Tag: Afternoon Edition

The appeal, covering needs in 2010, is more than double the U.N.’s initial request on Jan. 15 for $562 million to help quake victims for six months.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his special envoy for Haiti, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, launched the $1.44 billion appeal at a meeting with diplomats from many of the 191 other U.N. member states.

The Miami Herald newspaper reported that the group arrived at Miami International Airport shortly after midnight.

A Haitian judge freed the missionaries without bail on Wednesday — though the charges were not dropped — and they were whisked to the airport in a van bearing diplomatic plates to board a US military transport plane for Miami.

“I have come to tell the Haitian people and their leaders that France, which was the first on the ground after the catastrophe, will remain firmly at the their side to help them pick themselves up again and open a new happy page in their history,” Sarkozy said in Port-au-Prince.

Sarkozy announced an aid package of some 326 million euros (446 million dollars) over the next two years, a sum that includes the cancellation of Haiti’s 56-million-euro debt.

The stark assessment from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) comes with Port-au-Prince still lying in ruins more than one month on, while the bodies of more than 200,000 dead pile up in mass graves outside the capital.

The study’s release coincided with what would normally be Haiti’s annual carnival, an explosion of pulsing music and colorful parades. But this year, the events have been cancelled as no one is in the mood to party.

With the coming rainy season threatening to worsen already squalid conditions in makeshift camps across the capital, aid organizations have been seeking to distribute tarps for up to 1,500 families per day.

More than a million Haitians are homeless, but a month after the massive quake, UN officials said only about 50,000 families, or an estimated 272,000 people, have received emergency materials to build their own shelters.

In the central Champ de Mars square, where the impact of the 7.0 magnitude temblor is still seen in the sprawling tented camps that now dominate the plaza, people began to gather from before dawn.

Part memorial service, part rally, mourners gave resilient cries of “hallelujah” as others wept for loved ones lost in an event many simply call “the catastrophe.”

“There are people who put forth the figure of 230,000, but we have counted a bit more than 217,000. These are verified figures,” Interior Minister Paul Bien-Aime said.

The government also declared a day of mourning for Friday to mark one month since the quake struck, bringing death and destruction on an unprecedented scale to the desperately poor Caribbean nation.

Sparks lit up the night as workers used heavy-duty saws to cut through tangled steel and concrete in an attempt to reach up to eight people believed to have entered the damaged Caribbean Market building before it came crashing down on Tuesday.

Rescuers earlier thought they had detected at least one person alive inside, and at one point asked for silence so they could listen for survivors using ultra-sensitive listening equipment.

The missionaries, most of whom belong to an Idaho-based Baptist church, were arrested last month trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border to the Dominican Republic 17 days after a magnitude 7 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

They were charged last week with child abduction and criminal association. Hearings that could lead either to their release or a decision to move ahead with prosecution were scheduled to resume on Tuesday and a judicial source said a ruling was unlikely before Wednesday.

While officials say food distribution has finally moved into high gear, more Haitians protested Sunday, saying the government had done nothing for them as the one-month anniversary of the January 12 devastating earthquake approached.

Meanwhile, the case of 10 Americans charged with kidnapping children in the wake of the disaster here took another turn, with their Haitian lawyer saying he had quit after being accused of seeking to bribe the judge.

But the country’s Justice Minister Paul Denis insisted they should be brought before Haitian courts, instead of being returned to the United States.

“It is Haitian law that has been violated,” Justice Minister Paul Denis told AFP. “It is up to the Haitian authorities to hear and judge the case. I don’t see any reason why they should be tried in the United States.”

More than three weeks after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake, Bellerive said his tiny Caribbean nation had been ravaged by “a disaster on a planetary scale” and detailed the tragic toll suffered by his people.

“There are more than 200,000 people who have been clearly identified as people who are dead,” he said in an interview with AFP, adding that another 300,000 injured had been treated, 250,000 homes had been destroyed and 30,000 businesses lost.