Death customs

"Como te ves me vi
 Como me ves te versa" 

Modest funeral plots multiply at the back of an old cemetery at Lesbos (Mytilene). Dirt mounds at the back are a foil for the imposing, marble tombs that dot Saint Panteleimon’s grounds as the graves of refugees that died reaching the island continue to multiply.

A horrific account of someone buried …alive or a viral Internet hoax from Honduras, of all places?
You decide.
Regardless, wouldn’t an autopsy by a couple of internationally known coroners flown to the central American country solve this question?

Serbian PM Aleksandar Vucic has said he is "sad and disappointed" that western embassies in Belgrade did not lower their flags at half-staff on Wednesday.

Serbia on that day observed a day of mourning for the victims of Croatia's Operation Storm.

A Belgrade man was unable to bury his mother-in-law because she was, due to negligence, carelessness or some other reason, cremated by mistake.

The body of the deceased, 80-year-old Ljubica Popovic, was switched at the funeral home with that of another woman of the same name, who was to be cremated.

The Republican People?s Party (CHP) tabled a motion on July 22 for the declaration of a three-day long period of national mourning over the killings of dozens of people in a suicide bomb attack earlier this week in Turkey?s southeast.

The motion was presented to the parliament with the signatures of the CHP?s Sezgin Tanr?kulu, Veli A?baba and Özgür Özel.

The Republican People?s Party (CHP) has urged Turkey?s government to declare national mourning over the massacre of dozens of people in a devastating suicide bombing on the border with Syria, which it blamed on militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Ancient Greeks had a real fear of the dead rising from their graves to stalk the living. Passo Marinaro, the necropolis of a Greek colony in Sicily, used from the 5th through to the 3rd centuries BC, shows a number of tomb occupants forcibly pinned down to prevent them from rising.

The BBC feature on Greece, titled “Graveyard Overcrowding Stokes Cremation Debate in Greece”, focuses on problems concerning burials at cemeteries in Athens and Thessaloniki that are overcrowded. The cost of a permanent grave plot is at 100,000 euros, meaning that cremation – legalized in 2006 – would be a more viable option.

Tens of thousands of Singaporeans braved waits of up to 10 hours outside parliament March 27 to pay their last respects to founding leader Lee Kuan Yew despite appeals from overwhelmed officials to honour him elsewhere.