GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Police in Russia have arrested a noted historian for keeping 29 mummies which he reportedly dug up from graveyards and dressed. He has not been identified by police but Russian media have given his name as Anatoly Moskvin, a 45-year-old historian “who was considered the ultimate expert on cemeteries in Nizhny Novgorod”, according to wire service AP (Sydney Morning Herald and Moscow Times), which carries a photo released by police Monday, of one of the dolls in his apartment.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Thirty-five bodies were recovered by police in Boca del Rio in the Mexican state of Veracruz Tuesday, after they were left in two trucks abandoned on a busy rush-hour road, with the gates open and the bodies spilling out.
Police have identified seven of them, all with criminal backgrounds, according to CNN.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Air France and Airbus were called in by a French judge 19 and 20 May to provide evidence about the airplane that went down off the coast of Brazil in June 2009, reports French news service Free.
Details have not been released, but earlier in the week the BEA, the French agency charged with investigating the crash, came down hard on newspaper Figaro for publishing incorrect and unverified information. The agency said at a press briefing 16 May that all the data has now been downloaded from the black boxes found at the end of April, and “this data will now be subjected to detailed in-depth analysis. This work will take several weeks.”
The debate continues over whether to bring to the surface bodies from the June 2009 Air France crash into the ocean off the coast of Brazil, reports CNN, which reports that a French government statement says the first recovered body, still attached to a seat, was brought up. DNA samples from the body will be sent to a laboratory for analysis according to the US news service, but French media have not reported this.
Some families want their dead left at the bottom of the sea while others are asking for them to be recovered. Some but not all of the 288 bodies of those on the flight were discovered when a part of the plane was found in April 2011. The cause of the crash remains a mystery.
The process is technically complicated because the bodies have been at sea for nearly two years and can only be removed very slowly and cautiously from their burial place 3,900 metres deep.
The number of families that cannot afford to claim and bury or cremate their own people is growing, the Los Angeles county in California says. The number of people whose cremation was paid for by taxpayers rose 36 percent in 2008, over 2007, from 525 to 712. Los Angeles Times
Thirteen bodies have washed up on the Tanzanian island of Mafia (map), along with debris, and they are thought to be those of victims of the Comoros archipelago crash of a Yemeni airliner in 1 July. Officials say DNA tests will be needed to identify them. The island is south of Dar es Salaam, not far from the mainland. BBC
The Brazilian government says that two bodies have been found as well as debris that appears to be linked to the AF447 Air France flight that went missing 1 June, not far from where the plane was last heard from. Caution is being urged, however, after false alarms earlier in the week over debris spotted and that appeared initially to belong to the flight. Among the debris found: a backpack with a computer in it, a suitcase, an airline ticket. BBC, CNN, Reuters
