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    Man Found in Syria Appears to Be a Missing American

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    Syria’s new authorities said on Thursday that an American citizen who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.” Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.In another video posted by Al Arabiya, the man, wearing a beard and a gray hooded top, said that he had been held in a cell alone. When asked how he was freed, he said that on Monday, someone “took a hammer and they broke my door down.”It was not immediately clear where the man had been held. The fall of the authoritarian Assad regime over the weekend to rebel forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has prompted the release of many prisoners held in a sprawling network of detention centers operated by the former government.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nigeria Boat Capsizes, Killing at Least 27

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      Rescuers were searching for survivors after the vessel, taking passengers to a food market, capsized along the River Niger, officials said.ABUJA, Nigeria — At least 27 people were killed and more than 100, mostly women, were missing on Friday after a boat transporting them to a food market capsized along the River Niger in northern Nigeria, the authorities said.About 200 passengers were on the boat traveling from the state of Kogi to the neighboring state of Niger when it capsized, said Ibrahim Audu, a spokesman for the Niger State Emergency Management Agency.Rescuers had managed to pull 27 bodies from the river by Friday evening, while divers were still searching for survivors, according to Sandra Musa, a spokeswoman for the Kogi state emergency services.The authorities have not confirmed the cause of the sinking, but local news outlets suggested the boat might have been overloaded. Overcrowding on boats is common in remote parts of Nigeria, where the lack of good roads leaves many with no alternative routes.Most previous deadly boat accidents in Nigeria have been attributed to overcrowding and the lack of maintenance of the boats, often built locally to accommodate as many passengers as possible in defiance of safety measures.Also, the authorities have not been able to enforce the use of life jackets on such trips, often because of the lack of availability or cost.Justin Uwazuruonye, who is in charge of Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency operations in the state, said rescuers had trouble finding the location of the capsized vessel for hours after tragedy struck.Such deadly episodes are increasingly becoming a source of concern in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, as the authorities struggle to enforce safety measures and regulations for water transportation. More

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      California Man to Reunite With Family 25 Years After He ‘Vanished With No Trace’

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      Marcella Nasseri saw a man who resembled her long-lost brother in the news. Fingerprint scans solved the decades-old case.For years, Marcella Nasseri searched for the remains of her brother, who she believed had died after he mysteriously disappeared in Doyle, Calif., 25 years ago.Now, Ms. Nasseri’s brother, who vanished in August 1999, has been found and identified in the Los Angeles area and is being reunited with his family, the authorities announced on Tuesday.It all started when Ms. Nasseri saw an article in USA Today from May that asked the public for help identifying a patient who had been found sitting on a curb in south Los Angeles nearly a month before. He had been staying at emergency facilities including St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood near Long Beach, Calif., for weeks.The article, which explained that the patient could not communicate, included a photo of the man — with gray hair and blue eyes, believed to be in his mid-60s — lying in a hospital bed.Ms. Nasseri believed the patient was her missing brother, Tommy. She added an undated photograph of her brother as a younger man in a GoFundMe post earlier this week. Tommy had more dark hair than the man in the hospital bed but his arched eyebrows, rounded nose and deep-set eyes showed a resemblance between the two.In an attempt to have her inclination confirmed or denied, Ms. Nasseri contacted the local authorities. Derek Kennemore, the deputy sheriff of Lassen County in Northern California, then pushed for a detective with the Missing Persons Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department to obtain the fingerprints of the unidentified patient, according to a statement from the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office.“The Detective was able to positively identify the man as the one reported missing in 1999 from Doyle,” the statement said.St. Francis Medical Center, the county sheriff and Ms. Nasseri did not respond to requests for comment. Tommy’s condition and how he disappeared were not immediately clear.“He just VANISHED with no trace,” Ms. Nasseri said in her post. “Not even his vehicle was ever located.”Now, the two are working to be reunited. Ms. Nasseri lives in Lassen County, about 600 miles north of Lynwood, Calif., where her brother is staying. For the cost of a possible medical transfer as well as items like men’s clothing, pencils and paper so he can draw, Ms. Nasseri sought $500 in donations on the crowdsourcing site.After two days, the page had raised nearly $7,000.Some of the money, Ms. Nasseri said, would also go to buy her brother a device so he could listen to some of the songs that she remembers him loving — including one especially prescient tune by Cyndi Lauper.“If you’re lost you can look and you will find me,” Ms. Lauper sings in one of the tunes that appeared on Tommy’s list. “Time after time.” More

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      1 Dead and 4 Are Missing After Boat Capsizes Off California

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      A search began after reports of six overdue boaters Saturday. Officials said a child was rescued and in stable condition and the body of a teenager was recovered.The U.S. Coast Guard recovered the body of a teenager and rescued an 11-year-old boy as it pressed its search for four boaters missing after their vessel capsized on Saturday off California, the authorities said.The U.S. Coast Guard received a report about six overdue boaters at about 11:40 p.m. on Saturday from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, said Levi Read, chief petty officer with U.S. Coast Guard District 11.Three of those on board were adults, and the others were ages 11, 14 and 17, Petty Officer Read said.The group set out on a 21-foot blue-and-white motorized vessel from the Westside Marina in Bodega Bay around 3 p.m. for recreational crabbing, Petty Officer Read said.The boaters were supposed to be home by 7 p.m. the same day. When they didn’t return, family members alerted the authorities.Crews from several agencies, including the Coast Guard, the Sheriff’s Office and the California Air National Guard, searched a large area on Sunday that stretched from Bodega Bay south toward Point Reyes in Marin County and 20 miles offshore, Petty Officer Read said.It was unclear on Sunday where the group went crabbing, where and when the boat capsized or what led up to it overturning.The last cellphone ping the authorities received was around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and about seven nautical miles west of Bodega Bay, Petty Officer Read said.An 11-year-old boy was found alive off South Salmon Creek Beach at around 8 a.m. on Sunday. He was taken to a hospital and was stable.The body of another child, a male, was recovered from the waters within the search area at about 10:15 a.m. on Sunday, Petty Officer Read said. It was unclear whether it was the 14-year-old or 17-year-old who was recovered.He said the group was from the Corning, Calif., area, and that five are family members, though their relationship was unknown. One is a family friend, Petty Officer Read said.“The search is ongoing,” he said. “Our thoughts are with the family and friends of the family that is missing.”The water on Sunday was about 52 degrees, the average year-round temperature for the Pacific Ocean, Petty Officer Read said.Winds were about 20 miles per hour, creating choppy seas and white caps, but the sky was otherwise clear and visibility was good, he said.Bodega Bay, about 70 miles north of San Francisco, is a fishing hamlet of about 1,000 year-round residents where Dungeness crab is trapped several months of the year. More

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      Boot Found at Everest Could Be From Sandy Irvine, Who Vanished 100 Years Ago

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      When Sandy Irvine went on a pioneering expedition to Mount Everest’s summit in 1924, he and his partner vanished. The recent discovery may shed light on the ill-fated adventure.A well-preserved boot found by a group of climbers on Mount Everest could be a clue to solving one of the most enduring adventure mysteries in the history of exploration of the world’s highest peak.The climbers who made the discovery in late September have reason to believe that it could contain some of the remains of Andrew Comyn Irvine, 22, whose ascent with an expert climber in an attempt to be the first to reach the summit in 1924 led to their disappearance.The recent explorers, from a National Geographic film crew, were on a glacier below the north face of Everest when they spotted a brown leather boot sticking out of the ice.Looking closer, they noticed a sock with a patch sewed to it that spelled “A.C. Irvine” in stitched red letters.“We just kind of walked around, like for a few minutes, being like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Jimmy Chin, a mountaineer and filmmaker, said of the find. “We just stumbled upon one of the great discoveries of our time.”In April 1924, Mr. Irvine, a talented engineer but inexperienced climber from Birkenhead, England, who was better known as Sandy, joined George Mallory, a British mountaineer renowned for having reached 27,000 feet above sea level on Mount Everest in 1922.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Pinnacle Man’ Found Frozen Near Appalachian Trail Is Identified

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      The man, Nicholas Paul Grubb, was found frozen near the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania in 1977. His identity remained a mystery until a state trooper found his fingerprints.For 47 years, he’s been known as the Pinnacle Man.On a brutally cold winter’s day on Jan. 16, 1977, two hikers found a man’s frozen body in a cave below the Pinnacle, a scenic viewpoint off the Appalachian Trail in Albany Township in eastern Pennsylvania, about 75 miles northwest of Philadelphia.The authorities performed an autopsy, took the victim’s fingerprints and determined that he was a male between 25 and 35 years old, with blue eyes and reddish curly long hair.There were no signs of foul play, and the authorities determined the death was suicide from a drug overdose.When no one came forward to claim him, the Pinnacle Man was buried in a potter’s field.At some point, the original fingerprints taken during the autopsy went missing, and the copies of those prints were too poor in quality to use for identification, the authorities said.More than four decades later, the man now has a name: Nicholas Paul Grubb, who was 27 and from Fort Washington, Pa.At a news conference last week, officials with the Berks County Coroner’s Office explained that a Pennsylvania state trooper tracked down the missing fingerprints to help identify Mr. Grubb.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Man Missing for 10 Days in a California Forest Is Found Alive

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      Lukas McClish said he lost 30 pounds in 10 days but was rescued without any major injuries.On the morning of June 11, Lukas McClish stopped by the home of a friend who told him about a granite outcropping in the nearby woods that piqued his interest, so Mr. McClish set out on his own, shirtless, to explore the scenery.Mr. McClish, 34, of Boulder Creek, Calif., would not be seen or heard from for nine nights and 10 days. His disappearance into California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park would prompt a search that involved about 300 people, emergency personnel from several agencies and ended with help from a dog.Mr. McClish, a hiker who does landscaping in forests that have been razed by wildfires, appeared to have been swallowed by the woods.“I was just so astounded by being lost,” he said in a telephone interview.The area where Mr. McClish was lost had been hard-hit by the C.Z.U. Lightning Complex fire in 2020 and “looks completely different from all of the other terrain,” he said.“That’s one thing that I didn’t take into consideration — when the fire comes through like that and decimates it, it turns into the desert, and you’re unable to find your bearings,” he said.Typical markers to gain a sense of direction, like deer trails or hiking paths, were gone. But Mr. McClish, an experienced backpacker who has traversed other rugged regions of the United States, took it as an opportunity to explore a part of his backyard that he was unfamiliar with.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Search Underway in Greece for British TV Doctor Michael Mosley

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      Mr. Mosely, a popular science journalist, disappeared while on a walk on the Greek island of Symi. He was last seen at a bus stop on Wednesday afternoon.Greek authorities on Thursday said they were searching for Michael Mosley, a prominent British journalist and television presenter who had gone missing a day earlier while on a walk on the island of Symi.Mr. Mosley, 67, was reported missing by his wife, Clare Bailey, on Wednesday afternoon, according to Constantina Dimoglidou, a spokeswoman for the Greek police. The couple had arrived in Symi on Tuesday, planning to stay for a week.“We’re looking everywhere for him,” Ms. Dimoglidou said, adding that the local fire service and volunteers were involved in the search. The Greek fire service on Thursday said a team of six firefighters was looking for a missing foreign national on Symi, part of the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea, and said drones had been sent from the nearby island of Rhodes.Mr. Mosley told friends on Wednesday afternoon that he was going to walk about two miles from the Agios Nikolaos area back to the main town of Symi, where the couple was staying, according to Ms. Dimoglidou. He was last seen by a witness at a bus stop in Pedi, about halfway between the two locations, and did not have his cellphone on him when he disappeared, she said.It was possible, she said, that Mr. Mosley had become dizzy from the heat. Temperatures in Symi have hovered around 95 degrees Fahrenheit this week, and the weather authorities in Greece had urged vigilance over the risk of high heat.“It’s rugged terrain with high spots, so it’s possible that he fell,” Ms. Dimoglidou said. His disappearance also spurred a call for information in a local Facebook group, in which a post said that Mr. Mosley had set off at around 1:30 p.m. and never appeared at his accommodation.Mr. Mosley trained as a doctor before becoming a documentary maker and a science journalist who dispensed advice on diet, fasting and other health habits. He became famous for his myth-busting work on diet and is widely known as a proponent of intermittent fasting, writing several books on the subject. A longtime producer and presenter for the BBC, he is the host of the broadcaster’s “Just One Thing” health podcast, and was nominated in 2002 for an Emmy on “The Human Face,” a series examining the science behind beauty. More recently, he released two series with the British Channel 4 broadcaster investigating obesity in Britain and the nutrition behind the grocery shopping of everyday consumers. More

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      3 Bodies in Mexico Are Identified as Missing Australians and American

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      Family members confirmed the identities of two Australian brothers and their American friend, who were found shot to death after going missing last month.Three bodies that were found in the Mexican state of Baja California last week have been identified as those of three tourists from Australia and the United States who had disappeared days earlier, the Mexican authorities said on Sunday.The bodies were confirmed to be those of Callum and Jake Robinson, two brothers from Perth, Australia, and Jack Carter Rhoad of San Diego, the Baja California attorney general’s office said in a statement. “The confirmation comes after the victims’ families were able to identify them, without the need for genetic testing,” the statement read.The Robinsons and Mr. Rhoad had been on vacation, surfing and camping along the coast near the Mexican city of Ensenada, when they disappeared on April 27. The Robinsons’ mother said in a social media post on Wednesday that they had never showed up at an Airbnb they had booked in another coastal town.Early on Friday, the Mexican authorities recovered the three bodies from a 50-foot-deep water hole near La Bocana beach. A fourth, yet unidentified male body, which prosecutors said had no relation to the case, was also found at the bottom of the hole.Each of the bodies later identified as those of the tourists had a gunshot wound to the head, said María Elena Andrade Ramírez, the state’s attorney general.Three suspects have been detained in connection with the killings. One has been charged with forced disappearance. Ms. Andrade Ramírez said he tried to rob the Robinson brothers and Mr. Carter of the pickup truck in which they were traveling. When they resisted, she said, he shot them and later disposed of their bodies. “Unfortunately, they stayed in an inhospitable place where there was no way to call for help,” Ms. Andrade Ramírez said at a news conference on Sunday.The other two people being detained have been charged with possession of methamphetamine, Ms. Andrade Ramírez said. She said that there might be more arrests, but that there was no indication that any of Mexico’s organized crime gangs had been involved in the killings. “The hypothesis so far is that they approached with the intent to seize the pickup truck and attacked the victims,” she said.Ms. Andrade Ramírez said a burned campsite had been discovered in a remote, isolated area south of Ensenada, about four miles from where the bodies were found. A single shell casing and blood stains were found at the site, and the tourists’ pickup truck, also burned, had been abandoned nearby, Ms. Andrade Ramírez said. More