Sri Lanka: 1700 persons registered missing after the Civil War

The Mannar Citizen Committee – a voluntary organization is now involved in collecting details of persons missing in Kilinochchi and Jaffna districts.

The registration of persons missing started on 14th October and according to reports, so far nearly 1100 registration have been made about 1700 persons went missing.

It is said that those are persons missing during the LTTE – Sri Lanka security forces confrontation (war) period.

Earlier, Sri Lanka Government appointed three members to the Commission tasked with investigating cases of persons who went missing from the Northern and Eastern Provinces during the war on 14 August 2013.

They are Mr. Maxwell Parakrama Paranagama (Chairman) Ms. Dimingu Badathuruge Priyanthi Suranjana Vidyaratne and Mr. Mano Ramanathan.

The Commission has been given the authority to conduct inquiries and investigations necessary, and submit a report to the President within six months.

President Rajapaksa has instructed the Commission to identify the person(s) responsible in cases where abductions or disappearances are found to have taken place and to take legal action against those person(s).

The Commission appointed by the Sri Lanka Government has called for submissions in writing from general public details of any persons went missing on or before the end of October 2013.

Thursday 17 October 2013

http://www.asiantribune.com/node/65029

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Cyclone, flood toll rises to 38 in Odisha

With flood waters receding in five districts, the Odisha government on Thursday stepped up relief and restoration work as the death toll rose to 38 with the recovery of two bodies.

The State government also updated the number of affected persons in the cyclone and floods at 1.23 crore and the number of disaster-hit villages in 17 districts to 18,117.

The floods substantially subsided in five districts, but two blocks of Baliapal and Bhogarai in Balasore district were still facing a problem, Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) P.K. Mohapatra told reporters in Bhubaneswar.

“We hope the water will recede from Bhogarai and Baliapal blocks soon,” he said.

The two bodies were recovered at Kendrapara and Puri, Mr. Mohapatra said.

Stating that Ganjam, Balasore and Mayurbhanj were identified as the worst cyclone-flood hit districts in the State, Revenue and Disaster Management minister S.N. Patro said that relief and restoration was the focus of the government now.

With eight lakh families hit by the cyclone in Ganjam, he said that 494 relief centres were being opened in the district from Thursday.

Relief would also be provided from Thursday in Kendrapara and Jagatsinghpur districts, he said.

Questioned about reports that relief was unavailable, the Minister said “So far 91,000 families in Ganjam district have been provided 50 kg of rice and Rs 500 in cash from 310 centres.”

The Minister said, families living in very severely affected villages were entitled to 50 kg of rice, Rs. 500 in cash for dal and a polythene sheet.

Those in severely affected villages would get 25 kg rice and Rs. 300 for dal.

Most of the affected persons have left for home, Mr. Patro said while 23,000 people were in still in relief camps in Balasore district and 15,000 people in Mayurbhanj district, while in Ganjam district there were only 1610 people.

Stating that relief was being provided as per the 2011 census data and National Population Register, he said, “There is no need of ration card or any other identification to avail relief.”

Admitting that the pace of work by government officials had slowed after successfully evacuating people before the cyclone, Mr. Patro said “The officials are requested to show seriousness and take active role in relief and restoration.”

He warned that officials guilty of dereliction of duty would be severely dealt with and face suspension and action under Essential Services Maintenance Act).

“Action will be taken against officials if found not cooperating with the administration in relief and restoration work,” he said.

On incidents of loot of relief materials, Mr. Patro said that the police have been directed to take action.

People disrupting movement of relief materials through road blockades and attacking people restoring power would be punished, the minister said.

The cyclone that made landfall near Gopalpur on Saturday night claimed 21 lives, while 17 others perished in subsequent floods.

Thursday 17 October 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/cyclone-flood-toll-rises-to-38-in-odisha/article5244012.ece?homepage=true

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Death toll in Central Visayas quake rises to 163, more bodies found in Bohol

The number of fatalities from the magnitude 7.2 earthquake that shook Central Visayas has climbed to 163 with 21 still missing, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said at a news briefing on Thursday.

NDRRMC spokesman Maj. Rey Balido said Bohol now accounts for 149 fatalities; but Bohol's provincial information officer Tootsie Escoba said in a phone interview two more fatalities were added to the list of Bohol, for a total of 151 already.

Cebu has 11 deaths and Siquijor, one.

Balido said 375 individuals have been reported injured while 3.4 million people or 676,065 families were affected. Of the number, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is serving 32,941 families inside 85 evacuation centers.

NDRRMC added that 19,309 houses were partially or totally damaged: 2,926 partially damaged and 15,574 totally damaged in Bohol; 12 partially damaged and 797 totally damaged in in Cebu.

Before noon Thursday, the death toll climbed to 158, with officials reiterating the casualty count from the powerful quake was likely to rise as disaster response units begin reaching areas that had earlier been isolated by downed bridges or landslides.

At a briefing in Camp Aguinaldo Thursday morning, NDRRMC executive director Eduardo del Rosario said the number of injured persons also climbed to 374: 188 in Bohol, 182 in Cebu, three in Siquijor and one in Negros Oriental.

The NDRRMC said that 1,213 aftershocks had been recorded from Tuesday to 5 a.m. Thursday, with around 24 of these felt by residents in the affected provinces.

But the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, in the update page of its website, recorded at least three more aftershocks, the strongest a 5.5-magnitude tremor at 7:37 a.m. The other two were a 4.4-magnitude quake at 6:19 a.m. and one of 4.6-magnitude at 11:29 a.m.

The NDRMMC said the affected population also rose to 671,000 families, or more than 3 million people.

Of these, 6,511 families, or 32,954 people, are staying in 61 evacuation centers.

At least 605 houses were destroyed while 1,461 were damaged.

Damage to roads, bridges, and flood control was initially estimated at P75.15 million: P17.65 million in Cebu and P57.5 million in Bohol.

As of 7 p.m. Wednesday, the NDRRMC said 75 percent of power in Bohol had been restored.

Thursday 17 October 2013

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/72923/death-toll-for-central-visayas-quake-rises-to-158----ndrrmc

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Typhoon Nari kills 11 in Vietnam, leaves 5 missing

Rescuers have recovered more bodies after a typhoon flooded thousands of homes in Vietnam, raising the toll to 11 dead and five missing, officials said Thursday.

Floods inundated more than 34,000 homes in three central provinces after Tyhoon Nari, which already had destroyed or damaged about 13,000 homes in seven provinces, the national floods and storms control department said. The typhoon damage included homes that collapsed or had roofs blown off by the winds.

Nari hit Vietnam's central coast early Tuesday after crossing the Philippines over the weekend, killing 13 people there.

Three people were killed in Quang Nam province, the department said.

Two flood victims' bodies were recovered Wednesday in Quang Binh province, raising its total to five dead and one missing, provincial disaster official Ngo Duc Song said. The floods submerged nearly 19,000 homes in the province, many of them up to 2 metres (6.5 feet) under water, and left four villages isolated, he said.

The Gianh river in Quang Binh province reached a record high but was receding slowly, he said.

Nearly 5,000 people were evacuated from their flooded homes to higher ground, Song said, adding that soldiers and police officers were sent to help villagers deal with the floods.

Floods also killed a teenager in Nghe An province, a disaster official there said.

In the neighbouring province of Ha Tinh, the floods killed two people and authorities were searching for two others missing there, disaster official Tran Quang Duc said.

One person each was missing in Thua Thien Hue and Binh Dinh provinces, the national floods and storms control department said.

The department said the floods has disrupted traffic on some parts of several highway and parts of the North-South railway in Quang Binh province.

Thursday 17 October 2013

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Typhoon+Nari+kills+Vietnam+leaves+missing/9045431/story.html

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8 bodies recovered after Laos plane crash

Rescuers in fishing boats pulled bodies from the muddy Mekong River on Thursday as officials in Laos ruled out finding survivors from a plane that crashed in stormy weather, killing 49 people, including one Canadian.

Backpacks, an airplane propeller and passports were among the debris scattered on the riverbank where the Lao Airlines turboprop plane apparently hit hard before skidding into the water and sinking Wednesday.Cambodia's civil aviation office said the pilot was one of its nationals and had "many years" of flying experience.

The QV301 flight set off from Vientiane on time at 2.45pm (0745 GMT) and was supposed to arrive in Pakse just over an hour later.

French-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR said the twin-engine turboprop aircraft was new and had been delivered in March.

Founded in 1976, Lao Airlines serves domestic airports and destinations in China, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Impoverished Laos, a one-party communist state, has had 29 fatal air accidents since the 1950s, according to the Aviation Safety Network, whose data showed that the country's safety record had improved dramatically in the last decade.

The last fatal air accident was in October 2000 when eight people died after a plane operated by the airline -- then called Lao Aviation -- crashed in remote mountains in the northeast of the country.

“So far eight bodies have been found. We don’t yet know their nationalities,” said Yakao Lopangkao, director general of the country’s Department of Civil Aviation, who was at the crash site in Pakse, in southern Laos. “We haven’t found the plane yet. It is underwater. We’re trying to use divers to locate it.”

He ruled out finding survivors. “There is no hope. The plane appears to have crashed very hard before entering the water.”

Some bodies were found as far as 20 kilometres from the crash site, he said.

“We have asked villagers and people who live along the river to look for bodies and alert authorities when they see anything,” he said.

Fleets of small fishing boats and inflatable rafts plied the muddy, vast waterway as part of the search with men in life vests peering into the water. After storms Wednesday, the search took place under sunny blue skies.

Thailand, which borders Laos, was helping with the search. It sent 30 scuba divers to assist in the search for bodies, said Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Sek Wannamethee.

The state-run Lao Airlines released an updated list of the 44 passengers’ nationalities Thursday. It said the flight included 16 Lao nationals, seven French, six Australians, five Thais, three Koreans, two Vietnamese and one person each from Canada, China, Malaysia, Taiwan and the United States.

The Canadian passenger has yet to be identified.

A Foreign Affairs spokesman in Ottawa said Wednesday that the department was working closely with local authorities to confirm if Canadian citizens had been affected.

Cambodian authorities said one of the plane’s pilots was a 56-year-old Cambodian with more than 30 years flying experience.

Details of the crash remained murky. Lao Airlines said in a statement that the plane took off from the capital Vientiane and “ran into extreme bad weather conditions” as it prepared to land at Pakse Airport. The area is known for its remote Buddhist temples, nature treks and waterfalls that draw tourists.

The airline said it had yet to determine reasons for the crash of the ATR-72 aircraft, which was virtually new and had just been delivered in March. The crash occurred about seven kilometres from the airport.

French-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR said in a statement that “the circumstances of the accident are still being determined.” It said that it will assist in the investigation which will be led by Lao authorities.

The ATR-72 has been involved in 16 crashes since it went into service in 1988, according to databases kept by the Flight Safety Foundation and the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives. The death toll from Wednesday’s crash was the second highest on record involving an ATR-72; accidents in the U.S. in 1988 and Cuba in 2010 each killed 68 people. ATR had delivered 611 of the planes by the end of last year.

Among the six Australians on board, was a family of four. Relatives released a photo of the family, Gavin and Phoumalaysy Rhodes and their two children, a three-year-old girl and a 17-month-old boy.

The other two Australians were a father and son. They were identified as Michael Creighton, a 42-year-old aid worker based in Laos who had worked for the United Nations, and his father, Gordon Creighton, 71, a retired teacher who was visiting his son.

“We have lost a father, a husband, a son, a brother, a fiance and a best mate in one tragic circumstance and we are trying to come to terms with our loss,” the family said in a statement. Michael Creighton was living in Laos with his fiance, who was not on the plane.

Hazardous conditions

Rescuers battled hazardous conditions Thursday in the search for bodies from a Lao Airlines plane which plunged into the Mekong River.

As rescuers scoured the river for the submerged plane, a crane perched on a floating platform in the middle of the Mekong was on standby to try to winch up the aircraft.

About 10 boats of varying sizes plied the fast flowing waters and divers from a Thai rescue team were on the scene to assist.

"It's difficult to dive because there is a strong current and it's dangerous. So I think it's 50/50 that we will find something," said Thai rescue diver Aniwat Plaeng-ngaan, 20. Crowds of local people, monks and security personnel watched from the banks. Some recounted seeing the plane in trouble before it came down.

"I heard a boom! A sound like a bomb going off. There was smoke and flames before it crashed," said local village chief Buasorn Kornthong, 37.

Some debris was seen floating along the river and suitcases were wedged in mud on the riverbank.

Some of those killed were taken to a Chinese-run mortuary in Pakse town, which is a hub for tourists travelling to more remote areas in southern Laos.

Three bodies draped in blue plastic sheets were seen in the building, which was guarded by some 10 policemen, some armed, who turned away onlookers.

"They are foreigners from the crash," staff at the centre told AFP, adding that their nationalities were unknown.

Lao Airlines said the aircraft hit "extreme" bad weather while witnesses described seeing the aircraft buffeted by strong winds.

"The plane was about to land but appeared to be hit by a strong wind, causing its head to ascend and pushing it away from the airport area and out of reach of the air traffic control radar," state-run Laos news agency KPL quoted a witness as saying.

Cambodia's civil aviation office said the pilot was one of its nationals and had "many years" of flying experience.

The QV301 flight set off from Vientiane on time at 2.45pm (0745 GMT) and was supposed to arrive in Pakse just over an hour later.

French-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR said the twin-engine turboprop aircraft was new and had been delivered in March.

Founded in 1976, Lao Airlines serves domestic airports and destinations in China, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Impoverished Laos, a one-party communist state, has had 29 fatal air accidents since the 1950s, according to the Aviation Safety Network, whose data showed that the country's safety record had improved dramatically in the last decade.

The last fatal air accident was in October 2000 when eight people died after a plane operated by the airline -- then called Lao Aviation -- crashed in remote mountains in the northeast of the country.

Thursday 17 October 2013

http://globalnews.ca/news/907554/8-bodies-recovered-after-laos-plane-crash/

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Mexico finds missing plane; all 14 aboard dead

Mexican military and civilian personnel on Wednesday reached the site on the Baja California peninsula where a small plane carrying 14 people crashed, and confirmed all aboard died.

A photo from the crash site showed the shattered, partly burned wreckage of the plane on a steep mountainside.

The site was so precarious that soldiers had to use special mountaineering equipment to reach the wreckage, said Baja California Sur state's interior secretary, Armando Martinez Vega.

Federal transportation Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Esparza wrote in his Twitter account that the single-engine propeller plane carried a pilot and 13 passengers.

Martinez Vega said the bodies of those aboard had been found, but the task of transporting them to the nearest morgue would be difficult.

The plane was operated by a small local carrier. All those aboard are believed to have been Mexican citizens. It took off from the Baja beach town of Loreto amid bad weather caused by Tropical Storm Octave on Monday and disappeared shortly afterward.

The wreckage of the airplane was spotted by a helicopter Wednesday in the Sierra de la Giganta mountain range just west of the Loreto airport, where it took off Monday morning, the secretariat said in a statement.

A search-and-rescue mission was launched Monday, two hours after the plane took off, the statement added.

The airplane was carrying 13 passengers - mostly members of the same family, including two minors - and the pilot.

The aircraft, property of the private company Aeroservicio Guerrero, went missing 25 minutes after taking off from Loreto on a flight to Ciudad Constitucion, apparently due to bad weather.

The plane was authorised to fly despite adverse weather conditions in Baja California Sur state caused by Tropical Storm Octave.

The cause of the crash was under investigation.

Thursday 17 October 2013

http://www.thestate.com/2013/10/16/3042749/mexico-finds-missing-plane-all.html

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Japan typhoon: Rescuers search debris for missing

Rescuers in Japan worked overnight and into Thursday looking for survivors of Typhoon Wipha, which has killed at least 18 people.

Around 39 people are still missing on Izu Oshima island, south of Tokyo, after the typhoon triggered storms and landslides on Wednesday.

The island governor has been criticised for not ordering an evacuation.

In the Japanese capital, Tokyo, the typhoon led to schools closing and around 400 flights being cancelled.

More than 1,000 rescue workers at Izu Oshima searched through piles of mud, broken houses and debris for bodies.

Yoshinori Sano, a spokesman for the rescuers, said that they were "hopeful" of finding survivors.

Police officers used chainsaws and shovels to free the body of a woman who had been buried in mud and the wreckage of a wooden house, AFP reported.

"I'd like to offer an apology because some people could have been saved if the town had issued an evacuation advisory or order," the mayor of the island, Masafumi Kawashima, said.

He said that he had not issued an evacuation advisory at the time because he feared that doing so "in the middle of heavy rains in the dark could lead to a secondary disaster".

"But in retrospect, I think that was naive," he said.

Around 280 houses were damaged on the island, officials said.

Local TV footage showed residents struggling to remove mud from their homes.

"We don't have tools, so we can't do much to clear [mud] out of the house," one resident said.

Meanwhile, operators at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant said they detected increased radiation levels after rain from the typhoon made contaminated soil flow into a ditch leading to the sea, broadcaster NHK reported.

They said they would begin a cleanup operation, NHK added.

Radioactive water had also overflowed from one of the tanks storing pumped-up groundwater, NHK reported, although it is not clear if this was related to the typhoon.

Thursday 17 October 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24561234

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Body of missing Vittorio Missoni recovered from plane

The remains of five people have been recovered from an airplane carrying a party that included Italian fashion industrialist Vittorio Missoni and went missing off the coast of Venezuela in January, an ANSA source said Thursday.

The bodies have been recovered of Missoni, his wife Maurizia Castiglioni, another Italian couple and of the co-pilot of the Islander yv2615u aircraft, which went missing after taking off from the Caribbean island of Los Roques in January 4.

The body of the pilot, Germán Marchant, has reportedly not been found.

All of the recovered bodies were in the plane with their seat belts on, said the source, Giorgio Serloni, an Italian businessman who lives in the archipelago.

The reports have not been confirmed by the Venezuelan authorities. The missing plane was found in June thanks to the technology an American oceanographic ship.

They group were travelling to Caracas after holiday on an island in the Los Roques Caribbean archipelago. The Los Roques area is notorious for plane crashes.

In 2008 another small plane returning to the Venezuelan mainland from the archipelago disappeared with 14 people aboard, including eight Italians.

Vittorio Missoni was the eldest son of Ottavio Missoni, the founder of the company famous for its colourful zig-zag knitwear who died in May.

The operation to pull the ship out of the sea in order to establish whether the accident was the result of human error or a technical fault has reportedly started.

Thursday 17 October 2013

http://www.gazzettadelsud.it/news/english/65519/Five-Missoni-party-bodies-reportedly-recovered-off-Venezuela.html

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Powerful earthquake hits near Papua New Guinea

A powerful earthquake rocked the South Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea on Wednesday, officials said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake measured magnitude 7.1 and was located 40 miles west-southwest of Panguna in Papua New Guinea. It struck at 8:31 p.m. at a depth of 36 miles, it said.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said a destructive Pacific-wide tsunami was unlikely.

Earthquakes are common in Papua New Guinea. The country lies on the "Ring of Fire" — an arc of earthquake and volcanic activity that stretches around the Pacific Rim.

A magnitude-7.0 earthquake on the northern coast in 1998 generated a large tsunami that swamped several villages, killing about 2,200 people

Wednesday 16 October 2013

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/16/earthquake-papua-new-guinea/2992507/

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More bodies found in Bohol; quake death toll hits 151

The death toll from the magnitude-7.2 earthquake that struck Central Visayas ballooned to 151 as search and rescue teams recovered more bodies in Bohol province on Wednesday.

In an updated report from Chief Superintendnt Danilo Constantino, director of the Central Visayas police regional office, said that a total of 141 bodies have been recovered from the rubble in quake-hit areas in Bohol.

Constantino said nine fatalities were also recorded in Cebu province and one in Siquijor.

The regional police director added that a total of 302 people have been reported injured during the powerful quake, which struck at 8:21 a.m. on Tuesday.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) had also reported that a total of 23 people have been reported missing in Bohol.

Police Officer 3 John Legaspi, operations clerk of the Bohol Provincial Police Office, told reporters in a phone interview that the fatalities were recorded from 25 towns and majority of the bodies were recovered in the town of Loon.

The agency said that at least 2.8 million people were affected by the quake in three provinces in Central Visayas, including Bohol and Cebu, and more than 10,000 people have been brought to evacuation centers.

The NDRRMC has initially pegged the damage from the earthquake at P75 million. It said P57.8 million of the figure was for the bridges damaged in Bohol and P17.67 million for bridges damaged in Cebu.

During the NDRRMC's briefing on Wednesday afternoon, an official of the Department of Education said 30 schools in two divisions in Bohol and Cebu were damaged by the earthquake while three more schools are being used as evacuation centers.

The education official said that classes in selected schools in Bohol and Cebu have been suspended until Friday.

The Department of Health had also reported that 11 government-run hospitals were damaged by the quake.

The epicenter of the earthquake, which struck at 8:21 a.m., was traced six kilometers southwest of Sagbayan town in Bohol. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology earlier reported that the epicenter was traced nearest Carmen town.

The quake was felt strongest at Intensity 7 in Tagbilaran City, Cebu City, Lapu Lapu City, Mandaue City, Toledo City, Carcar City and Naga City (in Cebu).

Wednesday 16 October 2013

http://www.philstar.com/nation/2013/10/16/1245940/more-bodies-found-bohol-quake-death-toll-hits-151

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Plane crashes in Laos, 39 people killed

A Lao Airlines plane on an internal flight from the capital, Vientiane, to the south of the country, crashed into the Mekong in the late afternoon, China's Xinhua state news agency said, citing the airline.

The ART twin-turbo plane flight QV301 with about 40 passengers on board crashed into the Mekong River as it was coming in to land at the airport in Champassak province in southern Laos due to bad weather.

A television station in neighbouring Thailand said 39 people had been killed.

Airline and government officials in Laos were not immediately available for comment.

The plane left Wattay airport in Vientiane at 2.45pm and crashed at 4pm, the official said.

It was unknown if there were any Thai passengers on the flight.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/1016/480765-laos-plane-crash/

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DNA from LA area immigrants could solve painful mysteries from Guatemala's civil war

Javier Alvarez doesn’t remember much from the time his father went missing from their home in Guatemala in 1982, at the height of the violence during that country's civil war.

He was only ten years old then. But he remembers the hushed conversations between his mother and grandfather, the hand-wringing as they tried to come to grips with his father’s kidnapping.

“I remember they told me that my father had disappeared, and my mother and grandfather were going around in circles," said Alvarez, who now lives near downtown Los Angeles with his family. "They were asking them for ransom, but no one came for it, for the money."

His father never reappeared.

More than three decades later, Alvarez joined the audience in a meeting hall at the Central American Resource Center near downtown, filled with fellow Guatemalan refugees.

They were there to learn about a project that’s been using DNA to identify the bodies of some of Guatemala’s roughly 45,000 wartime desaparecidos - the disappeared – most of them kidnapped by Guatemalan military. They are among the estimated 200,000 casualties of the lengthy war, which ended in 1996 after 36 years.

Unraveling the mysteries of a war

Since 2004, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation has been exhuming and identifying the bodies of desaparecidos, excavating clandestine mass graves and military sites. The non-profit NGO receives U.S. and international funding. In 2008, they began collecting DNA from family members of the missing in Guatemala. So far they’ve identified more than 3,000 bodies, about 200 of them through DNA.

“We wanted to give a voice to the disappeared," said Fredy Peccerelli, a forensic anthropologist and director of the Guatemala City-based organization. "We wanted to give a voice to those bodies. We wanted the bodies, those disappeared people, to talk directly to their families so we could connect with them. We wanted them to remember that their loved one is missing, and they need to look for them.”

Peccerelli's family was personally affected by the war. His uncle was among those who disappeared and was never heard from again. His immediate family fled to the United States after his father was threatened, settling in New York. Peccerelli grew up in Brooklyn.

So far, the DNA bank has met with relative success in Guatemala, where Peccerelli says they have been receiving more than 200 DNA samples a month from families with missing loved ones. Some families have gone so far as to lend their names and photos to a campaign dubbed "Mi nombre no es XX" (My name is not XX), referring to a term used in Guatemala for unidentified bodies, similar to "John Doe."

Reaching out to immigrants in the United States

The idea now is to make inroads in the U.S., starting with Los Angeles, Guatemala's largest expatriate community. So far, the group has collected only a couple dozen DNA samples here. But Peccerelli hopes more immigrants will participate now that recent trials of accused Guatamalan war criminals - including two in the U.S. - have revived public interest.

Not everyone affected is willing to come forward. Many of those who survived the war carry their trauma silently, trying to bury the past, said Patricia Foxen, an anthropologist on the board of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission. She said it's especially complicated for the families of desaparecidos, who may never know what happened to their loved ones.

“It’s extremely difficult for them, because sometimes they are not actually sure what happened to their disappeared family member," Foxen said. "When I was doing my field work in Guatemala, for example, the guerrillas were being demobilized in these camps, and people the community that I was living in would ask me to take pictures because they thought I might be able to find their sons and husbands who had disappeared fifteen years or twenty years beforehand. I thought it was astonishing that they still had hope that they might still show up.”

None did. It’s presumed that those who went missing have long been dead. Foxen says even today, even for those who moved thousands of miles north, "it is really hard for people to live with that big question mark every single day.”

It’s a question that Javier Alvarez wants to put to rest. At the recent community meeting in Los Angeles, Alvarez sat down to have a DNA swab taken from the inside of his cheek. Afterward, he grew emotional, recalling his childhood.

Life after his father disappeared was tough. His mother was forced to raise six children alone, the oldest child just 12. Eventually they all made it to the United States. Alvarez married and now has a family of his own. But the loss of his father still haunts him.

“All of this makes me glad to know there is a possibility that I can find my father again after so much time," he said, trying to hold back tears. "You can imagine – in life, you miss your father, your mother. I would have liked to have enjoyed being with him, from the time I was small to when I grew up.”

Peccerelli says he used to think finding and burying the bodies of loved ones would provide closure to these families. Now he’s not so sure. He recalled what one man he helped said afterward.

”One of them said, ‘I had a purpose before, because my father was missing," Peccerelli said. "And he was found, and I'm very thankful. I don’t know what to do with myself now, because my entire life was about looking for him.' "

But the work continues. Peccerelli and his team will return to Southern California for the December sentencing date of Jorge Sosa in Riverside County. Sosa is an accused Guatemalan war criminal, recently convicted of U.S. immigration fraud. He will likely be stripped of his U.S. citizenship and face eventual deportation to Guatemala, to stand trial over accusations that he took part in a brutal 1982 massacre of civilians in the small village of Dos Erres.

The Guatemalan forensic team will come equipped with DNA kits, hoping that among those who are following Jorge Sosa's sentencing, they'll find more refugees like Alvarez who are seeking answers.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

http://www.scpr.org/blogs/multiamerican/2013/10/15/14972/dna-from-la-area-immigrants-could-solve-painful-my/

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Philippines quake toll hits 107

The 7.1-magnitude earthquake smashed the central island of Bohol on Tuesday morning, triggering landslides that engulfed entire homes, ripping apart bridges and tearing down centuries-old churches.

The national disaster agency said on Wednesday that the number of people confirmed killed on Bohol and neighbouring islands had climbed from 93 to 107, and more bad news was expected as rescue workers were yet to reach some villages and towns.

"Our efforts today are focused on reaching isolated areas. We suspect individuals are trapped out there and we have to conduct search and rescue," National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council spokesman Reynaldo Balido told AFP.

With destroyed bridges, ripped-open roads and power outages fragmenting the island of about one million people, Balido said authorities were struggling to reach isolated communities and had no idea how bad the damage was in some areas.

"We don't even have an estimate... we are just assuming that since there were collapsed buildings, we must search for them," Balido said, when asked how many people remained missing.

At Loon, a small coastal town of about 40,000 people just 20km from the epicentre of the earthquake, shocked survivors wandered around the rubble of collapsed buildings looking for relatives.

Farmer Serafin Megallen said he dug with his hands, brick-by-brick, to retrieve his mother-in-law and cousin from the rubble of their home on Tuesday.

"They were alive but they died of their injuries three hours later. There was no rescue that came, we had to rely on neighbours for help," he told AFP.

Megallen said a neighbour with a truck tried to drive the bodies to Loon's funeral parlour, only to find out the bridge across a river on the way was destroyed.

The bodies were then taken across the river aboard a boat.

"But no one will give them last rites because the church was also destroyed," he said.

Ten churches, many of them dating back centuries to Spanish colonial rule of the Philippines, were destroyed or badly damaged on Bohol and the neighbouring island of Cebu.

Loon's limestone Our Lady of Light church was reduced to mounds of crushed rocks.

"We're trying our best to keep hopes up, but in this desperate situation there is nothing much we can do beyond giving comforting words," local priest Father Tomas Balakayo told AFP.

"I try to be strong but this is terrible, what have these people done to deserve this?"

More than 800 aftershocks had been recorded, including one on Wednesday morning with a magnitude of 5.1, according to national disaster authorities.

Most of the confirmed deaths were on Bohol, which is one of the most popular tourist islands in the Philippines because of its beautiful beaches, rolling "Chocolate Hills" and tiny "tarsier" primates.

Nine people died on neighbouring Cebu island, home to the Philippines' second-biggest city of the same name.

No foreign tourists were reported killed.

Tuesday was a national holiday for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, and that may have reduced casualties because schools and offices are closed.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/10/16/philippines-quake-toll-hits-107-0

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Examining why hostesses and sex workers go missing in Japan

On October 8, Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested two construction company employees for hiding a dead body found inside a building in Shibuya Ward scheduled to be demolished. As reported in the Sankei Shimbun, the body had been inside the structure for about five years.

While such discoveries may not be typical, a large number of people go missing in Japan each year. Evening tabloid Nikkan Gendai (Oct. 12) reports that approximately 81,111 people vanished in 2012.

Of them, 28,924 were women. As far as age, the majority were under 20 years old. In the average case, the person will have later been found to have returned home or committed suicide. Even so, about 1,400 cases remain unsolved.

Like host club employee Masamichi Tsuchida, who disappeared from his home in 2010 and was later found to have been murdered, some who go unaccounted for work in the adult-entertainment trade. In attempting to understand why, the tabloid speaks with fuzoku writer Kazuo Kajiyama.

As far as a kyaba-jo (hostess) or fuzoku-jo (sex-club worker), the main reason is debts owed to host clubs, says the writer.

“In order to pay off the bills, the girls will be sold off to soapland bathhouses or to a ‘snack’ club that engages in prostitution, such as those in Sakae, Chiba Prefecture,” says Kajiyama. “The girls are confined and not allowed to communicate with anyone. I also hear of a lot of cases where they’ll wind up selling their bodies near casinos in Korea.”

Gangsters also purchase girls heavily in debt. Many will undergo plastic surgery such that even their parents will not be able to recognize their faces. They will then be put to work in adult video (AV) industry.

Freelance writer Taizo Ebina says that some hostesses are taken off the premises by regular customers, abducted and sold to brokers in various parts of Asia for one million yen each.

“Runaway girls will be imprisoned in one-room apartments,” says Ebina. “They will engage in ‘live chat’ Internet sessions in which they show their genitals. They’ll also work as prostitutes in ‘on board brothels’ for passengers on ships. In most of these cases, the girls will be hooked on stimulant drugs.”

Wednesday 16 October 2013

http://www.tokyoreporter.com/2013/10/16/examining-japanese-hostesses-sex-workers-go-missing/

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Cargo ship hits seawall off South Korea; 9 dead, 2 missing

A cargo ship hit a seawall off South Korea's southeastern coast and partly sank in an accident that killed nine crew members and left two missing, coast guard officers said Wednesday. Eight crew members were rescued.

The ship is owned by a Chinese firm and flagged in Panama, and its crew is nearly all Chinese with one Vietnamese.

The 8,461-ton ship had anchored off the port city of Pohang but high waves forced it against the seawall Tuesday afternoon, a coast guard statement said.

All 19 people on board were listed as missing about 14 hours after the accident as winds and waves hampered rescue efforts.

Early Wednesday, coast guard rescuers found eight sailors either floating in the sea or waiting for help on the front of the ship. Most of the vessel has sunk, coast guard officers said. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to speak to the media on this matter. The rescued sailors were wearing life jackets, the officers said.

The coast guard also collected the dead bodies of nine crew members but two are still missing, the officers said.

China's official Xinhua News Agency said the ship, the CHENGLU15, belonged to China's Lishen International Shipping Group Corp. in Zhejiang province.

The ship had unloaded its freight and was set to leave for Japan. The coast guard officers said the ship was carrying about 130 tons of bunker oil and diesel fuel.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

http://www.sunherald.com/2013/10/15/5032648/cargo-ship-sinking-off-south-korea.html

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Typhoon, mudslides kill 14 in Japan; 50 missing

A typhoon caused deadly mudslides that buried people and destroyed homes on a Japanese island Wednesday before sweeping up the Pacific coast, grounding hundreds of flights and disrupting Tokyo's transportation during the morning rush. At least 14 deaths were reported and more than 50 people were missing.

Hardest hit was Izu Oshima island about 75 miles south of Tokyo. Rescuers found 13 bodies, most of them buried by mudslides, police and town officials said. Dozens of homes were destroyed, and more than 50 people are missing. "We have no idea how bad the extent of damage could be," town official Hinani Uematsu said.

One woman from Tokyo died after falling into a river and being washed 6 miles downriver to Yokohama, police said. Two sixth-grade boys and another person were missing on Japan's main island, Honshu, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.

More than 350 homes have been damaged or destroyed, including 283 on Izu Oshima, it said.

Typhoon Wipha, which stayed offshore in the Pacific, had sustained winds of 78 mph.

More than 30 inches of rain fell on Izu Oshima during a 24-hour period ending Wednesday morning, a record since record keeping began in 1991.

The rainfall was particularly heavy before dawn, the kind in which "you can't see anything or hear anything," Japan Meteorological Agency official Yoshiaki Yano said.

Izu Oshima is the largest island in the Izu chain southwest of Tokyo. It has one of Japan's most active volcanoes, Mount Mihara, and is a major base for growing camellias. About 8,200 people live on the island, which is accessible by ferry from Tokyo.

As a precaution, the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, released tons of rainwater that were being held behind protective barriers around storage tanks for radioactive water. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said only water below an allowable level of radioactivity was released, which Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority allowed Tuesday. During an earlier typhoon in September, rainwater spilled out before it could be tested.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/15/tokyo-japan-typhoon/2991859/

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Search completed, no survivors found after Peru bus plunge

No survivors have been found several days after a bus crash in an Andean region of Peru and authorities say that they have finished searching the area.

51 people were aboard an old cargo truck-turned-bus early Saturday morning when the vehicle careened off the road and plunged over 200 meters (650 feet) into a ravine, then rolled into a river. Among the 51 fatalities, 14 were children and all of the victims belonged to the indigenous Quechua people.

The accident happened as the traveling party was returning from a nearby town where they were taking part in a religious ceremony that celebrated a patron saint.

While traveling on the dark, provincial highway between Santa Teresa and Suyucuyo, the bus careened off the road. The location of the crash was in the highlands approximately 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) north of one of the world’s wonders, Machu Picchu, and the mountainous area is almost exclusively populated by Peru’s various indigenous groups.

So far, no specific reason has been given for the crash as there were no reports of inclement weather in the area at the time of the crash. However, local officials are assuming that given what kind of celebration the group was attending, they say it is likely that alcohol was a factor.

The hilly area made searching difficult and crews were called out in the dark of night, making the recovery of the victims even more difficult. Rescuers scoured the area and gathered bodies, finding some victims more than 100 meters (330 feet) from the crash site. Crews placed the victims on a nearby field, where family members shuffled by, identifying relatives.

The highlands of Peru sit at altitude and are connected by a network of isolated roads that link villages. Many locals, all indigenous individuals who often travel from village to village selling their wares, travel by rickety makeshift trucks because there are no established bus or train routes in the area.

The condition of the transport vehicles coupled with the narrow, twisting roads and heavy fog creates notoriously dangerous driving conditions.

Just a week ago, 19 Peruvians were killed in Huancavelica, also in the southeastern highlands region of the country. That accident came just several days before another bus accident killed 10 in the same area. In August, another accident involving a bus led to 14 deaths in Peru’s mountainous Cajamarca region.

Tuesday 15 October 2013

http://inserbia.info/news/2013/10/no-survivors-in-peru-bus-crash/

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Philippine quake death toll rises to 93 (update)

A powerful earthquake killed at least 93 people in the Philippines on Tuesday as it generated landslides that buried homes, triggered terrified stampedes and destroyed historic churches.

Fifteen of the confirmed fatalities were in Cebu, the country’s second most important city and a gateway to some of its most beautiful beaches, the national disaster agency reported.

The 7.1-magnitude quake killed another 77 people in the neighbouring island of Bohol, famed for its rolling “Chocolate Hills”, while one other person died on nearby Siquijor, which attracts tourists with its pristine white sands.

“I was thrown to the ground by the strength of the quake. Broken glass rained on me,” Elmo Alinsunorin, who was on duty as a guard for a government tax office in Cebu, said.

“I thought I was going to die.”

“I was thrown to the ground by the strength of the quake. Broken glass rained on me,” Elmo Alinsunorin, a guard for a government tax office in Cebu, said.

Authorities said the death toll could still climb, with officials struggling to assess the extent of the damage in the worst-hit areas of Bohol where roads remained impassable and power was cut at nightfall.

Bohol police chief Senior Superintendent Dennis Agustin said one of the worst affected areas was the coastal town of Loon, where at least 18 people were killed by landslides that buried houses along large stretches of highway.

Loon is about 20 kilometres from where the epicentre of the quake struck at just after 8.00am. It faces a narrow strait of water, with Cebu about 25 kilometres away on the other side.

Cebu, with a population of 2.5 million people, is the political, economic, educational and cultural centre of the central Philippines.

It hosts the country’s busiest port and the largest airport outside of the capital of Manila, which is about 600 kilometres to the north.

A university, a school, shopping malls, public markets and many small buildings in Cebu sustained damage in the quake.

Mass panic sparks stampede

Three of the people who died in Cebu were crushed to death in a stampede at a sports complex, according to the provincial disaster council chief, Neil Sanchez.

“There was panic when the quake happened and there was a rush toward the exit,” Sanchez said.

He said two other people were killed when part of a school collapsed on a car they had parked in, while four others died at a fish market that crumbled.

Ten churches, some of which have crucial links to the earliest moments of Spanish colonial and Catholic conquest in the 1500s, were also badly damaged on Cebu and Bohol.

The limestone bell tower of the Philippines’ oldest church, Cebu’s Basilica Minore del Santo Nino, was in ruins.

Other limestone churches that were built in the 1700s and 1800s on Bohol had crumbled completely, prompting grieving for the loss of some of the Philippines’ most important cultural treasures.

“It is like part of the body of our country has been destroyed,” Michael Charleston “Xiao” Chua, a history lecturer at De La Salle University in Manila, said.

Aside from its beaches, Bohol is famous for its more than 1,000 small limestone “Chocolate Hills” that turn brown during the dry season.

One of the main tourist venues there, the Chocolate Hills Complex, was severely damaged, according to Delapan Ingleterra, head of a local tourist police unit.

“There are huge cracks in the hotel and there was a collapse of the view deck on the second floor,” Ingleterra said, adding that no-one was injured at the complex.

There were no reports of foreign tourists being killed anywhere in the disaster zone.

Tuesday’s quake was followed by hundreds of aftershocks, at least four aftershocks of which measured more than 5.0 in magnitude.

The Philippines lies on the so-called Ring of Fire, a vast Pacific Ocean region where many of Earth’s earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.

More than 100 people were left dead or missing in February last year after an earthquake struck on Negros island, about 100 kilometres from the epicentre of Tuesday’s quake.

The deadliest recorded natural disaster in the Philippines occurred in 1976, when a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 7.9 earthquake devastated the Moro Gulf on the southern island of Mindanao.

Between 5,000 and 8,000 people were killed, according to official estimates.

Tuesday 15 October 2013

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1332041/least-20-killed-after-earthquake-hits-philippines

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Rescue suspended for victims of Colombia building collapse

Officials suspended their search Monday for workers missing in an apartment building collapse that claimed the lives of at least two people in the city of Medellin.

Nine people were still believed trapped in the ruins of the newly constructed 22-story building, which gave way Saturday.

The search for survivors was hampered by heavy rains, which have made rescue and recovery efforts more difficult.

"At this time, no search and rescue efforts are being carried out to find the nine people missing," authorities said in a statement.

Officials said two bodies were found late Sunday, but had not yet recovered from the debris. They said they managed to pull three people from the rubble alive.

The apartment building, one of several in a complex in the El Poblado municipality southwest of Medellin, caved in Saturday.

It had been evacuated after inspectors warned of a risk of collapse.



Workers were inside trying to shore up the structure when it came down, officials said.

Half the building's 80 apartments were inhabited before the collapse.

Five other towers in the same complex have been evacuated as a precaution, officials said.

Tuesday 15 October 2013

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/131014/rescue-suspended-victims-colombia-building-collapse

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Death toll rises from migrant accidents near Lampedusa

Divers have found an additional 20 bodies from last week's shipwreck near the Italian island of Lampedusa, raising the death toll to 359.

Officials say rescuers found the additional bodies on Saturday as a recovery effort continued at the site of the sunken ship, which was packed with African migrants when it went down.

A second recovery effort is under way Saturday in waters about 105 kilometers southeast of Lampedusa, after another ship carrying migrants capsized on Friday.

About 200 people were rescued from the boat that was believed to be carrying as many as 400 passengers. Authorities in Italy and Malta confirmed at least 34 people drowned.

Witnesses say the boat capsized as passengers tried to get the attention of a passing aircraft.

In a Saturday statement, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said witness accounts indicated most of those on board were Syrians or Palestinians and most of those confirmed dead were women and children.

Antonio Guterres said it was "shameful to witness hundreds of unwitting migrants" drowning near Europe's border.

U.N. figures indicate about 30, 000 migrants have arrived in Italy and Malta so far this year, about double the total for 2012.

Lampedusa is geographically closer to Africa than it is to Italy's mainland, making the island a destination for Africans hoping to start a new life in Europe.

Tuesday 15 October 2013

http://www.womencitizen.com/world-21/death-toll-rises-from-migrant-accidents-near-italian-island-news-361.html

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