Tsunami pushes Japan from major aid donor to leading recipient
Daunting engineering and waste-management operation begins along
north-east coast after world's most expensive disaster Cranes
lift a boat off a two-storey building in the tsunami-devastated
town of Otsuchi, Japan A worker watches cranes lift a boat off a
two-storey building in the tsunami-devastated town of Otsuchi,
Japan. Photograph: Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty Images  Japan is
set to make the traumatic leap from being one of the world's
most generous aid donors to one of its biggest aid recipients as
it begins the mammoth task of cleaning up the wreckage left by
the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.  A fleet of bulldozers,
cranes and drills have started clearing rubble along the north-
east coast in the most daunting engineering and waste-management
challenge any government has faced. The work is moving slowly as
bodies are still being recovered.  More than 25,000 people are
dead or missing as rescue workers struggle to identify bodies
that in