AirAsia flight QZ8501: 3 more passengers' bodies identified

The East Java Police's Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team has released the names of three passengers aboard AirAsia QZ8501 whose bodies have been identified.

"In identifying the victims, the DVI team analyzed primary and secondary data," the team said as quoted by kompas.com in a press conference at Bhayangkara Police Hospital in Surabaya on Sunday.

The primary data used to identify the victims included such personal markers as fingerprints while the secondary data included identification of sexual organs and accessories they wore, the team said.

Following requests from the families of those on ill-fated AirAsia flight QZ8501, police will not allow media to cover the transfer of bodies identified by its Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team.

East Java Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Awi Setiyono announced on Saturday that the press would no longer be permitted to cover such transfers, as happened with the first four bodies.

“We plead with our journalist friends: There’s no need for the transfer to be covered. The families have objected. This is a private matter, let’s respect this,” Awi told reporters on Saturday.

The spokesman said the objections were mainly aimed at live television coverage.

On Saturday in Surabaya, the bodies of two more victims were returned to families without a ceremony.

“In both cases, we have a match between ante mortem and post mortem data,” Awi said.

Six bodies have been returned to families as of Saturday, seven days after contact with the plane, which was en route from Surabaya to Singapore, was lost.

Separately, 12 more bodies arrived at Bhayangkara Hospital for identification on Saturday, flown in from Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan, where bodies and debris found at the crash site in the Karimata Strait have been taken.

A total of 30 bodies have been flown to the hospital, including the six returned to families. Awi said two more bodies would soon be returned to families, with two others at the final stage of identification. The rest were still undergoing identification.

Awi said the police were collecting DNA data from victims’ families.

East Java forensic team member Sr. Comr. Hery Wijayatmoko said the team was relying on DNA data. “After being in the water for [seven days, it’s difficult to obtain fingerprints],” Hery said.

He said that the bodies were first labeled and separated based on gender and nationality.

The latter stages involved examining the bodies for post mortem data, including dental documentation, property found on the bodies, as well as fingerprints and DNA data.

“It’s not easy, but we have many experts on the team to help speed up the process,” he said.

A number of forensic experts have joined the team, including those from Brawijaya University in Malang, East Java; Gajah Mada Univeristy in Yogyakarta and the University of Indonesia (UI) in Jakarta.

UI forensic expert Budi Sampurna said that police would autopsy the bodies of the pilot, co-pilot and some of the passengers for their investigation.

“Not all the passengers’ bodies will be subject to autopsy. We’re taking only a sample, because not all the families approve [of this method],” Budi said.

Singapore deploys DVI team A Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team comprising six officers from the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and two forensic experts from the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) departed earlier today for Surabaya to assist Indonesia in identifying victims of the recent AirAsia QZ8501 tragedy.

Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs and Foreign Affairs Mr Masagos Zulkifli joined family members to send off the DVI team at Changi Airport.

Superintendent (Supt) Sng May Yen, who was also part of the DVI team deployed to Phuket during the aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami, said that the team will "do our best and try to help as many families as possible."

He said on Facebook: "We will do all we can to support our Indonesian friends in these difficult times. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims."

Sunday 4 January 2014

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/01/04/families-tell-cops-return-bodies-without-media-coverage.html

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/asia/south-east-asia/story/airasia-flight-qz8501-3-more-passengers-bodies-identified-20150104

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/asia/south-east-asia/story/singapore-sends-team-help-identify-bodies-those-board-airasia-flight

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Explosives trigger mine collapse in Mohmand; 10 dead

At least 10 people were killed on Saturday when a marble mine collapsed in the Safi tehsil of Mohmand Agency. Officials expect the death toll could rise.

Local miner Mir Wais Khan said the incident took place at Jalat Haji marble mine at Khanqah Ziarat mountain in Safi at 3pm. “Around 15 people – 11 miners, two truckers and their two helpers – were at the site when the mine caved in,” he told The Express Tribune by phone.

After the incident, other miners rushed to the site, called heavy machinery from other mines and started a rescue operation. “Four bodies, including that of a trucker, have been pulled out from underneath the huge boulders,” he said, adding that a seriously injured miner was also recovered and shifted to hospital where he is said to be in a critical condition. “There are slim chances of finding more survivors,” he added.

A political administration official, Miraj Khan, confirmed 10 fatalities. “Troops from the Khasadar force and Frontier Corps are also helping with the rescue operation which is ongoing,” he added.

Senator Hilal Rehman claimed that the mine collapsed as the miners used explosives to excavate marble from the mine. “The government should provide the mines with heavy machinery and build a social security hospital at the site as the Fata secretariat and political administration receive billions of rupees annually in taxes from these mines,” he said.

Mine management in Pakistan lacks preventive and protective measures, as a result the number of fatal accidents is high.

Workers endure harsh conditions in makeshift mud shacks or in villages devoid of basic facilities.

Accidents are not recorded in the registry as required by law, and often go unchecked. Mine workers in Pakistan get a pittance for work considered one of the highest-risk activities in the world in terms of safety and health.

Sunday 4 January 2014

http://tribune.com.pk/story/816892/disaster-in-mohmand-explosives-trigger-mine-collapse-10-dead/

http://www.dawn.com/news/1154860

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Many bodies of AirAsia passengers won’t be autopsied

Investigators won’t conduct autopsies on most of the bodies recovered from the AirAsia airliner that crashed into the Java Sea, paying mind to cultural sensibilities regarding respect for the dead in this largely conservative, Muslim nation.

Doctors will conduct autopsies on the plane’s crew to detect any possible presence of toxic agents, banned drugs or alcohol. The bodies of foreign nationals will also undergo autopsy in line with international rules.

Officials in Surabaya said Saturday that a “sampling” of passengers on the flight would also undergo autopsies but declined to comment further on how many and which passengers they would be.

For Indonesians on Flight 8501, an autopsy can be conducted only if written consent is obtained from relatives or if police open a criminal investigation in which the autopsy is needed as part of evidence, Dr. Anton Castilani, the director of Indonesia’s Disaster Victims Identification unit, said Saturday.

One autopsy had been completed as of Saturday, according to DVI officials, who declined to comment on the cause of death.

Many Indonesians are reluctant to grant permission for an autopsy, even if it could provide insight into a relative’s final moments. Muslims, in particular, prefer that the deceased are buried as soon as possible after recovery.

Indonesia normally doesn’t conduct autopsies on victims of air or ferry disasters, Dr. Castilani told The Wall Street Journal in an interview.

“There are cultural issues,” Dr. Castilani said. “People refuse to allow autopsies.”

Jonathan Galaviz, partner at Global Market Advisors and an aviation expert, said that autopsies on passengers aren’t mandatory in the U.S. and Europe and wouldn’t be standard procedures in many jurisdictions.

While autopsies may indicate whether a passenger was likely killed on impact or drowned, the more relevant data points on how the plane went down will come from the analysis of the black boxes.

“For most of the passengers, the cause of death is the crash and the data from the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder will most certainly reveal the cause of the crash,” Mr. Galaviz said.

In the U.S., autopsy isn't mandatory for the crew, Mr. Galaviz said. Instead, blood samples need to be taken from their bodies to rule out drugs and alcohol.

“An autopsy would be a very normal thing as part of a suspicious or unexpected death like this” though religious considerations can be taken into account, said Graham Braithwaite, professor of safety and accident investigation at Cranfield University in the U.K. The pathological assessments can also become important during later litigation in determining payouts, he said.

Indonesian police haven’t classified the probe into the crash as a criminal investigation, said Dr. Castilani, who is both a senior police superintendent and a medical doctor. He is leading the effort to identify victims after their bodies are recovered at sea and carried out similar work in the 2002 Bali terror bombings.

For Dr. Castilani, physical examination of the bodies can yield clues and help analyze what happened.

“As the police doctor, you should have your own mind if you find something suspicious,” Dr. Castilani said.

By Saturday, 30 bodies had been recovered, the majority of them “mostly intact,” Dr. Castilani said. He was unwilling to speculate on what conclusions can be drawn from examinations so far.

The identification process is under way in Surabaya, the city on eastern Java island where the flight to Singapore originated. By Saturday afternoon, six bodies sent to the forensics teams had been identified.

Budi Sampurna, forensics professor at the University of Indonesia, who is assisting with the identification, said autopsies may be difficult to conduct “because the bodies are in water for too long, and signs would have been gone.”

Mr. Sampurna said that identification is the priority for the forensics teams.

Sunday 4 January 2014

http://www.wsj.com/articles/many-bodies-of-airasia-passengers-wont-be-autopsied-officials-say-1420307128

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Mt Erebus disaster – template for all subsequent air disaster recoveries

This week the Indonesian Navy has been trying to recover some of the 162 bodies from the Air Asia flight which crashed into the Java Sea. A grim and dangerous way to end a year in which 1,320 people have perished in air crashes. The long-term global trend may be for crashes to become increasingly rare, but 2014 was the worst year for fatalities in nearly a decade.

And recovering the bodies from these disasters is one of the more unpleasant, and sometimes perilous, jobs around.

One man knows all about this. Bob Mitchell, now 73, was in charge of attempting to recover the bodies of 257 who died when they crashed into the side of Mount Erebus, in Antarctica, 35 years ago.

It was a sightseeing flight that went terribly wrong and which still attracts conspiracy theories to this day.

But the search and recovery of the bodies became the template for all subsequent air disaster recoveries, from last year’s shocking shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines plane over Ukraine to the Lockerbie disaster of 1988.

Mitchell was immediately aware of the significance of the Erebus crash. On November 28, 1979 he was an inspector in the New Zealand police force and specialist in search and rescue. He had, by chance, spent the day teaching a course in victim identification, before heading off to an early Christmas party.

“I had just got home and was sitting down to dinner when the phone went. It was my boss who told me I had better come in. “At the time it was the fourth largest air disaster in history and I knew straightaway this was going to be a biggie.”

Bob Mitchell says: "The 257 bodies didn’t bother me a great deal because it goes with the territory."

In New Zealand, search, rescue and recovery of bodies is a police job. The fact that the plane had crashed 2,500 miles away in one of the most inhospitable areas on the planet was not relevant. The plane was an Air New Zealand DC10 and the great majority of the passengers were Kiwis.

Mitchell had just a few hours to gather a small team of policeman together, collect some cold weather kit from a Polar expedition base, and fly to Antarctica on a Hercules.

While Mitchell comes across as very level headed, many of the team were overwhelmed by the scene of death and destruction they encountered, in particular, Stuart Leighton, who was just 22 at the time.

“We had no idea what Antarctica would throw at us. We just knew it would be dangerous.”

Even for the experienced policemen, the scale and the freezing temperatures were something they had never encountered.

Leighton recalls: “There was a lot of mutilation with a lot of the bodies. It was grotesque. It was overwhelming. I personally felt a little bit out of my depth.

“I had the thought, 'I don’t belong here. This is for the big boys’.”

Mitchell admits now that Leighton was probably too young to have been part of the mission.

The team leader’s main concern was not the sight of corpses scattered across the glacier -- “The 257 bodies didn’t bother me a great deal because it goes with the territory” -- but the safety of his team.

How they would cope with the sudden winds that would suddenly pick up bits metallic debris turning them into missiles that flew across the site, how they would avoid falling into the numerous fissures in the ice, how they would be able to recover 257 individual corpses, bag them up and return them to the New Zealand mortuary to be identified before the ice runway at the McMurdo station melted?

Mitchell instituted an efficient system, dividing the crash site into a grid. Each corpse, or part of a body, was numbered according to who found the victim and where they were found. “I am a chess player. So, I used the international correspondence chess method of numbering the grid of the crash site.”

He remains a very serious international chess player to this day. And it is a method still used in disaster sites. It helped the team back in New Zealand to match dental records and fingerprints with the passenger list.

After setting up the operation, he spent most of the fortnight at the McMurdo base camp – 70 miles from Mr Erebus. Meanwhile his team slept in tents at the crash site itself. Every day they would laboriously pick through the wreckage, along with the help of a team of mountaineers and photographers.

Viewers of the documentary are left in little doubt it was a gruesome job. Mitchell says: “If anything the film understates it. There is no easy way to deal with a body. You have to pick it up, put a label on it, and you have to handle it. You can’t airbrush it. And some of those bodies were very difficult to get to.”

Some had fallen down a ravine, caused by the burning engine melting the glacier. Many were difficult to put into a standard body bag. Leighton recalls: “These bodies were frozen solid. Whatever grotesque shape they landed in, that’s what they froze into.”

All of the team remember the stench of the disaster.

Mitchell says: “The smell of kerosene, jet fuel, takes me straight back to Erebus. It’s not that I get flashbacks, but I immediately remember.” There were other challenging aspects of the mission, not least the endless presence of loud and aggressive skua gulls, carrion-eating birds of the Antarctica, who kept on pecking at the corpses. The team resorted to burying the bodies again under the snow, once they had been bagged up, to stop the birds getting to them.

They were there for just 14 days but they never stopped working. The perpetual daylight of the South Pole meant that they worked around the clock, 12 hours on, 12 hours off, but never properly resting nor escaping the tragedy, even when having a meal.

Leighton says: “We had one set of gloves while we were there. They were baked with the fatty human remains, the soot, the whatever, and you ended up having to use the same set of gloves to put food in your mouth.”

It is perhaps unsurprising that the experience has severely affected the policeman, who then was just a young man.

“I remember thinking, 'Oh my God, I hope this is not going to traumatise me, I hope this isn’t going to completely screw me when I get back.’ Because I knew it had the potential to do so. And unfortunately it did.”

At the time there was very no proper counselling for the team when they returned. He has spent most of the rest of his life trying to come to terms with that fortnight.

Mitchell, for his part, says though he does not like to dwell on the past, “but there needs to be an opportunity for people to unwind. Stu Leighton’s life has been stuffed up by the fact he did not get the full opportunity to let people know.”

For all the scars some of the team were left with, it was a successful mission. Of the 257 victims, 213 were successfully identified. The Royal Commission into the causes of the crash ruled it was not pilot error but rather errors by Air New Zealand in allowing sightseeing flights to go too low and for changing the course of the flight, without telling the crew. It proved a controversial conclusion and was challenged. The police, however, were universally praised for their recovery mission.

And Mitchell is clear that air crashes, and body recovery, will remain part and parcel of modern life, despite improvements in aviation design. “The airliners are getting bigger and they still crash.”

Sunday 4 January 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/aviation/11322102/Mt-Erebus-disaster-where-air-crash-recovery-learnt-its-grisly-trade.html

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Search for 16 Philippine Bulk Jupiter sailors missing off southern Vietnam underway

Vietnamese rescue forces and vessels from other countries are searching for 16 missing Philippine crew members aboard a Bahamas-flagged ship considered sunk off southern Vietnam on Friday morning.

There were 19 Philippine crew members aboard the Bulk Jupiter when it departed from Malaysia, the Vietnam Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Center (Vietnam MRCC) said, adding that one has been saved and two bodies have been found.

Currently, Vietnamese vessel SAR 413 is guiding Liberia’s ZIM ASIA, Oman’s tugboat OLNG Muttrah, Singapore’s tugboat Kota Nekad, and Sea Land Meteor of China’s Hong Kong in the search for the Bulk Jupiter and the missing sailors.

The Bulk Jupiter is thought to have wrecked as it has yet to be found after the Vietnamese rescue force received SOS messages from the vessel at 7:00 am on Friday, when it was about 150 nautical miles off the southern Vietnamese city of Vung Tau, the Vietnam MRCC said.

After receiving the emergency signals, the Vietnam MRCC issued a maritime notice asking for help from vessels nearby and sent SAR 413 to the scene to begin rescue activities, which were later joined by the above foreign ships.

At 2:10 pm on Friday afternoon, OLNG Muttrah saved one sailor and found a body drifting at sea. The rescued person is the cook and the body has been identified as the Bulk Jupiter captain.

About 30 minutes later, the Kota Nekad reported it had found a corpse confirmed to be a crew member.

The Vietnam National Committee for Search and Rescue said it has proposed that the Defense Ministry dispatch the HQ608 – a naval ship – to the scene to support the SAR 413 in the ongoing search.

Meanwhile, the Vietnam MRCC said on Friday night that the owner of the Bulk Jupiter will send a representative from Singapore to Vietnam to coordinate with it in the search efforts.

The Bulk Jupiter was in distress when it was transporting 46,400 tons of iron ore from Malaysia to China, the Vietnam MRCC said.

Saturday 3 January 2015

http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/25135/search-for-16-philippine-bulk-jupiter-sailors-missing-off-southern-vietnam-underway

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Norman Atlantic ferry: Search to resume for victims

Rescue workers are to resume a search on the Norman Atlantic ferry, nearly a week after it caught fire while sailing from Greece to Italy.

Firefighters and investigators boarded the boat on Friday after it was towed into the Italian port of Brindisi.

They recovered a "black box" recorder, but said it was not yet safe to enter the car deck where the fire started.

It is not clear what caused the blaze, which killed at least 11 people. Up to 19 are said to still be missing.

It took rescuers more than two days to extract 477 survivors from the burning ferry, mostly by helicopter.

The Italian prosecutor leading the investigation into the cause of the fire, Giuseppe Volpe, has said he fears that the bodies of would-be illegal migrants could be found in the hold.

The Norman Atlantic was still smouldering and listing visibly as it was tugged into Brindisi's port on Friday.

"There are cars and trucks and other things that are still slowly burning," said Brindisi Fire Commander Michele Angiuli, adding that this "could still go ahead for a long time".

An investigating magistrate, Ettore Cardinali, told journalists as he left the boat that it had not been possible to reach the car deck.

"For safety reasons, we cannot verify first hand what's inside," he said.



Greek authorities have said that up to 19 people are missing. Mr Volpe said on Friday that about 10 to 15 people were unaccounted for, having earlier said dozens might be missing.

The captain, owner and operator of the ship as well as three crew members are reported to have been placed under investigation by an Italian court over the fire.

Earlier in the week, two Albanian seamen were killed on a tugboat towing the ferry after they were struck by a connecting cable.

The ferry was sailing from Patras in Greece to the Italian city of Ancona when it caught fire on Sunday.

Passengers described being trapped between the the burning heat of the fire below deck and freezing rain and huge waves.

Survivors said people had fought for spaces in lifeboats and helicopter baskets, and complained that the crew seemed overwhelmed by events.

Saturday 3 January 2015

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AirAsia QZ8501: Search teams 'find two large objects'

Search teams scouring the Java Sea for the wreckage of AirAsia flight QZ8501 have found "two large objects", Indonesian officials say.

Search and rescue agency chief Bambang Soelistyo said an underwater vehicle was being lowered to take pictures.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian weather agency has said that bad weather was the "biggest factor" behind the crash.

The jet disappeared with 162 people on board while flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore last Sunday.

So far 30 bodies have been recovered in the search. No survivors have been found and the main sections of the Airbus A320 have not been retrieved.

Most bodies are thought to have been trapped in the plane's fuselage.

Mr Soelistyo said on Saturday that the large objects had been detected by sonar from an Indonesian navy ship.

"We found oil slicks and huge objects at 23:40 (16:40 GMT) last night. I am confident these are parts of the missing AirAsia plane that we are looking for," he said.

He said the larger of the objects was 10 metres by five (32ft by 16ft) but that strong currents made operating the underwater vehicle difficult.

"As I speak we are lowering an ROV (remotely operated underwater vehicle) to get an actual picture of the objects detected on the sea floor. All are at the depth of 30 metres."

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes at the forward operating base in Pangkalan Bun says it seems this could be the breakthrough search teams have been hoping for.

The cause of the crash is not yet known. Specialist equipment has arrived to the search for the plane's "black box" flight recorders, though officials say no signals have been picked up yet.



An initial analysis by Indonesian weather agency BMKG has found that conditions at the time of the plane's disappearance suggest it likely flew into a storm.

"From our data it looks like the last location of the plane had very bad weather and it was the biggest factor behind the crash," said Professor Edvin Aldrian, head of research at BMKG.

He said there was evidence of extremely icy conditions at the plane's altitude, which can "stall the engines of the plane and freeze and damage the plane's machinery."

Officials have said the plane was travelling at 32,000ft when it requested to climb to 38,000ft to avoid bad weather.

Some investigators are reported to believe that the plane may have gone into an aerodynamic stall as the pilot climbed steeply.

Saturday 3 January 2015

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-30664604

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Search team recovers 30 bodies from missing AirAsia flight

Colonel Yayan Sofiyan, commander of the warship Bung Tomo, says five of the victims were found still strapped in their seats when they were retrieved from the Java Sea and taken to an Indonesian vessel on Friday.

Meanwhile it has been confirmed that a French investigation team will use sonar equipment and metal detectors to scour the seabed for wreckage, including the plane's black box - which could reveal what caused the tragedy.

Rescuers hope the fuselage - if intact - will contain the remains of many of the 162 people still missing after the plane travelling from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore vanished and later crashed on Sunday.

No survivors have been found and investigators hope the wreckage will be key to explaining what might have caused Flight QZ8501 to go down.

Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo, said: "We will focus on underwater detection."

He also explained that ships from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the US had been on the scene since before dawn today to try and pinpoint wreckage and the all-important flight data and cockpit voice recorders.

The data recorder contains crucial information such as engine temperature, vertical and horizontal speed and hundreds of other measurements.

The voice recorder would have captured conversations between pilots and other sounds coming from the cockpit.

Mr Soelistyo said bad weather, which has hindered the search for the past several days, remained a concern.

However he vowed to recover the bodies of "our brothers and sisters whatever conditions we face."

Drizzle and light clouds covered the area this morning, but rain, strong winds and high waves up to 4 metres (13 feet) were forecast until Sunday. Strong sea currents have also kept debris moving.

Meanwhile Toos Saniotoso, an Indonesian air safety investigator, said investigators "are looking at every aspect" as they try to determine why the plane crashed.

He added: "From the operational side, the human factor, the technical side, the ATC (air-traffic control) - everything is valuable to us."Several more bodies were recovered by a US Navy ship today, bringing the total found to 30.

Four have been identified and returned to their families.

A helicopter from the USS Sampson brought the corpses to Pangkalan Bun, Indonesia - the town nearest to the plane's suspected crash site - where they were were unloaded and driven away in ambulances.

Meanwhile, a number of ships holding sensitive equipment arrived at the scene this morning to hunt for the plane's fuselage.

As the investigation continues nine planes, many with metal detecting equipment, have scoured a 13,500-square-kilometres (8,380-square-mile) area off Pangkalan Bun.

Two Japanese ships with three helicopters are also understood to be on their way.

The fuselage could be at an estimated 25 metres to 30 metres (about 80 feet to 100 feet) underwater.

Vice Air Marshal Sunarbowo Sandi said as soon as the wreckage is found, divers will be sent down to recover the passengers and crew.

Four crash victims have been identified and returned to their families.

They include the first, Hayati Lutfiah Hamid, who was found on Thursday and flight attendant Khairunisa Haidar Fauzi and passengers Kevin Alexander Soetjipto and Grayson Herbert Linaksita who were found on Friday.

The first burial took place yesterday after the body of female flight attendant Hayati Lutfiah Hamid was released, to weeping family members at a local hospital. Three other members of her family who were on board the flight have yet to be found.

Ms Hamid, 49, was buried in a traditional Islamic ceremony in a cemetery a few miles from the airport.

Saturday 3 January 2015

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/549810/AirAsia-plane-crash-bodies-found-underwater-investigation

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Grieving relatives ID bodies after China stampede

Grieving relatives identified the bodies of loved ones a day after a stampede during New Year's celebrations along Shanghai's historic waterfront area killed 36 people. Some families lashed out at authorities, accusing them of being unresponsive to their plight and failing to prevent the disaster.

Thirty-two of 36 people killed in New Year eve stampede at Shanghai's iconic waterfront area have been identified, authorities said today, as Chinese media and public criticised the administration's failure to prevent the tragedy that marred the gleaming financial hub's image.

The chaos began about a half-hour before what was supposed to be a joyful celebration of the start of 2015. In the end, dozens were dead and 47 people were hospitalized, including 13 who were seriously injured, according to the Shanghai government. Some of the victims had suffocated, said Xia Shujie, vice president of Shanghai No. 1 People's Hospital.

Seven of the injured had left hospitals by Thursday afternoon.

The Shanghai Municipal government has published the identity of 32 victims on its microblog, with the rest yet to be identified. Among them, the youngest was a 12-year-old boy while the oldest was 37.

Among those identified, 21 were female. A total of 25 women, mostly young college graduates, were killed in the incident.

The stampede's cause was still under investigation. It happened at Chen Yi Square in Shanghai's old riverfront Bund area, famed for its art deco buildings from the 1920s and 1930s. Throngs of people often jam the area during major events.

A day after the tragedy, some criticized the government, blaming it for failing to keep order at the city's most popular site and for miscommunications with victims' relatives.

"We were told my sister was still being rescued the minute before we were taken to the morgue, where she had been lying dead -- clearly for a while," said Cai Jinjin, whose cousin Qi Xiaoyan was among the dead. "There she was, cold and all by herself."

Other victims' relatives complained that authorities failed to notify them of the deadly stampede and had been unresponsive to their requests for information. In one case, relatives of 24-year-old victim Pan Haiqin said they were alarmed after Pan's employer reported a no-show at work on Thursday, and after traveling hours to Shanghai, got no answers from authorities before they finally were able to confirm Pan's death.

At one of the hospitals where the injured were being treated, relatives tried to push past guards, who used a bench to hold them back. Police later allowed family members into the hospital.

A grieving mother dragged a low-ranking municipal official out from a government compound, demanding answers. Police at one hospital brought out photos of unidentified dead victims, causing dozens of waiting relatives to crowd around. Not everyone could see, and young women who looked at the photos broke into tears when they recognized someone.

According to a man who returned to M18 to pick up his lost phone, some people did throw coupons out of the windows, but some just threw the "banknotes" into the air above their heads when the bar was filled with about 200 people, the Shanghai Daily reported. Shanghai has organised gala shows on the western bank of Huangpu River for new year countdowns in previous years, with a strong police presence on the riverside to control crowds and maintain order.

Witnesses said that in past years, hundreds of police officers, some armed, stood watch in the area during the celebrations, preventing crowds from walking on the terrace.

Shanghai police did not state how many police officers were at the scene at the time of the stampede, saying only that they sent 500 officers to help disperse the crowd at about 11:30 pm when they noticed the crowd on the stairs was not moving.

It took between five and eight minutes for the police to reach the staircase and it was already too late when they arrived, Eastday.com quoted police as saying.

There was no official estimate of the revellers in the area and estimates by mainland media varied between 100,000 and 150,000 people.

The Shanghai government has cancelled the lightshow and other major New Year celebration activities.

Survivors recounted the horrific experience when the brightest night turned into the darkest minutes before midnight.

Zuo Zhijian, a survivor, said: "You can't imagine this: you are suspended over the ground. Someone behind you grabs your hair to stand up. Right there in front of you, a girl begs you to save her life and says she is dying, while another just lies motionless."

"Two dozen people were lying on the ground with bags, cellphones, shoes and scarves scattered around," Zuo said.

China's top tourism authority made an urgent call to beef up precautionary measures against surging tourist numbers during holidays after the stampede.

The National Tourism Administration (NTA) has called on the government to step up the security arrangements, improve emergency response plans, and take strict measures to control tourist flows at scenic spots as the country braces for Chinese New Year Holiday falling next month during which millions visit the scenic spots.

NTA said under China's Tourism Law, scenic spots are obliged to inform tourists and report to the local government when tourist numbers could potentially exceed their maximum reception capabilities, so that measures could be taken to timely divert tourists in order to insure security.

Saturday 2 January 2015

http://www.thonline.com/news/national_world/article_94fe2b31-c45d-53c8-8030-7ac7b88afe24.html

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Tropical Storm Jangmi: 53 Dead In Philippines As Rains Bring Flooding, Landslides To Islands

The death toll from flooding and landslides in the Philippines wrought by tropical storm Jangmi rose to 53 on Wednesday, officials said, with some regions saying they were caught off guard by the deluge.

In Catbalogan town in Samar province 19 people died in a landslide that left homes and vehicles buried under rocks and mud, local Mayor Stephany Uy-Tan said, adding that the town had been surprised by the landslide.

“We did not expect a deluge. We thought the hill where the landslide hit was tough as rocks,” she told AFP.

“There was no evacuation, people were just advised to prepare for possible landslides,” she said. “We need to check communication systems to find out what went wrong.”

Jangmi affected 121,737 people, of which 80,186 are in evacuation centres, according to the national disaster monitoring agency, which said that 53 people were killed overall.

The storm’s death toll was nearly triple that of the last major storm to hit the country, Super Typhoon Hagupit, earlier this month.

Hagupit, with winds of 210 kilometres (130 miles) per hour, sparked a massive evacuation effort as it brought back memories of the strongest storm ever to hit the country, Super Typhoon Haiyan, whose 230-kilometre per hour winds left 7,350 dead or missing in 2013.

In Misamis Oriental province, floods flattened rice and corn fields resulting in an estimated USD 9 million in damages, Governor Yevgeny Emano told.“We were caught by surprise, we didn’t expect that we would be hit by the eye of the storm,” Emano said, although he noted he had received some warnings.

In Leyte — the province worst-hit by Haiyan — the rains brought landslides and floods that closed off major roads, Governor Leopoldo Domenico Petilla said.

Mina Marasigan, the national disaster monitoring agency’s spokeswoman, defended the government’s handling of the storm saying weather warnings were sent out even as Jangmi was still forming over the Pacific Ocean.

“Maybe people underestimated the situation because it’s a tropical depression, not a super typhoon. They dismissed it as weak,” she said.

“We need to study what happened in this storm closely and find ways for the public to better understand storm warnings,” Marasigan added.

Most of the deaths were reported Tuesday in the eastern and central islands, including areas that were devastated last year by Typhoon Haiyan, which killed over 6,300 people. Five bodies were recovered from a house buried by a landslide in Tanauan town, eastern Leyte province, which suffered extensive damage during Haiyan.

Tuesday’s deaths included 12 people caught in a landslide near eastern Catbalogan City, according to the AP. Among the victims were people trapped in two vans and six homes when the landslide hit.

The storm, known locally as Tropical Storm Seniang, made landfall early Monday morning on the east coast of Mindanao, the Philippines’ southernmost and second largest island. Flooding on Mindanao wiped out several highways and bridges. Evacuation centers were inundated with thousands of people seeking shelter from the storm. Jangmi then marched northwest across the Visayas, a collection of islands circling the Visayan Sea. The heaviest rainfall was felt in the central Philippines, according to Weather.com.

Rough seas on Monday kept nearly 13,400 people stranded on the islands, where ferries are a primary mode of travel. Warnings remained in effect Tuesday as the storm made its way toward the South China Sea. Meteorologists expected the storm to move beyond the Philippines by New Year’s Day. Jangmi could reach southern Thailand and northern Malaysia by Saturday, according to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

More than 3.9 million people were forced from their homes in November 2013 after Typhoon Haiyan ripped through the islands. Tens of thousands of people were injured in the storm, widely considered one of the strongest storms to ever make landfall, according to CNN.

Wednesday 31 December 2014

http://www.ibtimes.com/tropical-storm-jangmi-31-dead-philippines-rains-bring-flooding-landslides-islands-1769672

http://indianexpress.com/article/world/asia/philippines-jangmi-storm-kills-53-people/

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Liberia Ebola victims can be buried after cremation decree relaxed

Liberia's government has purchased a plot of land to form a graveyard for Ebola victims, relaxing a much-contested order that all Ebola victims' bodies must be cremated.

Ciatta Bishop, head of the national Ebola burial team, said on Tuesday that the government has secured a 25-acre site when victims of the deadly disease can now be buried, Associated Press reports.

The decree which made disposing of deceased Ebola victims through cremation compulsory has been highly unpopular in Liberia, where funeral traditions are carefully followed and are considered a sacred obligation to the deceased.

The Liberian government ordered victims must be cremated, because corpses of Ebola victims remain highly contagious. Many healthcare workers in the affected West African state have contracted the virus after washing or moving dead bodies.

The new burial site in Liberia's capital has been created on land acquired from the Disco Hill district at a cost of $50,000 (£32,000).

Mr Nyenswah said the new site would be staffed by trained burial teams and would accommodate Muslim and Christian ceremonies.

He said the site would allow "dignified and safe burials, where people can practise their rituals but not touch dead bodies".

A memorial to Ebola victims who have been cremated will also be erected there, he added.

More than 2000 corpses of suspected Ebola victims had been cremated after the decree was ordered at the height of the crisis in Liberia several months ago.

The corpses of Ebola victims are highly contagious, and many of those who washed or touched bodies before their burials contracted the disease.

Bishop warned the public that in returning to normal burials "we have to be careful now" so that the process does not lead to a flare-up in Ebola cases.

"They just must not touch bodies otherwise... we will have problems again and the number (of Ebola cases) will rise," Bishop said.

The cremation decree is highly unpopular in Liberia, where funeral traditions are carefully followed and are considered a sacred obligation to the deceased.

Many families have tried to secretly bury their relatives' bodies to avoid them being taken away by burial teams for cremation.

The number of people infected by Ebola in the three countries worst affected by the outbreak has passed 20,000, with more than 7,842 deaths in the epidemic so far, according to the World Health Organisation. Cumulative case numbers in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea stood at 20,081, WHO said in a statement.

Wednesday 31 December 2014

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/liberia-ebola-victims-can-be-buried-after-cremation-decree-relaxed-1481362 https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/25880934/liberia-eases-up-on-ebola-cremation-order/

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AirAsia QZ8501: Bad weather hampers recovery of bodies

Efforts to locate victims and wreckage of AirAsia flight QZ8501 which crashed into the Java Sea in Indonesia on Sunday are being hampered by stormy weather and strong tides.

Indonesian officials have confirmed that remains and debris found in the waters off Borneo are from the plane.

The authorities say that seven bodies have now been retrieved.

The first two bodies from the AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crash have arrived back in the Indonesian city of Surabaya, where relatives are waiting.

Next of kin have been asked for DNA samples to help identify the victims.

The Airbus A320-200, carrying 162 people from Surabaya to Singapore, disappeared on Sunday and remains were located in the sea on Tuesday.

The authorities say seven bodies have been retrieved, but bad weather is hampering further salvage efforts.

A public memorial will be held in Surabaya on Wednesday evening local time, and the governor of East Java province has told the BBC that all New Year's Eve celebrations have been cancelled.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has promised a "massive search by the ships and helicopters" with the focus on recovering the bodies of victims.

The bodies were flown to Surabaya's Juanda airport on Wednesday afternoon from a hospital in Pangkalan Bun, where they had been sent from the crash site.

Another five bodies are reported to be on board a ship on their way to a harbour near Pangkalan Bun.

Four of the seven bodies are male and three female, one of them a flight attendant.

One search and rescue agency official, Tatang Zaenudin, said one of the bodies was wearing a life jacket but this has not been confirmed.

Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.Pilot's friend: "He was very professional and experienced and a humble man"

But strong winds and 2m waves have slowed down the recovery of bodies and debris, with helicopters mostly grounded and divers prevented from searching the waters.

Ships already in place are continuing the search. Mr Fernandes said they were expecting to operate round the clock.

The weather is forecast to deteriorate further, with heavy rains until Friday.

Next of kin of passengers and crew have been asked for DNA samples to help identify the bodies when they come in.



The BBC's Alice Budisatrijo in Surabaya says concerns are growing that the remains will be too difficult to identify after more than three days in the water.

"Now we are focused on praying for the victims," said Soekarwo, who uses one name like many Indonesians. "This is a big tragedy for Indonesia and we will do our best for the victims and their families."

As the relatives of the QZ8501 passengers and crew wait for the bodies of their loved ones to return to Surabaya, the Indonesian officials are trying to assure them that everything is being done to ensure a swift process.

It is day four since the aircraft went missing from the radar and concerns are growing that the remains will be too difficult to identify. News of bad weather hampering the recovery efforts is another setback for the grieving relatives.

Many say the government and Air Asia have been handling the tragedy as well as they could but all the relatives want is for their loved ones to be properly identified so they can be laid to rest.

Aircraft from several countries were set to scan the sea in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Divers were also being deployed to search for bodies and for the plane's "black box" flight recorders.

But officials said heavy rain, strong winds and waves of up to 3m (10ft) had forced them to suspend the air operation, though ships already in place were continuing the search.

The head of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, Bambang Soelistyo, said another body had been retrieved from the sea on Wednesday, bringing the total to seven. One was a woman wearing cabin crew uniform.

Two of the bodies have now been flown to a hospital in Pangkalan Bun in the Borneo province of Central Kalimantan. A ship carrying four bodies is on its way to a harbour near the town.

They will be eventually be taken to Surabaya, which is on the island of Java, for identification.

On board the plane were 137 adult passengers, 17 children and one infant, along with two pilots and five crew.

Most were Indonesian but the passengers included one UK national, a Malaysian, a Singaporean and three South Koreans.




It is not yet clear what happened to the plane but its last communication was a request from air traffic control to move up to avoid bad weather. The pilot did not respond when given permission

A three-day search ended on Tuesday when remains including aircraft parts, luggage and the bodies believed to be passengers were found in the Karimata Strait, south-west of Pangkalan Bun.

Bambang Soelistyo said a shadow had been spotted under the water, which appeared to be in the shape of a plane. Later reports said a large object had been identified by sonar.

The Associated Press news agency quoted one official as saying the bodies of victims could end up being washed up on beaches.

"It seems all the wreckage found has drifted more than 50km from yesterday's location," Vice Air Marshal Sunarbowo Sandi said.

Pictures of debris and bodies were shown on Indonesian TV to distraught relatives waiting at Surabaya's Juanda international airport.

Those watching the pictures were visibly shocked, with some collapsing.

The search is being led by Indonesia but is a multinational effort. Singapore has sent ships equipped with sensors to detect pings that may be emitted from the plane's black boxes.

Malaysia, Australia and Thailand are also involved, while the US destroyer USS Sampson has been sent to the zone.

Wednesday 31 December 2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-30639206

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China factory explosions kill 17 workers

A gas explosion at an auto parts factory in southern China killed 17 people and injured 33 others on Wednesday, state media reported.

Three of the injured were in critical condition, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The Southern Metropolis Daily said witnesses heard three blasts at the Fuhua Engineering and Manufacturing Co. factory in Foshan city. The blasts destroyed the facility's walls and ceiling and also damaged a nearby glass factory and other plants.

Pictures on the newspaper's website showed panels blown off the building's structure and people lying injured on the ground. Xinhua said the factory was closed for cleaning at the time of the blast.

Officials were investigating the cause of the explosion, it said.

The tragedy in Foshan came just hours after the Chinese government revealed that the death toll in the country’s worst industrial accident in 2014 — an explosion at another auto parts factory in August — was double the number originally reported.

On Tuesday night, the State Administration of Work Safety said that at least 146 workers at Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products in eastern Jiangsu province had died in the incident, compared with initial reports of 75 deaths.

The government added that it had sacked the party secretary and mayor in Kunshan, an important export hub near Shanghai, and also sanctioned a deputy provincial governor over the accident in which a room filled with metal dust exploded.

Another 18 people, including Kunshan Zhongrong’s chairman, will be prosecuted and could receive severe punishments.

On December 27, a court in the northeastern Jilin province convicted more than a dozen executives and officials for alleged lapses that contributed to a poultry plant fire that claimed 121 lives in June 2013.

In November, two coal mine disasters and a fire at a food processing plant claimed the lives of another 55 Chinese workers.

Wednesday 31 December 2014

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8f66e032-90cb-11e4-8134-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3NTtCJ7Uq

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How will the AirAsia QZ8501 victims be identified? Indonesian Police begin search for DNA evidence

Hospitals in Surabaya, Indonesia, were preparing Tuesday to receive and identify bodies recovered in the Java Sea that Indonesian officials said may have come from the wreckage of the missing AirAsia Flight QZ8501. The plane en route from Surabaya to Singapore was carrying 162 people on board, including 16 children and an infant. At least 40 bodies were sighted and six were recovered Tuesday from the waters off the coast of Borneo, according to the Independent.


Based on the precedent set by previous airline disasters, including the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July, experts are likely set to begin a long process of identifying the remains. The victims were due to be identified at Surabaya’s Bhayangkara Hospital, though the condition of the bodies remained unclear, something which could possibly affect the identification process, the Independent said. Early reports suggest that the bodies sighted by investigators were found in a bloated condition, according to the New York Times.

In similar cases of mass disaster, the first step forensic experts take is collecting certain information about the victims before their death, including their age, hair color and stature, all of which may assist in their identification, according to the Daily Mail. DNA is also collected from the remains, usually from parts of the body with the least amount of degradation, particularly deep muscle tissue. This data is then cross-referenced with DNA samples collected from victim’s homes, including from toothbrushes or combs. Experts can also use DNA samples from close family members, such as a parent or child to make the identification.

Once investigators are able to establish that a particular remain belongs to an individual, they will have a record of that person’s DNA and will be able to connect it with other remains. “It ends up being a kind of giant jigsaw puzzle of trying to place every body part based on its DNA or some other identifying characteristics,” David Foran, director of the forensic science program at Michigan State University said, according to the Guardian in July after Flight MH17 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. In March, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared over the South China Sea with 239 on board, and the plane has yet to be found.

While DNA can be recovered even in the case of severe damage to the bodies, there are also other ways to collect primary identification evidence, such as fingerprints and dental records. This information is then backed up with secondary information, such as tattoos or signs of previous surgeries, the Guardian reported.

Police in Indonesia have already begun collecting materials from the families of the victims, including DNA samples and fingerprints. The passengers on the flight include 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans as well as people from Malaysia, Singapore, France and Britain.

Wednesday 31 December 2014

http://www.ibtimes.com/how-will-airasia-qz8501-bodies-be-identified-indonesian-police-begin-search-dna-1769660

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AirAsia QZ8501: Multiple bodies, wreckage recovered in search for missing plane

An Indonesian warship has recovered three bodies from the sea in the search for the AirAsia jet, Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency says.

Earlier in the day, a navy spokesman told the media a warship had retrieved more than 40 bodies but later retracted the statement saying it was a miscommunication by staff.

Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency chief Bambang Soelistyon said: "Today we evacuated three bodies and they are now in the warship Bung Tomo".

An Indonesian air force plane spotted items resembling an emergency slide, plane door and other objects in the search for missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 earlier in the day.

AirAsia has released a statement confirming the debris found is from flight QZ8501.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo said all available ships and helicopters would be deployed to the area where the debris was found.

A major search and rescue effort involving at least 30 ships and 15 aircraft from nine countries has been looking for the aircraft since it vanished early on Sunday morning while carrying 162 people from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore. The findings mark a major breakthrough on the operation’s third day.

The flight’s carrier, AirAsia Indonesia, an affiliate of the Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia, confirmed in a statement posted on Facebook that the debris belonged to the missing flight.

“I am absolutely devastated,” AirAsia’s chief executive, Tony Fernandes, said, according to the statement. “This is a very difficult moment for all of us at AirAsia as we await further developments of the search and rescue operations but our first priority now is the wellbeing of the family members of those on board QZ8501.”

The Indonesian television station TvOne reportedly broadcast images of a floating body, then apologised for showing the pictures after relatives of passengers in Surabaya saw the images on television and burst into tears.

AFP reported that at least two relatives collapsed and had to be carried out on stretchers. “My heart will be totally crushed if it’s true. I will lose a son,” 60-year-old Dwijanto told the news agency.

The Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, arrived in Surabaya after nightfall to meet the families.

Indonesian officials said search and rescue teams spotted the shadow of a plane beneath the water. “God blessed us today,” Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters, according to AFP. “At 12:50 the air force Hercules found an object described as a shadow at the bottom of the sea in the form of a plane.”

As dusk fell, Indonesian navy spokesperson Manahan Simorangkir said searchers had begun to recover bodies.

Earlier, Tri Wibowo, the co-pilot of one of the planes involved in the search, said he saw “dozens of floating bodies as well as bags and aircraft debris”, according to the Jakarta Post. SB Supriyadi, the director of national search and rescue, told reporters the corpses were not wearing life jackets.

Indonesian air force official Agus Dwi Putranto told a press conference on Tuesday afternoon that search vessels had found objects located approximately 10km from the location where the plane was last captured on radar. “We spotted about 10 big objects and many more small white-coloured objects which we could not photograph,” he said.

Tuesday 30 December 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/30/missing-airasia-flight-qz8501-teams-retrieve-bodies-java-sea

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/12/30/indonesia-airplane-idUKL3N0UE06220141230

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-30/airasia-qz8501-debris-spotted-is-from-plane-official/5993438

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Norman Atlantic ferry fire: 12 confirmed dead, 41 people unaccounted for as rescue operation wraps up on ferry burning in Adriatic

Two Albanian seamen who took part in the rescue operation for the Norman Atlantic ferry have died from injuries incurred in an accident, raising the death toll from the fire to 12.

The Italian navy said the merchant sailors were on board a tugboat when the cables attaching it to the stricken ferry snapped. It did not provide further details.

Meanwhile, nearly 40 passengers thought to have been on the boat remain unaccounted for, but it is unclear whether that is due to inaccurate manifest lists or whether some of them may have perished unnoticed in the chaotic early stages of the disaster.

Earlier, Italy's defence minister Roberta Pinotti told a news conference that the Italian navy rescued 427 people, bringing the total accounted for to 437.

However, Greek authorities originally announced that 478 passengers and crew were on board when the fire broke out and left the ferry drifting in high seas and treacherous weather off Albania.

But Italian transport minister Maurizio Lupi said it was unclear whether the passenger list released by the Greek authorities was an accurate reflection of who was on board.

He said the ferry had made a stopover on a Greek island before it ran into trouble on Sunday morning.

"There is a embarkation list on which the names of the 427 passengers and 56 crew appear," Mr Lupi said.

"It is up to the departure port to match up their list and the people (rescued).

"That is why we are continuing our (search) effort: we cannot know what the exact number was."

None of the statements made by survivors of the disaster have so far given any indication that as many as 41 passengers may have died.

This morning DFAT confirmed that two Turkish-Australian dual nationals on the ferry were both safe and well and had been offered consular assistance.

Italian navy chief of staff Admiral Giuseppe De Giorgi said military planes were continuing to overfly the area around the ferry checking for bodies.

Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi praised the work of the Italian-led rescue effort, which he said had helped avoid a "massacre".

The Italian navy said the Italian captain Argilio Giacomazzi was the last of the crew to leave the ship in a rescue effort that defied high seas and freezing weather in a 36-hour drama.

The Norman Atlantic was sailing from Patros in western Greece to Ancona in Italy carrying passengers and more than 200 vehicles when a fire broke out in the early hours of Sunday.

It was 44 nautical miles from Corfu when fire broke out on the car deck.

"It was hell," Greek opera singer Dimitra Theodossiou said after being evacuated by helicopter.

"It was very cold, terribly cold. Nearby ships sprayed water from their hydrants [to fight the fire] and we were completely wet."

She was treated for a mild case of hypothermia at a hospital in Lecce, Italy, and later released.

Another passenger, Robert Mane, said there was little warning that a fire had broken out, and many people struggled to get into lifeboats.

"We were asleep when the smoke entered out cabins. Flames and smoke were engulfing people from all sides," he said.

"The crew tried to somewhat coordinate the evacuation into the emergency boats, but that proved to be impossible.

"At that stage people were just throwing themselves into the boats. It took me 25 minutes to get into one."

Italian and Greek helicopter crews winched more than 400 people to safety despite gale-force winds and thick smoke.

Bad weather hampered earlier efforts to attach cables to the ferry for towing.

Rough seas and thick fog in the area also led to the collision of two merchant ships, resulting in at least one death.

Italy's coastguard confirmed the first casualty of the disaster when it recovered the body of a man who had thrown himself off the burning ferry.

Officials said most of the passengers were Greek, but the manifest included names from several other countries including Germany, Italy, Austria, Turkey, France and the Netherlands.

The rescue effort involved helicopters and aircraft from the Italian and Greek defence forces along with 10 ships in support roles.

Early in the rescue, seven merchant ships gathered around the ferry to act as a windbreak as firefighting vessels made their way to the scene.

The Ferry recently passed inspection for faulty fire door.

"The tests confirmed that the boat was in full working order," Carlos Visentini said.

He said the company had addressed minor flaws found after checks by Greek authorities in the port of Patras.

"The inspectors did uncover a slight malfunction in one of the fire doors, number 112, situated on bridge number 5 - the one where, according to the information we have so far, the fire developed," he said.

"This was immediately repaired to the satisfaction of the inspectors and therefore the boat was able to continue in service."

The Italian-flagged ferry was chartered by Greek ferry operator Anek Lines. The cause of the fire has still to be determined.

Tuesday 30 December 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-30/norman-atlantic-ferry-rescue-wraps-up/5992308

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Human bones discovered on Gaspé peninsula ‘witnesses to a tragic event’

The human bones arrived in a cardboard box and the investigators scrutinized them one by one: About a dozen long bones, more than 25 vertebrae, pieces of a jawbone.

Laid out on a long, rectangular table, the remains held a tale of human tragedy. The investigators – anthropologists working for Parks Canada – began to piece that tale together, helping bring some resolution to a mystery that straddles time and two continents.

The partial skeletons were discovered near the surface of a stony beach on Quebec’s Gaspé peninsula three years ago. Now, officials have determined they are those of three children from Europe who showed signs of malnutrition. They believe they were almost certainly Irish migrants who died in a 19th-century shipwreck in Canadian waters as they fled poverty in search of a better life.

“They are witnesses to a tragic event,” said Pierre Cloutier, an archeologist at Parks Canada. “You can’t have a more tangible witness to tragedy than human remains.”

The findings are poignant for Georges Kavanagh, a resident of Gaspé who traces his ancestors to some of the victims and survivors of the shipwreck. He has been carefully following the story of the bones since they were found. He wants to ensure they get a proper reburial.

“I have a link to these people – I almost consider them my family,” Mr. Kavanagh said. “Who wouldn’t want their ancestors to get a peaceful rest?”

The quest to trace the origins of the bones began in 2011.

A passerby discovered the remains on the shoreline of Cap-des-Rosiers, within the boundaries of the Forillon National Park, 700 kilometres northeast of Quebec City. Erosion had exposed them to the elements and disturbed the resting place of three children who likely had little rest in their short lives.

Officials believe the three were probably victims of the wreck of the Carricks, one of the many “coffin ships” that crossed the Atlantic carrying Irish migrants fleeing famine in their homeland. The Carricks was heading to Quebec City, but foundered in a violent storm off Cap-des-Rosiers in 1847.

Reports of the death toll vary, but about 100 bodies washed ashore after the storm and were buried in a mass grave; survivors were taken in by local families. Montreal’s St. Patrick’s parish later erected a stone marker at the site commemorating the tragedy, which stands only 40 yards from where the children’s skeletal remains were found.

Parks Canada sent the bones for analysis to Quebec’s forensics lab in Montreal, then they were taken to the University of Montreal, where anthropologist Isabelle Ribot and graduate student Rémi Toupin began to examine them in detective-like detail.

The length of the bones and other clues indicated the victims were children – two aged between 7 and 9, the other 11 or 12. A curve in one bone pointed to malnutrition consistent with rickets, a condition caused by vitamin D deficiency.

Mr. Toupin scraped off a bit of tooth enamel for a chemical analysis. The results point to a plant-based diet found in Europe that could have included potatoes, a staple in Ireland before the catastrophic blight caused a famine that killed swaths of the population and sent legions into exile.

A clue found on the site offered a glimpse of the victims’ history: An unvarnished, nickel-sized, dark-brown wooden button. It was traced to 19th-century Europe.

“In archeology, we are there to protect memory … and give people an identity and say who they were,” Mr. Toupin said. “We can’t always reach absolute conclusions, but it’s always our goal to go as far as possible in identifying people.”

It would take carbon dating and DNA testing to be sure the victims were aboard the Carricks. Parks Canada, however, says it will not take the analysis any further.

The Carricks was among hundreds of migrant ships bound for the port of Quebec City in 1847, the darkest year of the famine in Ireland. The voyage was perilous for the desperate travellers, who were often weakened by hunger and disease. Nearly 5,300 of those fleeing died on their way to Canada.

The bones from Cap-des-Rosiers are to be repatriated to the Gaspé for reburial next year. Mr. Kavanagh would like to find the precise spot of the common grave and move it, if need be, to prevent other human remains from being disturbed by erosion.

“I want them to be placed in a spot,” Mr. Kavanagh said from his home, “where they can remain for centuries and centuries.”

Tuesday 30 December 2014

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/human-bones-discovered-on-gaspe-peninsula-witnesses-to-a-tragic-event/article22234819/

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Police to conduct DNA tests to identify Bhiwandi fire victims

The Narpoli police will carry out DNA tests to identify the eight workers who died in the Bhiwandi warehouse blaze on Saturday.

Early Saturday morning in Bhiwandi, a city in the Indian state of Maharashtra some 20 kilometres north-east of Mumbai, a massive fire broke out on the premises of a timber mart. The fire reportedly started in one timber godown and spread to three others. Dozens of fire-fighters managed to bring the inferno under control, but not before it had taken eight lives and injured three others. The bodies, charred beyond recognition, will be identified via DNA testing.

The charred bodies of the deceased who worked in two warehouses located close to each other in the Rahnal area have been kept at the IGM hospital morgue in Bhiwandi.

The two warehouses where the fire broke were used to stock timber and plastic. Primary probe in the incident revealed that the warehouses were operating without any legal permits. It is mandatory for warehouses stocking such inflamable goods to have fire safety equipments, which was not followed in this case.

The fire brigade received a call of the fire at around 2.57 AM and managed to put it out by 7 AM, after four-long-hours, using three fire engines and water from a nearby well. Cooling operations were underway till 11.30 AM. According to officials, the 100 by 50 square meter godown was used to build wooden crates and had workers living inside, judging by the charred clothes and utensils.

“Eight people were charred and we managed to rescue three who had sustained severe burns and have taken them to Indira Gandhi hospital. There are rumours of two more trapped inside, we haven’t been able to know for sure. If they are still trapped, which is highly unlikely, they would not have survived,” said a fire official at the site.

Tuesday 30 December 2014

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/mumbai/others/Police-to-conduct-DNA-tests-to-identify-Bhiwandi-fire-victims/articleshow/45672488.cms

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/8-killed-in-bhiwandi-fire-accident-at-timbre-mart/

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Italy ferry: 'Up to 38 still missing' amid confusion over Norman Atlantic passenger list, death toll rises to 8

The death toll in the Italian car ferry fire shipwreck in the Adriatic climbed to eight today as a Greek report said as many as 38 people may still be missing.

The latest figures released by the Italian coast guard said eight people had died after the fire broke out in the Norman Atlantic Sunday and that 407 people had been rescued.

Earlier Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi heartily congratulated Italian rescuers on averting a "hecatomb" and said everyone had been rescued from the ferry.

However the respected Greek online weekly To VIma reported that as many as 38 people were still missing from the ferry.

Italian transport minister Maurizio Lupi admitted at a news conference that authorities are uncertain how many people who were evacuated from lifeboats had been tipped into the sea Sunday.

He also said that while the ship was officially carrying 478 people including 56 crew some survivors picked up were not on the passenger list. Mr Renzi earlier on Monday during a news conference said there may have been illegal immigrants who were stowaways aboard the ferry.

Mr Renzi told the last man to leave the ship was Captain Argilio Giacomazzi, saying “there is only the captain [left on board], who like all serious captains is the last to abandon ship”.

Captain Argilio Giacomazzi later disembarked from the ship, handing over to Italian navy officers at 2.50pm on Monday.

Mr Renzi also paid tribute to the firefighters, Navy personnel and other rescuers who raced to the ship off Corfu using helicopters, motor launches and tugs.

“An intervention full of passion, dedication and tenaciousness allowed us to avert a real hecatomb,” he said. “We expect to end the rescue operation within a few hours.”

The fire broke out on the car deck of the five-year-old ferry at dawn, as it was passing 44 nautical miles north of Corfu, destroying the ship’s steering mechanism and leaving it drifting towards the Albanian coast.

The car ferry had been sailing from Patras in Greece and Ancona in northern Italy.

Photographs showed flames spreading quickly through the decks as passengers began to evacuate. Roughly 120 people were able to leave the ship, and were picked up by a nearby freighter, before the fire cut off access to the lifeboats.

Monday 29 December 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11316653/Italy-ferry-Up-to-38-still-missing-amid-confusion-over-Norman-Atlantic-passenger-list.html

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Fire in Lahore shopping centre leaves 13 dead, 2 injured

A fire broke out in Khalid Plaza, Al-Kareem Market of Urdu Bazar near Lohari Gate, Lahore on Monday evening apparently due to a short circuit in which 13 people, including a woman, were killed and two were injured.

More casualties are feared as fire fighters of Rescue 1122 and the fire brigade are still trying to overcome the fire.

The fire broke out at 5.32 pm in the evening and intensified within 10 minutes. So intense was the fire, that it trapped a number of people inside.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Rescue 1122 spokesperson Jam Sajjad Hussain said that the operation was underway and the real cause of the fire could only be ascertained once the blaze has been put out. He added that 16 firefighting vehicles and around 80 firefighters are trying to overcome the blaze while 25 ambulances were present to evacuate the dead and injured to the hospital.

“More casualties are feared since we haven’t managed to overcome the fire completely as yet,” said Hussain, adding that the building has only one entry and exit point.

One of the firefighters told The Express Tribune that they could not predict how many of people were still inside the building. Rescue services and fire brigade officials were also facing problems owing to low visibility and narrow streets and the large crowd gathered at the scene.

SP City Asad Sarfraz Khan said he had to use a loud speaker on multiple occasions to ask the gathered crowd to clear the area outside the affected building so that the rescue workers could work unhindered.

However, District Co-ordination Officer Captain (retd) Muhammad Usman said that the fire broke out due to short-circuit.

One of the shopkeepers of the market, Abu Bakar Butt, told The Express Tribune that Waleed, the son of the market union’s president was also among the dead.

MS Mayo Hospital Dr Amjad Shahzad confirmed that 12 bodies had been brought to them, including that of a woman. He added that initial examination of the dead showed that most had died of suffocation, while some had also suffered from burns.

One of the injured Mazhar Afzal, who suffered 15 per cent burn injuries was discharged after treatment. The dead were identified by their relatives.

Meanwhile, CM Punjab Shahbaz Sharif took notice of the fire and asked the city district government to submit the report of the incident within 24 hours.

“All the resources should be utilized in saving the lives of the people who are in the Khalid Plaza and best treatment facilities should be provided to the injured people who are rescued,” said Sharif.

Monday 29 December 2014

http://tribune.com.pk/story/814038/fire-in-lahore-shopping-centre-leaves-12-dead-10-injured/

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