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The death toll from Sunday's natural disaster in Southeast Asia has reached 23,000, of them 12,000 in Sri Lanka, 6,000 in India, 4,700 in Indonesia and over 800 in Thailand. In a press conference held Monday afternoon at the Foreign Ministry, Deputy Director General Nissim Ben-Sheetrit said that so far 450 Israelis in the region have been contacted. Ministry officials said earlier that over 500 were still unaccounted for. According to Ben-Sheetrit, "I cannot say with certainty that there are no Israeli fatalities. We are examining this possibility and I hope there would not be any. Currently, between 7 and...

At least 6,000 Europeans are still missing - most of them presumed dead - after the Indian Ocean disaster wrecked beach resorts in south-west Thailand.

everal thousand North Americans are still unaccounted for in Thailand and Sri Lanka after the tsunami which killed more than 120,000 people. At least 14 US citizens have been confirmed as dead, state department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Aussie toll may eclipse Bali THE Australian death toll from Sunday's horrific tsunami could be much worse than previously feared, with the number of Australians killed running into the hundreds. As the international death toll rose above 126,000 yesterday, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty warned the number of Australian victims could dwarf the Bali bombing tragedy in which 202 people died, including 88 Australians, making it Australia's worst peace-time loss of life on foreign shores. Senior officials warned yesterday it could take up to six months for many of the bodies to be repatriated because of the extreme difficulties...

The Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1104035110442) in an update on the tsunami casualties today posted a link to a password-protected Thai government site listing all of the known names of the victims from Saturday’s tsunami, along with the password to access it. If you wish to locate the victims for a particular nationality, you can access them by following this link: (http://www.ems.narenthorn.thaigov.net/tsunami/login.php) and typing in “USER” for the username and “PASSWORD” for the password…without the quotation marks, of course. The site offers the option of listing the names by country of origin. This information should be of particular value to anyone with...

I was advised this morning that the son and daughter-in-law of a man that my parents go to church with is missing in Phuket, Thailand. The last we heard is that they were going to the beach for their holiday. The last time they were heard from was Friday evening.

Somewhere, in the arms of a starry winter night, a little 9-year-old boy is resting. His mind is filled with the new and wonderful, led on to things he has always wanted to see, things that were always just beyond the fence. But behind him, just on the other side of the adventure, people are searching, praying, looking for him. For out in the wonderment, beneath the stars, Logan Mitcheltree is missing. The runners and the dreamers never understand what it is that makes us fear so for them; they only know that the world is a marvelous, moving...

UPDATED: 12:04 p.m. Crews in Lycoming County found the body of a child Tuesday morning. The discovery was made not far from where Logan Mitcheltree, 9, disappeared on Saturday afternoon. It is a sad ending to a massive search that involved hundreds of volunteers. The tragic discovery was made just after 8:00 a.m. by a Bureau of Forestry search member. He was setting up grid marks for the day's search. That worker caught a glimpse of something orange. It turned out to be a backpack near the body of a young boy. Investigators now believe the body is that of...

The search for 9-year-old Logan Mitcheltree continued Sunday in South Williams, but as of 11:30 p.m. officials had found no signs of the boy, despite hundreds of volunteers having combed every inch of the borough since he went missing Saturday. Logan, of 1195 Main St., was last seen running east at Market Street and Southern Avenue at around 5 p.m. Saturday, borough Police Chief Rexford Lowmiller said. He was wearing a long-sleeved gray shirt, blue jeans and brown slippers. He is 4 feet tall, weighs 55 pounds, has short, reddish-blond hair and dark brown eyes. The youth is autistic and...

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. - Hundreds of volunteers searched for a missing 9-year-old boy, who is autistic and unable to speak, as temperatures dropped. Logan Mitcheltree was last seen around 5 p.m. Saturday wearing a long-sleeved gray shirt, blue jeans and brown slippers. He remained missing early Monday, a Lycoming County emergency dispatcher said. Temperatures dropped to 15 degrees Sunday night, with winds making it feel close to zero. More than 350 people had signed up for search parties, directed from a command post set up at a fire station. For safety reasons, only emergency personnel were asked to continue searching...

Los Gatos police have made an arrest in the case of a woman who has been missing for three years after she was last seen at a Campbell brew pub. Police say they arrested Maurice Nasmeh in San Jose at 8:45 a.m. this morning. He's the same man who police question three years ago regarding the disappearance of Janine Harms. Harms was last seen with him at the Rock Bottom Brewery in Campbell in 2001. When she failed to show up for work the following Monday, friends and family became concerned. She hasn't been seen since. It was not immediately...

Traffic on the road to Fitzgerald's Casino was stopped as police used a tracking dog to look for 65-year-old Norma Massa. The Tunica Sheriff's Department was aided by the DeSoto County air unit as well as the Marshall County Sheriff's Department. tracking dogs. Massa was last seen at Fitzgerald's Monday morning when she was part of a group from the St. Peter complex in Midtown. Massa never showed for the ride home, the bus left and her family was called. Below freezing temperatures and the fact that Massa is described as easily confused had searchers working overtime according to Tunica...

We're getting reports that all of Laura Bush's lovely Christmas decorations may have bumped some of the White House's usual art out of the building. Like the official portrait of Bill Clinton. A Wonkette operative writes: A friend of mine just got the chance to get a White House tour, and she really wanted to see President Clinton's portrait close up. She couldn't find it, and an usher quietly told her that it had been taken down to make room for Christmas decorations. But there was Bush 41 and Reagan still on the wall. We understand keeping Reagan up there...

"Police Continue Questioning Family Members, Others" POSTED: 8:23 am EST December 12, 2004 UPDATED: 8:30 am EST December 12, 2004 MADISON TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- "Police said Friday that they are not calling anyone a suspect following Tuesday's disappearance of a 5-year-old girl. Emily Rimel Emily Rimel was last seen at about midnight Tuesday at her family's apartment in the 4400 block of Reinbeau Drive in Madison Township. Rimel, 5, is 3 feet tall and about 48 pounds. She is white and has brown hair and brown eyes. She was wearing a red and orange striped shirt and purple Spandex pants....

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Decmeber 12th, 2004, 5:45 p.m.) -- The search for an 18-month-old girl has ended in tragedy. Police discovered the body of Kaylynn Gaddie early Sunday morning four days after she went missing. Now, the boyfriend of the baby's mother is charged with killing her. WAVE 3's Frances Kuo has the story. Kaylynn Gaddie only lived for a year and a half. Her young life ended with what the coroner says was a blunt force trauma to the head. "I never in my wildest dreams thought that Shawn would hurt that baby like that ... never," said James Barr,...

Mom's Boyfriend Has Taken Lie Detector Test POSTED: 4:52 am EST December 9, 2004 UPDATED: 8:26 am EST December 9, 2004 COLUMBUS -- Police say they're treating the disappearance of 5-year-old Columbus area girl as a kidnapping after two days of searching with dogs and helicopters failed to turn up any trace of her. Emily Rimel vanished from her bed in her home in the Columbus suburb of Madison Township early Tuesday morning. Her mother's boyfriend, Brent Copley, said he put the child to bed shortly after midnight and she was gone when her mother, Jane, returned home from her...

CHARLESTON, W.Va.-Record powerball winner Jack Whittaker has reported his 17-year old granddaughter missing, police said late Thursday. Family members had not seen or heard from Brandi Lasha since 9 pm Saturday when she was at her Hurricane home, Putnam County Sheriff's Sgt. Lisa Arthur said.

Hundreds of letters and photographs are missing from the National Archives and its regional offices, including one presidential library. Many are suspected stolen. The extent of the losses is detailed in a series of reports from the organization's investigative office, but the value of the items is difficult to determine because that is largely measured by historic importance and rarity.

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Rescuers found the wreckage of a missing plane used by the U.S. Air Force and recovered the bodies of several Americans who were aboard when it crashed in snow-covered mountains over the weekend, Afghan police said Tuesday. The transport plane, which was carrying three U.S. soldiers and three American crew members, was located southeast of Bamiyan in the heart of the Hindu Kush mountains, said Ghulam Mohammed, a senior police official in Bamiyan.