Tuesday 2 July 2013

China's rain-related disaster toll rises


China's heavy weekend rains and related disasters have left at least 39 dead and another 13 missing, officials said.

The regions worst hit by the torrential rains and resulting floods and landslides are Inner Mongolia, eastern Anhui and central Hubei provinces, Xinhua News Agency reported, quoting the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Several other regions also have been affected including southwest Sichuan province and neighboring Chongqing municipality.

In Sichuan province alone, the rains and flooding have affected 2.44 million people and forced the evacuation of 119,500 people, the ministry said. More than 5,600 homes have been destroyed and another 10,000 damaged.

Soldiers used inflatable motorboats to rescue trapped villagers, the report said.

Weather forecasters said heavy rains were expected to hit north and southwest China over the next three days.

Meanwhile, Rumbia, the sixth tropical storm to hit China this year, was expected to head toward Guangdong and Hainan provinces after entering the South China Sea.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/07/02/Chinas-rain-related-disaster-toll-rises/UPI-88331372744140/

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US offers help in DNA testing for Rana Plaza victims


The US Federal Bureau of Intelligence will provide Bangladesh with the Combined DNA Index System (Codis) free of cost to identify bodies of Savar’s Rana Plaza fatalities.

The software programme will help establish the identities of 321 bodies of unidentified garment workers who died in the building collapse.

A source at the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs said the FBI would also provide technical and vocational support to experts at the DNA Laboratory in the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) where the software will be placed.

The US agency recently expressed its interest in voluntarily supporting the women and children affairs ministry’s “Violence against women” project.

National DNA Profiling Laboratory chief, Dr Sharif Akteruzzaman, also professor of Biochemistry at Dhaka University, said the US had been very positive about giving the highly developed DNA software to Bangladesh.

Dr Sharif said a memorandum of understanding would be signed between the two countries very soon.

About 68 laboratories in 34 countries are use the Codis software, Dr Sharif said. The FBI had also provided Codis to Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea, and now Bangladesh, the fourth country to get this free of cost.

Asked about the status of DNA tests for the casualties at Rana Plaza, the laboratory chief said DNA tests were being done in four phases and specialised software was necessary for this. He however did not say how long it would take to complete the tests.

About 550 people await the DNA test results.

DMCH DNA Laboratory officials are not sure how long it will take to get all the tests done.

The officials attributed the reasons for the delay to the lack of skilled personnel and most importantly, the essential Mass Fatality Identification System (MFIS) software.

They said normally it takes seven to eight days to prepare a DNA profile from blood, and a longer period from bones.

To match the DNA of a large number of unknown bodies will take years, said the officials.

On condition of anonymity, one of the laboratory officials said the DMCH DNA Laboratory had sent a proposal to the finance ministry for the allocation of funds to buy MFIS software, but the finance ministry rejected the proposal.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2013/jul/02/us-offers-help-dna-testing-rana-plaza-victims

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Bereaved mother who defied Argentina’s ‘dirty war’ dictators


It was 1977 and Argentina was in the grip of a military dictatorship. Outside the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, women in white headscarves began demonstrating to demand news of their children who had mysteriously disappeared. Laura Bonaparte had lost three offspring, their father, two sons-in-law and her son’s girlfriend; she became one of these original “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo”.

Bonaparte, who has died aged 88, went on to work for Amnesty International, reporting on alleged human rights violations by Israeli forces in Lebanon and by the armed forces of war-torn El Salvador and Guatemala. She would later campaign in Bosnia on behalf of Muslim women who had been victims of ethnic cleansing and, back home, for abortion rights as well as for equal treatment of those whose sexuality defied the country’s traditionally macho culture.

All the while, she continued to press the judiciary and successive Argentine governments for information on the fate of an estimated 30,000 desaparecidos (“the disappeared”) during the “dirty war” conducted by the military against domestic opponents until 1983.

Bonaparte lost her 24-year-old daughter Noni even before the 1976 coup against president Isabel Perón. Facing an armed struggle by various leftwing groups, Perón had empowered army and police to “annihilate subversion”. A feared far-right paramilitary death squad called Triple A (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance), joined in. On Christmas Eve that year, Bonaparte learnt that Noni, who had ties to the armed leftwing Revolutionary Army of the People, had been killed.

Her body was never returned. “They offered to give us her hands, conserved in a jar, but I refused and told them: ‘I want my daughter in one piece’,” the mother said. She later assumed that Noni, minus her hands, had been dumped in a mass grave.

Soon after the March coup, Noni’s husband Adrián was assassinated by soldiers but his body never found. In June, soldiers kicked down the door of Laura’s ex-husband, the Jewish biochemist Santiago Bruchstein, shouting: “How can a Jewish bastard judge the armed forces?” She later heard he had been set fire to and burnt to death. The following year, Bonaparte’s son Víctor and daughter Irene disappeared, as did Víctor’s girlfriend Jacinta and Irene’s husband Mario.

Mothers such as she started arriving at the Plaza de Mayo, the square in front of La Casa Rosada (the Pink House of Evita fame), to demand news of their loved ones. One afternoon in 1977, more than a dozen appeared, separately. The authorities had forbidden gatherings of more than three people and told them to leave. Instead, they split into pairs and paraded around the square.

The white headscarves were adopted as a symbol and the Mothers’ ranks swelled to a few thousand as more and more family members vanished. Late that year three of the original Mothers themselves “were disappeared”. Their bodies, as well as those of several sympathisers including two French nuns, were found washed up on the banks of the Rio Plata. Retired naval captain Adolfo Scilingo later said opponents of the military were routinely taken on board vuelos de muerte (death flights), drugged, stripped naked and dumped into the Atlantic so that salt water and fish would destroy the evidence.

Then came June 1978, when journalists from around the world descended on Buenos Aires for the World Cup football tournament and stumbled on the story of las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. The Mothers went what would nowadays be called viral. In 1986, however, with differing political ideologies, they split into two factions: Bonaparte set up the more moderate Madres de Plaza de Mayo – Linea Fundadora (“founding line”), while Hebe de Bonafini headed the original Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo.

In 1988, Bonaparte successfully fought president Carlos Menem’s plan to privatise the Esma naval academy in Buenos Aires, which had “processed” many of the disappeared. Instead it was preserved as a memorial, museum and human rights centre.

Bonaparte was born in the province of Entre Ríos, close to the Uruguayan border, in 1925, daughter of a socialist judge. By the age of 13, encouraged by her father, she was teaching women prisoners to read and write. After qualifying as a psychologist, she helped female hospital patients, many traumatised by abortion issues, in the city of Lanús.

Her work strengthened her belief in women’s rights and she divorced her husband at a time when that was widely considered a shameful sin. They had had five children, one of whom died as a baby, the other four raised in an ambience of art and music, variously playing piano, harp or cello.

Her son Luís Bruchstein, now a journalist, is the only one remaining. Grandchildren Hugo and Victoria Ginzberg, who were babies when Irene and Mario disappeared, also survive her and are involved in human rights. The family story was told in the book Una Madre de Plaza de Mayo – Contra el Olvido (“lest we forget”) by French writer Claude Mary.

This week, Laura Bonaparte’s white headscarf was buried with her.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/12c7f8e2-de78-11e2-b990-00144feab7de.html

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Spanish Civil War mass grave excavated in Ronda


Work has started at the San Lorenzo cemetery in Ronda to identify two possible mass graves where it is thought that between 1,700 and 3,000 Civil War victims could be buried.

The objective of this initial research is to locate and define existing graves in the cemetery as a prelude to exhumation. Up to 3,000 people, mostly Republicans, are thought to have been dumped in pits during the Spanish Civil War.

The project, the first stage of which is being funded by the Directorate General of Democratic Memory of the Junta de Andalucia, is expected to take one year, with the final objective being to honour those who died and giving them a decent and proper burial.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

http://www.nerjatoday.com/nerjanews/2013/06/20/research-into-mass-graves-in-ronda/

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Probe pending into WWII leader General Sikorski's death


An investigation into the death of WWII prime minister General Wladyslaw Sikorski is nearing completion as Poland marks the 70th anniversary of his plane crash this week.

According to the Institute for National Remembrance (IPN), the state-backed body charged with investigating alleged crimes against Polish citizens, the probe will be the most comprehensive to date.

The Polish leader's death remains a riddle to many, in spite of an official wartime investigation that claimed the crash was an accident.

Sikorski, who headed the Polish government-in-exile in London, died on 4 July 1943 when his Liberator plane crashed into the sea shortly after take-off while returning to England from a reconnaissance trip to Gibraltar.

Although the pilot of the July 1943 flight survived with broken legs, all fourteen other people on board, including British MP and liaison officer to Sikorski Victor Cazalet, died in the accident.

All aboard apparently died immediately, although some bodies were never recovered, further fuelling conspiracy theorists.

Conspiracy theories flourished over the years, with the finger pointed at Russia, Britain and even a clique loyal to Polish military leader General Wladyslaw Anders, who had been at odds with Sikorski.

An official British military investigation blamed the crash on jammed controls in the cockpit.

As revealed in March this year by Piotr Dabrowski from IPN, besides archival work, two witnesses have been interviewed for the current probe in England and Spain.

The first was a radio operator who participated in the British navy's salvage operation, immediately after the plane went down. The second was a diver who helped extract bodies from the wreck.

Claims that Sikorski had been murdered prior to take off were largely dispelled following the exhumation of his remains in 2008 at Wawel Cathedral, Krakow.

Forensic tests ruled out that the general had been shot, stabbed or suffocated. The injuries were considered compatible with those suffered by victims of crashes.

However, noted historian Norman Davies has reflected that “no reputable historian” has ever insisted that sabotage took place.

Likewise, historian Adam Zamoyski, whose father served for a time as aide-de-camp to Sikorski, told the Krakow Post that the Polish leader was “simply not important enough to warrant being liquidated.”

Tuesday 2 July 2013

http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/140012,Probe-pending-into-WWII-leader-General-Sikorskis-death-

http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/139746,Vintage-beetles-commemorate-WWII-leader-Sikorski

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The Kaimai crash: 50 years on


On July 3, at 8.05am, it will be 50 years since a DC3 took off from Whenuapai airport in northwest Auckland. It was a veteran of World War II, one of thousands of the big twin-engined cargo workhorse built to haul troops and weapons around.

It had been spruced up and now flew for the National Airways Corporation, (NAC), trolling up and down the country, taking people to work or holidays or home. Flight 441 was to stop in Tauranga, Gisborne, Napier and Palmerston North, before reaching Wellington in the early afternoon.

NAC publicity from the day used shots from inside the upgraded ZK AYZ. Flying was still an event and a bit of an extravagance, with men dressed in suits and mum and the kids in their Sunday best.


Almost all the pictures of the 20 passengers which were to fill the newspapers in the coming days showed the men wearing ties, their hair slicked and parted in the middle, and the women in Jackie O hats. All the window seats were full.

Tauranga air-traffic control heard from the plane at 9.06am when it began its descent into the coastal town. The tower called again at 9.14am, but there was no reply, because by then everyone on board was dead.

Flight 441 had failed to clear the highest ridge in the area by a small margin. It had hit a rock wall in the Kaimai Range. Investigators later estimated the impact speed at about 140kmh, the aircraft going from that to zero in roughly 3.5 metres. It exploded and burned and tumbled down the face of the rock.

It had flown over the quarry at the small settlement of Gordon, about halfway between Te Aroha and Matamata. Workers heard it pass over, low. Then a noise like a door banging far away. Despite the witnesses and a search starting immediately, the terrain and the weather were so bad that the wreck wasn't found until the next day. It was another day until ground crews reached it.

Peter Ryan has flown out of the nearby Matamata airport for more than 50 years. In 1963, he was 21, when his friend Geoff Pullum turned up to tell him that his dad was on a plane missing in the range.

Frederick Pullum, a stalwart in the Auckland community of Birkenhead, was a consulting engineer on his way to a job.

Peter and his friend went to the quarry, where searchers had started to assemble. They went to Te Aroha, where the bodies were being stored. They thought they might help identify them, but it was a waste of time. The impact and fire had left nothing but charred, blackened trunks that could only be sorted out by a pathologist.

As well as the passengers, the plane had two pilots and an air hostess. The 23 dead means it is still the worst air crash to happen on New Zealand soil.

An investigation began into what went wrong. The weather was not supposed to be as bad as it was. It was all right at Auckland and Tauranga, but in between an easterly gusted to 150kmh and visibility was nil. The pilots flew blind. They had radio compasses, but they failed often and were known to be unreliable in the weather conditions on the day.

The DC3 had distance-measuring equipment that would have given pilot Len Enchmarch and first officer Peter Kissel a clue as to where they were, but Tauranga airport didn't yet have a transmitter to talk to the plane. They navigated by the crude device of determining how fast they had been flying for how long.

The wind and lack of technology meant the aircraft flew to the west of the Kaimai Range. The pilots probably thought they had crossed and were tracking down the eastern slopes. Radar coverage in 1963 was sparse and no-one could see their error.

The hills were known to cause a wave effect in the atmosphere as wind struck them - huge downdrafts followed by huge updrafts, like water streaming over a rock in a river.

Investigators talked to another crew that had flown over the Kaimais earlier in the day who told of an extreme downdraft and, to escape from it, the airliner needed to use maximum power. The inquiry reasoned that Flight 441, descending and turning for what the crew believed was an unimpeded run into Tauranga, had been caught in something similar.

If there is an expert on what the pilots on Flight 441 were facing, Peter Ryan is it. He runs Sky Venture Flight Training at the Matamata field. He was also the chief flying instructor at the gliding club for years, specifically teaching the newcomers how to ride the massive waves of air coming over the range, the same ones that affected Flight 441.

He has been in aircraft that climb when idling in the updraft and has dropped parachutists into the air mass and seen them go up instead of down.

He has flown on DC3s and knows exactly how much power they have in reserve. Not too far from here is one that was rated to carry 26 passengers in its flying days, but regularly trucked about six-tonne payloads no bother.

Still, the crew of the ZK AYZ wouldn't have had a chance. By the time they were that low and in the kind of waves that were happening on the day, there was no way out of the accident.

The crash happened before the Accident Compensation Act existed and the families of survivors still had the right to sue. NAC settled the cases out of court.

From his flying school at Matamata, Ryan can see the crash site. Not long after it happened, the SAS blew up the wreck, because people were getting upset at catching glimpses of the smashed metal. Today it is overgrown and hidden by the type of easterly that was blowing on the day of the crash.

The official memorial is near Gordon, nowadays a T-intersection and about six houses. The crash site is over the fields and into the bush about 9 kilometres away.

Next week a crowd will gather to remember the crash. Noted aviation historian Reverend Dr Richard Waugh, who also wrote an excellent book on the accident called Kaimai Crash, will lead a service. An old DC3 will do a flypast and later offer trips out of Ryan's airfield at Matamata.

Visited alone, it is the same as a million other vantage points in New Zealand. Some of the buildings look as if they were here in 1963. It's silent and still and unchanging and unremarkable.

Part of the fascination and sadness that surrounds air disasters is that strangers' lives all end together at some random, lonely place.

There's added poignancy here because, only 16 years later, the circumstances would be echoed when another New Zealand flight crew would become lost in zero visibility, without knowing it, near another mountain in Antarctica.

The memorial service will be held July 3, at 9am at the memorial plaque on Old Te Aroha Rd, 600 metres southeast from the intersection of Old Te Aroha, Gordon Rd and Armadale Rd.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/life-style/8863466/The-Kaimai-crash-50-years-on

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Russia: 19 die in helicopter crash in Siberia


Russian authorities say 19 people have died after a helicopter carrying 28 people, including 11 children, crashed in a remote Siberian region of Yakutia.

The Interstate Aviation Committee, Russia's top aviation body, said that a Mi-8 helicopter crash-landed in a remote mountainous area on Tuesday, dozens of miles away from the nearest village, and caught fire.

"There were three crew members and 25 passengers on board," the Interstate Aviation Committee said in a statement. "Nineteen people died, the aircraft burnt down," said the statement, citing the surviving crew members.

Of the 25 passengers 11 were children, the emergencies ministry said in a separate statement without providing further details.

Officials did not immediately comment on the cause of the crash.

The people died when the helicopter performed a hard landing, apparently in bad weather conditions, 45 kilometres (28 miles) northwest of the small town of Deputatsky in the Yakutia region in Russia's north.

A plane with rescuers and medics on board has arrived at the crash site, said the emergencies ministry, adding that helicopters with more medics and rescue workers have also been dispatched to the scene.

Russia's aviation industry remains blighted by repeated accidents involving its ageing fleet of planes and helicopters.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

http://news.yahoo.com/russia-19-die-helicopter-crash-siberia-075000344.html

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Uttarakhand Chopper accident: DNA analysis of remains of 7 victims completed


The Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) here has identified the bodies of seven ITBP/NDRF personnel who died when their helicopter crashed during a rescue mission in Uttarakhand.

This would enable handing over of the mortal remains to the respective families.

"Samples from the bodies of seven personnel who died in the June 25 crash of an IAF helicopter in a rescue operation in Uttarakhand were received late on the night of June 29 at the CDFD for identification by DNA analysis.

"The individual identifications have been completed by the morning of July 1, by matching of the individual DNA profiles with those of the relatives," a CDFD release said.

Four personnel of ITBP and three of NDRF were identified and the respective agencies have been informed so that the mortal remains can be handed over to their families, it said.

CDFD has also done DNA profiling of relatives of several other deceased personnel in the crash, so that if additional mortal remains are recovered their identification by DNA analysis can be completed, the release added.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

http://zeenews.india.com/news/uttarakhand/chopper-crash-dna-analysis-of-remains-of-7-victims-over_859154.html

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DNA testing to identify Uganda fuel tanker fire victims; toll rises to 33


At least 33 Ugandans died and 20 sustained severe injuries after a fuel truck caught fire on the outskirts of Kampala on Saturday night.



Ugandan police say 29 people died on the spot and four others died later at Mulago National Referral Hospital.

The accident occurred around 9pm on the northern bypass road about 5km from Kampala city centre.

According to eye witness reports, a station wagon vehicle rammed into the rear of the fuel tanker and the impact damaged the tanker, resulting in a fuel leak.

Fire broke out as locals rushed to the scene of the accident to scoop fuel from the tanker.

It is still unclear what caused the fire, although it is believed to have been ignited by fumes from a motorcycle's exhaust pipe.



"I heard a loud explosion. Fire engulfed the tanker and several other vehicles near it," Mubarak Asimwe, who manages a stall near the scene of the accident.

"After the fire, many charred bodies were near the burnt tanker and vehicles."

Police spokesperson, Judith Nabakooba said "So far the death toll is 33. Twenty nine people died on the spot and four died in hospital.

"More than 20 others are still admitted in hospital in critical conditions. So far 18 bodies have been claimed by relatives".

She said that other bodies were burnt beyond recognition and DNA will be used to identify them.

Nabakooba called on relatives of missing people to report to police with photographs of the deceased and a DNA sample from a close relative.



This is not the first time people had died under such circumstances.



In October 2009, 20 people died in Nwoya District in northern Uganda, as they attempted to siphon fuel from a tanker that had been involved in an accident.



Other such deaths in recent years have occurred in Mukono and Bugiri districts, with the worst incident occurring in the 1990's when more than 100 people died as they collected fuel from an overturned tanker.

Tuesday 2 July 2013

http://www.theafricareport.com/East-Horn-Africa/dna-testing-to-identify-uganda-fuel-tanker-fire-victims.html

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