Death Toll

MIAMI -- A physicians' group that took part in a recent study of the impact of an international embargo on the people of Haiti has challenged the study's projection that the sanctions may be killing as many as 1,000 children each month.The group, Physicians for Human Rights, said in a statement yesterday that the estimated death toll was an unreasonable extrapolation of data from a small region. The report was drawn up by the Center for Population and Development Studies at Harvard University.

Something's rotten on the Baltimore area waterfront. Fish are washing ashore by the thousands in a mass die-off that officials say appears to be caused by a weather-driven worsening of the pollution that chronically plagues the Chesapeake Bay. State investigators expanded their probe Wednesday into what they believe are algae-related fish kills in Marley, Furnace and Curtis creeks in Glen Burnie, raising the estimated death toll there tenfold, while...

Baltimore's homicide toll has grown by two with the deaths of a 19-year-old man who was shot while on his way to visit a girlfriend and a 51-year-old man beaten to death while walking along a street.The latest killing occurred just before 2 a.m. yesterday as Wendell "Toby" Wilson left his home in the 4800 block of Poe Avenue in Northwest Baltimore to walk through a known drug trafficking area to visit his 17-year-old girlfriend, said Dennis S. Hill, a Baltimore police spokesman.The young man was approached by several people -- one of whom pulled out a long-barrel, .22-caliber revolver and fired six shots, striking Mr. Wilson once in the neck and hand.

Your editorial "No way out for Syria" (Jan. 24) catalogs a lot of facts about the bloody turmoil that engulfs Syria today. The editorial notes the disinclination of practically any party involved to act forcefully - apart from the Syrians risking their lives every day to oppose the tyranny of the Bashar Assad regime. But as one might expect in an editorial, it makes no recommendation. Moreover, it fails to explain why none of the interested parties is acting to punish Assad and his cronies for a blood-letting that is exceeded only by the blood-letting Bashar's father, Hafez, wrought on his own people.

Government analysts downgraded the annual death toll from obesity yesterday in a study that is certain to bewilder a public already obsessed with dieting and nutrition. In fact, they inexplicably found that people who weigh a few pounds more than the ideal are less likely to die than those who weigh a few pounds less. Taken together, the findings will undoubtedly leave scientists and consumers arguing over obesity's true role in mortality - though no one argues that being overweight is good for you. The latest report by scientists with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that obesity kills about 112,000 people a year, only a third of the number estimated just four months ago. But Dr. Kathleen Flegal, who led the study reported in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, said the lower death estimate should not make consumers complacent about their expanding waistlines.

HERAT, Afghanistan -- The number of civilians killed in bombing by foreign forces Tuesday night was much higher than the official figure of 21 and might rise as high as 80, residents reached by telephone said yesterday. The residents' tally differed from that given by Ezatullah, a government administrator of the Sangin region who uses one name. He said he had spent four to five hours in the village of Sarwan Qala yesterday and that the civilian death toll remained 21. The U.S. military has stood by its original statement, in which it said it called in the airstrikes on Taliban insurgents after a 16-hour battle and destroyed three militant compounds.

Not wanting to think about civilian deaths in Iraq has become almost universal. But ignorance of the Iraqi death toll is no longer an option. An Associated Press poll in February found that the average American believed about 9,900 Iraqis had been killed since the end of major combat operations in 2003. Recent evidence suggests that things in Iraq may be 100 times worse than Americans realize. News report tallies suggest that about 75,000 Iraqis have died since the U.S.-led invasion. But a study of 13 war-affected countries presented at a recent Harvard conference found that more than 80 percent of violent deaths in conflicts go unreported by the press and governments.

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico - Help arrived by the truckload in flood-ravaged neighborhoods of this border town yesterday, bringing relief to thousands of desperate residents who lost everything to the Rio Escondido over the weekend. The flood's death toll remained at 33, with dozens more missing and nearly 2,000 people getting help in shelters. About 400 people from the military and hundreds of government officials and volunteers, many wearing face masks to guard against health risks, worked through the night to restore power and clear away debris.

BOMBAY, India -- Ward 1 of the Hinduja Hospital treats male patients with psychiatric and skin disorders, but not of the kind seen here yesterday. There was the man suffering such anguish that he emitted terrified, bone-chilling screams every few minutes. Propped up in beds around him were other dazed-looking patients with fragments of metal embedded in their skin - along their backs, in their arms and legs. This was the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in India in more than a decade, a series of synchronized explosions along a crowded commuter railway that killed as many as 200 people and wounded hundreds in the country's financial and entertainment capital.

LIMA, Peru -- A day after an earthquake devastated cities along Peru's southern coast, government officials said the deaths exceeded 500, with at least 17,000 people displaced and with wide areas lacking electricity, telephone service or road access. The deputy chief of Peru's fire department put the death toll at 510 last night. At least 300 of the dead were in Pisco, a port town about 125 miles south of Lima, and more were thought to be buried in rubble, local officials said. Dozens were inside the San Clemente cathedral, which was full for Mass when the quake caved it in about 6:40 p.m. Wednesday.

I found it very depressing reading your article on the tornado in Joplin ("Death toll climbs to 116 from worst twister since 1953" May 24). I hope this really brings us as a nation together and provides relief like we did for Katrina. I pray that everyone will be able to make recoveries for all their losses. And I certainly hope President Obama does more for the town of Joplin then just "send his condolences" to the governor. Rachel Airey, Bel Air

You had to knock loud, above the whir of air conditioning and the squeals from the community pool across the street. But eventually Michael Waters-Bey appeared. Not on the porch, where seven years ago he'd held a photo of his only son up for the television cameras, and implored the president to take a hard look at the price his family had paid for the war in Iraq. This time he came to an upstairs window. He lifted the sash, leaned out and politely declined to talk about his son, the war, Memorial Day or anything else.

With more than 700 people reported dead, rescuers smashed through fallen walls and sawed into rubble Sunday in an urgent push to find survivors of the massive earthquake that roared through Chile a day earlier. Some 2 million were said to be displaced, injured or otherwise impaired by the disaster. Untold numbers remained missing. Government forces struggled to contain looting in some of the most heavily damaged areas, dispatching the army to the task in Concepcion, Chile's second-largest city.

S o overwhelmed was Nadege Marc after viewing news coverage of the earthquake in Haiti that she couldn't even begin to face the prospect of seeing firsthand what she calls "the circle of death." A shadow fell over Marc's face as she described watching footage of the blanket-covered heaps of corpses on sidewalks and the mass graves of unidentified bodies. Yet the Veterans Elementary School teacher, who organized a fundraiser among students and staff, said she expects to summon the courage to head to the Caribbean country in the not-too-distant future.

T he world has responded with tremendous generosity to the destruction in Haiti after last week's earthquake, but the breakdown of security and order there threatens to multiply the already terrible death toll if the food, water and medicine pouring into the country can't be distributed properly. Relief officials now estimate that the death toll could rise as high as 200,000, with hundreds of thousands more left seriously injured or homeless. With people desperate for food, water and shelter, looting has broken out in the country's shattered capital, Port-au-Prince, and thousands of residents are trying to flee the destruction for outlying areas, some of which are in even worse shape.

Even as aid trickled in Thursday to earthquake-ravaged Haiti - and estimates emerged of as many as 50,000 dead and countless more gravely injured - experts feared the country was on the brink of a public health disaster that could persist for months. While relief workers hoped to provide food and water and to confront the most pressing of immediate medical needs, from antibiotics to bandages, disaster response experts say what remains ahead could be equally daunting: rebuilding from scratch a public health system that was fragile at best before disaster struck.

BAGHDAD -- The wails of mourners reverberated yesterday across the Shiite Muslim city of Amarah, still reeling from three car bombs that ripped through its main market the previous day. The provincial Health Department lowered the death toll from 41 to 28, citing confusion in the immediate aftermath of the first major bombing to hit the southern city during the Iraq war. At the same time, the estimate of the number of injured grew to at least 180, said...

DUJIANGYAN, China -- At 2:28 p.m. on Monday, Liu Wei was at his desk in the animal-breeding center, where he works as a researcher, when his world began to shake. Like everyone else in the office, the 39-year-old father stumbled out into the yard before beginning the slow walk home through city streets paralyzed by traffic and emergency vehicles and the chaos that engulfed one of the areas in China hardest-hit by an earthquake in which authorities said the death toll might reach 50,000.