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Russian media, "Turkey supports Georgia" Russian Izvestya newspapers has claimed that Turkey was among the countries that supported Georgia in the recent strife in South Ossetia, by supplying the country with weapons, CNNTurk reported on Sunday. The Russian newspaper cited a Russian Defense Ministry report published three months prior that claims over the past four years Turkey has supplied Georgia with $45 million in weapons and ammunition, as well as training Georgian army officers. Interfax Agency also reported that Turkish naval ship has entered in to Georgian territorial waters off the coast near the city of Batumi.

NGOs: Europe once urged Colombia to pay any price to free hostages. Now it pitches a fit when its own bill comes due. The International Red Cross' fury at Colombia for improper use of its emblem to save 15 lives is out of line.The argument goes that Colombia shouldn't have let an undercover soldier use a Red Cross bib over his Palestinian keffiyeh (a get-up that FARC found perfectly credible) to rescue 15 hostages on July 2, because it might make the FARC and groups like it distrustful of future Red Cross efforts. "If authenticated, these images could clearly establish...

<p>FREDERICK, Md. - Bruce E. Ivins was a juggler, a gardener, a church musician, a Red Cross volunteer — and a suspected multiple murderer, according to federal authorities.</p> <p>Some people who knew him scoffed at the government’s assertion that Ivins sent the anthrax letters that killed five people and sickened 17 in the fall of 2001. But court documents indicate the outwardly mild-mannered Ivins had a menacing side.</p>

Bogotá (ICRC) – Yesterday, 23 July, in a rural area of Vigía del Fuerte, Antioquia department, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) received eight civilians who had been held by the FARC-EP since 17 July 2008. The operation was the outcome of a strictly confidential dialogue between the parties concerned and the ICRC’s neutral and independent humanitarian action. The civilians were released following a request made by the FARC to the ICRC. The ICRC will continue to support efforts to find means of obtaining the release of other hostages and detainees in the hands of armed groups....

For 15 years, the American Red Cross has been under a federal court order to improve the way it collects and processes blood. Yet, despite $21 million in fines since 2003 and repeated promises to follow procedures intended to ensure the safety of the nation’s blood supply, it continues to fall short. The situation has proved so frustrating that in January the commissioner of food and drugs attended a Red Cross board meeting — a first for a commissioner — and warned members that they could face criminal charges for their continued failure to bring about compliance, according to three...

One thing Americans do not want to hear when they are injured or facing surgery is that blood from the American Red Cross may actually harm them. So it was unnerving, to put it mildly, to learn that the Red Cross, which collects and distributes some 43 percent of blood given to patients in this country, has failed to follow quality-control measures ordered by a federal court 15 years ago. The organization’s sloppy procedures and its lethargy in investigating possible harm have put untold numbers of Americans at risk. These failures have been identified in reports and investigations by the...

Leave it to CNN to worry that the Colombian government committed a war crime in its recent rescue of FARC hostages, including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN) -- Colombian President Alvaro Uribe says one Red Cross symbol was used in a daring and successful hostage rescue mission that took place two weeks ago. What seems to be part of a red cross is seen on a bib worn by a man involved in the rescue in this official image. One of the rescuers was wearing the symbol on a bib, Uribe said Wednesday in a nationally televised announcement that was also carried on radio. He described the wearing of the symbol as a slip-up. Such a use of the Red Cross emblem could constitute...

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia misused the symbol of the Red Cross in this month's military rescue of politician Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other guerrilla-held hostages, the government said on Wednesday, admitting a possible violation of the rules of war. "We regret that this occurred," President Alvaro Uribe said in a speech following reports that the Red Cross emblem was displayed on a vest or T-shirt worn by a Colombian intelligence officer who took part in the rescue mission. Falsely portraying military personnel as Red Cross members is against the Geneva Conventions as it could put humanitarian workers at risk when...

Colombian military intelligence used the Red Cross emblem in a rescue operation in which leftist guerrillas were duped into handing over 15 hostages, according to unpublished photographs and video viewed by CNN. What seems to be part of a red cross is seen on a bib worn by a man involved in the rescue in this official image. Photographs of the Colombian military intelligence-led team that spearheaded the rescue, shown to CNN by a confidential military source, show one man wearing a bib with the Red Cross symbol. The military source said the three photos were taken moments before the...

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN) -- Colombian military intelligence used the Red Cross emblem in a rescue operation in which leftist guerrillas were duped into handing over 15 hostages, according to unpublished photographs and video viewed by CNN. Photographs of the Colombian military intelligence-led team that spearheaded the rescue, shown to CNN by a confidential military source, show one man wearing a bib with the Red Cross symbol. The military source said the three photos were taken moments before the mission took off to persuade the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels to release the hostages to a supposed international aid group...

DES MOINES, Iowa - The American Red Cross said on Monday that its Disaster Relief Fund is wiped out and it's being forced to borrow money to help flood victims throughout the Midwest. Jeff Towers, the organization's chief development officer, said the balance for domestic disaster relief efforts is zero. He said the American Red Cross would borrow to keep workers and volunteers in the field helping flood victims. "The Red Cross remains committed to providing the scale of services that people expect of the Red Cross when disaster strikes, and the way that we are doing that right now...

A Red Cross boat delivering supplies to help 1,000 victims of last weekend's cyclone sank Sunday when it hit debris in the Irrawaddy Delta region, as the U.S. prepared to deliver relief supplies to Myanmar. "The crew managed to get to the safety of an island, along with four Red Cross staff who were on the boat," Red Cross official Joe Lowry said. "But we've lost most of the cargo."

My local board of supervisors donated $10K to the Red Cross, very generous with my tax money i suspect. Here is my letter to the editor: BOARD DONATES TO RED CROSS Let's see now 5 supervisors on the board donated a total of $10,000. that is a very generous donation of an average of $2000 each. I commend them for their generosity, assuming they personally made the donation and didn't use my taxes to make a donation in their name. If I was forced to participate in that donation against my will, I demand to know the specific law that...

SAN DIEGO — The American Red Cross acknowledged that it lacks safeguards against paying for unused hotel rooms during natural disasters, a gap that may have cost it tens of thousands of dollars during Southern California's wildfires last year. The acknowledgment Friday came a day after the charity disclosed that blocks of rooms booked to accommodate volunteers in San Diego County went empty. "Our job was to be reviewing who we had in hotels every night and making sure the reservations matched who was coming and who was going," said Joe Becker, who oversees disaster services. "We had instances where...

Monday Dec. 3. 2007 - Sheridan Oregon. Many Sheridan residents were effected by a flood that hit the city. Streets and homes were flooded. There was mandatory evacuations for some residents. The National Guard was called in to provide sand bags, and fire departments from surrounding communities came to help with mutual aid. The city was also hit by a flood back in 1996. View AlbumGet your own

A vast archive of wartime German documents on the Nazi Holocaust has been opened to the public. The 47m documents, kept in Germany, contain detailed records on 17.5m forced labourers, concentration camp victims and political prisoners. Previously, the files were only used to trace missing persons, reunite families and provide information for compensation claims. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) manages the files. The whole archive takes up some 26km (16 miles) of shelving in the town of Bad Arolsen in western Germany. Minute details The files are not expected to shed dramatic new light on the Nazi...

American Red Cross president and chief executive Mark W. Everson resigned today because he engaged in a personal relationship with an employee. Everson, who previously was commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, took over the Red Cross on May 29 as the federally chartered disaster-relief agency struggled to restore a reputation damaged by its response to Hurricane Katrina. He oversaw a broad restructuring plan for the $3.4 billion organization. Everson's resignation is effective immediately. He was engaged in a personal relationship with a subordinate female employee, agency spokeswoman Suzy C. DeFrancis said. A senior executive at the Red Cross informed...

Sorry for long title and caps. I am typing thru tears. My mom is dying of pancreatic cancer. She raised my son and I got thru to Red Cross & Hospice and they approved it. Military is denying it saying she is not loco parentis. On top of that nobody knows how to do the paper work. My son is her baby (30 Year Old Marine) and she is all she wants. Seems to be holding on for him. She just took a drastic turn for the worst yesterday. I need a congressman/senator anyone who I can call and try...

Link only--site does not permit copy/paste function.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 27 — Four employees of the International Committee for the Red Cross, who were on their way to help secure the release of hostages held by the Taliban, were kidnapped on Wednesday, officials said today. But a Taliban spokesman quoted by Reuters said the four might be released soon. The spokesman, who declined to be named, said it had not been known at the time that they worked with the Red Cross. The four employees, two foreign and two Afghan, were in Wardak Province, southwest of the capital, when they went missing, according to Graziella Piccolo, a...

RED CROSS USES GUERRILLA TACTICS TO URGE EARTHQUAKE PREPAREDNESS First they handed out empty bottles of water that read: "Try living on this for three days." They parked mobile billboards in San Francisco that made it look as if a major earthquake had just rocked downtown. They even posted housing ads on craigslist for heavily damaged flats near the Presidio that exclaimed "Available immediately!" And now the American Red Cross - frustrated with its findings that a whopping 83 percent of Bay Area residents remain unprepared for the Big One - is unveiling its latest guerrilla marketing tactic today:...

GHAZNI, Afghanistan - Two South Korean women kidnapped by the Taliban burst into tears Monday after being turned over to the Red Cross on a desert road where the body of one of the original 23 hostages was dumped. The women's release was the first breakthrough in a drama that began more than three weeks ago when a busload of Korean church volunteers was seized. A second male captive also was shot to death in late July, meaning 14 women and five men are still being held. The handover came after two days of face-to-face talks between the Taliban and...

NEW YORK: Johnson & Johnson, the health-products giant that uses a red cross as its trademark, sued the American Red Cross on Wednesday, demanding that the charity halt the use of the red cross symbol on products it sells to the public. Johnson & Johnson said it has had exclusive rights to use the trademark on certain commercial products — including bandages and first-aid cream — for more than 100 years. It contends that the Red Cross is supposed to use the symbol only in connection with nonprofit relief services. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York,...

The People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee held a press conference this morning in front of their New Orleans office to protest the alleged withholding of funds from Hurricane Katrina victims by the American Red Cross. PHRF charges that the humanitarian aid organization is concealing money available through the Means to Recovery program, which is part of its third-phase recovery efforts for people who suffered losses in Katrina, Rita and Wilma. The first phase was emergency response, sheltering and feeding, while the second phase was financial assistance. According to PHRF, the Means to Recovery program is supposed to allocate...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Two local Red Cross workers helping coordinate negotiations between the Lebanese army and Islamic militants in a besieged Palestinian refugee camp were shot to death on Monday, hospital officials said. The workers were killed in their vehicle as they tried to escort a Muslim scholar trying to mediate an end to fighting between the Lebanese army and Fatah Islam militants, out of the Nahr el-Bared camp, the officials said.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Red Cross is welcoming a statement by Mullah Omar, the fugitive head of the Taliban, that calls on the humanitarian group to be part of an independent commission on civilian casualties in the Afghan War. It appears to be Mr. Omar's first-ever public mention of an international organization, and is a sign of "movement" in the Taliban's brutal conflict against foreign forces, the Red Cross says. But on a day that the insurgents allegedly mortared a military hospital set up to help civilians, NATO strongly dismissed the Taliban chief's missive. "He is a criminal who has...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka- Two Sri Lankan Red Cross workers abducted from the capital two days ago were found shot to death, the aid group said Sunday. The bodies of the two ethnic Tamil men were found Saturday in Ratnapura district, about 60 miles southeast of the capital, Colombo, Red Cross Director General Neville Nanayakkara said. Nanayakkara said the two men, S. Shanmugalingam and K. Chandramohan, had been in the capital for a workshop and were at a train station on their way home when they were taken away by men who claimed to be police. He said the two were...

Nazi Eichmann's passport found in ArgentinaThe passport used by notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann to enter Argentina in 1950 has been found by accident in an archive in Buenos Aires. The passport, still in good condition, was issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. Eichmann was one of the main executors of Adolf Hitler's 'final solution', the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II. A judge, Maria Servini de Cubria, stumbled upon the document in court archives. The passport has been handed over to the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires, which confirmed the discovery....

An immigration-reform activist says an Illinois branch of the American Red Cross should be taken to task for allowing the Mexican government to use its office to pass out consular identification cards to illegal aliens in the community.

WASHINGTON, March 8, 2007 – The top lawyers in the State Department and DoD have sent a letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross criticizing the methodology authors used in compiling a study that purports to be a definitive explanation of the laws of war. The letter, signed by John B. Bellinger III, the legal adviser for the State Department, and William J. Haynes II, DoD’s general counsel, says the books, titled “Customary International Humanitarian Law,” – while noble – are flawed in execution. Jean-Marie Henckaerts and Eric Mongelard, members of the ICRC’s legal division, authored the...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2007 – The Armed Services Blood Program Web site has been redesigned, offering updated content as well as a new look, officials said. The new Web site, www.militaryblood.dod.mil, features information on how to join a “Life Force” team of donors, volunteers and supporters. Topics include blood facts, donor eligibility criteria, donor center locations, and more. Other information offered involves the ASBP “Specialist in Blood Banking” program, its curriculum and how to apply. Convenient links direct users to online blood donation appointment scheduling via the “Click to Save Lives” blood drop button on the ASBP home page....

Holocaust: Sweden's complex legacy On 27th January 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz, an event commemorated around the world on Holocaust Memorial Day. David Stavrou looks at the complex legacy of the Holocaust in Sweden, where the battle to promote tolerance still rages. Chavka Folman-Raban is a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz who arrived in Sweden a few days before the end of the Second World War. Like many other survivors, she was liberated by the Red Cross and found refuge in Sweden. "I'm not sure I can describe with absolute certainty the transition from being a prisoner in a concentration...

GENEVA - The "Red Crystal" debuts Sunday as an emblem that can be used to protect its relief workers, part of an agreement for Israel's admission to the Red Cross movement after more than half a century of exclusion. During decades of stalemate, stemming from the Jewish state's reluctance to display a cross or crescent, some countries had feared that adding a red Star of David to the list of protective emblems would open the door to proliferation of other such symbols and undermine the recognition that any emblem had to protect humanitarian workers. But it was unlikely that the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government has fined the American Red Cross $5.7 million for violating blood-safety laws and the terms of a 2003 consent decree. The fine covers quality assurance, inventory management, control of non-conforming blood products, donor screening and blood component manufacturing issues turned up during a 2005 inspection of a Red Cross facility in West Henrietta, N.Y., the Food and Drug Administration said in a Nov. 21 letter. The letter, to Red Cross interim president and CEO Jack McGuire, was posted Monday on the FDA Web site. The fine appears to be the largest single penalty ever...

The Red Cross says Burma's government has ordered it to close five field offices in the country, severely curtailing its humanitarian work there. The offices, some of which deal with victims of conflict in Burma's border areas, now face closure, it said. The Red Cross also says it will remain barred from visiting jails, said to include some 1,000 political prisoners. Humanitarian work for some of Burma's most vulnerable people was now in jeopardy, the organisation said.

GAZA CITY (AP) -- The Red Cross announced the suspension of its operations in the Gaza Tuesday night, after two of the organization's workers were kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen earlier in the day. Iyad Nasr, a spokesman for the Red Cross's Gaza office, said the organization had ceased all field operations and would intervene only "in matters of life and death." Workers have been ordered to stay in their offices because of fears for their safety, he said. The kidnapping of the two Red Cross workers, both Italians, was the latest in a string of abductions of foreigners in the...

GAZA (Reuters) - Gunmen abducted two Italians working for the International Committee of the Red Cross in southern Gaza on Tuesday, the latest in a spate of kidnappings of foreigners in the Palestinian coastal strip. Police said the aid workers were in a car on their way to the town of Khan Younis when they were intercepted by gunmen. "They were taken out of their vehicle and put into another car which then sped away," said one police officer at the scene. An ICRC spokesman in Jerusalem, Simon Schorno, identified the abducted men as Claudio Moroni and Gianmarco Onorato. He...

BAD AROLSEN, Germany - The 21-year-old Russian sat before a clerk of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate's office, describing the furnaces at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where he had been a prisoner until a few weeks previously. "I saw with my own eyes how thousands of Jews were gassed daily and thrown by the hundreds into pits where Jews were burning," he said. "I saw how little children were killed with sticks and thrown into the fire," he continued. Blood flowed in gutters, and "Jews were thrown in and died there"; more were taken off trucks and cast alive...

For the first time, the International Committee of the Red Cross met this week with 14 suspected al Qaeda operatives held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including the reputed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, said sources with direct knowledge of the visit. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of planning the 2001 attacks and former No. 3 leader of al Qaeda, and Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be September 11 hijacker, were among the 14 prisoners to meet with Red Cross officials. International Committee of the Red Cross members had planned to meet with each of the suspects privately and...

<p>Fox News reporting a new video is out. It shows two dead american soldiers burned and being dragged through the streets.</p> <p>There is a belief that they are the bodies of troopers Tucker and Menchaca.</p>

TYRE, Lebanon - The International Red Cross said on Saturday its officials had met three captured Hezbollah fighters in Israel and urged the Jewish state to declare the number of Lebanese guerrillas in its jails. Andreas Wigger, head of the international committee’s delegation in Lebanon, also asked Hezbollah’s top official in southern Lebanon, Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, to allow his group access to the two Israeli soldiers snatched by the guerrilla group, ICRC spokesman Hisham Hassan said. Hezbollah’s capture of the two soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid triggered a 34-day war that killed nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly...

AHMED FAWAZ sits in a wheelchair in a sweat-stained hospital gown, smoking a cigarette in the sweltering heat. He was discharged from a Beirut hospital this week, after losing his leg when a Lebanese Red Cross ambulance he was in with his family came under an Israeli air attack in south Lebanon on July 23. The incident near the village of Qana left his son Mohammed, 12, scarred by shrapnel. The attack on two ambulances ferrying the injured between Tibnin and Tyre was widely reported by the international media. Yet the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has condemned press coverage of...

THE International Committee of the Red Cross has rebuked Foreign Minister Alexander Downer for relying on an unverified internet blog to claim an Israeli missile strike on one of its ambulances in southern Lebanon was a hoax. A spokeswoman for the ICRC in Geneva said yesterday there was no evidence to support Mr Downer's assertion that the international media had been duped in reporting that Israel had deliberately targeted the ambulance. An image of the roof of the ambulance showed what was purportedly an entry hole allegedly made by an Israeli rocket which had pierced the centre of the red...

by Mark Finkelstein August 10, 2006 - 08:52 That truth is the first casualty of war has been borne home by the proliferating scandal of photographs of the current Middle East crisis doctored so as to portray Israel in the worst possible light. At this point, can we look at any image from the area without a good dose of doubt? Take this morning's report on the Today show. NBC's Richard Engel, in Tyre, Lebanon, reported that: "The fighting has made humanitarian relief efforts almost impossible. Israel has cut roads and attacked vehicles, isolating Hezbollah and everyone else." This was...

Humanitarian Aid Organization Israel La'ad Comes to Kiryat Shomena Is the UN and the International Red Cross Discriminating Against Israel? By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Kiryat Shmona ---August 9.....The supermarket in Kiryat Shmona, Israel was empty. No lines, no loudspeakers announcing sales, no sound of cash machines opening and closing. Breaking this silence was the wail of air raid sirens as an endless line of shopping carts filled to the brim with everything from milk and cheese to washing detergent and shaving cream waited by one cash register. Driving in large, green and blue pickup trucks, flying Israel flags...

Hamas did not allow representatives of the Red Cross to visit kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit, sources said Saturday. The humanitarian organization had requested last week to see Shalit in order to assess his health condition, and were denied the visit by Hamas. "We will not allow visitors to see the soldier while the families of thousands of jailed Palestinians cannot see their loved ones," Hamas officials said.

Israel La'ad To Provide Humanitarian Aid To Northern Towns By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Tel Aviv----August 3......Since the war in Lebanon began three weeks ago with the Hezbollah terror organization, the Israel civilian populations of Haifa, Kiryat Shmona, Nahariya, Metulla, Rosh Pina, Nazareth and Tiberius have suffered numerous casualties, hundreds of injuries, emotional trauma and economic devastation. According to the Israel police over 2,000 rockets and Hezbollah missiles have slammed into Israel from Lebanon as a result of terror rocket attacks. Over 70 Israelis, including babies and children, have died with more than 1,700 Israelis injured. Lebanon has totally...

REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. (Army News Service, July 10, 2006) – Having volunteered with the Red Cross, Cindra Smith knew there was something wrong when she arrived home from work late one night and had a Red Cross message on her machine. “When I called them back I was told to wait by the phone and expect a call,” she said. “When I got the phone call they said my daughter had been shot in the back during an IED attack in Iraq.” Pvt. Tracy Branton, Smith’s oldest daughter, was a heavy wheel mechanic on a convoy in Iraq when it...