Indian military helicopters collide in mid-air, nine killed

Two military helicopters collided in mid-air during a training sortie over the western Indian state of Gujarat on Tuesday, killing nine air force personnel, the government has said.

Television pictures showed skeletal, charred remains of the Russian-made MI-17 multi-utility helicopters in what seemed like a sparsely populated area. The wreckage was surrounded by police, firefighters and military officials.

Officials quoted by the media said the crash site was a military area near the Jamnagar airbase in Gujarat, a state bordering Pakistan. No casualties or loss of property on the ground was reported.

The country's military has been plagued by often fatal accidents due to obsolete hardware. More than half of the 872 MiG fighters India bought from Moscow since the early 1960s have crashed.

India plans to spend about $100bn over the next 10 years to upgrade largely Soviet-era military equipment.

Thursday 30 august 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/30/indian-military-helicopters-collide?newsfeed=true

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Japan estimates monster quake could kill 320,000

Japan's government on Wednesday unveiled a worst case disaster scenario that warned a monster earthquake in the Pacific Ocean could kill over 320,000 people, dwarfing last year's quake-tsunami disaster.

Tokyo's casualty toll estimate was based on a catastrophic scenario in which a powerful undersea quake of about 9.0 magnitude sparked a giant tsunami that swamps Japan's coastline south of Tokyo The Cabinet Office's hypothetical disaster would see the quake strike at nighttime during the winter with strong winds helping unleash waves that reach 34-metre (110 feet), sweeping many victims away as they slept.

Many of the estimated 323,000 victims would be drowned by the tsunami, crushed under falling objects or in fires sparked by the disaster, it said.

On March 11 last year, a 9.0 magnitude quake struck seismically-active Japan in the early afternoon, triggering tsunami waves that reached 20 metres.

About 19,000 were killed or remain missing while the tsunami slammed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, sending reactors into meltdown and sparking the worst atomic crisis in a generation. "As long as we live in Japan, we cannot deny the possibility of a huge earthquake and tsunami," Masaharu Nakagawa, state minister for disaster management, told reporters Wednesday.

The report was designed to paint a worst-case scenario and help officials boost their disaster preparedness.

An estimate in 2003 assumed casualties of about 25,000 people, but that scenario envisioned a less powerful 8.4 magnitude quake striking a smaller area.

The deadliest quake in Japanese history struck the central Kanto region in 1923, killing at least 100,000 people.

Thursday 30 August 2012

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-japan-monster-quake.html#jCp

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Navy recovers 10 more bodies off Libyan coast

The Navy recovered 10 more bodies on Wednesday evening, who were victims of a boat that sank while transporting 40 illegal immigrants off the coast of Libya on Sunday evening.

“The bodies were completely decomposed,” said Health Ministry Undersecretary Mahmoud Zahran. “Only three bodies were identified from the ID cards that were found.”

The bodies were sent to the morgue of the Barrany Central Hospital. The morgue at Salloum Hospital.

Seventeen bodies have been recovered from the accident site so far.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

Thursday 30 August 2012

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/navy-recovers-10-more-bodies-libyan-coast

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Nine passengers dead in DG Khan road mishap

DERA GHAZI KHAN - Nine passengers died while 70 others received injuries when two coaches collided at Indus Highway near Kala Town on late Tuesday night.

The Local people later joined the Rescue 1122 personnel dragged out the bodies and the injured passengers from both the buses which were bound for Karachi and coming from Swat. The injured said that both the buses stopped at a hotel for dinner and had just moved when met the fatal accident.

Most of the passengers were going back to their work station after celebrating Eid at their native towns. As per police officials, the two coaches (LZ 1475 and LRT 1467) collided at sharp turn while making an attempt to overtake when an oil tanker came from the opposite side at the highway in the town near some 40 km from here towards North. The deceased were identified as Mohammad Iqbal, the driver of a coach, Mohammad Sadiq, Shazia Bibi, Saddam Hussain, Ali Zai, Gull Tahir and Sajid Hussain while the two dead bodies were yet to be identified.

The injured were shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital while the minor injured were rushed to a nearby rural health centre.

Thursday 30 August 2012

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/national/30-Aug-2012/nine-passengers-dead-in-dg-khan-road-mishap

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Amnesty Urges Balkans to Investigate War Missing

Amnesty International is calling on Balkan governments to investigate the fate of some 14,000 people who are still unaccounted for since the region's conflicts in the 1990s.

This is nearly half the total of 34,700 people reported missing between 1991 and 2001 when a series of conflicts tore apart the former Yugoslavia.

The group said Wednesday the missing are a daily source of pain for relatives wanting to learn the fate of their loved ones.

"The lack of investigations and prosecutions of enforced disappearances and abductions remains a serious concern throughout the Balkans," Amnesty official Jezerca Tigani said on the International Day of the Disappeared on Thursday.

"The major obstacle to tackling impunity and bringing the perpetrators to justice is a persistent lack of political will" in Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo, she stressed.

While some of the main war crimes perpetrators have been tried by the UN war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, that tribunal is nearing the end of its mandate, Amnesty warned.

"Domestic courts are slow to abide by their responsibility to seek out, identify, and prosecute the remaining perpetrators," it said.

Amnesty stressed that the families of the victims, who come from all ethnic groups and walks of life, must get access to justice and reparations for their loss.

"Their families have the right to know the truth about the circumstances of the forced disappearance, the process and the result of the investigation and the fate of the disappeared person," Tigani said.

The families of the victims, "do not know if they will ever return, so they cannot mourn and adjust to the loss," according to an Amnesty report issued on Thursday.

It quotes the mother of Albion Kumnova, a Kosovo Albanian who disappeared during the 1998-99 conflict between ethnic Albanian rebels and Serbian security forces. His body is believed to have been transported to Serbia and buried there.

"If I could know where my son Albion is, and if I could bury him and put a flower on his grave I would be in a better place," Nesrete Kumnova told Amnesty.

Besides calling on the Balkan governments to "demonstrate a clear commitment ... to end impunity for enforced disappearances and abductions" Amnesty also urged the European Commission to pressure them on the subject during the accession process of countries that want to join the European Union.

Croatia is set to enter the EU in 2013, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro are all candidate members, while Bosnia and Kosovo also want to join the 27-member bloc sometime in the future.

In July 2011 some 500,000 people in the region signed a joint petition of more than 1,500 NGOs from all over the former Yugoslavia asking for an independent regional commission to draw up a list of all the victims of the wars and try to clarify the fate of the people still listed as missing.

It is estimated that at least 130,000 people were killed in the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo. Most of them -- some 100,000 -- died during Bosnia's 1992-1995 conflict.

Thursday 30 August 2012

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Amnesty-warns-14000-are-still-missing-after-Balkans-wars/articleshow/15977830.cms

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Death toll climbs to 19 in SW China mine explosion

CHENGDU, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- The death toll in a gas explosion that occurred Wednesday afternoon in a coal mine in southwest China's Sichuan province has climbed to 19, rescuers said Thursday morning.

A total of 107 miners have been rescued, although 28 remain missing, the local rescue headquarters said.

Chinese state television said rescue teams had retrieved the bodies of 19 miners who died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Another three people died in hospital.

A total of 154 miners were working underground at the Xiaojiawan Coal Mine in the city of Panzhihua when the blast occurred around 6 p.m. Wednesday.

The injured have been taken to local hospitals, the headquarters said.

Professional rescue teams from other coal mines in Sichuan have been sent to the accident site.

The coal mine is owned by Zhengjin Industry and Trade Co., Ltd.

The owner of the mine is being questioned by police.

China's mines are the deadliest in the world because of lax enforcement of safety standards and a rush to feed demand from a robust economy. But the death toll from accidents has been falling, government statistics show.

The government work safety watchdog said that 1,973 miners were killed in coal mine accidents last year, according to state media. In 2010, 2,433 people were killed, down from a toll of 2,631 the previous year.

Thursday 30 August 2012

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-08/30/c_131817265.htm

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