Monday 17 June 2013

Phillipines abandon search for missing 7


Philippine authorities said yesterday they had abandoned hope of finding alive seven people missing from a ferry, which sank last week with dozens on board, after three days of searching in strong currents.

Rescuers recovered two bodies from the sea and rescued 61 others after the Lady of Mount Carmel went down Friday off the coast of central Masbate island, more than 300 km southeast of Manila.

Regional civil defense chief Raffy Alejandro said divers had not been able to reach the sunken ferry, believed to be lying on the seabed 1,300 feet (396 meters) under water.

“We are shifting from rescue to retrieval. We will search only if someone spots something floating near the coastline,” he told reporters. He said they had also withdrawn some of the search and rescue vessels.

The ferry mysteriously sank in calm weather before dawn on Friday about two km (1.2 miles) from Burias Island.

Alejandro said the sunken ship was in water too deep to be reached by navy divers so it could not be determined if any bodies were trapped inside.

Coast guard officials originally refused to give up hope for the missing, believing they could have swum or drifted to nearby islands.

But Alejandro said the decision to end rescue efforts was made due to lack of progress and signs of impending bad weather.

The sinking of the ferry has raised questions as it came apparently in clear weather and smooth seas. Survivors are also reported to have accused the crew of not attending to them as the ship was sinking.

Sea accidents are common in the Philippines due to poor safety standards and overloading.

The world’s deadliest peacetime maritime disaster occurred near Manila in 1987 when a ferry laden with Christmas holidaymakers collided with a small oil tanker, killing more than 4,300 people.

Monday 17 June 2013

http://www.arabnews.com/news/455306

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11 dead, 50 missing in Uttarakhand Monsoon


Five more bodies were recovered today from near the Himalayan shrine of Kedarnath even as the chardham yatra remained suspended for the second day due to landslips.

Authorities in Chamoli district said the toll may climb as about 50 persons from different villages in the area are missing and rescue operations are on.

They said five bodies were recovered from Basukital adjoining Kedarnath.

The Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath motor way and pedestrian routes are blocked at about a dozen places by rocks and boulders that have come down as part of the debris from collapsed houses and landslides triggered by rains continuing for the last 36 hours.

Monday 17 June 2013

http://www.firstpost.com/india/monsoon-tracker-live-11-dead-50-missing-in-uttarakhand-876469.html

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June 24, 1973: Upstairs Lounge fire

On the evening of June 24, 1973, Duane “Mitch” Mitchell dropped his two sons off at the movies before heading to the Upstairs Lounge on the corner of Chartres and Iberville streets with his partner, Horace Broussard.

The bar was a hub for the Metropolitan Community Church, a recently formed ministry that reached out to gays and lesbians.

“During those days, it was an alternative to a dance or hustler bar. It was more of a fellowship, a place where we would sing a song or add a verse to ‘We Shall Overcome’,” said Stewart Butler, 82, who was at the lounge that night.

Mitchell had divorced his wife a few years earlier and was living with Broussard on Polymnia Street. The two were regulars at the Upstairs, attending Metropolitan Church services in a back room theater and rarely missing the Sunday night beer bust.

That evening, they were among about 75 people there.

According to witness accounts, some patrons were singing around the piano, while others were discussing a fundraiser for disabled children.

At approximately 7:50 p.m., the buzzer rang and a patron headed toward the stairwell to open it. He found the stairway engulfed in flames.

As the fire tore through the bar, many inside tried desperately to climb through barred windows to safety. Some leapt to their deaths, while others were devoured by the flames.

Butler, who left an hour or so before the fire to visit a neighboring bar called Wanda’s, remembers sirens and a ghastly scene.

“It was chaos. It was horror. The one thing I particularly remember is seeing MCC Rev. Bill Larson up against the window bars. He burned to death right up against those bars. It was an absolutely monstrous thing,” Butler said.

Mitchell made it outside but went back in to try to save Broussard. Both perished in the fire, alongside 30 others, many of whom were gay men.

That night Duane Jr. and Steven Mitchell watched “The Incredible Athlete” over and over, wondering when their father would arrive to pick them up.

“There was nobody there except for me and my brother and the people who owned the theater,“ said Duane Mitchell Jr., who was 11 at the time, in a documentary about the event. “We were waiting on Dad to come, but he never did.”

Conflicting statements

Forty years after it killed 32 people, the Upstairs Lounge fire still lingers oddly on the fringes of history, unresolved and unknown to many New Orleanians despite the epic scale of the tragedy.

The 64-page New Orleans Police Department report filed Aug. 30, 1973, reveals that detectives found compelling evidence of arson at the scene: An empty 7-ounce can of Ronsonol lighter fluid on the stairway where the fire had begun.

The report also includes a statement by an employee at the Walgreens in the 100 block of Royal Street who said she sold a can of lighter fluid around the time of the fire to a man she described as “gay” and appearing distraught.

Investigators additionally learned that two men had been kicked out of the bar that night, one of whom had had a violent confrontation with another patron.

Michael Scarborough gave police a statement saying he had been in a fight that night with a man who had been spying on other men in the bathroom.

“I just jumped up and just knocked him down, and he just looked up at me and he said, ‘I’m gonna burn you all out,’” Scarborough said.

David Dubose, 19 at the time, initially confessed to the fire, but recanted. After another man provided an alibi for him and Dubose passed a polygraph test, he was cleared of suspicion.

A few days later, the police located a second suspect, 24-year old Roger Nunez. But before he could be interviewed, Nunez had a seizure and was taken to Charity Hospital.

Nunez was also treated for a broken jaw. He was released from the hospital days later, unbeknownst to police.

Officers were unable to find him for months. When they did, he denied setting the fire and said he couldn’t remember whether he had been at the lounge that night.

A year later, Nunez committed suicide in his home in New Orleans East.

Shortly after Nunez’ death, one of his friends, Ralph Forrest, told police Nunez had admitted to him several times, while drunk, that he had started the fire.

“When I questioned him when he was sober regarding the fire, he wouldn’t admit it and said, ‘You must be kidding; me do that!’” Forrest said.

Keeping the story alive

“Do a mind experiment,” said New Orleans artist Skylar Fein in his Bywater studio on a recent afternoon.

“Imagine that the fire had happened a few blocks away, at Antoine’s, and all of the people who died were relatively wealthy, white heterosexual couples. I can guarantee that things would have turned out differently. Had there been a prime suspect, he would not have been allowed to go free.”

Fein — who in 2008 breathed life into the story of the Upstairs Lounge when he built a replica of the bar that he exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Center of part of Prospect.1 — is one of many artists and researchers who have recently spotlighted the tragedy.

Fein thinks the story is surprisingly little-known in New Orleans, considering the magnitude of the carnage — as well as what it reveals about the mores of the times.

Royd Anderson, a teacher and documentary filmmaker who will premiere his film about the event next week, agrees.

“This is the worst mass murder of gays in U.S. history, and it’s a footnote in most Louisiana textbooks,” Anderson said.

At the time of the fire, Anderson said, there were no public statements or memorials given by either Gov. Edwin Edwards or Mayor Moon Landrieu.

Media coverage was short-lived, and only a few small church ceremonies were held for the victims. Some bodies even went unclaimed.

The Rev. William P. Richardson, of St. George’s Episcopal Church, held a small prayer service, earning him a raft of hate mail and a rebuke from the bishop.

Even today, the only physical memorial marking the tragedy is a plaque laid 25 years later on the sidewalk outside of where the fire had occurred.

“Most people walk right over it like it’s not even there,” Anderson said.

Harassment commonplace

The near-silence by politicians on the tragedy — and the ire directed at Richardson — highlights the homophobia that pervaded New Orleans, and America as a whole, in the early 1970s.

Frank Perez, a columnist for Ambush magazine and author of a book about the history of gay New Orleans, said that gays in the city were still being harassed and arrested because of their sexual orientation.

Raids of gay bars were common, and those who were taken in for violating vice laws would be subjected to police violence, have their names published in the paper and often find themselves evicted from their apartments and fired from their jobs, Perez said.

He added that the public attitude about the fire was “very cruel,” with the victims being the butt of jokes more often then the object of sympathy.

“Radio commentators would say things like, ‘What should they do with the remains? How about burying them in fruit jars?’” he said.

According to Perez, while gays were organizing politically in other U.S. cities, the gay community in New Orleans was more inclined to organize socially, and activism was rare.

Wayne Self, a composer who has written a musical about the Upstairs fire, said the stigma of homosexuality deterred many victims’ families and friends from rallying for more public acknowledgement of the tragedy.

“This was never going to be a Stonewall,” said Self, referring to the Stonewall riots that occurred in 1969 in New York City after a raid on a gay bar, galvanizing the gay community there.

“Family members were embarrassed,” Self said. “There were gay men who were married, who had brought shame to their families.

“The gay community in New Orleans didn’t want it to be a shot heard around the world.”

Turning point

But the event still marked a sort of turning point for gay identity in New Orleans, according to Butler, recalling a memorial service held at St. Mark’s Church on Rampart Street.

When the media arrived, mourners, many of whom were gay, had to decide between slipping out a side door in anonymity or walking out the front door and potentially revealing their sexual orientation.

“To my knowledge, not one person left from that side door, we all left upright and proudly through the front,” he said.

Three months after the tragedy, The Times-Picayune published a series of articles about how many gays were coming out of the closet in the fire’s aftermath.

Four years later, thousands of people would gather at Jackson Square to protest singer and homosexuality critic Anita Bryant, an event widely viewed as a seminal moment in New Orleans gay activism.

Author Johnny Townsend, who 20 years ago wrote one of the first books on the fire, said he still feels touched by the stories he researched long ago.

“It did consume me,” he said. “I worked on it 20 hours a week for probably a year and a half, and I’m still haunted by things that people have told me.”

Memorial events scheduled

A number of events commemorating the fire are planned for June 24, the 40th anniversary of the tragedy.

Fein will give a brief lecture at the Williams Research Center of the Historic New Orleans Collection, after which a jazz funeral will proceed to the site of the fire.

That evening, Self’s musical, “Upstairs,” will premier at Cafe Istanbul, and on Monday, Anderson will show his film for the first time at PJs Coffee on Magazine Street.

Duane Mitchell, who lives in Alabama, said he hopes to make it, but can’t afford the cost of transportation and is relying on donations that Self has been raising.

Mitchell hasn’t been back to New Orleans since his father’s passing, and he said the anniversary is taking an emotional toll on him.

“What really stings me is that nobody was ever charged with any crime,” he said.

“I still think my dad’s a hero. I think about him every day, what he could have been and what we could have been.”

Monday 17 June 2013

http://theadvocate.com/home/6254220-125/1973-lounge-fire-lies-on

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Search for ferry passengers shifts from rescue to recovery


The search for seven missing passengers of the ill-fated vessel that sank off Masbate last Friday is now a recovery effort, the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) in Bicol Region said Monday.

Raffy Alejandrino, OCD-Bicol Region chief, said they were studying the option of using the sonar equipment of the United States Navy to reach the area where the roll-on and roll-off vessel M/V Lady of Carmel sank.

Rough seas caused by Tropical Depression "Emong" also affect the ongoing search operation of the navy and coast guard, he said.

The ferry was sailing in a calm sea on Friday when it sank around 5 a.m. along Burias Pass between Pio Duran, Albay and Aroroy, Masbate.

Two persons died in the incident while 61 passengers and crew were rescued.

The bodies of Erlinda Julbitado and Carlota Senga were transferred to Metro Manila over the weekend. Julbitado's remains were brought to The Evergreen Chapels and Crematory in Pasig City while Senga's were brought to San Roque in Marikina City.

Julbitado and Senga were part of the group who went to Masbate for the house blessing of Julbitado's daughter.

Monday 17 June 2013

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/breaking-news/2013/06/17/search-ferry-passengers-shifts-rescue-recovery-287830

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15 unidentified bodies found in Tamil Nadu every day‏


Fifteen unidentified bodies are recovered in Tamil Nadu every day.

As many as 5,319 unidentified bodies were found in Tamil Nadu in 2012, according to recent data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Most of the individuals were murder victims.

The state is second only to Maharashtra, which tops the official crime compiler’s morbid list with 5,906 unidentified bodies. Crime experts and police officers say a rise in the number of unidentified bodies could be a pointer to an increase in the number of unsolved murders.

A total of 37,838 unidentified bodies were recovered across the country in 2012, an average of 103 bodies a day, the NCRB data has revealed.

Most bodies unclaimed are of women and elderly

Police officials say killers dump bodies in lakes or on railway tracks because it is an easy way to get rid of evidence and putrefaction or mutilation makes identification and further investigation difficult for police.

A police officer said few people approach police to identify bodies or claim them. “Investigating officers try to make identification as soon as possible, preferably within 48 hours, before decomposition starts, because determining the identity early is vital to a murder investigation,” he said.

Unidentified bodies are sent to crematoriums or to medical colleges where they are used to study anatomy.

The Tamil Nadu police website (www.tnpolice.gov.in) currently has details of 631 unidentified bodies that were recovered in the state this year. Most of the bodies were of senior citizens and of women with severe injuries to the face.

Social activists say several of the bodies are of homeless people. “There are too few homes where they can find shelter and inadequate healthcare facilities,” said A Narayanan, who works for the welfare of the homeless. “The facilities are poor at government hospitals and mortuaries are often inadequate. This leads to decomposition. Police rarely conduct forensic tests to determine the cause of death,” he said.

Railway police have to deal with a large number of bodies, of people who committed suicide or were accidentally hit by trains. “Railway police usually take unidentified bodies to the nearest government hospital,” said Southern Railway chief public relations officer V J Accamma. If we conclude it is a suspicious death, we immediately alert the nearest police station.”

“We place advertisements in newspapers about unclaimed bodies, after which we wait for a few days,” a police officer said. “If we receive no response and the body is not connected to a medico-legal case, we hand it over to the corporation for burial or send it to a medical college.”

Monday 17 June 2013

http://www.pakistankakhudahafiz.com/region/15-unidentified-bodies-found-in-tamil-nadu-every-day%E2%80%8F/

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June 17, 1958: The collapse of the Second Narrows Bridge


June 17, 1958, was a perfect summer day, sunny and hot. Workers building the new Second Narrows Bridge were nearing the end of their shift when, suddenly, a span 20 storeys above Burrard Inlet began to shake.

“Some of the men on it ran,” reported The Vancouver Sun. “Some clung to the girders.

“Then, with a crash that could be heard in downtown Vancouver, it swung down like a pendulum and slammed into the bottom of the sea.

“Clinging ironworkers flicked off like flies. The falling mass pulled its inshore supporting pillar out, (which) allowed (a second) span to fall like its partner.”

A survivor estimated that the collapse lasted only 25 seconds, but it sent 18 men hurtling to their deaths, and injured 20 more.

John Olynyk was one of the lucky ones. Olynyk was inside a “big, criss-crossed diagonal beam” when the span collapsed. He miraculously survived the fall and crawled to the top of the beam, but the tide started to come in. Then “the water came up and up and up,” and he thought he only had five minutes to live.

But a crew of six welders spotted him. Clambering onto a work boat, wrote The Sun’s Tom Ardies: “They put their torches to the steel cage that held him. They burned it away piece by piece, and pulled him out at the last minute.

“ ‘We worked like hell to save his life,’ said welder Jim Fullager. ’He just stared at us, without a word.’ ”

The welders pulled eight men out of the wreckage. But only two were alive.

A diver later died searching for bodies in the twisted metal underwater, bringing the final death toll to 19. Among the dead were two engineers that had miscalculated the strength of the “grillage” on a platform. A royal commission into the disaster said the miscalculations “meant the beams of the platform were used without stiffeners and supports which would have been found necessary if the calculation had been made correctly.”

It was a fatal mistake.

Monday 17 june 2013

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/THIS+HISTORY+JUNE+1958/8533871/story.html

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