Puerto Rico: students protest tuition hike
Students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) slowed traffic in and out of San Juan when they demonstrated in a major highway to protest plans for raising tuition by $800 in January.
Students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) slowed traffic in and out of San Juan when they demonstrated in a major highway to protest plans for raising tuition by $800 in January.
At least eight people died and two disappeared when Hurricane Tomas struck Haiti; the cholera epidemic continues, and health experts fear the flooding from Tomas may help it spread.
Hundreds of protesters marched on the United Nations military base at the city of Mirebalais in the Central Plateau, charging that the Nepalese troops stationed there had caused a major outbreak of cholera.
There have been over 200 confirmed deaths so far from a cholera epidemic that apparently broke out in the Lower Artibonite River region of Haiti, local authorities report.
Haitian prison officers are found to have killed 12 detainees “deliberately and without justification,” using “inappropriate, abusive and disproportionate force” during a January prison uprising.
About 60 Haitians protested an extension of the mandate for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) by blocking the entrance to the mission’s base near the Port-au-Prince airport.
A group of 45 US Congress members called on the United States not to support presidential and legislative elections in Haiti in November if 14 political parties continue to be excluded from the ballot.
Former US president Bill Clinton and Haitian leaders met with the group monitoring international earthquake recovery aid to hear proposals that benefit the private sector in the donor countries.
Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, described policy changes intended to expand Cuba’s small private sector, part of a plan to lay off some half million public employees.
Haiti’s Civil Protection agency reports that five people died and 57 were injured when a violent storm hit Port-au-Prince and areas to the south. Camps of displaced earthquake victims were hardest hit.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner and Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive met to discuss international efforts to help Haiti’s recovery.
After three days of meetings four Haitian political coalitions announced their opposition to the general elections scheduled for Nov. 28.