Red Cross

Red Cross Demands Branches Remove Crucifixes to Be More Secular

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– Red Cross Demands Branches Remove Crucifixes to Be More Secular:

Volunteers have criticised the Red Cross charity after receiving a communication telling them to remove crucifixes from the walls of their branches as the organisation looks to become more secular.

The Belgian branches of the international aid organisation received an email from the Provincial Committee of the Red Cross in Liège to remove all crucifixes. André Rouffart, president of the Red Cross in Verviers, said: “We were asked to respect the principles of the Red Cross”, and not to distinguish between race or religious belief 7sur7 reports.

Read moreRed Cross Demands Branches Remove Crucifixes to Be More Secular

American Red Cross exposed as massive, incompetent fraud: built just six homes after collecting half a billion dollars in Haiti earthquake donations

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– American Red Cross exposed as massive, incompetent fraud: built just six homes after collecting half a billion dollars in Haiti earthquake donations:

You can’t make this stuff up.

From Propublica.org:

The group has publicly celebrated its work. But in fact, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. Confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed insiders show the charity has broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success.

The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six.

Read moreAmerican Red Cross exposed as massive, incompetent fraud: built just six homes after collecting half a billion dollars in Haiti earthquake donations

Migrant Crisis: Bulgarian Red Cross: 3-4 Million Refugees Expected To Reach Europe In Spring

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Shall we call it the “European Spring” then?

– Bulgarian Red Cross: 3-4 Million Refugees Expected to Reach Europe in Spring:

The refugee crisis has not ended and a wave of 3-4 million people is expected to reach Europe in the spring.

This was stated by the chairperson of the Bulgarian Red Cross Hristo Grigorov in an interview for Focus news agency on the occasion of a round table entitled “Integration of refugees in Bulgaria: reality and challenges”.

Read moreMigrant Crisis: Bulgarian Red Cross: 3-4 Million Refugees Expected To Reach Europe In Spring

How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes

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– How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes (ProPublic, June 3, 2015):

The neighborhood of Campeche sprawls up a steep hillside in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. Goats rustle in trash that goes forever uncollected. Children kick a deflated volleyball in a dusty lot below a wall with a hand-painted logo of the American Red Cross.

In late 2011, the Red Cross launched a multimillion-dollar project to transform the desperately poor area, which was hit hard by the earthquake that struck Haiti the year before. The main focus of the project — called LAMIKA, an acronym in Creole for “A Better Life in My Neighborhood” — was building hundreds of permanent homes.

Read moreHow the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes

Philippine Super Typhoon: Red Cross Fears 1000 Deaths

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– Red Cross Fears 1000 Deaths in Philippine Typhoon (New York Times, Nov 8, 2013):

MANILA — The powerful typhoon that swept across the Philippines on Friday cut a path of destruction though several central islands, leaving the seaside city of Tacloban in ruins and leading to early, unconfirmed estimates of at least 1,200 dead.

Strong winds from the typhoon hit a coastal town in Laguna Province. More than 700,000 evacuated ahead of the storm.

Although the government said it could confirm only about 140 deaths so far, the Red Cross in Manila said its people on the ground were reporting an estimated 1,000 deaths on Leyte Island, where Tacloban is, and about 200 from the neighboring island of Samar.

Read morePhilippine Super Typhoon: Red Cross Fears 1000 Deaths

Red Cross Launches Emergency Food Aid Plan In The UK … First Time Since World War II

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– Red Cross Launches Emergency Food Aid Plan in the UK – First Time Since World War II (Liberty Blitzkrieg, Oct 12, 2013):

Welcome to the global recovery folks. A recovery that is so strong in the UK, the Red Cross has been called in to provide food aid for the first time since World War II. Nothing spells happy days are here again like that sort of news.

Oh, didn’t participate in the global recovery? No worries, oligarchs have got you covered and will happily offer you a piece of bread in between flat purchases in the City of London so that you remain quietly and apathetically planted squarely in front of the television . The “recovery” was and is a gigantic heist. Nothing more, nothing less.

From the Independent:

The Red Cross will this winter start collecting and distributing food aid to the needy in Britain for the first time since the Second World War, as welfare cuts and the economic downturn send soaring numbers of people to soup kitchens and food banks across Europe.

In what could be the start of an increased role in Britain for the Geneva-based charity best known for its work in disaster zones, its volunteers will be mobilised to go into supermarkets across the country at the end of November and ask shoppers to donate dry goods. The British Red Cross will then help FareShare, a charity working with the Trussell Trust and Tesco, distribute the packets and tins to food banks nationwide.

Britain is just one of many countries where families are struggling to put food on the table. In a report released today into the devastating humanitarian impact of Europe’s financial  crisis, the Red Cross recorded a 75 per cent increase in the number of people relying on their food aid over the last three years. At least 43 million people across the Continent are not getting enough to eat each day and 120 million are at risk of poverty.

Read moreRed Cross Launches Emergency Food Aid Plan In The UK … First Time Since World War II

Red Cross Medical Team Told By Headquarters Not To Provide Medical Care For 3/11 Fukushima Radiation Victims

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– Red Cross Team said “We were told by headquarters not to provide medical care for those exposed to radiation” after 3/11 -Hospital Worker (ENENews, July 28, 2012):

Title: What Really Happened in Fukushima A Report From a Medical Care Provider
Source: FukushimaVoice
Date: Jul 27, 2012

What Really Happened in Fukushima A Report From a Medical Care Provider

Part 2
Thursday, December 22, 2011

Please let me explain about what happened immediately after the earthquake.

On March 11, 2011, we began to have more and more evacuees from Futaba-machi.

[…]

We accepted both inpatients and outpatients without any manual or instruction for medical care for radiation exposure. However, Fukushima University Medical School Hospital only accepted the seriously injured (essentially refusing to accept evacuees) and the Red Cross medical team said “we were told by the headquarters not to provide medical care for those exposed to radiation.”

They stayed for three days, but the Red Cross medical team went to another prefecture without seeing any patients.

Read moreRed Cross Medical Team Told By Headquarters Not To Provide Medical Care For 3/11 Fukushima Radiation Victims

Donation Via German Red Cross Used To Build Library, Nursery School For Evacuees In RADIOACTIVE Koriyama City In Fukushima

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– Donation via German Red Cross Used to Build Library, Nursery School for Evacuees in Koriyama City in Fukushima (EX-SKF, Jan. 7, 2012):

I’m not really sure that’s how German people who donated to the German Red Cross for the disaster relief for the March 11 earthquake/tsunami wanted the money to be spent.

The library and the nursery school are for people evacuated from Kawauchi-mura in a planned evacuation zone to Koriyama City. Koriyama City is in high-radiation “nakadori” (middle third) of Fukushima Prefecture, where pre-schoolers were found with 0.11 millisievert external radiation in one month in November 2011, with the maximum 0.66 millisievert. Certainly not a place where any nursery school should be.

But the donation from Germany was used to build a facility to keep the villagers from Kawauchi-mura in Koriyama City together.

(The photo is the German embassy official Claus Eilrich with Kawauchi-mura’s village chief in the tape-cutting ceremony.)

From Kyodo News (1/6/2012):

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A facility with the library room and the nursery school opened on January 6 in the temporary housing in Koriyama City in Fukushima Prefecture where the residents from Kawauchi-mura lives after having evacuated from their home after the nuclear accident. The facility was built with the money of about 40 million yen (about 408,000 euro, US$520,000) donated via the German Red Cross.

Read moreDonation Via German Red Cross Used To Build Library, Nursery School For Evacuees In RADIOACTIVE Koriyama City In Fukushima

Russian Secret Service ‘Murdered Six Red Cross Nurses’

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A Russian secret service unit was responsible for murdering six Western Red Cross nurses in Chechnya in cold blood fourteen years ago rather than Chechen rebels, it has been claimed.


The Kremlin’s version of events have been challenged by a former agent in Russia’s FSB security service Photo: CORBIS By Andrew Osborn in Moscow 7:21PM GMT 24 Nov 2010

The allegation, made by a former agent in Russia’s FSB security service, challenges the Kremlin version of events that the group was executed by Chechen rebels.

The murdered aid workers included a Dutch architect and nurses from New Zealand, Canada, Spain and Norway. They were working in a hospital not far from Grozny, the Chechen capital, caring for victims of the first Chechen war when they were murdered in their beds in a mysterious night time raid in December 1996.

FSB Major Alexei Potyomkin, who is on the run in Germany with his family, has claimed he was there at the time and that members of his unit murdered the aid workers in error, mistaking them for Chechen rebels. They then did their best to cover up the crime and pin it on the Chechens, he alleged.

Alexander Cherkasov of human rights group Memorial, an expert in Chechnya who has often clashed with the Kremlin, said he doubted the new claims.

Read moreRussian Secret Service ‘Murdered Six Red Cross Nurses’

Rhode Island Floods May Affect 200,000, Says Red Cross Official

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rhode-island-floods
A man photographs a flooded commercial building along Elmwood Avenue as the Pawtuxett River overflows in Cranston, Rhode Island on March 30, 2010. Getty Images

April 1 (Bloomberg) — As many as 200,000 people may be affected by flooding in Rhode Island that has halted Amtrak service to Boston for two days, blocked highways and threatened a Rhode Island dam.

After two record flood crests in March, Rhode Island is dealing with damage reminiscent of hurricanes, Teddy Hampton, American Red Cross disaster relief operations job director, said in a telephone interview today.

“When you start talking about the numbers of people who are affected, it’s pretty dad-gum close to a Category 3 to Category 4 hurricane,” said Hampton, who flew in from Alabama and often has to respond to the tropical systems. “It’s going to far, far exceed the local chapter’s capability in every way.”

About 184 people were housed in Red Cross shelters last night, and many more went to the shelters to eat, Hampton said. The Red Cross estimates 180,000 to 200,000 people will be dealing with the flood on some level, from cleaning the sewer- tainted water that washed over their homes to finding food.

Read moreRhode Island Floods May Affect 200,000, Says Red Cross Official

Mongolian herders lost millions of animals because of extreme cold

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Appeal for Mongolian herders after cold kills livestock

mongolia_snowstorm Mongolia has been hit by unusually severe winter weather

The International Red Cross has appealed for help for thousands of Mongolian herders who have lost their livestock because of extreme cold.

The Red Cross said that millions of animals had perished during the country’s hardest winter in years.

It says it needs over $900,000 (£603,000) to provide emergency assistance to the worst-hit families and restock herds.

A BBC correspondent says those animals who survived are running out of food.

In recent months temperatures in Mongolia have dropped below -40C.

Local residents call it a “dzud” – a severe winter following a very dry summer, which has left reserves of fodder low.

Read moreMongolian herders lost millions of animals because of extreme cold

Zimbabwe cholera epidemic could top 60,000 – Red Cross

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GENEVA, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic is “far from under control” and could exceed 60,000 cases over the next week, the Red Cross warned on Friday.

Torrential rains are expected to spark major flooding and exacerbate the water-borne outbreak that has killed 2,773 people among 50,000 infected since August, the United Nations said.

Related articles:
– Zimbabwe slaughters elephants for army (Daily Nation)
– Desperate Children Flee Zimbabwe, for Lives Just as Desolate (New York Times)
– South Africa: Another Meeting Set on Zimbabwe Crisis (New York Times)

“The outbreak in Zimbabwe is only increasing in scale, it’s claiming more lives,” Dr. Tammam Aloudat, senior health officer at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told journalists in Geneva.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), a U.N. agency, warned in December that up to 60,000 people could be infected if the country’s worst cholera epidemic spiralled out of control.

“It is difficult to predict where the outbreak will peak. It might even go beyond that nightmare scenario,” Aloudat said.

Read moreZimbabwe cholera epidemic could top 60,000 – Red Cross

Red Cross: Israel breaking international law, letting children starve in Gaza

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The International Committee of the Red Cross on Thursday accused Israel of delaying ambulance access to the Gaza Strip and demanded it grant safe access for Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances to return to evacuate more wounded.

Relief workers said they found four starving children sitting next to their dead mothers and other corpses in a house in a part of Gaza City bombed by Israeli forces, the Red Cross said on Thursday.

“This is a shocking incident,” said Pierre Wettach, ICRC chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories.

“The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestinian Red Crescent to assist the wounded,” Wettach said.

Related articles:
– Rockets hit Israel from Lebanon (BBC)
– Agreement Reached on U.N. Resolution Calling for Mideast Cease-Fire
(Washington Post)
– Red Cross says Israel barred rescuers from shelled Gaza homes (Los Angeles Times)

The agency said it believed Israel had breached international humanitarian law in the incident.

Read moreRed Cross: Israel breaking international law, letting children starve in Gaza

The silent tsunami

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Hunger now afflicts almost a billion people in 60 countries … and kills 25,000 a day. A special report by Rob Edwards to explain the background to our Christmas appeal

A SILENT tsunami of hunger is engulfing the world, afflicting nearly a billion people in 60 countries and killing 25,000 men, women and children every day. The global food crisis, triggered by high prices, shortages and bad weather, is deepening as the world’s economy moves into recession. Millions more people are now facing poverty, starvation, disease and death.

The World Bank is predicting that 967 million people will now go hungry in 2008, 44 million more than in 2007. That means that almost one in every six people on the planet is not getting enough food to stay healthy.

Children’s growth is being stunted, immune systems are being destroyed and fatal diseases like diarrhoea, measles and malaria are spreading.

“This is a tragic loss of human and economic potential”, says a report from the World Bank.

Irreparable damage is being done to the health, life and prospects of hundreds of millions of people, it warns. “This is not only a crisis now, but a time bomb for the future.”

The World Bank also estimates that 2008 has pushed 100 million more people into serious poverty, making it more difficult for them to afford life’s essentials. Some 2.3 billion people worldwide have to manage on less than the equivalent of £1.35 a day.

Read moreThe silent tsunami

UN suspends food distribution in Gaza

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Labourers work at a UN Relief and Works Agency food distribution center in the Gaza City Shati refugee camp

GAZA CITY (AFP) – The United Nations announced it was suspending food distribution to half of Gaza’s 1.5 million people on Thursday after Israel failed to allow emergency supplies into the Palestinian territory.

Israel had said it would allow 30 trucks to deliver supplies to Gaza on Thursday after it sealed off the Gaza Strip on November 5, but later said rocket and mortar fire by Gaza militants made it impossible to do so.

“They have told us the crossings are closed today. At the end of today we will suspend our food distribution,” said UN Relief and Works Agency spokesman Chris Gunness.

“Our warehouses are effectively empty,” he told AFP.

Read moreUN suspends food distribution in Gaza

Red Cross finds Bush administration guilty of war crimes

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In a secret report last year, the Red Cross found evidence of the CIA using torture on prisoners that would make the Bush administration guilty of war crimes, The New York Times reported Friday.

The Red Cross determined the culpability of the Bush administration after interviewing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, according to the article.

Prisoner Abu Zubaydahwho said he had been waterboarded, “slammed against the walls” and confined in boxes “so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position.”

The information comes from a new book written by Jane Meyer, who has frequently published articles concerning counter-terrorism in The New Yorker.

The book is titled “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” and will be released next week.

Mayer cited “sources familiar with the report” to explain the confidential document as a warning “that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.”

Read moreRed Cross finds Bush administration guilty of war crimes

China Red Cross Officials Suspected of Embezzling Donations for Quake Victims

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Reporting a fake number on the purchase receipt is a well known phenomenon of the systematic corruption that exists within the Chinese communist regime. But now, citizens are raising concerns that the same thing seems to be happening to money donations meant to be spent solely on helping people reconstruct their homes after the devastating disaster.

Local medicine retailers are speaking out, saying that a supervising body should be present to make sure all donated resources are being correctly utilized.

“There were two Red Cross officers from the Zhongjiang district trying to buy $10,000 worth of medicine from our shop for the earth quake victims, but they wanted us to write down a number that is five times higher than the true price. We refused, but the neighboring medical retailers gave way to these officers,” said one medicine retailer in an interview with NTDTV.

A local resident from Sichuan province said that more people have realized how much the CCP’s corruption has cost people’s lives.

“They’re even going for the rescue donations and resources. There is no trust left for the CCP at all,” said the resident.

Due to the concern over the ineffective supervision of Red Cross organizations in China, a number of people in China either escort the donated resources themselves to the quake area or hand it over to reliable community organizations. This has been the route chosen by two of the three largest web companies in China to donate their money. To avoid corruption, they’re taking an alternative way without having any contact with the CCP.

A China resident from Guang Xi province said that the corruption is an unavoidable result under a dictatorship. “The government is using its overwhelming control to have power over everything. There is no boundary for the government to act so there is no limitation on any form of corruption in China.”

New Tang Dynasty Television
May 26, 2008

Source: The Epoch Times

Machine makes water good enough to drink

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Victoria Fray with a glass of drinking water made with her new desalination machine. Photo / Greg Bowker

Auckland engineer Victoria Fray has come up with a new variation on the age-old theme of teaching someone to fish so they can feed themselves forever.

She has designed a mini-desalination plant that is small and robust enough to be sent to remote Pacific islands to provide water for up to 900 people in an emergency – then be hauled back to Auckland and used again in the next disaster elsewhere.

Read moreMachine makes water good enough to drink