• Four arrested as death toll climbs to 341 in Bangladesh factory collapse

    Rescuers, refusing to give up hope, scour the rubble for survivors in the aftermath of one of the country's worst industrial disasters. NBC's Ian Williams reports.

    By Serajul Quadir and Ruma Paul, Reuters

    DHAKA, Bangladesh -- Two factory bosses and two engineers were arrested in Bangladesh on Saturday, three days after the collapse of a building where low-cost garments were made for Western brands, as the death toll rose to 341 but many were still being found alive.

    As many as 900 people could still be missing, police said.

    The owner of the eight-story building that fell like a pack of cards around more than 3,000 workers was still on the run.

    Police said several of his relatives were detained to compel him to hand himself in, and an alert had gone out to airport and border authorities to prevent him from fleeing the country.

    Officials said Rana Plaza, on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka, had been built without the correct permits, and the workers were allowed in on Wednesday despite warnings the previous day that it was structurally unsafe.

    Two engineers involved in building the complex were also arrested at their homes early on Saturday, Dhaka district police chief Habibur Rahman said. He said they were arrested for dismissing a warning not to open the building after a jolt was felt and cracks were noticed on some pillars the previous day.

    While protesters have taken to the streets of Dhaka, distraught family members have gathered at the sight of the collapsed building looking for information about missing loved ones.  ITV's Paul Davies reports.

    The owner and managing director of the largest of the five factories in the complex, New Wave Style, surrendered to the country's garment industry association during the night and they were handed over to police.

    The factory, which listed many European and North American retailers as its customers, occupied upper floors of the building that officials said had been added illegally.

    'People are asking for his head'
    "Everyone involved -- including the designer, engineer and builders -- will be arrested for putting up this defective building," said junior internal affairs minister Shamsul Huq.

    An alliance of leftist parties which is part of the ruling coalition said it would call a national strike on May 2 if all those responsible for the disaster were not arrested by Sunday.

    Rahman identified the owner of the building as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a leader of the ruling Awami League's youth front.

    "People are asking for his head, which is quite natural," said H.T. Imam, an adviser to the prime minister.

    Wednesday's collapse was the third major industrial incident in five months in Bangladesh, the second-largest exporter of garments in the world. In November, a fire at the Tazreen Fashion factory nearby the latest disaster killed 112 people.

    Such incidents have raised serious questions about worker safety and low wages, and could taint the reputation of the poor South Asian country, which relies on garments for 80 percent of its exports.

    Anger over the working conditions of Bangladesh's 3.6 million garment workers -- most of whom are women -- has grown since the disaster, triggering protests.

    Hundreds were on the streets again on Saturday, smashing and burning cars and sparking more battles with police, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Eyewitnesses said dozens of people were injured in the latest clashes.

    Remarkably, people were still being pulled alive from the precarious mound of rubble -- 21 in all since dawn on Saturday.

    "We must salute the common people who dared to enter the wreckage to rescue them, as even our professionals didn't dare to take the risk," Mizanur Rahman, deputy director of the fire service, told Reuters.

    Marina Begum, 22, spoke from a hospital bed of her ordeal inside the broken building for three days.

    "It felt like I was in hell," she told reporters. "It was so hot, I could hardly breathe, there was no food and water. When I regained my senses I found myself in this hospital bed."

    Frantic efforts were under way to save 15 people trapped under the concrete who were being supplied with dried food, bottled water and oxygen.

    About 2,500 people have been rescued from the remains of the building in the commercial suburb of Savar, about 20 miles from Dhaka.

    Wrong permit, illegal floors
    Emdadul Islam, chief engineer of the state-run Capital Development Authority (CDA), said the owner of the building had not received the proper building consent, obtaining a permit for a five-story building from the local municipality, which did not have the authority to grant it.

    "Only CDA can give such approval," he said. "We are trying to get the original design from the municipality, but since the concerned official is in hiding we cannot get it readily."

    Furthermore, another three storeys had been added illegally, he said. "Savar is not an industrial zone, and for that reason no factory can be housed in Rana Plaza," Islam told Reuters.

    Islam said the building had been erected on the site of a pond filled in with sand and earth, which meant its foundations were too weak.

    "There were three big and very heavy generators that shook the whole building when they were operating. On that day the generators were being used and within seconds the building collapsed," Islam said.

    Sixty percent of Bangladesh's garment exports go to Europe. The United States takes 23 percent and Canada takes 5 percent.

    North American and European chains, including British retailer Primark and Canada's Loblaw, a unit of George Weston Ltd, said they were supplied by factories in the Rana Plaza building.

    Loblaw, which had a small number of "Joe Fresh" apparel items made at one of the factories, said on Saturday that it was working with other retailers to provide aid and support.

    It said it was sending representatives to Bangladesh and was also joining what it described as an urgent meeting with other retailers and the Retail Council of Canada.

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  • Man found alive 2 days after being swept away by Philippines typhoon

    Reuters

    Typhoon survivor Carlos Agang lies on a stretcher after he was found alive Thursday.

    By Reuters

    Updated at 2 p.m. ET: NEW BATAAN, Philippines – Rescue workers found a 54-year-old man clinging to a boulder by a river – injured but alive – two days after a powerful typhoon ravaged the south of the Philippines.

    At least 420 people were killed and nearly 400 are missing, The Associated Press reported Thursday, citing Philippines authorities.

    All Carlos Agang had to eat was coconut and water until he was found in a tattered shirt with a fractured leg and bruises by a group of rescue volunteers in New Bataan town in Compostela Valley, the province worst hit by Typhoon Botha. Reuters initially reported he was 77, but later corrected his age.

    "I can't believe it. I didn't expect to see people survive two days after they were swept by flood and mud," fire volunteer Mark Roman Jumilla told Reuters.

    "For two days, he survived on coconut and water. He lost his family when floodwaters swept a temporary shelter area where he and his family sought refuge," Jumilla said.

    Rescuers also found a pregnant woman on the other side of the river with her one-year son after escaping floods that swamped their house after Typhoon Bopha hit land on Tuesday.

    "It happened so fast. Water came rushing to us while we were leaving our house to move to safer grounds," Lenlen Medrano, 23, told Reuters as she was being carried by soldiers in a stretcher.

    "I prayed hard over and over until we found ourselves on the riverbank," she added.

    A Reuters photographer saw four bodies near the spot where Agang was rescued. The river's current was strong, making it hard for rescue teams to reach other survivors.

    'Entire families were washed away' as Typhoon Bopha hits

    The death toll could rise further, with local government officials reporting hundreds missing.

    An intense, powerful typhoon has cut across the Philippines triggering landslides and flash floods on the island of Mindanao. ITN's Jane Deith reports. Warning: The story contains some disturbing images.

    PhotoBlog: Grief amid Bopha's destruction

    About 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year, often causing death and destruction. Almost exactly a year ago, Typhoon Washi killed 1,500 people in Mindanao.

    Arturo "Arthur" Uy, governor of Compostela Valley, said search and rescue operations were continuing, particularly in far-flung areas in New Bataan town, where a three-year old child was plucked from under a crumpled house on Wednesday, more than 24 hours after the typhoon made landfall. The child's mother and a sibling are missing.

    Erik De Castro / Reuters

    Rescuers on Thursday evacuate a pregnant woman with her child who survived flooding in New Bataan, Philippines.

    "I believe we can rescue more people," Uy told Reuters. "We evacuated people from riverbanks and shorelines. But the floods and strong winds battered not just the riverbanks but also places where residents were supposed to be safe."


    A few residents in Compostela Valley started repairing their houses, but for majority, rebuilding will not be easy.

    "I don't know what to do now," coconut farmer Roger Calarian told Reuters while queuing for a rice ration at the center of New Bataan town. "I lost my house, I lost my livelihood. I want to rebuild my hut but I don't think I have the energy to do that now."

    Calarian said he and his wife were lucky to have survived when coconut trees crashed on their house on Tuesday. "We prayed, hugged each other until the winds calmed down, and then we crawled out to safety," he added. 

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  • Family photos lost in Japan tsunami debris are slowly reunited with survivors

    A tsunami victim looks through albums for her photographs on Monday.

    By Reuters

    OFUNATO, Japan -- In a large, bright room not far from the ocean that raged through this coastal Japanese city nearly a year ago, a handful of people with magnifying glasses pore over boxes of photographs of friends or loved ones.

    The massive March 11 tsunami that leveled buildings and flattened towns along a wide swathe of northern Japan, including Ofunato, also took a more subtle toll, with hundreds of thousands of photographs lost to the churning waters.

    But now these memories are slowly making their way back to their owners, thanks to the painstaking efforts of a team that cleans them of mud, dirt and oil.

    "I got one photo blown up, and I was so thankful for that. I put it in a frame, and it brought tears to my eyes," said 77-year-old resident Yoshiko Jindai, looking through boxes of photographs.

    Toru Hanai / Reuters

    Recovered photographs are hung to dry after cleaning.

    Ofunato has enlisted a team of seven part-time staffers to help sort though the over 350,000 photos that have accumulated after being brought in by police, firefighters, rescue workers and average citizens who were looking through the rubble.

    In charge of cleaning and restoring the photos is paper conservator Satoko Kinno, who said her job is the second stage in the marathon of returning the photos to their owners after they are found.

    In the immediate aftermath of a monstrous earthquake that triggered a tsunami, fires, and nuclear power plant warnings, Dateline NBC reports on the current state of Japan and its people.

    Zen priest battles 'invisible demons' of radiation

    "I try to remember that people found these photos in the midst of rubble, and that I have to take the baton from them. So that's where I get my motivation," Kinno said.

    The photos are frozen once found to prevent bacteria and mold from growing on them until they can be properly cleaned and packed for display.

    The facility holds the photos in its industrial-sized freezer bins until they can be dealt with. Once cleaned, they are packed into photo albums and taken around to temporary housing complexes in the hopes of finding their owners.

    Other people choose to sort through boxes of photos themselves for hours on end, looking for snapshots of their lives thought lost to the forces of nature.

    Seven months after the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, debris from the disaster was tracked slowly moving across the Pacific Ocean toward the U.S. NBC News' Kate Snow reports.

    Some laugh and chat as they search, as if at a casual social occasion. Others grab the books and flip through quickly, almost desperately.

    But even those who don't find anything are grateful for the chance to sort through albums filled with thousands of photos of children, graduations and even scenery of areas struck by the tsunami, now devastated. "I have some photos and videos at my home, but it's still very nice of them to do this," said 79-year-old Kimiko Tanaka.

    If somebody finds photos that might belong to another person, a member of Kinno's team will make the rounds of temporary housing to take the memories back to them.

    Toru Hanai / Reuters

    Tsunami victims look through albums for their photographs.

    Report: Japan withheld scary nuclear scenario

    Thousands have made their way back to grateful owners, but many thousands more remain unclaimed -- or still frozen.

    Kinno vows to continue until the last photo goes home.

    "I've really started to realize the depth and meaning that each and every photo has to it, and as such I want to do what I can to return as many photos as I can," she added.

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  • Worsening weather threatens Costa Concordia wreck

    Workers risk their lives to find the 21 people who are still missing. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.

    By msnbc.com news services

    Updated at 7:30 p.m. ET: Italian authorities hope to stabilize the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia as worsening weather on Friday could cause it to shift deeper into the sea, delaying plans to pump oil out of the vessel to prevent a possible environmental disaster.

    Six days after the 114,500 ton ship capsized off the Tuscan coast, hopes of finding anyone alive in the partially submerged hulk have all but disappeared.

    Eleven people are known to have died and 21 people are still unaccounted for out of more than 4,200 passengers and crew aboard when the ship struck a reef just yards from the shoreline.

    In the wake of the accident, Carnival Corporation, parent company of Costa Cruises and nine leading cruise lines around the world, announced Thursday plans for a comprehensive audit and review of all safety and emergency response procedures across all of the company's cruise lines.

    "While I have every confidence in the safety of our vessels and the professionalism of our crews, this review will evaluate all practices and procedures to make sure that this kind of accident doesn't happen again," said Micky Arison, Carnival Corporation's chairman and CEO, in a statement.

    Most cruise ships put emphasis on safety

    Attention is now turning to how to remove 2,300 tons of fuel aboard the ship, with bad weather threatening to make the ship even more precarious on the rocky ledge where it is resting.

    Environment Minister Corrado Clini told parliament he had urged the ship's operator, Costa Cruises, to take all possible measures to anchor the ship to prevent it from sliding deeper into the sea.

    "If the ship slides, we hope that it doesn't break into pieces and that the fuel tanks do not open up," he said.

    Clini said there was a risk that the ship could sink to 50 to 90 meters below the reef it is now on, creating a major hazard to the environment in one of Europe's largest natural marine parks

    Updated at 3:40 p.m. ET:

    Minutes after the Costa Concordia struck a rock, a crew member told the Italian coast guard there was no emergency on board the ship, according to an audio recording aired on Sky TG 24, an all-news channel in Italy.

    The crew member is believed to be an officer, but not Capt. Francesco Schettino, NBC News reported.

    The conversation started about 30 minutes after the Concordia ran aground and was the first between the coast guard and the cruise liner.

    "Good evening Costa Concordia, please, do you have problems on board?," a coast guard official asks the bridge.

    The crew member  replies: "We've had a blackout, we are checking the conditions on board."

    The coast guard asks: "What kind of a problem? Is it just something with the generator? The police ... have received a phone call from the relatives of a sailor who said that during the dinner everything was falling on his head."

    The crew member says some passengers were already wearing life jackets, and repeated there had been a blackout. "We are checking the conditions on board."

    REUTERS/Zhurnal Tv via Reuters TV

    Costa Concordia crew member Dominica Cemortan gestures in this still image from a Jan. 17 television interview. Cemortan defended the captain's actions, saying he helped to save the lives of passengers.

    Italian news reports say prosecutors want to speak to Dominica Cermotan of Moldova. Cermotan, a 25-year-old hostess who reportedly was working for Costa on the Concordia, said on her Facebook page that she wasn't on duty the night of the grounding but was with Schettino, other officers and the cruise director on the bridge. She said she was called to help with translations of instructions for how the small number of Russian passengers should evacuate.

    She defended Schettino, telling Moldova's Jurnal TV that "he did a great thing, he saved over 3,000 lives."

    "We were looking for them, searching for them (the Russians)," she said in the TV interview. "We heard them all crying, shouting in all languages."

    Prosecutor Francesco Verusio declined to comment on whether he was seeking Cermotan as a witness, citing the ongoing investigation.

    On Thursday, rescue teams resumed the search for victims from the Concordia disaster before the weather turns and salvage crews need to start pumping fuel from the wreck. The search is expected to focus on the fourth deck, around an evacuation assembly point where seven of the bodies found so far were located. NBC News' Michelle Kosinski reports that the search team has been using sonar to look at the sea floor as well.

    A scuba team was poised to go inside the wrecked Italian cruise liner, Kosinski reported Thursday morning.

    One of the specialist diving crews said on Thursday the available window to complete the search could be as small as 12-24 hours although the chief spokesman of the rescue services denied that any deadline had been set and said the situation was still evolving.

    The Costa Serena, the sister ship of the Costa Concordia, passed the partially-sunken liner on Wednesday evening. International cruise goers put on a brave face as Costa's first Mediterranean tour since last week's tragedy set sail out of the same port near Rome as the doomed luxury liner.

    Vincenzo Pinto / AFP - Getty Images

    The Costa Serena, background, passes sister ship Costa Concordia on Jan. 18 off the coast of Italy's Isola del Giglio (Giglio island). International cruise goers put on a brave face as Costa's first Mediterranean tour since last week's tragedy set sail out of the same port near Rome as the doomed luxury liner.

    Crew members returning home have begun speaking out about the chaotic evacuation, saying the captain sounded the alarm too late and didn't give orders or instructions about how to evacuate passengers. Eventually, crew members started lowering lifeboats on their own.

    "They asked us to make announcements to say that it was electrical problems and that our technicians were working on it and to not panic," French steward Thibault Francois told France-2 television Thursday. "I told myself this doesn't sound good."

    He said the captain took too long to react and that eventually his boss told him to start escorting passengers to lifeboats. "No, there were no orders from the management," he said.

    Identifying victims
    On Thursday, seven of the dead were identified by authorities: French passengers Jeanne Gannard, Pierre Gregoire, Francis Servil, 71, and Jean-Pierre Micheaud, 61; Peruvian crew member Thomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza; Spanish passenger Guillermo Gual, 68, and Italian passenger Giovanni Masia, who news reports said would have turned 86 next week and was buried in Sardinia on Thursday.

    The first victim was identified on Wednesday as crewmember Sandor Feher, 38, of Hungary. Jozsef Balog, a pianist who worked with Feher, a violinist, told the Budapest newspaper Blikk that Feher was wearing a lifejacket when he decided to return to his cabin to pack his violin. Feher was last seen on deck en route to a lifeboat. According to Balog, Feher helped put lifejackets on several crying children before returning to his cabin.

    The children of Barbara and Jerry Heil, a Minnesota couple aboard the ship that have been missing since the accident, said Wednesday in a blog posting that their parents are not among those passengers whose bodies were recently recovered.

    Slideshow: Luxury cruise ship runs aground

    DigitalGlobe

    The Costa Concordia ran aground Jan. 13 off the coast of Italy, resulting in the evacuation of thousands of passengers as the ship began heavily listing.

    Launch slideshow

    Captain's 'complete inertia'
    Schettino, blamed for causing the accident by steering too close to shore and then abandoning the vessel before the evacuation was complete, is under house arrest. Prosecutors said they would appeal against a decision by a judge on Tuesday to allow Schettino to return home, saying he may seek to flee.

    "We do not understand why the judge took this decision and we don't agree with it," an official from the prosecutor's office in Grosseto said.

    In the ruling, the judge said Schettino had shown "incredible carelessness" and "a total inability to manage the successive phases of the emergency," only sounding the alarm 30 to 40 minutes after the initial impact.

    He had abandoned the ship and remained on shore in a state of "complete inertia" for more than an hour, "watching the ship sink," the ruling said.

    "No serious attempt was made by the captain to return even close to the ship in the immediate aftermath of abandoning the Costa Concordia."

    John H. Hickey, a maritime law expert, called the actions of Costa Concordia Capt. Francesco Schettino "disgusting" and "unforgivable," saying Schettino should have been the "last human being off that ship." The Costa Concordia cruise ship capsized off the coast of Italy Friday night, leaving at least 11 dead, with more than 20 people still missing.

    According to Schettino's lawyer, the captain has admitted bringing the ship too close to shore but he denies bearing sole responsibility for the accident and says other factors may have played a role.

    Schettino was always available to provide information to coast guard and rescue services throughout the evacuation, even when he was not on board the vessel, his lawyer says.

    Schettino said he did not abandon ship, according to a transcript published by Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper and reported by the Associated Press.

    "I did not abandon a ship with 100 people on board ... the ship suddenly listed and we were thrown into the water," Schettino reportedly said during a recorded telephone conversation with Capt. Gregorio De Falco of the Italian coast guard in Livorno.

    Schettino is accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck by sailing too close to shore and abandoning ship before all his passengers and crew scrambled off.

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    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

  • Owner of Costa Concordia pledges assistance to passengers

    Authorities must decide what to do with the stricken 115,000 ton cruise ship. NBC's Mark Potter reports.

    By msnbc.com and news services

    Updated at 8 p.m. ET: Carnival Corp., whose luxury liner Costa Concordia capsized off the coast of Italy last Friday, said it was providing lodging, refunds and other support to people affected by the accident, even as some public relations executives criticized the company's handling of the situation.

    "I give my personal assurance that we will take care of each and every one of our guests, crew and their families affected by this tragic event," said Carnival Chief Executive Micky Arison in a statement late on Wednesday — five days after the incident that left 11 people dead and 22 missing.

    Costa Cruise Lines, a unit of Carnival and operator of the ship, has been arranging lodging and transportation for passengers and crew members to return home, and has offered assistance and counseling as needed. It has also begun refunding passengers their cruise fares and all costs incurred while on board.

    The company also said it was contacting every passenger and crew member or their family and will be addressing personal possessions lost on board.

    Public relations experts have chastised Carnival for being slow to address the disaster and vague about its response and efforts to prevent similar incidents in the future.

    "There are 101 ways they could have more effectively handled the communication around the crisis," said Evan Nierman, founder of public relations firm Red Banyan Group.

    Carnival would have benefited, Nierman said, if Arison were on the ground in Italy, being seen talking to victims and crew and taking charge of the situation.

    The shifting ship is creating dangerous problems for the searchers who need to blast holes in the hull. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.

    Updated at 5:30 p.m. ET: The children of a Minnesota couple missing since last week's Costa Concordia disaster in Italy said Wednesday their parents are not among those passengers whose bodies were recently recovered.

    Family members posted the information on their blog, and said they were praying that conditions at the stricken cruise ship would improve so authorities could resume search operations.

    Jerry and Barbara Heil, of White Bear Lake, Minn., are the only Americans still unaccounted for. The Heils were among the passengers still listed as missing, according to an official tally released Wednesday by Italian authorities.

    Family members, who had been waiting to hear the identities of five bodies recovered Tuesday, said on the blog that they received confirmation that their parents were not among them.

    Italian rescue workers suspended operations early Wednesday after the ship shifted slightly on the rocks, creating concerns about the safety of divers and firefighters searching for the missing.

    "We continue to pray and hope for advantageous conditions which will allow the search and rescue operations to continue," the Heil family said on the blog. "While it is certainly hard for us to see the recovery efforts stall due to the unstable conditions present at and around the Costa Concordia, we are also very concerned for the safety of the Italian Coast Guard as they continue to put forth a heroic effort in trying to find those who remain missing.

    "We are grateful to all of those who are working so hard to find our parents," the statement said. 

    Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino has reportedly now told officials that he tripped and fell into a lifeboat shortly after the ship began taking on water near Giglio Island.

    Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET: Francesco Schettino, captain of the doomed Costa Concordia that partially sunk on Friday, said he did not abandon ship, according to a transcript published by Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper and reported by the Associated Press.

    "I did not abandon a ship with 100 people on board ... the ship suddenly listed and we were thrown into the water," Schettino reportedly said during a recorded telephone conversation with Capt. Gregorio De Falco of the Italian coast guard in Livorno.

    The transcript also showed the coast guard official urgently commanding the captain to return to the cruise ship after he had abandoned it.

    "You go on board! Is that clear? Do you hear me?" the Coast Guard officer shouted as Schettino sat safe in a life raft and frantic passengers struggled to escape the listing ship. "It is an order. Don't make any more excuses. You have declared 'Abandon ship.' Now I am in charge." 

    The officer confronted him with an expletive-laced order to get back on board, which has quickly entered the Italian lexicon. The four-word phrase has become a Twitter hashtag and Italian media have shown photos of T-shirts bearing the command. 

    Criminal charges including manslaughter and abandoning ship are expected to be filed by prosecutors shortly. Schettino faces a possible 12 years in prison on the abandoning ship charge alone.

    Updated at 2:50 p.m. ET: A German woman listed as missing from the Costa Concordia was located alive in Germany.

    Gertrud Goergens alerted police in Germany that she was alive and well, according to the Associated Press, citing the prefect's office in Grosetto, Italy.

    Goergens was removed from the official list of missing late Wednesday. Twenty-three passengers are still unaccounted for:

    Dayana Arlotti, Italy; William M. Arlotti, Italy; Elisabeth Bauer, Germany; Michael M. Blemand, France; Maria Dintrono, Italy; Horst Galle, Germany; Jeanne Gannard, France; Christina Mathi Ganz, Germany; Norbert Josef Ganz, Germany; Pierre Gregoire, France; Gabriele Grube, Germany; Barbara Heil, United States; Gerald Heil, United States; Egon Hoer, Germany; Mylene Litzler, France; Margarethe Neth, Germany; Inge Schall, Germany; Siglinde Stumpf, Germany; Brunhild Werp, Germany; Josef Werp, Germany; Margrit Schroeter, Germany; Maria Grazia Trecarichi, Italy; Luisa Antonia Virzi, Italy.

    Three crew members are also missing: Girolamo Giuseppe, Italy; Russel Terence Rebello, India; Erika Fani Soriamolina, Peru. 

    Eleven bodies have been recovered, though only one has been publicly identified: Crew member Sandor Feher, 38, of Hungary. 

    Hungarian ministry spokesman Jozsef Toth said Feher's body was found inside the wreck and identified by his mother in the Italian city of Grosetto.

    Jozsef Balog, a pianist who worked with Feher, a violinist, told the Budapest newspaper Blikk that Feher was wearing a lifejacket when he decided to return to his cabin to pack his violin. Feher was last seen on deck en route to a lifeboat. According to Balog, Feher helped put lifejackets on several crying children before returning to his cabin.

    Captain Francesco Schettino, the man accused of causing the deadly wreck of a cruise ship off the coast of Italy, is out of jail and under house arrest, as additional bodies were found aboard the capsized ship. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.

    Separately, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said Wednesday he will hold a hearing to review cruise ship safety. The exact date has not been determined, but Mica has requested Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.) to aid in the investigation.

    "The Costa Concordia tragedy is a wake-up call for the United States and international maritime organizations to carefully review and make certain we have in place all the appropriate standards to ensure passengers' safety on cruise ships," Mica said in a statement.

    Updated at 11:40 a.m. ET: 

    The Costa Concordia took a nearly identical route past Giglio Island in August to the one Friday that led to the sinking of the ship, NBC News has learned.

    Adam Smallman, editor of shipping magazine Lloyd’s List, said the route taken in August, based on satellite tracking, was “authorized by the company and the coast guard.”

    Slideshow: Luxury cruise ship runs aground

    DigitalGlobe

    The Costa Concordia ran aground Jan. 13 off the coast of Italy, resulting in the evacuation of thousands of passengers as the ship began heavily listing.

    Launch slideshow

    "Our assessment of the route this vessel took (in August) is it must have come perilously close, and I mean possibly within touching distance of the rock that it hit this time ... which the company is saying wholly unauthorized in terms of its proximity to the island," Smallman said.

    The search for missing passengers aboard the Costa Concordia is on hold over fears that the ship is shifting, making rescue efforts more dangerous.

    The captain in charge of the specialist divers searching the stricken Costa Concordia tells NBC News that they need to blow four more holes in it to gain access to the bottom of the cruise ship. Asked about the search for bodies -- some 23 people are unaccounted for according to Reuters -- the captain said there was visual evidence suggesting some bodies were at the bottom of the sea.

    NBC News, citing officials involved in the rescue effort, reported that on Wednesday the ship had sunk 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) at the front and 1 meter (3.2 feet) at the back, raising concerns that the vessel may break up in the middle.

    The coast guard is monitoring shifts with sensors installed by divers at the start of the rescue mission, and that movement is its main concern as it could trap divers. By late afternoon, officials still did not have enough data to reassure them that the ship had stopped resettling.

    "The visibility is awful. Yesterday I couldn't see my hand in front of my face," Giuseppe Minciotti, director of a school for cave divers in the northern city of Verona and part of the specialist team deployed on the wreck, told Reuters.

    "I grabbed a piece of floating debris, and I couldn't see what it was until I had my head out of the water. It was a woman's shoe," he said.  "We're waiting today for new openings to be made, and we'll see if the visibility is any better in those points."

    Jim Fee, a yacht skipper for three decades, discusses the potential ecological problems related to the Costa Concordia disaster. NBC's Harry Smith reports.

    Coast guard spokesman Cosimo Nicastro said work would focus on an evacuation assembly area on the partially submerged fourth deck, where most of the 11 bodies found so far have been located.

    "It's where we have already found seven of the bodies and it's where the passengers and crew gathered to abandon ship," Nicastro said.

    Fire services spokesman Luca Cari said the search was suspended at about 8 a.m. local time (11 p.m. ET) after a shift of a few inches, posing a potential threat to diving teams operating in the submerged spaces of the ship.

    There was no word on when work might resume. 

    The Costa Concordia had more than 4,200 passengers and crew on board when it slammed into a reef Friday off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio after Capt. Francesco Schettino made an unauthorized maneuver from the ship's programmed course — allegedly to show off the luxury liner to the island's residents.

    Rescue workers discovered five bodies on Tuesday, bringing the death toll of the Costa Concordia accident to 11. 

    The adult bodies, believed to be passengers, were all wearing life jackets and were found in the rear of the ship near an emergency evacuation point, according to Nicastro.

    Schettino, whose actions during the disaster have come under intense scrutiny as details of his role on the night of the disaster emerge, appeared before a judge in Grosseto, Tuscany, where he was questioned for three hours. Schettino remains under house arrest.

    During a heated conversation the Italian coast guard told the captain of the Costa Concordia to go back to the ship. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.

    Schettino's lawyer, Bruno Leporatti, said urine and hair samples have been taken from Schettino, apparently to determine if he might have consumed alcohol or used drugs before the accident.

    Leporatti also told a news conference in Grosetto that house arrest made sense given there was no evidence the captain intended to flee. He cited the fact that the captain coordinated the evacuation from the shore after leaving the ship.

    "He never left the scene," Leporatti said. "There has never been a danger of flight."

    Leporatti added the captain was upset by the accident, contrary to depictions in the Italian media that he did not appear to show regret.

    "He is a deeply shaken man, not only for the loss of his ship, which for a captain is a grave thing, but above all for what happened and the loss of human life," the lawyer said.

    Martino Pellegrino, a crew-member on Costa Concordia, described Schettino as "authoritarian," "stubborn" and "egocentric," in an interview with Italian newspaper La Republica on Tuesday.

    "Schettino likes to be in control of the ship's wheel," he told the newspaper.

    Also on Tuesday, a transcript of a conversation between Schettino and Capt. Gregorio De Falco of the Italian coast guard in Livorno, showed the coast guard official urgently commanding the captain to return to the cruise ship after he had abandoned it.

    "There are people trapped on board," De Falco said. "Now you go with your boat under the prow on the starboard side. There is a pilot ladder. You will climb that ladder and go on board. You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear? I'm recording this conversation, Cmdr. Schettino ..."

    Passengers continued to make their way home, with consistent claims that crew members were ill-prepared to handle an emergency evacuation.

    "The crew members had no specialized training — the security man doubled as the cook and bartender, so obviously they did not know what to do," passenger Claudia Fehlandt told Chile's Channel 7 television after being embraced by relatives at Santiago's airport.

    "In fact, the lifeboats, even the ones that did get lowered, they did not know how to lower them and they cut the ropes with axes," she said.

    Msnbc.com staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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