Category: News

Jan 29 2010

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 42 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Disease spreads in quake-hit Haiti

by Virginie Montet, AFP

29 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Haiti’s desperate earthquake survivors faced a new threat Friday as the United Nations reported a rise in cases of diarrhea, measles and tetanus in squalid tent camps for victims.

A vast foreign aid effort is struggling to meet survivors’ needs 17 days after the disaster, which killed around 170,000 people and left one million homeless and short of medicine, food and water.

Several medical teams reported increased cases of diarrhea in the last few days in Haiti, Paul Garwood, a spokesman for the UN World Health Organization, said in Geneva.

Jan 28 2010

Afternoon Edition

Our senior news editor is experiencing technical difficulties. So, here LIVE from warm, sunny Port au Prince, Haiti is your afternoon news

This is also an Open Thread

Aid missing many in a city of want

MSF Haiti 28/01/10

PORT-AU-PRINCE – When aid groups and soldiers venture out of the heavily secured refugee camps to deliver food to the starving at hundreds of smaller sites scattered everywhere throughout this capital city, they question whether they will be providing succour to the most needy, or exactly the opposite.

“When we deliver to women and children, we have to know whether they will get it or will they get killed for it,” said Adam Klyczek, a medic with the 82nd U.S. Airborne squadron of 400 soldiers based at the Pétionville Golf and Country Club, now home to about 40,000 refugees. “Is it a violent area, will we create a riot, will we start looting?”

Jan 28 2010

J. D. Salinger R.I.P.

J. D. Salinger, author of “Catcher in the Rye” has passed away of natural causes according to his son. Now I will have to read the book. Blessed Be

J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose “The Catcher in the Rye” shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91.

Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author’s son said in a statement from Salinger’s literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

“The Catcher in the Rye,” with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, Cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which made “Catcher” a featured selection, advised that for “anyone who has ever brought up a son” the novel will be “a source of wonder and delight – and concern.”

h/t TPM

Jan 27 2010

Wednesday Morning Science Supplement

Wednesday Morning Science Supplement is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Science

1 India’s ‘miracle’ biofuel crop: too good to be true?

by Yasmeen Mohiuddin, AFP

Tue Jan 26, 10:50 pm ET

NEW DELHI (AFP) – To its fans, jatropha is a miracle crop, an eco-friendly answer to India’s growing energy needs, but some experts are starting to question whether the wonder-shrub is too good to be true.

The seeds of the wild plant, which grows abundantly across India, produce non-edible oil that can be blended with diesel, to make the biofuel that is part of government efforts to cut carbon emissions and combat climate change.

That, combined with the shrub’s much vaunted ability to flourish on poorly irrigated land, should make it the perfect crop for wasteland in the drought-prone nation.

Jan 26 2010

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 No respite for Haiti amid fresh aftershocks

by Daphne Benoit, AFP

1 hr 53 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Two new aftershocks rattled weary Haitians Tuesday, as top US officials defended the huge American military-led aid operation from criticisms of being too heavy-handed.

“We just can’t get used to these quakes. Each aftershock is terrifying and everyone is afraid,” trader Edison Constant said after the aftershocks struck in quick succession around dawn, two weeks after the quake.

“I hid under my bed,” added iron merchant Julien Louis, exhausted by a stream of some 50 aftershocks since the devastating 7.0-magnitude quake on January 12.

Jan 25 2010

Afternoon Edition

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Haiti PM begs for earthquake aid

by Dave Clark, AFP

1 hr 7 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Haiti’s prime minister begged donors Monday to back the rebuilding of his quake-hit country and boost international aid as hundreds of thousands of people fought for survival in the rubble.

Nearly two weeks after the worst recorded disaster in the Americas killed at least 150,000 people, a conference of foreign creditors in Montreal heard that it would take at least 10 years to rebuild the stricken Caribbean nation.

As bulldozers cleared more corpse-filled buildings in the center of the flattened capital Port-au-Prince, Haitians expressed both hope and skepticism about the emergency meeting of donor countries in Montreal.

Jan 24 2010

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

Between Games Edition.

Colts 30 – 17.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Bulldozers move into Haiti capital as victims pray

by Jordi Zamora and Charles Onians, AFP

2 hrs 35 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Thousands of Haitian voices rose in prayer from ruined churches Sunday, as recovery teams began to bulldoze the capital’s devastated centre and a French ship carrying supplies arrived.

Twelve days after a catastrophic earthquake razed much of the city, hundreds of thousands of Haitians remained in desperate need of food, water and shelter, despite a large-scale US military intervention and UN-run aid program.

In Port-au-Prince, morning prayers and song gave way to apocalyptic scenes as earthmovers cleared downtown rubble, spewing rotting corpses into the streets and opening new routes for looters to swarm through the ruins.

Jan 23 2010

Time Magazine on Haiti

A Weekend News Digest Supplement

I apologize for not maxing out on my news pieces recently, but I’ve been busy with Administrative issues and creating other content.

Not to mention real life.

I’ve looked at Time Magazine for the first time in a while and I discovered a backlog of pieces on Haiti that I thought I’d present as a supplement for you.

As always, this is not all the pieces, just the ones I think long enough to quote and of interest to my readers.

From Yahoo News World

1 Could the Haiti Earthquake Have Been Predicted?

By JEFFREY KLUGER, Time Magazine

Wed Jan 13, 4:10 pm ET

The tragedy of the earthquake that struck Haiti Tuesday, Jan. 12, is easy to measure in the lives lost, homes destroyed and infrastructure wrecked. The paradox of the quake is equally evident: when a natural disaster so devastating hits, oughtn’t we have some way of predicting it? Hurricanes, blizzards, even volcanoes can be forecast well before their arrival, after all, allowing governments and people to make lifesaving preparations. Earthquakes, however, are stealth disasters, geological phenomena largely undetectable until just seconds before they occur. What scientists have long wanted to know is why quakes are so sneaky and what, if anything, can be done to read their warning signs better.

Jan 23 2010

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Haiti calls off search for trapped quake victims

by Clarens Renois, AFP

2 hrs 21 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Haiti officially abandoned earthquake search and rescue efforts on Saturday as survivors gathered in a ruined cathedral to mourn the country’s archbishop and 110,000 other victims of the disaster.

The government’s decision came despite the rescue on Friday of two people who spent 10 days buried in the rubble, but officials said it was aimed at letting aid workers focus on getting supplies to hundreds of thousands of people.

The United Nations warned meanwhile that Haiti’s upcoming rainy season — a source of other disasters that have plagued the country in recent years — could pose a new threat to beleaguered survivors of the 7.0-magnitude quake.

Jan 22 2010

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Haiti rescuers switch focus to the living

by Charles Onians, AFP

1 hr 21 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Desperate Haitian quake survivors braved new aftershocks Friday to get the first major food hand-outs in the capital, as rescuers switched from searching for buried victims to helping the living.

US forces also slowly reopened the main port to bring in huge aid shipments, with international assistance finally gathering pace 10 days after the disaster killed at least 75,000 people and left 500,000 homeless.

A televised benefit hosted by George Clooney and featuring performances from Wyclef Jean, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and others was, meanwhile, set to be screened on US networks and streamed live on Internet sites.

Jan 21 2010

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 60 Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Mass relocation for Haiti homeless

by Jacques Guillon and Sophie Nicholson, AFP

1 hr 13 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Haitian officials Thursday unveiled a huge operation to move hundreds of thousands of homeless outside the ruined capital, as medics worked feverishly to treat countless injured.

In a bid to move an estimated 500,000 left destitute by the January 12 quake, the Haitian government said it was seeking to relocate them out of squalid, stinking tent cities into housing outside Port-au-Prince.

“The government has made available to people free transportation. A large operation is taking place: we’re in the process of relocating homeless people,” said Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime.

Jan 21 2010

Shake, Rattle and Operate (Up Dated)

From MSF

Photobucket

Haiti: Treatment Continues Through Powerful Aftershock

On Wednesday morning, as Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Haiti continued to work through long queues of patients waiting for treatment and surgery, the country was shaken anew by a powerful aftershock. In Choscal hospital, where MSF has been running two operating theaters, patients were so alarmed by the tremors that they had to be relocated into tents outside the building. The surgeons stayed in the hospital, however, rotating in regular shifts, performing one operation after another.

In the week since the January 12 earthquake, MSF has established 10 operating theaters in the battered country. Seven are in Port-au-Prince hospitals-Choscal, Trinité, Carrefour and Chancerelle-and three others are outside the capital, in the towns of Leogane and Jacmel. Overall, MSF surgical teams have been carrying out an average of 130 operations per day. Simultaneously, logisticians are racing to find new facilities or rehabilitate damaged ones. Additional operating theaters are being prepared in Leogane and Grand Goave, west of the capitol, and inside Port-au-Prince, where a team expects to complete the construction of an inflatable hospital with two operating theaters by Friday.

Cross posted at The Wild Wild Left

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