory ruins, playing a critical role in rescuing survivors.

One of them, a young mechanic named Omar Faruque Babu, was celebrated in media reports for pulling more than 30 people from the wreckage. When the rescue effort ended, he was checked into a hospital, where he hanged himself in a bathroom.

A part-time teacher, Faizul Muhid, 27, spent three days and nights mining the rubble for the living, and then moved on to a local high school where victims’ bodies were left for relatives to claim.

As the corpses rotted in the heat, he did what no one else would do: searched the rows of remains for items — cellphones, nose rings, scraps of paper — that might help with identification. Late one night, he and another volunteer had to fight off a pack of dogs that had gotten hold of an open body bag with a corpse inside.

These days, he self-medicates with a cocktail of antidepressants that he buys with assistance from friends. “Am I gonna be psycho?” he asked one recent afternoon.

Muhid initially resisted psychological help. Now he thinks he could use it, but it is expensive and scarce: There are no more than a dozen certified counseling psychologists in this country of more than 160 million people, according to several doctors and activists.

Sheikh Yusuf Harun, deputy commissioner for the district of Dhaka, said, “It’s true — no one is taking responsibility” for the mentally damaged. “They are not reported to us,” he said.

Once compensation packages are finalised, Harun said, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is planning to address the matter. He offered no details on what kind of long-term support might be made available.

To fill the void in psychological services, several grass-roots organisations are working in hospitals with victims of Rana Plaza, forming support groups that encourage patients to share their stories. Groups are also training counselors to canvass neighborhoods and offer help.

Though the outreach is generally well received, it remains “pretty ad hoc” and covers just a fraction of those affected, said Sadaf Saaz Siddiqi, who works at Naripokkho, a nonprofit group that helps garment workers.

No one has yet reached Islam, the rescue volunteer. A medal from a local workers’ rights organisation sits on the nightstand of his tin shack, the only nod to his sacrifice.

After spending three weeks in a hospital facility, largely unattended to, he left to be with his wife before the birth of their fourth child, a son. He wants to support them, he said, but thoughts of the bodies he left behind still make him angry and restless.

When he’s not home, his wife usually knows where to find him.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

http://www.thedailystar.net/beta2/news/rana-plaza-survivors-still-suffering/

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In the future, we may be able to see mass graves from space


By now, you have probably seen the images of hundreds of broken Syrian bodies lying in mass graves, victims of the alleged August 21 chemical weapons attack outside of Damascus. The images, from unconfirmed amateur videos, are horrific, but they are far from the first reports of mass graves in Syria. It’s impossible to know how many of these graves exist, and in all likelihood, we will probably never know just how many victims have been hastily abandoned in unmarked pits since the country’s civil war began two years ago.

It’s a problem that has plagued nearly all of history’s greatest tragedies. Mass grave sites are difficult to confirm, and often take years to find, if they are found at all.

In Iraq, families of Saddam Hussein’s victims rush to grave sites every time bodies are uncovered. In Cambodia, mass grave mapping teams have identified 20,002 sites in the Khmer Rouge’s “Killing Fields,” and it’s unclear how many more exist. And in Bosnia, where mass graves were routinely moved every time investigators got too close, it’s impossible to know just how many bodies were buried.

Now, a team of scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee’s renowned forensic anthropology center are developing a suite of technologies to better detect mass graves. If successful, the project will make mass-grave mapping both safer and easier, allowing clandestine grave-hunters to identify possible burial sites from the safety of their own desks by using multispectral imagery from satellites and drones.

“The perpetrators of these crimes have historically done a really good job of covering up these crimes—generally these graves are very difficult to find, even if you have the right technology,” said Devin White, a senior research scientist for ORNL’s geographic IT division. “We're trying to find a more efficient and a more accurate way to do this, and in particular, in areas where we might not be able to get in there on the ground.”

The initial data for the project is being gathered by a team of forensic anthropologists at a mass grave experiment site in eastern Tennessee. Unlike most mass grave experiments, the University of Tennessee team is using actual dead bodies that have been donated to the forensics center’s “Body Farm,” a step that researchers hope will improve the accuracy of their data as they determine which geographical, environmental, and anthropological characteristics of a mass grave can be seen from space. While satellite images have been used since the 1990s to find large mass grave sites, the goal of this new project is to locate smaller sites—where six, 10, 20 bodies are buried—and test whether the technology can be that fine-grained.

"It's these types of graves that fall through the cracks, that are harder to find,” White said. "For the families that have missing people around the world, those people are still missing regardless of whether they are in a big grave or a small grave."

Once the forensic data is gathered, scientists at ORNL use it to inform a mechanical algorithm aimed at identifying other possible mass grave sites. The idea, White explained, is to use commercial satellite images to determine the probability that a mass grave exists at a given location, based on factors like vegetation growth, soil quality, and other environmental disturbances. Ideally, White said, researchers could combine these satellite pictures with lower-altitude aerial imagery, including thermal data and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology, which measures subtle changes in ground elevation.

Researchers are also experimenting with other geospatial data, including information from crowdsourcing and social media, to more accurately pinpoint the site of mass graves.

“We just pull in anything we can get our hands on,” White said. “No one has ever really tried to do this before, so we're basically throwing the kitchen sink at it, looking at every possible sensor, every possible data set that we can collect, and trying to weed it down to the ones that we think are useful.”

White cautions that the project is still in its early stages, and the technology will probably never be able to identify grave sites with absolute certainty: The only way to prove that a mass grave exists is to actually dig up the bodies.

“This is not a predictive model,” White said. “It's a guide. We're by no means saying that we're going to come up with the Holy Grail here, and come up with one answer that is going to work everywhere. “

But the new technologies aim to focus grave-hunting methods, which currently rely on blind luck and unreliable eyewitness accounts. Moreover, in areas where investigators have been barred from entry, or where conflict makes it too dangerous to start digging up bodies, the aerial images could allow teams to track grave sites from afar, and give government intelligence agencies and international groups a bird's-eye view into opaque foreign conflicts.

“If you can come up with a way to look at these areas safely from a distance, then you can make a judgement call that can inform policy, what non-profits are doing, and enable the international community pressure on these groups that are killing people and putting people in the ground,” White said. “In the end, that's going to help so many people.”

Tuesday 10 September 2013

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/in-the-future-we-may-be-able-to-see-mass-graves-from-space

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Uttarakhand floods:Police seek DNA samples of kin of missing persons


The Uttarakhand Police have sought DNA samples of relatives of those who went missing in the heavy floods that left the hill state devastated in June this year.

"DGP Uttarakhand, through his letter has appealed for samples of DNA of the relatives of missing persons in the Uttarakhand floods, so that they can be identified," a release from Andhra Pradesh Police said here today.

About 80 people from Andhra Pradesh are believed to be missing following the heavy floods in Uttarakhand in June.

The relatives of the missing persons, who wish to give their DNA sample, may contact N K Misara at Doon Hospital in Dehradun for the purpose of identification of unidentified bodies and locating the missing persons, the release added.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/uttarakhand-floodspolice-seek-dna-samples-of-kin-of-missing-persons/articleshow/22458340.cms

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INS Sindhurakshak: Bodies of sailors identified


Twenty-six days after they met with a tragic end on board the INS Sindhurakshak, the navy today finally confirmed identification of the bodies of Assam sailors Timothy Sinha and Naruttam Deuri on the basis of DNA profiling results.

Timothy, 29, from Cachar and Naruttam, 21, from Lakhimpur, were among the 18 sailors on board the Russia-made submarine docked at the Mumbai naval docks on the night of August 14 when a powerful explosion sank it. There were no survivors.

The duo’s parents, who have been waiting for the results since they gave blood samples for DNA matching on August 17, received word from the navy this morning.

Timothy’s mother Mitra Chakravarty Sinha told The Telegraph over phone from Mumbai that the news had brought relief to her and her husband Vidyaratan Sinha, a Baptist pastor. “Though we could not take our son back alive, we can at least take solace in the fact that we can now accord him a decent burial with elaborate church service and prayers,” she said.

She said she would start for home — Pailapool village in Cachar district’s Lakhipur subdivision — with the mortal remains of her son on Tuesday evening and reach Silchar on Wednesday morning, following which he would be accorded a formal burial, either late on Wednesday or Thursday morning.

The Cachar district administration, according to official sources here, is preparing to accord an official farewell to the sailor, with army and police personnel according him a guard of honour ahead of the burial.

Naruttam’s father Jyotish Chandra Deuri told The Telegraph over phone from Mumbai that the navy informed him about the identification of his son’s body this morning. He said the remains were sealed in a coffin and would be handed over to Mumbai police to be sent to Assam next week.

Deuri, who has been camping in Mumbai since August 15, said he was not allowed to look at the body, as, according to the navy, it was badly decomposed. “Though it was heartbreaking, I now at least have the solace that my son has been identified,” he said.

His brother, Kabinet, said they had already informed the villagers back home — Narayanpur Major Chapori in Lakhimpur district — and preparations were on to accord a befitting farewell to Naruttam.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130910/jsp/frontpage/story_17332021.jsp

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