Friday 22 June 2012

Fourth year anniversary of the sinking of the Princess of the Stars

Persida Acosta, chief of the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO), said Judge Peras is set to conduct an occular inspection in Romblon where the ship sank at th height of typhoon Frank in June 21, 2008.

Acosta said government lawyers assisting families of victims to identify remains and seek damages, as well as the PAO “pray to the courts and high heavens that the courts in Cebu and Manila expedite the resolution of the damages suit.”

Around 560 cadavers were recovered from the sunken ship.

Acosta told Cebu Daily News the PAO Forensic Laboratory identified 11 skeletal remains taken from the ship. Of the number, seven were turned over to their families.

Acosta said PAO recently identified the remains of 42-year-old Joselito Aballe, whose remains were turned over in a simple ceremony to the daughters of Joselito in Cebu City. Acosta said the PAO Forensic Team will proceed to Sibuyan Island to process, analyze and identify the recovered body.

Efforts of the laboratory are focused on the biological profiling of the skeletal remains recovered from the sunken M/V Princess of the Stars.

Through the efforts of the PAO Forensic Team, the Philippine Coast Guard and the private salvor, the skeletal remains in the laboratory have reached more than 140, Acosta said.

She said PAO needs access to the victims’ ante mortem data which is under the custody of Dr. Renato Bautista, head of the Disaster Victim Identification team of the National Bureau of Investigation which did extensive work in Cebu with the Interpol to identify cadavers brought here.

Judge Peras earlier ordered the arrest of Baustista for his failure to heed the court order to turn over documents needed by PAO. But Acosta said Dr. Baustista continues to defy the court order.

Bautista, in an earlier interview, denied that he was withholding the documents and said he was willing to give them to the PAO but said the victims’ data remain “confidential” as agreed upon by the NBI and Interpol.

PAO has been seeking the transfer of the documents from the NBI to help identify the human remains that will undergo an anthropological examination by a University of the Philippines based forensics group.

Retired ship captain Amado Romillo, an expert witness presented by the prosecution, insists that MV Princess of the Stars took an “extremely dangerous” route from the Manila port to Cebu City at the height of typhoon Frank in 2008. Instead of passing through the west side of Mindoro, Romillo said the sunken ship made its regular route where the eye of the typhoon was situated when it sank on June 21, 2008.

Acosta said the skipper’s testimonies proved that there was negligence on the part of ship officials who decided to travel despite an impending typhoon. Using a nautical chart or map, Romillo explained to the court the route of the MV Princess of the Stars when it left the Manila North Harbor on June 20, 2008.

The MV Princess of the Stars capsized off Romblon enroute to Cebu City with 820 people on board. Only 32 survived.

Friday 22 June 2012

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/216895/four-years-after-tragedy-damage-suit-drags-on

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Indonesia plane crash search called off

Rescuers have ended their search of damaged and burned homes in Jakarta without finding further victims of a military plane crash that killed seven airmen and four people on the ground.

The Fokker F-27 turboprop was on a routine training flight when it crashed into a military housing complex on Thursday about a mile short of the runway where it was trying to land.

Two children aged two and six, their grandmother and their aunt were killed in the crash, along with the plane's pilot, co-pilot and five trainees. "Search and rescue efforts have finished," air force spokesman Colonel Agung Sasongko Jati said on Friday morning. "All the wreckage has been removed and there are no more new victims."

Eleven people were injured in the crash, which sent a huge plume of black smoke billowing into the sky. The aircraft was built in 1958 and has been used by Indonesia's air force for the past 35 years, during which time it had completed 14,900 flight hours.

It was declared airworthy before it took off for its second training flight of the day under clear skies, Jati said. "It seemed that the pilot was trying to land on a nearby paddy field," he said. "But it was not clear whether it was because of an emergency."

He said the plane did not have a black box.

The crash comes after a Russian Sukhoi passenger jet crashed into an Indonesian volcano during a demonstration flight for potential buyers last month, killing all 45 people aboard.

Friday 22 June 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/22/indonesia-plane-crash-search-over?newsfeed=true

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Search for missing after boat capsizes off Christmas Island


Ships and aircraft scoured the Indian Ocean Friday for survivors after a boat capsized off Australia's remote Christmas Island, with three people confirmed dead and more than 80 missing.

Ships and aircraft scoured the Indian Ocean Friday for survivors after a boat capsized off Australia's remote Christmas Island, with three people confirmed dead and more than 80 missing. So far, 110 people have been rescued from the vessel which was believed to be carrying around 200 asylum-seekers, with authorities saying: "We're still in that critical window where more lives could be saved." "We have 110 survivors and three confirmed dead so far," a spokeswoman from Australia's Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is working with Indonesia's search and rescue authority Basarnas, told AFP.

They were taken by ship to Christmas Island, a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean where they were given medical checks. "They were rescued wearing life jackets and we are quite confident we will recover more survivors," added the spokeswoman, who said the water temperature was warm.

The ship, en route from Sri Lanka, issued a distress call and capsized 120 nautical miles north of Christmas Island, 2,600 kilometres (1,600 miles) from the Australian mainland on Thursday afternoon.

 Christmas Island administrator Steve Clay told ABC radio that three of the survivors were admitted to hospital on their arrival, but the rest were OK. "They were transferred to the jetty, put into buses and transferred up to the Phosphate Hill immigration facility," he said. "They're getting medical checks up there. They appear calm and they were just sitting quietly."

The capsize is the latest in a series of refugee boat disasters in the Indian Ocean in recent years, as rickety, overloaded vessels packed with desperate migrants sink on their way to Australia.

Four merchant vessels, two Australian Defence Force ships and five aircraft are involved in the search. "We're still in that critical window where more lives could be saved," said Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare. "People can survive out there for up to 36 hours if they have either lifejackets or they have debris to hold onto."

Clare said about 40 survivors were found clinging to the upturned hull of the boat on Thursday afternoon, while others were discovered holding onto debris up to three nautical miles from the scene.

Though they come in relatively small numbers by global standards, asylum seekers are a sensitive political issue in Australia, dominating 2010 elections due to a record 6,555 arrivals.

Direct asylum-seeker journeys from Sri Lanka have historically been rare but navy sources in Colombo have reported a marked increase in Australia-bound people-smuggling operations. Indonesia is a more common transit point for those trying to reach Christmas Island, which is closer to Java than mainland Australia, but many fail to reach their destination.

The UN's refugee agency said it was "deeply concerned" by the incident. "This accident again underscores the dangerous nature of these hazardous journeys, and the desperate and dangerous measures people will resort to when they are fleeing persecution in their home countries," it said in a statement.

In December, a boat carrying around 250 mostly Afghan and Iranian asylum-seekers sank in Indonesian waters on its way to Christmas Island, with only 47 surviving.

Some 50 refugees were killed in a horror shipwreck on the island's cliffs in December 2010. Fifteen were children aged 10 years or younger.

The worst known refugee boat disaster off Australia in recent years was the sinking of the SIEV X in 2001, which killed 353 of the more than 400 asylum-seekers on board.

Friday 22 June 2012

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/299226/australia-fears-refugee-boat-disaster-toll-could-soar

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