Workers Find Survivor in Bangladesh Rubble

DHAKA, Bangladesh—Rescue workers Friday pulled a female garment worker from the rubble of Rana Plaza after more than 16 days buried alive—among the longest periods anyone has survived such an ordeal.

The eight-story building, which housed five garment factories, collapsed April 24, killing more than 1,000 people, one of the worst-ever factory accidents.

Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesBangladeshi rescuers retrieve garment worker Reshma Begum from the rubble of a collapsed building on May 10.

Long after hope of finding anyone alive had faded, army rescuers said they had broken through the mass of concrete and steel to a woman in her 20s.

She had fallen from the third floor into a Muslim prayer room into an air pocket in the basement, and remained alive by forcing a broken pipe up through a crack in the debris for ventilation, rescuers said.

Reshma Begum, who identified herself as a seamstress who worked on the third floor of Rana Plaza, had been banging the pipe against concrete to attract attention, after bulldozers had removed loose rubble that had been covering the area.

“I heard the sound and rushed towards the spot,” Abdur Razzaq, an army sergeant who was involved in the rescue, said in an interview. “I knelt down and heard a faint voice. ‘Sir, please help me,’ she cried.”

The rescue was broadcast live on national television. As she was lifted from the rubble, crowds that had gathered broke into cheers of “God is great!” Rescue workers wiped away tears.

“It’s a miraculous event,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said after visiting Ms. Begum in the hospital and congratulating the rescue teams.

Ms. Begum told rescuers she was unhurt and had survived by scavenging for food and bottled water in the backpacks of dead colleagues. She had been buried for 16 days and about seven hours during one of the hottest times of the year in Bangladesh, with temperatures reaching 95 degrees (35 degrees Celsius) and 80% humidity.

Her hair and face were covered in dirt as she carried out, wearing a purple and pink salwar-kameeze, and her scalp was showing where she had apparently lost big clumps of hair.

Doctors who attended her at a nearby military hospital said she was suffering from dehydration but otherwise appeared to have no major injuries.

At the hospital, a woman who identified herself as Ayesha Begum said Reshma was her sister.

“We’ve been waiting outside the building for two weeks,” said Ayesha Begum, flanked by another woman who identified herself as Reshma’s aunt. “We’d given up hope. God has brought her back for the sake of her little son.”

Reshma Begum came from the northern district of Dinajpur, according to Ayesha Begum. She said her sister had come to Dhaka four years ago to work in a garment factory so as to become more independent.

Reshma recently had separated from her husband and was bringing up her 5-year-old son, working as a seamstress in the New Wave Bottoms factory in Rana Plaza, she said.

The crowds around the disaster site had thinned in recent days, but on Friday evening, families clutching photos of missing loved ones were once again thronging the area hoping to see their relatives brought out alive.

“God is merciful,” said Afsar Ali, who said he was looking for his daughter. “We still have hope.”

There has been controversy in Bangladesh over the pace of the rescue operations. Right after the disaster, the Bangladesh government turned down an offer of help from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a spokesman for the office said.

In the first few days, volunteers were heavily involved, some using their bare hands. People held up handwritten signs asking for donations of oxygen cylinders, drills and water bottles.

Some relatives of those missing, angered by the lack of heavy-lifting equipment, clashed with police at the site.

Later, the army, which now is coordinating efforts, moved in with bulldozers and other heavy machinery. They have defended the pace of the rescue efforts, saying they were careful not to go too quickly and kill possible survivors.

Maj. Gen. Hasan Suhrawardy, who is leading the army’s salvage operation, said the pace would now slow again, since Ms. Begum’s survival had raised hopes, however slight, that other survivors could be in the wreckage.

Bulldozers stopped plowing the debris for a few hours after Ms. Begum was discovered, before starting operations again gingerly under flashlights.

Briefing reporters at the building collapse site, Gen. Suhrawardy said: “Reshma is totally OK. She worked hard to keep herself alive. That is a very strong woman.”

The last known survivor before Friday was killed on April 28 by a fire set off inadvertently by rescuers who were trying to cut through to free her.

The tragedy has shocked Bangladesh and the world, putting pressure on the government and foreign brands to improve safety conditions in the country’s 5,000 factories.

Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest producers of garments, supplying major U.S. and European retailers. The industry produces some of the world’s cheapest clothes, paying workers monthly wage rates as low as $40, a quarter those of China’s.

The government this week has begun an inspection of the country’s factories. On Wednesday, the government forced 18 factories to shut while they carried out safety improvements, including three owned by the country’s largest exporter of garments.

There have been few instances of people surviving longer than 10 days after disasters like earthquakes, according to academic studies. In 2010, after the Haiti earthquake, a teenage girl was rescued 15 days after the disaster.

The United Nations, which coordinates disaster relief, normally calls of search and rescue operations after a week or so and shifts its focus to tending to survivors.

In the past 10 days, focus has shifted to recovering hundreds of bodies that lay under rubble. The death toll has jumped by about 100 each day since Saturday, as salvage workers found huge numbers of bodies on the ground floor and basement.

On Friday, the toll rose to 1,050 people.

 

By SYED ZAIN AL-MAHMOOD (May 10, 2013)

—Joe Lauria in New York contributed to this article. 

 

Knight’s name removed from FBI missing persons’ list just 15 months after disappearance

Michelle Knight, the longest-held captive in the Ohio hell house, was removed from the FBI’s missing persons’ database just 15 months after her disappearance, according to a new report.

Cleveland spokeswoman Maureen Harper claimed the cops did the right thing by taking Knight’s name off the list in November 2003, The Cleveland Plain-Dealerreported.

Harper said cops were unable to contact Michelle’s mother Barbara to verify her daughter was still missing.

However, the paper reports that decision conflicts with the department’s written policy, where an officer must confirm a missing person has been found and then contact the FBI within two hours before the name is removed.

 

Knight was found more alive more than 10 years after her Aug. 23, 2002 disappearance, along with Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, after allegedly being kept as sex slaves by Ariel Castro in Cleveland. Knight, now 32, was reportedly pregnant several times but Castro allegedly beat her until she miscarried The Post previously reported.

Having Knight’s name in the National Crime Information Center, called by the FBI as the “lifeline of law enforcement,” would have been the only way law enforcement agencies and victims’ groups could have helped in the search, the newspaper reports.

Harper said cops continued to work Knight’s case, confirming with Barbara that her daughter was still missing through May 2003.

After that, cops were unable to reach the estranged mother by phone, with a detective noting Michelle’s case “will remain invalid until new leads develop.”

Missing adult advocate Kym Pasqualini said if Michelle’s mom had called them for help “we would have had to say no” without an NCIC number to go with Knight’s name.

Knight is still in the hospital recovering from her ordeal.

Yesterday Knight’s twin brother recalled his shock at seeing her alive for the first time in more than a decade.

“When I saw her, she was white as a ghost,” Freddie Knight, 32, told The Post. “But she told me, ‘Come over here and give me a hug. It’s been ages!’ ”

“She was happy to see me. It was emotional. She even recognized me — even though it had been 11 years.”

Freddie, who is estranged from their mom, Barbara, was the first family member to see Michelle after her escape.

Michelle was raped as a teen, became pregnant and lost the baby to social services just before she vanished in 2002. She was impregnated in the attack and had a child, which she then lost to state custody.

“We didn’t talk about that bad stuff. She’s been through a lot, so she’s not ready to talk about that,” Freddie added.

“I’m glad he’s in jail,” he said of Castro.

“I wish he was dead. He should have a death sentence; all those miscarriages. It’s crazy.”

Additional reporting by Lorena Mongelli  (May 10, 2013)

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‘Daddy’ is a ‘monster’: Ariel Castro’s daughter blasts fiend after women freed from Ohio hell house

Even with her demonic father in all likelihood gone forever, Gregg lives with a living reminder of the troubles that have plagued her family — she takes care of sister Emily Castro’s 5-year-old daughter.

The little girl was taken away from Emily after she slashed her then 11-month-old daughter’s throat in April of 2008.

Things were not always as dark as they are now for the Castro family, although sources told The Post Ariel Castro spent years delivering severe beatings to his late-wife Grimilda Figueroa.

Gregg recalling nothing out of the ordinary going on in her childhood home where Ariel Castro kidnapped and held captive three women for about a decade.

However, the shocking revelations about her father have now put his peculiar habits in a whole new light for Gregg.

“All these weird thing I noticed over the years like how he kept his house locked down so tight in certain areas, how if we’d be out at my grandma’s having dinner he would disappear for an hour or so and then come back and there would be no explanation where he went, everything is making sense now, it’s all adding up,” Gregg said.

At the time, however, Gregg did not think her father’s behavior was anything beyond strange.

For example, one time when she went to visit her father she asked if she could go upstairs to see her childhood bedroom but Castro talked her out of it saying, “Oh, honey, there’s so much junk up there. You don’t want to go up there,” she said.

Gregg thought nothing of the incident when it happened, saying that she just thought of Castro as “being a pack rat.”

While the upstairs was off limits later in life, the basement was a complete no-go zone of the house, even when Gregg was a child, seeing as it was always locked with a “cheap Masterlock.”

One time Gregg did pick the locks, however, and made her way downstairs, “I remember there being a fish tank down there which was odd because there was nobody down there to look at the fish.”

There were no signs that women were being held captive or that there might have been a small girl living in the house, according to Gregg.

That doesn’t mean that Gregg didn’t know the girl existed. About two months ago Castro showed Gregg a picture of a little girl on his phone but he insisted it was his girlfriend’s child by another man.

“I figured at the most he had an illegitimate child out there, you know, and I would find out eventually,” Gregg said.

Gregg now knows the origins of her 6-year-old sister and hopes that she and the other women held captive by her father can get the treatment that they need.

She also hopes that they will come to understand that her father’s actions are not a reflection of her and her family.

“We don’t have monster in our blood,” she said.

 

Police facing questions in Cleveland rescue

One neighbor says a naked woman was seen crawling on her hands and knees in the backyard of the house a few years ago. Another heard pounding on the home’s doors and noticed plastic bags over the windows.

Both times, police showed up but never went inside, neighbors say. Police also paid a visit to the house in 2004, but no one answered the door.

Now, after three women who vanished a decade ago were found captive Monday at the peeling, rundown house, Cleveland police are facing questions for the second time in four years about their handling of missing-person cases and are conducting an internal review to see if they overlooked anything.

City Safety Director Martin Flask said Tuesday that investigators had no record of anyone calling about criminal activity at the house but were still checking police, fire and emergency databases.

The three women were rescued after one of them kicked out the bottom portion of a locked screen door and used a neighbor’s telephone to call 911.

“Help me. I’m Amanda Berry,” she breathlessly told a dispatcher in a call that exhilarated and astonished much of the city. “I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years and I’m, I’m here, I’m free now.”

Berry, 27, Michelle Knight, 32, and Gina DeJesus, about 23, had apparently been held captive in the house since their teens or early 20s, said Police Chief Michael McGrath.

Three brothers, ages 50 to 54, were arrested. One of them, former school bus driver Ariel Castro, owned the home, situated in a poor neighborhood dotted with boarded-up houses just south of downtown Cleveland. No immediate charges were filed.

A 6-year-old girl believed to be Berry’s daughter was also found in the home, said Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba. He would not say who the father was.

The women were reported by police to be in good health and were reunited with joyous family members but remained in seclusion.

“Prayers have finally been answered. The nightmare is over,” said Stephen Anthony, head of the FBI in Cleveland. “These three young ladies have provided us with the ultimate definition of survival and perseverance. The healing can now begin.”

He added: “Words can’t describe the emotions being felt by all. Yes, law enforcement professionals do cry.”

Police would not say how the women were taken captive or how they were hidden in the same neighborhood where they vanished. Investigators also would not say whether they were kept in restraints inside the house or sexually assaulted.

Four years ago, in another poverty-stricken part of town, Cleveland’s police force was heavily criticized following the discovery of 11 women’s bodies in the home and backyard of Anthony Sowell, who was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

The families of Sowell’s victims accused police of failing to properly investigate the disappearances because most of the women were addicted to drugs and poor. For months, the stench of death hung over the house, but it was blamed on a sausage factory next door.

In the wake of public outrage over the killings, a panel formed by the mayor recommended an overhaul of the city’s handling of missing-person and sex crime investigations.

This time, two neighbors said they called police to the Castro house on separate occasions.

Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter once saw a naked woman crawling in the backyard several years ago and called police. “But they didn’t take it seriously,” she said.

Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of the house in November 2011. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. “They walked to side of the house and then left,” he said.

“Everyone in the neighborhood did what they had to do,” said Lupe Collins, who is close to relatives of the women. “The police didn’t do their job.”

Police did go to the house twice in the past 15 years, but not in connection with the women’s disappearance, officials said.

In 2000, before the women vanished, Castro reported a fight in the street, but no arrests were made, Flask said.

In 2004, officers went to the home after child welfare officials alerted them that Castro had apparently left a child unattended on a bus, Flask said. No one answered the door, according to Flask. Ultimately, police determined there was no criminal intent on his part, he said.

Castro, 52, was well known in the mainly Puerto Rican neighborhood. He played bass guitar in salsa and merengue bands. He gave children rides on his motorcycle and joined others at a candlelight vigil to remember two of the missing girls, neighbors said. They also said they would sometimes see him walking a little girl to a neighborhood playground.

Tito DeJesus, an uncle of Gina DeJesus, played in bands with Castro over the last 20 years. He recalled visiting Castro’s house but never noticed anything out of the ordinary, saying it had very little furniture and was filled with musical instruments.

“I had no clue, no clue whatsoever that this happened,” he said.

Also arrested were Castro’s brothers Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50.

On Tuesday, a sign hung on a fence decorated with dozens of balloons outside the home of DeJesus’ parents read “Welcome Home Gina.” Her aunt Sandra Ruiz said her niece had an emotional reunion with family members.

“Those girls, those women are so strong,” Ruiz said. “What we’ve done in 10 years is nothing compared to what those women have done in 10 years to survive.”

Many of the women’s loved ones and friends had held out hope of seeing them again,

For years, Berry’s mother kept her room exactly as it was, said Tina Miller, a cousin. When magazines addressed to Berry arrived, they were piled in the room alongside presents for birthdays and Christmases she missed. Berry’s mother died in 2006.

Just over a month ago, Miller attended a vigil marking the 10th anniversary of Berry’s disappearance.

Over the past decade or so, investigators twice dug up backyards looking for Berry and continued to receive tips about her and DeJesus every few months, even in recent years. The disappearance of the two girls was profiled on TV’s “America’s Most Wanted” in 2005. Few leads ever came in about Knight.

Knight vanished at age 20 in 2002. Berry disappeared at 16 in 2003, when she called her sister to say she was getting a ride home from her job at a Burger King. About a year later, DeJesus vanished at 14 on her way home from school.

Jessica Aponce, 24, said she walked home with DeJesus the day the teenager disappeared.

“She called her mom and told her mom she was on her way home and that’s the last time I seen her,” Aponce said. “I just can’t wait to see her. I’m just so happy she’s alive. It’s been so many years that everybody thinking she was dead.”

Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard, who were held captive by abductors at a young age, said they were elated by the women’s rescue.

“We need to have constant vigilance, constantly keep our eyes open and ears open because miracles do happen,” Smart said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

* AP,  May 7, 2013

 

Saudi Arabia legalises sports for girls in private schools

Saudi Arabian girls are to be allowed to play sport in private schools for the first time, in the latest move aimed at slowly increasing women’s rights in the ultraconservative kingdom, the country’s official news agency said 

 

Saudi Arabian girls will be allowed to play sports in private schools for the first time, according to a decision announced on Saturday, the latest in a series of incremental changes aimed at slowly increasing women’s rights in the ultraconservative kingdom.

Saudi Arabia’s official press agency, SPA, reported that private girls’ schools are now allowed to hold sports activities in accordance with the rules of Shariah, or Islamic law. Students must adhere to “decent dress” codes and Saudi women teachers will be given priority in supervising the activities, according to the Education Ministry’s requirements.

The decision makes sports once again a stage for the push to improve women’s rights, nearly a year after two Saudi female athletes made an unprecedented appearance at the Olympics.

“It’s about time,” said Aziza Youssef, a professor at King Saud University. “Everything is being held back in Saudi Arabia as far as women’s rights.”

Youssef said she sees the decision to allow sports for girls in private schools as part of package of wider reforms targeting women, but that continued restrictions on sports is a discrimination that negatively impacts women’s health.

Education Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Dakhini was quoted in SPA saying that the decision to allow girls to play sports in private schools “stems from the teachings of our religion, which allow women such activities in accordance with Shariah.”

The government had previously quietly tolerated physical education in some private schools, but there is no set curriculum.

The decision, which also orders private girls’ schools to provide appropriate places and equipment for sports, is a monumental step that will likely soon affect public schools and universities, which are also gender segregated, Youssef said.

The Saudi government plays a role in private schools, providing text books and directors.

Deputy Minister of Education for Women’s Affairs, Nora al-Fayez, was quoted in local press saying recently that there is a plan in place to expand sports education in public schools. It remains unclear if girls would have access to the same level of physical education as boys.

Sports for women in Saudi Arabia have been largely a pastime of elites who can afford expensive health club memberships. They are often attached to hospitals since women’s gyms were closed in 2010 on grounds they were unlicensed.

Saudi Arabia allowed two female athletes to compete in last summer’s Olympics only after the International Olympics Committee had put intense pressure on the kingdom to end its practice of sending only male teams to the games. Their participation was not shown on Saudi TV stations.

Women’s sports remain nearly an underground activity in the kingdom, which is home to Islam’s holiest site in Mecca.

Only the largest female university in the kingdom – Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman Unviersity – has a swimming pool, tennis court and exercise area for its students. No other university in Saudi Arabia has sports facilities for its female students and staff.

Women are also bound by strict rules when it comes to their attire, so they cannot, for example, be seen by men while jogging in sweat pants. Almost all women in Saudi Arabia cover their face with a veil known as the “niqab,” and even foreigners are obliged to respect local culture and wear a loose black dress known as the “abaya.”

Female athletes cannot register for sports clubs or league competitions. They are banned from entering national trials, which makes it impossible for them to qualify for international competitions.

The government has turned a blind eye, though, to tournaments where all female teams play against one another.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is seen as pushing for these reforms. Other Saudi rulers have also quietly tried to modernize the country, with King Faisal’s wife opening the first school for girls in the late 1950s.

But the monarch is facing edicts from powerful and influential senior Saudi clerics who are against all types of sporting activities for women. They argue that in order for a woman to remain protected from harassment, she must avoid public roles.

Despite such rhetoric, thousands of women work as doctors and professors in Saudi Arabia. Women will be allowed to run for office and vote for the first time in the 2015 municipal elections.

There have also been a number of incremental and significant changes that have afforded women new roles in recent months.

A law was implemented last year to allow women sales clerks’ jobs, and women now have seats on the country’s top advisory council. A woman was licensed to practice law for the first time last month, and a ban was lifted on allowing women to ride motorbikes and bicycles.

But with each move comes restrictions.

Women are only allowed to sell at female apparel outlets, such as lingerie stores. The 30 women who now serve on the country’s Shura Council, which advises the king, were segregated from the 130 men in the chamber, and plans for a proposed barrier that would separate the genders remains under discussion. Moreover, there are no guarantees that women who become licensed lawyers will not face discrimination in the courtroom. Lastly, women may be allowed to ride bikes in parks, but they have to be accompanied by a male relative and dressed in the “abaya.”

In other areas, women’s freedoms are still severely limited. They are not allowed to drive nor are they allowed to travel or attend school without the permission of a male guardian.

A 52-page report on women’s sports in Saudi Arabia issued by Human Rights Watch last year urged the government to set benchmarks for physical education, to set a curriculum to follow and to launch a public outreach campaign about girls’ rights to physical education.

“Although religious views opposing prohibition on women’s participation in sport are less frequently pronounced than those in favor, government policy is only inching toward realizing women’s right to sport rather than taking bold steps to realize it,” the report said.

(AP)

 

Suicide Rate Climbs For Middle-Aged Americans

It may be time to change the benchmark for discussion of public health problems in the U.S.

For quite a while, the annual number of fatalities from auto accidents has been a kind of shorthand for health issues that are big and important.

Starting in 2009, though, suicides surpassed deaths from crashes. In 2010, there were about 38,000 suicides compared with about 35,000 deaths from motor vehicle crashes.

In a new analysis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention zeroed in on suicide data for middle-aged people, 35-64, because that’s where the increase in suicides has been the most dramatic. (Among younger and older people the rates didn’t change much.)

The suicide rate for people 35-64 rose to 17.6 per 100,000 people in 2010 from 13.7 per 100,000 in 1999. That’s an increase of 28 percent.

Why are the rates up so much?

The CDC researchers say that possible factors include the recent economic downturn, an increase in drug overdoses and a so-called cohort effect for baby boomers. As teens, baby boomers were more likely to commit suicide than teens of previous generations. It may be that the tendency followed them as they aged.

How people commit suicide has changed, too. Use of firearms and poison rose, but the biggest increase was for suffocation, mostly due to hanging.

“This increasing trend is particularly troubling because a large proportion of suicide attempts by suffocation result in death, suggesting a need for increased public awareness of suicide risk factors and research of potential suicide prevention strategies to reduce suffocation deaths,” the CDC researchers wrote.

* Text by SCOTT HENSLEY, May 2, 2013

The findings appear in the latest issue of Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report.

 

Jamestown Colonists Resorted to Cannibalism

The first permanent British settlers in North America turned to cannibalism to survive harsh conditions, finds an analysis of human remains with sharp cuts and chopping blows.

Excavated last year from a dump at James Fort in Jamestown, Va., the fragmented remains belonged to a 14-year-old girl and date back to the “starving time” winter of 1609-1610, when three-quarters of the colonists died.

Found with several butchered horse and dog bones, the skeletal remains — a tibia (shin bone) and a skull — featured a series of marks that provide grisly evidence of the dead girl becoming food for the starving colonists.

The researchers were first struck by four shallow chops to the forehead which indicate a hesitant, failed attempt to open the skull.

“The bone fragments have unusually patterned cuts and chops that reflect tentativeness, trial and complete lack of experience in butchering animal remains,” Doug Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

“Nevertheless, the clear intent was to dismember the body, removing the brain and flesh from the face for consumption,” he added.

At last the attempt succeed. A series of deep, forceful chops from a small hatchet or cleaver to the back of the head split the skull open. Flesh was removed from the face and throat using a knife, as sharp cuts and punctures marking the sides and bottom of the mandible, reveal.

The highly fragmented skeleton did not allow the researchers to establish the cause of death of the girl, although a combination of digital and medical technologies made it possible to reconstruct her likeness.

The research team has named her “Jane.”

Based on the anthropological evidence of her diet and the archaeological layer where her remains were found, Owsley and colleagues believe “Jane” arrived in Jamestown in August 1609, just months before the deadly “starving time” had begun.

According to Jim Horn, Colonial Williamsburg’s vice president of research and historical interpretation and an expert on Jamestown history, the “starving time” was brought about by a series of disasters that struck the community two years after it was established in 1607. These included disease, a serious shortage of provisions, and the siege of the native tribes Powhatan.

“Survival cannibalism was a last resort; a desperate means of prolonging life at a time when the settlement teetered on the brink of extinction,” Horn said.

Of about 300 English settlers living at James Fort in the winter of 1609, only about 60 survived to the spring.

The researchers believe it’s likely that Jane wasn’t a lone case and several other dead bodies were cannibalized.

Indeed, numerous account describing cannibalism surfaced among the survivors soon afterward Lord De La Warr saved Jamestown by sailing into the settlement with food and new colonists.

The facial reconstruction of Jane will be on display on May 3 at the exhibition “Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th Century Chesapeake” in the National Museum of Natural History.

 

*  Text BY ROSSELLA LORENZI, MAY 1, 2013

 

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