Infinite Unknown

- 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.

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Tags: Environment, Fukushima, Global News, Government, Health, Japan, Medicine, Nuclear, Nuclear reactors, Politics, Radiation, Red Cross

- 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):

原発事故を受け全村避難している福島県川内村の住民が身を寄せる同県郡山市の仮設住宅に、図書室や保育所などを備えた交流施設が６日、オープンした。ドイツの赤十字社に寄せられた義援金約４千万円を使い建てられた。

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.

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Tags: Children, Environment, Fukushima, Global News, Government, Health, Japan, Koriyama City, Nuclear, Nuclear reactors, Politics, Red Cross

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.

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Tags: FSB, Global News, Government, Politics, Red Cross, Russia

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. Continue reading »

Tags: Environment, Flood, Janet Napolitano, National Guard, Red Cross, Rhode Island, U.S., Weather

Appeal for Mongolian herders after cold kills livestock

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. Continue reading »

Tags: Environment, Mongolia, Red Cross, Weather, Winter

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.

Continue reading »

Tags: cholera, Health, Politics, Red Cross, U.N., WHO, Zimbabwe

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.

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Tags: Children, Gaza, International Law, Israel, Military, Palestinians, Politics, Red Cross

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.

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Tags: Children, Economy, Food, Food Prices, Food shortages, Health, Inflation, malnutrition, Oil Prices, Recession, Red Cross, rice, U.N., World Bank

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.

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Tags: Food, Gaza, Israel, Politics, Red Cross, U.N.

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.”

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Tags: Bush administration, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Government, Guantánamo, Politics, Red Cross, Terrorism, Torture, U.S., War Crimes, War on Terror