Armed with machetes and knives, Haitian national police and local officials destroyed some 200 tents in a Port-au-Prince camp set up by people left homeless in last year’s earthquake.
Popular Haitian singer Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) was sworn in as his country’s 56th president amid a blackout in the capital—after a failed effort to amend the Constitution to allow presidents two consecutive terms.
166,000 homeless Haitians are threatened with eviction from their displaced persons camps while the Clinton Bush Fund spends $2 million building a luxury hotel.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) hosted a high-publicity fact-finding delegation in San Juan to highlight human rights abuses in Puerto Rico, finding that that a “culture of fear” inhibits free speech on the island.
A new United Nations report agrees with most of the conclusions of Haitian and foreign observers who blame the deadly cholera outbreak on bad sanitation practices at a base operated by UN troops.
Far-right Cuban activist Orlando Bosch died in Miami at the age of 84. Accused in a number of terrorist actions against Cuba, he denied he was involved in a string of 1997 attacks on hotels in Havana.
The “international community” is pressuring Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council to change 18 questionable decisions in the Parliament race—as presidential candidate “Sweet Micky” Martelly is accused of intimidating journalists.
Workers at a Haitian telephone company privatized last year went on strike to demand a full 36 months’ salary in compensation for their impending layoffs.
A federal jury in El Paso, Texas, acquitted Cuban-born former CIA “asset” Luis Posada Carriles of 11 counts of fraud and obstruction of justice, handing US prosecutors their latest defeat in the case.
Popular singer Michel (“Sweet Micky”) Martelly defeated fellow right-winger Mirlande Hyppolite Manigat in the race for Haiti’s presidency—but real power still lies with the multinational Interim Haiti Recovery Commission.
Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd, South Korea’s leading apparel manufacturer, is pushing ahead with plans to open a large garment assembly plant near the coastal village of Caracol in Haiti’s agricultural Northeast department.
The number of displaced Haitians living in camps in the Port-au-Prince area after the January 2010 earthquake has now fallen to about 680,000. But those who left the camps haven’t necessarily found better shelter.
