More than three months after the cruise ship Costa Concordia sank off the coast of Italy, the two missing American passengers have been confirmed dead after their bodies were identified several weeks after they were found.

Barbara and Gerald Heil of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, were the only two U.S. victims to die in the accident that occurred on January 13, and on Tuesday their family confirmed their passing in an online statement, reported local paper the Hastings Star Gazette.

The Costa Concordia was the second cruise ship crashed with Captain Francesco Schettino at the helm, according to internal company documents leaked on Thursday and published in several Italian newspapers.

The captain, who has denied any wrongdoing in the wreck of the Costa Concordia, also damaged the Aida Blu cruise ship in June 2010 after sailing too quickly into a German harbor where he “maneuvered at a speed of 7.7 to 7.9 knots during entry into the port of Warnemunde.”

Costa Cruises has suffered another PR nightmare and left a ship full of disgruntled passengers demanding compensation after being left adrift in pirate-infested waters for three days.

The stricken Costa Allegra, which lost power on Monday 200 miles from the Seychelles Islands off mainland Africa, finally made it to dry land on Thursday when it was towed into port on the island of Mahe by a tug boat, reported ABCNews.com.

Another crisis has rocked the boat for the Costa Cruise corporation as more than a thousand people are floating adrift in a huge vessel owned by the company after a fire broke out on board causing them to lose power.

The Costa Allegra is sitting undefended in the Indian Ocean 200 miles from the Seychelles Islands off mainland Africa in an area that is notorious for being infested by modern-day pillaging pirates, reported ABCNews.com.

Salvage workers scouring the wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that is lying stricken off the coast of Italy found eight more bodies on Wednesday.

The latest grisly discoveries bring the total number of confirmed dead from the January 13 disaster to 25, reported the Chicago Tribune, and included the bodies of a woman and a five-year-old girl. Seven people out of the more than 4,200 who boarded the ship remain unaccounted for.

After 18 days of desperate searching for survivors of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster, Italian officials have been forced to pull out because of the risk to rescue workers.

Italy's Civil Protection agency made the announcement on Tuesday due to the unstable positioning of the ship’s massive hull creating too many safety concerns to continue, reported USAToday.com.

According to the statement, relatives and diplomatic officials representing the countries of the missing have been informed of the difficult decision.

A multimillion dollar lawsuit has been filed by victims of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia cruise ship amid anger at the compensation being offered by the ship's owner.

In what is believed to be the first of many anticipated civil filings by passengers against Carnival Corp., the Miami-based company that owns the Italian cruise operator, attorneys for six passengers filed legal paperwork in Miami’s federal court on Friday requesting $450 million in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages.

The complaint said the plaintiffs were “in terror of catastrophic injury, death, drowning, having been placed in a situation where common sense said the vessel was sinking but the orders from the crew were to return to their cabins.”

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On Thursday, a Peruvian crew member filed suit in Chicago looking for $100 million in damages but also seeking class-action status to cover all crew and passengers.

The lawsuits came amid outrage at Costa Crociere SpA offering just $14,500 in damages to the 3,206 passengers who were not physically injured plus the cost of the cruise, travel and medical expenses.

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Attorney Marc J. Bern told AP that Costa’s offer was woefully inadequate. “There is not one uninjured person on that ship, whether or not they have a physical scratch,” he said. “The anxiety, the stress for many of these people will never leave them.”

The vacation cruise liner capsized off the coast of  Italy on January 13. The death toll for the tragedy reached 17 on Saturday after a body of a woman, believed to be a crew member, was pulled from the wreckage.

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There are 15 more people still missing including those of retired Minnesota couple Gerald and Barbara Heil.

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After insulting survivors of the cruise ship disaster by offering them 30 percent off future trips, Costa Cruises has now agreed to pay each passenger $14,460 as compensation for psychological trauma and lost baggage.

Still many passengers who had to desperately jump to safety onto lifeboats after the $450 million cruise liner crashed into a reef off the coast of Tuscany on January 13 think that it is not enough because they can't yet put a figure on the cost of the trauma they endured.

The offer was negotiated by a consumer group working with 3,206 passengers from 61 countries, none of whom were injured in the accident, reported the Huffington Post.

As passengers desperately struggled to escape the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship, a group of rich Russians reportedly bribed crewmembers to get coveted spots on the life boats.

Italian officials are reportedly investigating whether expensively dressed Eastern Europeans stuffed handfuls of cash into the pockets of cruise line staff after the massive vessel hit a reef on January 13, reported the Sun.co.uk.

A resident who lives on the island of Giglio near where the ship capsized four miles off course has revealed that instead of seeing women, children and wounded when the first life boats reached dry land, she was shocked to come face-to-face with, "healthy men and elegant women in evening gowns who were speaking Russian," Franca Anichini told German media.

A woman's body has been found in the corridor of the capsized cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, bringing the death toll in the disaster to 12.

The massive ship, carrying over 3,000 passengers ran aground off the Tuscan coast of Italy a week ago but diver only discovered the woman's body Saturday. She was wearing a life vest.

The victim was found during a risky inspection of an evacuation staging point at the rear of the wrecked ship according to Italian Coast Guard Commander Cosimo Nicastro.

Details of the woman's nationality and identity are not yet known.

There is still one crew member and 19 passengers who have not been accounted for.

Survivors of the accident described the evacuation as "every man for themselves," and compared the evacuation chaos to what happened on the Titanic.

The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino,  is currently under house arrest.  He is being investigated for possible manslaughter charges and also stands accused of abandoning the ship before everyone was evacuated.