Wednesday 9 April 2014

Rana Plaza building collapse: 7 more bodies identified by DNA


Seven more bodies of Rana Plaza victims have been identified by the National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory (NFDPL) of Dhaka Medical College.

NFDPL chief Prof Sharif Akhtaruzzaman told The Daily Star last night that they had submitted the DNA results to the government authority on Monday.

So far 207 out of the 322 unidentified bodies, from which DNA samples were collected, had been identified.

On April 24 last year, nine-storey Rana Plaza that housed five garment factories collapsed, trapping thousands.

According to government estimate, 1,134 people were killed and 2,515 injured people were rescued from the death trap.

The bodies which were beyond recognition were identified in three phases through DNA tests--initially 157, then 43, and now 7.

Wednesday 09 April 2014

http://www.thedailystar.net/city/7-more-bodies-identified-19398

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Search for Malaysian jet to be costliest in history


As the intensive hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 entered its second month on Tuesday, the only certainty was that it would become the most expensive search and recovery effort in aviation history, with an international fleet of ships and planes scouring the Indian Ocean at a cost of millions of dollars a day.

For the most part, the dozens of countries that have contributed personnel, equipment and expertise to the search have borne the costs while declining to disclose them, with officials offering a united front in saying it would be callous to talk about money while a commercial airliner and the 239 people aboard remained unaccounted for.

On Wednesday, officials reported that an underwater signal had been detected on two occasions the day before, reviving hopes that they still might locate the Boeing 777-200's data and voice recorders. Still, many of the governments involved may soon face a tough decision about whether to keep bearing the extraordinary costs of the search, analysts said.

"Each country will have to ask itself: What are the prospects of further investigation and the cost-benefit of it?" said Ramon Navaratnam, chairman of the Center for Public Policy Studies at the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute in Kuala Lumpur. "If there's no prospect, there's no prospect: We have to be very realistic. But it's a very difficult to decision to make. It's like someone on a medical support system and you have to determine whether to pull the wires or not."

Until now, the costliest search and recovery effort ever undertaken followed the crash of Air France Flight 447 hundreds of miles off the coast of Brazil in 2009, reaching about 115 million euros, roughly $160 million at the time, over the course of two years, according to estimates by experts who participated in that effort.

But the search for Flight 370 is already far more complicated, and may have already topped that total. Some of the ships involved cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day apiece to use, and some of the aircraft being used can cost thousands of dollars an hour each to operate, officials say.

While there is an international convention that determines responsibility for air accident investigations, there are no protocols or treaties that dictate who pays, experts said. The most likely case is that the countries and companies participating in the search for Flight 370 will bear their own costs, several analysts predicted.

Even if searchers are able to pinpoint wreckage from the plane soon, it would open another costly chapter, involving undersea exploration and possibly the recovery of parts of the plane, bodies and other evidence from depths of nearly three miles.

Angus Houston, an Australian who is the lead coordinator of the search, said that the recovery phase could in itself take "a long, long time," measurable in months.

In the case of Air France Flight 447, the French agency that investigated the crash, the Bureau of Investigations and Analysis, spent about 32 million on the undersea search and the forensic investigation of debris.

The airline and the plane's manufacturer, Airbus, together ended up covering about 16 million of those costs. The costs of the surface search were shared by the governments involved, including France, the United States and Brazil, which was also responsible for conducting autopsies of 50 of the passengers.

"At times this is done by specific states, and at others on a joint basis," said Anthony Philbin, spokesman for the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations group.

When TWA Flight 800 exploded off the coast of Long Island in 1996, the airline was already near bankruptcy and refused to pay for anything, said James E Hall, who was chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board at the time.

As a result, the board and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which shared responsibility for the inquiry, got a special allocation from Congress to retrieve aircraft parts from the floor of the Atlantic as evidence in a potential criminal inquiry, he said. The recovery bill came to millions of dollars, with the largest salvage ship costing $60,000 a day.

In the past few weeks, after the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner shifted to the southern Indian Ocean, the burden has been shouldered largely by a seven-nation coalition: Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea and the United States. Those countries together have contributed at least 10 military vessels, one polar supply vessel, 14 military aircraft and five civilian aircraft, officials said. At least seven merchant ships from various nations have also participated, and in recent days, Britain has added a naval survey vessel and a nuclear submarine.

But those numbers do not account for the contributions when the search ranged from the South China Sea to the Strait of Malacca and included many more nations, scores of planes and ships, and hundreds of personnel.

Among the countries involved in the current phase, only the United States and South Korea have publicized their expenditures.

The Pentagon spent about $3.3 million to cover the cost of American ships and aircraft participating in the search through the end of March. The Pentagon has also budgeted an additional $3.6 million to cover search costs, including the deployment of the underwater device that detected potential beacon pings over the weekend, said Lt Col Jeff Pool, a Pentagon spokesman.

During the first three weeks of South Korea's involvement, which began on March 15, the government spent about $563,000 to cover the operation of a P-3C Orion surveillance plane and a C-130 Hercules transport plane as well as food and other expenses to support 39 pilots and other personnel, according to a spokesman for the country's foreign ministry.

And with as many as a dozen aircraft flying daylong reconnaissance flights, the aerial search alone is costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per day.

In addition, millions of dollars have already been spent on radar and satellite data collection, as well as on the criminal investigation of the pilots and others aboard Flight 370.

Some analysts do not expect much haggling, however, about the final costs of the search.

"I don't think a lot of these countries are big on heaping the bill on Malaysia," said Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. "It's just not the right thing to do."

Navaratnam, of the Center for Public Policy Studies here, said the possibility that solving the mysteries of Flight 370 could help prevent anything similar from happening again should be reason enough for nations to contribute as much as they can.

"Hopefully, from this tremendously sad experience, we also learn," he said. "Those who died need not have died in vain."

Wednesday 09 April 2014

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Search-for-Malaysian-jet-to-be-costliest-in-history/articleshow/33487851.cms

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Avalanche in Upper Dir claims dozens of lives


Fourteen people, including children and women, were killed and four injured when an avalanche caused by rain and hailstorms struck homes and resulted in roof collapses in the southern and north western districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it emerged on Tuesday.

Ten persons from one family died when the avalanche hit a house and a shop in Upper Dir, police officials confirmed.

Thal police Station House Officer (SHO) Fazal Rabbi Khan told The Express Tribune that those killed include school-going children.

Locals teamed up with security forces and rescue teams to launch rescue operations in the Badran and Batal areas of Kohistan.

The incident occurred 150 kilometres away from the district headquarters in the east, near the border with Swat.

Khan said that the avalanche hit in the mountainous area of Makral Mohallah of Badran village early on Sunday.

The police official said that seven children belonging to one family were killed along with their parents after being trapped under debris in the house belonging to Gul Badshah. Locals complained of a delayed start in the rescue operation in the remote area. The incident took place 25 kilometers away from the Thal police station where it took government officials three hours to access the area.

“The rescue workers were successful in retrieving bodies from the debris after a hectic four-hour joint operation,” the SHO said, adding that moving scenes were witnessed when the mass funeral of the family members was held in the village.

Similarly, the second incident took place in the Batal Bazaar area of Usherai Dara on Monday.

A police official confirmed the deaths of four school-going children of grade five, adding that one body could not be identified.

He added that two persons were missing and that the partially injured were transferred to Timergara while the critically wounded were shifted to Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar. Locals expressed fear that the death toll may increase.

Meanwhile, a statement issued by the ISPR from Swat said that the rescue operation was under way in two areas of the district. In a press release, it said that security officials were conducting rescue activities and dispatched ration for the affected families.

The statement confirms the deaths of 10 persons from one family in the Badran area of Kohistan, in which nine bodies have been retrieved while the search for one is ongoing.

The statement further adds that four persons died while four others wounded in the Batal area were shifted to the hospital.

Three of a family, including a father, mother and their daughter died when a roof collapsed in Orakzai Agency on Tuesday.

Assistant Political Agent Hayat Khan Wazir said the incident occurred due to the recent prolonged spell of rains in the agency. Locals demanded that the government extend relief efforts and compensate the damage.

In Bannu, a two-year-old died while four women were injured in a heavy downpour and hailstorm resulting in a roof collapse in the district. The rain spell continued till Monday night which caused severe damage to crops, orchards and houses.

Wednesday 09 April 2014

http://tribune.com.pk/story/693152/natures-fury-avalanche-in-upper-dir-claims-over-a-dozen-lives/

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One more body recovered: Wash. mudslide death toll now 35


The Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office says one more person has been added to the list of people killed in the Washington state mudslide.

Authorities said Tuesday afternoon that at least 35 people have died, but officials are still working to identify four of them.

Eleven people remain on the sheriff's list of people missing from the March 22 slide that buried homes along the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, about 55 miles northeast of Seattle.

Searchers with dogs continue to probe the debris field as the Army Corps of Engineers builds a berm to reduce flooding.

Wednesday 09 April 2014

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/04/washington_mudslide_3.html

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