BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) – Mourners in Sri Lanka used their bare hands to dig graves Tuesday while hungry islanders in Indonesia turned to looting in the aftermath of Asia’s devastating tsunamis. Thousands more bodies were found in Indonesia, dramatically increasing the death toll across 11 nations to more than 52,000.

Indonesia’s Health Ministry said in a statement that more than 27,000 people were confirmed killed in parts of Sumatra island, the territory closest to the epicenter of Sunday’s earthquake, which sent a giant tsunami rolling across the Indian Ocean.

But the ministry said it had not yet counted deaths along the inundated and shattered towns of Sumatra’s western coast, which soldiers and rescue workers were unable so far to reach – including the district of Meulaboh, where earlier the head of another agency estimated that 10,000 people were killed.

When those regions are included in the ministry count, the death toll could rise dramatically yet again.

TV footage from overflights of Meulaboh and other parts of the west coast showed thousands of homes underwater. Refugees fleeing the coast described surviving for days on little more than coconuts before reaching Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province on Sumatra’s northern tip, which itself was largely flattened by the quake.

“The sea was full of bodies,” said Sukardi Kasdi, who reached the capital from his town of Surang.

THREE gamblers who pulled off an audacious coup at the Ritz in London using James Bond-style gadgetry to calculate where a roulette ball would land can keep their $3.2m winnings.

Scotland Yard, which seized cash and froze bank accounts during a nine-month investigation into the sting, has decided there are no grounds to prosecute the gamblers.
The decision will prompt the Ritz and other casinos to heighten security.

The gaming trio — described by police sources as a chic Hungarian woman, aged 32, and two elegant Serbian men, aged 33 and 38 — were alleged to have smuggled a laser scanner linked to a micro-computer into the casino inside a mobile phone.

The scanner measured the speed of the ball as the croupier released it, identified where it dropped, and measured the wheel’s declining orbit.

These factors were beamed to the micro-computer, which calculated into which section of numbers on the wheel the ball would settle.

This information was then flashed onto the screen of the mobile just before the wheel made its third spin, by which time all bets must be placed.

Having reduced their odds from 37-1 to 6-1, the trio bet on all six numbers in that section to ensure they would win.

On the first night they won almost $250,000. They returned the next night to win almost $3 million. The gamblers cashed their chips, declined offers of a free caviar-and-champagne dinner to celebrate and left.

The casino’s security experts examined closed-circuit television footage and officers from Scotland Yard’s gaming squad arrested the trio at a hotel nearby on suspicion of obtaining their winnings by deception.

They had been reporting to police on bail but have now been told they are free to leave Britain.

The Yard said: “The case has been stamped ‘no further action’. All the money impounded at the outset of the inquiry has been returned.”

Legal sources said the gamblers had to be let off because they had not violated any law. The scanner did not interfere with the ball or wheel. It provided information but did not manipulate the game. – SUNDAY TIMES

JAKARTA, Indonesia Dec. 26 — A gargantuan earthquake centered off the west coast of Indonesia unleashed a series of tidal waves Sunday morning that crashed into coastal towns, fishing villages and tourist resorts from India and Sri Lanka to Thailand and Malaysia, killing more than 10,000 people and leaving many more missing.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured the earthquake at 8.9 on the Richter scale, making it the fifth strongest since 1900. It was the largest since 1964, when Alaska was jolted by a quake measuring 9.2.

The initial quake struck the western tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island shortly after 7 a.m. local time, flattening buildings and sending a wall of water about five yards high into the cities and towns of Aceh province, according to witnesses reached by telephone.