Free Republic

Three million children in Haiti are in need of humanitarian assistance as continuing gang violence hampers aid delivery, the head of the UN children's agency, Unicef, has said. Catherine Russell said the situation in gang-wracked Haiti was "catastrophic" and growing worse "by the day". She told a meeting of the UN Security Council that in many areas essential services had collapsed. Meanwhile, a transitional presidential council has still not been sworn in. While Haiti has been blighted by gangs for years, the armed groups stepped up their attacks at the end of February when Prime Minister Ariel Henry travelled to...

Haiti a country of nearly 12 million people in the Caribbean is on the brink of total State collapse around 200 0:06 different heavily armed gangs have managed to seize control over large swats of the country's territory and are operating with near impunity while some 0:13 of the more heavily armed gangs that are more similar to paramilitaries have managed to seize control over as much as 90% of hades's capital and largest city 0:20 Port of Prince these gangs have been able to completely overpower what little is left in the country of the former 0:26 Haitian government...

San Francisco city officials plan to pull its offices from a downtown building near City Hall due to high rent and a bad real estate market, The San Francisco Standard reported Friday. The 11-story building in downtown San Francisco was initially leased to city and county officials back in 1999 and has over the years served as office space for many municipal departments like the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector, the Mayor’s Office of Disability and the Department of the Environment, the outlet reported.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Thursday it had agreed a security package to protect the borders of the Turks and Caicos Islands - a British Overseas Territory - in response to the risk violence in Haiti could spread. The Turks and Caicos Islands are 200 miles (322 km) from Haiti, where a political and social crisis has led to weeks of escalating violence and heavily armed gangs have tightened their grip on the capital Port-au-Prince The British Foreign Office said the package was designed to "respond to the risk of gang violence and illegal migration from Haiti spilling over...

In the most predictable turn of events, the government and the criminals (forgive the probably false premise that these are two distinct groups) are collectively working to rob honest and hardworking people of their money and property. It’s abundantly obvious that leftist governments in the West have proven to be so bad at “governing” that they’ve forfeited all their support—their only option now for victory at the ballot box is to resort to vote-buying schemes, either overtly (student loan “forgiveness”) or through the welfare state by providing additional “benefits.” Either way, these politicians consistently go about it through the government...

Haiti's Prime Minister Ariel Henry has agreed to resign following weeks of mounting pressure and increasing violence in the impoverished country. It comes after regional leaders met in Jamaica on Monday to discuss a political transition in Haiti. Mr Henry is currently stranded in Puerto Rico after being prevented by armed gangs from returning home. In a video address announcing his resignation, Mr Henry urged Haitians to remain calm. "The government that I am leading will resign immediately after the installation of [a transition] council," Mr Henry said. "I want to thank the Haitian people for the opportunity I had...

U.S. government officials have grown alarmed that the Haiti National Police could begin to crumble within hours — and that a long-planned multinational mission led by Kenya to provide reinforcements may not be enough to save the country from a complete descent into gang control. Outgunned Haitian police have been battling a united front of gangs and losing key firefights. Now, a potential power void and a collapse of the Haitian government that had already faced a skeptical public risks undermining whatever morale is left among the police forces. “The government could fall at any time,” a U.S. official told...

MEXICO CITY - Popocatépetl, the nearly 18,000 foot volcano that hovers like a sentinel on the southeastern fringe of Mexico's capital, awakened again Sunday, punctuating an especially shaky seismic season. Popo, as the mountain is widely called, spewed at least seven exhalations overnight Saturday and through the day Sunday, sending vapor, smoke and gas billowing into the clear sky. The most serious occurred just after 9 a.m. Sunday, sending a vapor cloud a mile into the air. Mexico's National Disaster Prevention Center issued a precautionary warning to residents, advising them to stay alert for a worsening situation and to keep...

Authorities in Mexico have confirmed the remains found in 45 plastic bags near Guadalajara belong to as many as eight call center employees, who were reported missing in May, according to CBS. Six men and two women were reported missing by their families between May 20 and May 22. While their families believed their loved ones worked at a typical call center, the facility was reportedly one of 19 in Mexico under investigation by the United States Department of the Treasury for possible links to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). “CJNG’s deep involvement in timeshare fraud in the Puerto...

California is a one-party Democrat state with an incredibly wealthy tech sector and, through Hollywood, control over the American psyche. For a while, thanks to that tech money and Hollywood’s continuing (albeit diminishing) popularity, it looked as if California could sustain its mad spending, drug policies, pro-criminal policies, and generally huge government without imploding. Several recent reports, however, indicate that the implosion is coming fast. To begin with, the state has gone from $100 billion budget surplus last year to a probable $25 billion budget deficit this year. The accepted wisdom is that this is the first indication of a...

Jiménez said investigations into the cause of the incident had begun but added that “everything indicates” an accident, and that she would share more details upon completion of the investigation. Jiménez also highlighted the “heroic” actions taken by the pilot who crash-landed the helicopter in an empty lot instead of a populated area. Images from the crash showed the smoldering remains of the helicopter and police cars around a grassy area.

One of the Sinaloa cartel leaders who launched a struggle for control of the gang following the re-arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was captured Tuesday ... Damaso Lopez, known by the nickname "El Licenciado" — a title for college graduates. Lopez was long considered Guzman's right-hand man and helped him escape from a Mexican prison in 2001. Lopez, 51, is believed to have been locked in a dispute with Guzman's sons for control of the cartel's territories. The head of Mexico's federal detectives' agency, Omar Garcia Harfuch, said Lopez was "one of the main instigators of violence in Sinaloa...

Old Hugh Hewitt is apparently getting good intel (14 August FR Post "Military Coup in Mexico"). Powerful and influential senior Mexican General, General Segio Aponte Polito, was recently removed from his position as the 2nd Military District Commander (LA Times, 9 Aug). Unlike the US, Generals in Mexico don't get “resigned”..they play major roles in many power broker positions (and yes, until late, behind the scenes). The Mexican Military is fed up with not being able to control the spiraling arms race and increasing sophistication of the cartels. Expect to see Aponte in the future..and before the US election...Wait and...

Since Monday, Haiti has been sinking into chaos in widespread anti-government protests that have turned violent in parts of Port-au-Prince, as well as rural cities like Petit Goave and Gonaives. The protests had been intensifying for weeks, stoked by the rising cost of living, a scarcity of U.S. dollars, political manipulation and the lack of fuel at the pumps after two suppliers, providing 40% of the market, stopped ordering. “This incident is simply unacceptable. The looted food was intended to feed nearly 100,000 schoolchildren until the end of the year and provide emergency aid to the most vulnerable families in...

And note-- O'Keefe is in a lawsuit with the New York Times. The FBI launched a political raid on Project Veritas' offices, and the personal homes of James O'Keefe and his reporters -- with battering rams at the ready -- and then not only seized his private, confidential, protected communications with counsel, but then immediately leaked them to the corporation they are politically allied with whom James O'Keefe is suing. The New York Times immediately ran a hit piece which they intend to help their court case, claiming that James O'Keefe talked to his lawyers about how to avoid breaking...

Ashraf Ghani played a central role in the design and implementation of the post-Taliban settlement in Afghanistan, serving as UN adviser to the Bonn process and as Finance Minister during Afghanistan's Transitional Administration. He has worked at the World Bank and taught at Johns Hopkins and Berkeley universities. He has been nominated for the job of Secretary General of the United Nations and considered for the job of President of the World Bank. He chairs the Institute for State Effectiveness.

A bill that the Mexican president is expected to approve soon would curtail private investors in the energy industry and possibly reverse gains in lowering carbon emissions. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has never been short of criticisms about his predecessor’s legacy. But he has reserved a special contempt for the sweeping overhaul that opened Mexico’s tightly held energy industry to the private sector.He has called the changes a form of legalized “pillaging,” the product of corruption and a resounding failure. He has suggested that some foreign energy investors are “looting” the nation and that Mexican lawyers who work for...

Dozens of students abducted from a school in northwest Nigeria last week have been rescued, the state government announced Saturday. Gov. Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger state said that 38 abductees, including several staff members, were rescued around 4 a.m. Bello met with the victims, all of whom were present at a press conference Saturday afternoon, except for one who was being treated at a local hospital for exhaustion. The victims, members of the Government Science College of Kagara, had been abducted Feb. 17 by gunmen in military uniforms. One student was shot and killed in the attack. Nigerian schoolchildren...

For generations, the United States has been viewed by much of the world as an infallible beacon of strength and power, thanks to its economic, military and social prowess. These days, the country is far from dominant. Instead, America is exhibiting all of the key indicators that political experts use to characterise a failing state – the kind of nation on the brink you might’ve found in the post-Soviet era or in war-torn regions of Africa and the Middle East. The notion that the world’s oldest functioning democracy could ever fail was, until recently, “unthinkable to all but the most...

The nation’s leading Spanish-language news network continues to inject its opposition to President Donald Trump into every possible angle. The most recent instance of institutional bias is reflected in a report on a recent study by the American Heart Association.