Monday 16 June 2014

At least 20 die in bus accident in Venezuela


At least 20 people were killed and 10 others injured Monday when a bus ran off the road and struck a tree in the central state of Miranda, Venezuelan authorities said.

"Up to now we have the unfortunate number of 20 people killed and 10 people injured - we're waiting for the list identifying these people," the emergency management services director of Miranda, Victor Lira, said on Union Radio.

Lira said the accident occurred around 4:30 a.m. when the driver of the bus coming from the western city of Barquisimeto lost control and "hit the highway's dividing strip and then collided with a fixed object, a tree," for causes as yet unknown.

He said that fire rescue personnel worked from the early hours of the morning at the scene of the accident, located according to media accounts on the expressway between Caracas and Valencia, to free a number of people who were trapped in the wreckage.

Traffic remained blocked for several hours on the expressway, Venezuela's main east-west route.

This was one of the worst accidents to occur in Venezuela, where a number of collisions with multiple fatalities have taken place in recent years.

In July 2013, 16 people died and 33 were injured when a truck and a bus crashed in the central state of Guarico, while in April 2012 a collision of buses near the eastern city of Barcelona left 14 dead and 22 injured.

Monday 16 June 2014

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2014/06/16/at-least-20-die-in-bus-accident-in-venezuela/

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11 tourists killed, 45 injured in Himachal bus accident


At least 11 tourists were killed and 45 others injured when a private bus skidded off the road and rolled down a gorge in Himachal Pradesh’s Sirmaur district Monday evening, police said.

A majority of the tourists were from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

Officials said the toll could increase as some more passengers might be trapped in the bus wreckage.

The bus carried around 60 tourists and was on its way from Renuka to Paonta Sahib in the hill state.

It met with the accident near Madhara Ghat, some 15 km from Renuka and 50 km from district headquarters Nahan, Assistant Superintendent of Police B.S. Thakur told IANS.

The cause of the accident is yet to be ascertained, he said over phone from the spot.

The injured were admitted to government hospitals in Nahan, Paonta Sahib and Dadhau.

Witnesses said police had a tough time extricating the bodies from the mangled steel of the bus.

Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh expressed shock and grief over the accident and directed the district administration to take all possible measures to rescue the victims and provide them adequate relief.

Monday 16 June 2014

http://odishasuntimes.com/63601/11-tourists-killed-45-injured-himachal-bus-accident/

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17 more skeletons found near Kedarnath valley

A special task force (STF), comprising 22 members, recovered 17 more skeletons from the Jungle Chatti and Rambara forest areas near the Kedarnath valley in Rudrapryag district on Sunday, just four days after 17 were recovered.

The team, led by DIG G S Martolia and Ajay Kotiyal from the Uttarkashi-based Nehru Mountaineering Institute, recovered nine skeletons from the Jungle Chatti area and eight from the Rambara area. They are believed to be of people who panicked and ran to higher regions for refuge during the flash floods in June last year.

The intensive combing operation was launched on Wednesday.

Members of the STF told TOI since the exact number of those who went missing and were killed during the disaster could not be ascertained, the possibility of recovering even more skeletons from the forest areas between Gaurikund to Kedarnath cannot be ruled out. "Our combing operation is on and will continue till all skeletons are found," said DIG G S Martolia.

An STF officer added that the skeletons were cremated after their teeth were sent to the Dehradun forensic laboratory for DNA and other related tests to ascertain their identities.

Meanwhile, the Congress-led Harish Rawat government in the state has constituted an 18-member combined task force, headed by IPS officer Sanjay Gunjyal, to intensify efforts through a 20-day long search operation for more skeletons in the region. "This new task force will help recover more skeletons from the region within the next couple of days," said chief secretary Subhash Kumar.

A combined search team had recovered about 350 rotten bodies from places in high altitudes two months after the catastrophe in the Kedarnath valley in mid-June last year. The bodies were cremated post DNA tests.

Monday 16 June 2014

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/17-more-skeletons-found-near-Kedarnath-valley/articleshow/36619114.cms

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The many would-be immigrants missing in the Mediterranean Sea


Every year tens of thousands of people leave poor, war-torn countries to seek better fortunes in Europe. Many risk dangerous sea voyages for the chance to improve their lives, but a huge percentage die as a result.

The number of fatalities is horrific enough, but what’s even worse is that their bodies are often not recovered.

Some who are trying to reach Europe from Africa, the Middle East or Asia do so by land via Turkey, but the majority braves the waters, often with deadly consequences.

Between 2000 and 2013, an estimated 23,000 men, women and children died trying to reach the continent. Most were drowning victims.

That number of fatalities is horrific enough, but what’s even worse is that their bodies are often not recovered, their deaths go undocumented and their families are never notified.

Journalists and activists alarmed by the trend formed a team to conduct the broadest study to date on migration deaths, gathering data and cross-referencing public and non-governmental records. The result? “The Migrant Files,” an interactive online database and map that detail Europe-bound migrant deaths.

And the trend is growing more deadly each year. According to Danielle Grasso, who worked on “The Migrant Files,” one out of every 200 people who tried reaching Greece and Turkey by boat in 2010 died — and by 2012, the number had jumped to one out of every 30 people. Stronger anti-immigration policies in Europe, coupled with tighter land border controls between Greece and Turkey, have helped boost the popularity of these dangerous sea routes.

Despite the high human cost, this issue only grabs headlines if a large boat sinks as it did last October, when 360 would-be emigrants perished off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost territory.

The waters surrounding this small island have seen nearly 4,500 hundred deaths since 2000. Locals are making great efforts to help the thousands who do make it to shore — so much so that Lampedusa was a 2014 Nobel Peace Price nominee for “showing a unique ability to express empathy and solidarity.”

Following the October tragedy, the EU vowed to take action. “The European Union cannot accept that thousands of people die at its borders,” said José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission.

Two months later, the EU launched EUROSUR, a new approach to patrolling Europe’s external borders, focused on intelligence gathering and faster information exchange between agencies, that aims to stem the tide of illegal immigrants while “reducing the death toll by rescuing more lives at sea.”

So far, no member state or European body has come up with a way to quantify the exact number of migrants killed in transit.

But there’s a clear tension between the EU’s vow to save lives and its commitment to stop the flow of people. After all, strong border control is partly what pushes migrants to risk their lives at sea in the first place.

So far, no member state or European body has come up with a way to quantify the exact number of migrants killed in transit. Frontex, the European agency in charge of border control, collects statistics on “lives saved” by European rescue missions — but not on lives lost.

Countries of origin are also trying to stop their citizens from embarking on perilous journeys by coordinating with Europe. At a recent EU-Africa summit, European and African leaders drew up a plan to facilitate legal immigration, promote economic development and fight the traffickers.

While both continents do what they can to stem the tide of people setting off on treacherous journeys, thousands of families in countries like Morocco, Syria, Senegal and Nigeria will forever wonder whether their loved ones found better lives in Europe — or died trying.

Monday 16 June 2014

http://www.ozy.com/acumen/the-many-would-be-immigrants-missing-in-the-mediterranean-sea/32039.article

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High-tech equipment fails to locate missing bodies in Beas


The massive search operations to trace bodies of Hyderabad engineering students yielded no result on Sunday, even as high-tech echo sounder device and remote sensing equipments were used to scan the Beas riverbed. The search operation began at 6am.

The rescue teams deployed a sides can SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging) to capture the images of the riverbed.

“The device showed good images but no bodies could be located,” said Jaideep Singh, commandant national disaster response force (NDRF), adding, the bodies were probably buried under thick layer of silt.

Lt Comnd of Indian Navy Hydrographers Bhoj Raj and PO Ratheesh scanned a stretch of 10 km from Pandoh Dam to the upstream using the device. The device was able to locate two carcasses but they were of some animals.

The search operation was carried out in two phases, scanning 5 km stretch each time. The rescue teams involving over 600 personnel of NDRF, Shastra Seema Bal (SSB), Indo- Tibet Border Police (ITBP), Navy, Army and state police had recovered eight bodies in the first four days of the search operation.

However, there is no significant headway since then as no bodies have been traced in the last three days. A special search operation to trace the bodies by drying up the Beas, by closing the sluice gates of Larji and Parbati- III power project on Saturday, also proved unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, a seven members team of Banglore- based Geokno India Private Ltd, led by manager Sunder Raj, also joined the search operation and had deployed its underwater light detection and ranging (LiDAR) to trace the bodies.

The team has scanned more than 5-km stretch from Pandoh reservoir to upstream to get the images of the riverbed and the data collected would be analysed later.

At least 25 persons, including students of Hyderabadbased engineering college were swept away in the Beas River at Thalout near Mandi on June 8.

Monday 16 June 2014

http://www.hindustantimes.com/punjab/chandigarh/high-tech-equipment-fails-to-locate-missing-bodies-in-beas/article1-1229924.aspx

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