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WASHINGTON -- Haitian-American and immigrant activists who greeted President Barack Obama's election with high hopes are growing frustrated with the administration's failure to deliver one of their top goals. Obama said in July he was ``very sympathetic'' to the community's request to allow Haitian immigrants now illegally in the country to stay temporarily, but no decision has been announced. Some activists say their patience is wearing thin.

It took 9 years to complete the Haitian monument in Franklin Square, but it took 230 years for the people of Haiti to receive the proper recognition for their role in the Revolutionary War. "The best moment in my life!" shouted Daniel Fils-Aime, who has seen this project through for those 9 years. "This recognition is a reward for all Haitians whether they are in the U.S. or Haiti," said Ralph Latortue, the Haiti consulate general in Miami. The monument was originally unveiled unfinished with only four statues in 2007, but thanks to a single-donor, the sculpture was recently completed,...

A United Nations plane has crashed in western Haiti, killing all 11 people on board, UN officials say. The Uruguayan surveillance plane was monitoring the Dominican Republic border as part of its tasks with the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti. Most of those on board the plane were military officers from Uruguay and Jordan, officials told the BBC. More than 9,000 UN personnel are stationed in Haiti, which has long been ravaged by violence and instability. Police officer Cadostin Marc-Andre told the AFP news agency the plane had been nearing the municipality of Ganthier when it came down. UN spokeswoman...

Bill Clinton, UN special envoy to Haiti and former US President, holds a piece made of pressed garbage to be used as fuel during an IBD international business meeting in Port-au-Prince, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009. Clinton and a trade delegation of at least 200 businessmen arrived to encourage a trade and investment mission in Haiti. Former President Bill Clinton holds a piece of charcoal made from saw dust to heat and cook food as he speaks about Haiti during the Americas Conference in Coral Gables Fla, Tuesday Sept 29, 2009. Days before he leads a trade delegation to Haiti to...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Police in Haiti have detained a man wanted for questioning in the slaying of his wife and their five children in Florida. An Associated Press reporter saw Mesac Damas in custody at a police station near the Port-au-Prince airport Monday afternoon. Two officers confirmed it was him. They spoke on condition of anonymity because his capture had not been publicly announced.

To family, friends and Fairfield University alumni and officials, he was the model citizen, a social activist whose decade of work with homeless Haitian street boys earned him an honorary degree from his alma mater. But when Douglas Perlitz, 39, appeared Friday in federal court in Denver, he agreed to be returned to Connecticut to face a 10-count indictment alleging he used his position in the university-supported Project Pierre Toussaint program to provide shelter, food, money and other gifts to homeless street boys in exchange for sex.

A year after a string of storms battered Haiti, South Florida Haitian leaders are stepping up efforts to press the Obama administration to activate a designation that would allow some 30,000 Haitians in the United States to seek employment. ``Our people need a work permit to continue contributing to this country and to provide for their families,'' said the Rev. Jonas Georges, a pastor at All Nations Presbyterian Church in North Miami Beach. ``It is a status that the president can say, with the stroke of a pen, `there it is.' '' Georges' plea came Monday at a news conference...

FORT BRAGG, N.C., Aug. 13, 2009 – As an 8-year-old boy sitting on the roof of a friend’s house in war-torn Haiti in 1994, Claudy Bellanger saw a sight that captivated his attention: helicopters speeding past carrying American soldiers. Army Spc. Claudy Bellanger’s experiences with U.S. soldiers as a boy growing up in Haiti led to his joining the Army. U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Kissta M. Feldner  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “I’d never seen them with my own eyes before, only on television,” he said. Bellanger’s boyhood experiences with U.S. troops in his home country set him...

In October 1994, President Bill Clinton used the U.S. military to force Haiti to take back former President Jean Bertrand Aristide, an intolerant populist who had been deposed in a coup three years earlier. The Haitian people didn’t fare well under the decade of Aristide tyranny and corruption following that U.S. intervention. But key Democrats, who secured contracts with the Haitian government, did. This sad chapter in U.S. foreign policy is a reminder of the immortal words of the French statesman Charles Talleyrand: “Countries don’t have friends, they have interests.” The Clinton administration had interests in Haiti. And that fact...

Isabelle Redford is a 7 year old little girl who loves to draw, but her art is more than just kid stuff. She is an artist. Her drawings are good enough to earn some real money but she isn’t spending it on toys or candy. Isabelle draws cards and raise money to help the orphans. It all started when Isabelle was 5, her mother Kelly Redford told her a story about twin girls in Haiti whose mother died during childbirth. Isabelle immediately asks her mother, “What can we do, we have to help.” Isabelle brainstormed and thought of a way...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Bill Clinton aims to refocus international attention on this Caribbean country's deep economic problems and environmental decay during his first visit as the United Nations' special envoy to Haiti. The former U.S. president, who is expected to meet with Haitian President Rene Preval and visit hurricane-battered areas, is lending his prestige to the plight of the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere as world attention has shifted to the global financial crisis and other trouble spots. He was scheduled to arrive late Monday, but no public events were planned until Tuesday, the United Nations said.

In a gesture of charity, the Canadian government has released the Republic of Haiti of its entire $2.3-million debt to Canada, Jim Flaherty, the finance minister said Thursday. The move, a part of the Canadian Debt Initiative, brings the total debt of impoverished countries cancelled by Canada to $965-million, including debt owed by Latin American and Caribbean nations. "Today’s announcement frees up valuable financial resources that can be better spent on Haiti’s priorities, not its liabilities," Mr. Flaherty said. "At a time of unprecedented hardship in the global economy, Canada continues to eliminate financial burdens faced by Haiti and other...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Three international organizations canceled $1.2 billion of Haiti's debt Tuesday, freeing up millions of dollars each year for the deeply impoverished Caribbean nation that is beset by humanitarian crises. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund said their boards decided this week to forgive Haiti's obligations to the two organizations, a move that triggered previously announced debt relief from the Inter-American Development Bank. The actions erased nearly two-thirds of Haiti's outstanding debt. As of April, Haiti owned more than $1.9 billion, according to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. "This is a pretty...

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Queens, New York... A little girl was burned over a 25 percent of her body and police said Thursday her mother and grandmother are responsible. What's even more disturbing is the fact that they said it happened during a ritual at the family's Queens Village home. The Queens district attorney said she was just 6 years old. And deliberately set on fire by her mother and grandmother. In what the top cop called a Haitian voodoo ritual. "She had accelerant poured on her and that a ring of fire was created. She was then placed inside the ring of fire...

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday officially named former U.S. President Bill Clinton as special envoy to Haiti. The position calls for Clinton to work to create jobs and access to basic services for the people of Haiti. “All I want to do is help the Haitians take over control of their own destiny,” Clinton said. The U.N. Office for the Special Envoy for Haiti said unemployment reaches 70 percent nationally and 78 percent of Haitians live on less than $2 a day. Even though Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Ban said he believes that it...

Key to victory is that Republicans develop a 435 strategy, fielding candidates in every seat. The need to take the fight to Democrats should be obvious to anyone who’s ever watched as much as a little league game in which one team has a great offense while the other plays a fine defensive strategy. Team offense wins 10-1. Fielding a candidate in each congressional district also allows us to gain some real stars who want to do amazing things for their district. Few if any have ever run with a more unique story than 2010’s Republican candidate for Florida’s 23rd...

The former President--in a development first broken by Laura Rozen--has accepted an appointment to become a United Nations special envoy to Haiti. Clinton notes that Haiti is a country that he first fell in love with when he and Hillary traveled there 35 years ago. From his account of that visit in his memoir, it would seem that it was a remarkable trip indeed. At the time, he was a defeated congressional candidate, who had gone to Haiti on something of a lark, as he pondered whether he wanted to take another stab at politics by making a bid for...

Former President Bill Clinton, who has committed his philanthropic efforts to helping hurricane ravaged Haiti, has been named a special envoy to the Caribbean nation on behalf of the United Nations. The honor comes two months after Clinton visited Haiti along with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in an effort to raise global attention to the country's effort to rebuild following a year of natural disasters that wreaked havoc on the Haitian economy, its people and its already fragile landscape. The four back-to-back storms left almost 800 dead and created nearly $1 billion in damage.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to name former U.S. President Bill Clinton as his special envoy to Haiti, U.N. officials said on Monday, in a move that could attract investment in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation and help stabilize the country. "The announcement is expected to come soon," one U.N. official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The official said a formal announcement could come as early as Tuesday.

RIVIERA BEACH — One by one, the bodies were carried off the boat in a somber sunset procession. Wrapped in silver tarps or white sheets, they rode up the long wooden dock on gurneys. The paramedics had a steady rhythm worked out by the time they reached the last one - a tiny brown package, small enough to carry in a gym bag. The body of a child.

Hello! I'm connecting with you once again from Haiti after spending an absolutely splendid day at a school of over 500 students that has been supported for the last seven years by members of a California local of one of our national unions. The children greeted us in Kreyol, French, and English showing us the efficacy of people-to-people missions in instances where U.S. policy is absolutely abominable. The Haitians rightly feel a sense of betrayal at the way their neighbor to the north has treated them because they know that they helped our country in the Revolutionary War in its...

Just two days after US President Barack Hussein Obama shared a controversial and landmark handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has released a study analyzing the flowering alliance between the increasingly anti-Western Latin America and the virulently anti-Israel Iran. The study was conducted at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), a non-governmental organization dedicated to Israeli intelligence and terrorism issues. According to the study, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using anti-Western Hugo Chavez as a springboard into several Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and...

It's true that President Obama and his team have plenty of diplomas from elite schools....Which makes Patrick Gaspard so interesting. The Reliable Source has learned that the director of the Office of Political Affairs is the only top staffer who didn't graduate from college. Nonetheless, he landed one of the most important jobs in the White House....Born in Haiti, the community organizer attended Columbia University's School of General Studies, an undergrad program designed for older, nontraditional students; he studied from fall 1994 to spring 1997 but was not awarded a degree. By that time, he was already in the thick...

MILTON, Mass. (AP) — A man on a rampage fatally stabbed his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his 5-year-old sister in front of a police officer and then headed toward his 9-year-old sister with a knife in his hand before officers shot him amid what their chief described as "a killing field." There was no clear motive for the events that unfolded Saturday in a tony Boston suburb that also is home to Gov. Deval Patrick. But there was no doubt at the carnage wrought by 23-year-old Kerby Revelus against his three sisters in the two-family home they shared with their parents...

30,000 Haitians have been ordered to leave the country by U.S. immigration authorities. But, Haitian officials say they're not going to issue the travel documents the thousands of Haitians need in order to return to their native country. The U.S. had put in a 3 month break in Haitian deportations that ended on December 5.

Below are excerpts from a Feb. 9 letter to President Barack Obama from representatives of 127 immigrant and civil-rights organizations and churches nationwide, including Marleine Bastien of Haitian Women of Miami and Cheryl Little of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. Immigrant communities look forward to working with your administration. Certainly you have many pressing priorities. We are compelled, however, to bring to your attention a life or death matter: Haitian deportees face hunger, homelessness and unemployment, if not worse, in the wake of four killer storms that further devastated our hemisphere's poorest nation. We urge you to immediately stay deportations...

A girl stands in a Haitian slum without shoes, without money, but full of pride: The image won the 2008 UNICEF photo of the year competition. Belgian photographer Alice Smeets is the youngest to ever come out on top in the contest. The girl trudges barefoot through the water, which is full of old shoes, dilapidated tins, and plastic bags. Two black pigs graze on an island of trash. They are ideal pets: they are impressively robust, and they feed themselves mainly off garbage. Blue skies and clouds are reflected in the filthy water. In the background stand the dwellings...

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - A ramshackle church school collapsed in a shanty town on the outskirts of Haiti's capital on Friday, burying dozens in rubble and killing at least 50, many of them children, rescue workers said. The three-story La Promesse school caved in while class was in session, and some of the walls and debris crushed neighboring residences in the Nerettes community near Port-au-Prince, injuring still more, civil protection service official Nadia Blachard told Haitian radio. "There are 50 killed and 124 wounded, including 20 in serious condition," Blachard said.

Last year, when Sen. Barack Obama was making the circuit of conventions for journalists of color, the question was whether the prospective candidate was black enough. This year, when he appeared before the UNITY: Journalists of Color convention in Chicago, the presumptive Democratic nominee joked, “I’m too black.” Obama appeared Sunday at the close of the convention in a session aired live on CNN to talk about his observations from his trip to the Middle East and Europe, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. economy and questions from the journalists about faith, affirmative action, immigration and apologies for...

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Scorned for decades after independence, invaded by U.S. Marines and subject frequently to the whims of Washington politicians, Haiti has endured a difficult history with the United States. Now many Haitians believe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, if he becomes the first black U.S. president, could open a new chapter and help their unstable and impoverished Caribbean homeland... < snip> Many Haitians say they view Obama as an inspiration and a source of pride for black people around the world, and many view him as a kindred spirit. < snip> More recently, powerful U.S. politicians have been...

Haiti facing 'major food crisis' Malnutrition is widespread in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world Haiti faces a "major crisis" if the international community does not increase food aid to the country, the UN's food agency has warned. The World Food Programme director for the region, Pedro Medrano, said Haiti required more help to feed its poor. He appealed for $54m (£27m) in new funding to counter food prices which have risen sharply around the world. At least six people were killed in Haiti last month as protests over rising prices turned violent. The prices of wheat,...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 27 (UPI) -- The Rev. Jesse Jackson and several leaders of Florida's Haitian community arrived in Haiti Sunday to study the country's food crisis, Haitian radio reported. Jackson and others are expected to discuss food-price inflation with Haitian leaders, according to officials of his Rainbow Push Coalition. Protests over spiking food prices left at least seven people dead this month and prompted lawmakers to oust Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis. On Sunday, Ericq Pierre, a former senior adviser with the Inter-American Development Bank, was named Alexis' successor.

Haitian senators have called on the Jacques Edouard Alexis, the prime minister, to resign in the wake of violent protests over the cost of the food that left five people dead. A letter signed by 16 of Haiti's 27 senators said government action to address the crisis was "too little too late," despite calm returning to Haiti's streets. "We have advised him to resign in the next 48 hours," said Andris Riche, a senior senator, on Thursday."

Haitians say their hunger is real Thu Apr 10, 2008 4:45pm EDT By Jim Loney PORT-AU-PRINCE, April 10 (Reuters) - Elta Petithomme has been scouring the Haitian capital's garbage-strewn main market street for hours, searching for something to feed her four young children. Today, pickings are slim. Yesterday she sold a cellphone for 50 gourdes, the equivalent of about $1.30, enough to buy some bread, sugar and fried plantains. That's all the children, all under the age of 6, had to eat for the day. "Some days neighbors will cook and give us some food, as little as it is....

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A desperate appeal from the president Wednesday failed to restore order to Haiti's shattered capital, and bands of looters sacked stores, warehouses and government offices. Gunfire rang out from the wealthy suburbs in the hills to the starving slums below as 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers were unable to halt a frenzy of looting and violence that has grown out of protests over rising food prices. Thousands of people were in the streets of Port-au-Prince following President Rene Preval's speech, many looting stores and terrorizing drivers and shopkeepers with rocks. Thousands more took part other in protests across the...

Food riots turn deadly in Haiti At least four people were killed and 20 wounded when demonstrations against rising food prices turned into riots in southern Haiti, officials say. Reports say scores of people went on the rampage in the town of Les Cayes, blocking roads, looting shops and shooting at UN peacekeepers. The UN said its personnel had opened fire at some of the armed protesters. For two days running, parts of Haiti have been erupting into violence triggered by the soaring cost of food. The prices of rice, beans and fruit have gone up by 50% in the...

In a radio ad sponsored by the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, Grammy Award-winning musician Wyclef Jean is asking his fellow citizens to give up crime and work to improve the country. "If you love Wyclef, that means you love Haiti. So you should not be raping women, kidnapping people and children, because there can be no excuse for doing so," Jean said in Creole in a short ad run several times a day by local stations in Haiti. "I reject these evil practices," said the 35-year-old Jean, who also urged Haitian men to respect and protect women's rights. Haiti,...

Excerpt - PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) — In a Haitian dance hall transformed into a temple, dozens of voodoo practitioners dressed all in white, scarves around their necks in red, yellow or green, came Friday to pay homage to their first-ever "supreme master". "Open the barriers," a sole voice intoned in Creole. "The master has arrive," answered the crowd of men and women, as they rose to greet Max Beauvoir, 72. Until recently, the priests of voodoo, the heavily spirit-focused, African-rooted belief of many Haitians, operated autonomously without a formal hierarchy or rules. But through the associations of followers, they decided to...

ISSUE: Haitian president wants temporary protective status for Haitians in America. Haitian President René Préval has finally asked the U.S. government to extend temporary protective status to Haitians. The designation is long overdue, and President Bush would do well to grant Préval's request. Haiti, already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, was further devastated by last year's Tropical Storm Noel, the latest in a string of natural disasters that have rocked the country in recent times. TPS would temporarily protect Haitians already in the United States -- many of them parents of U.S. born children -- from deportation. TPS...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau. The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene...

GRAND COLLINE, Haiti (AP) - Far from the spreading slums of the Haitian capital, past barren dirt mountains and hillsides stripped to a chalky white core, two woodcutters bring down a towering oak tree in one of the few forested valleys left in the Caribbean country. Fanel Cantave, 36, says he has little choice but to make his living in a way that is causing environmental disaster in Haiti. And these days, he and his 15-year-old son, Phillipe, must travel ever farther from their village to find trees to cut. "There is no other way to get money," the father...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau. The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau. The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene...

GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) - Calling for an uprising against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, thousands of protesters, some armed, hurled stones at outnumbered Haitian police and blocked streets with flaming tires. "We're going to feed Aristide to the fire!" people once loyal to the former slum priest yelled Monday night, standing near a smoldering barricade in the western port of Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city. Demonstrators spoke bitterly against the president, accusing him of orchestrating an attack in December that ultimately left 10 people dead, saying he staged the apparent coup himself as an excuse to silence the opposition. "He betrayed us," said...

The political and constitutional turmoil in Haiti deepened yesterday as the country's parliament ceased to function and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide began in effect to rule by decree while mass protests against him continued. With a general strike entering its fifth day, President Aristide delivered a speech at the airport in Port-au-Prince in which he failed to mention the clamour for him to step down. Amid tight security, the President then left on his private jet to attend the Summit of the Americas in Mexico. His address was dedicated to honouring the founding fathers of Haiti, which became the world's first...

Before Haiti became the world's first black republic, it was a slave nation. On the island, there were quarantines, where a new slave was broken down, beaten physically, informed of his inferiority and told to be thankful to his captors — because it was the work that the slave would do for his masters that would lead to forgiveness and acceptance into heaven. Now, more than 200 years after the slaves revolted, a former Colorado couple wants to commemorate the quarantine, which they believe is the source of the Western world's violence, racism and greed. "Our culture, our society did...

Sri Lanka has promised to look into allegations that 108 of its UN peacekeepers in Haiti paid for sex, in some cases with underage girls. The men are being sent home after being accused of sexual misconduct and abuse. Officials say the law will take its course once the soldiers arrive back in Sri Lanka, but warn that little tangible evidence has been produced. In the past, UN peacekeepers have been involved in a series of sex scandals, including this year in Ivory Coast. 'Zero tolerance' Sri Lanka has sent four senior officers, including a female brigadier, to Haiti to...

New scientific finding that AIDS came to the United States from Africa via Haiti, probably arriving in Miami as early as 1969, stoked controversy among researchers and Haitians on Tuesday -- reopening deep wounds over the medical community's role in perpetuating a stigma against people from the island. Published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study aims to better explain the origin of AIDS, whose history involves a virus with a sketchy story line that began in Africa in the 1930s and emerged in Los Angeles in 1981. The findings were based, in part, on...

The AIDS virus entered the United States via Haiti, probably arriving in just one person in about 1969, earlier than previously believed, according to new research. After the virus, HIV-1, entered the U.S., it flourished and spread worldwide. "Our results show that the strain of virus that spawned the U.S. AIDS epidemic probably arrived in or around 1969. That is earlier than a lot of people had imagined," said senior author Michael Worobey. The research is the first to definitively pinpoint when and from where HIV-1 entered the United States and shows that most HIV/AIDS viruses in the U.S. descended...