Sunday 26 May 2013

Bangladesh building collapse death rises to 1,129


The death toll from the collapse of a Bangladesh garment factory complex has risen to 1,129 after two more injured workers died a month after the disaster, officials said on Sunday.

Senior government official Zillur Rahman Chowdhury told AFP one male and one female victim of one of the world's worst industrial disasters had died in hospital.

"They were rescued alive from the rubble and were undergoing treatment but succumbed to injuries, one on Friday and the other on Saturday," Chowdhury said.

More than 3,000 garment workers were on shift at the nine-storey Rana Plaza complex, where they made clothing for Western retailers including Britain's Primark and Spain's Mango, when the building caved in on April 24.

Authorities called off the search for bodies on May 14 after rescuing a total of 2,438 people from the ruins of the building, which housed five garment factories in the Dhaka suburb of Savar.

An 18-year-old garment worker known only as Reshma was the last to be pulled out alive on May 10 after she spent 17 days under the rubble. She is recovering at a military hospital.

Scores of distraught relatives are still waiting for news of missing loved ones a month after the disaster, as 316 people are still formally unaccounted for.

Many of them are thought to be bodies recovered from the rubble, which were too badly damaged or decomposed to identify.

They were buried at a graveyard in Dhaka after DNA samples were collected. These will be matched later on with relatives' DNA to confirm identity and compensate families.

The tragedy, which highlighted appalling safety conditions in the sector, was the latest in a string of deadly accidents to hit the world's second largest garment industry.

A factory fire in Dhaka killed eight people on May 9. Another fire last November killed 111 garment workers, the worst blaze in the history of the country's textile industry.

Sunday 26 May 2013

http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/article/17335243/bangladesh-building-disaster-toll-rises-to-1-129/

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DNA may help military end era of unknown soldiers


More than 83,000 service members lost since the beginning of World War II remain missing, according to the Defense Department. Many lie in forgotten battlefield graves and beneath memorials of solemn anonymity.

But advancing techniques and DNA technology mean the United States might have buried its last unknown soldier. In offices and laboratories across the country and archaeological sites scattered across continents, teams of investigators and scientists comb the past for the country's lost defenders.

Half a world away from her father's final battlefield, Barbara Ann Broyles grew up, married and had three children. She was 41⁄2 years old when Faith died east of the Chosin Reservoir in Korea in 1950. The scattered, retreating remnants of his troops left behind his body.

She made a home in Baton Rouge. She watched America's relationship with North Korea deteriorate, and her hope for her father's recovery faded.

Then in late September, the phone rang. Retired Air Force Maj. Michael Mee wanted to meet with her.

They'd found him, he said.

Two military agencies — the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, based in Honolulu, and the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, based in Arlington, Va. — keep a case file on every missing soldier, sailor, airman and Marine, said retired Lt. Col. William Woodier, 66, a DPMO researcher.

“We don't ever quit,” Woodier said. He covers the Chosin Reservoir area, where hundreds of soldiers and Marines went missing during 10 days of fighting.

Among veterans Woodier interviewed were men who carried Faith, mortally wounded, to his jeep after he led an assault on Chinese blocking his battalion's retreat.

Woodier retired in May 2006, but the memory of a missing friend from another war binds him to the task at DPMO. Corpsman Mike Laporte, a fellow reconnaissance Marine, disappeared during a parachute drop into South Vietnam on Sept. 5, 1967.

Woodier said he intends to stay at DPMO until Laporte comes home or “somebody finds me face-down at my desk, I guess.”

“There are way too many people still waiting for their loved ones to come home,” Woodier said. “My corpsman is still missing.”

The Korean War was Faith's second. He parachuted into Normandy, Sicily and the Ardennes during World War II, and played poker with Russian soldiers at the Brandenburg Gate. Gen. Omar Bradley gave his wife and daughter the Medal of Honor he earned for leadership along the banks of Chosin Reservoir, where a surprise Chinese attack cut down hundreds of soldiers.

Broyles, 66, recalls difficult conversations with survivors who wanted to tell her how her father died.

One remembered lying among battered, exhausted troops in a medical tent when Faith walked in. Using a rifle as a crutch, he asked them to push a little farther.

“I need you,” he told them.

The veteran said they would have followed her father “to hell and back.”

“But, of course, they had,” Broyles said, “except not back.”

Low on ammunition, with hundreds wounded, Faith tried to lead a retreat through entrenched Chinese troops, according to an Army history. Of 3,500 men who pushed north with Faith days earlier, about 385 remained fit for combat, said JPAC historian Michael Dolski.

A U.S. airstrike meant to aid them dropped napalm on the convoy's lead element.

“All he could do was yell, and say, ‘Follow me.' And he led, and they followed him,” Broyles said.

Researchers at JPAC and DPMO identify likely sites of remains. An archaeological team visited North Korea in 2004 and found skeletal remains of 30 people jumbled in a mass grave near Chosin Reservoir.

They shipped the bones to Honolulu, where JPAC operates the largest accredited skeletal forensics laboratory in the world, said Debra Prince Zinni, a forensic anthropologist who helped identify Faith's remains.

She uses bones to determine gender, age and ancestry, and to look for identifying marks. That takes about two weeks, but a backlog of requests at the DNA lab delays test results by as much as a year. The difficulty of piecing together DNA from decades-old remains can add more time. Sometimes, the first sample isn't enough and the process starts anew.

Then researchers try to match analyzed samples with DNA samples taken from thousands of family members. They identified 80 people last year.

A few days after Mee called in September, Broyles' family gathered at her house. Mee arrived with two military officers and a thick briefing book containing hundreds of pages of peer-reviewed forensic studies, DNA analysis, witness accounts of the battle, and other evidence collected during decades of searching — even a letter Broyles' mother wrote to the Army in the 1950s about her husband's death.

Their meeting lasted for six hours, Broyles said.

“The object, as I look back on it, was to present to us all the information in such a way that we could be comfortable in saying that, despite all odds, that's my father. They've found him,” Broyles said.

In April, Broyles and her family stood on the tarmac at Ronald Reagan International Airport when the jet from Hawaii landed. Nearly 800 aircraft take off and land from the airport each day, but as the honor guard carried Faith's flag-draped casket from the plane, “you couldn't see anyone moving,” Broyles said.

“They all stopped.”

She asked officers at Arlington National Cemetery, where Faith's parents are buried, for an open-casket service, a rare request for partial remains.

“It just seems like a box is just a box,” she told them. “He's here. I want it clear that he's here.”

The undertakers wrapped his bones in a white shroud and wrapped the shroud in an Army blanket. Atop the blanket they laid his folded uniform. The casket remained open.

The U.S. Army Band and honor guard led the procession to his hilltop grave, marching beneath trees frosted green with the early blooms. Seven horses drew the black caisson carrying Faith's coffin. Broyles led the family and friends who followed.

“They actually did it. ... They found him,” she said. “None of his brothers are alive. None of his parents are alive. His wife died a long time ago. (But) they didn't forget. They found him and brought him back.”

Sunday 26 May 2013

http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/3807977-74/faith-broyles-army

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Last inspection: precise ritual of dressing nation’s war dead


The soldier bent to his work, careful as a diamond cutter. He carried no weapon or rucksack, just a small plastic ruler, which he used to align a name plate, just so, atop the breast pocket of an Army dress blue jacket, size 39R.

Staff members at the Dover Port Mortuary discuss the honor — and challenge — of preparing fallen American soliders for their final journeys home.

Sergeant Deynes, guided by an official military record, assembles the badges, medals, unit patches and ribbons that would go on the dress jacket.

“Blanchard,” the plate read.

Capt. Aaron R. Blanchard, a 32-year-old Army pilot, had been in Afghanistan for only a few days when an enemy rocket killed him and another soldier last month as they dashed toward their helicopter. Now he was heading home.

But before he left the mortuary here, he would need to be properly dressed. And so Staff Sgt. Miguel Deynes labored meticulously, almost lovingly, over every crease and fold, every ribbon and badge, of the dress uniform that would clothe Captain Blanchard in his final resting place.

“It’s more than an honor,” Sergeant Deynes said. “It’s a blessing to dress that soldier for the last time.”

About 6,700 American service members have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and almost every one of their remains have come through the Dover Port Mortuary. Yet only since 2009 have journalists been allowed to photograph coffins returning from the war zones, the most solemn of rites at this air base. The intimate details of the process have been kept from public view.

But recently the Air Force, which oversees the mortuary, allowed a reporter and a photographer to observe the assembling of dress uniforms for those who have died. A small slice of the process, to be sure, but enough to appreciate the careful ritual that attends the war dead of the United States military.

And enough to glimpse the arc of two long wars.

Housed in a partly unheated building before the wars began, the mortuary moved into a new 72,000-square-foot building in 2003 after the invasion of Iraq. Then, as the wars expanded, so did the mortuary staff: from 7 workers in 2001 to more than 60 today.

War also brought, for a time, unrelenting work. During the peak of fighting in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, 10 to 20 bodies arrived here each day, and embalmers often worked all night to get remains home on time.

“I have deployed to Afghanistan,” said Col. John M. Devillier, the commander of Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations. “But I’ve seen more war here.”

For each of the war dead, the journey through Dover begins with the arrival of a cargo jet that is met by military officials and, usually, family members. A team of service members wearing white gloves carries the coffins, covered with flags, to a white van that takes them to the Armed Forces Medical Examiner. Once an autopsy is completed, the work of the mortuary staff begins.

Remains are first embalmed and then washed. Hands are scrubbed clean, hair is shampooed. Where appropriate, bones are wired together and damaged tissue is reconstructed with flesh-toned wax. Using photographs, or just intuition, the embalmers try to recreate the wrinkles in faces, the lines around mouths, the corners and lids of eyes.

“It has to look normal, like someone who is sleeping,” said Petty Officer First Class Jennifer Howell, a Navy liaison at the mortuary who has a mortician’s license.

Once the body is ready, the mortuary staff prepares dress uniforms for each, even if the coffin is closed at the funeral with the uniform laid on top of the remains, and even if the body is to be cremated.

Work on Captain Blanchard’s uniform began the morning after his body arrived at Dover, in a room lined with wood closets and walls hung thick with military accouterments. There, Sergeant Deynes, guided by the captain’s official military record, began assembling the dozens of badges, medals, unit patches and ribbons that would go on the dress jacket.

Purple, orange and gold captains’ bars, denoting an aviator. Purple Heart. Overseas Service Badge. Sergeant Deynes searched along the walls and in tiny plastic drawers for each. Then he assembled the ribbons denoting the captain’s awards in the proper order according to precedence: a Bronze Star, his highest medal, went on the top, and the others followed like the words on a page.

When finished, he slipped them onto a metal “ribbon rack” and pinned it above the jacket’s left breast pocket. Then he took a photograph to be sent to Army personnel headquarters at Fort Knox for double checking. The process has to be “100 percent perfect,” said William Zwicharowski, the Dover Port Mortuary branch chief, because “a lot of times, families are in denial and they want to find something that gives them hope that it wasn’t their son or daughter.”

Cpl. Landon L. Beaty, the Marine Corps liaison, recalled receiving a hard lesson in uniform assemblage when he first came to the mortuary last year. After inspecting a Marine’s uniform for loose threads, he thought he had found every one — until his boss found 73 more. Corporal Beaty voluntarily did three push-ups for each missed thread.

Working so intimately with the dead can take a toll, so the mortuary has a large gym and a recreation room where workers are encouraged to blow off steam. A team of chaplains and mental health advisers are available for counseling.

Mr. Zwicharowski, a former Marine, said many workers were haunted by the youthfulness of the dead, and by the fact that so many leave behind children. He counsels his staff to avoid researching their backgrounds, but he has not always abided by his own advice.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, he read a note placed in the coffin of a boy who died on the jet that crashed into the Pentagon. It was from a brother, thanking the boy for defending him on the playground days before.

“It was something I wish I didn’t do, and I learned my lesson not to do it again,” Mr. Zwicharowski said, fighting back tears. “If I knew the story of every individual who went through here, I would probably be in a padded cell.”

Mr. Zwicharowski was one of several employees who reported problems at the mortuary several years ago that included workers losing body parts and sawing off the arm of a dead Marine without consulting his family.

According to a report issued in late 2011 by the Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that handles complaints from whistle-blowers, senior mortuary officials tried to cover up the problems and then punished the employees who reported them, including Mr. Zwicharowski. Since then, the Air Force has removed those officials, installing Colonel Devillier as the commander and promoting Mr. Zwicharowski to mortuary chief.

“We’re in a posture better than we ever have been,” said Mr. Zwicharowski, who was the director of a private funeral home in Pennsylvania before joining the Dover mortuary in 1999.

Sergeant Deynes began putting the final touches on Captain Blanchard’s uniform immediately after it returned from the base tailor, who had sewn captain’s bars onto the jacket shoulders and purple and gold aviator braids onto the sleeves — three inches above the bottom, to be exact. The sergeant starched and pressed a white shirt, ironed a crease into the pants, steamed wrinkles out of the jacket and then rolled a lint remover over all of it, twice.

Gently, he laid the pieces onto a padded table. Black socks protruded from the pants and white gloves from the sleeves. The funeral would be a closed coffin, but it all still had to look right.

“They are not going to see it,” he said. “I do it for myself.”

A week later, Captain Blanchard’s remains were flown to his home state, Washington, where he was buried in a military cemetery near Spokane.

His mother, Laura Schactler, said Captain Blanchard enlisted in the Marines after high school and served two tours in Iraq before marrying and returning home to attend college on an Army R.O.T.C. scholarship. After graduating, he learned to fly Apache attack helicopters, fulfilling a boyhood dream.

Before his funeral, Ms. Schactler spent time alone with her son but did not open his coffin. But later that night, she said, her husband and two other sons did, wanting to say one last farewell.

Inside, they saw a uniform, white gloves crossed, buttons gleaming, perfect in every detail.

Sunday 26 May 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/us/intricate-rituals-for-fallen-americans-troops.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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40 exhumed bodies of Ivorian crisis victims ready for collection


The Ivorian Government has said 40 exhumed bodies of victims of the country’s post-election violence were ready for collection and final burial by their families.

Justice Minister Gnenema Coulibaly, who made this known at a symbolic hand-over in honour of the victims in Abidjan, said the 22 bodies had already been identified by their families.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Ivorian government, with the support of some interventionist and human rights groups, flagged-off the exhumation exercise on April 4.

Coulibaly said the essence of the exercise was to bring justice to the souls of ``those Ivorians who died during the crisis’’.

``This gathering is to express our sincere honour and respect to our citizens who lost their lives during the political crisis. I sincerely present to the families of the victims, the sincere condolences of the Government and te people of Cote d’Ivoire,’’ he said.

In his remark, Mr. Diaby Siaka, a representative of the Families and Relatives of victims of the post-election crisis, called on the government to assist the families with funds to ensure befitting burials for the victims.

Sunday 26 May 2013

http://www.championonlinenews.com/index.php/en/champion-mainnews/latest-news/item/5727-40-exhumed-bodies-of-ivorian-crisis-victims-ready-for-collection-%E2%80%94minister

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Zanzibar honours victims of marine disaster


PLANS are underway to construct a fence to protect the graveyard, where people who died in 2011 and 2012 marine accidents lie, the Zanzibar State Minister Mr Mohammed Aboud Mohammed has said.

“The government has allocated more than 100m/- for the project. We have to protect the graveyards of people who died in MV Spice Islanders, and MV Skagit,” said Mohammed when he visited the areaKama, Unguja West district.

He said the aim of the fencing project to be managed by the disaster department is to prevent people from invading the graveyard area.

MV Spice Islander capsized on September 10, 2011 killing more thane 240 people, while MV Skagit drowned on July 18 last year killing more than 140 people.

Most of the bodies retrieved from the both accidents were buried by the state at Kama area.

Sunday 26 May 2013

http://www.dailynews.co.tz/index.php/local-news/17851-zanzibar-honours-victims-of-marine-disaster

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