Friday 13 September 2013

Remains of 2 airmen missing since WWII found


Their bodies were missing for decades after they disappeared behind enemy lines.

Now the remains of two U.S. Army Air Force troops who died during World War II are set to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery next week after search crews found them in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, the U.S. Defense Department POW/Missing Personnel Office said Thursday.

The A-20G Havoc bomber in which U.S. Army Air Force 2nd Lt. Valorie L. Pollard and Sgt. Dominick J. Licari were flying crashed after attacking enemy targets on March 13, 1944, the Defense Department said.

Their remains were recovered when the crash site was excavated last year.

More than 400,000 U.S. troops were killed during World War II, and the remains of more than 73,000 were never recovered or identified, the Defense Department says.

Papua New Guinea, an island country in the western Pacific, is north of Australia and just south of the equator. Much of the nation is covered in rugged terrain and rain forests.

Friday 13 September 2013

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/12/us/wwii-airmen-remains-found/

continue reading

Yearning for their return, kin of 25 persons missing in U’khand stay away from festivities

In this festive season, the families of those who have gone missing in the Uttarakhand floods continue to grieve for their near and dear. On Friday, it would be three months since the tragedy struck Uttarakhand. Twenty-five persons, including 16 women, from Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and other parts of the district have gone missing. The affected families have now lodged an FIR with the local as well as the Uttarakhand police.

Dhanashree Kadam's search for her missing parents, Yashwant and Alka More, has drawn a blank. This, she said, despite her brother visiting Uttarakhand twice. "It is an ordeal for our family. We never thought that our lives would take such a tragic turn. Even during Ganesh festival and Gauri festival, we are not in the right spirits to celebrate. I am obsessed my the thought of my parent's well-being. How can we celebrate festivals without them?" she asked.

Vasant Kamthe still hopes for a safe return of his four family members, including his wife. "Those who are missing might have been hospitalised and would have been too critical to contact us. To keep myself going on, I recently even consulted a fotune-teller, who told me my family members were possibly safe and could be back home by September end," he said.

Pune District Disaster Management Officer Vitthal Banote said the Uttarakhand police had recently visited Pune and met with the families of those missing. "They collected photographs of the missing persons and asked for their identity marks. They also confirmed the identity of families of those missing," he said.

Banote said though 160 more bodies were found in the third round of combing operations in Kedar Valley, there was nobody from Pune. The group of 25 missing persons is believed to have belonged to Shivgauri Travels. They have been missing from Rambada sector of Uttarakhand, which was completely destroyed.

Friday 13 September 2013

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/yearning-for-their-return-kin-of-25-persons-missing-in-u-khand-stay-away-from-festivities/1168576/

continue reading

Dozens missing in Russian psychiatric hospital fire


A fire raged through a Russian psychiatric hospital on Friday, killing at least three people and leaving dozens missing as police searched the surrounding area for survivors.

More than 30 others were feared dead, officials said on Friday.

The pre-dawn fire at a ward for severely ill patients was the second deadly blaze at a psychiatric hospital in Russia this year and is likely to prompt criticism of the state over its treatment of the mentally ill and other vulnerable citizens.

The fire in the one-storey hospital in the village of Luka in the north-western Novgorod region broke out about 3am local time Friday (midnight BST) and quickly engulfed the mostly wooden structure dating back to the 19th century, the emergency situations ministry said.

Authorities had long warned that the building was unsafe and called for its closure.

Emergency officials said that 23 of 60 people who were in the building when the blaze broke out were evacuated. Emergency teams found the bodies of two patients and a nurse, who they said died while trying to rescue others.

Another 34 people remained unaccounted for and were feared dead. Emergency workers were combing a nearby forest for patients who might have fled the blaze.

Some of the missing might have escaped, ministry official Oleg Voronov said on Ekho Moskvy radio.

The building housed male patients, state-run RIA reported.

Investigators suspect the blaze was caused by a patient setting a bed on fire, Interfax news agency reported, but regional governor Sergei Mitin said it might have been accidental.

"Medical personnel saw a patient who was shrouded in flames ... It's possible that he was smoking in bed and the mattress caught fire," Mitin said, according to Interfax. He said the ward that caught fire housed severely ill patients.

Emergency officials and prosecutors had sought to have the building condemned as unsafe, but a court instead ordered management to correct unspecified flaws by August 2014, the head of safety oversight for the ministry said.

"The building that burned was unfit for use," the official, Yuri Deshevykh, told Itar-Tass.

There have been many fires with high death tolls at state institutions such as hospitals, schools, drug treatment centres and homes for the disabled in the past decade, raising questions about safety measures, conditions and emergency exit routes.

In April, a fire at a psychiatric hospital outside Moscow killed 38 people.

Yuri Savenko, president of the independent psychiatric association of Russia, said after that fire the dilapidated state of psychiatric hospitals was pushing death tolls in such incidents up. He said a third of the buildings at such facilities had been declared unfit for use since 2000.

Friday 13 September 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/13/dozens-missing-russian-psychiatric-hospital-fire

continue reading