Venezuela officials say divers still searching for bodies from Missoni plane

Venezuela's attorney general says divers have been searching since the weekend for the bodies of the CEO of the Italian fashion house Missoni and others missing in a January plane crash in the Los Roques islands.

Luisa Ortega said in a statement Thursday that authorities would meet with relatives of the missing on Monday to offer details. She also tweeted about the search but without mentioning occupants of the plane, whose wreckage was located in June.

Ortega's statements came after the newspaper El Universal said the bodies of five of the plane's six occupants had been retrieved, including that of Missoni CEO Vittorio Missoni.

His family issued a statement saying it had no official word on bodies recovered. Missoni was lost with his wife, two friends and two plane crewmen.

Friday 18 October 2013

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/5be8f238601b454abc767c992b8a2017/LT-Venezuela-Plane-Missoni

Laos plane crash: Foreign assistance called in as authorities struggle to find victims' bodies

The authorities in Laos are struggling to locate the fuselage of a downed plane and more than 20 bodies still unaccounted for following a crash earlier this week when an aircraft crashed in the Mekong river in bad weather.

Experts from a number of other countries are on their way to the south-east Asian country to offer assistance after officials there expressed frustration over their inability to locate the wreckage and the missing bodies.

“It’s very difficult to find [bodies] under water,” Lao’s transport minister, Sommad Pholsena, told reporters, according to the Associated Press. “If we could find [the plane], we would have found it already.”

By Friday afternoon, 27 bodies had been recovered from the river. But rescue workers had still been unable to find the wreckage containing the flight data recorder. That will be crucial to understanding why the virtually new Lao Airlines ATR-72 turboprop crashed.

The crash happened on Wednesday afternoon as the plane prepared to land in stormy weather at Pakse airport in southern Laos. All 49 people on board, more than half of whom were foreigners, are presumed dead. The plane had set off from Vientiane, the capital.

Experts from France, Singapore and Thailand are expected to arrive in Laos over the coming days to help with forensics and locating the flight data recorder.

Witnesses interviewed on LTV, Lao national television, described a heavy storm and dark skies when the accident happened at around 4pm. One man said he heard a thundering noise overhead and looked up to see a plane shaking violently as it flew through the tops of trees. “It looked like it was bouncing in the sky,” he said. “Then the plane came lower and lower. Then there was an explosion and ‘Boom’.” The plane is believed to have then skidded from land into the water and sunk. According to the airline, 44 passengers and five crew were on the flight. The passengers included 16 Lao nationals, seven French, six Australians, five Thais, three Koreans, three Vietnamese and one person each from China, Malaysia, Taiwan and the United States. Friday 18 October 2013 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/laos-plane-crash-foreign-assistance-called-in-as-authorities-struggle-to-find-victims-bodies-8889398.html

More mobile phones mean fewer deaths from natural disasters

Fewer people were killed or affected by natural disasters than in any other year in the past decade, according to a report (pdf) released Oct. 17. In 2012, some 15,706 died, compared to 37,907 in 2011 or almost 304,474 casualties in 2010, according to the International Federation of Red Cross, IFRC, and Red Crescent Societies.

The smaller death toll is in part because last year didn’t see brutal disasters like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that left over 230,000 dead in South and Southeast Asia, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008, or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, each of which killed over 100,000. But we can also thank cell phones for last year’s smaller disaster-related death toll, according to the IFRC report.

In the Philippines, for example, which is struck by about 20 typhoons a year and whose population is scattered over thousands of archipelagos, mobile phones have been especially helpful. (Today, the number of cell phone subscriptions outnumber people.) The country has set up a surveillance system to send disaster damage reports and other data to emergency health officials via text messages. Before Typhoon Bopha—a category 5 super typhoon with winds of 280 km/h (175 mph) landed last year, authorities were able to evacuate some 41,000 citizens as well as quickly rescue people after the storm struck, thanks to cell phones and other communication technology. Even though Bopha was the most powerful storm the country had experienced up to that point, its death toll is behind that of eight other storms that hit before 2012. So far this year, 11 people have been killed during the worst typhoon of the year.

The idea of “humanitarian technology” has been picking up steam over the past few years. There are 6.8 billion mobile phone subscribers in the world. And if proper planning is in place cell phones in particular could be one of the most effective means for authorities and rescue staff to communicate with the public during emergencies and natural disasters. (One caveat is that after disasters hit, communication infrastructure, including cell phone towers, is often knocked out of service.) Earlier this month, mobile phones helped relief workers in India coordinate one of the country’s largest evacuation efforts ever and helped citizens dodge the worst of Cyclone Phailin.

There’s room for more use of mobile phones in rural areas where people traditionally get their news from their neighbours and relatives. As more people in rural regions as well as in developing countries subscribe to cheap cell plans, they can get disaster and safety information directly and quickly. Moreover, locals—in both rural and urban areas—are usually responsible for the bulk of the rescue efforts during the first critical hours after a natural disaster. These de facto first responders would be further helped with phones that help them reach or consult with health workers and aid agencies.

Friday 18 October 2013

http://qz.com/136684/more-mobile-phones-mean-fewer-deaths-from-natural-disasters/

More bodies recovered in quake-hit provinces; deaths at 173

Two more bodies were recovered in the quake-hit provinces of Bohol and Cebu on Friday, increasing the death toll from Tuesday's powerful quake to 173.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) said that as of 4 p.m., authorities retrieved a body in Toledo City in Cebu and another body in Bohol.

A total of 19 people remained missing while the injured victims substantially increased from 375 to 498.

The NDRRCM also estimated the cost of damage to infrastructure in Cebu and Bohol at P549.85 million.

A total of 676,065 families or 3.4 million people in Bohol, Cebu and Siquijor were affected by the powerful earthquake. Of the total affected, 162,566 people are displaced from their homes.

More than 19,000 houses were damaged in Cebu and Bohol. NDRRMC said that the quake's damage to infrastructure was at P563.6 million.

Friday 18 October 2013

http://www.philstar.com/nation/2013/10/18/1246663/2-more-bodies-recovered-quake-hit-provinces-deaths-173

EULEX to launch examination at the possible mass grave site in Rudnica

EULEX experts from the Forensic Medicine Department and representative of the Serbian government launched the examination at the site suspected to hold a mass grave from the period of conflicts in Kosovo.

The site of the potential mass grave is situated in Rudnica stone pit, municipality of Raska, the EULEX information service released on Thursday.

The examination was launched in the presence of Serbian authorities, the Serbian government Commission for people gone mission in Kosovo, the government Missing Persons Committee, the International Committee of the Red Cross and UNMIK representatives.

Chief of EULEX forensic medicine experts Alan Robinson said that after comprehensive talks with relevant bodies, the authorities decided to conduct the examination in several stages.

He said that examination of the first and the most likely site of the potential mass grave was set as the priority in the first stage.

Certain parts of the Rudnica stone pit were examined in 2007, and later in 2010 and 2011.

It is impossible to foresee the time necessary for examination of the site, Robinson said and noted that the first potential site will at first be examined in the course of five days and if human remains are found, the operation would expand considerably, EULEX said in a release.

Friday 18 October 2013

http://inserbia.info/news/2013/10/eulex-to-launch-examination-at-the-possible-mass-grave-site-in-rudnica/

Ghost ship Nina: Missing for four months in the vastness of the Pacific, with seven crew presumed dead, is this faint satellite image a glimmer of hope?

Blurry satellite images of what appears to be a ship drifting in the Pacific Ocean have raised faint hopes that seven crew members, missing since their yacht disappeared off New Zealand four months ago, may be alive.

Mystery has shrouded the fate of the Nina, a mahogany schooner which vanished after sailing into a severe storm in June. No trace of it was found during a search of more than half a million square nautical miles of the Pacific. The last word from the boat was an undelivered text message reporting: “Sails shredded last night.”

Relatives of the crew – six Americans, including David Dyche, the Nina’s owner and skipper, and 35-year-old Matt Wootton, from Orpington, Kent – say the object in the satellite images is the same size and shape as the 21-metre Nina. A private search and rescue company recruited by the families, Texas EquuSearch, is trying to plot its probable course before conducting an aerial search.

“We have never lost hope that the crew of Nina is alive and well, and that they will be rescued,” Robin Wright, whose 18-year-old daughter, Danielle, was on board, told The New Zealand Herald. However, the images gathered by EquuSearch are a month old, and some are sceptical as to whether they really depict the schooner. According to an Auckland-based meteorologist, Bob McDavitt, the area – about 200 kilometres west of Norfolk Island – is traversed by a vessel at least every other day. Even if the pictures do show the Nina, it may be a wreck – or a ghost ship, with no one left aboard.

The yacht – once the flagship of the New York Yacht Club – left Opua, in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands, on 29 May, headed for Newcastle, north of Sydney. It apparently weathered a storm on 4 June, with Evi Nemeth, a 73-year-old crew member, subsequently reporting the shredded sails.

Ms Nemeth said she would update the Nina’s position six hours later. But no further message was sent. Her undelivered text was released by the satellite phone company Iridium a month later. The boat’s emergency beacon was never activated.

On the day of the storm, Ms Nemeth – in the crew’s last direct contact with the outside world – had sought Mr McDavitt’s advice. The pair spoke by phone, after which she texted him, asking: “ANY UPDATE 4 NINA? … EVI.” That was the last he heard.

Nigel Clifford, the general manager of safety and response services for Maritime New Zealand, has said that while the Nina survived the storm, “very poor weather continued in the area for many hours and… [was] followed by other storms”.

New Zealand authorities have rejected calls by the crew’s families to resume their search. “We feel they are not going to be convinced by a satellite photo until they can see seven people holding their passports up, with their date of birth clearly visible,” said Mr Wootton’s father, Ian. He told the Herald that he and his wife, Sue, had mixed feelings when they first saw the photos. “You get the elation of ‘Yep, this looks like a really good image’. But also the downside of ‘How are you going to find it [the boat] again?’”

One expert, Ralph Baird, told the NY Daily News that the Nina was “a needle in a haystack, and that needle is moving”.

After the Nina disappeared, Russ Rimmington, a New Zealand skipper, claimed that the Nina was unseaworthy, with a warped hull, and that Mr Dyche – whose wife, Rosemary, and son, David, were also on board – refused to carry modern gadgetry.

Mr Rimmington also told Fairfax New Zealand that the Nina would have sunk if it had capsized, because of the lead on its keel.

Friday 18 October 2013

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/ghost-ship-nina-missing-for-four-months-in-the-vastness-of-the-pacific-with-seven-crew-presumed-dead-is-this-faint-satellite-image-a-glimmer-of-hope-8887402.html

How do you tell the difference between a cyclone, a hurricane and a typhoon?

In the past month we have seen Mexico hit by Hurricane Ingrid, India battered by Cyclone Phailin and destruction in Japan from Typhoon Wipha.

It would be easy to then assume that each of these devastating storms represent different types of extreme weather.

In fact they are all descriptions of the same meteorological phenomenon – a rotating mass of air that centres around an area of low pressure, bringing high speed winds, heavy rain and thunder storms.

Hurricanes generally form in the north Atlantic ocean or in the north east Pacific Ocean, with the Caribbean sea being worst effected.

Typhoons develop in the north western part of the Pacific Ocean, affecting south east Asia, the South China Sea and Japan most.

They are both types tropical cyclone, which form over large bodies of relatively warm water in the tropics.

Generally speaking a cyclone is a spiralling body of air and once they reach a certain size and intensity they become designated as hurricanes or typhoons.

Their energy comes from the evaporation of water from the ocean surface that forms clouds high in the atmosphere.

The combination of warm sea surface temperatures, atmospheric instability, high humidity in the troposphere and the Coriolis effect to produce a low pressure centre combine to form such tropical cyclones.

The circulation of warm moist air takes on a circular motion due to the Earth's rotation, rotating clockwise is the Southern hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere.

Eventually this builds until it forms a characteristic cyclone, which when viewed from above looks like a spiral of cloud around a central "eye".

Tropical cyclones typically can stretch several hundred miles in diameter but have been known to be more than 2,500 miles across.

Towards the centre of the storm the strongest thunderstorms and winds circulate while the relatively small cloud free eye is comparatively calm.

They generally have winds that are at least 74 miles per hour but some of the strongest have winds that are sustained around 195 miles per hours.

Hurricanes are classified on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale that classifies wind speed and damage intensity, with one being the weakest and five the most powerful. In 2005 there were four category four hurricanes, including Hurricane Katrina.

Typhoons are also rated on the Saffir-Simpson scale but the Japan Meteorological Agency also uses its own Typhoon scale.

In general there are around 10-15 hurricanes a year while there are up to 30 typhoons a year.

This is because there is no official typhoon season as tropical cyclones form through out the year in the north western Pacific, with June and November being the most intense period.

Hurricanes generally form between June and November. Hurricanes that cross into the western Pacific even become re-designated as typhoons.

The western North Pacific basin has the most intense tropical cyclone activity of any basin.

In 2012, the region saw a busy tropical cyclone season, with 25 events which reached Tropical Storm intensity or higher, according to World Meteorological Organisation.

Tropical storms are named using a standard method laid out by the WMO. Each ocean basin is designated a list of hurricane names for six years.

These names are put forward by the Tropical Cyclone Regional Body for that ocean basin at its annual meeting. There are five of these bodies.

Hurricanes are named using a rotating list of male and female names.

This started with feminine names in the mid 1900s when the mast of a boat named Antje was ripped off by a storm and it became known as Antje's hurricane.

Meteorologists began identifying storms using names from an alphabetically arranged list so the first storm to occur in a year would begin with an A.

By the end of the 1900s forecasters also started using male names for storms forming in the Southern Hemisphere. Now alternating male and female names are used.

Six lists of names are used in rotation in both the North Atlantic and in the north east Pacific.

The names for typhoons are also selected from a list but these are far more complicated.

A set of 140 names are selected by countries that sit around the basin and include names of people, types of animal, plant, words from astrology, places and mythological figures.

They are not alphabetically ordered and are assigned by the Tokyo Typhoon Centre, but they will work sequentially through the list.

According to the list the latest typhoon to emerge has been named Francisco and the next will be called Lekima.

Similarly storms in the Indian Ocean, near Australia, near Fiji, Papau New Guinea and Indonesia all have their own lists of names that are used.

When a storm is deemed to be particularly deadly or costly, its name is deemed to be inappropriate for future use and it is stricken from the list. Another name is selected to replace it.

Infamous storms such as Katrina, Mitch and Tracy are all examples of this.

Friday 18 October 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10385681/How-do-you-tell-the-difference-between-a-cyclone-a-hurricane-and-a-typhoon.html

Croatia exhumes remains of 19 war dead

The Croatian war veterans ministry said on Thursday that the human remains had been exhumed this week in the village of Masicka Sagovina village, near the city of Slavonski Brod.

According to preliminary information, the victims died in 1991, the ministry said.

Representatives of the Serbian government attended the exhumation, the ministry added.

The remains will be transferred to Zagreb for identification.

So far, the remains of 154 war victims have been exhumed in the county of Slavonski Brod.

The remains of 14 previously-exhumed war victims were also identified in Zagreb on Thursday.

Four of then died in the Slavonia region in 1991 and 1992, while eight others died during the Croatian military operation Storm in August 1995, and their remains were exhumed in the Lika, Sibenik and Sisak regions.

After Thursday’s identification, 1,684 people are still missing from the war in Croatia 1991-95.

The issue was a key topic during Croatian President Ivo Josipovic’s meeting with his Serbian counterpart Tomislav Nikolic in Belgrade on Wednesday.

Resolving the problem of wartime missing persons was “a precondition for resolving all issues between Zagreb and Belgrade”, Josipovic said.

Friday 18 October 2013

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/croatia-19-bodies-exhumed-14-identified

New search to solve 1981 plane mystery

It was an icy night on Sunday, August 9, 1981 when a Cessna 210, call sign VH-MDX, went missing over the Barrington Tops with five people on board.

It was on a three hour flight from Coolangatta to Bankstown airport when the Cessna 210M accumulated "a fair amount of ice" over the peaks of the park's mountain ranges.

In his last transmission, pilot Michael Hutchins tells the operator the light aircraft is "at 5000 (feet)".

Then he drops out of contact.

Despite countless searches, the bodies of Hutchins and his four passengers, Rhett Bosler, Noel Wildash, Phillip Pembroke and NSW Police Superintendent Ken Price have never been found.

Fergus Bell was the director of Bushwalker Rescues at the time of the incident and helped organise the original 10-day search mission.

He recalls the occupants of the plane were friends returning from a yachting trip in north Queensland.

Immediately after the incident, he knew there was very little hope of finding the men alive.

"Maybe privately they (rescuers) had hopes of finding survivors but the reality was that ... everything was adding up to a tragedy," he told AAP.

He describes the wind in the region on that icy night as "howling from the west" with snow falling in Barrington.

The area where it disappeared was so remote and rugged it presented an almost impossible task for search teams.

In unpredictable weather conditions they inched their way through thick forest with undergrowth so impenetrable it had to be cut away, risking life and limb as they negotiated steep ridges and plunging ravines.

After a fortnight the search was called off, but over the three decades since then a number of people have continued trying to solve the mystery.

Recent investigations combining flight information and modern mapping software has identified a one by two kilometre area in Barrington Tops National Park as the most likely site of the crash.

This weekend, more than 150 rescue personnel will scour the suspected crash site in a three day, last-ditch attempt to find the lost men.

The operation's commander Superintendent Peter Thurtell has seen how the crash effects those who remember it.

He says over the decades local residents had tried to help the families of the missing people in unofficial searches.

"An old sergeant that recently passed away, he used to go up there in his own time looking," he tells AAP.

"A lot of people never... gave up (despite) not really knowing where to search."

A 1983 aircraft accident investigation report couldn't determine the cause of the accident, but listed "severe turbulence, icing and a failure of the aircraft's primary flight instruments" as probable factors.

Searching for the Cessna wreckage has taken up a significant period of Fergus Bell's adult life.

He says it's a "wonderful mystery," but hopes the families of those on board will one day be able to lay their loved ones to rest.

The search began on Friday.

Friday 18 October 2013

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/19446507/new-search-to-solve-1981-plane-mystery/

More than 30 bodies still missing from Laos plane crash

Officials in Laos say they lack the equipment and manpower to locate the fuselage and more than 30 bodies still unaccounted for two days after a plane crashed and disappeared into the Mekong River.

International experts are arriving later from France, Singapore and Thailand to help with forensics and locating the flight data recorder, which could help explain why the virtually new Lao Airlines ATR-72 turboprop plane crashed.

Lao Airlines flight QV301 crashed on Wednesday as it prepared to land in stormy weather at Pakse Airport in southern Laos. All 49 people on board, more than half of whom were foreigners, are presumed dead.

Only 17 bodies have been found, said Lao transport minister Sommad Pholsena. Relatives of a Chinese victim identified the body today, marking the first identification since the crash.

"It's very difficult to find (bodies) under water," the transport minister told reporters at the crash site. "If we could find (the plane), we would have found it already."

Thailand, which lost five nationals in the crash, is deeply involved in the search, providing skilled manpower that its poorer neighbour lacks.

Thai transport minister Chadchart Sittipunt said the Thai navy initially sent scuba divers but their work was complicated by strong currents, deep water of up to 32ft and poor visibility in the muddy river. He said a Thai forensics team was due to arrive to help identify bodies as well as navy trawlers to sweep the river with nets to try to locate the fuselage.

"We think the plane broke into two pieces. The tail of the plane contains the black box," Mr Chadchart said after meeting his Lao counterpart in Pakse. "It is believed that many bodies of the passengers are still stuck in the plane, or else they would have surfaced on the river."

He said a team of Singaporean experts was flying in with equipment that can help locate the so-called "black box", or flight data recorder that stores technical information from the flight and records pilot conversations.

France's accident investigation agency said in a statement that it was sending four investigators to help Laos with the probe into the cause of the crash. The statement said the team would work with technical advisers from ATR, the French-Italian manufacturer of the aircraft, which said it delivered the plane to Lao Airlines in March.

Friday 18 October 2013

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/more-than-30-bodies-still-missing-from-laos-plane-crash-29670745.html