Body of missing Mississippi WWII soldier coming home after 80 years – National & International News – MON 7Feb2022

Body of Mississippi WWII soldier coming home after 80 years. Delta wants unruly passengers on no-fly list. Ottawa mayor declares state of emergency over ‘Freedom Convoy’.

NATIONAL NEWS

Body of Mississippi WWII soldier coming home after 80 years

After nearly 80 years, the remains of Private Andrew Joseph Ladner will be laid to rest in his home state. Ladner, who was 30 at the time of this death in November 1942, was from Lizana, MS, an unincorporated community in Harrison County. 

Ladner was killed in action at the battle of Buna-Gona in what is now Papua New Guinea. Ladner’s unit’s mission was to cut off Japanese supply and communications lines from the village of Sanananda. They set up a blockade, known as the Huggins Roadblock. The unit held the position for 22 days before Australian reinforcements arrived to relieve them.

When the war was over, the American Graves Registration Service searched the area for years for the remains of American soldiers. In 1950, the AGRS declared Ladner non-recoverable. We now know that, in fact, Ladner’s remains had been found in 1943 and interred at a temporary U.S. cemetery in the area. Later, U.S. authorities exhumed the remains in that cemetery and transferred them to the Philippines. But many of those remains were unidentified, with Ladner’s remains labeled only as X-1545.

In 1995, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) renewed efforts to identify the remains of soldiers who perished at the Huggins Roadblock. Last year, the DPAA managed to identify Ladner’s remains last year using dental and mitochondrial DNA analysis.

Ladner was a graduate of Perkinston Junior College, now Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College. A newspaper clipping from the time of his death listed his immediate survivors as his mother, Mary Laura Ladner, and three brothers, Alphonse, George and Purvis Ladner. 

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Delta wants unruly passengers put on no-fly list

After two years dealing with record numbers of unruly and even violent passengers, Delta airlines is asking the Department of Justice to take a tougher stance. Delta CEO Ed Bastian has asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to adopt a “zero tolerance” stance on disruptive behavior on flights. In the last two years, Delta has put 1,900 people on its own “no-fly list” and now wants the FBI to add those names to the federal no-fly list.

Disputes over masking and other on-board compliance issues have increased Delta’s unruly passenger reports incidents by nearly 100% since 2019. Last year, the FAA received nearly 6,000 unruly passenger reports from U.S. airlines, 4,290 of them mask-related. But investigations and prosecutions of unruly passenger incidents increased even more dramatically. The FAA initiated 1,099 investigations of those incidents in 2021, with only 146 in 2019.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Ottawa mayor declares state of emergency over ‘Freedom Convoy’

Yesterday, the mayor of Canada’s capital Ottawa declared a city-wide state of emergency over the “Freedom Convoy” protests. Last week, truckers from all over Canada descended on Ottawa, protesting a new rule requiring truckers crossing the U.S.-Canada border to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19. Local police say there are about 7000 individuals and 1000 vehicles participating in the protest. Those trucks are clogging up roads in the city center near Canada’s Parliament, blocking traffic and forcing many businesses to close.

There have also been troubling incidents of violence and harassment. Locals say that protesters harangue them on the street if they are wearing a mask. Police are also investigating reports of racial violence as well was attacks on a local homeless shelter. 

City residents have criticized the police for their seeming unwillingness to confront the protesters. But the state of emergency granted greater policing powers. On Sunday, police seized thousands of gallons of fuel the protesters had stockpiled to keep their trucks running. They’re also threatening to arrest anyone supplying the protesters with things like fuel and toilet paper.

But the protesters are unusually well-provisioned and seem prepared to stay indefinitely until they achieve their goals. These goals vary, but most are demanding the repeal of all public health mandates. 

While the protesters are vocal and determined, they are very much in the minority in Canada. About 80% of Canadians are vaccinated, including 90% of truckers. Polls also show that 67% of Canadians want more restrictions on the unvaccinated, while 68% felt they had “very little in common” with the protesters.

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