Free Republic

The Red Cross has been praised for its tireless efforts assisting storm victims in Middle Tennessee. But there are concerns in the black community that the organization lacks diversity, especially in an effort helping mostly black evacuees. A number of minority churches and groups are offering to help, but say they've been left out. The Red Cross Shelter in Franklin opened its doors to storm victims last week. It’s only one of two shelters in Middle Tennessee. The other is in Nashville. Both shelters are in suburban areas, and the volunteers are predominately white, while the evacuees are almost all...

United States President George Bush was tonight accused of trying to undermine the United Nations by setting up a rival coalition to coordinate relief following the Asian tsunami disaster. The president has announced that the US, Japan, India and Australia would coordinate the world’s response. But former International Development Secretary Clare Short said that role should be left to the UN. “I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up,”...

Soldiers suply water and food, cheering Iraqis, etc Iraqi citizens stand on top of a statue of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) which was pulled down by US-led forces, in the town of Kerbala, April 6, 2003. REUTERS/Peter Andrews Children return to school for the first time since the U.S.-led war on Iraq (news - web sites) started in a village near the city of Najaf in central Iraq on April 4, 2003. Soldiers from the 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion helped cleanup the school that was damaged by artillery fire. The image was used by Brigadier General Vincent Brooks...

Filed at 8:12 a.m. ET AMMAN (Reuters) - U.N. and other relief agencies on Sunday criticized the way food was being distributed under U.S. and British forces' supervision in southern Iraq in which strong Iraqis grabbed food at the expense of the weak. Over the past few days, hundreds of Iraqis have been shown on television scrambling near Basra for boxes of food aid, sent from Kuwait, while troops tried to control them. ``We want to see aid delivered to the most needy in a way that has human dignity and we don't think that only the strongest should get...

KUWAIT CITY -- A pipe linking Kuwait's water supply to southern Iraq will deliver 2.7 million litres of water per day, a British spokesman for humanitarian operations said here on Sunday. British Maj-General Albert Whitley, the US-led coalition's deputy commander of post hostility operations, said: 'Tomorrow, a pipe goes across from the Kuwaiti water supply system' to the southern port city of Umm Qasr, 'and that will deliver something in the order of 2.7 million litres a day.' The British military, together with a number of international aid organisations, will provide tankers to deliver water from the pipe's outlet 'to...