Mine collapse toll in CAR rises to 62

The number of people killed when a gold mine in the Central African Republic caved in at the weekend has risen to 62, local officials said on Friday.

The previous toll from the disaster, which occurred on Sunday when a mudslide destroyed a pit at Ndassima in the centre of the highly unstable, landlocked country, stood at 52.

"In all, 62 people died in this drama. Thirty-seven bodies were able to be brought out ... but at least 27 people have been reported missing to date, according to checks and queries made to relatives and friends," a source in the Ouaka district administration said.

The people who have vanished "have remained under the soil at an inaccessible depth. The search has been called off. Relatives who have not seen their loved ones cannot be assured of finding them alive," the source added.

"The entire population of the Ouaka region is in mourning. People can't stop crying. Just imagine, seven members of a same family perished. It is a real tragedy," Didier Ouangai, mayor of the nearby provincial capital of Bambari, said on Wednesday.

Last Sunday, the president's office in Bangui said that the collapse of the pit was brought about by heavy rain. The new head of state, Michel Djotodia, on Tuesday declared three days of mourning throughout the country.

The gold reserves at the Ndassima mine are estimated at about 3.6 million ounces, worth some 4.2 billion dollars at current market value.

The site, initially exploited by Aurafrique, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Axmin, was closed by the CAR government in 2009 on the grounds of "a general opacity to the detriment of the national interest".

Rebels of the Seleka coalition, whose key leaders included Djotodia, took control of operations at the mine during an offensive launched in January. In March, they toppled president Francois Bozize and seized power in Bangui.

The gold and diamond mining sectors are key to the economy of the country. The diamond business provides directly and indirectly for about a quarter of the population of some 4.5 million.

The infrastructure is rudimentary, however, and the CAR has remained one of the world's poorest and least developed countries despite its mineral wealth.

Saturday 29 June 2013

http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/Mine-collapse-toll-in-CAR-rises-to-62-20130628

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Lab will identify Hammerl’s remains

The family of slain Saturday Star photographer Anton Hammerl are hopeful that his remains will be identified by a Sarajevo DNA laboratory which has set out to identify the remains of some of the thousands of people who are missing after years of conflict in Libya.

This week the laboratory, run by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), which, through its work in the Balkans, has become a world leader in the field, has generated more than 100 DNA matches since the fall of the regime of slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

According to the Scotsman.com, the DNA matches have been made from bone and blood samples submitted to the ICMP by the new Libyan authorities.

Hammerl was shot and killed by troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi outside of Brega on April 5, 2011 while covering the civil war in Libya.

After his death, Hammerl’s family was led to believe by the Gaddafi regime that he was alive and safe but held in detention in Libya.

His family learnt about his death on May 19 after the release of a group of journalists who had been with Hammerl when he was killed.

According to media reports, on the morning of April 5, 2011, three other reporters were attacked by Libyan soldiers who shot at them in a remote desert location outside Brega.

These included two Americans – James Foley, a freelance reporter and regular contributor to the Global Post, and Clare Morgana Gillis, a freelance reporter – as well as Spanish photographer Manu Brabo.

When the shooting started, Foley and Gillis both heard Hammerl yell out, “Help!” Hammerl was killed and the other three journalists were beaten by the pro-Gaddafi forces and then taken as their prisoners.

In November last year, the ICMP and the Libyan government signed an agreement to co-operate on missing persons cases from the recent conflicts, as well as from Gaddafi’s 42-year regime. So far, 115 DNA matches have been made.

The blood and bone samples are from the notorious case of the Bin Jawad mass grave, in which about 170 bodies were found in December 2011.

The ICMP compared the DNA profiles of post-mortem samples with blood samples obtained from families of the missing.

The Libyan authorities will now inform the families of the missing that their relatives have been identified and legally close the cases.

Although Hammerl’s family had not yet received news about his remains this week, his wife, Penny Sukhraj, is hopeful.

ICMP’s director-general, Kathryne Bomberger, said the ICMP was committed to assisting the Libyan government in continuing to develop its capability to address this painful issue.

“As we do so, we are also assisting them through using our capacity to conduct high-throughput DNA identification testing to assist in resolving large numbers of missing persons cases.

“We hope that by expediting this process, we will bring long-awaited answers to families of the missing who have waited to learn the fate of their loved ones,” said Bomberger.

Jibril Hamed, who is in charge of the identification process at the Ministry for the Affairs of Families of Martyrs and Missing Persons, said that there could be up to 10 000 people missing in Libya – from the recent conflict, as well as those missing from the 1977 war with Egypt, the 1978 war with Uganda, the 1980-1987 wars with Chad and the 1996 Abu Salim Prison massacre.

Saturday 29 June 2013

http://www.thepost.co.za/lab-will-identify-hammerl-s-remains-1.1539481#.Uc8oSjRzA34

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1,000 still missing in ‘Himalayan Tsunami’

At least 1,000 people remain missing almost two weeks after devastating floods struck India's Himalayan region, killing hundreds and leaving tens of thousands of people in need of aid and rehabilitation, a government official said on Friday.

Dubbed a "Himalayan Tsunami" by the Indian media due to the torrents of water that gushed through Uttarakhand, the floods and landslides swept away buildings and bridges and buried roads. The state government revised down the estimated death toll to 580.

Many inland areas, scattered with remote mountain villages, have been cut off. International charities warn the number of deaths and the extent of the devastation are likely to be much greater once roads are cleared and affected areas become accessible.

"We still do not have an exact figure on the missing. So far it appears to be around 1,000 but that figure could likely go up," Bhaskar Anand, secretary of Uttarakhand's Disaster Management Agency, told Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone.

The region is a popular Hindu pilgrimage destination due to its four temple towns of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri, which make up the site called "Char Dham Yatra", attracting tens of thousands of devotees from all over India and abroad during the peak summer months.

Army and air force personnel rescuing stranded Hindu pilgrims said they hoped to end the mammoth evacuation in the next few days, weather permitting. They will then shift their focus to relief work, clearing roads and pathways and rebuilding infrastructure.

Over 100,000 mainly Indian pilgrims have been evacuated by land and air since heavy pre-monsoon rains triggered floods and landslides on June 15 and 16. Some local media organisations say the operation is the biggest evacuation in India's modern history.

"The information that we are getting is that between 2,000 to 3,000 pilgrims remain to be evacuated," Group Captain Sundeep Mehta, an Indian Air Force spokesman stationed at an air base in Gauchar town, said in a telephone interview.

"The weather here has meant that not many helicopters can take off today, but those survivors that are able are being taken down by foot."

Search for Missing

Local television channels have been running tickers with helpline numbers for relatives searching for their loved ones.

Families from different parts of the country, whose relatives had gone on the pilgrimage, told reporters they had not heard from them since the deluge started as phone lines were down.

Posters with pictures of missing people have been put up on public notice boards across Uttarakhand and local government websites showed photographs of unidentified corpses recovered from the disaster zone.

A medical expert stationed in the temple town of Kedarnath, one of the worst affected areas, told Thomson Reuters Foundation he and his colleagues were trying to identify and dispose of bodies through mass cremations in line with Hindu last rites - an arduous task.

Many bodies could not be photographed due to the extent of decomposition, while others had heads severed or were badly mutilated, he said. Officials were collecting samples of skin and hair to be used later for DNA matching with family members searching for their missing relatives.

The Times of India on Friday reported that 26 bodies had been found downstream in rivers in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh, believed to have been carried there by flood waters.

Charity ActionAid India, which has been distributing relief in the districts of Rudraprayag, Chamoli and Tehri, said initial assessments pointed to a final death toll of as many as 5,000 people.

Approximately 300,000 people have had their lives disrupted by the floods, 50,000 have been displaced from their homes and around 10,000 people have been injured, it added in a statement.

"The priority for ActionAid and partners remains helping the families search, locate and file missing persons' reports and provide immediate relief in the form of food packets to communities," said ActionAid India's Barsha Chakraborty.

Saturday 29 June 2013

http://bdnews24.com/world/2013/06/29/1000-still-missing-in-himalayan-tsunami

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Relatives identify missing loved ones at display

Sisters Sangita Jadhav and Asmita Yadav spent almost two years searching for their brother Deepak Zende, who had been missing since September 2011. Their search met a tragic end on Friday when they found Zende's photograph among the thousands of photographs displayed by the Pune police on the premises of the police headquarters in Shivajinagar.

The Pune police organized a display of as many as 2,227 photographs of unclaimed bodies and murder victims who remain undetected. Besides the sisters, four more people found their missing relatives were able to ascertain the identities of their relatives through the photographs at the display.

Relatives of the missing persons kept coming to the headquarters since morning and anxiously went through the photographs. One of them was 72-year-old Salima Siddiqui.

She had come to the police headquarters to look for her 40-year-old daughter, Nasreen Siddiqui, who is missing for the last two years. "I have checked the photographs displayed by the Pune police as well as those put up at police stations in other cities. But, I could not find her," Salima said. adding, "We are searching for her since she went missing."

Asmita Yadav said, she and her sister were tirelessly searching for their brother Deepak, who was missing since September 15, 2011.

"It is very painful for us is that we came to know that our brother is no more. That, too, on a day when we are performing rituals marking the completion of three months of our father's demise,after our father's death"she said.

Yadav said that while checking the photographs in the display all of sudden she noticed the picture of her brother. She further said, "I was shocked to see the picture of my brother at the display. We will not be able to even perform his last rites as his body has already been disposed of as it was unclaimed. We are now informing our relatives that Deepak is no more."

Rajendra Bhamare, assistant commissioner of police (crime), said as per the directives of the director general of police Sanjeev Dayal, the city police arranged the display of the photographs of persons found dead without any claimants for the bodies and undetected murders.

"Along with the city police, the photographs obtained from the Pune rural police, Ahmednagar police, Satara police and the government railway police were also display," Bhamare said.

He said the Pune police displayed 155 photographs, which included 126 people found dead and 29 photographs of undetected murders, which took place between 2008 and 2013.

The Pune rural police have sent 182 photographs; Satara police, 99 and the Ahmednagar police, 24 for the display. The government railway police have sent 1,767 photographs," Bhamare added.

He said the police received huge response from the people.Since morning the people have started visiting the display.

"We have asked all the police stations in the city to send their data of such persons for the display. Apart from that, we have also sent detailed information about the display to all the complainants, who have lodged the missing person's complaints with the police stations," Bhamare added.

Bhamare said he had maintained a register of such persons, when he was in charge of the social security cell. "We have also kept the register at the display," he added.

Bhamare said along with Deepak Zende (35), the identities of Rameshchandra Karva (50), Satish Pardeshi (40), Shivaji Pawar (60) and Ganpat Kamble (81) were also ascertained by their relatives. "We are expecting more people to visit the display on Saturday," Bhamare said. The display will be open on Saturday between 12 pm to 5 pm.

Saturday 29 June 2013

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/Relatives-identify-missing-loved-ones-at-display/articleshow/20825990.cms

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Mass graves of babies scandalize Greece

The unresolved issue of mass graves of babies has made Kaliopi Spanou, Ombudsman in Athens, file a complaint against the administration of Athens cemetery. In 2008, the Ombudsman had prepared a special report on the status and management of the cemetery, but nothing had been done until recently to improve the situation as reported by Greek media. Five years ago, Spanou paid particular attention to the mass burial of babies by cemetery authorities.

She was aware of the problem after the parents of a deceased baby informed that the Athens municipal cemetery authorities had refused to perform the exhumation of the remains of their child. The inspection has made it clear that the cemetery authorities bury all remains of babies in a common grave and cannot carry out the exhumation of a specific child because they do not know to which child the remains belong.

In 2009, the Ministry of Health issued a decree stipulating that deceased babies should be treated like deceased adults and that there should be a separate grave/urn for each of them, indicating the child’s name and surname. "The bodies of babies should be buried separately with all the identifying marks provided by the law for adults, after the issuance of a personalized registration," stipulates the ministerial decree.

The Ombudsman's inspection shows that not only has the right of individual burial been violated but also that the legal procedures as regards the issuance of a permit for a burial place where the remains of the small bodies can be laid have not been met. The investigation of the particular case of which Spanou had been informed found the remains of the buried baby but their exhumation was impossible because the remains of other buried babies would have been removed as well.

The supervising authority has made strict recommendations as regards the procedures which henceforth are to be applied. The municipal services have accepted these observations and the official information indicates that this practice will be over. It is not yet clear whether the municipal cemetery in Athens will suffer some sort of punishment for the creation of unregulated mass graves of babies.

Friday 28 June 2013

http://www.grreporter.info/en/mass_graves_babies_scandalize_greece/9502

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'Go slow on last rites, bodies don't spread disease'

A group of senior scientists from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) has warned the Uttarakhand government, under pressure to finish mass cremations at Kedarnath, against the consequences of burning piled up bodies without a thought to "psychological closure".

TISS's Dr Ravikant Singh, said it's "important" to first try and identify the bodies. "There are the clothes victims have on them. There would be cellphones they've used. Kin need to know if their loved ones have really died," Singh said. "Otherwise, they'll keep hoping that someday the door will open and people they have assumed to be missing — in the absence of concrete evidence of their death — will walk in. There needs to be psychological closure. Else, it might lead to lifelong trauma and hallucinations. What's happening at Kedarnath is wrong."

The doctors said governments often justify mass cremations after natural disasters in the name of diseases bodies spread. "But there are myths that need to be broken," Singh said. "Bodies don't cause epidemics. And have negligible health risks for the public as long as they don't touch or handle dead bodies. Smell is not a health risk in well-ventilated area."

In something that the ITBP hinted at when its DG Ajay Chadda told the Uttarakhand government that "burial of bodies is not in our charter of duties", the scientists said the urgent task is care for survivors. The doctors, who were here first on June 20 and readying a second batch of scientists to reach Uttarakhand, said rapid mass burial of victims is not justified on public health grounds.

Though this might be controversial, the scientists, who said no one was listening to them, have come armed with a presentation for the state that says burial is preferable to cremation. The burial site should be 1.5m deep, at least 200m from drinking water sources, with bodies side by side and not piled up, and with clearly marked spaces for each. "Seeing the body and being able to say goodbye allows an emotional closure," one doctor said.

The recommendations are in keeping with a Pan American Health Organization report of 2004 that has its director Mirta Roses Periago noting: "Regrettably, we continue to be witness to the use of common graves and mass cremations owing to the myths and beliefs that corpses pose a high risk for epidemics."

Friday 28 June 2013

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Go-slow-on-last-rites-bodies-dont-spread-disease/articleshow/20808832.cms

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Death toll rises to 52 after Ndassima mine collapse

The number of people killed when a gold mine in the Central African Republic collapsed at the weekend rose to 52, local officials said.

The previous toll for the disaster, which occurred on Sunday when a landslide destroyed a pit in Ndassima in the centre of the country, stood at 37.

"From the figure of 37 dead on the day of the tragedy, we now have a count of 52 bodies recovered," Didier Ouangai, mayor of the nearby city of Bambari, told AFP.

"The entire population of the Ouaka region is mourning. People can't stop crying. Just imagine, seven members of a same family perished. It is a real tragedy," he said.

Another local official said it was feared the toll could rise even further since 64 miners were known to have been working in the pit, at a depth of around 18m, when the landslide struck.

"We are using moto taxis to transfer the bodies to their families in Bambari," said Jules Gatien Wenceslas Zengagba, a young gold miner taking part in the search effort.

"As soon as this rain-induced collapse happened, it was clear there would be no survivors. In some cases, we retrieved severed heads, this is how we tallied up the casualties," said Mahamat Saleh Ndomakossi, a local official.

The government has declared three days of national mourning from Tuesday.

The gold and diamond mining sectors are key to the economy of the highly unstable, landlocked nation. The diamond business provides directly and indirectly for about a quarter of the population of some 4.5 million.

The infrastructure is rudimentary however, and the Central African Republic has remained one of the world's poorest and least developed countries despite its mineral wealth.

Ndassima lies in territory controlled by former rebels of the Seleka alliance, who ousted president Francois Bozize in March.

Friday 28 June 2013

http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/CAR-gold-mine-collapse-toll-hits-52-20130627

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No DNA samples, chopper crash victims hard to identify

The bodies of 17 out of 20 IAF, ITBP and NDRF personnel who were killed in Tuesday's helicopter crash are badly mutilated and burnt, and they are still lying at the accident site near Kedarnath, officials said on Wednesday. They said the bodies were beyond recognition and they were in a fix on how to hand them over to the families for cremation as they do not have any previously preserved DNA samples to match with.

Rescue teams are waiting for the weather to improve on Wednesday, when they will fly the bodies to Guptakashi one by one on a smaller helicopter.

"Within 15-20 minutes they would have reached the base at Gauchar. After spending almost a week at Kedarnath under extreme conditions they were finally returning when the helicopter crashed. I did not speak to them but they must have been really happy and excited to return," said Ajay Chaddha, DG ITBP.

Of the 20 men who were killed six belonged to ITBP. The other nine NDRF men who died were also from ITBP and were on deputation.

The next challenge for the officials was to identify the dead. "All of them were in uniform and their bodies are badly burnt. We will preserve the DNA samples but the real challenge would be to hand over the body to the concerned family. As we do not have previous DNA samples stored with us we can match it only with that of the family members, which is a time consuming process," said a senior official. "We will look for some other identification like a ring, chain or any other thing." At least 11 of those killed were aged between 22 and 32.

As of now, 26 ITBP and 60 NDRF personnel were still posted in the Kedarnath, Gaurikund areas. Chaddha said they would be asked to return only after the weather improves.

Friday 28 June 2013

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/uttarakhand-no-dna-samples-chopper-crash-victims-hard-to-identify/1134467/

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Authorities cremate hundreds of flood victims in northern Indian state of Uttarakhand

Authorities in India on Thursday conducted mass cremations of hundreds of people who were killed by devastating floods and landslides that struck Uttarakhand nearly two weeks ago.

Army helicopters flew Hindu priests to the worst-hit town of Kedarnath in Uttarakhand to conduct funeral prayers before the cremations of nearly 300 bodies that were found buried in silt near the town’s main temple.

State government spokesman Amit Chandola said that authorities had airlifted tons of logs for the cremations, but that the funerals were delayed by intermittent rain. Eighteen bodies were cremated Wednesday before the rain, he said.

With the skies clearing up Thursday, the cremations resumed.

Before being cremated, each body was photographed and DNA samples were collected, Chandola said.

Kedarnath, one of four temple towns in Uttarakhand, is part of a popular Hindu pilgrimage route. Most devout Hindus make the pilgrimage at least once in their lives, and hundreds of thousands of people visit the temples during the summer before the onset of the monsoon season. This year, however, they were caught in early rains in mid-June that led to torrential floods and landslides in the Himalayan region.

India steps up grim search for bodies in flood zone

Rescue workers stepped up the search for bodies Thursday in India’s flood-ravaged north and mass cremations took place as fears grew over outbreaks of disease, officials and reports said.

More than 100,000 mainly pilgrims and tourists have been evacuated from the disaster zone while some 4,000 remain in relief camps after the flash floods and landslides that hit the state of Uttarakhand on June 15.

Rivers swollen by monsoon rains have swept away houses, buildings and entire villages in the Himalayan state, which was packed with tourists and pilgrims travelling to Hindu shrines.

Around 1,000 people have died, the state government has told AFP, although officials have warned the death toll could rise as more victims are found.

Persistent bad weather is hampering evacuations from the relief camps, officials said, and their focus is increasingly on recovering bodies to prevent the spread of disease.

“The remaining people will be evacuated as and when the weather clears,” a senior officer overseeing rescue operations told AFP.

“The bigger worry is finding the scores of dead bodies that may be still buried under debris,” said the officer, who did not want to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Health officials have warned locals against drinking river water on concerns of contamination from rotting bodies.

Six bodies were found floating in the Ganges in Allahabad on Wednesday, some 650 kilometres (404 miles) downstream from Kedarnath, according to reports, highlighting the difficulty of locating all those who perished.

Rescue workers are clearing away large amounts of debris and scouring remote areas for victims. More than 1,000 bridges have been damaged along with roads, cutting off villages and towns.

A team of police, doctors and firemen has been deployed to the worst-hit Hindu temple area of Kedarnath Valley to recover bodies there, the officer said from the state capital Dehradun.

All survivors in that area have already been picked up. “They are carrying saws, plate-cutters and also saline water which is needed to preserve body parts,” the officer said.

The team includes mountaineers to retrieve bodies found in the jungle, valleys and gorges, and help carry them out on foot, as well as photographers who will send pictures to the police to speed up the identification process.

DNA samples from the bodies are being taken before cremation and are being preserved by the authorities, officials said.

The search for bodies and the cremations came as villagers accused authorities of ignoring the needs of local residents and instead focusing rescue and relief efforts on visiting pilgrims and tourists. “There were 67 houses in our Chandrapuri village out of which 63 were washed away by the Mandikini river,” Birendra Singh, a former army officer, told AFP at a relief camp in Dehradun.

Friday 28 June 2013

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013%5C06%5C28%5Cstory_28-6-2013_pg14_4

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Venezuela: Italy fashion CEO Missoni’s missing plane found; disappeared in January

The underwater wreckage of a plane that disappeared off Venezuela with the CEO of Italy’s iconic Missoni fashion house and five other people on board has been found, government officials and family members said Thursday.

Jorge Galindo, press chief for Venezuela’s Interior and Justice Ministry, said via Twitter that the aircraft has the tail number YV2615 and went missing Jan. 4.

The ID and date correspond to the plane that disappeared over open water near the Los Roques archipelago while carrying 58-year-old Vittorio Missoni; his longtime companion, Maurizia Castiglioni; two of their Italian friends, and two Venezuelan crew members.

A month later, two pieces of luggage from the plane washed up on the tiny island of Bonaire.

Italy’s Foreign Ministry said that the plane was found at a depth of 230 feet (70 meters) and had broken into pieces, but that there was certainty it was the Missoni plane because the tail number was legible.

Missoni’s family in Italy issued a statement thanking both governments for their support and expressing confidence that an investigation will determine what caused the crash.

“The possible recovery of the aircraft is being evaluated at this moment in Venezuela, “ the statement said.

It added that the plane was identified on the fifth day of a search thanks to the oceanographic technology of a U.S. ship.

Last week, Venezuelan authorities announced that they had found the undersea wreckage of another small plane missing since 2008 near Los Roques.

That discovery was made with the help of a U.S. boat that was also going to search for Missoni’s plane in the same area.

The Missoni fashion line has continued to show new collections, including menswear summer 2014 over the weekend in Milan as it marks its 60th anniversary, but it has been far from a celebratory year.

Since Missoni’s disappearance, his father, Ottavio Missoni, the family-run company’s patriarch, died.

Thursday 27 June 2013

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/venezuela-italy-fashion-ceo-missonis-missing-plane-found-disappeared-in-january-carrying-5/2013/06/27/2c9a4276-df3f-11e2-8cf3-35c1113cfcc5_story.html

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Historic Schooner Nina and crew of seven missing off New Zealand

A text message asking for advice about sailing on in bad weather was the last communication from missing schooner, Nina.

The message was sent to a meteorologist on June 4, six days into its voyage from Opua in the Bay of Islands for Newcastle, Australia, and about 370 nautical miles west-northwest of Cape Reinga.

The 21-metre Nina, built in 1928 and described as a beautiful, race-winning vessel, set out on May 29.

Maritime New Zealand has grave concerns for the seven crew members, saying the journey was expected to take 12 days.

Six Americans - three men aged 17, 28, and 58, three women aged 18, 60, and 73 - and one 35-year-old British man were on board.

Their experience ranged from a professional sailor and the captain, to another man on the boat who had no boating experience, said Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand's (RCCNZ) Kevin Banaghan.

RCCNZ was contacted by concerned family and friends and started a "communications search" on June 14.

No sign of the vessel was reported by any other vessel in the area.

Nina was equipped with a satellite phone, a spot beacon which allowed regular tracking signals to be sent manually, and an emergency beacon. The beacon had not been activated.

Banaghan said a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion had also been sent out and completed two extensive searches.

On June 25 a search area of 160,000 square nautical miles was covered, to the immediate north-north east of New Zealand, based on estimates of where Nina would be if it was disabled and drifting.

Yesterday a search was completed of 324,000 square nautical miles between northern New Zealand and the Australian coast, based on the vessel suffering damage but continuing to make progress towards Australia. No sign of the vessel was found.

"If it did come to grief, it would have been catastrophic and quite quick I imagine," he said.

"The sea conditions at the time were 8 meters and winds gushing to 65 knots so it wouldn't have been pleasant."

The emergency beacon, located in the cabin, was likely to be a hydrostatic release beacon, he said. This meant it would either need to be manually released, or it would go off when it got wet.

"In the event it sinks very quickly, it may have been trapped in the vessel, and we won't get a signal if it goes under water any depth at all," Banaghan said.

He said the estimate of a 12-day trip was "very ambitious" given the weather conditions, especially given they had been asked to wait out the storm. The Australian Maritime Authority did not expect them to arrive before June 25.

But the crew could still be on their journey with no problems, or the vessel could have suffered damage and the crew then taken to a life raft, Banaghan said.

The New Zealand rescue centre is liaising with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and will continue to review search options.

Two search and rescue missions by an aircraft covering almost half-a-million square miles of the Tasman Sea, which the 75-year-old vessel was trying to cross en route to Newcastle, New South Wales, have failed to find any sign of the ship or her crew.

Local conditions in the 1,400-mile-wide sea separating Australia and New Zealand were poor at the time Nina was last heard from on June 4, according to Kevin Banaghan, spokesman for the Rescue Co-ordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ).

"Unfortunately, no sign of the vessel has been found," he said. "Our records show that conditions at the last known position for the vessel, on 4 June, were very rough, with winds of 80kph (50mph), gusting to 110kph (68mph), and swells of up to 8 metres (26 feet).

The New Zealand authorities started attempting to make communications contact with the boat on June 14, after being alerted by the families of those on board, also alerting other ships in the area to look out for her.

On June 25 and 26 a New Zealand Air Force Orion P3 search aircraft scoured the area but without success.

Thursday 27 June 2013

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/fears-for-briton-on-missing-ship-29378208.html

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8850144/Search-for-schooner-heading-to-Australia

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Body of storm victim found dead months after Hurricane Sandy

In the chaotic days after Superstorm Sandy, an army of aid workers streamed onto the flood-ravaged Rockaway Peninsula looking for anyone who needed help. Health workers and National Guard troops went door to door. City inspectors checked thousands of dwellings for damage. Seaside neighborhoods teemed with utility crews, Red Cross trucks and crews clearing debris.

Yet, even as the months dragged by, nobody thought to look inside the tiny construction trailer rusting away in a junk-filled lot at the corner of Beach 40th Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard.

If they had, they would have found the body of Keith Lancaster, a quiet handyman who appeared to have been using the trailer as a home the night Sandy sent 5 feet of water churning through the neighborhood.

It took until April 5 before an acquaintance finally went to check on the 62-year-old's whereabouts and found his partially skeletonized remains. His body lay near a calendar that hadn't been turned since October and prescription pill bottles last refilled in the fall.

New York City's medical examiner announced this week that Lancaster had drowned, making him the 44th person ruled to have died in New York City because of the storm.

Neighborhood residents described Lancaster as a loner and something of a drifter, and police said he had never been reported missing. No one stepped forward to claim his body from the city morgue, either, after he was finally discovered this spring. He was buried in a potter's field on an island in Long Island Sound, the medical examiner's office said. A police missing-person squad is still trying to identify any relatives.

But in life, he was well liked by some of the people who saw him sweeping sidewalks around the vacant lot where he sometimes slept.

"When we first moved here, he weeded our entire backyard," said Gerald Sylvester, 55, a retired transit worker who lives in a small bungalow just feet from the trailer where Lancaster died.

Sylvester and his wife, Carrie Vaughan, 60, said Lancaster also mended their fence and once fixed an outdoor light at their house – but he always refused any money for his help. He wouldn't take any food, either, when they offered, and politely declined their invitations to come inside, explaining he didn't like to go into people's houses.

"He didn't talk a lot, but if he knew you, you could have a decent conversation," said Vaughan. "He was very nice. A gentleman at all times."

She said it wasn't entirely clear where he was living. Lancaster, who the family said looked slightly frail, told her he didn't want to settle in one place.

As the storm approached and the neighborhood evacuated, Sylvester said he went looking for Lancaster to see if he wanted to leave with the family, but never found him.

After the Oct. 29 storm, many neighborhood residents were unable to return to their homes. Even today, some buildings remain empty or under repair. Vaughan and Sylvester were away for two months, living in a FEMA-funded apartment, before they came back.

The lot where Lancaster's trailer sat has been vacant for many years and, at just 15 feet wide, is easy to miss. Someone passing by would probably assume, wrongly, that it is the side yard of one of the bungalows that sit next door.

The company that owns the plot, the Master Sheet Co., hasn't paid any property taxes on the parcel for years, according to city records, and it wasn't clear whether anyone associated with the business was aware someone was living on the property. A lawyer for the owners, Robert Rosenblatt, said Wednesday that he wasn't immediately able to reach his clients.

New York City's Office of Emergency Management didn't respond Wednesday to inquiries about the efforts the city had made to locate and identify storm victims, and why they failed to reveal Lancaster's death for so long. The mayor's office also didn't respond to an inquiry.

The lot where Lancaster died remained filled with junk this week, including an old office chair, plastic crates and bottles and stuffed animals. The trailer – barely big enough to stand in – is itself filled with trash.

Vaughan said that when her family returned home, she wondered what had become of Lancaster, but never suspected that he had been killed or that his body was in the trailer, which sits on cinder blocks just a few feet from her home.

"He was like a fixture of the community. We were wondering what happened to him," said Vaughan. "We would've taken him with us."

Thursday 27 June 2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/keith-lancaster-nyc-sandy_n_3509361.html

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Understanding the role of local culture in disaster victim identification

Culture can be defined as the predominating attitudes and behaviour that characterize the functioning of a particular group or society. This may include belief systems, religion, (ancestral) traditions and values, modes of expression and community structures and functioning. Cultural attitudes can differ from person to person, region to region and country to country. Death is not only a biological phenomenon but also a sociocultural event with resultant behaviours, ceremonies, rituals and beliefs (Bahar et al., 2012). Attitudes surrounding death are more deeply rooted in some cultures and a disaster may therefore have long-term implications if inappropriately handled without due care for cultural sensitivities. Appropriate actions by the Government to identify and inter the victims according to locally accepted traditions can further stimulate economic recovery and community reconstruction. Invaluable lessons for both disaster management and victim identification have been learned in the aftermath of the 2004 South East Asia tsunami.

Due to the variation in cultural attitudes, best practice guidelines to incorporate cultural behaviours in disaster victim identification (DVI) are not widely described. The Interpol DVI guide states that “(…) the specific religious and cultural needs and national idiosyncrasies or laws and directives of the Member States must be taken into consideration during an operation, but will not be discussed any further in the explanations of the Guide. It is also not possible to deal with all conceivable operational scenarios”. As stated in the Interpol guidance, national laws and directives need to be followed although the guidance acknowledges that application of international standards should apply in multinational DVI operations. Many of those member countries are faced with a complexity of group structures involving tribal, indigenous, ethnic and remote communities. While it is recommended to compliment the Interpol best practice guidelines with Standard operating Procedures (SOP’s) and Memorandums of Understanding (MoU’s) between collaborating parties, not many reports have been published on specific cultural problems encountered during international DVI operations.

Religion is a key force behind the way the community or society interacts with notions of disasters (Reale, 2010). Religious organisations and leaders are frequently involved in important community dynamics and power structures, providing health services, education and emergency relief and those bodies understand the local culture and speak the local language. Disasters may be interpreted as an ‘act of god’ or revenge from evil forces with bloated unrecognisable bodies (often referred to as ‘monsters’) used as ‘proof’ of supernatural intervention and punishment for sins committed by affected communities or sinful behaviour of foreign tourists. Following the 2004 Tsunami in South-East Asia for example, locals, unfamiliar with post-mortem processes, interpreted the facial changes as a sign of superhuman intervention and ‘dehumanisation’ of the victims (Merli, 2009). Indeed, much of those responses find its origins in the lack of awareness of post-mortem processes or the causation of natural events.

In remote (particularly poverty-stricken) areas, forensic awareness may be limited and the need for proper identification procedures poorly understood. If a disaster occurs in small communities, locals may retrieve the bodies and bury them according to local burial customs. State-ordered burials of disaster victims in mass graves out of misguided fears of health implications caused by decomposing bodies have led to much public resistance. Bodies and body parts may be removed as quickly as possible and/or identified visually by relatives and handed over on-site without appropriate identification and documentation procedures. Indeed, secondary and tertiary identifiers according to the Interpol standards are still seen and accepted as primary identifiers in many global regions. Additionally, the Interpol standards may be endorsed at the ‘top-level’ (e.g. Governments or central police authorities), the disaster response may not be recognised at ‘low-level’ remote communities who still rely on traditional ancestral practices in dealing with disasters. This has been increasingly recognised by NGO’s and local organisations and this has led to initiatives to raise awareness of disaster management in remote tribal communities mainly in Africa and Australia. Forensic and coronial practices may cause considerable distress to indigenous peoples who may have no societal or religious mechanisms for dealing with the consequences of such investigations (Byard and Chivell, 2005). Most religions and cultures find autopsies acceptable under special circumstances such as for the purposes of identification or to investigate the causes of an accident. Religious leaders may issue a decree (fatwa) to approve specific autopsy procedures, rituals and burial arrangements to deal with the special circumstances of a disaster. It is also not uncommon in certain countries that bodies remain unclaimed by relatives, placing an additional burden on mortuary capacity and local authorities to arrange the disposition of those remains. Remote communities are more than often dependent on local resources to sustain their livelihood, e.g. fishing or livestock. Following (natural) disasters and resultant loss of income and livelihood, stories of looting, theft of bodies from local hospitals for ransom, and grave robbing have been reported.

The importance of rituals and proper burial is embedded in many religions and form part of the healing process following a sudden loss. Spirituality and religiosity give individual guidance on how to behave and assess a situation, what action should be taken, as well as what and how coping strategies to be selected to address the situation. Superstitious and spiritual phenomena are commonly encountered after disasters such as the 2004 Tsunami and 2010 Great Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. The presence of ‘spirits’ of those who died, has had profound social and economic effects in terms of the mourning and healing process, ante-mortem data collection, rebuilding communities, and tourism. Performance of proper burial and body rituals are therefore of pivotal importance to overcome those fears, even in the absence of a missing person’s body which may never be recovered.

Disasters in areas of conflicts may pose additional problems for the recovery, identification and repatriation of local and foreign nationals. In this respect, similar issues may arise in collapsed and failed States where no or hardly infrastructure is in place to handle large-scale disasters. NGO’s, religious organisations and leaders may be able to mediate between parties. Periods of truce between fighting factions may be initiated to manage a disaster, for example the agreement between Philippine Government forces and Maoist rebels following Typhoon Bopha. Additional problems in conflict areas may arise if bodies of the victims are used as a negotiation tool or for ransom demands. Regions of (post-)conflict are characterised by deep distrust in the Government or local authorities and this may lead to difficulties in ante-mortem data collection. The Interpol guidance does not address those issues, particularly when dealing with disasters in conflict areas. Additional recommendations are needed to deal with the presented issues above. Guidance from religious organisations and NGO’s with extensive experience in working with remote communities may prove beneficial to address cultural sensitivities.

Abstract of oral presentation: presented by Dr Jan Bikker at the 2nd Annual Forum for Disaster Victim Identification, Royal College of Pathologists, London

References

Byard, R.W., Chivell, W.C. (2005) The interaction of death, sorcery and coronial/forensic practices within traditional indigenous communities. Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine 12 (5); pp. 242-244.

Merli, C. (2009) Religious interpretations of Tsunami in Satun province, Southern Thailand: reflections on ethnographic and visual materials. Svensk Religionshistorisk Rsskrift. 14; pp. 154-181

Reale, A. (2010) Acts of God(s): the role of religion in disaster risk reduction. Humanitarian Exchange Magazine 48, October 2010.

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7 yr norm to declare missing person 'dead' must be relaxed

The Kedarnath tragedy has killed thousands of devotees and death toll is likely to go up as thousands of people are still missing. The relatives of the missing persons are praying day and night for their near and dear ones to return but it is not clear for how many days would this operation will continue.

After the military operation ends, the state government needs to work hard to undertake restoration work in the valley. It is also true that hundreds of dead bodies are also lying there and needs to be identified. If possible, they needed to be handed over to the relatives of the deceased.

The major challenge before the Government is to identify the deceased person, but the recent news tells that Government is going ahead with mass funeral next week. Looking at the present conditions, in many cases either it will not be possible to identify the person or still there will be hundreds of dead bodies which will not be traceable.

In the eyes of law, a person will not be declared dead until his/her body is recovered. What will happen to their finances in the absence of valid death certificate is also a major concern for the remaining family members.

They will neither be allowed to claim the money lying in the bank account nor will insurance company or mutual fund house will pay them unless they provide copy of death certificate.

The life of legal heirs is also likely to be majorly affected financially if the problem is not addressed immediately. Legal heirs might have to also struggle for day- to-day expenses even though they have sufficient money and investment in the name of missing person.

If the dead body is not found then what to do to claim the money and investment of missing person requires immediate attention and people should know the provisions of the law in this regard. Those who are dead are unlikely to come back but we should also seriously think about the problems which living family members have to face for their survival.

As per section 108 of the Indian Evidence Act 1872 "Person is presumed to be dead who is unheard of for more than seven years by those who would naturally have heard of him/her if he/she had been alive".

It means in the absence of valid death certificate family members will not be able to even touch the money and investment for another minimum seven years. The procedure is also long.

First family members have to file a missing complaint with local police and after completion of seven years they have to approach appropriate court for the necessary order stating the missing person is presumed to be dead.

What time court will take is also not clear, means delay of another six months to one year time to claim the money. The Government has to seriously think about this real life problem and have to review the provisions and reduce the time required for declaring missing person dead particularly in case of natural calamities like what happened in Kedarnath valley recently.

There is also another one possibility if the State Government takes this seriously and acts immediately. Section 10 of Registration of Births and Deaths Act' 1969 gives power to State Government to appoint any person on their behalf to notify birth or death or both which occurred in such areas as may be prescribed.

A positive step by Uttarakhand Government can solve many problems and give hope to many families who have lost their bread earner. If the death of missing person is notified by the State Government, then on the basis of that it is possible to apply for and get the death certificate.

Whether this will happen or not; nobody knows. But it has highlighted the basic thing that we have to plan for our finances so that in case of unfortunate event; our loved ones do have to struggle financially in their life. It is important to open a bank account in joint name with either and survivor basis and also advisable to invest jointly with either and survivor basis.

We have also to nominate one or two of the family members in all investments wherever such facility available. It is also important to execute a will in favour of loved ones so that there is no confusion thereafter.

Till you get the death certificate, pay the life insurance premium to continue the policy as non payment of premium in time will lapse the policy. It is also possible to claim the money, if the amount is small, on the basis of indemnity bond filed with the concerned authority, if they agree do so.

I also request all the three regulators, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA) and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to do the needful in this regard so that legal heirs can easily get the money back and move forward in their life.

Thursday 27 June 2013

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/others/7-yr-norm-to-declare-missing-person-dead-must-be-relaxed_906681.html

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Kinect-guided cockroaches could map disaster zones

Connecting Microsoft's Kinect system to an electronic cockroach interface could create insects capable of mapping out collapsed buildings and other dangerous areas.

Remote controlled cockroaches can be created relatively simply by attaching circuitry to the creatures' antennae. Microstimulation of the antennae trick the roach into thinking it has bumped into a surface and can be used to change its direction.

Combining a Kinect motion-sensing system with a version of this control technology created by North Carolina State University, researchers were able to program a path for the roaches to follow. As the cockroach moves the system tracks it and makes adjustments using the electrical interface.

"Our goal is to be able to guide these roaches as efficiently as possible, and our work with Kinect is helping us do that," said Alper Bozkurt, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State.

"We want to build on this program, incorporating mapping and radio frequency techniques that will allow us to use a small group of cockroaches to explore and map disaster sites," said Bozkurt. "The autopilot program would control the roaches, sending them on the most efficient routes to provide rescuers with a comprehensive view of the situation."

The program also uses Kinect to collect data on how the roaches respond to the electrical impulses from the remote-control interface. This data will help the researchers fine-tune the steering parameters needed to control the roaches more precisely.

"We want to build on this program, incorporating mapping and radio frequency techniques that will allow us to use a small group of cockroaches to explore and map disaster sites," Bozkurt says. "The autopilot program would control the roaches, sending them on the most efficient routes to provide rescuers with a comprehensive view of the situation."

If the system works the researchers eventually hope to be able to equip the roaches with communication devices which would also allow rescue services to communicate with trapped or injured people.

Thursday 27 June 2013

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/26/kinect-cockroaches

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Remembering the victims of 1950s Stalinist regime

A ceremony was held on Wednesday at Prague's Ďáblice Cemetery to remember those killed or incarcerated by Czechoslovakia's communist regime. Organised by the Confederation of Former Political Prisoners, it was attended by a number of political and religious leaders.

A military brass band played Chopin’s funeral march as dignitaries filed up to a small monument – flanked by Czech soldiers bearing arms – to the hundreds of Czechoslovaks shot, tortured or starved to death by the regime during the Stalinist excesses of the 1950s.

This leafy cemetery on the northern outskirts of Prague is where the regime buried its victims, their bodies thrown into unmarked, mass graves, usually without notifying their families. Ďáblice Cemetery is the final resting place for a number of prominent victims of communist-era oppression, including Zdena Mašínová, mother of the Mašín brothers who shot their way out of Czechoslovakia in 1953; she died in 1956 after several years of incarceration during which she was tortured and denied medical treatment by the secret police.

Standing over her mother’s grave, Zdena Mašínová junior told me it was during the frantic search to find her burial place that the then 19-year-old stumbled across a horrific secret.

“They refused to tell me where she’d been buried - it wasn’t until I got a secret tip-off that they’d buried her here at Ďáblice. I rushed here as fast as I could. The person in charge brought me to this spot and told me I must never tell anyone this but she was buried in a pit containing the bodies of 32 dead children. They were babies born to female political prisoners incarcerated at Pankrác Prison. Their corpses were loaded onto trucks and brought here to Ďáblice – just loaded onto a truck, no coffins. When there weren’t enough bodies in the pit they would throw in the body of an adult prisoner. And in June 1956, that’s where my mum was buried.”

Today the burial pits are marked with gravestones, some bearing names, others blank – the bodies have never been exhumed and in most cases identification is impossible; some of the babies were just a few days’ old. Zdena Mašínová believes there could be as many as a hundred children buried here.

Thursday 27 June 2013

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/remembering-the-victims-including-infants-of-1950s-stalinist-terror

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Online database of all the recovered bodies on cards

A team of forensic officers was deployed by the Uttarakhand Government on Wednesday to collect DNA samples of unidentified bodies, after flash floods and landslides ravaged the hill State earlier this month. A senior state official said they are preparing a database of all bodies and it will be posted on the government website.

“Majority of bodies are disfigured. We will soon post the entire list with photographs. We are also taking the help of the district police as far as missing persons are concerned and a request was also sent to the National Crime Records Bureau to publish it on the website,” an official said.

National Disaster Management Authority vice-chairman M Shashidhar Reddy said about 340 pilgrims were missing. “There is 10-foot high debris in Kedarnath and we fear that several bodies are trapped,” Reddy said.

Thursday 27 June 2013

http://newindianexpress.com/nation/Online-database-of-all-the-recovered-bodies-on-cards/2013/06/27/article1654808.ece

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Uttarakhand floods: Identifying the dead proving to be a daunting task

After saving most of those who survived the Uttarakhand floods, authorities are facing a daunting task in establishing identities of hundreds of bodies by way of photographs and DNA samples before consigning them to mass cremations.

The few photographs of the dead that have been put online by the Uttarakhand government are hardly even a fraction of the victims and in many cases features have been disfigured beyond recognition.

There is every possibility that the kin of the dead will have to deal with a statistic as they may not be able to make an identification. DNA tests may not prove fully reliable as genetic material is also subject to decomposition.

Having concentrated in rescuing the living, authorities have not been able to pay much attention to bodies, many of which lay in the open or floated down the Ganga to be fished out in Haridwar or further downstream.

June 28 will mark the thirteenth day since the disaster, usually a significant date in terms of Hindu rituals performed after death. As many bodies will remain unidentified at the time of cremation, the government is likely to wait for a month before declaring a missing person as deceased.

The authorities are also banking on the pictures uploaded by relatives of missing persons on the websites of the state government, but matching these photographs with the ones in their possession seems equally difficult.

Though the state authorities have already started uploading certain basic details of the victims, officials believe that it is only a scientific-forensic test that will identify bodies.

In an interview to the TOI on Monday, Uttarakhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna had said that 'tehsildars' will issue death certificates after a month. "If a person doesn't return in 30 days, the government will immediately release the compensation and not go by rules which state that you have to wait for seven years," he had told TOI.

An official said, "Team of medical staff has already collected DNA samples of most of the bodies. These samples will be preserved till the time their identities are established through matching it with the relatives. The local police have also finished the process of chronicling the details from legal point of view".

The Uttarakhand government has, meanwhile, put up a message board on the websites, asking relatives of the missing persons to provide them whatever information they can provide to trace them. The latest report put the figure of missing persons at 344.

The relatives of the victims had initially reported the missing complaints in thousands with Kedarnath - epicenter of devastation -- topping the list with 1,021 missing persons. Since the majority of them have already been traced, the total number now rests at 344.

"344 people are still missing. There are indications that the death toll may go up," said the NDMA vice chairman M Shashidhar Reddy, adding the rescue operation will, hopefully, be completed within a couple of days.

Reddy said efforts were being made to evacuate bodies under the debris - which are eight to ten feet high - in Kedarnath.

Thursday 27 June 2013

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Uttarakhand-floods-Identifying-the-dead-proving-to-be-a-daunting-task/articleshow/20789048.cms

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All 20 bodies found in helicopter crash in north India

Paramilitary soldiers on Wednesday recovered 20 bodies from a steep hillside in northern India where a helicopter crashed while on a mission to rescue people stranded in monsoon floods, the country's air force chief said.

The helicopter crashed late Tuesday when its rotor blades hit the hillside while returning with survivors of flooding and landslides that have killed more than 1,000 people and washed away thousands of homes, roads and bridges since mid-June in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.

Soldiers using ropes reached the crash site early Wednesday and found the bodies of 20 people, including five air force crew members, Air Chief Marshal N.A.K. Browne told reporters.

The helicopter's cockpit voice recorder was recovered and an inquiry has been ordered to determine the cause of the crash, Browne said.

Some 45 aircraft have been used in rescue and relief operations, but bad weather has dogged the efforts since Sunday, with intermittent rain and dense fog hanging over the mountains.

Troops on Wednesday were trying to rescue about 5,000 people who remained stranded in the towns of Badrinath and Harsil 10 days after torrential rains triggered the flooding and landslides in Uttarakhand.

Browne visited the hill town of Gauchar, where the air force has mounted its relief and rescue operations. He assured flood survivors that helicopters would rescue everyone stranded in Uttarakhand despite the bad weather and poor visibility.

Hundreds of thousands of Hindus make the Char Dham Yatra pilgrimage to four temple towns in Uttarakhand each year, usually returning home before monsoon rains in July make the mountainous area much more treacherous, but unprecedented heavy rains fell around mid-June this year and caught many by surprise.

About 92,000 people from hundreds of villages and towns hit by the floods have been rescued. Landslides and floods flattened entire towns, roads were washed away and communication links snapped, cutting off many people and necessitating air rescues.

Wednesday 26 June 2013

http://news.yahoo.com/20-bodies-found-helicopter-crash-north-india-075259375.html

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Delhi Police mistakingly uploads living guru's photo in category of unidentified bodies

The ZIPNet or the Zonal Integrated Police Network is one project which is key to Delhi Police plans for the future. The aim is to share crime and criminal information in real-time with police forces of other states — in short, it's a database pool in the police and public domain, of information ranging from FIRs to arrested persons to unidentified bodies.

But a UP policeman's attempts to familiarise himself with the ZIPNet went horribly wrong recently, prompting Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar to send a circular to eight states, explaining the need for caution while updating the database.

The policeman in Aligarh, while learning to use the ZIPNet for missing people and unidentified bodies, made a random picture selection for the trial run and ended up uploading the photograph of a well-known spiritual leader under the category of 'Unidentified dead bodies'.

The policeman tried to delete the entry he had made but soon realised that only the administrator in Delhi had the rights to do it. Instead of alerting his superiors, the policeman chose to remain quiet and the photo remained on the page for more than two days.

The blunder was brought to the notice of the Delhi Police by angry followers of the spiritual leader after they spotted his photograph in the category of unidentified bodies. So agitated were these followers that they turned up at the police headquarters to stage a protest.

They calmed down only after assurances from the police that the photograph would be removed and officers instructed to exercise caution while using the ZIPNet.

In the circular he sent to ZIPNet member states, Commissioner Neeraj Kumar said even if officers accidentally upload and save any incorrect information, they should alert

the Delhi administrator instead of trying to "brush it under the carpet".

Wednesday 26 June 2013

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/cop-blunders-uploads-living-gurus-photo-in-category-of-dead/1133829/

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