Cannibal restaurant 'with roasted human heads on the menu' shut down by police

Police arrested 11 people and closed a restaurant after two human heads wrapped in cellophane were discovered at a hotel restaurant that had been serving human flesh.

A tip-off led police to the macabre discovery in Anambra, Nigeria, with 11 people being arrested and AK-47 guns and other weapons being seized.

Human flesh was apparently being sold as an expensive treat at the restaurant, with authorities saying that roasted human head was even on the menu.

"I went to the hotel early this year, after eating, I was told that a lump of meat was being sold at N700, I was surprised," a pastor who had visited the eatery said.

"So I did not know it was human meat that I ate at such expensive price.

"What is this country turning into? Can you imagine people selling human flesh as meat," he added. "Seriously I’m beginning to fear people in this part of the world. "

Another local added to the Osun Defender newspaper: "I always noticed funny movements in and out of the hotel; dirty people with dirty characters always come into the hotel.

"So, I was not surprised when the police made this discovery in the early hours of yesterday."

The tabloid reported that two army caps, 40 rounds of live ammunition and 'so many cell phones' were also discovered by authorities.

Tuesday 18 February 2014

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/cannibal-restaurant-with-roasted-human-heads-on-the-menu-shut-down-by-police-9123693.html

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S Korea building collapse: At least nine dead, 10 trapped

At least nine people have died and 17 more have been seriously injured in a building collapse at a resort in South Korea.

At least 10 people are still trapped under the wreckage in the south-eastern city of Gyeongju.

Seven of those killed were students.

About 80 people received minor injuries, officials at the state-run National Emergency Management Agency said, when part of an auditorium fell in after heavy snowfall.

The structure failed during an orientation event for first-year university students from the southern city of Busan.

Fire services have blamed the weight of snow on the roof. The weather is also thought to have slowed rescue efforts.

Local media reports say the collapse happened at around 21:15 local time (12:15 GMT), though there is confusion over the number of students in the hall at the time.

A large number of students from Busan University of Foreign Studies were at the Mauna Ocean Resort, said an official, and many managed to get out of the damaged building by themselves.

The students are thought to have been attending a concert in the auditorium when the roof fell in.

"The ceiling came crashing down at the front near the stage," one student told South Korea's YTN news channel. "Then pandemonium broke out and everyone started rushing towards the exits, shouting and screaming," he added.

Gyeongju is a historic city that served as the capital of one of the Korean peninsula's ancient kingdoms, and is a popular tourist destination.

The area has experienced exceptionally heavy snowfall over the past week.

One of the world's worst peacetime building collapses happened in South Korea in June 1995, when Seoul's Sampoong Department Store collapsed, killing hundreds.

Tuesday 18 February 2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26231628

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Crowdsourcing fuels revolution in missing-persons hunts

Not too long from now, the Orange County coroner's office will post details about an unidentified person on a national database of unidentified bodies.

The particulars will include: The body was male, found in the Pacific Ocean a mile off Newport Beach on Dec. 24. He was 6 feet tall, 162 pounds, wearing nylon sweat pants made by Champion and size 11 Asics running shoes. There will be a photo of his left shoe and of the Timex he wore on his left wrist.

Local officials have his DNA and some general information about the man's appearance, but it will take an anthropologist a little time to determine his age range.

Once the information is posted, anyone in the country who is looking for a lost father or son or uncle or neighbor can go on the fully searchable website and see if they recognize anything remotely familiar. If so, they can alert the authorities and ask them to check if their lost soul matches our found body.

This crowd-sourced matching of missing persons to unidentified bodies – or of a missing person to the lost living – is what makes the U.S. Department of Justice's National Missing and Unidentified Persons System so revolutionary.

NamUs, as it is known, has been up and running for 10 years.

So how come you've never heard of it?

MISSING OR DEAD

Maybe it's because you're lucky. You're not connected in a personal way with the reality that there are 100,000 active missing person cases going at any time in this country. That on the virtual shelves of America's medical examiners and coroners lie 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains. That every year 1,000 more sets get added to those shelves.

And maybe you haven't had a reason to know that, until a decade ago, more than half of the nation's medical examiners didn't have a policy for storing the X-rays and fingerprints of their unsolved unidentifieds.

Or that thousands of jurisdictions – state, local, county, parish, city, region, whatever – have sometimes confusing, sometimes overlapping and sometimes nonexistent rules about who tells who what when adults go missing.

Or that missing adults, because they are adults and have the freedom to come and go as they please, are not always reported as missing unless foul play is suspected.

This is all true despite that fact that the National Institute of Justice – the research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice – launched an initiative in 2004 to improve the nation's ability to find missing people. It was working on better training for law enforcement and medical examiners, and better education for judges and lawyers on DNA evidence, and to standardize the world of forensic record-keeping.

In spring 2005, it convened an Identifying the Missing summit, which brought together many of the nation's most vocal advocates for the missing. They created NamUs – pronounced Name Us – which stipulated that only medical examiners and coroners could place information on the unidentifieds database. But taking advantage of the coming idea of social media, they also wanted to make it possible for interested parties to upload information onto their missing person's site, thus alerting authorities to promising matches of unidentified bodies and missing loved ones.

Orange County got on board early, in 2009.

Unidentified Person #7690 is a woman who was hit by a car while walking across Beach Boulevard at Orangewood Avenue in 2005. A mole was made note of. So, too, a faint scar on her inner left ankle. If you'd like to see the clothes she died in, the photos are there. Same for her leather-strapped sparkly sandals.

It's not meant to be prurient. Nothing gory is shown. It's meant to be specific enough to be helpful, says Todd Matthews, director of communications for NamUs. Helpful, that is, to the families of those who are looking for a 5-foot-3, 165-pound woman of indeterminate race, likely between 19 and 30.

And somebody is looking. NamUs keeps track. Interested parties have gone on the database and asked the medical examiner in Orange County to check to see if #7690 was 1) Teresa Alcaraz, born 1974; 2) Katrina Ashford, born 1953; 3) Lynn Bandringa, born 1945 … There have been 47 failed matches so far. That is, the county coroner has looked at each of the 47 women in question and compared their missing persons details to that of #7690 and, in each case, found something that didn't fit.

The family in such cases, explains Matthews, was “probably devastated either way.” Because one answer means your loved one is definitively dead, the other means you have to keep looking.

What you want, he says, is to allow the family to finally lay their burden down. The pain is, sadly enough, not yours to spare them.

DYING IN LIMBO

NamUs is not widely known in California. Though local agencies are required to report missing persons to the California Department of Justice, they are not yet required to report or publish information to the NamUs database.

“California has strong reporting laws; they're progressive,” Matthews says. “But the state has a large burden compared to other states. (NamUs') approach has been, ‘Let us help you.'

“California is worried about handling information in California. But we are worried about handling information as a nation.” The nationwide outreach is an important part of the NamUs puzzle – because people from California just don't disappear in California to be found in California.

What if the body recently found off Newport Beach belongs to a family in New York City? Busy investigators in that metropolis and in that state might not put the pieces together when they get the National Crime Information Center bulletin. But families, looking for a lost sailor or a runaway father or a troubled son, have a place to start, a place they can search daily with specific tools. Might they recognize the Timex? Might they help themselves to lay their burden down?

Missing adults can be entered in NamUs at any time, but that process is just one step. A local report also must be filed with law enforcement officials before a case can be published in NamUs.

Missing children are, of course, handled differently. They have no legal right to wander without permission, so laws require reporting missing children to NCIC, the FBI and other agencies.

The online NamUs database currently contains information on 10,704 unidentified bodies and 16,037 missing people. What it doesn't include are likely thousands of FBI records, and of those people who are between 18 and 21, who fall out of the “child” category and not quite into the “adult” one.

Twice – once each in 2009 and 2011 – U.S. Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., and Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, introduced a bill to fund the sharing of information between the FBI, the National Crime Information Center and NamUs, thus streamlining the data transfer and the public's right to know.

Twice the bill has died. It is referred to as Billy's Law, after Billy Smolinski, a 31-year-old Connecticut man whose family believes that unnecessary delays and the confused state of reporting adult missing persons cost him his life.

FOUND IN PLAIN SIGHT Sometime soon, Diana Smith will be exhumed from Mountain View Cemetery in San Bernardino. She will be cremated and her remains will be sent home to her family in Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

Because she was 19 when she left her family on July 3, 1991, no police agency in the past two decades has agreed to list her as missing. Her family had no way to find her other than to post a few fliers and wait for a phone call that never came. They saved enough money to hire a private investigator in 2005, but he didn't turn up anything.

All they could do was pray that Diana simply wanted nothing to do with them.

Late last year, when they inquired if they could enter their own file about Diana into NamUs, family members were told that they could, but that it would be unpublished until a law enforcement agency could verify the case. They were also told that NamUs would help them not only obtain, but pay to obtain and analyze, the requisite information.

NamUs investigators began to help the day the self-reported missing notice arrived. That was Nov. 30, 2013. On Dec. 11, the agency collected the DNA of Diana Smith's surviving younger sister, Chrissy Metzler. By Dec. 20, the Ohio Bureau of Investigation had a warrant for Diana's dental records.

Metzler had already scoured the Unidentified portion of NamUs and found four possible matches. One was sort of promising. On Jan. 9, Ohio investigators knocked on Metzler's door to tell her that NamUs UP # 2551 was, in fact, Diana.

They explained to Metzler, 39, that her big sister had been slain two months after she left home in 1991. The body was found at a truck stop off California State Road 58 on Sept. 3, 1991, three days after she'd been shot multiple times.

“Oh, yes, it was awful,” Metzler says, “but at least we knew.”

Diana Smith has been dead for 22 years. Once the details were entered into a database you've never heard of, she was able to reclaim the name she'd lost so long ago.

It took just a little more than a month.

Monday 18 February 2014

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/missing-602007-namus-information.html

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Samjhauta blasts : 7 years after, 19 dead bodies still unidentified

Seven years on, 19 dead bodies of the victims Samjhauta Express twin bomb blasts are lying buried unidentified at Panipat's burial ground. At the same time, kin of victims are running from the pillar to post to get the death certificates.

68 persons, most of them Pakistani nationals were killed in the twin bomb blasts in Attari (Pakistan bound) cross border Samjhauta Express near Deewana railway station on the night intervening February 18 and 19, 2007. Dead bodies of 45 victims were identified. 23 dead bodies were given the mass burial. As on now 19 dead bodies are still unidentified and are lying in the burial ground.

After a four-year-long probe, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on June 20 last year charged suspected right-wing extremist Swami Aseemanand and four others with triggering explosions in the cross-border Samjhauta Express.

But due to non release of DNA reports by Hydrabad's central forensic laboratory, kins of those believed to be dead are a harried lot these days.

Momin Malik, the Panipat based lawyer, who had been pursuing the cases related to claims of kins of those dead claimed that even after assurance by NIA officials couple of months ago, nothing has happened so far.

Sometimes we feel ashamed due to the attitude of authorities in Hydrabad as well as Indian government. There are four such persons whose families have been wiped out in the incident. Just because of the delay in DNA reports neither those families have got the death certificates nor they have been given the claims,'' Malik said.

There is a girl called Raheela, who has lost her father Mohammad Vakil, the government has neither issued his death certficiate nor government has been able to search him. We ourselves have searched around 90 jails in India so far, he added further.

Tuesday 18 February 2014

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Samjhauta-blasts-7-years-after-19-dead-bodies-still-unidentified/articleshow/30572226.cms

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18 bodies recovered as missing Nepal passenger plane found

Nepalese troops on Monday recovered 18 bodies from the snow-blanketed wreckage of a plane that crashed into a hillside, the latest disaster to hit the country’s internationally-blacklisted airlines.

Body parts and debris from the Nepal Airlines plane, which was carrying 15 passengers and three crew, were found scattered in a village next to the scene of Sunday’s crash in the mountainous west of the country, a police official at the scene said.

Officials dug through snow that had blanketed passengers’ bodies overnight in Arghakhanchi district, 226 kilometres west of the capital, local police official Kiran Khatri said.

“It was horrible, we found burned body parts. Only eight people had undamaged faces,” Khatri said in a phone interview.

The Twin Otter propeller plane, carrying locals and one passenger from Denmark, lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly after taking off from the popular tourist town of Pokhara on Sunday afternoon.

The aircraft from the state-run carrier encountered heavy rain en route from Pokhara to the town of Jumla, 353 kilometres west of Kathmandu.

The torrential downpour eventually forced two helicopters to stop their hunt for the plane Sunday.

Police resumed their search at first light on Monday, finally spotting scattered pieces of the wreckage during an aerial search of Arghakhanchi.

Soldiers have since recovered the bodies of all those on board, an army statement said.

“The bodies will be brought to Pokhara and Kathmandu for post mortem and handed over to respective families,” it said.

The crash, which left the aircraft shattered into small parts, is the latest to raise alarm over Nepal’s aviation industry. It comes only weeks after all the country’s airlines were banned from flying to the European Union.

An airline spokesman said engineers had refurbished the plane in recent weeks, leaving it in “good condition”.

“The preliminary report shows that the cause of the crash was the bad weather,” Ram Hari Sharma, Nepal Airlines spokesman, said. “When the plane took off from Pokhara airport the weather condition was fine... but unfortunately the weather condition en route to the destination worsened,” Sharma said.

“We cannot predict when the clouds cover the land,” he said.

Kathmandu-based aviation expert Hemant Arjyal said that while the weather may have played a part, the accident made it “pretty clear that our safety has not been up to the standards”.

“It’s well below the world average,” Arjyal said.

The Himalayan nation, which counts tourism as a major contributor to its economy, has suffered a number of air crashes in recent years, which have usually been attributed to inexperienced pilots, poor management and inadequate maintenance.

Arjyal, an engineer and member of the non-profit Nepal National Aviation Council, blamed authorities for their reluctance to investigate accidents thoroughly.

“There is a tendency to investigate only if all people on board have died in the crash,” he said.

“This makes the job of the investigating officials easy. Now you can blame the dead crew.”

Instead, he said, officials needed to probe non-fatal accidents as well to understand the reasons behind Nepal’s appalling safety record.

A Chinese tourist and a local pilot were killed when an ultra-light aircraft crashed into a hill in Pokhara last October.

Fifteen people were killed at the same airport in May 2012 when a plane carrying Indian pilgrims crashed into a mountain.

In September 2012 19 people, including seven Britons and four Chinese, were killed after an Everest-bound plane crashed minutes after taking off from Kathmandu in an accident which the government blamed on a panic-stricken pilot.

At the time of the blacklisting last December, EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said the country’s safety record “does not leave us any other choice”.

Government officials said the ban was “unfortunate” and came after months spent on upgrading safety and monitoring aircraft.
“Officials say that they have improved. If we have improved, there should have been no crash at all yesterday,” said aviation expert Arjyal.

Monday 17 February 2014

http://gulfnews.com/news/world/other-world/18-bodies-recovered-as-missing-nepal-passenger-plane-found-1.1292047

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Body found near site of Chinese tycoon's Bordeaux chopper crash

A body was discovered Friday on the banks of the river into which a Chinese tycoon crashed his helicopter as he toured his newly-acquired Bordeaux wine estate in December.

A resident of nearby Saint-Andre de Cubzac found the body, sources in the investigation told AFP on condition of anonymity, but the body was not yet confirmed as Lam Kok's.

"The site of the discovery is located between the site of the crash and the place where the bodies of two other passengers were found," an official said.

"But we have to wait for DNA matches as part of the forensic investigation," the official added.

The 46-year-old tea magnate had invited the press to his lush new property on December 20 to celebrate his $41-million purchase.

He took off on a helicopter tour of the estate -- which he intended to turn into an elite tea- and wine-tasting retreat -- with his 12-year-old son, his financial adviser and the chateau's former owner.

The three other bodies have been found but the tycoon was still missing.

James Gregoire, who died in the crash on the day he handed over the property to Lam Kok, had bought the chateau in 2003 after the previous chateau owner died in a plane crash.

Wealthy Chinese have developed a taste for fine French wines, and their buying power has been credited with pushing prices for certain vintages to record levels.

In recent years they have increasingly taken to buying French vineyards as well.

Saturday 15 February 2014

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/21479049/body-found-near-site-of-chinese-tycoons-bordeaux-chopper-crash/

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One survivor, 77 bodies found after Algerian plane crash

Rescue workers found 77 bodies at the scene of one of Algeria's worst air disasters Tuesday, after a military transport plane carrying troops and family members crashed in the northeast of the country, Algerian state television said.

Only one survivor had been found, an officer from the military's civil protection unit said.

Ennahar TV channel said the survivor was a woman who was rushed to hospital in critical condition. The search for other survivors at the remote crash site in the mountainous Oum El Bouaghi region was continuing.

The Hercules C-130 troop transporter was reported to be carrying 99 passengers and four crew when it crashed just as it was about to start its descent to Constantine airport, about 48 kilometres away.

State radio and television put the number of victims at over 100, but an army officer later told the official APS agency that the plane was carrying 77 people.

Bad weather was believed to have caused the crash. The region has been experiencing strong winds and snowfall.

The aircraft was traveling from the southern desert town of Tamanrasset, according to El Watan newspaper.

A crisis team headed by an air force general was leading the rescue operation.

The accident is one of the deadliest in Algerian aviation history.

In 2003, an Air Algeria passenger plane crashed on takeoff from Tamanrasset airport and burst into flames, killing 102 people.

Last year, an Algerian military cargo aircraft crashed in southern France, killing two soldiers and four civilians.

Tuesday 12 February 2014

http://www.guelphmercury.com/news-story/4362810-one-survivor-77-bodies-found-after-algerian-plane-crash/

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Forensic Scientists Support El Salvador's Steps to Investigate El Mozote Massacre

Forensic experts from around the world met in El Salvador last week to support the state's first tentative steps toward investigating what is considered among the most heinous atrocities in Latin American history -- the massacre of El Mozote.

By inviting the Human Rights Center at the UC Berkeley School of Law and forensic teams from Argentina, Guatemala, and Bosnia-Herzegovina to El Salvador, the Supreme Court of Justice gave hopeful signs that it intends to comply with the sentence of the Inter-American Court to investigate the massacre that took place in December 1981.

Like the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 and six Jesuit priests in 1989, the massacre of El Mozote is both a painful reality and a tragic symbol of the darkest days of the war. Over three days in the eastern department of Morazan, the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion terrorized and killed more than 1,000 villagers, among them some 400 children -- the youngest only three days old.

Since the end of the 12-year war in 1992, El Salvador's Amnesty Law has prevented the prosecution of those who committed human rights abuses during the armed conflict. However the Inter-American Court ruled in October 2012 that the massacre of El Mozote violated international law, specifically the American Convention on the "rights to life, to personal integrity and to personal liberty" and other articles related to rape, torture, and the murder of children. The Court sentenced El Salvador to investigate the facts of the massacre, identify and prosecute those responsible, and return remains of the victims to their next of kin.

El Salvador was asked to take action within two years -- by December 2014 -- but the clock ticked for a full year without progress. Until now.

Finally, under the new leadership of El Salvador's provisional Supreme Court President Florentín Meléndez Padilla, who took office last fall, the state has begun to comply. Meléndez and the Supreme Court's Institute of Legal Medicine invited the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, the International Commission on Missing Persons in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center to spend four days in El Salvador offering scientific advice and insights.

The meeting has helped to establish progress on El Mozote in case any political winds (and political personnel) shift with the presidential elections -- the second round of which will be held on March 9.

"We do need great wisdom in these four days so that we can agree to an action plan -- not in months but in weeks," said Dr. Cristián Orrego Benavente, director of the Human Rights Center's Forensic Program, at the outset of the meeting, expressing the need to act quickly.

The forensic scientists who visited El Salvador have decades of experience searching for graves, exhuming bodies, identifying remains, and scientifically documenting crimes -- often with the participation of grieving families. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team has worked on El Mozote intermittently over two decades under the sponsorship of Tutela Legal, the former human rights office of the Archdiocese of the Catholic Church of El Salvador.

While El Mozote's massacre has been well reported by journalists (most notably Raymond Bonner in The New York Times, Alma Guillermoprieto in The Washington Post, and Mark Danner in The New Yorker) and intensive investigations and exhumations have been performed by the Argentinians, the state itself has never investigated the crime.

During the meetings at the Supreme Court of Justice in San Salvador, the visiting scientists raised critical questions for their Salvadoran colleagues who will conduct the work, including: How will the families of the victims of El Mozote be involved from the very beginning of the process, as mandated by the Court? Are there more graves to exhume and what will happen if family members don't want to unearth them? What are the best forensic tools to use in this investigation? What are the challenges associated with investigating a massacre that happened 32 years ago?

The scientists and Salvadoran colleagues traveled more than three hours east from San Salvador to El Mozote to see the massacre sites and to hear testimonies from victims' family members. They also spoke with the legendary Belgian priest, Father Rogelio Ponselle, who has worked with the community for some 20 years, and visited the monument that honors the victims.

"This is where we found fifteen people -- five from my family and ten from another," said Orlando Márquez, standing on a hill and pointing to a stretch of field flanked by cows where El Mozote's dead were once strewn. It's a story he has told several times in the 32 years since the massacre.

Now, with a new state-sponsored investigation, he and other family members will likely recount their stories again -- this time for the official record.

Despite the ubiquitous history of political violence in the country, Salvadoran forensic investigators simply have not had the means to comprehensively investigate or formally prosecute massacres. Moreover, they are burdened by simultaneously investigating an all-consuming gang war marked by brutality that has produced a steady stream of disfigured and mutilated victims.

All agreed that the scientific expertise of forensic experts who have worked in the trenches throughout Latin America, Africa, and Europe will be critical to the future of El Salvador's investigation of El Mozote.Last weeks' meetings marked an essential step toward revisiting and beginning to repair a wartime atrocity and accurately preserving historical memory -- for surviving families like that of Márquez and for all Salvadorans.

Rapid next steps -- including meetings with families, scientists, prosecutors, and Salvadoran officials -- will hopefully propel El Salvador toward satisfying the Inter-American Court's ruling and seeking a measure of truth and justice for victims and the nation as a whole.

Monday 12 February 2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrea-lampros/forensic-scientists-suppo_b_4749719.html

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Hirakud boat tragedy toll rises to 31

With the recovery of three more bodies from the Hirakud reservoir on Tuesday, the death toll in the boat tragedy has gone up to 31.

Of the total 31 victims, 30 persons were picnickers of Lions Club while one has been identified as Amarendra Rout (30), an employee of Hindalco Industries Limited at Hirakud. He was returning from Bandhbahal under Banharpali police limits in Jharsuguda district.

Earlier, the rescue team had recovered 28 bodies - 11 on Sunday and 17 on Monday. The rescue operation was called off after bodies of all missing persons were recovered, Sambalpur Sadar Sub-Collector Surendra Panda said.

Meanwhile, Revenue Divisional Commissioner (North) Pramod Meherda, who is probing the mishap, visited the Sonutikra Ghat here. A case has also been registered at Hirakud police station in connection with the incident. Police have also filed a case against the boat owner Satyanand Pandey of Jagannath Mandir Colony in Sambalpur town and the two boatmen - Akshya Rana and Anjan of Sonutikra area under Sason police limits here. Police said further investigating is on.

The District Governor of Lions Club Padma Charan Nayak along with other senior office bearers also arrived to meet the members of the bereaved families. Thousands of people from across the society gathered at the Rajghat in Sambalpur town where the last rites of the deceased were performed.

Ramesh Agarwal is yet to come to terms with the tragedy. President of the Lions Club, Sambalpur division, Agarwal had never imagined that he would lose many of his fellow members in the boat mishap. He was on board the ill-fated motor-driven country boat. Refuting claims made by the district administration that boat capsized due to overloading, Agarwal said the ferry sunk after water gushed into it from its base. “Overloading was not a factor at all,” he claimed. He said the load was more during their onward journey with around 100 picnickers, besides regular passengers along with 18 motorcycles on board.

“Water suddenly gushed into the boat in the middle of the Hirakud dam reservoir during the return journey and the propeller of the boat stopped working. We tried to evacuate the water with utensils and through a hand pump fitted in the boat. We raised alarm and called our drivers waiting for us on the dyke of the reservoir and friends over mobile phone after we felt that it was difficult to throw water out of the boat,” said a tearful Agarwal.

A rescue boat reached the spot four minutes before the boat capsized. “Every one was in a hurry to board the rescue boat and the boat lost its balance,” he said. Lauding role of boatmen who reached the spot immediately and effort by some fellow members who saved many lives, he said the administration played an important role in the rescue operation. Agarwal said motto of Lions Club is ‘We Serve’ and 101 members of club are always ready to serve people in need.

Wednesday 12 February 2014

http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/Hirakud-Boat-Tragedy-Toll-Rises-to-31/2014/02/12/article2052324.ece

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Military Plane Crash in Algeria Kills 103

At least 103 people are feared killed as a military cargo plane crashed in north-eastern Algeria.

The breaking news was reported by the local Annahar TV channel, cited by the Bulgarian public radio, BNR.

According to the channel, the plane went down not far from a north-eastern town of Oum El Bouaghi.

No other details are available at the moment.

Tuesday 11 February 2014

http://www.novinite.com/articles/158115/Military+Plane+Crash+in+Algeria+Kills+103

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Docu-drama on forgotten Leith rail disaster

It was a sunny May morning in 1915 and the troops on board the train were cheery, whistling, comrades in arms.

As the train carrying 500 Edinburgh men bound for the Front approached Gretna few could have anticipated the horror that was about to unfold.

The locomotive smashed into a goods train, bursting into flames.

Then, with people still trapped inside, a Glasgow bound-express train ploughed into the wreckage.

The tragedy that ensued has been likened to the rail industry’s Titanic moment – a disaster which left 215 Royal Scots and 12 civilians dead.

Now, nearly 100 years on, a special docu-drama charting the disaster is to be made – and the programme makers are keen to unravel the events’ roots in Leith, the community from where many of the victims hailed.

Director Robert Rae, of Theatre Workshop Scotland, is based in the former Dalmeny Drill Hall where the ill-fated battalion was based.

He is seeking help to tell the train disaster story, which was not widely reported at the time for fear it would damage home-front morale.

He said: “This is a seminal event in Leith history. “It was the biggest rail disaster in UK history, and yet today many people have never even heard of it.

“Through our research we have found out that the youngest victim of the crash had only just turned 15-years-old. Some families lost all of their children in the disaster.”

Among the officers killed was Lieutenant Christian Salvesen, son of the shipping magnate of the same name.

Robert said: “The bodies were brought back to the Dalmeny Drill Hall and the people of Leith gathered outside and waited to find out what had happened to their loved ones.

“But they weren’t allowed into the building because the injuries were so horrific. It was almost the only time that the war came home in such a direct way. They didn’t even manage to get out of Scotland.”

This isn’t Theatre Workshop Scotland’s first foray into film-making.

Their award-winning feature film The Happy Lands, created with members of the mining communities of Fife, was screened by the BBC, and the team are hoping to repeat that success in Leith. Already, people with a personal connection to the disaster have expressed an interest in taking part.

Robert said: “We have been approached by people who have said their grandfather was involved and that they want to tell their story. You don’t need any experience and we’re keen for people to get involved in everything from acting to the research process.”

Jim Tweedie, from Leith Local History Society, welcomed news of the planned documentary. “I’m all for this tragedy being publicised. It’s an important part of Leith history, but it tends to be forgotten that more than 200 people died.”

“Many people in Leith can trace back to relatives who were involved in this disaster.”

Tuesday 11 February 2014

http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/transport/docu-drama-on-forgotten-leith-rail-disaster-1-3300763

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Expert has hopes for Northern Ireland's Disappeared

The top forensic investigator with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains said “we would like to think we will have some success in this coming year”.

Geoff Knupfer was speaking in Drogheda last night at the opening of an exhibition on the Disappeared.

There are seven bodies still to be recovered in the Republic. While no dates are in place to resume digs, he acknowledged it is “a tall order,” to ask somebody to identify a site 30 years later.

“These sites were selected with great care for their anonymity, they are barren wastelands and to ask anybody to come along 30 years later is a tall order.”

Amongst those at the opening was Seán Megraw whose brother Brendan was abducted and murdered by the IRA in 1978, and Anna McShane, daughter of Charlie Armstrong whose body was recovered in 2010. He disappeared in 1981.

Tuesday 11 February 2014

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/expert-has-hopes-for-disappeared-258339.html

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Rescue op for Odisha boat victims in Hirakud called off for the day

As the sun went down the western horizon, the district administration suspended rescue operations for the day today although the bodies of three persons who are still missing following the boat mishap deep inside the Hirakud Dam reservoir on Sunday are yet to be fished out.

Operations, however, will continue on the shores with electric lights, sources in the district administration said.

Rescue operations inside the reservoir will resume at day break tomorrow, the sources added.

A total of 28 bodies have been recovered in two days of rescue operations, according to district administration.

While bodies of three more members of the Lions Club picnic team are to be traced, there is no word yet on the whereabouts of the boatman, the assistant boatman and several others who were also on the boat, leading to apprehension that the death toll could go up further.

Tuesday 11 February 2014

http://odishasuntimes.com/31114/rescue-operations-inside-reservoir-called-day/

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112 Dhaka collapse victims unidentified

A Bangladesh expert said on Monday he has given up hope of identifying 112 victims of the Rana Plaza factory collapse, almost a year after one of the world's worst industrial tragedies.

The garment factory complex on the outskirts of Dhaka collapsed in April last year, trapping thousands of workers who stitched clothes for Western retailers.

Rescue work ended three weeks later with 1,129 bodies recovered from the ruins of the nine-storey complex.

Authorities buried more than 300 victims whose bodies were so badly damaged or decomposed that they were beyond recognition, but collected their DNA samples to help verify any compensation claims.

Sharif Akhteruzzaman, head of the National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory, said his experts have now identified 200 of those victims after matching their DNA samples with those of living relatives.

“Of the 322 people, we have now identified 200 people. Of them 157 were identified earlier and 43 this month,” Akhteruzzaman told AFP.

But Akhteruzzaman said the lab could not identify more than 100 victims, despite re-analysing their samples and trying to match them.

“We don't have any hopes for these 112 bodies as they did not match with any of the 549 people who've come to us for their missing relatives.”

Formal identification means families can claim compensation for the tragedy, amid anger that authorities were not doing enough to help those left behind.

Akhteruzzaman has previously raised concerns about the quality of the DNA samples which were collected.

Akhteruzzaman also said the lab was analysing human remains recovered at the site in recent months to try to identify them, although it was unclear how many new victims have been found.

Police said in December they had recovered remains after street children spotted bone fragments while rifling through debris at the site.

The recovery has reinforced accusations by labour groups that the operation to rescue workers and retrieve bodies ended too quickly, and that the death toll could be higher still.

The tragedy highlighted the appalling safety conditions in the world's second largest garment industry after China, and forced Western retailers and the government to promise factory safety inspections.

Bangladeshi and international labour unions have criticised the government, factory owners and Western retailers for not swiftly and adequately compensating victims and their families.

The government has said it has paid money to families of around 800 victims, including about 40 survivors who lost limbs.

But authorities have delayed compensating the rest, citing a lack of identification, a task made more difficult by inadequate payroll records kept by the factory's managers.

Tuesday 11 February 2014

http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/112-dhaka-collapse-victims-unidentified-1.1644780

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Mexico finds 100s of skeletal remains along U.S. border

Mexican officials have discovered hundreds of skeletal remains scattered on ranches in a stretch of towns along the U.S.-Mexico border as they carried out a wide search to locate missing people.

The remains were burned and extremely hard to identify, said Coahuila state prosecutors' spokesman Jesus Carranza on Monday.

News of the grisly finds came at the same time 12 bodies were unearthed from clandestine graves in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero and about two months after 67 bodies were found in western Mexico. Such discoveries remain common despite government claims that the number of killings has gone down in the past year.

Police in Coahuila haven't said whether an organized crime group is suspected in the skeletal remains, but the area is known to be dominated by the violent Zetas drug cartel. Officers have arrested 10 men, including four police officers suspected of aiding a criminal group, the state attorney general's office said in a press release.

The police operation took place on ranches in 11 different towns around the border city of Piedras Negras, right across Eagle Pass, Texas, after interviews with family members and at least 32 former local officials. Usually, remains like these have been found in mass graves, but these were left on the surface in the region known as Five Springs, Carranza said.

At some of the ranches, investigators found bullet casings as well as barrels of diesel fuel that was likely used to burn bodies.

"We are still not sure how many skeletal remains and how many victims we are talking about," Carranza said. "But this operation was launched to try to locate missing people."

An organization that supports families of missing victims has gathered 321 cases between 2007-13 in just Coahuila. Families were worried Monday that the government contaminated the crime scenes because of images from local media showing the use of heavy machinery at the search sites.

"It makes you want to cry. It's unbelievable how they handle evidence. It just complicates the identification of the remains," said Guadalupe Fernandez, a member of Forces United for our Disappeared in Coahuila and the mother of Jose Antonio Robledo, an engineer who went missing in 2009.

The state prosecutors' office said it followed protocols of preservation in crime scene investigations.

In Guerrero state, the attorney general's office said a dozen bodies were found Sunday in the town of Mexcaltepec by military personnel after they received an anonymous tip Saturday night.

In the same state and only a few days before, members of armed self-defence groups found a clandestine grave in the town of Cajelitos near the state capital of Chilpancingo and reported the skeletons of three men and two women.

Two months ago, authorities excavated for several days in recovering 67 bodies that had been bound or gagged in a remote town by Lake Chapala, a popular spot with tourists and American retirees.

It is a region where the Knights Templar and New Generation drug cartels are fighting each other. Local police officers who confessed to handing over people to the New Generation organization led investigators to the scene, officials said.

Tuesday 11 February 2014

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mexico-finds-100s-of-skeletal-remains-along-u-s-border-1.2531629

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Madinah hotel blaze kills 15 pilgrims

Fifteen pilgrims died and 130 others were injured in a fire that broke out at a hotel in Madinah on Saturday, the Madinah Governorate said in a statement.

The fire occurred at the Ishraq Al-Madina Hotel at 2:33 p.m.

Eyewitnesses said the victims were of different nationalities and included Egyptians and Turks.

Civil Defense firefighters were able to put out the blaze by 5 p.m., the governorate said.

Madinah Gov. Prince Faisal bin Salman has been following up on the incident.

An investigation to ascertain the cause of the fire has been launched, sources said. Preliminary reports indicate that the fire occurred as a result of a short circuit during maintenance work.

Thirty of the injured were treated on the spot, while others were sent to King Fahd Hospital and the Ansar Hospital. According to one report, Ansar received four bodies and 91 injured.

Most pilgrims died of suffocation, the statement said. There were about 700 guests in the hotel at the time the fire broke out. Authorities evacuated guests and closed off streets leading to the hotel on Sitteen Street. Some pilgrims who were trapped inside the hotel climbed to the roof of the building for safety.

A large number of people had gathered in front of the hotel, obstructing rescue efforts.

Eighteen fire-fighting teams were dispatched to put out the blaze, while the Red Crescent deployed 14 first-aid teams and Madinah’s Health Department eight teams.

An Indian pilgrim staying at a nearby building said she saw a huge plume of dark smoke coming out of the hotel as she was returning from the Prophet’s Mosque at around 2:45 p.m.

“We saw some people waving through the windows for help. We also saw several firefighters engaged in rescue operations. A large number of people had gathered in front of the hotel. It was a frightening scene,” she said. There were conflicting reports about the number of Egyptian casualties.

Ahmed Zaki, an official at the Egyptian Consulate in Jeddah, said they had received information about the death of four Egyptians. Another report said that as many as 12 of the 15 victims were Egyptians. Egyptian Ambassador Afifi Abdel-Wahab was quoted as telling an Egyptian television channel that “15 Egyptians died in the fire.”

Prince Faisal has ordered hotel guests to be relocated.

Monday 10 February 2014

http://www.arabnews.com/news/522796

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51 dead in Burundi flood disaster

At least 51 people perished in flooding and landslides in a night of torrential rain in the Burundi capital that swept away hundreds of homes and cut off roads and power, officials said Monday.

Police in Bujumbura said the toll was the highest in living memory from a disaster caused by freak weather, with more than 100 people also injured.

“The rain that fell in torrents overnight on the capital caused a disaster,” Security Minister Gabriel Nizigama told reporters.

“We have already found the bodies of 51 people killed when their houses collapsed or were swept away.”

Police said several hundred homes were destroyed after torrential rains began battering the city late Sunday.

Houses in the poorer parts of town are often built from mud bricks, which offer no resistance to torrents of water and mud.

“It’s the first time in the history of Bujumbura that we have seen damage on this scale,” Bujumbura mayor Saidi Juma said, calling for “solidarity on a national and international scale” to help the city cope.

In the district of Kinama in the hardest hit north of the city, a stream broke its banks, with waters rising to shoulder level in some places.

By midday the flooding had subsided, leaving scenes of devastation.

Zawadi, a mother-of-five, stood in the ruins of her Kinama home, feeding her five-month-old baby surrounded by jerry cans and muddy clothing.

“I heard the children shouting during the night,” she said, recounting how she had gone into their room to find them standing up on their bed, which was already under water.

The whole family was able to run outside before the walls caved in, but one neighboring family was less fortunate, with the parents and their three children crushed to death.

On the western outskirts of Bujumbura, residents told similar stories.

“Around midnight we heard something cracking and we all ran outside for fear the house would fall on us,” said Gaudence Nyandwi, whose father Venant was being transferred from an improvised stretcher to a car, his face contorted in pain.

“My father went back inside to see if he could save anything and the house fell on him. We think he might have a broken leg,” Nyandwi told AFP.

Nizigama said burials of the victims would begin on Monday because there was not enough space for their bodies in the capital’s mortuaries.

He was speaking at a police station in the worst affected northern part of Bujumbura, where an AFP journalist saw 27 bodies covered in white sheeting.

Nizigama, touring the disaster zone with other ministers, promised food aid to those who lost their homes and said the government would bear the cost of burying relatives and would provide new housing.

Torrential rain fell solidly for 10 hours overnight, causing power cuts in whole areas of the city which lies on the northeastern shore of Lake Tanganyika.

The road leading out of the capital to neighboring Rwanda was blocked because of a landslide while a bridge was washed away on the road to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Monday 10 February 2014

http://www.arabnews.com/news/523716

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43 more victims identified thru' DNA tests

The National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory of Dhaka Medical College has identified 43 more bodies that had been buried at the Jurain graveyard after those were recovered from the Rana Plaza collapse site.

These bodies were among the around 290 bodies buried at the Jurain graveyard, as those could not be identified.

So far, 200 such bodies that were burned beyond recognition have been identified through DNA test, said Sharif Akhtaruzzaman, the national technical adviser of the lab, yesterday.

DNA samples of another 112 bodies are still to be identified while the lab is working on 10 other samples, he added.

“A list of the 43 identified workers has been sent to the labour ministry,” he said.

The Rana Plaza building collapsed on April 24 last year, killing at least 1,135 and injuring hundreds.

Nearly 10 months into the disaster, families of the workers whose bodies were not found have received little compensation from the authorities.

Monday 10 February 2014

http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/43-more-victims-identified-thru-dna-tests-10709

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Bolivia mudslide buries village; 4 dead, 9 missing

Heavy rains caused a mudslide that buried much of a small mountainside settlement in central Bolivia, killing at least four people, local officials said Sunday. Nine more people were listed as missing.

Jimena Alegre, an official for the Morochota municipality, told The Associated Press by telephone that the slide occurred Saturday night in the Quechua community of Chuypakasa and buried the homes of 15 families.

Rescue squads were digging through the site in hopes of finding more survivors. The first responders were from Cochabamba, which is about 220 kilometers (135 miles) east of the capital of La Paz.

Heavy rains have been falling across most of Bolivia since November and civil defense officials say 46,850 families have been affected.

The government news agency ABI said Sunday that 40 people have been killed, including 10 who died two weeks ago in a mudslide in the Amazon town of Rurrenabaque.

Monday 10 February 2014

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/feb/09/bolivia-mudslide-buries-village-4-dead-9-missing/

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Odisha Boat Disaster Toll Mounts To 24; Seven Still Missing in Hirakud reservoir

Thirteen more bodies were recovered today taking the toll in the boat capsize incident in Odisha's Sambalpur district to 24 even as efforts were on to trace at least seven more missing persons.

The bodies were found as scuba divers were engaged in the morning to trace the missing persons after the boat capsize in Sambalpur district yesterday, Special Relief Commissioner P K Mohapatra told PTI.

He said at least seven persons were still missing.

"The number of missing persons might vary with additional information being received from local people," Mohapatra said.

The scuba divers also located the sunken boat.

The state government has announced Rs 1.5 lakh ex-gratia for the family members of the dead and free treatment for the survivors.

An administrative inquiry by Sambalpur's revenue divisional commissioner has been ordered.

Recounting the sequence of events in the Assembly, Parliamentary Affairs minister Kalpataru Das said that around 114 family members of the Lion's Club, Sambalpur went on a picnic beside the Hirakud reservoir.

He said the picnickers while returning set sail in a large motorised boat from Tilla Ghat.

In addition, around 30 people, some with motorcycles, from nearby villages also boarded the boat, Das said.

The boatmen asked some of the picknickers to disembark as the boat was overloaded, but this was ignored, the minister said.

Halfway through the return journey, the motor of the boat suddenly stopped creating panic among the passengers with the boat capsizing.

Another boat rushed to rescue the passengers with most of them jumping into the water.

As soon as the district administration received about the capsize, the collector, the superintendent of police, and the fire-brigade launched a rescue operation, Das said.

He said that about 80 persons were rescued by 6:00 pm yesterday. Those in a critical condition were admitted to the district headquarters hospital in Sambalpur, VSS Medical College Hospital in Burla and JMJ Hospital at Bareipali.

Those with minor injuries were discharged after first-aid.

Monday 10 February 2014

http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/Boat-Disaster-Toll-Mounts-To-24-Seven-Still-Missing/2014/02/10/article2048963.ece

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