A Virginia man who was killed in World War II has been accounted for, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced this week.
David Walker, 19, was assigned to the battleship USS California when it was torpedoed during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Walker was one of 103 crewmen who died on the ship during the attack, the DPAA said. Remains from the ship were recovered by U.S. Navy personnel and interred in Hawaii cemeteries, including the the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, but it wasn’t until 2018 that the 25 men who were buried as “Unknowns” were exhumed.
The remains were analyzed with anthropological and dental analysis by the DPAA and mitochondrial DNA analysis by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System.
David Walker.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
Now that Walker has been identified, a rosette will be placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. He will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery in September, the DPAA said.
According to Walker’s personnel file, he was from Norfolk, Virginia. There was no information available about surviving relatives, or when Walker entered the U.S. Navy. According to a news clipping shared by the DPAA, Walker enlisted in the U.S. Navy about one year before his death. Another news clipping said that he left high school early to enlist. According to one of the news clippings, Walker’s mother, identified as Edna Lee Ward, asked a local reporter to place Walker’s photo in the newspaper to announce his death at Pearl Harbor.
Kerry Breen
Kerry Breen is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News’ TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.
Investigation into Baltimore bridge collapse underway as port remains blocked – CBS News
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Lawsuit against Harvard for stolen body parts case dismissed
Lawsuit against Harvard for stolen body parts case dismissed
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Harvard Library says it has removed a book that’s been in its collection for nearly a century that is partially made with human skin that was taken from a deceased hospital patient without consent. The book’s space in the library has long been in question, as it was bound with a woman’s skin and included a handwritten note from its first owner saying, “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.”
The library announced that it would remove the book, “Des Destinées de L’âme” (“Destinies of the Soul”), earlier this month. The book, published by Arsène Houssaye in 1879, was not originally made of skin. That part was added by the book’s first owner, French physician Dr. Ludovic Bouland, who, according to Harvard Library, “bound the book with skin he took without consent from the body of a deceased female patient in a hospital where he worked.”
Arsène Houssaye’s “Des destinées de l’âme” has been removed from the Houghton Library amid controversy over human skin from a deceased hospital patient being used in the binding.
Houghton Library, Harvard University
Bouland included a handwritten note in the volume that says, “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering,” Tom Hyry, associate university librarian for archives and special collections, said in a Harvard Library update.
“Evidence indicates that Bouland bound the book with skin, taken from a woman, which he had acquired as a medical student,” Hyry said. “A memo accompanying the book written by John Stetson, which has since been lost, told us that Bouland took this skin from the body of an unknown deceased woman patient from a French psychiatric hospital.”
Bouland died in 1933 and the book was added to Harvard’s collection in 1934 on deposit. That note also included a description of the process that was used to treat the skin so that it could be bound with the book. The book was formally donated to the university in 1954 and Harvard Library said that it tested the binding in 2014 to confirm that it was bound with human remains.
Until recently, the book had been available to “anyone who asked for it,” Harvard Library said, “regardless of their reason for wishing to consult it.”
“Library lore suggests that decades ago, students employed to page collections in Houghton’s stacks were hazed by being asked to retrieve the book without being told it included human remains,” the library states. “Harvard Library acknowledges past failures in its stewardship of the book that further objectified and compromised the dignity of the human being whose remains were used for its binding. We apologize to those adversely affected by these actions.”
Anne-Marie Eze, associate librarian of Harvard’s Houghton Library, said the book’s removal was the culmination of years-long efforts and “as part of the University’s larger project of addressing human remains in its collections.”
In 2022, the university published a report about human remains found in university collections. A committee found remains of 15 people who “may have been enslaved” in the Peabody Museum, which also holds “one of the nation’s largest collections of human remains of Native American individuals.” Most of the human remains found across the university collections system are rooted in archaeological context or are used for educational purposes.
The book was not included in that category – and it’s not the only piece of human remains believed to be in the library system.
“There is a bone fragment purportedly of Saint Sebastian (ca. 3rd century) in a medallion reliquary,” the report states.
The library says that it’s now conducting additional research into the book, Bouland and the female patient whose skin was removed, and that the skin itself is in “secure storage at Harvard Library.” They are also working with France to “determine a final respectful disposition of these human remains.”
Eze said that the book has been “fully digitized” – sans binding – and that those scans have been made publicly available. All images of the skin have been removed from the online catalog and blog posts, and the book itself will only be made available to researchers in the future without its cover.
“The core problem with the volume’s creation was a doctor who didn’t see a whole person in front of him and carried out an odious act of removing a piece of skin from a deceased patient, almost certainly without consent, and used it in a book binding that has been handled by many for more than a century,” Hyry said. “We believe it’s time the remains be put to rest.”
Li Cohen
Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending content writer for CBS News.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani authorities will perform DNA testing on the remains of the suicide bomber who rammed his explosive-laden car into a vehicle in the country’s northwest, killing five Chinese nationals and their local driver, officials said Wednesday.
The attack occurred in Shangla, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where thousands of Chinese nationals work on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor which includes a multitude of megaprojects such as road construction, power plants and agriculture. The CPEC is a lifeline for Pakistan’s cash-strapped government, currently facing one of its worst economic crises.
The five were engineers and laborers heading Tuesday to the Dasu Dam, the biggest hydropower project in Pakistan, where they worked. Their remains were transported to the capital, Islamabad, local police official Altaf Khan said, adding that the deceased had a police escort when the attack happened.
Pakistani officials said they shared the latest investigation developments with their Chinese counterparts. China is expected to send its own experts Wednesday to the attack site to conduct an independent investigation while collaborating with Pakistani authorities.
Khan said they have further expanded a search that started a day earlier, looking for the attacker’s possible accomplices.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on separatists as well as a breakaway Gul Bahadur faction of Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, and is a separate group, but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.
The TTP denied being behind the attack in a statement Wednesday, saying: “We are in no way related to the attack on the Chinese engineers.”
Tuesday’s attack came less than a week after Pakistani security forces killed eight Baluchistan Liberation Army militants who opened fire on a convoy carrying Chinese citizens outside the Chinese-funded Gwadar port in the volatile southwestern Baluchistan province.
The Chinese foreign ministry condemned the attack and offered “deep condolences to the deceased” in a statement Wednesday.
The ministry said China has asked “Pakistan to thoroughly investigate the incident as soon as possible, hunt down the perpetrators, and bring them to justice” and added that “any attempt to undermine China-Pakistan cooperation will never succeed”.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif promised a swift conclusion to the investigation during a visit with the Chinese ambassador, Jiang Zaidong, on Tuesday.
Chinese laborers working on CPEC-related projects in Pakistan have come under attack in recent years.
In July 2021, at least 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals, were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle near a bus carrying several Chinese and Pakistani engineers and laborers, prompting the Chinese companies to suspend work at the time. Pakistani authorities at the time initially insisted it was a road accident, but China disputed the claim, saying victims were the target of a suicide attack.
The German government says it is supplying €45 million ($48.7 million) to UNRWA, United Nation’s agency for Palestinian refugees, for its work in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied West Bank, while funds for Gaza remain suspended.
The contributions are part of the regular regional support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the German Foreign Office said, disclosing the sum in Berlin on Monday.
Germany, alongside other donor countries, suspended UNRWA funds for the agency’s work in the Gaza Strip after Israel in January accused a dozen UNRWA employees of being involved in the terrorist acts committed by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that, based on initial information provided by Israel, the allegations seemed credible, and he promised comprehensive clarification. Two separate investigations are under way and several employees were fired.
According to the German Foreign Office, it is still unclear whether funds earmarked for UNRWA’s work in the Gaza Strip will be resumed. A review is still ongoing, the ministry said.
Of the total sum of €45 million being provided to UNRWA in other regions, €15 million are to support basic health and education services for Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon and €7 million are to go to a “Cash for Work” programme for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, the ministry said.
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) — Canada’s federal government and the provincial Manitoba government agreed Friday to spend tens of millions to help search a landfill for the remains of two slain Indigenous women.
A sum of $20 million Canadian (US$14.7 million) from each government is to go toward a search of the privately owned Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg, where the remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran are believed to be.
Cambria Harris, daughter of Morgan Harris, said Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew told her they are going to search every part of the area where her mother is believed to be. She confirmed the amounts.
“I am very grateful,” she said.
Jeremy Skibicki is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Harris, Myran and two other women. The other two are Rebecca Contois, whose partial remains were found in a different landfill, and an unidentified woman Indigenous leaders have named Buffalo Woman. The remains of Buffalo Woman have not been found.
Police in 2022 rejected the idea of a search, in part because of the potential danger from toxic materials and the sheer volume of material at the landfill.
“We’re glad to be able to move forward with the funds necessary to search every cubic meter of the relevant space,” Kinew said in a written statement. “While we don’t know if the search will be successful, we have to try.”
An Indigenous-led committee commissioned two reports on the feasibility of a search, which has been estimated to cost $90 million Canadian (US$66 million) if completed within a year.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has previously said the disappearances and deaths of Indigenous women in Canada have too often been treated as a low priority or ignored.
The leader of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said she hopes the governments will fund whatever search efforts may be needed.
“We don’t want to go back and back again to ask that this work be complete,″ Grand Chief Cathy Merrick said.
U.S. businesses added 187,000 jobs in July, keeping pace with June’s solid hiring as employers sought to add staff amid a tight labor market.
Hiring was slightly below the expectation from analysts polled by FactSet that employers had added 200,000 new jobs last month. The unemployment rate edged down to 3.5% from 3.6% in June, the Labor Department said on Friday.
Even so, job growth has become more muted than earlier this year, partly as the Federal Reserve has sharply boosted interest rates over the past year, making it costlier for businesses to expand. Even though hiring is cooling, employers are still adding new jobs, easing some concerns that the interest rate hikes could tip the economy into a recession.
“The U.S. jobs report was near expectations for July, but the labor market is softening as many employers navigate changing circumstances,” said Eric Merlis, managing director and co-head of global markets at Citizens, in a Friday email.
He added, “As the Fed works to curb inflation by raising rates to slow the economy, monthly jobs numbers provide a key measure of the impact and they continue to show the resilience of the economy.”
July’s data marks a slowdown from the average monthly hiring over the prior 12 months, when employers on average added 312,000 new positions each month, the Labor Department said. Businesses added jobs last month in health care, social assistance, financial activities and wholesale trade.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is monitoring the economy for signs that inflation, which hit a four-decade high last year, is tempering in response to its series of interest rate hikes. The central bank wants to guide inflation downward to a 2% rate, although in June it stood at 3.1%, still above that goal.
“Slower job growth in July could be a welcome sign for the Fed, as they seek to prevent a wage-price spiral, where higher wages due to the low supply of workers lead to increased costs for companies that may subsequently pass on higher prices to consumers,” noted Stephen J. Rich, CEO of Mutual of America Capital Management, in a Friday email.
Wages rose 0.4% in July, to an hourly average of $33.74, the Labor Department said on Friday. That matched June’s wage increase, and was slightly higher than the 0.3% increase expected by some analysts. On an annual basis, average earnings in July increased 4.4% from a year earlier, with wage growth ticking up for production and non-supervisory workers, who make up about 82% of the workforce.
“[W]ages did not ease as expected, which will be disappointing to policymakers,” noted Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.
In June, businesses added about 209,000 jobs, although the Labor Department revised the number downwards to 185,000 jobs on Friday.
A set of female skeletal remains found in Florida in 2007 have been identified as those of Jeana Lynn Burrus, 39. Burrus, who lived in Sarasota, Florida, was never reported missing, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release announcing the identification.
Her whereabouts had also not been questioned in the 16 years since the remains were found, the sheriff’s office said.
Jeana Burrus is seen in a photo combination released by the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, Aug. 2, 2023.
The remains were found in February 2007 in a shallow grave in a wooded area of the Ashton Court area of Sarasota. The investigation went cold, but later DNA testing and genetic genealogy advancements allowed the sheriff’s office to make a positive identification in November 2022.
On Wednesday, the sheriff’s office said investigators were seeking information from anyone familiar with Burrus or her husband, James Burrus. The couple lived in Citrus County, Florida, and Frederick, Maryland, before moving to Sarasota County.
Burrus had a son, James Burrus Jr., who attended a Sarasota elementary school between 2005 and 2006. Her husband worked at a body shop in Sarasota, while Burrus herself was unemployed.
Kerry Breen
Kerry Breen is a news editor and reporter for CBS News. Her reporting focuses on current events, breaking news and substance use.
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The search for an Australian army helicopter that crashed at sea killing four people during a military exercise with the United States last week found human remains but not the black box crucial to explaining the tragedy, an officer said on Thursday.
Recovering the four air crew and the black box flight data recorder have been the main priorities since an MRH-90 Taipan helicopter crashed on July 28 during a nighttime operation in the Whitsunday Islands off the northeast Australian coast.
An underwater drone spotted the human remains and part of the cockpit at a depth of 131 feet on Wednesday, said Army Lt.-Gen. Greg Bilton, who is coordinating the operation.
“The debris field is consistent with a catastrophic, high impact” with the ocean surface, Bilton told reporters.
The Australian navy would soon deploy specialized equipment to retrieve the wreckage and remains, he said.
The search and recovery operation, which has involved the U.S. and Canadian militaries, has been hampered by bad weather and strong currents.
Searchers were determined to recover the black box, which contains flight data and cockpit voice recordings.
“It’s a difficult task but we’ll do our absolute best to find it and, as you know, the black box is critical to helping us to understand what’s actually taken place,” Bilton said.
The crashed Taipan had been taking part in Talisman Sabre, a biennial U.S.-Australian military exercise that is largely based in Queensland state. This year’s exercise involves 13 nations and more than 30,000 military personnel.
A French Airbus helicopter had been flying with three aircraft and “communications were normal” before the crash, Bilton said.
A rescue operation began immediately but officials said on Monday there was no longer any chance of finding survivors.
Australia’s fleet of more than 40 Taipans has been grounded since the crash and there are doubts any will fly again.
The government announced in January plans to replace them with 40 U.S. Black Hawk helicopters. The Taipans’ retirement date of December 2024 would be 13 years earlier than Australia had initially planned.
Since that announcement, the fleet was grounded in March after a Taipan ditched off the New South Wales state coast near the naval base at Jervis Bay during a nighttime counterterrorism training exercise. All 10 passengers and crew members were rescued.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The fate of an American nurse and her daughter kidnapped in Haiti last week remains unknown Tuesday as the U.S. State Department refused to say whether the abductors made demands.
Around 200 Haitians had marched in their nation’s capital Monday to show their anger over an abduction that’s another example of the worsening gang violence that has overtaken much of Port-au-Prince.
Alix Dorsainil of New Hampshire was working for El Roi Haiti, a nonprofit Christian ministry, when she and her daughter were seized Thursday. She is the wife of its founder, Sandro Dorsainvil.
Witnesses told The Associated Press that Dorsainvil was working in the small brick clinic when armed men burst in and seized her. Lormina Louima, a patient waiting for a check-up, said one man pulled out his gun and told her to relax.
“When I saw the gun, I was so scared,” Louima said. “I said, ‘I don’t want to see this, let me go.’”
Some members of the community said the unidentified men asked for $1 million in ransom, a standard practice of the gangs killing and sowing terror in Haiti’s impoverished populace. Hundreds of kidnappings have occurred in the country this year alone, figures from the local nonprofit Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights show.
The same day Dorsainvil and her daughter were taken, the U.S. State Department advised Americans to avoid travel in Haiti and ordered nonemergency personnel to leave, citing widespread kidnappings that regularly target U.S. citizens.
The violence has stirred anger among Haitians, who say they simply want to live in peace.
Protesters, largely from the area around El Roi Haiti’s campus, which includes a medical clinic, a school and more, echoed that call as they walked through the sweltering streets wielding cardboard signs written in Creole in red paint.
“She is doing good work in the community, free her,” read one.
Local resident Jean Ronald said the community has significantly benefitted from the care provided by El Roi Haiti.
Such groups are often the only institutions in lawless areas, but the deepening violence has forced many to close, leaving thousands of vulnerable families without access to basic services like health care or education.
Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders announced it was suspending services in one of its hospitals because some 20 armed men burst into an operating room and snatched a patient.
As the protesters walked through the area where Dorsainvil was taken, the streets were eerily quiet. The doors to the clinic where she worked were shut, the small brick building empty. Ronald and others in the area worried the latest kidnapping may mean the clinic won’t reopen.
“If they leave, everything (the aid group’s programs) will shut down,” Ronald worried. “The money they are asking for, we don’t have it.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller wouldn’t say Monday if the abductors had made demands or answer other questions.
“Obviously, the safety and security of American citizens overseas is our highest priority. We are in regular contact with the Haitian authorities. We’ll continue to work with them and our US government interagency partners, but because it’s an ongoing law enforcement investigation, there’s not more detail I can offer,” Miller wrote in a statement Monday.
In a video for the El Roi Haiti website, Alix Dorsainvil describes Haitians as “full of joy, and life and love” and people she was blessed to know.
Dorsainvil graduated from Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts, which has a program to support nursing education in Haiti. Dorsainvil’s father, Steven Comeau, reached in New Hampshire, said he could not talk.
In a blog post Monday, El Roi Haiti said Alix Dorsainvil fell in love with Haiti’s people on a visit after the devastating 2010 earthquake. It said the organization was working with authorities in both countries to free her and her daughter.
“Please continue to pray with us for the protection and freedom of Alix and her daughter. As our hearts break for this situation, we also continue to pray for the country and people of Haiti and for freedom from the suffering they endure daily.”
___
AP journalists Megan Janetsky in Mexico City and Pierre Richard Luxama in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.
