More dead bodies recovered in Misamis Occidental shores

OZAMIZ City--At least six (6) more dead human bodies in advanced stages of decomposition were recovered from the shores of Misamis Occidental while nine (9) others in the same condition were recovered from the shores of Zamboanga del Norte, days after the onslaught of Typhoon Sendong. This brings up to 1,388 the number of accounted dead bodies who were believed victims of 'Sendong,' of which only 837 were identified, as of Jan. 12, Regional Director Ana Caňeda of the Office of Civil Defense (OCD), region 10, said. Data gathered by the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (RDRRMC), region 10, also show that 737 of the dead bodies were from Cagayan de Oro City, 693 were from Iligan City and 45 were from Bukidnon. Caňeda, who is the Chairperson of RDRRMC-10, said their data also show that 5,889 were injured during the onslaught of TS Sendong, but only 138 of them were identified. Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Investigation...

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Concordia Disaster: Five More Bodies Found

The Italian coast guard has said five more bodies have been found inside the capsized Costa Concordia - taking the total number of dead to 11. The bodies of four men and one woman in their 50s and 60s, all wearing lifejackets, were found together below the waterline at the front of the ship. Filippo Marini, a coast guard spokesman, said: "The bodies were found close to where the bodies of two other victims were discovered. They were in a submerged section of the ship at the back." Earlier authorities said that 29 people are still not accounted for, including 14 German tourists. Rescuers are also searching for six Italians, four French citizens, two Americans and three people from Peru, India and Hungary. Four of those missing are crew members and the rest are passengers. Search teams have been using explosives to blast holes in the half-submerged cruise ship but time is running out in the search for survivors. Following the evacuation...

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Haiti lorry carnage: 26 killed in Port-au-Prince

Haiti - Social : Traffic accident in Delmas 33, Martelly calls for solidarity Michel Martelly, the President of the Republic, went, on the evening of Monday, January 16, 2012, to the Television Nationale d'Haiti (TNH) in Delmas 33, to see the extent of damage caused by a terrible traffic accident. Around 10 pm, a truck [ZA 12655], whose brakes apparently dropped, hit in its path pedestrians, vehicles, motorcycles, among others, before finishing its run in the premises of the State television. The first findings gave to count, several casualties and wounded. [according to the latest information that accident would have been 26 victims and 56 wounded]. "It appears that the driver lost control of the vehicle, claiming the lives of many merchants which offer food on the sidewalks and many passers-by, before finishing his wild ride in the premises of the National Television of Haiti," indicated the National Director of Traffic Services,...

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[Article] Estimating human age from T-cell DNA rearrangements

(Zubakov, D. et al. Current Biol. 20, R970–R971 (2010). This paper describes a method for predicting the age of an individual from human blood. During immune system development, the rearrangement of T cell receptor loci produces episomal DNA molecules, the levels of which are known to decrease with age. Zubakov and colleagues show that quantification of these molecules by PCR can accurately predict the age of a sample donor, even with degraded or very small samples. This approach should be useful for identifying disaster victims or providing leads from crime scen...

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Mt. Lebanon Fire Department has bracelets to help locate missing people

Jan 12, 2012 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Mt. Lebanon Fire Department is accepting applications for a set of cellular-based tracking bracelets that help locate missing people almost anywhere in the country. The $200 device made by Texas-based EmFinders is designed for people with Alzheimer's, dementia, autism and other conditions that can cause them to wander and make communicating their whereabouts difficult. To gauge interest, the municipality has purchased 10 devices to start through a donation from the Mt. Lebanon Partnership. "There was a group of parents who came and said this was a concern of theirs," said Commissioner Kelly Fraasch, who is part of the committee that worked to obtain the devices and will decide which applicants receive them. The individual can wear the device, which looks like a wristwatch with a large face, 24 hours a day or as often as necessary. If the person...

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Identifying the unknown dead: New system cross-checks missing person cases with unidentified bodies

He was a black man, probably in his 30s or 40s, when someone robbed him of his life — and his name — more than 30 years ago. His body was left in a heavily wooded area of Mascot, covered with leaves, brush and limbs freshly cut from a nearby tree. Animals had brushed the vegetation aside. His skeletal remains were found on Jan. 12, 1982, about 600 yards off Clear Springs Road near Mine Road, a remote site probably known to whoever dumped the body, investigators theorize. In life, the victim had stood about 5-feet-10. In death, he wore a blue pullover shirt, dark trousers, red and white socks. There was a pair of size nine zip-up shoes on his feet. There was a 38-caliber bullet wound in the back of his head. He had no identification or possessions. Body decomposition indicates he was most likely killed sometime between March and June of 1981. Today, the best hope for identifying him lies with the relatively new National Missing and Unidentified...

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NamUs Missing Person Database Goes Unused by 93 Percent of Law Enforcement

Since 2009, families and medical examiners have had access to a free online database that's designed to assist in the identification of more than 40,000 sets of unidentified remains across the country. Dubbed "NamUs," short for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, the program allows both parties to enter identifying characteristics of a missing person or unidentified body in the hopes that this information exchange will help match a face to a fate. It's a grim consolation for those whose friends or families have been affected by violence or accidents. Nevertheless, the Associated Press reports that the free service has helped solved 16 cases since the cross-matching feature went live in July of last year. The numbers don't end there: the service is home to around 6,200 unidentified sets of remains, 2,800 missing people, and--according to The Crime Report--has been accessed (on the missing persons front) by more than 185,000...

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El Salvador head apologises for 1981 El Mozote massacre

President Mauricio Funes wipes a tear while apologizing for the massacre of El Mozote on 16 January 2012. An emotional President Funes recalled the terror perpetrated in El Mozote El Salvador's President Mauricio Funes has sought forgiveness for what he called "the worst massacre of civilians in contemporary Latin American history". In 1981, soldiers killed some 1,000 people, nearly half of them children, in the town of El Mozote. They had been accused of collaborating with left-wing guerrillas. Mr Funes made his emotional apology on the 20th anniversary of peace accords that ended the nation's civil war. The president travelled to El Mozote, some 200km (120 miles) from the capital, San Salvador, near the border with Honduras. "For this massacre, for the abhorrent violations of human rights and the abuses perpetrated in the name of the Salvadoran state, I ask forgiveness of the families of the victims," he said on Monday. Breaking...

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Evidence mounts against military over asylum shipwreck

Indonesian police say there is mounting evidence military personnel were involved in arranging the boat which capsized last month, killing around 200 asylum seekers. Indonesian and Australian Federal Police are investigating the sinking of the overloaded boat, which went down about 40 nautical miles off East Java with around 250 asylum seekers on board. The boat was reportedly en route to Australia. Shortly after the sinking, three soldiers were detained and accused of organising the final stages of the voyage. A civilian defence employee was also arrested. But ABC TV's 7.30 has learned the military's involvement in the smuggling has become a widening scandal as two more soldiers have been implicated and brought in for questioning. The military command in East Java, led by Major-General Murdjitok, has pledged full cooperation. "Who wouldn't be unhappy to uncover the syndicate? That's what we are trying to do right now," he said. "We...

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Changing weather patterns 'could trigger flu pandemics' by altering flight path of migratory birds

A weather pattern cycle that leads to a drop in the sea surface temperature across the tropical Pacific Ocean, could be responsible for spreading deadly influenza. Scientists found that these La Nina events - when the sea temperature cools three to five celsius lower than normal - preceded the last four worldwide flu pandemics in 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009. The team, from Columbia University and Harvard School of Public Health, said the La Nina pattern is known to alter the migratory patterns of birds, which are thought to be a primary reservoir of human influenza. They theorised that altered migration patterns promote the development of dangerous new strains of influenza. The flu pandemics have varied greatly in intensity - thanks in part to modern drugs and isolation policies. While the 'Spanish influenza' of 1918 caused an estimated 50 to 100million deaths, the latest swine flu pandemic of 2009 claimed around 20,000 lives. To examine...

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WTC Bone Fragments Still Surface a Decade After 9/11

A recent New York Times article revealed that a decade after 9/11, small fragments of human remains from victims from the World Trade Center towers are still being identified. This adds to the documented evidence of the severe destruction of the bodies of WTC victims, a phenomenon that could only have been caused by explosives. According to the NYC medical examiner’s office, remains are being identified almost every day. This excerpt from the article reveals how harrowing the recovery of destroyed human remains has been on the families of 9/11 victims: When Sean Tallon, a firefighter, was identified, his family never considered the possibility that there might be additional calls. “We were so relieved to have part of him to put in the coffin that it didn’t matter how much it was at that stage,” Mr. Tallon’s sister, Rosaleen Tallon, said. But for three years, the family received calls from the medical examiner’s office as more of his...

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Learn the lessons of earthquakes, for big ones will happen again

Tuesday marks the 17th anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake--a day to pray for the repose of the souls of people killed by the catastrophic earthquake. We believe that this year, people will also pay tribute to the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake that hit the Tohoku region 10 months ago, and wish for steady progress toward reconstruction from the disaster. There is one thing we need to think about on this occasion. Have we applied the lessons of the Jan 17, 1995, disaster to the March 11 disaster? The Hanshin earthquake found most people living in the disaster-hit areas unprepared. Residents and local governments lacked sufficient provision for major earthquakes as they shared the notion that the Kansai region was safe from such events. Many buildings, especially old wooden houses, lacked reinforcement against major earthquakes. Over 6,000 people were killed by the Hanshin earthquake, with more than 80 per cent of...

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Mine body recovery ‘two to four years’ away

Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn is due to fly to Wellington in the next few weeks to meet the Prime Minister and Pike River Mine receivers in a further bid to secure funds for the body retrieval. “We have brought home everybody from many mine disasters over 150 years of coal mining on the West Coast,” Mr Kokshoorn said today. “The exception is two men from the 1967 Strongman Mine disaster, where 19 miners were killed by an explosion.” However, Pike River receiver John Fisk tempered the Mayor’s expectations, saying it would two to four years before the bodies could be recovered. Mr Kokshoorn started preliminary talks with John Key when he was in Greymouth for the one-year memorial service. He will ask the Government, receivers and future mine owners to contribute funds to the recovery effort, and a separate trust will probably be set up. On site at Atarau, a 100m vertical borehole down into the mine where the 29 victims of the November...

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Mine inferno

The Pike River Mine has turned into a “blast furnace” with temperatures possibly reaching a constant 1000degC, after a fourth explosion deep inside the deadly pit. Exhausted relatives of the 29 men who perished in the first explosion on November 19 have now been told grimly that forensics may be needed to identify the remains of their loved ones. Police briefed families last night about the process under way known as disaster victim identification (DVI). DVI is a worldwide standard of positively identifying victims in a multiple casualty event. Primary methods of identification include fingerprints, dental records and DNA. After the 1967 Strongman Mine disaster, all but two coffins had to be sealed. Flames were last night shooting from the top of a 108m ventilation shaft. No flames had been visible until now, even during the initial methane explosion. The fourth explosion was heard at Atarau, 12km away, and plumes of smoke were visible...

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Setting up an off-site emergency mortuary facility (EMF) to deal with a DVI incident: disaster victim management (DVM)

(Forensic Science, Medicine, and Pathology Online First DOI: 10.1007/s12024-011-9310-1 David Eitzen and Alex Zimmermann) Forensic mortuaries in all Australian jurisdictions are dealing with increasing workloads, with routine cases regularly occupying greater than 50%, and often as much as 85%, of existing cold room body storage capacity, particularly over long weekends and during seasonal increases in respiratory infections. Hence the need to deal with a sudden influx of deceased persons or multiple body parts in a mass fatality incident would overwhelm most Australian forensic mortuaries, thereby requiring other means of body storage and processing. Exercise “Construct” was a joint South Australian Police (SAPol) and Forensic Science South Australia exercise designed to practice the establishment and construction of an emergency mortuary facility (EMF) to deal with a mass fatality incident and the subsequent disaster victim identification...

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Costa Concordia: divers blow holes in cruise liner

Rescuers try to access flooded lower cabins as number of passengers missing on stricken vessel stands at 29 Amid growing confusion over the number of passengers still missing from the Costa Concordia, navy explosives experts have blown a series of holes in the hull of the stricken cruise liner to allow divers searching for passengers better access to flooded lower cabins. After local officials raised the tally of missing passengers from 16 to 29, the divers blew a first hole in the landward side of the vessel at 7.40am local time on Tuesday, a second at 8.05am and a third at 8.40am. Officials have said four holes were planned along the 290m (950ft) length of the ship, which will give divers who are searching deep inside the submerged part of the liner a quick escape route if the vessel slips into deeper waters. Divers were evacuated from the ship on Monday as it shifted a few centimetres in rough seas. Grounded on its side on granite...

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Rescuers Use Explosives In Cruise Ship Search

Rescuers searching for those still missing from the cruise liner that capsized after crashing into rocks in Italy have begun using explosives to blast holes in the vessel. It comes as Italian emergency services deny reports in La Stampa newspaper that a seventh body has been found on the Costa Concordia. The increased death toll was reported in the Italian media after "black box" recordings showed the ship's captain ignored an order to get back on board. Taped telephone conversations released by authorities suggest Francesco Schettino was evasive when ordered by a port official to supervise the rescue. Officials said last night a total of 29 people remained missing, while six have been confirmed dead after the cruise liner collided into a reef off the Tuscan coast near the island of Giglio. Two controlled explosions were carried out early this morning to allow firefighters and scuba divers to enter parts of the ship that they had not...

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Vanishing victims: The ‘open wounds’ of Mexico’s drug war

Mexico City (CNN) — The blue plastic envelope is packed with papers: security camera photos, cell phone records, business cards and letters asking for help. “My folder, this is my son,” Alfonso Moreno says. The young man left Mexico City on a road trip to Texas last January. His parents say 33-year-old Alejandro, a computer systems engineer, vanished just an hour away from the U.S.-Mexico border. They have been searching for him ever since. On this day, a wood-paneled meeting room at a Mexico City peace foundation is the next step in their hunt. They sit at a table with parents of a street performer, a real estate agent and a group of gold salesmen. A year ago, they all were strangers. Now, they greet each other like old friends, with smiles and warm embraces. A brutal drug war has brought them together. Their children are among more than 5,300 people who have gone missing in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown...

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Killers of Americans south of border rarely caught - More than 200 U.S. citizens killed in Mexico since '04

A 22-year-old man from Houston and his 16-year-old friend are hauled out of a minivan in Mexico, shot execution style by thugs in a black Lincoln Continental, and left dead in the dirt. The body of a 65-year-old nurse from Brownsville is found floating in the Rio Grande after a visit to a Mexican beauty salon. An American retiree, an ex-Marine, is stabbed to death as he camps on a Baja beach with his dog. More than 200 U.S. citizens have been slain in Mexico’s escalating wave of violence since 2004 — an average of nearly one killing a week, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation into the deaths. Rarely are the killers captured. The U.S. State Department tracks most American homicides abroad, but the department releases minimal statistics and doesn’t include victims’ names or details about the deaths. The Chronicle examined hundreds of records to document the personal tragedies behind them. “I’m no longer the same person,”...

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More bones at Diyarbakır mass grave

Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Sezgin Tanrıkulu visits the site in Diyarbakır where 11 skulls have been found so far as the diggings continue. AA photo The number human skulls found in the vicinity of a former gendarmerie building in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır has increased to 11 as the prosecutor’s office deepens the investigation. “In the past, Turkey was proud of its underground mine treasures; now Turkey has more to be proud of, such as skulls and bones from unsolved murders,” Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Sezgin Tanrıkulu said Jan. 15 during a visit to the area. “This area must be researched entirely. The prosecutors held a declaration of secrecy but these kinds of investigations should be open to the public. Turkey does not need artificial agendas – Turkey’s main agenda should be human rights, justice and democracy,” he said. Raci Bilici, the head of the Human Rights Association...

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Mass grave found in Vietnam

This land contains 30 corpses of North Vietnamese communist forces, who probably died during Tet war in 1968 Aggression.Simultaneous attacks on military bases in South Vietnam and the U.S. was a turning point in the Vietnam War. This mass grave is located in Quang Tri province, central Vietnam. According to military commanders in Quang Tri, Tran Trong Trung, a mass grave was discovered accidentally by a resident when digging the soil to plant rubber trees. In fact, according to Trung, Vietnam’s military before seeking the location of the grave for three years but to no avail. Their search was based on information provided by veterans of the Vietnam War from Americans who say there are about 158 soldiers who were buried in that place. Currently the excavation is being conducted to search for more corpses in that location. None of the corpses are beyond recognition, identification is only done based on what they wear, such as watches, belts,...

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Funerals of the Missing

THEMIS Vlamis from Voni village in Kythrea and Costas Siskos from Asha village in Famagusta, missing since the 1974 Turkish invasion, were given a proper burial yesterday in Limassol. State spokesman, Stefanos Stefanou addressed the mourners at the funeral of Vlamis and spoke of his story. Vlamis was a reserve soldier for the 305 infantry battalion which was sent to the One Milia area on August 14, during the Turkish invasion. Once hemmed in by enemy forces, the Cypriot soldiers took refuge at Voni, where they dressed as civilians. On August 15, Turkish forces rounded up all civilians of the village and executed them. Vlamis’ remains were exhumed in 2005 from a mass grave in an area between Voni and the Turkish Cypriot village of Bekogiou. Siskos’ remains were exhumed in 2008 from a mass grave in the village of Asha in Famagusta. Cyprus Mail Posted on January 16, 2012 http://www.parikiaki.com/archives/33...

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Discovery of mass grave unearths bitter legacy of Dersim massacres

The existence of a mass grave containing the bones of 95 victims of the Dersim massacres was announced Saturday by an Alevi activist in Erzincan province, a discovery the activist says should be followed by the opening of "the many mass graves of Dersim", Today's Zaman reported The grave, which had remained unknown to locals of Erzincan province's Zini Gedigi district for 73 years, was documented by lawyer and Alevi advocate Cihan Soylemez last week after the topsoil that had covered it for decades washed away. The exposed bones serve as testimony to one of the darkest chapters of the Turkish Republic's history, the 1937-38 military campaign that was approved by leading members of the state and saw the deaths of over 13,000 semi-autonomous Zaza and Kurdish-Alevi tribesmen. The Zini Gedigi district is located on the border between Erzincan and the province historically known as Dersim, renamed Tunceli in the years following the massacres,...

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Mass grave discovered in Afghanistan's Balkh

There has been over three decades of war here in Afghanistan . The Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989, civil war among political groups and rise of the Taliban in 1919s and now the U.S-led war are the key wars. Local people have suffered very much during these conflicts. housands of Afghans disappeared. And now shocking stories are emerging. The discovery of this mass grave is one of them. It has been found in a military base. These construction workers told us that they were digging here to build a parking lot when they were confronted this terrible scene. The scene was very horrible to us too. The grave was filled with a substantial amount of fragments of human bones. The skeletons were in different states. Some were tied behind their backs. Others had bullet holes. Women and children’s clothes were also in the grave. But exactly how many bodies are in it? And why were they dumped in this grave? These questions have not been...

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