3 Red Cross Workers Killed in Ukraine by Shelling

New York Times,

Three Red Cross workers were killed and two wounded on Thursday when artillery fire struck a frontline aid distribution site in Ukraine on Thursday, the organization said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross workers were preparing to distribute wood and coal briquettes in the village of Viroliubivka, in the Donetsk region, when they were hit, the group said in a statement.

The aid distribution had not yet started and no residents were harmed, the Red Cross said. The supplies were intended to prepare residents for the cold winter nights that are soon to come.

The Red Cross said that its teams worked in the region regularly and that its vehicles were clearly marked.

Images from after the attack show a white truck with a large red cross centered on the side engulfed in flames, its cab on fire and plumes of black smoke billowing upward in an arch.

The wounded staff members were taken to receive medical attention, and one was in serious condition, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine said in a statement.

The attack took place amid increasing Russian bombardment around the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, roughly 35 miles away, as Russian troops pressed ahead with an offensive aimed at capturing the strategic city. Conditions in the city have deteriorated, and residents who remain are largely without water or electricity.

The Red Cross denounced the shelling without assigning specific blame.

“I condemn attacks on Red Cross personnel in the strongest terms,” the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, said in the statement. “It’s unconscionable that shelling would hit an aid distribution site. Our hearts are broken today as we mourn the loss of our colleagues and care for the injured.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine blamed Moscow for the deaths and called the attacks “another Russian war crime” in a statement paired with a photo of the Red Cross vehicle ablaze.

Last year was the deadliest on record for humanitarian aid workers, according to the United Nations, which reported 280 aid workers killed in 33 countries in 2023, a 137 percent increase over the year before.

For 2023 and the first half of 2024, the I.C.R.C. reported six staff members killed and 14 injured. That figure did not include Thursday’s casualties.

Pat Griffiths, a Red Cross spokesman in Ukraine, was at a conference in Kyiv when he received news of his colleagues’ deaths. Mr. Griffiths said he had recently traveled to the eastern Ukraine with the team whose members were killed.

“The feeling right now is grief,” he said. “And then because of our neutrality, all we can do is repeat the call, this urgent call, for all countries around the world, all parties to a conflict, to respect international humanitarian law, which is crystal clear that humanitarian workers and those who help, and ambulance drivers or first aid responders, are not targets.”

Asked if the group would cease operations in that area of Ukraine, another spokesman, Jason Straziuso, said the Red Cross monitors the security situation carefully and planned to do an analysis of the attack.

“We know that our work helping people close to the front lines of conflict is inherently dangerous,” Mr. Straziuso said. “We know we cannot avoid all risks. When people think about the risk humanitarian workers face, we hope they also think about the risk residents who live close to the front lines of conflict face.”

Judge throws out two charges Trump faces in Georgia election subversion case

CNN,

A judge on Thursday threw out three charges in the sweeping Georgia election subversion case, including two charges that former President Donald Trump faces.

The decision hasn’t yet been formally applied to Trump because his case has been paused pending appeals.

In a separate ruling, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee also upheld the marquee racketeering charge in the case, which Trump is also facing.

Trump lawyer Steve Sadow hailed the rulings as a victory.

“President Trump and his legal team in Georgia have prevailed once again,” Sadow said in a statement. “The trial court has decided that counts 15 and 27 in the indictment must be quashed/dismissed.”

McAfee threw out one count of filing false documents and one count of conspiring to file false documents, both stemming from the Trump campaign’s efforts to put forward a slate of fake GOP electors in Georgia. Trump was only named in the conspiracy count.

In the ruling, McAfee also threw out a separate count of filing false documents, which Trump was charged with. That count relates to untrue statements about supposed voter fraud that were included in one of Trump’s lawsuits in December 2020 that attempted to negate the election results.

These rulings only narrowly took effect for former Trump lawyer John Eastman and Georgia state Sen. Shawn Still, who were involved in the 2020 fake electors plot. Their cases are not currently paused. Trump was only named in two of the three charges that McAfee threw out Thursday.

The awkward ruling from McAfee comes as he has only partial jurisdiction over the 2020 election meddling case. Trump and most of his remaining co-defendants are seeking to have an appeals court disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from overseeing the case. So, their cases are paused with McAfee, who presides in a lower court. But two defendants, Eastman and Still, opted to move ahead with their cases in the lower court rather than join the appeal over whether Willis should be prosecuting the case.

Willis, a Democrat, originally secured a 13-count indictment against Trump last summer, related to his multi-pronged attempts to overturn his 2020 defeat in the Peach State. McAfee already threw out three of Trump’s charges in March.

Willis’ office declined to comment. McAfee’s chambers did not immediately return a request for additional clarification.

‘Never sought Mamata’s resignation’: Doctors blame Bengal govt over failed meet to resolve RG Kar stalemate

Hindustan Times,

Agitating doctors blamed the West Bengal government over failure to resolve the RG Kar impasse, saying they never sought the chief minister’s resignation.

After an attempt to resolve the medic unrest in Kolkata failed once again, agitating doctors on Thursday pointed the blame at the West Bengal government for its rigidness to not allow the live streaming of the meeting. The protestors also said they never sought chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s resignation, as offered by her, over the rape and murder of a junior doctor in Kolkata last month.

The doctors said that Mamata Banerjee, through her remarks, was attempting to blame the medics for the impasse over the RG Kar issue, and that their ‘cease work’ agitation would continue until their demands were met.

“The chief minister’s remarks are unfortunate. We wanted the talks to take place. However, the state administration was adamant about not allowing live streaming of the meeting. Our demands are justified. We wanted live streaming for the transparency of the meeting,” one of the agitating doctors said, reported PTI.

The talks were scheduled for 5pm in the presence of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, as demanded by the protesters. The CM waited for more than two hours to meet the agitating junior doctors. However, the meeting did not take place as scheduled.

The protesting doctors refused to hold any talks with the West Bengal government unless their demand for the live telecast of the meeting was met.

“We had never asked for her resignation and are neither here to press for it. We are here with our demands for the sake of justice for the murdered doctor of RG Kar Hospital. We wanted to resolve this issue. We are extremely unhappy that the talks did not take place. But we will still wait for a response from the administration,” the agitating doctor said.

Meanwhile, another protestor said that they never sought Mamata’s resignation over the matter. She said that not even the parents of the victim doctor have demanded the chief minister’s resignation.

“This is not our aim at all, our aim is justice (for the murdered RG Kar hospital doctor). Nowhere in our five demands have we demanded her resignation. Our demand is clear. We want those creating hurdles in the path of justice to be brought under the purview of law. Not even the parents of the victim have demanded her resignation,” she said.

This comes after CM Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday that she is “ready to resign and leave the post for the sake of the people”, expressing her disappointment over the junior doctors’ refusal to meet.