Tsunami stories: Man found off Aceh after 8 days at sea

An Indonesian man has been found afloat on tree branches and debris, about 160km from the shores of Aceh province.

Rizal Sapura, 23, was rescued by a Malaysian cargo ship on Tuesday, after surviving mainly on rainwater.

He was weak and in shock and rushed into medical care when the ship reached Malaysia.

Debt relief in sight

Rich nations appear likely to help Asian countries devastated by the tsunami, by freezing billions of dollars in debt repayments.

The move could provide major relief to Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, India and Somalia, which have a combined US$272 billion ($391.19 billion) in external debt.

Britain, which has assumed the presidency of the G8 group of industrialised nations, called for an immediate moratorium on repayments by nations hit by the tsunami.

Gordon Brown, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, hopes that a deal will be announced at a meeting of the Paris Club of sovereign lenders on January 12.

Ancient tribes escape

The behaviour of wildlife may have helped save the ancient tribes of India's Andaman and Nicobar islands from the tsunami.

"Our teams have been out on boats with the administration teams and have reported back that these tribes are safe," the director of the Anthropological Survey of India , V. K. Rao, said yesterday.

He said they must have been warned by the behaviour of birds and marine animals.

Mr Rao said the tribes' folklore had references to a huge deluge and islands shrinking. "It could be that this has happened before," he said.

Lifesaving lesson

A Scots teacher who had learned the signs of an approaching tsunami saved the lives of his wife, his 11-year-old daughter and 15 other tourists.

John Chroston, 48, was in the water at Kamala Bay, Phuket, when the sea around him suddenly disappeared. He sprinted on to the beach shouting "tsunami", and urged other holidaymakers to flee. He then persuaded a shuttle bus driver to take his family and the other passengers towards higher ground.

'Doctors' pose danger

Self-styled untrained "volunteer doctors" are practising life-threatening quackery among tsunami survivors in southern India.

Many can not tell a muscle from a vein, but have been moving around administering cocktails of drugs and intravenous fluids, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

Shantaseela Nayar, secretary of Tamil Nadu's rural development department, said quacks were distributing "everything from paracetamol, to anti-malaria and anti-tuberculosis drugs to antibiotics and treating everything from bruises to infections - or worse".

In one village, Government doctors found two men without medical training trying to administer IV fluid in the arm of a collapsed man.

Software helps forensics

Forensic teams are quickly learning to use a computer program that could help identify victims of last week's tsunami in seconds.

With more than 200 forensic experts in Thailand rushing to identify thousands of bodies, the Danish DVI (disaster victim identification) System International program allows users to log data ranging from DNA and teeth structure to eye colour and body markings, such as tattoos.

The information can be compared with data about people from before they went missing.

The system can give information in a few seconds if a person has a "very special" trait, said Dorte Hougaard, one of two representatives in Thailand of Plass, the system's developer.

The system is based on Interpol's recommendations for identifying disaster victims.

Mother's sacrifice

A British woman who travelled to Sri Lanka to pursue her dream of opening an orphanage died in the tsunami after saving her daughter's life.

June Abeyratne, 48, from Kingswood, Surrey, had travelled to the island with her Sri Lankan husband Viraj, 42, and their 11-year-old daughter, Alexandra.

The mother and daughter were in their ground floor villa when the tidal waves struck. June Abeyratne saved Alexandra by pushing her out the hotel window, but was unable to escape as the window was too small for an adult.