Exhumation

Forensic experts Wednesday began exhuming a mass unmarked grave that could hold the remains of the acclaimed poet Federico Garcia Lorca, in a milestone in Spain's drive to address the legacy of its 1936-39 civil war. Under a tent-like structure, the team started its work by staking out and cleaning surface soil at the site in southern Spain in preparation for digging in earnest, said Sara Gil, an archaeologist who is a member of the team....

When Maira Martinez graduated from college in Bogota, she had dreams of being a female Indiana Jones, excavating ancient burial sites and unlocking secrets to Colombia's rich pre-Hispanic past. These days, she's sifting through a much more recent, and grisly, past. The 27-year-old forensic anthropologist is a member of one of 12 exhumation teams working to recover and, they hope, identify the remains of thousands of victims of Colombia's civil war.

Estonian officials exhumed remains believed to be those of Soviet soldiers from a Red Army memorial in the heart of the capital Saturday, pushing ahead with an operation that sparked widespread rioting by ethnic Russians. The streets were largely quiet after two nights of unrest, but tensions were still high among the country's majority ethnic Estonians and minority Russians.

The body of the second husband of slain state Controller Kathy Augustine was exhumed in Las Vegas so investigators could try to determine whether he died as a result of foul play. Clark County Coroner Michael Murphy took the rare step of retrieving the body of Charles Augustine to perform an autopsy after Chaz Higgs, 42, was arrested and charged with using a paralyzing drug to kill Kathy Augustine, 50. Higgs was her third husband.

Mingling with the pungent wafts of ganja smoke and the bobbing pulse of Jamaica's surrogate national anthem, "One Love," a jarring note of discord is messing with the mellow vibe of this remote village. Here in the Dry Harbor Mountains lie the remains of reggae legend Bob Marley, and those who come to honor his memory insist it is here he must stay.

The body of the 14-year-old boy whose murder in 1955 helped spark the civil rights movement rests in an African American cemetery here, adjacent to a used car lot and across from the Swap-o-Rama flea market. Emmett Louis Till lay undisturbed while the tragedy of his death and the acquittal of two white men, who later admitted killing him, galvanized an army of Americans to call for racial justice.

Federal authorities exhumed Emmett Till's body from an African American cemetery in this Chicago suburb Wednesday, searching for clues in a half-century-old killing that fortified the civil rights movement. Many questions -- including a rumor that the body in the grave isn't Till's -- surround the slaying. The 14-year-old was killed after he reportedly whistled at a married white woman in a Mississippi Delta grocery store.

For two years, the family of a lost 16-year-old Santa Ana girl prayed she would return alive, only to learn last summer that she had been slain in Baja California and buried in an unmarked grave. Now they want to bring the girl's body home -- a task that could take years. Lillian June Serianne disappeared July 3, 2001. Two days later, her body was found by passersby on the highway between Ensenada and Tijuana.

The body of a Santa Ana teenager was returned Thursday to her family after it laid unidentified in the Ensenada municipal cemetery for two years and then languished there for a third year as the family lobbied for its release. Family members were present when the body of Lillian Serianne was exhumed Wednesday in Mexico, said Liza Davis, spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana. Serianne disappeared July 3, 2001.

The Dominican Republic on Monday refused a request from Spanish scientists to perform DNA tests on remains here purported to be those of Christopher Columbus. Researchers studying genetic evidence from 500-year-old bone slivers said this month that preliminary data suggested that Columbus might be buried in the Spanish city of Seville, though they said more testing was needed to be certain.