Long Island Expressway Crash kills one, injures 33

An accident involving 35 vehicles on the Long Island Expressway in New York Wednesday afternoon left one woman dead and 33 other people injured and closed the expressway in both directions, Suffolk County police said.

Raymond Simoneau, 42, of Rockingham, Vermont, was driving a tractor-trailer eastbound when it struck several cars, causing a chain-reaction crash in the town of Shirley, located about 70 miles east of New York City.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/20/us-usa-newyork-crash-idUSBRE8BJ04N20121220

Suspected bird flu victim in Semarang, Indonesia

The Central Java Health Agency says it has received a report of a suspected case of bird flu in the province.

The 54-year-old man, a resident of the Sambiroto subdistrict, was currently under treatment at St. Elisabeth Hospital in Semarang, officials said.

“The man has been suffering from a cough, a cold and a high fever, with temperature above 38 degrees Celsius,” Rorry Hartono, the agency's disease control and environmental health division chief, said on Wednesday.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/12/19/suspected-bird-flu-victim-semarang.html

Coal mine collapse and blast kills 8 in Iran

Iran's official news agency says a collapse and explosion in a coal mine has killed eight workers in the country's east.

IRNA on Wednesday quoted Ahmad Talebian Moqadam, who is governor of Tabas city near where the accident occurred, as saying that a tunnel in the mine collapsed, leading to an accumulation of gas and an explosion. He said five bodies were recovered on Tuesday, the day of the accident, and three more the next day.

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019931400_apmliranmineblast.html

Mark van den Boogaard: Dead Dutch Skydiver Found Days After Jump

The body of a Dutch skydiver has been discovered in a field over a week after he made a fatal jump in which his parachute failed to open.

According to reports in the Netherlands, Mark van den Boogaard jumped from a plane on December 8 as part of an organised event.

But his body was not found until this week when rabbit poachers came across it by accident in a field near Teuge airfield, close to the city of Apeldoorn.

http://news.sky.com/story/1027800/dead-dutch-skydiver-found-days-after-jump