DVI News 21 February 2011
26/Feb/2011
14 Die in Plane Crash in Honduras14 February 2011.
All 14 people aboard died Monday when a small passenger plane crashed near the Honduran capital, authorities said.
The accident occurred 30 kilometres south of Tegucigalpa.
Airplane wreckage and human remains were scattered over a heavily wooded area.
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=386957&CategoryId=23558
At least 4 dead, several injured after two trains collide near San Miguel station
16 February 2011. Argentina.
Two passenger trains collided head-on near the San Miguel station, leaving at least four dead and over 120 injured, according to the UGOFE Emergency Train union. Firemen have already released those who were trapped in the cars.
Buenos Aires province Health Minister Alejandro Collia confirmed the first three deaths and stated that 13 people remain in critical condition.
"Two of the passengers were killed in the crash and the third victim died in the hospital," he said.
Several media outlets later confirmed the fourth death.
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/59146/at-least-3-dead-several-injured-after-two-trains-collide-in-san-miguel
Poor stacked in mass graves at Illinois cemetery
17 February 2011. USA.
Stillborn babies are buried by the dozens in the same wooden box and the bodies of indigent adults are stacked in mass graves at a Chicago-area cemetery that inters the county's poor and unknown dead, authorities said Thursday.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart called for a review of the cemetery's contract at a news conference in which he criticized the operation for haphazard practices and restated his belief that the state needs legislation requiring DNA collection on all unidentified bodies.
Homewood Memorial Gardens President Tom Flynn told The Associated Press that the cemetery follows protocol and does the best it can for the $239 it receives per body
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/02/17/general-us-cemetery-body-disposals_8314702.html
Forensics Under the Microscope
More courts are starting to question the ‘facts’ proved by scientific evidence
17 February 2011. USA.
Warren Horinek did not murder his wife. That’s what he said, that’s what the medical examiner said, that’s what the homicide sergeant said. Even the district attorney’s office in the Horineks’ hometown of Ft. Worth, Texas, agreed that he was innocent—not something a Texas prosecutor typically says. But when Bonnie Horinek died in 1995, her parents refused to believe what the evidence strongly suggested—that Bonnie shot herself—and instead they enlisted the services of a blood-spatter analyst to prove that it was their son-in-law who had killed their daughter.
The spatter analyst zeroed in on the blood-soaked T shirt Horinek was wearing when the paramedics arrived. To him, the fine spray of blood on Horinek’s left shoulder was not from administering CPR, as Warren said it was, and as the 911 recording seemed to indicate, but from shooting Bonnie at close range. On the basis of that testimony, Horinek was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years. But did they really get their man? Horinek’s lawyers have filed a writ of habeas corpus to try to have him released, based in part on the National Academy’s report; much of the spatter analyst’s testimony, the lawyers argue, “was contrary to known and accepted science.”
In the age of CSI and Dexter, we’re led to believe that forensic science is a high-tech discipline, powerful and sophisticated enough to catch any criminal.
As it turns out, whether blood-spatter analysis and disciplines like it qualify as “science” at all is a matter of increasing debate.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/17/forensics-under-the-microscope.html
6 killed in Mogadishu building collapse
18 February 2011. Somalia.
At least six people, including four children, have lost their lives in the Somali capital Mogadishu after their house crumbled, an official says.
“We recovered five bodies (four kids along with their mother) from the debris and rescued three others in a Shangani house built a hundred years ago,” a Press TV correspondent quoted Abdifitaaq Sabriye Hassan, a local police chief, as saying.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/165830.html
Mass Graves of Sikhs killed in 1984 Sikh Genocide discovered after 26 years
18 February 2011. India.
A mass Grave of Sikhs killed in November 1984 has been discovered after 26 years in the village Hondh-Chillar, District Rewari, Haryana. The village was inhibited by several Sikh families and on November 02, 1984 in an organized and well planned attack, the entire village was burnt along with its Sikh population and Gurudwara. The village consisting of torched houses, burnt Gurudwara and scattered human bones has been now been discovered.
The genocidal site of village Hondh-Chillar is discovered by the sustained and unceasing efforts of Engineer Manvinder Singh Giaspur.
http://www.sikhsangat.org/2011/02/mass-graves-of-sikhs-killed-in-1984-sikh-genocide-discovered-after-26-years/#
12 dead in tour boat accident, victims' names identified
18 February 2011. Vietnam.
The bodies of twelve victims have been recovered following a tour boat accident in Ha Long Bay. Their names have been officially confirmed this morning.
The boat sank off Ti Top Island in the early hours of this morning.
The bodies of 11 foreigners and their Vietnamese guide have been sent to Bai Chay Hospital for identification.
The foreign passengers were from Russia, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, America, Japan, Australia, France, Switzerland and Sweden.
http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20110218-264129.html
8 pilgrims killed in 2 separate road accidents
18 February 2011. India.
Eight pilgrims died in two separate road accidents in western Tamil Nadu on Friday. Four pilgrims on their way home after offering prayers at Thiruvannamalai temple died on the spot after being knocked down by an unidentified heavy vehicle near Salem on Friday morning.
As it was early morning, their bodies remained unattended for over 30 minutes. Later, pedestrians alerted the police who reached the spot and sent the bodies to the Salem General Hospital.
In another incident on Pollachi-Udumalpet Road, four women pilgrims to the Masani temple at Anamalai died on the spot and seven were injured when the van in which they were travelling collided with a speeding lorry.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/coimbatore/8-pilgrims-killed-in-2-separate-road-accidents-in-TN/articleshow/7525831.cms
15 die in Siavonga road crash
18 February 2011. Zambia.
Fifteen people died on the afternoon of February 17 in Siavonga when a Toyota minibus they were travelling in collided head on with a Mitsubishi truck.
Fourteen of the victims, including both drivers, died on the spot
Among the dead are three children, three women and ten men. All the bodies have been identified.
http://www.daily-mail.co.zm/media/news/viewnews.cgi?category=8&id=1298070220
Amelia Earhart Spit Samples to Help Lick Mystery?
DNA to be mined from envelope seals to help identify aviator's remains.
18 February 2011. USA.
Amelia Earhart's dried spit could help solve the longstanding mystery of the aviator's 1937 disappearance, according to scientists who plan to harvest her DNA from envelopes.
Using Earhart's genes, a new project aims to create a genetic profile that could be used to test recent claims that her bones have been discovered.
In July 1937 Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished over the central Pacific Ocean while attempting to fly around the world following the Equator.
In 2009 researchers with the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery found a bone fragment on the South Pacific island of Nikumaroro, which they believed might have been from one of Earhart's fingers.
No team has yet claimed to have extracted DNA from purported Earhart remains. Some scientists have even suggested the Nikumaroro bone fragment isn't human at all but may instead belong to a sea turtle whose remains were found nearby.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110218-amelia-earhart-spit-dna-mystery-disappearance-saliva-science/
Excavations Unscientific and Counterproductive
18 February 2011. Turkey.
After a mass grave was discovered in Mutki, a district of Bitlis in the pre-dominantly Kurdish region of south-eastern Turkey, this January, the issue of unsolved murders is back to the agenda. Specialists and human rights defenders claim that haphazard excavations carried out with shovels were not acceptable. They demanded an independent international team in order to reveal the truth.
Prof. Þebnem Korur Fincaný is an expert on forensic medicine, the determination of torture and rehabilitation measures. She remarked that the state could not investigate a crime that is being imputed on the state itself. Doubts would still remain even if the investigation would have been carried out in accordance with scientific methods, Fincancý stated.
Lawyer Taylan Tanay, President of the Contemporary Lawyers Association (ÇHD) Istanbul Branch, said that they were going to file a criminal complaint about the officials on duty at the time. The people to be litigated include former Prime Minister Tansu Çiller, former Chief of Staff Doðan Güreþ, former Chief of Police Mehmet Aðar, politician Ünal Erkan and former Governor of Istanbul Hayri Kozakçýoðlu among others.
http://www.bianet.org/english/human-rights/127986-excavations-unscientific-and-counterproductive
4 Killed in Colombia Helicopter Crash
19 February 2011.
An army general, two other soldiers and a civilian were killed Friday when a helicopter crashed in the northeastern province of Santander, the Colombian military said.
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=387403&CategoryId=12393
Train-bus collisions kills 13 in Bangladesh
19 February 2011.
At least 13 people were killed in Bangladesh today in two identical accidents when trains rammed into crowded buses. Eight people were killed, five of them instantly, when a capital-bound intercity train called Suborno Express rammed into a passenger bus at an apparently unguarded railway crossing at Shahishidal area of Comilla.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Train-bus-collisions-kills-13-in-Bangladesh/Article1-664366.aspx#
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