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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Typhoon Frank stormed across the Philippine Sea June 21, 2008 capsizing numerous boats, killing hundreds and leaving an estimated 1,330 missing in total including 820 passengers and crew from the MV Princess of the Stars ferry.

Since then Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) teams in Cebu City, Philippines made up of experts from the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). and INTERPOL have painstakingly matched DNA from recovered bodies to that of blood samples donated by relatives of those still missing.

“The 23,000-ton vessel was also carrying tens of thousands of pounds of commercial insecticide and many bodies still remain trapped inside the wreckage” according to a recent press release from the ICMP.

“With fingerprint identification out of the question for most of the victims, and dental records not available, this leaves only DNA as a means of identification, with samples from recovered victims matched to those provided by the missing passengers’ relatives.”

An NBI-DVI report explains “DNA matches are made by comparing profiles from victims to a database of profiles from their relatives. A minimum of two close relatives [are] sought for each individual.”

NBI-DVI has so far collected 1,916 blood samples from relatives of missing victims representing 809 missing persons. These samples are then matched against the 318 DNA samples from recovered bodies received by the ICMP.

“Almost three months have passed since our country was struck by one of the worst typhoons in memory, with ‘Frank’ causing the sinking of the Princess of the Stars with hundreds of passengers and crew on board,” said NBI Director Nestor M. Mantaring in the press release.

“The NBI, through its DVI team, was tasked [with identifying] the victims of this tragedy. With help from INTERPOL and the ICMP, we have reached the 100th DNA-matched result which led to the identification and release of the bodies to their respective families.

“We are committed to doing this until the last possible victim is identified and returned to their family,” he concluded.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Fears of contaminated bone and skin grafts are being felt by unsuspecting patients following the revelation that funeral homes may have been looting corpses.

Janet Evans of Marion Ohio was told by her surgeon, “The bone grafts you got might have been contaminated”. She reacted with shock, “I was flabbergasted because I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I didn’t know I got a bone graft until I got this call. I just thought they put in screws and rods.”

The body of Alistair Cooke, the former host of “Masterpiece Theatre,” was supposedly looted along with more than 1,000 others, according to two law enforcement officials close to the case. The tissue taken was typically skin, bone and tendon, which was then sold for use in procedures such as dental implants and hip replacements. According to authorities, millions of dollars were made by selling the body parts to companies for use in operations done at hospitals and clinics in the United States and Canada.

A New Jersey company, Biomedical Tissue Services, has reportedly been taking body parts from funeral homes across Brooklyn, New York. According to ABC News, they set up rooms like a “surgical suite.” After they took the bones, they replaced them with PVC pipe. This was purportedly done by stealth, without approval of the deceased person or the next of kin. 1,077 bodies were involved, say prosecuters.

Investagators say a former dentist, Michael Mastromarino, is behind the operation. Biomedical was considered one of the “hottest procurement companies in the country,” raking in close to $5 million. Eventually, people became worried: “Can the donors be trusted?” A tissue processing company called LifeCell answered no, and issued a recall on all their tissue.

Cooke’s daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, said, “To know his bones were sold was one thing, but to see him standing truncated before me is another entirely.” Now thousands of people around the country are receiving letters warning that they should be tested for infectious diseases like HIV or hepatitis. On February 23, the Brooklyn District Attorney indicted Mastromarino and three others. They are charged with 122 felony counts, including forgery and bodysnatching.

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Saturday, October 27, 2007

Gay Talese wants to go to Iraq. “It so happens there is someone that’s working on such a thing right now for me,” the 75-year-old legendary journalist and author told David Shankbone. “Even if I was on Al-Jazeera with a gun to my head, I wouldn’t be pleading with those bastards! I’d say, ‘Go ahead. Make my day.'”

Few reporters will ever reach the stature of Talese. His 1966 profile of Frank Sinatra, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, was not only cited by The Economist as the greatest profile of Sinatra ever written, but is considered the greatest of any celebrity profile ever written. In the 70th anniversary issue of Esquire in October 2003, the editors declared the piece the “Best Story Esquire Ever Published.”

Talese helped create and define a new style of literary reporting called New Journalism. Talese himself told National Public Radio he rejects this label (“The term new journalism became very fashionable on college campuses in the 1970s and some of its practitioners tended to be a little loose with the facts. And that’s where I wanted to part company.”)

He is not bothered by the Bancrofts selling The Wall Street Journal—”It’s not like we should lament the passing of some noble dynasty!”—to Rupert Murdoch, but he is bothered by how the press supported and sold the Iraq War to the American people. “The press in Washington got us into this war as much as the people that are controlling it,” said Talese. “They took information that was second-hand information, and they went along with it.” He wants to see the Washington press corp disbanded and sent around the country to get back in touch with the people it covers; that the press should not be so focused on–and in bed with–the federal government.

Augusten Burroughs once said that writers are experience junkies, and Talese fits the bill. Talese–who has been married to Nan Talese (she edited James Frey‘s Million Little Piece) for fifty years–can be found at baseball games in Cuba or the gay bars of Beijing, wanting to see humanity in all its experience.

Below is Wikinews reporter David Shankbone’s interview with Gay Talese.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) says it finished interrogating the nearly 105 Iraqi scientists it held in its search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In many cases their information was helpful, but in other cases the wrong people were detained, and were subjected to questioning by “inexperienced and uninformed” interrogators.

From an update to the Comprehensive Report of the Special Adviser to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, “As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible. After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted.

“As far as the WMD investigation is concerned, there is no further purpose in holding many of these detainees. These individuals have shown no reluctance to engage in further discussions should the need for questioning arise about past WMD programs.”

Elsewhere, “Some may have other issues to account for, including Regime finance questions, but certainly some have been quite helpful toward the compilation of an accurate picture of the Regime’s WMD efforts and intentions over the last three decades.”

The comments were addenda and an accompanying note, supplemental to the original report, which was issued last autumn, and seen as the final report of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG). They were added by Charles Duelfer, head of the ISG, and Special Adviser to the Director of Central Intelligence in Baghdad.

Deulfer emphasised that more information is likely to emerge naturally, over time, from people with differing viewpoints and interests. And a backlog of documents recovered from the former regime remain to be examined.

He described the ISG investigation as hampered by:

• The security situation
• The quality of identification, detention, and interview of those involved in the Iraqi WMD effort
• Other internal procedural weaknesses
• Constant personnel rotations.

A preference for reinforcement of short-term security on the part of the coalition forces over anti-proliferation efforts, fear of arrest and detention on the part of the Iraqi personnel, and other factors in the continuing conflict of the post-war environment, all impacted on the effort by the ISG.

The report confirms the expressed opinion of former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, that Iraq had no significant WMDs. “[T]here was not a single intelligence service in the world that said Iraq maintained massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction,” Ritter said at the time.

Duelfer summary of the intelligence obtained, as understood by the ISG, includes, “[T]he risk of Iraqi WMD expertise of material advancing the WMD potential in other countries is attenuated by many factors and is presently small …”

And, “So far, insurgent efforts to attain unconventional weapons have been limited and contained by coalition actions.”

Also, “There continue to be reports of WMD in Iraq. ISG has found that such reports are usually scams or in misidentification of materials or activities. In a very limited number of cases they have related to old chemical munitions produced before 1990.”

The new addenda included information on the Iraqi Military Industrial Commission, the “state-run military-industrial complex” which played a “central role in the evolution of all the Regime’s weapons programs”.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

File:Jack Abramoff Jan1006.jpg

Jack Abramoff, the disgraced ex-lobbyist began his six year prison sentence today. Abramoff himself pled guilty on January 3, to three criminal felony counts in a Washington, D.C. federal court related to the defrauding of American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials. The following day he pled guilty to two criminal felony counts in a separate federal court, in Miami, related to his fraudulent dealings with SunCruz Casinos.

On March 29, he was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of more than $21 million. His prison sentence was the minimum permitted under a plea bargain with federal prosecutors. Abramoff arrived at about 6:30 a.m. ET at a prison facility in western Maryland and began serving a nearly six-year prison sentence for a fraudulent deal to buy a fleet of casino ships in Florida. The camp is all male.

Stephen Finger, executive assistant at the prison, said all inmates work while there. Incoming inmates such as Abramoff typically are assigned to jobs such as food service work. Finger said that inmates can work their way up from low-level jobs paying 12 cents an hour to better positions paying up to 40 cents an hour.

Abramoff has ties to many Republican officials including former Representative Bob Ney, two of former Representative Tom DeLay’s Aides, Senator Conrad Burns (lost on Election Day) and Representative John Doolittle.