NEWS IN RELATION TO NATURAL DISASTERS

nancyk58 · January 24, 2010

OXFAM APPEAL - CANCEL HAITI's DEBT

APPEAL FROM OXFAM: HELP HAITI TODAY AND TOMORROW

CANCEL THE DEBT

Our biggest concern right now is dealing with the immediate aftermath of the humanitarian disaster caused by the devastating earthquake. But in our concern to help those suffering, let’s not forget the long term.

The world’s attention is focused on Haiti. Leaders are pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people and help them to build a brighter future out of the rubble. The debts that Haiti owes will hamper efforts to rebuild the country and lock them in poverty for years to come.

Leaders are meeting in Montreal on Monday to decide on the amount of aid that they will give. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that it will work to cancel the debt, and this now needs to happen.

Email the head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn to demand that when leaders meet on Monday, they cancel Haiti’s debts immediately.

WHY IS DEBT CANCELLATION SO IMPORTANT?

Haiti still owes hundreds of millions of dollars in debt - a legacy of loans from global financial institutions and donor nations to unelected governments of years past. It is one of the poorest countries in the world and yet the IMF response to the earthquake was to offer a $100 million loan. This loan would increase Haiti’s debt burden at this time of crisis.

EMAIL THE HEAD OF THE IMF

Haiti currently owes over $891 million in debt. If these debts aren't cancelled, Haiti will be sending tens of millions to the IMF and other international bodies even as it struggles to rescue and rebuild.

Email the head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn to demand that the IMF cancels Haiti’s debt immediately to make sure that earthquake relief doesn't create a new debt burden.

Our biggest concern right now is dealing with the immediate aftermath of the humanitarian disaster caused by the devastating earthquake. But in our concern to help those suffering, let’s not forget the long term.

The world’s attention is focused on Haiti. Leaders are pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people and help them to build a brighter future out of the rubble. The debts that Haiti owes will hamper efforts to rebuild the country and lock them in poverty for years to come.

Leaders are meeting in Montreal on Monday to decide on the amount of aid that they will give. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that it will work to cancel the debt, and this now needs to happen.

EMAIL the head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn to demand that when leaders meet on Monday, they cancel Haiti’s debts immediately.

After having sent this email:

"To: [email protected]

Subject: Cancel Haiti’s debt

Dear Dominique Strauss-Kahn

In the wake of the earthquake, we call on you to work to cancel Haiti's $890 million debt and ensure that earthquake aid comes as grants, not loans. Haiti's scarce funds must be used to help its people rebuild their lives.

The international community and the IMF must take action to cancel Haiti’s debt immediately, as you have indicated. You have said that you are working on a way to turn the $100 million loan already announced into a grant and I very strongly urge you to do everything you can to make sure that this happens.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Nancy Boysen "

I received this from OXFAM:

Thank you,

Thanks for taking action. Although our biggest concern right now is dealing with the immediate aftermath of the terrible humanitarian disaster caused by the devastating earthquake, we need to still think about the future of Haiti.

It’s vital that while the world’s attention is focused on Haiti we show our support to help the people of Haiti build a brighter future.

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/actions/haiti_drop_the_debt.html

EMAIL the head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn to demand that when leaders meet on Monday, they cancel Haiti’s debts immediately.

nancyk58 · January 25, 2010

Updates of the situation in Southeast Asia and Haiti

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 24 JANUARY 2010

BBC World / News:

Haiti capital toll "tops 150,000". The confirmed death toll from Haiti's devastating earthquake has risen above 150,000 in the Port-au-Prince area according to Haiti's Communications Minister who also told the news agency AP (Associated Press) that the death toll is based on bodies collected in and around Port-au-Prince by state firm CNE.

Many more remain uncounted under the rubble in the capital and elsewhere including the towns of Jacmel and Leogane.

The focus has shifted to aid.

1 million Haitians have now left Port-au-Prince, and 600,000 have been made homeless by the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010.

Danish DR1 (Text-TV / Teletext):

Norway doubles its aid to Haiti and transmits 200 million Norwegian Kroner to the relief work for the victims. The money is to be distributed between UN organizations and voluntary relief organizations. In particular relief / aid to women and children shall be given priority.

The UN to employ local 220,000 Haitians. The UN is identifying 500 sites outside Port-au-Prince where camps are to be built for the homeless, people without shelter. 220,000 local Haitians are employed to help build emergency / makeshift houses. Mr Henrik Kastoft from the UN's Development Programme UNDP says: "It has turned out to be an efficient model employing local people. By employing one Haitian, we help 5".

130,000 Haitians have accepted the government's offer to be sent to the countryside.

According to the United Nations 132 Haitians have been rescued from the rubble - this number of rescued after such a devastating earthquake is record high.

TV2 Text-TV (TV2 gossip) on Text-TV:

On Saturday evening the "Canada for Haiti" show starring among others Celine Dion, Nelly Furtado and James Cameron was broadcast live from Toronto.

Thursday Leo DiCapricio donated 1 million $ to emergency relief work in Haiti.

Saturday George Clooney donated 1 million $ to Haiti.

At the beginning of the week the fund "Not on our watch" initiated by George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Don Cheadle sent 1 million £ to Haiti.

Port in Haiti is expected to open on Monday, 25 February 2010. The emergency relief goods can reach their destination quicklier when the port can take delivery of ship containers, as this will speed up the distribution of food, medicine and other supplies. Ulrik Jørgensen, press agent in Danish Red Cross, just returned from Haiti. He says that it will really make a big difference when the port opens. Currently only one landing slot can be used in the airport meaning that many aircrafts/planes have to wait or land in the Dominican Republic.

ZDF text:

Haiti stops adoptions of Haitian children to prevent child trafficking. New adoptions are forbidden or at least stopped after reports of increase in child traficking. Only adoptions already approved before the earthquake struck on 12 January 2010 are allowed. Due to child traficking the Haitian government intensified the border control.

Record-high amount collected after the US Gala for Haiti: 58 million $ or 41 million Euro. This is a new record of donations in connection with a show like this. 130 Hollywood actors and musicians performed including Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and COLDPLAY.

A young man (23 or 25 years old) saved after 11 days. A French team of firemen rescued the young man from the rubble of a collapsed shop at a hotel in Port-au-Prince. Wismond Exantus told the French news agency AFP that he took refuge under a table and was lucky enough to have coca cola and biscuits within reach - that saved his life. He was able to move a little, but not to free himself by digging. He had told the rescuers that there were 4-5 other people in there - alive.

DR1 TTV (latest news):

Italian criticism of Haiti relief efforts. Guido Bertolaso, the Italian Minister for Civil Security criticizes the international relief work and efforts for lacking leadership. "The USA should have been in charge of relief efforts in Haiti". He is in Haiti to coordinate relief efforts and describes "the terrible situation that could have been handled much better". He warns against the risk of unrest among the Haitian population.

The worst hit towns have no food. For 12 days the inhabitants of Leogane 30 km away from Port-au-Prince have not received any emergency relief. On Sunday the first amphibious ships arrived with food for the town - the worst hit town being completely destroyed by the earthquake. Thomas Ubbesen, a reporter from Danish TV channel DR, was shocked when visiting Leogane. He thought that nothing could be worse than what he had seen in Port-au-Prince, but this was even worse. Not one single house was standing. The inhabitants were starving - many of them had nothing to eat and had not eaten anything since the earthquake struck on 12 January 2010.

nancyk58 · January 25, 2010

Update of the situation in INDONESIA on 24 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA ON 24 JANUARY 2010

INDONESIA

At least 8 Indonesians killed and 13 missing after heavy rains and flooding in the Indonesian state of Sulawesi.

Substantial material damage

Many houses destroyed

The supply of water and electricity cut off

Roads impassable

Many villages isolated and cut off from the outside world

Rescuers having problems in getting into the area.

For the past few weeks large parts of Indonesia have had heavy rains. At least 14 dead before Friday's new bad weather according to local media.

nancyk58 · January 25, 2010

All-Star Telethon raises $57 million, so far

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 25 JANUARY 2010

ALL-STAR HAITI TELETHON RAISES $57 MILLION, SO FAR

(01/24/2010 | 08:50 AM - GMA News.TV)

NEW YORK – Organizers for the all-star "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon say the event raised $57 million — and counting.

"The public has set a new standard of giving for a relief telethon with 'Hope for Haiti Now,' and the donations continue to come in," Lisa Paulsen, president and CEO of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, said in a statement released Saturday. The group is helping to oversee the funds gathered from the event.

The two-hour telethon aired Friday night on the major networks and dozens of other channels, including MTV, Bravo, and PBS, and was also streamed live online. Stars like Brad Pitt, Beyonce, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and more used their presence to encourage donations for Haiti, following a Jan. 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000 people.

The total released Saturday includes money raised by phone, text and the Web. It does not include donations by corporations or via iTunes, where people are able to buy performances of the event for 99 cents each, or the entire album for $7.99. Those funds also go to Haiti relief.

The "Hope for Haiti Now" CD is the biggest one-day pre-order in the site's history and the new song "Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour)" by Jay-Z, Rihanna, Bono and the Edge, debuted during the telethon, is the No. 1 single on iTunes.

People can donate via text, phone or through the "Hope for Haiti" Web site for the next six months. Among the organizations who will receive funds from the telethon include OXFAM America, UNICEF, and the Clinton-Bush Haiti Foundation.

- AP

nancyk58 · January 25, 2010

AID HAITI - updates of situation on 25 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 25 JANUARY 2010

DR1 (text-TV/teletext):

UN: "It may take weeks before everyone has received aid!" This statement was made by Henrik Kastoft who is head of communications in the organization UNDP (UN's Development Programme).

He realizes that some areas in Haiti have not yet received any emergency relief and aid, and it may take some time before everyone has received aid, because the Haiti relief efforts are UN's largest task and biggest challenge ever. "Don't forget that we had to start from scratch here."

The Haiti earth quake was registered on the Danish island of Bornholm according to the website videnskab.dk (videnskab = science). The sound was registered by one of the sensitive seismometers (seismographs) run by Danish researchers at GEUS, the National Geological Surveys for Denmark and Greenland.

50 aftershocks after the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010.

TV2 TTV (Text-TV):

Registration of life under Haiti's rubble. French rescuers have registered movements under a collapsed building by radar 12 days after the devastating earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010. They started digging in the hope of finding a survivor. More than 20 rescuers are participating in this mission. The movements might also have been caused by an animal.

ZDF text:

The EU has agreed upon sending 350 paramilitary police officers to Haiti. The European Union Police Mission is to ensure the distribution of relief goods. Today the foreign ministers within the EU agreed on this in Brussels. Currently up to six European states participate in the Police Mission. France and Italy will send 100 policemen, the Netherlands 50, whereas Spain, Portugal and Roumania are planning to participate in / contribute to the Police Mission.

1 million homeless. According to the United Nations' Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs / OCHA, the number of homeless could be as many as 1 million (between 800,000 and 1 million) who urgently need shelter, tents and building materials. Makeshift camps for the survivors must be established and maintained. Still more people are leaving the capital Port-au-Prince. According to the Haitian government more than 150,000 people were killed by the earthquake on 12 January 2010.

ARD text:

Planning of rebuilding / reconstruction. The EU foreign ministers decided to send about 300 police officers with a paramilitary training to Haiti to ensure more security. In Montreal in Canada representatives from 20 countries prepare a donors conference. At the beginning of the meeting Canada talked in favour of a substantial debt relief. Few pledges were made in this meeting. A sort of Marshall Plan is needed. One of the globally largest group of exiled Haitians live in Montreal.

BBC WORLD:

Haiti quake operation "lacks leadership". Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy's civil protection service talked about "lack of leadership in international aid operations" and criticised the US forces in Haiti saying that the troops had no training in running a civilian relief operation.

It is believed that the quake on 12 January 2010 killed 200,000 people.

Britons donated £46 million to Haiti fund. Britons donated that amount to the Haiti earthquake appeal fund after another £4 million was added over the week-end.

200,000 people were killed and 2 million made homeless by the quake on 12 January 2010. The UK's Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) said relief agencies were working "round the clock" in Haiti. Meanwhile Development Secretary Douglas Alexander will meet religious groups to discuss how to provide long-term help for victims of the disaster.

nancyk58 · January 26, 2010

HOPE for HAITI now - album and songs on iTunes

From MTV.com:

The "Hope for Haiti Now" album is the biggest one-day album pre-order in iTunes history and is currently the #1 iTunes album in 18 countries. The studio version of "Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour)," the original track performed by Bono, The Edge, Jay-Z and Rihanna during "Hope for Haiti Now," is currently the #1 song on iTunes in 12 countries.

"Hope for Haiti Now" will continue accepting donations for six months via the following methods:

» Online: http://www.hopeforhaitinow.org

» Phone: 877-99-HAITI

» Text: Text "GIVE" to 50555

»Mail: Hope For Haiti Now Fund, Entertainment Industry Foundation, 1201 West 5th Street, Suite T-700, Los Angeles, CA 90017

"Hope for Haiti Now" benefits Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, UNICEF, United Nations World Food Programme, Yele Haiti Foundation, and the newly formed Clinton Bush Haiti Foundation. Proceeds from "Hope for Haiti Now" will be split among each organization's individual funds for Haiti earthquake relief. With the exception of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, each partner organization was selected for its history of operation and collaboration within the nongovernmental organization (NGO) community in Haiti.

nancyk58 · January 26, 2010

Updates of the situation in HAITI - UNICEF SITUATION REPORT 7 Jan. 2010

HAITI EARTHQUAKE

UNICEF SITUATION REPORT No.7 , JANUARY 22

Situation overview

The Interial Minister has presented the numbers of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the six regions that have been evaluated. In Nord: 2,500, Northwest: 29,500, Centre: 20,530, Antibonite: around 50,000, Grand Goave: more than 10,000 and Sud: more than 10,000 persons. Totally more than 120,000 IDPs. The problem of IDPs is very big and the influx continues.

The result of the rapid needs assessments at Petit Goave confirms that there were no significant injuries or damages as a result of the aftershock on 20 January.

Aid is getting through to more and more locations. WFP and partners have the target of distributing food to 120,000 persons today, where each individual gets a 5-day ratio. The US Army also started airdropping yesterday. Since the start of the response, WFP has provided around 3 million meals to more than 200,000 people.

The Prime Minister has been expressing concern over the insufficiency of food and food items being distributed. It has also occurred that the same site received delivery twice. The Prime Minister urges the humanitarian agencies working in Haiti to further increase communication amongst them. He also pleaded that the humanitarian organizations should be working through the offices of the mayors in the region, in order to improve the cooperation.

While making rapid assessments on orphanages etc, UNICEF Child Protection teams have localized more than 70 children, some of them babies that urgently need to go to the hospital because they are injured or ill in some other way. UNICEF is trying to find some partner that could take care of the transportation.

Guido Bertolaso, the chief of the Italian Civil Protection, has arrived to Haiti together with a group of experts in emergency relief.

Humanitarian needs

There have been demonstrations in the streets because of the lack of food.

From Jacmel it is reported that the coordination is very slow. For instance, there are too many doctors, due to the lack of coordination. There has been no protection meeting. The first meeting between MINUSTAH, UN and the Canadian Forces is being planned for tomorrow.

There is a need for recreation kits for children in the sites.

Progress in hygiene is slow in Jacmel. Only three latrine blocks have been built.

UNICEF Response

Since yesterday, WFP with the support from UNICEF has been distributing 1,076 rations for children under the age of five at eleven small sites in Jacmel. WFP has also distributed 18 000 rations to grownups today. The rations consist of rice, tea, oil and salt which makes it possible for people to cook themselves. The sites are organized by the Committee de Quartier and most of them are small ones. The Committee de Quartier also helps with cooking when necessary.

The organization ACDI, VOCA and Save the Children want to start collaborating with UNICEF in the field of health, nutrition and protection. The collaboration is yet to be defined.

Programme Commitments:

Nutrition:

A car with supplies (vitamine A, zink, ORS, plumpynut) left Port au Prince today for Jacmel. The distribution of the supplies to severely malnourished children between six months and five years started this afternoon.

Representatives of the committee for nutrition yesterday visited orphanages to make an assessment of their needs of supplies. The distribution will be coordinated with the committee for Child Protection.

Terre des Hommes have reported on IDPs. UNICEF has been in touch with Terres des Hommes to see how UNICEF can help with food distribution.

UNICEF is working on contracts with ACF to operate in nutrition programs and concerns.

Health:

Today, UNICEF met with the director of immunization programme at the Ministry HAITI of Health in order to discuss vaccinations. Early next week there starts a new initiative for DTP and DT. Within three weeks, the Measle and Rubella Campaign will start. Port au Prince has the highest priority, thereafter other areas affected by the earthquake. The cold chain is a problem since the refrigerators are run on propane gas, which there is a lack of, but UNICEF will be able to provide propane gas in time for the vaccination campaign to start.

PROGRAMME

Child Protection

Response

UNICEF has supported the mobilization of cadres of IBERS mobile teams to undertake rapid child protection assessments on sites, as well as at orphanages/institutions in Port Au Prince affected by the earthquake. These assessments include identifying key needs and providing NFI the following day. Currently, these teams are reaching some 10 sites per day, and the activity is being scaled up to reach 20 per day by next week. This is by no means sufficient to meet the magnitude of need, when considering the number of institutions/orphanages that were in Port au Prince before the earthquake and which have been affected. Due to challenges with Information Management, it has also not yet been possible to process the data that has come in – a preliminary analysis of assessment findings thus far will be available on Monday.

Through partners UNICEF Child Protection is reaching some 37,000 children through Child Protection Programming. These include a variety of programmatic themes, including psychosocial support, NFI support and referral for especially vulnerable children, non-formal education, adolescent programmes, services for child Gender Based Violence survivors and interim care arrangements for unaccompanied children, including family based care.

Child Protection programmes are being implemented both in areas directly affected by the earthquake and in those areas to which affected populations are moving. Partners in these projects include Save the Children, Solidarite pour les femmes; Aide Medicale International, Viva Rio, and IBERS, the child protection arm of the Ministry of Social Welfare.

In response to reports and risks of trafficking and illegal adoption of children from Haiti, UNICEF is supporting the Special Police Brigades for Child Protection to undertake monitoring of movement of children at the Port au Prince airport as well as along Border Areas.

Priorities

The immediate priority, both for the Child Protection Sub-Cluster and UNICEF response programme at the moment is ensuring the survival and protection of the most vulnerable unaccompanied children, including those in orphanages and institutions affected by the earthquake. The situation and needs of unaccompanied children is urgent and overwhelming at this stage. Through the urgent reporting form that has been developed by the child protection sub-cluster, there are more than 20 such reports coming in per day. Children are also being dispatched from hospitals either without being accompanied by adults or being in the company of adults that are not their relatives and there continues to be reports of organizations and groups attempting to fly children out of Haiti.Prevention of trafficking/illegal adoption as well as the registration of especially vulnerable unaccompanied children are key issues.

Gaps and Challenges

The lack of cars as well as human resources has impeded UNICEF’s ability to reach more sites per day. This is a key challenge to child protection activities, which require larger human and transportation resources.

Education:

Still, UNICEF is facing difficulties in filling the cluster of education because of lack of human resources.

HIV/AIDS:

Today there was an announcement through the radio that the organization AASON started a patient clinic for providing care for HIV-infected. People are being encouraged to go back to the clinic where they used to get treatment before the quake, but in case the clinics have been destroyed, the patients could get care in the AASON clinic.

Clusters:

Nutrition:

The cluster coordinator Mija Ververes together with Hedwig Deconinck (USAID) will arrive to Haiti tomorrow.

The strategy and the standards are being finalised engaging the government in a leading role.

The key constraints are communication and coordination and the capacity for storage. The plan for general food distribution is not fully implemented yet.

WASH:

Maximal production of main two companies can not serve all the needs that are increasing every day, so solutions have been analyzed and found. DINEPA is negotiating with private water distributor about water trucking and treatment and the cluster will support in wells and boreholes assessments. The cluster needs to identify new sources to meet the demand, and also to define a strategy for hygiene kit distribution.

Latrine constructions have started in three sites in Port-au-Prince and Petion-Ville.

Child Protection:

Currently there are 30 organizations participating in the sub-cluster. They have formed three working groups under the sub-cluster to look at specific issue.

The three groups are:

1. Identification and registration of unaccompanied children. In the first phase those most vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and violence, including all those under 5 years of age, will be registered.

2. Interim care arrangements for unaccompanied children and 3. Development and integration of child protection strategy within the Shelter Cluster Strategy scenarios. The Shelter Cluster has developed a draft strategy presenting three shelter scenarios that will be applied in response to this disaster (support to spontaneous settlements; planned transitional sites for larger populations; host family arrangements). Based on these shelter scenarios, the CW Sub-Cluster will develop strategies to ensure mechanisms for child protection in all contexts.

The sub-cluster has now agreed upon and finalized a number of key tools, including Inter-agency agreed upon common Child Protection Rapid Assessment and urgent action reporting form on urgent child protection risks in particular areas. A who, what, where mapping tool to begin collecting information is being implemented to meet key gaps.

Key child protection issues and concerns have been integrated in the UNDAC Inter-Cluster Assessment that will be undertaken in all affected areas next week. Child protection staff from government and NGOs have also been identified to form part of the assessment teams that will undertake the assessment.

The Sub-Cluster, through the coordinator and MINUSTAH-Child Protection, is participating in the Shelter Cluster to ensure that child protection concerns are integrated in to both the development of Shelter Strategies, as well as site planning.

Media and Communication:

Key media activities undertaken and planned:

Today, for instance CNN, the Spanish, Canadian and Italian televisions are making reportages. Tomorrow, CNN international will make a live interview with Representative Guido Cornale.

List of spokespersons: Representative Guido Cornale, sr communication officer Kent Page and communication officer Roshan Kahdivi.

nancyk58 · January 26, 2010

Updates of the situation in HAITI on 26 January 2010

Updates of the situation in Haiti on 26 January 2010

Danish TV2 Teletext / Text TV:

14-year old Guirlande survived 13 days in the rubble and was rescued today from the rubble of her home. "I prayed to the Lord". A family friend heard Guirlande. She had been hiding under her bed which protected her against the falling rubble. She had a bottle (or the like) of water within reach.

Two aftershocks in Haiti 2 weeks to the day after the devastating earthquake.

According to US Geological Surveys / USGS an earthquake measured at 4.4 at the open Richter scales shook Haiti at 6.16 local time. A Haitian had woken up at around 5 local time because of a minor earthquake. "It was not so bad - only shaking a little".

Danish TV2 News interviewed a man who originates from Haiti. He had lived in the USA for many years and participated in the Vietnam war. After all that he had experienced and seen during the war there, he felt that he could cope with anything. He had returned to his native Haiti to help the poor population and in particular orphans. When the earthquake struck, his nephew rescued a baby, while 5 young relatives were dead. Now the man houses 36 people up in the mountains.

ARD text: Haiti song will be performed by many artists including a complete Take That, i.e. inclusive of Robbie Williams. Other artists performing the song will be Mariah Carey, Susan Boyle, Rod Stewart, Kylie Minogue, Leona Lewis plus James Blunt. The charity song is a cover version of the REM classic "Everybody hurts".

International donors conference to be held in March in New York in United Nations' headquarters. The USA will organize the conference. The long-term aid to Haiti is to be planned at the conference.

Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti's Prime Minister estimates that 5 to 10 years of foreign aid will be needed to rebuild the country.

Participating in the meeting in Canada were representatives from Canada, the USA and Brazil (SVT Text - Swedish Teletext).

SVT Text - Swedish Teletext / Text-TV: Chaos when there is not sufficient food. According to the United Nations World Food Programme (WPF) the world's supplies of ready-prepared meals in Haiti are soon emptied out. The head of WFP, Josette Sheeran said that there was an urgent need for ready-prepared meals for Haiti. And it is important that those distributing aid in Haiti are escorted by military - if not, there will be an unruly crowd in connection with the distribution of food, and the weaker Haitians will not get any food.

nancyk58 · January 27, 2010

German ZDF text about a landslide in PERU:

2 dead after landslide on the famous Inka road to Machu Picchu: One tourist from Argentina and a Peruvian guide. 3 other tourists were wounded. After the landslide the road was closed. Almost 2,000 tourists are now in the village Machu Picchu Pueblo near the antique fortress. A landslide had blocked the railway connection in the area. The stranded travellers were "angry and worried, some were desperate" according to a spokesman for the place/site.

HAITI:

From UNICEF (received 26 January 2009):

Now two weeks have passed since Haiti was hit by the earthquake that triggered the biggest humanitarian disaster in modern times. Millions of people have lost their homes and are dependent on emergency aid from the outside world.

Despite difficulties, the relief efforts are well under way. UNICEF distributes among other things clean water, medicines and hospital equipment for which there is still a desperate need.

This week UNICEF begins to vaccinate 360,000 children under five years against diphtheria, polio, tetanus, rubella and measles. At this stage of the disaster it is critical to protect children against life-threatening diseases that spread quickly when many people live close together under extremely primitive conditions.

You can read more about the relief efforts in the latest situation report (posted here yesterday) and a brief summary of UNICEF's efforts in Haiti below. And on UNICEF Denmark's homepage you can continuously monitor developments in Haiti.

Thanks to all who already have supported the collection for Haiti's children. You can still make a contribution to http://www.unicef.dk / Haiti

Best regards

Steen M. Andersen

Secretary General, UNICEF Denmark

--------------------------------------------------

Short on UNICEF's relief efforts in Haiti:

Water and sanitation: UNICEF is in charge of UN's overall efforts to provide clean water and sanitation. Every day water is delivered to hospitals, orphanages and other institutions as well as distribution points/lines spread throughout Port-au-Prince.

Health: This week UNICEF begins to vaccinate 360,000 children under five years against diphtheria, polio, tetanus, rubella and measles to prevent epidemics of life-threatening diseases.

Nutrition: There are established nutrition centres to treat malnourished children in the makeshift (temporary) camps in the area around Jacmel. The first supplies of nutritious nut mixtures, vitamin A and powders to treat dehydration have already been distributed.

Protection of children: UNICEF is visiting orphanages and other institutions to help vulnerable children. UNICEF is working with the Red Cross and Save the Children to find and register lost children in order to trace their families and protect children against abuse, trafficking and illegal adoption.

Emergency Supplies: UNICEF World Warehouse in Copenhagen and the regional warehouses in Panama and Dubai will be continuously sending relief to the needy children and their families.

nancyk58 · January 27, 2010

Updates of the situation in HAITI on 24 + 25 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 24 + 25 JANUARY 2010

HAITI GOVERNMENT: 150K BODIES RECOVERED IN CAPITAL

(01/24/2010 | 11:23 PM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The confirmed death toll from Haiti's devastating earthquake has topped 150,000 in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area alone, the communications minister said Sunday, with many more thousands dead around the country or still buried under the rubble.

Communications minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue told The Associated Press that the figure is based on a body count in the capital and outlying areas by CNE, a state company that has been collecting corpses and burying them in a mass grave north of Port-au-Prince. It does not include other affected cities such as Jacmel, where thousands are believed dead, nor does it account for bodies burned by relatives.

The United Nations said Saturday the government had confirmed 111,481 bodies; all told, authorities have estimated 200,000 dead from the magnitude-7.0 quake, according to Haitian government figures cited by the European Commission.

"Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble — 200,000, 300,000?" Lassegue said. "Who knows the overall death toll?"

Experts say chances are slim that more survivors will be found in that debris, although rescuers pulled a man buried for 11 days in the wreckage on Saturday.

Crews dug a tunnel through the rubble of a fruit and vegetable shop to reach Wismond Exantus, who is in his 20s. He was placed on a stretcher and given intravenous fluids as onlookers cheered, and later told the AP he survived by diving under a desk during the quake and later consuming some cola, beer and cookies in the cramped space.

"I was hungry, but every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive," Exantus said from his hospital bed.

Haiti's government has declared an end to searches for living people trapped under debris, and officials are shifting their focus to caring for the thousands of survivors living in squalid, makeshift camps.

U.N. relief workers said the shift is critical: While deliveries of food, medicine and water have ticked up after initial logjams, the need continues to be overwhelming and doctors fear outbreaks of disease in the camps.

In the notorious slum of Cite Soleil, the site of some looting and violence since the quake, U.S. and Brazilian soldiers handed out food and water Sunday morning to thousands of men, women and children who lined up at a health center.

The U.S. soldiers brought 2,000 food rations, 75,000 high-energy biscuits and 9,000 bottles of water, while the Brazilians had 8 tons of food in small bags of uncooked beans, salt, sugar and sardines, as well as 15,000 liters of water.

Lunie Marcelin, 57, said her entire family — including six grown children who live with her — survived the quake, but they had no money to buy food.

The handouts "will help us, but it is not enough," she said. "We need more."

In the United States, organizers of the all-star "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon said Saturday that the event raised $57 million — and counting. The two-hour telethon aired Friday night and was also streamed live online. Stars such as Brad Pitt, Beyonce, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and more used their presence to encourage donations for Haiti.

As many as 200,000 people have fled Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. About 609,000 people are homeless in the capital's metro area, and the United Nations estimates that up to 1 million could leave Haiti's destroyed cities for rural areas already struggling with extreme poverty.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Sunday it has recorded 52 aftershocks of magnitude 4.5 or greater since the Jan. 12 quake. - AP

150,000 HAITI QUAKE VICTIMS BURIED, GOVERNMENT SAYS

(01/25/2010 | 07:17 AM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The truckers filling Haiti's mass graves with bodies reported ever higher numbers: More than 150,000 quake victims have been buried by the government, an official said Sunday.

That doesn't count those still under the debris, carried off by relatives or killed in the outlying quake zone.

"Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble — 200,000? 300,000? Who knows the overall death toll?" said the official, Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue.

Dealing with the living, meanwhile, a global army of aid workers was getting more food into people's hands, but acknowledged falling short. "We wish we could do more, quicker," said U.N. World Food Program chief Josette Sheeran, visiting Port-au-Prince.

In the Cite Soleil slum, US soldiers and Brazilian U.N. peacekeeping troops distributed food. Lunie Marcelin, 57, said the handouts will help her and six grown children "but it is not enough. We need more."

The Haitian government was urging many of the estimated 600,000 homeless huddled in open areas of Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million, to look for better shelter with relatives or others in the countryside. Some 200,000 were believed already to have done so, most taking advantage of free government transportation, and others formed a steady stream out of the city on Sunday.

International experts searched for sites to erect tent cities for quake refugees on the capital's outskirts, but such short-term solutions were still weeks away, said the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency.

"We also need tents. There is a shortage of tents," said Vincent Houver, the Geneva-based agency's chief of mission in Haiti. Their Port-au-Prince warehouse has 10,000 family-size tents, but some 100,000 are needed, he said. The organization has appealed for $30 million for that and other needs, and has received two-thirds of that so far.

In the aftermath of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake, the casualty estimates have been necessarily tentative. Lassegue told The Associated Press the government's figure of 150,000 buried, from the capital area alone, was reported by CNE, a state company collecting corpses and burying them north of Port-au-Prince.

That number would tend to confirm an overall estimate of 200,000 dead reported last week by the European Commission, citing Haitian government sources. The United Nations, meanwhile, was sticking Sunday with an earlier confirmed death toll of at least 111,481, based on recovered bodies.

The final casualty estimates, which the European Commission said also include some 250,000 injured, will clearly place the Jan. 12 earthquake among the deadliest natural catastrophes of recent times. That list includes: the 1970 Bangladesh cyclone, believed to have killed 300,000 people; the 1974 northeast China earthquake, which killed at least 242,000 people; and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, with 226,000 dead.

One who wouldn't die in Port-au-Prince was Wismond Exantus, who was extricated from the rubble Saturday. He spoke with the AP from his cot in a French field hospital on Sunday, saying the first thing he wanted to do was find a church to give thanks.

He spent the 11 days buried in the ruins of a hotel grocery store praying, reciting psalms and sleeping, he said. "I wasn't afraid because I knew they were searching and would come for me," he said.

With further such rescues highly unlikely so long after the quake, Haiti's government has declared an end to search operations for the living, shifting the focus more than ever to caring for the thousands surviving in squalid, makeshift camps.

The World Food Program had delivered about 2 million meals to the needy on Friday, up from 1.2 million on Thursday, Sheeran said. But she acknowledged that much more was needed.

"This is the most complex operation WFP has ever launched," she said.

The scene Sunday at Cite Soleil, the capital's largest and most notorious slum, showed the need.

Thousands of men, women and children lined up and waited peacefully for their turn as the American and Brazilian troops handed out AID — the Americans gave ready-to-eat meals, high-energy biscuits and bottled water, the Brazilians passed out small bags holding uncooked beans, salt, sugar and sardines, as well as water.

The need for medical care, especially surgery, postoperative care and drugs, still overwhelmed the help available, aid agencies reported. In the isolated southern port city of Jacmel alone, about 100 patients needed surgery as of Friday, the U.N. reported. Medical personnel were there, but not the necessary surgery supplies.

In Port-au-Prince, meanwhile, the aid group Doctors Without Borders said its inflatable hospital — six large inflatable tents flown in from France — was preparing for its first operations.

The world's nations have pledged some $1 billion in emergency aid to Haiti. Organizers of Friday night's "Hope for Haiti Now" international telethon reported the event raised $57 million, with more pledges from ordinary people still coming in. - AP

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY MEETS FOR HAITI TALKS

(01/25/2010 | 09:43 AM - GMA News.TV)

MONTREAL — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Haiti's prime minister and foreign ministers from a host of nations meet in Montreal on Monday to try to improve relief efforts in the international community's first meeting since Haiti's devastating earthquake.

Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said Sunday that the conference will review the progress of aid delivery to Haiti since the Jan. 12 earthquake and lay the groundwork for a larger meeting that will focus on long-term reconstruction.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive arrived in Canada ahead of the conference for a Sunday meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"The task ahead of you is unimaginable," Harper said to Bellerive before the two began private talks. "I say to you Jean-Max as a fellow prime minister, I just can't imagine."

Bellerive expressed his gratitude to Canada and said he came to discuss the support that will be needed.

"But we are fully conscious that the prime responsibility for our future lies in the hands of the Haitian government and the Haitian people," he added.

Harper and foreign ministers from more than a dozen countries, eight international bodies and six major non-governmental organizations will convene on Monday.

"It's not a donor or pledging conference," Cannon said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's to make sure we have an action plan. We want to coordinate better in the short term and make sure we all know who is doing what and how."

Cannon said one goal is to "physically get the Haitian government back on its feet." The quake destroyed key government buildings, including the National Palace, hampering the work of what was already a weak and inefficient state.

"They don't have any offices," Cannon said. "I was chatting with Mrs. Clinton the other day. She mentioned that an American government building remained intact and said they were turning it over to the Haitian government so that they could at least set up temporary offices."

Cannon said the morning session will take stock of the aid efforts. He said ministers will hear from Bellerive, the United Nations and non-governmental agencies like the Red Cross.

Ministers will meet in the afternoon to work on the steps needed ahead of the larger reconstruction conference, where money will be pledged. Cannon said he expects the date and location of that conference to be announced Monday.

Governments have pledged nearly $1 billion in aid to Haiti, according to an Associated Press estimate, including $575 million from the European Union's 27 nations.

Monday's meeting comes as a global army of aid workers was delivering more food into people's hands in Haiti, but the efforts were still falling short. U.N. World Food Program chief Josette Sheeran, visiting Port-au-Prince, said Sunday said aid groups wished they could do more and do it more quickly.

One Haitian government official said more than 150,000 victims have been buried by the government and that nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble.

Canada has deep ties to Haiti. More than 100,000 people of Haitian descent live in Canada, most of them in Montreal.

After the Montreal meeting, Bellerive will travel to Ottawa to meet with Canada's Haitian-born governor general Michaelle Jean.

Jean, the representative of Queen Elizabeth II as Canada's head of state, broke down in tears during a press conference after the Jan. 12 earthquake. She said it's as if an atomic bomb had fallen on Port-au-Prince. - AP

nancyk58 · January 27, 2010

Updates of the situation in Haiti on 26 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 26 + 27 JANUARY 2010

John Travolta lands in Haiti piloting relief supplies

(01/26/2010 | 01:17 PM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — John Travolta has landed his own jet in Haiti carrying relief supplies and a team including doctors and Scientology ministers. The 55-year-old actor flew the Boeing 707 from Florida on Monday carrying 4 tons of ready-to-eat military rations and medical supplies for earthquake victims. Among those accompanying Travolta is his wife, actress Kelly Preston. The Church of Scientology says the pair planned to return home after unloading their passengers and supplies. - AP

RP medical team to leave for Haiti Monday night

HAITIANS SEARCH FOR THEIR DEAD: `I NEED THE BODY'

(01/26/2010 | 07:22 AM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – In what's left of one family's home, in what remains of one destroyed neighborhood, Jean-Rene Lochard has retrieved the bodies of his mother, brother, sister-in-law and nephew, and buried them beside the ruins, one by one and with a priest's blessing.

On Monday, he dug deeper, searching for his brother's 5-year-old son. Only when he finds the boy will he rest. "I need the body to bury him," he said. "It's important to bury the bodies."

With 150,000 bodies already in mass graves, international teams, grieving families, sympathetic neighbors and sometimes even strangers were pulling at the rubble with tools or bare hands in countless corners of this devastated city. Thirteen days after the killer earthquake, they were desperate to recover some of the thousands of Port-au-Prince's lost dead — to close each tragic circle, to lay loved ones in the earth to rest in peace.

For the living — the homeless spread across empty lots, parks and plazas in the hundreds of thousands — there was little rest as aid agencies struggled to fill their needs for food and water, and to get them tents to shelter their families against the burning tropical sun.

In front of the wrecked National Palace, people's desperation boiled over. Uruguayan U.N. peacekeepers had to fire pepper spray into the air to try to disperse thousands jostling for food.

The overwhelmed soldiers finally retreated, and young men rushed forward to grab the bags of pinto beans and rice, emblazoned with the US flag, pushing aside others — including one pregnant woman who collapsed and was trampled.

Thousands of people are huddled nearby in the Champs de Mars plaza, many with nothing more than a plastic sheet to protect them from sun and rain.

"We live like dogs," said Espiegle Amilcar, 34. "We're sleeping, eating and going to the bathroom in the same place."

The global agency supplying tents said it already had 10,000 stored in Haiti and at least 30,000 more would be arriving. But, said the International Organization for Migration, "the supply is unlikely to address the extensive shelter needs." The group estimates 100,000 family-sized tents are needed; the U.N. says up to 1 million people need shelter.

Meanwhile, the Haitian government and international groups are preparing a more substantial tent city on Port-au-Prince's outskirts, the first of more than a half-dozen sites that officials hope will shelter the displaced before the onset of spring rains and summer hurricanes.

In Montreal on Monday, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and officials of more than two dozen other donor nations and international organizations met to assess the progress of the relief effort.

Haiti will need "more and more and more in order to complete the task of reconstruction," Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told them. He said his impoverished nation lost 60 percent of its gross domestic product in the quake, the economic activity centered on Port-au-Prince.

Returning from Haiti, international Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally said in Geneva that a NEW Port-au-Prince must be planned. "It's going to require, minimum, a generation," he said, adding that the need for heavy equipment to tear down damaged buildings was growing.

That prospect was what was driving Jean-Rene Lochard to dig harder, with the help of neighbors and hired workers, to find his little nephew in the collapsed six-story home, an enormous pile of cracked concrete and twisted metal bars in Port-au-Prince's western district of Carrefour-Feuilles.

"The contractors are going to come and smash everything else, so we want to find him first," Lochard, 42, said as he sat amid the remains of a family's life — shoes, bits of clothing, a small red Elmo doll.

When the magnitude-7.0 quake struck on Jan. 12, Lochard recalled, "I was going crazy," because the house completely collapsed around him as he dashed outside. Eight of the 14 family members who lived there perished.

He and others quickly rescued an injured 17-year-old niece, and then, four days after the quake, a 5-year-old nephew, Samael. "He was in a state of shock, so traumatized he couldn't speak," said Jacques Lochard, 45, Jean-Rene's brother.

Then they started pulling out the bodies, first that of those children's father, police commander Carlo Lochard, then those of his other children, including 8-month-old Anaelle, owner of the little Elmo doll. Finally, the body of the family matriarch, Ismeda Edmond, 72, was found six days after the quake, in the entrance to the dining room.

She "was like the neighborhood godmother. Everyone in the neighborhood would come to see her," said family friend Jean-Louis Nold.

The bodies of three were buried in a city cemetery, but four others — the men's mother, brother, sister-in-law and nephew — were so badly decomposed that the morgue refused to receive them, and they were interred in the back garden, beneath a breadfruit tree, in rough requiems for a devoutly Roman Catholic family. "Every time we find a body, we call the priest," Jean-Rene Lochard said.

Now, on Monday, they searched unrelentingly for 5-year-old Jovany. In traditional Haitian families, a nephew is like a son. "We are a united family. That's why we live together in the same house," Jacques Lochard said. "Nobody can imagine what we are feeling."

In other pitiful scenes across Port-au-Prince, family survivors clambered over and clawed at rubble in hopes of finding their loved ones. Others simply sat hopelessly. And some still held out hope of finding people alive, two days after the last such "miracle" rescue.

"There's still hope. We think that people could still be alive," Mexican search team chief Hector Mendez said outside the ruins of the Montana Hotel, where some 40 Americans and many other foreigners were believed buried.

But he acknowledged, "There are many, many bodies."

- AP

US troops treat 35-year-old Haiti man pulled from rubble

(01/27/2010 | 06:47 PM - GMA News.TV)

Members of the US 82nd Airborne Division treated a 35-year-old man purportedly pulled from the rubble of a downtown Port-au-Prince building in earthquake-stricken Haiti, witnesses said on Tuesday.

According to Associated Press reporters on the scene, Rico Debrivell had a broken leg and other minor injuries. It was not immediately determined how long he had been under the rubble.

Debrivell is believed to have been pulled out of the debris by local residents and was later treated by the US medics who were working in the commercial center of downtown Port-au-Prince.

The area has been looted extensively since the January 12 magnitude-7 quake that devastated the Haitian capital.

– AP

BBC World: Man rescued in Haiti quake rubble - A man was pulled alive from the rubble 2 weeks after the earthquake. US troops rescued the man from the ruins of a building in centre of city and he was taken to hospital. He was trapped under the rubble for 12 days, the military said - and he was severely dehydrated.

The rescue came 14 days after the 7.0-magnitude quake which killed as many as 200,000 people on 12 January 2010.

German ZDFtext: 31-year-old man rescued alive from rubble after 12 days by US troops. He had a broken leg and minor face injuries. He was severely dehydrated. A total of 134 people have been rescued alive from the rubble - Saturday one man was rescued.

ARDtext: US troops have found and rescued a survivor from the rubble after 12 days in connection with clearing and cleaning up work.

The UN World Food Program makes an appeal for more aid. The people will need aid for a longer time than expected.

UNICEF together with the Haitian government plans a big vaccination campaign. 600,000 children are to be vaccinated against measles and tetanus.

In March there will be held a donors conference.

Danish TV2 TTV (Text TV):

Minister wants to move Port-au-Prince. The Canadian foreign minister Lawrence Cannon: A huge task of rebuilding and reconstructing Haiti is lying ahead. It is a question whether the rebuilding should take place where Port-au-Prince is situated

today. Because that area is threatened by new earth quakes.

nancyk58 · January 28, 2010

Updates of the situation in HAITI / AVAAZ APPEAL to CANCEL HAITI's DEBT

AVAAZ's APPEAL - CANCEL HAITI's DEBT! Received 28.1.10

It's shocking: even as aid flows in to Haiti's desperate communities, money is flowing out to pay off the country's crushing debt -- over $1 billion in unfair debt racked up years ago by unscrupulous lenders and governments.

The call for full cancelation of Haiti's debt is building steam across the world, and has won over some leaders -- but other rich lender countries are rumoured to be resisting. And time is short: G7 finance ministers could reach a final decision next week at their summit in Canada.

Let's raise a massive global call for justice, mercy and common sense for the people of Haiti in this hour of tragedy. Avaaz and partners will deliver the call for debt relief directly to the summit -- click below to sign the petition, and then pass this email to friends:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/haiti_cancel_the_debt_13/97.php

Even before the earthquake, Haiti was one of the world's poorest countries. After Haitian slaves rose up and won their independence in 1804, France demanded billions in reparations -- launching a spiral of poverty and unjust debt that has lasted two centuries.

In recent years, the tremendous worldwide campaign for debt relief has awoken the world's conscience. And in the last few days, under mounting public pressure, lenders have begun to say the right things about erasing Haiti's still-devastating debt burden.

But the devil is in the details. After the 2004 tsunami, the IMF announced relief from debt payments for stricken countries -- but the underlying debt went right on growing. Once public attention had faded, the debt payments were bigger than ever.

It's time to cancel Haiti's debt fully and without conditions, and ensure that earthquake aid is made with grants, not loans. A victory now will change lives in Haiti even after the world's attention has moved on. Join the call for debt relief, and pass this message to those who feel the same:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/haiti_cancel_the_debt_13/97.php

As we watch the images on our televisions and computers, it's hard not to be overwhelmed. And the history of rich countries' relations with Haiti is dark indeed.

But moments like this one can bring transformation. Across the world, people have donated to save lives in Haiti -- indeed, Avaaz members have given more than $1 million in the last ten days. But we also need to raise our voices as global citizens, to address the man-made tragedies that left our brothers and sisters in Haiti so vulnerable to natural crises.

There is not enough that we can do. But let's all do everything we can.

With hope,

Ben, Alice, Iain, Ricken, Sam, Milena, Paula, and the whole Avaaz team

ABOUT AVAAZ

Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires, and Geneva.

Click here to learn more about our largest campaigns.

Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo pages! You can also follow Avaaz on Twitter!

link to Facebook: http://www.avaaz.org/en/haiti_cancel_the_debt_13/97.php

-- The Avaaz team

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AVAAZ APPEAL:

DROP HAITI'S DEBT

As Haitian families search for survivors and relief rolls in, Haiti is still staggering under $1 billion in old debts racked up by unscrupulous lenders and unelected governments of the past.

But in recent days, a worldwide outcry has grown to cancel Haiti's debt -- and while some key lenders are rumoured to be holding out, the IMF and some key governments have indicated that debt relief could be within reach.

More pressure is needed. The petition below will be delivered to the IMF and G7 finance ministers at their crucial meetings in coming days -- sign and spread the word:

Petition to Finance Ministers, IMF, World Bank, IADB, and bilateral creditors:

As Haiti rebuilds from this disaster, please work to secure the immediate cancellation of Haiti’s $1 billion debt and ensure that any emergency earthquake assistance is provided in the form of grants, not debt-incurring loans.

Sign the petition now!

274,673 have already signed the petition! Let's reach our new target of 300,000. This petition has been signed by citizens of more than 150 countries worldwide. The number of signatures includes 148,000 collected by Avaaz's partners at the ONE campaign.

SUPPORT AVAAZ ON HAITI AND BEYOND

The world has responded to the devastation of Haiti's earthquake with a huge outpouring of support. Avaaz is working with groups on the ground in Haiti to save lives, prepare for reconstruction -- and advocate for changes that will leave Haitians less vulnerable to future disasters.

But Avaaz's work on Haiti and other issues is only possible thanks to small contributions from citizens around the world. Avaaz accepts no money from governments or corporations. You can support Avaaz's work by making a donation with your credit card or making a donation from your paypal account & you can also donate by check, wire transfer, phone or mail.

nancyk58 · January 28, 2010

Updates of the situation in the Philippines on 28 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN THE PHILIPPINES ON 28 JANUARY 2010

MAGNITUDE-6 QUAKE ROCKS BICOL REGIONS - PHIVOLCS

(01/28/2010 | 07:35 AM - GMA News.TV)

A powerful predawn quake hit parts of Bicol and Southern Luzon on Thursday, but the Philippine Institute of Volcanology of Seismology said it was too far from land to cause damage.

Phivolcs seismologist Henremagne Penarubia said the quake was recorded at 2:49 a.m., with the epicenter traced northeast of Virac, Catanduanes in Bicol. "It was measured at Magnitude 6.0, but it was too far from land to cause damage," Penarubia said in an interview on dzBB radio. Citing initial reports, he said the quake was felt at Intensity III in Virac, Catanduanes and in Naga City in Camarines Sur. It was also felt at Intensity II in Legazpi City in Albay, and even parts of Quezon province in Southern Luzon.

Penarubai also assured there was no tsunami caused by the quake, saying a tsunami is likely if a quake is of magnitude 6.5 to 7.0.

For its part, the United States Geological Survey said the quake was recorded at 2:49 a.m., with the epicenter traced to 140 km east-southeast of Pandan, Catanduanes; 190 km east-northeast of Legazpi City in Albay; 200 km north-northeast of Calbayog, Samar; or 495 km east-southeast of Manila.

- LBG, GMANews.TV

DR TTV (Danish teletext / text-TV)

EARTHQUAKE near the Philippines - strenght 6.1 on the Richter scale. No tsunami alert. The epicentre was 141 km east / southeast of Pandan in a depth of 24 km according to USGS. No report of damage to people or buildings as a consequence of the quake.

2 other news items involving the Philippines posted on the thread "The Philippines need help too".

nancyk58 · January 28, 2010

Updates of the situation in Haiti and Haiti-related news on 27 and 28 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 27 and 28 JANUARY 2010 and Haiti-related news on 27 and 28 January 2010, Part I of II

HAITI's CHILDREN ON THEIR OWN ON SHATTERED STREETS

(01/27/2010 | 10:56 AM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — The children with no names lay mute in a corner of the General Hospital grounds Tuesday, three among thousands of boys and girls set adrift in the wake of Haiti's earthquake.

"Hi Joe, how are you?" the American doctor tried, using a pet name the staff had given a boy of about 11. There was no response.

"Joe," ''Baby Sebastian" and the girl who didn't even have a nickname hadn't spoken or cried since they were brought in over the previous 48 hours — by neighbors, passers-by, no one knows who. "Sebastian," only a week old, was said to have been taken from the arms of his dead mother.

They're lucky: Haitian-born Dr. Winston Price and the staff were treating them for infections and other ailments. Hundreds of thousands of other hungry and thirsty children are scattered among Port-au-Prince's squatter camps of survivors, without protection against disease or child predators — often with nobody to care for them.

"There's an estimated 1 million unaccompanied or orphaned children or children who lost one parent," said Kate Conradt, a spokeswoman for the aid group Save the Children. "They are extremely vulnerable."

The UN children's agency, UNICEF, has established a special tent camp for girls and boys separated from their parents in the Jan. 12 quake, and who are in danger of falling prey to CHILD TRAFFICKERS and other abusers.

The Connecticut-based Save the Children has set up "Child Spaces" in 13 makeshift settlements. The Red Cross and other groups are working to reunite families and get children into orphanages.

The post-quake needs of Haiti's children have outrun available help. Some youngsters have been released from hospitals with no one to care for them — there just aren't enough beds.

"Health workers are being advised to monitor and send separated/unaccompanied children to child-friendly spaces," the UN humanitarian office said in its latest situation report.

The plight of the young is poignant even in a country where the UN estimates A THIRD of the 9 million population NEEDS INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE in the quake's aftermath. "We still have a huge distance to go," said John Holmes, the UN relief coordinator.

That was evident in Port-au-Prince's streets, alleys and crumbled doorways, where handwritten messages begged for help. In the Juvenat neighborhood, a group of 50 families hung a white sheet from a doorway, with this plea scrawled in green: "We need food assistance, water and medicine."

It was evident, too, among the thousands pressing against Haitian police at a food-distribution site in the Cite Soleil slum. They swung sticks to beat back the crowd.

Brazilian troops in armored personnel carriers controlled a tightly packed line of earthquake survivors waiting for food in the broiling sun by firing pepper spray and training their guns on the jostling, rowdy crowd. The line stretched between the partially collapsed National Palace and entirely destroyed Supreme Court.

One soldier loaded a shotgun and returned their taunts by shouting back insults in Creole. Some were offended, others amused at hearing a Brazilian trooper insulting them in their own language.

"They treat us like animals, they beat us but we are hungry people," said Muller Bellegarde, 30.

Several left without getting food, fearful of the pepper spray, the soldiers, and thugs who were grabbing food from receivers.

Many said they appreciate the international response and under no circumstances want the Haitian government to handle aid deliveries, but suggested Haitian churches could provide more orderly and respectful venues for distributions, with Haitian communities organizing security.

"The help is good but the way they're doing it is bad. This is anarchy," Thomas Louis, 40, trying to get rice and oil for his two babies, aged 2 and six months. "This is not aid. This is a way to put people down."

Also on Tuesday, Haitians in a crowd of looters pulled a man from the rubble of a store that had been repeatedly scavenged, and called for help from U.S. soldiers, who treated him for a BROKEN LEG and SEVERE DEHYDRATION.

Rico Dibrivell, 35, claimed he had been trapped since the earthquake two weeks earlier, but the military provided no details about how he managed to survive.

More than 100 have been unearthed by rescue teams since the Jan. 12 quake, and many more by their neighbors, but most of those were in the immediate aftermath and authorities say it is unlikely for anyone to survive more than 72 hours without water.

On Saturday, an international team of rescuers unearthed a shop clerk who they believed had been buried since the earthquake.

The MONUMENTAL SCALE OF THE HAITI DISASTER — perhaps 200,000 DEAD, a CAPITAL CITY ON ITS KNEES — has severely strained the world's ability to get relief supplies through Port-au-Prince's OVERLOADED AIRPORT and CRIPPLED SEAPORT.

Some 800 TO 1,000 AID FLIGHTS WERE STILL AWAITING PERMISSION TO LAND, a SEVEN-DAY BACKLOG, UN and European officials reported Tuesday. On top of that, "TRUCKS are NEEDED," UN spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva — especially small trucks because "the streets are extremely congested." The UN's Holmes estimated that 2 MILLION PEOPLE NEED FOOD, but only 500,000 have received some so far.

The medical picture has improved, but remains critical. World Health Organization spokesman Paul Garwood said more medical staff is needed, especially rehabilitation specialists, to help with postoperative recovery of 200,000 people who have had amputations or other surgery.

Haitians and volunteers from dozens of countries, working around the clock, were still performing up to 100 amputations a day in some hospitals.

At the General Hospital, Price strode from tent to tent checking on the 81 children under his care. Staff interrupted the tall, balding pediatrician with a string of questions: "Do you know about this baby?" ''Where's the medication?" ''Where will we sleep tonight?"

Of the nameless, speechless trio, he was treating young Joe for an infection oozing from both eyes. The 7-pound (3-kilogram) Baby Sebastian, in a white diaper decorated with sheep, had diarrhea. The unnamed girl, about 10, lay listlessly and stared upward. She had an eye infection, but would soon be picked up by an orphanage, Price said.

With no clues to their past, Price could only wonder.

"Maybe some of these parents are not even looking because their house was destroyed and they might think the kid was inside," he said. "But maybe the kid was pulled out, so they are missing each other." Children left alone are everywhere. At one of the 13 Save the Children sites, about 25 children have no adult relatives taking care of them, Conradt said. She said the group has helped some 6,000 children since the quake.

The aid group's "Child Spaces" are cordoned-off areas where children can play under supervision," run around being children, giving them a chance to return to normalcy as much as they can."

Such areas also protect children against the potential for abduction by child traffickers, a chronic problem in pre-quake Haiti, where thousands were handed over to other families into lives of domestic servitude, said Deb Barry, an emergency protection adviser with Save the Children.

She said her organization was working to track down every rumor it hears about threats to stranded children, "but we haven't been able to verify those thus far."

In Geneva, a UNICEF spokeswoman, Veronique Taveau, said the organization had been told of children disappearing from hospitals. "It's difficult to establish the reality," she said, but added that UNICEF has strengthened security at hospitals and orphanages.

Save the Children, the Red Cross and other organizations, meanwhile, are trying to establish a joint database of information to try to reunite separated families.

Government spokeswoman Marie Laurence Jocelyn-Lassegue, the communications minister, said Tuesday that Haitian officials have temporarily halted new adoptions because of concerns about corruption and carelessness in the system.

"Some children we don't know if the parents are alive or not," Jocelyn-Lassegue said. — AP

US TROOPS TREAT 35-YEAR-OLD HAITI MAN PULLED FROM RUBBLE

(01/27/2010 | 06:47 PM - GMA News.TV)

Members of the US 82nd Airborne Division treated a 35-year-old man purportedly pulled from the rubble of a downtown Port-au-Prince building in earthquake-stricken Haiti,/COLOR] witnesses said on Tuesday.

According to Associated Press reporters on the scene, Rico Debrivell had a broken leg and other minor injuries.

It was not immediately determined how long he had been under the rubble.

Debrivell is believed to have been pulled out of the debris by local residents and was later treated by the US medics who were working in the commercial center of downtown Port-au-Prince.

The area has been looted extensively since the January 12 magnitude-7 quake that devastated the Haitian capital. – AP

JESSICA SIMPSON WORKING TO SEND SHOES TO HAITI

(01/27/2010 | 08:07 PM - GMA News.TV)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Jessica Simpson is raising money to send shoes to earthquake victims in Haiti.

Simpson has teamed up with the Nashville-based organization Soles4Souls. The charity has pledged to work with other aid agencies to give out one million pairs of shoes. Simpson is urging people to "do everything that we can for the victims in Haiti. Just five dollars will buy two people a pair of shoes." The charity says Haitian survivors need shoes to protect against broken glass, twisted metal and raw sewage. People can donate at http://www.50Kshoes.com. - AP

QUINCY JONES WANTS 'WE ARE THE WORLD' HAITI REDO

(01/28/2010 | 10:47 AM - GMA News.TV)

LOS ANGELES — Quincy Jones is re-recording the charity song "We Are the World" and sending the proceeds to Haiti. The 76-year-old music legend says musicians are gathering Monday at a Los Angeles recording studio to redo the 25-year-old hit song.

Jones would not say who will perform on the track "because we've got to make sure we've got who we got," but that the revamped song will feature a new roster of all-star musicians.

The original 1985 hit, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, featured Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel and Tina Turner, among others.

Jones discussed the track and his other charitable endeavors at a private party Wednesday celebrating watchmaker Audemars Piguet's donation of $1 million to the Quincy Jones Foundation. - AP

Danish TV3 Text-TV (seen 28 January 2010):

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Sandra Bullock have each donated 1 mio $ to Haiti.

Lady Gaga has just held a "Gaga for Haiti" day where the proceeds from the sale of tickets for her last concert in New York's Radio City Music Hall PLUS the proceeds from the sale of Lady Gaga merchandise all over the world on this "Gaga for Haiti" day went to Haiti. This resulted in the equivalent of 2.5 million Danish kroner for Haiti - according to Celebrity-gossip.net./COLOR]

nancyk58 · January 28, 2010

Updates of the situation in Haiti and Haiti-related news on 28 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI AND HAITI-RELATED NEWS ON 28 JANUARY 2010, PART II OF II

2 WEEKS AFTER HAITI QUAKE, FOOD AID FALLS SHORT

(01/28/2010 | 09:58 AM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Whether locked up in warehouses or stolen by thugs from people's hands, food from the world's aid agencies still isn't getting to enough hungry Haitians, leaving the strongest and fittest with the most.

The newly homeless of the rubble-strewn Bizoton slum say they haven't gotten food, water or help with shelter in the two weeks since the earthquake.

"If it rains now, that's it," Wilson St. Ellis, 50, a father of eight, said Wednesday amid plastic sheets stretched here and there as flimsy shields against the elements.

Where donated RICE, BEANS or READY-TO-EAT MEALS are being distributed, crowds quickly become unruly, with young men pushing ahead and grabbing food bags from women and the weak. UN peacekeepers fire pepper spray and Haitian police swing sticks to restore control.

"These people are just hungry," UN spokesman Vincenzo Pugliese said of the thousands thronging food distribution points, where he said UN peacekeepers were reinforcing security.

Food remains scarce for many of the neediest survivors despite the efforts of the United Nations, the US military and dozens of international aid groups. Relief experts say the scale of this disaster and Haiti's poor infrastructure are presenting unprecedented challenges, but Haitian leaders complain coordination has been poor.

"Many mistakes have to be rectified in order to bring help to the people who need it," President Rene Preval complained to reporters.

In a bid to improve food distribution, representatives of the UN, the US, the Haitian government and private aid groups met Wednesday, and afterward Donald Reilly of Catholic Relief Services said they decided to divide Port-au-Prince into zones, designating a major aid agency to be responsible for delivering UN food to each sector.

Meanwhile, in a stunning development so long after the 7.0-magnitude tremor collapsed thousands of buildings in Port-au-Prince and beyond, French rescuers pulled a 17-year-old girl Wednesday from the rubble of a home near the destroyed St. Gerard University.

The last confirmed such rescue occurred Saturday, 11 days after the quake, when a man was extricated from the ruins of a hotel grocery store. A man pulled from rubble Tuesday said he had been trapped not on Jan. 12, the day of the quake, but during an aftershock. At least 135 people have been unearthed by rescue teams since the quake, which killed an estimated 200,000 people.

On food aid, the UN World Food Program (WFP), which says it has reached 450,000 people, urgently appealed to governments for more cash for Haiti supplies — $800 million to feed 2 million people through December, more than quadruple the $196 million already pledged.

The food agency says rising tensions and security incidents — "including people rushing distribution points for food" — have hampered deliveries. But since the massive relief effort's first days, other problems have also delayed aid — blocked and congested roads, shortages of trucks, a crippled seaport and an overloaded Port-au-Prince airport.

"The unblocking of the logistical bottlenecks is an absolute priority," the European Commission said Wednesday, describing a seven-day backlog of 1,000 relief flights seeking permission to land at the single-runway airport.

The senior US officer in Haiti said Haitian families simply cannot rely on any particular location for rations.

Food is "flooding" into the city, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen told reporters, "but it's being delivered pretty much in terms of where we can get to and where we can distribute it," not always in locations that are "sustained every day."

At some regular distribution points, such as near the Champs de Mars, the central plaza where thousands of homeless are living, daily food handouts have drawn crowds of frantic people. Desperation boiled over earlier this week and Uruguayan peacekeepers retreated as young men rushed forward to grab US-donated bags of beans and rice. A pregnant woman collapsed and was trampled.

Elsewhere as well, the strong have preyed on the weak, prying donated food from their arms.

"These things should be done is a systematic way, not a random way," said Dr. Eddy Delalue, who runs a Haitian relief group, Operation Hope. "It's survival of the fittest: The strongest guy gets it."

At one squatter settlement Julia Jean-Francois, 25, clutching a grocery bag filled with small packets of donated water, told of her encounter with food robbers.

"I lost all the rice, beans and oil that were distributed last week. A group of young men shoved me and grabbed the bags and ran away," said Jean-Francois, whose mother was killed in the quake.

An hour later, she said, one of the men returned and offered to sell her the same food for the equivalent of $18. She refused, relying instead on a communal kitchen she formed with homeless neighbors.

She said Haitian police patrolling nearby did nothing while people were robbed. "We complained, and they got into their truck and left," she said.

As she spoke Wednesday, a gang of youths pushed into a line of people waiting for water, shoving an elderly woman, who screamed and swung her bucket at their heads.

Port-au-Prince street vendors can be seen openly selling US-donated rice by the cupful from bags marked "not for resale." Fears of OFFICIAL CORRUPTION surrounding the food aid also are surfacing.

Paul Coroleuski of the US-based Convoy of Hope, which has distributed aid in Haiti for three years, said he has more than 100 tons of food in a Port-au-Prince warehouse ready to hand out, but it has been delayed for days by Haitian officials who say they will take over distribution.

Private agencies like his worry that Haitian officials "will do what they always have done, which is the government takes care of the government and the people are secondary," he said.

Haitian officials denied the government plans to take over food distribution from private agencies.

Coroleuski's frustration and distrust of the government is echoed in Port-au-Prince's streets.

"If they turn it over to the Haitian government, they would take it all for themselves," said Muller Bellegarde, 30, as he waited for food in the unrelenting tropical sun.

Haitians remember that when the government took charge of delivering international aid to the city of Gonaives after deadly hurricane floods in 2008, much of it ended up sold on the black market.

- AP

FRENCH TEAM MAKES NEW 'MIRACLE' RESCUE IN HAITI

(01/28/2010 | 04:55 PM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A French search team that wouldn't go home pulled off another "miracle" rescue in Port-au-Prince, lifting a 17-year-old girl alive from beneath this cityscape of rubble. Above ground, hundreds of thousands of other survivors hoped for a breakthrough of another kind — in delivering badly needed food aid.

Key players in the Haiti earthquake relief effort, in what may have been a pivotal meeting, decided to better coordinate by dividing up the city among themselves for handing out food.

Food distribution thus far has often been marked by poor coordination, vast gaps in coverage, and desperate, unruly lines of needy people in which young men at times shoved aside the women and weak and took their food.

"These things should be done is a systematic way, not a random way," Dr. Eddy Delalue, who runs a Haitian relief group, Operation Hope, said Wednesday of the emergency food program. "It's survival of the fittest: The strongest guy gets it."

Wednesday's rescue of teenager Darlene Etienne from a collapsed home near St. Gerard University, 15 days after Haiti's great quake killed an estimated 200,000 people, was the first such recovery since Saturday, when French rescuers extricated a man from the ruins of a hotel grocery store. A man pulled Tuesday from the rubble of a downtown store said he had been trapped during an aftershock, not in the original Jan. 12 quake.

Authorities say it is rare for anyone to survive more than 72 hours without water, let alone more than two weeks. But young Etienne may have had some access to water from a bathroom of the wrecked house, and rescuers said she mumbled something about having a little Coca-Cola with her in the rubble.

Her family said Etienne had just begun studies at St. Gerard when the disaster struck, trapping dozens of students and staff in the rubble of school buildings, hostels and nearby homes. "We thought she was dead," said cousin Jocelyn A. St. Jules.

Then — a half-month after the earthquake — neighbors heard a voice weakly calling from the rubble of a private home down the road from the destroyed university. They called authorities, who brought in the French civil response team.

Rescuer Claude Fuilla walked along the dangerously crumbled roof, heard her voice and saw a little bit of dust-covered black hair in the rubble. Clearing away some debris, he reached the young woman and saw she was alive — barely. "I don't think she could have survived even a few more hours," Fuilla said.

Digging out a hole big enough to give her oxygen and water, they found she had a very weak pulse. Within 45 minutes they managed to remove her, covered in dust. A neighbor said he believed she was rescued from the house's shower room, where she might have had access to water.

She was extremely dehydrated and weak, with very low blood pressure. She was rushed to a French military field hospital and then the French military hospital ship Sirroco.

France's ambassador to Haiti, Didier le Bret, praised the "stubbornness" of the French rescue squad.

"They should not have been working anymore because, officially, the rescue phase is over," he said. "But they felt that some lives still are to be saved, so we did not say they should leave the country."

At least 135 people buried in rubble have been rescued by search teams since the quake, most in the immediate aftermath.

On food aid, the U.N. World Food Program, which says it has reached 450,000 people, urgently appealed to governments for more cash for Haiti supplies — $800 million to feed 2 million people through December, more than quadruple the $196 million already pledged.

Food remains scarce for many of the neediest survivors despite the efforts of the United Nations, the U.S. military and dozens of international aid groups. Relief experts said the scale of this disaster and Haiti's poor infrastructure are presenting unprecedented challenges, but Haitian leaders complain coordination has been poor.

The food agency said rising tensions and security incidents — "including people rushing distribution points for food" — have hampered deliveries.

At some regular distribution points, such as near the Champs de Mars, the central plaza where thousands of homeless are living, daily food handouts have drawn crowds of frantic people. Desperation boiled over earlier this week and Uruguayan peacekeepers retreated as young men rushed forward to grab US-donated bags of beans and rice. A pregnant woman collapsed and was trampled.

Since the relief effort's first days, however, other problems have also delayed aid — blocked and congested roads, shortages of trucks, a crippled seaport and an overloaded Port-au-Prince airport.

In a bid to improve food distribution, representatives of the UN, the US, the Haitian government and private aid groups met Wednesday to discuss coordination. Afterward, Donal Reilly of Catholic Relief Services said they decided to divide Port-au-Prince into zones, designating a major aid agency to be responsible for delivering food to each sector.

That may bring some hope to the newly homeless of the rubble-strewn Bizoton slum, who say they haven't gotten food, water or help with shelter in the two weeks since the earthquake.

"If it rains now, that's it," Wilson St. Ellis, 50, a father of eight, said Wednesday amid plastic sheets stretched here and there as flimsy shields against the elements. - AP

Danish Text-TV (for DR1 and DR2):

17-year-old girl rescued by French and Haitian rescuers after 15 days in the rubble. She was happy, shocked and about to cry when she was found and pulled out. She was severely dehydrated and had leg injuries. Tuesday a 31-year-old man was rescued after 12 days in the rubble - his house collapsed by one of the aftershocks.

BBC World / News:

Teenage girl pulled out of the rubble of her house 15 days after the disaster. She was happy and shocked despite being severely dehydrated and having a leg injury. One of her rescuers called it "A miracle that she was alive after such a long time".

German ZDF Text TV:

17-year-old girl rescued from the rubble of her house by French team late Wednesday evening. She was severely dehydrated and had a leg injury. Her house collapsed on the 12 January 2010 in connection with the devastating earthquake.

At least 170,000 dead after the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010 (new official figure).

1 million people estimated homeless.

Lack of tents and the food situation is at a critical level with insufficient food supplies.

Danish Text-TV (for DR1 and DR2):

ALSO HAITIAN ANIMALS NEED HELP.

Appeal from the Humane Society International not to forget that the Haitian animals are also quake victims, and long-term aid is needed for the animals as well - in particular vaccinations against contagious diseases among the animals. The animals are coping better with the situation than expected.

nancyk58 · January 29, 2010

Updates of the situation in Haiti on 29 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 29 JANUARY 2010

URBAN (Danish free paper) on 29 January 2010:

THE MIRACLE IN THE RUINS.

'Thanks', was all that the girl said as she was dug out of the rubble after 15 days.

There is still hope of finding survivors in the earthquake-ravaged island of Haiti. It is clear following the rescue of a 16-year-old girl from the rubble of a house in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

"I don't know how she has been able to fight for so long. It is a miracle", says the rescuer J.P. Malaganne to the news agency Reuters.

The girl was severely dehydrated when she was found and had apparently a leg injury according to French and Haitian rescuers. "She only said: "Thanks". She is very weak which indicates that she has been there for 15 days", says Samuel Bernes, spokesman of a French rescue team.

The severely dehydrated 16-year-old girl is now under treatment in a French hospital. "For the time being we have to calm her, anaesthetize her and stabilize her", says Michel Orcel who is the doctor treating her.

MetroXpress, Denmark on 29 January 2010:

75% OF PORT-au-PRINCE IS DESTROYED. HAITI. 75% of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, is in ruins after the earthquake on 12 January. This is estimated by UN's special envoy, Paul Farmer to the news agency AFP. At the same time President René Preval estimates that more than 170,000 people have died and a million people have been made homeless. On the other hand, sources tell Ritzau that the security in Haiti has increased considerably.

Danish DR1 TTV (Text TV):

HAITI IS RUNNING OUT OF MEDICINE. The hospitals in the earthquake-stricken country are full of thousands of wounded who have exhausted the doctors that are treating the needy. Several hospitals are running out of basic medicaments such as antibiotics and painkillers. The need for medicine is much bigger than the amount of medicine it is possible to get into the country so that it can be distributed. The United Nations also points out that Haitians hospitals are in need of medicine.

Danish TV2 TTV:

SEVERAL SCHOOLS TO REOPEN IN HAITI ON MONDAY in the areas of Haiti that are not ravaged by the devastating earthquake in Haiti 16 days ago. The Haitian Ministry of Education is to examine to what extent the earthquake ravaged public and private schools in Port-au-Prince and in other parts of the country.

200,000 people are estimated killed on 12 January 2010.

Swedish Television, Text-TV:

HAITI SCHOOLS TO OPEN AGAIN ON MONDAY in the areas that have not been affected by the the devastating earthquake - according to the Haitian Ministry of Education. The authorities and relief organizations are to make a quick assessment of the schools in Port-au-Prince and in other places in the hardest hit areas and in areas having received many internal refugees.

It is estimated that up to 200,000 people were killed by the earthquake on 12 January 2010. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 8,000 schools and 1.8 million children have been affected.

German ZDFtext:

INCREASING NUMBER OF RAPES IN HAITI. Several homeless women and girls who had taken refuge in tents have been raped. Haiti's Chief of Police accuses criminals having escaped from the prisons during the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010 of having committed these crimes.

The Dominican Republic will organize a new conference for reconstruction of Haiti.

At least 170,000 people were killed by the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010.

UNICEF COUNTS THE ORPHANS. Unicef has started its registration of orphans among minors wandering/roaming about the streets of Port-au-Prince. The minors are then placed in extra established emergency camps. The teams on site are confronted with difficult situations: Many childrens are victims of abuse, others are wounded, but have received no medical treatment. 60 adoptive children from Haiti have arrived at Frankfurt Airport.

HAITI: EVERYWHERE IN HAITI THERE IS A SHORTAGE OF MEDICAMENTS.

According to info given by aid workers, supplies of medicaments are only in third place after food and tents.

According to Haiti's Chief of Police, several homeless girls and women who had taken refuge in emergency camps / tents have been raped, and he accuses criminals who managed to escape from the prisons during the devastating earthquake on 12 January 2010 of having committed these crimes.

BBC World, TTV:

RECONSTRUCTION WILL TAKE SEVERAL DECADES following the devastating earthquake 2 weeks ago. The acting head of the UN Mission in Haiti, Edmond Mulet told BBC that the logistics of the relief effort were a nightmare with Haiti's inadequate infrastructure destroyed and a shortage of vehicles. Mr Mulet said reconstruction was not starting at zero, but "below zero".

As many as 200,000 people died in the earth quake on 12 January 2010, while an estimated 1.5 million are now homeless.

nancyk58 · January 31, 2010

Updates of the situation in Haiti on 29 + 30 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 29 + 30 JANUARY 2010, PART I OF II

HAITIANS TIRED OF WAITING, START OWN REBUILDING

(01/30/2010 | 07:12 AM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Defying pleas to wait for Haiti's reconstruction, families lugged heavy bundles of wood and tin up steep hillsides Friday to do the unthinkable: build new homes on top of old ones devastated in the earthquake.

The defiance reflects growing anger and frustration among Haitians who complain that their leaders — and any rebuilding plans — are absent more than two weeks after the Jan. 12 earthquake damaged or destroyed thousands of homes in the capital.

Few tents have been supplied, rubble remains strewn in many streets, and signs begging for help in English — not Haitian Creole — dot nearly every street corner in Port-au-Prince.

It could take another month to get the 200,000 tents needed for Haiti's homeless, said Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, the culture and communications minister. Haiti now has fewer than 5,000 donated tents.

In the concrete slum of Canape Vert, an area devastated by the quake, dozens of people were pooling their labor and getting on with rebuilding.

"I have 44 years' worth of memories in this house," said Noel Marie Jose, 44, whose family was reinforcing crumbling walls with tin and wood.

"I got married here. I met my husband here. My mother braided my hair there where these walls used to stand," Jose said. "Even if it's unsafe, I can't imagine leaving. Even if the government helps, it will come too late. This is how it is in Haiti."

Surrounding her, concrete homes were either crushed or had toppled down a hill. Jose and other families said they were worried both about the coming rainy season and fears they may lose their plots after demolitions because they either lack clear title or the government does not want them to rebuild on land it considers unsafe.

Reconstruction, resettlement and land titles are all priorities of the government of President Rene Preval — but so far in name only. The government has been nearly paralyzed by the quake — its own infrastructure, including the National Palace, was destroyed — and so far it has been limited to appeals for foreign aid and meetings with foreign donors that have yet to produce detailed plans for the emergencies it confronts.

Its first priority is moving people from areas prone to more earthquakes and landslides into tent cities that have sanitation and security but have yet to be built. Preval has engaged in dozens of meetings with potential outside contractors to discuss debris removal, sanitation and other long-term needs. Albert Ramdin, assistant secretary of the Organization of American States, has offered help in creating a new Haitian land registry — a process that could take months if not years because countless government records were destroyed in the quake.

Haitians ardently defend their property rights. If a family has occupied land for more than 10 years, they gain ownership rights even without a deed. For some families, small homes have been passed on through the generations. Few Haitians have insurance, and the loss of what few assets they have has crippled countless families.

Many have tired of living in tents improvised from tarps, sheets and bedspreads, opting to rebuild their homes rather than find new plots.

Lassegue said such rebuilding wouldn't be tolerated — and that the government wants to develop and implement a comprehensive reconstruction plan that might feature building codes, an anomaly in this impoverished nation.

"We've been sleeping outside but the rains will come soon," said Merilus Lovis, 27, taking wooden planks and erecting them for walls inside the foundation of his former home, where his wife and daughter died. "I'm scared of the floods on this hillside but I don't think that God would let such bad things happen twice."

Paul Louis, a 45-year-old porter, has started a business buying wood from scavengers and selling it on the street. He purchased a cracked and worn 1-by-8-foot board for about $2 and was selling it Friday for $3. "People are afraid to build with concrete now," Louis said.

In another neighborhood, people dug through destroyed homes to salvage materials. Women did the wash amid the ruins.

"I have stayed, but I lost my home," said Thomas Brutus, who lives perched precariously on a debris-strewn hillside in a shack made from the remains of destroyed homes. "So I made this little house, even though I know it's dangerous. We have been here for 14 days and have received no help."

Many residents say they're staying because they grow vegetables on their small plots. Thousands of others have swarmed to improvised tent camps, where Elisabeth Byrs, an official of the U.N.'s humanitarian coordination office, said there is a "major concern" about sanitation.

About 200,000 people are in need of post-surgery follow-up treatment and an unknown number have untreated injuries, she said.

In other developments:

• Teams of looters overwhelmed private security guards in the downtown commercial district, carting off refrigerators and washing machines as well as wood and steel from damaged businesses. Hundreds of bystanders protested the failure of Haitian police to stop them, and cheered "Viva US military!" as a patrol from the US 82nd Airborne Division came in to restore order. Police belatedly arrested the men.

• Haiti hopes schools outside the capital not affected by the earthquake can open in coming weeks and that those not destroyed in Port-au-Prince could start operating in March, Lassegue said. An estimated 200 schools in Port-au-Prince were destroyed or partially damaged, many of them collapsing on students. Getting children into schools would help protect them from predators taking advantage of the quake that orphaned unknown thousands and separated thousands more from their parents. Haiti has always had a problem with traffickers looking for child and sex slaves.

• The United Nations asked for a $700 million agricultural investment fund for Haiti to boost food production and create jobs. The 18-month plan is part of the government's strategy to rebuild the country, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said. Top needs are seeds, tools and fertilizers so farmers can plan for spring planting season.

"The food situation in Haiti was already very fragile before the earthquake and Haiti was highly dependent on food imports," Alexander Jones, FAO's emergency response manager in Haiti, said in a statement.

• The United States has distributed some 43,000 radios to people in Port-au-Prince so they can hear public service announcements.

• The US Drug Enforcement Administration said it had suspended operations in Haiti so its agents can focus on the disaster. Traffickers have long favored Haiti as a transit point for South American drugs. - AP

NUN TO JUMP FROM PLANE FOR HAITI RELIEF COLLECTION

(01/30/2010 | 03:01 PM – GMA News.TV)

A Texas-based nun will jump from a plane in a skydiving stunt after a school she headed exceeded its goal of raising $25,000 for relief work in earthquake-hit Haiti.

Sister Jane Meyer, head of school at St. Agnes Academy in Houston, promised to take her first skydive if her school can reach the $25,000 goal for Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

“I think I am ‘up in the air’ – we just finished counting the money today and we are at more than $40,000. We are sending a check tomorrow. Pray that I don’t have a ‘heart attack’ as I ascend and jump!" Meyer said in a note to CRS, which was posted Saturday (Manila time) on CRS’ Website.

She said she agreed to take the skydive because she felt it was her responsibility to help Haiti by motivating people to give.

Meyer said she is now preparing to train for her skydive, even as she voiced optimism her school can raise more than $50,000.

“I am preparing for my jump and I want my message to motivate others. We will hit over $50,000, I know. The competition is fierce among classes. Anyway, I am beginning to get in training!" she said.

CRS said the Academy initially set Ash Wednesday as the cutoff date to reach its $25,000 goal for Haiti relief through bake sales, tournaments, and student competitions.

Meyer said she trusts CRS to handle the funds after she took part in a CRS Frontiers of Justice trip to Ghana.

“Being on the ground in Ghana, I saw firsthand that the money given to CRS goes directly to the cause," she said. - LBG, GMANews.TV

5 MORE PINOYS ARRIVE FROM QUAKE-HIT HAITi

(01/30/2010 | 10:33 AM – GMA News.TV)

A second batch of five Filipinos arrived before dawn on Saturday from earthquake-devastated Haiti, a day after the first batch arrived home.

Radio dzBB’s Lito Laparan reported Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) officials welcomed the five who arrived at 5:55 a.m.

The five, initially identified as Victor Torizo, Dicsina Torizo, Allen Vincent Torizo, Bernadette Villagracia and Art Venus Villagracia, arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Philippine Airlines PR-109 flight at 5:55 a.m.

DFA Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs executive director Enrico Fos said there were initially supposed to be 18 Filipinos in the second batch.

OWWA head Carmelita Dimzon said the 13 encountered “booking problems."

“There were glitches in the booking with American airlines, for some reason we do not understand. Some needed to be issued transit visas so only five were able to make the trip home," Dimzon said in an interview on dzBB radio.

She said they expect the other Filipinos to return Sunday and Monday.

Dimzon said they did not get a chartered flight for the Filipinos in Haiti because relatively few have decided to return.

“It is not worth to get a chartered flight, if there are few people returning home," she said.

In a separate interview on dzRH, Dimzon said the booking problem occurred while the Filipinos were in the Dominican Republic to take connecting flights in Miami and Los Angeles.

“The 13 had problems in booking at the Dominican Republic. They are waiting to get their transit visas," she said.

Bernadette Villagracia, an industrial engineer, said she felt fine but decided to return home.

She said she felt God was “angry" when the quake hit Haiti," Villagracia said on dzBB radio.

But when asked if she will return to Haiti, she said, “Definitely."

In a separate interview on dzRH, she recalled her son was all alone with a nanny.

On Friday, six Filipinos arrived from Haiti after taking connecting flights to Miami and Los Angeles.

Dimzon assured the returning Filipinos of assistance in getting home, and help in getting livelihood.

The Philippine National Red Cross and Department of Social Welfare and Development will also provide stress debriefing and psycho-social counseling for them, she added.

"We know they have been through a traumatic experience and they will not forget it," Dimzon had said in an interview last Friday, while waiting for the first batch to arrive.

Full military honors

Meanwhile, full military honors await the remains of three United Nations peacekeepers that are expected to arrive this coming Tuesday.

Radio dzRH reported the remains of peacekeepers DP3 Perlie Panangui, Sgt. Janice Arocena, and Sgt. Eustacio Bermudez Jr. will be brought to the Villamor Air Base upon arrival. - LBG, GMANews.TV

6 PINOYS WHO SURVIVED HAITI QUAKE BACK IN RP

(01/29/2010 | 07:53 AM – GMA News.TV)

Six Filipinos from earthquake-devastated Haiti, one of them wheelchair-bound, arrived home early Friday, with government officials on hand to welcome them.

Radio dzBB's Manny Vargas reported that the six, who comprise the first batch of repatriated Filipinos, arrived before 6 a.m. at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 2.

Those who arrived were identified as Gregorio Bacurin, Donna Bacurin, Sonny Marlin, Rowena Cruz, Michaela Santos, and Rosario Santos.

They arrived aboard a Philippine Airlines PR-103 flight from Los Angeles. A second batch of 18 is due to arrive Saturday. Officials are still finalizing the scheduled arrival of a third batch of about 40 Filipinos.

They passed through the Dominican Republic and took connecting flights to Miami and Los Angeles before returning home.

Donna Bacurin, 43, was among those trapped in a building devastated by the quake. She said at least five Haitian co-workers died in the quake.

"The building shook and I ran for cover under a table. It was too far for me to run," Bacurin said in Filipino in an interview.

When asked if she plans to return to Haiti soon, she said: "Not yet, I have not decided."

Rosario Santos said she was lucky because she left a gas station crushed by the quake at the last minute. Her niece Michaela, 13, is a high school student.

Government officials including those from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, Department of Foreign Affairs and Department of Social Welfare and Development welcomed the six.

OWWA head Carmelita Dimzon assured the six of assistance in getting home, and help in getting livelihood.

The Philippine National Red Cross and Department of Social Welfare and Development will also provide stress debriefing and psycho-social counseling for them, she added.

"We know they have been through a traumatic experience and they will not forget it," Dimzon said in an earlier interview while waiting for the first batch to arrive.

At the time of the killer quake last January 12, a total of 462 recorded Filipinos were in Haiti — 290 civilians and 172 military and police peacekeepers.

Four Filipinos, three of them members of the RP peacekeeping contingent, were confirmed killed while two others, both civilians, remain unaccounted for.

- RSJ, GMANews.TV

nancyk58 · January 31, 2010

Updates of the situation in HAITI on 29 + 30 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 29 + 30 JANUARY, PART II OF II

DR1 TTV: HAITIANS NOW FLEEING BY BOAT.

The first known group of Haitians fleeing from their country by boat after the massive earthquake on 12 January 2010 has/have been picked up near the British Turks and Caico islands South of Miami. According to the authorities 122 people were on board the boat. The Haitian boat people / refugees have been interned in a sports centre and not returned to Haiti. Last week the Turks and Caico islands suspended the repatriation (sending home) of illegal immigrants from Haiti. The islands are situated 145 km North of Haiti and have a population of about 30,000 people.

DR1 TTV: DANES HAVE DONATED 50 MILLION DANISH KRONER TO HAITI.

The 5 largest Danish relief organizations have added up the donations received – this for DR News. So far Danes have donated a total of 50 million Danish Kroner via these relief organizations as follows:

Save the children, Denmark about DKK 05.7 mio

Danish Church Aid DKK 04.6 mio

UNICEF, Denmark DKK 14.0 mio

Red Cross, Denmark DKK 16.3 mio

Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF DKK 08.5 mio

So far Danes have donated 50 mio Danish Kroner for the relief effort in Haiti. And it has been decided that the relief organizations are not to pay value added tax on the donations which has been the case previously.

DR1, TTV: RED CROSS, DENMARK:“THE TSUNAMI TOUCHED THE DANISH PEOPLE MORE BECAUSE IT WAS “CLOSER” TO US”.

So far the money collected for the earthquake victims amounts to around DKK 50 million, whereas the organizations collected DKK 340 million after the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004.

Red Cross’ Fundraising Manager Kenneth Oerberg is not surprised that the collection of money for Haiti is not as lucrative as the collection of money for the victims of the tsunami. – “In connection with the tsunami many Europeans and many people from Scandinavia including some Danes died or were directly affected by this disaster. Therefore the tsunami disaster somehow touched us Danes more because it was “closer” to us”, says Kenneth Oerberg from Red Cross, Denmark.

TV2 News: OUR DONATIONS FOR HAITI ARE KEPT BACK FOR UP TO 2 MONTHS.

Emergency relief is needed several places in the world. But the money is kept back for up to 2 months even though it is technically possible to transfer the money to the relief organizations long before – according to the Danish local newspaper “Jydske Vestkysten”. “The amounts donated by the customers are registered in our databases few seconds after the mobile phone owner donated the amounts”, says Kim Baasch, managing director of Computonic – a so-called gateway firm supplying the technical platform to the emergency relief.

DR1, TTV: MORE THAN DKK 130 MILLION COLLECTED TO AFRICA AND HAITI.

This is a record-high amount collected in the 4 years of Denmark’s national, annual collection of money for 12 relief organizations. The exact amount collected during the 4-hour-long show was DKK 130,612,113 million. Last year the result of the televised collection was more than DKK 78 million. The show was aired on DR1. This year’s collected money is earmarked for Africa's women knowing that an African woman spends 90% of her income on her family. So by helping African woman you help the entire family. Due to the devastation earthquake in Haiti it has been decided that half of the money collected will go to Haiti.

DR1: WOMEN FIRST IN THE FOODLINE IN HAITI.

The UN establishes 16 distribution points in Haiti where hungry and homeless women can collect food. They distribution points are reserved for women and will open on Sunday, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). The goal is to reduce the long lines of frustrated Haitians. Many women and children have been pushed away from these food lines. Rice and beans have been distributed to hundred thousands of Haitians since the earthquake on 12 January 2010. The 16 centres are to be the foundation for a more long-term system for the months to come.

SVT (Swedish Text-TV): USA STOPS INJURED HAITIANS.

According to the Swedish newspaper “Svenska Dagsbladet” the USA has stopped the evacuation of injured from the earthquake-stricken Haiti. The reason is -- according to New York Times – that no one will pay for the care and treatment of the injured Haitians. The pressure on the US hospitals has become too big, and the question who is to pay for the care and treatment of these injured Haitians has not been solved yet. The flights gave the injured the possibility of advanced medical treatment in the USA. In Florida 500 patients have been treated for severe injuries they got on 12 January 2010 when the devastating earthquake struck.

BBC World: US HALTS HAITIAN VICTIM EVACUATIONS.

The US military has stopped evacuating Haitian earthquake victims to the US in a reported dispute over medical costs. Flights stopped on Wednesday, because some hospitals were reluctant to take patients from Haiti, a US military official told the New York Times. A doctor in the quake zone warned 100 of his patients would die in the next 48 hours unless they were airlifted. Meanwhile only women will be allowed to collect food from new UN distribution sites in Haiti’s capital.

BBC World: UK TO SHIP IRON TO HAITI VICTIMS.

The government has purchased all of the UK’s available corrugated iron sheets to provide shelters for victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Gordon Brown announced the move which should help some 2,000 families, at a charity poetry reading for Haiti in London on Saturday. The 5,700 sheets cost £35,000 and were bought from the £20 million the UK government has allocated to the relief effort. They will be shipped to the stricken country next week.

ARD Text: DEATH TOLL NOW 180,000 – INTERNATIONAL AID CRITICIZED:

At least 180,000 people died. President Preval criticized that the international aid was not sufficiently coordinated. He says that the Haitian Government is not involved in decisions, and that the relief organizations do not coordinate their emergency relief effort. Therefore he is going to appoint his own emergency relief coordinator.

The Haitian elections planned to take place at the end of February 2010 will probably be postponed 2 years.

ZDF text: PRESIDENT CRITICIZES AID WORKERS:

President René Preval criticizes the insufficient coordination of the international relief work for the earthquake victims. “Many countries engage and give proof of their good intentions. But our government is not involved and the coordination is insufficient“. The aid goes directly to the foreign organizations. Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president spoke of “the donor countries’ imperialism” . “They donate the money, but most of it returns to the donor countries”, he said in the press conference.

ZDF text: ELECTIONS POSTPONED 2 YEARS.

The Haitian elections planned to be held in February 2010 will probably be postponed 2 years. The government plans to postpone the mandate of the delegates. The future administration must be even more decentralized, says President Preval. The seat of the government will according to the constitution also in future be in Port-au-Prince, but the local authorities should have more administrative authority. “We need more streets and more work in the province so that not all Haitians come to Port-au-Prince, Preval pointed out.

nancyk58 · January 31, 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN THE PHILIPPINES ON 31 JANUARY 2010

MAGNITUDE-4.8 QUAKE ROCKS GENSAN IN MINDANAO (SOUTHERN RP)

(01/31/2010 | 08:41 AM - GMA News.TV)

A magnitude-4.8 quake rocked General Santos City in Mindanao early Sunday, but state seismologists said there was no casualty or damage to property.

Radio dzBB cited initial information from the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology indicating the quake was recorded at 7:25 a.m. The epicenter was traced to 107 km southeast of General Santos, and was felt at Intensity I in the city.

The United States Geological Survey said the quake was at magnitude-4.9, with the epicenter traced to 95 km south-southeast of General Santos City; 190 km south of Davao; 1,140 km south-southeast of Manila; or 2,460 km east-northeast of Jakarta, Indonesia.

SATURDAY QUAKES

Meanwhile, dzBB reported that Phivolcs recorded several earthquakes last Saturday in different parts of the country.

A magnitude-2.8 quake was noted at 5:49 p.m., 45 km northwest of Pagadian City. It was felt at Intensity II in Manukan town in Zamboanga del Norte province.

Also, a magnitude-4.9 quake was recorded at 10:27 a.m. in Ilocos, with the epicenter at 109 km northeast of Laoag City, Ilocos Norte. It was felt at Intensity II in Pasuquin town in Ilocos Norte, and Laoag City.

Phivolcs also recorded a magnitude-4.5 quake 36 km northeast of Sorsogon City at 9:50 a.m., which was was felt at Intensity III in Legazpi City and Irosin in Sorsogon.

- LBG, GMANews.TV

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 31 JANUARY 2010

3RD BATCH OF PINOYS ARRIVES FROM QUAKE-RAVAGED HAITI

(01/31/2010 | 08:22 AM - GMA News.TV)

After going through a brief flight delay, 12 Filipinos comprising the third batch of Filipinos from earthquake-devastated Haiti arrived home early Sunday.

Radio dzBB’s Lito Laparan reported that government officials welcomed the 12 upon their arrival at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

“We had to sleep outside our house, in the street," recalled Joan Despeñas, one of the repatriated Filipinos who survived the magnitude-7 earthquake in Haiti on January 12.

Despeñas, who had been living in Haiti for 10 years and working as a supervisor at a fast-food outlet, said she was in the kitchen when the quake struck.

Her mother was among those trapped in a supermarket for three days, but was rescued. Despeñas said her mother will go to New York for a vacation then return to Haiti.

When asked if she will return to Haiti, she said, “probably yes."

But she said she still worries about her friends Geraldine Lalican and Grace Fabian, who were also trapped in the collapsed supermarket.

Four Filipinos were killed in the Haiti tragedy. Lalican and Fabian have remained unaccounted for.

An initial list of the third batch identified the Filipinos by their surnames as Pretilla, Repiso, Sison, Manalansang, Dupone, Duran, and Ramirez. Four of the 12 are children.

The Filipinos arrived on a Philippine Airlines PR-103 flight from Los Angeles, and were supposed to arrive at 5 a.m. but were delayed for more than an hour.

Sunday's arrival brought to 23 the number of Filipinos repatriated from Haiti since the deadly quake.

Labor officials said the next batch of Filipinos will likely arrive this Wednesday or Thursday.

The first and second batches of Filipinos arrived at the NAIA last Friday and Saturday.

Under the repatriation plan organized by the government, the Filipinos from Haiti were to be brought to the Dominican Republic and take connecting flights in Miami and Los Angeles.

- LBG, GMANews.TV

nancyk58 · January 31, 2010

Updates of the situation in Haiti on 31 January 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 31 JANUARY 2010

US HALTS AIRLIFTS OF HAITI PATIENTS, CITING SPACE

(01/31/2010 | 08:56 AM - GMA News.TV)

MIAMI – The US military has halted flights carrying Haitian earthquake victims to the United States because of an apparent dispute over where seriously injured patients should be taken for treatment.

An American doctor treating victims in Port-au-Prince warned that at least 100 patients needed to get to better hospitals or they could die, while the US government said it was working to expand hospital capacity in both Haiti and in the US.

It was unclear exactly what prompted the Wednesday decision by the US military to suspend the flights, or when it would end. Military officials said some states were refusing to take patients, though they wouldn't say which states.

"There has been no policy decision by anyone to suspend evacuee flights," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "This situation arose as we started to run out of room."

The halt came one day after Florida Gov. Charlie Crist wrote a letter to US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, warning that "Florida's health care system is quickly reaching saturation, especially in the area of high level trauma care."

But officials in Crist's office said they didn't know of any Florida hospitals were turning away patients. He asked Sebelius to activate the National Disaster Medical System, which is typically used in domestic disasters and pays for victims' care.

Poor coordination and limited resources, not costs, drove the governor's request, said John Cherry, spokesman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

"We've made it clear that (the cost) is an issue we'll deal with down the road," he said.

State health officials say some medical flights landed in Florida without any advance notice, and the poor coordination may be keeping some survivors from getting the help they need, Cherry said. He cited the case of a burn victim flown earlier this week into Tampa, which is not equipped to treat those injuries.

Meanwhile on the ground in Haiti, Dr. Barth Green, a doctor involved in the relief effort in Port-au-Prince, warned that his patients needed to get to better hospitals.

"We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don't Medevac them," said Green, chairman of the University of Miami's Global Institute for Community Health and Development.

Civilian flights have not been stopped, but Green said he was relying on US military flights to fly out patients because they are larger and better equipped to handle injured patients.

At a temporary field hospital at Haiti's international airport set up with donations to Green's institute, two men had already died of tetanus. Doctors said 5-year-old Betina Joseph faced a similar fate within 24 hours unless evacuated to a US hospital where she can be put on a respirator.

The girl — infected with tetanus through a two-inch cut on her thigh — weakly shooed a fly buzzing around her face as her mother caressed her corn rows, apparently unaware that getting the girl out could mean life or death.

"If we can't save her by getting her out right away, we won't save her," said Dr. David Pitcher, one of 34 surgeons staffing the field hospital.

The White House said federal officials were working with other states and non-government aid groups in Haiti to EXPAND HOSPITAL CAPACITY so they can make more room for critically injured patients aboard the USNS Comfort hospital ship anchored off the coast of Port-au-Prince.

There have already been 435 patients evacuated to the US, 18,500 patients treated by HHS personnel on the ground in Haiti, and 19,000 patients treated by the Comfort either on ship or on shore, with 635 patients currently on aboard the Comfort.

Captain Kevin Aandahl, spokesman for US Transportation Command, said no evacuation requests have been made by US military medical facilities in Haiti, including the Comfort, since the flights were suspended Wednesday.

US Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said he did not know who ordered a stop to the evacuations but said it is a problem that should be fixed.

"I'm sure the Department of Defense wants to do the right thing as do we," he said Saturday in a conference call. "Look, everybody is here working on the ground trying to do the right thing for as many people as possible."

- AP

HAITI GOV'T SAYS CHILDREN TAKEN WITHOUT PERMISSION

(01/31/2010 | 10:10 AM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitian police detained a group of Americans on Saturday on suspicion of trying to take children out of the country without proper papers amid the chaos following the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The Americans were taken into custody with about 33 children while trying to reach the Dominican Republic, said Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue.

Sean Lankford told The Associated Press from Idaho that his wife and 18-year-old daughter were among 10 Americans detained.

Lankford, a member of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, said the group had intended to take the children to an orphanage they had set up at a hotel in the Dominican Republic. He says the group thought it had the proper paperwork.

Lankford says US officials on Saturday were working to locate the 10 church members. He says Idaho friends and relatives have been in touch with those detained via text message and phone calls.

Haiti has imposed new controls on adoptions since the Jan. 12 earthquake. The government now requires Prime Minister Max Bellerive to personally authorize the departure of any child as a way to prevent child trafficking.

Officials estimate that thousands of kids have been separated from their parents or orphaned by the earthquake.

- AP

HAITI DETAINS AMERICANS TAKING KIDS ACROSS BORDER

(01/31/2010 | 02:14 PM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Ten Americans were detained by Haitian police on Saturday as they tried to bus 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic, allegedly without proper documents.

The Baptist church members from Idaho called it a "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission," meant to save abandoned children from the chaos following Haiti's earthquake. Their plan was to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a rented hotel at a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, where they planned to establish an orphanage.

Whether they realized it or not, these Americans — the first known to be taken into custody since the Jan. 12 earthquake — put themselves in the middle of a firestorm in Haiti, where government leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to child trafficking.

"In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing," the group's leader, Laura Silsby told The Associated Press at the judicial police headquarters in the capital, where the Americans were being held pending a Monday hearing before a judge.

Silsby said they only had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children. She said her group obtained them through a well-known Haitian pastor named Jean Sanbil of the Sharing Jesus Ministries.

Silsby, 40, of Boise, Idaho, was asked if she didn't consider it naive to cross the border without adoption papers at a time when Haitians are so concerned about child trafficking. "By no means are we any part of that. That's exactly what we are trying to combat," she said.

Social Affairs Minister Yves Cristallin told reporters the Americans were suspected of taking part in an illegal adoption scheme.

Cristallin said the 33 children were lodged late Saturday at an SOS Children's Village outside of Port-au-Prince. SOS Children's Villages is a global nonprofit based in Austria.

Many children in Haitian orphanages aren't actually orphans but have been abandoned by family who cannot afford to care for them. Advocates both here and abroad caution that with so many people unaccounted for, adoptions should not go forward until it can be determined that the children have no relatives who can raise them.

UNICEF and other NGOs have been registering children who may have been separated from their parents. Relief workers are locating children at camps housing the homeless around the capital and are placing them in temporary shelters while they try to locate their parents or a more permanent home.

The US Embassy in Haiti sent consular officials, who met with the detained Americans and gave them bug spray and MREs to eat, according to Sean Lankford of Meridian, Idaho, whose wife and 18-year-old daughter were being held.

"They have to go in front of a judge on Monday," Lankford told The Associated Press.

"There are allegations of child trafficking and that really couldn't be farther from the truth," he added. The children "were going to get the medical attention they needed. They were going to get the clothes and the food and the love they need to be healthy and to start recovering from the tragedy that just happened."

Haiti has imposed new controls on adoptions since the earthquake, which left thousands of children separated from their parents or orphaned. The government now requires Prime Minister Max Bellerive to personally authorize the departure of any child as a way to prevent child trafficking.

Silsby said they had documents from the Dominican government, but did not seek any paperwork from the Haitian authorities before taking 33 children from 2 months to 12 years old to the border, where Haitian police stopped them Friday evening. She said the children were brought to the pastor by distant relatives, and that the only ones to be put up for adoption would be those without close family to care for them.

The 10 Americans include members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho, as well as people from Texas and Kansas. Idaho friends and relatives have been in touch with them through text messages and phone calls, Lankford said.

"The plan was never to go adopt all these kids. The plan was to create this orphanage where kids could live. And kids get adopted out of orphanages. People go down and they're going to fall in love with these kids, and many of these kids will end up getting adopted."

"Of course I'm concerned for my wife and my daughter," he added. "They were hoping to make a difference and be able to help those kids."

The group described their plans on a Web site where they also asked for tax-deductible contributions, saying they would "gather" 100 orphans and bus them to the Dominican resort of Cabarete, before building a more permanent orphanage in the Dominican town of Magante.

"Given the urgent needs from this earthquake, God has laid upon our hearts the need to go now versus waiting until the permanent facility is built," the group wrote.

- AP

HAITI WORKERS HAND OUT‘WOMEN-ONLY’ AID COUPONS

(01/31/2010 | 06:37 PM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Relief workers began handing out women-only food coupons, launching a new phase of what they hope will be less cutthroat aid distribution to ensure that families and the weak get supplies following Haiti's devastating earthquake.

Young men often force their way to the front of aid delivery lines or steal it from others, meaning aid doesn't reach the neediest at rough-and-tumble distribution centers, according to aid groups.

The World Food Program coupons can be turned in by women at 16 sites in the capital starting Sunday, and entitle each family to 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of rice.

U.N. officials say they are still far short of reaching all 2 million quake victims estimated to need food aid.

Meanwhile, federal agencies scrambled to explain the U.S. MILITARY's SUSPENSION OF MEDICAL EVACUATIONS OF CRITICALLY ILL HAITIANS TO THE UNITED STATES in a dispute over where the victims should be treated.

"We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don't Medevac them," said Dr. Barth Green, chairman of the University of Miami's Global Institute for Community Health and Development. That included 5-year-old Betina Joseph, who developed tetanus from a small cut in her thigh. Doctors said Saturday that she had just 24 hours to live if not provided with respirator care.

White House officials said they were working to increase hospital capacity in Haiti and aboard the USNS Comfort hospital ship as well as in the United States. U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said about 435 earthquake victims had been evacuated before the suspension, and that he was "sure the Department of Defense wants to do the right thing."

Relief officials were facing a growing sanitation crisis that could spread malaria, cholera and other deadly diseases throughout the chaotic camps.

SHORTAGES OF FOOD, CLEAN WATER, ADEQUATE SHELTER AND LATRINES are creating a potential spawning ground for epidemics in a country with an estimated 1 million people made homeless by the Jan. 12 quake.

In one camp, a single portable toilet served about 2,000 people, forcing most to use a gutter that runs next to an area where vendors cook food and mothers struggle to bathe their children.

Survivors have erected flimsy shelters of cloth, cardboard or plastic in nearly every open space left in the capital.

Women wait until night to bathe out of buckets, shielding their bodies behind damaged cars and trucks. Water is recycled — used first for brushing teeth, then for washing food, then for bathing.

"My 1-year-old has had diarrhea for a week now, probably because of the water," said Bernadel Perkington, 40. "When the earthquake happened I had 500 gourdes (about 15 U.S. dollars), which I was using for clean water for her. The money for that ran out yesterday."

The crowding and puddles of filthy water that breed mosquitoes have begun to spread diseases such as dengue and malaria, which were already endemic in Haiti. Some hospitals report that half the children they treat have malaria, though the RAINY SEASON — the peak time for mosquitoes — won't start until April. - Tight quarters also expose people to cholera, dysentery, tetanus and other diseases.

The U.N., Oxfam and other aid organizations have started to dig latrines for 20,000 people, said Silvia Gaya, UNICEF's coordinator for water and sanitation, even if that's a small fraction of the 700,000 people that officials said were living in the camps last week.

"In some parks, there is no physical space" even to dig latrines, Gaya said.

- AP

Swedish Text-TV - SVT Text:

RAIN NEW THREAT TO EARTHQUAKE STRICKEN HAITIANS

The UN fears that the rainy season that may start already in February will have disastrous consequences for the earthquake survivors. Diseases may spread very fast. According to the UN as many as 1 million Haitians being without shelter and without access to water and toilets of acceptable sanitary standard may be threatened.

Yesterday Haiti's health minister Alex Larsen said that the government will act as quickly as it can to find shelter for hundred thousands of people who lost their home due to the devastating earthquake on 12 January.

German ZDF text:

PRESIDENT PREVAL APOLOGIZES FOR HIS LONG SILENCE.

President Preval asks the Haitian population to excuse his silence after the devastating earthquake on 12 January. "Also a president is only a human being, and the great pain is silent", he said. He escaped from the earthquake because he had left the presidential palace earlier than normal due to a meeting. According to the Haitian government 180,000 died due to the earthquake on 12 January. The US coordinated the aid in the first days after the earthquake. The Haitians had criticized the president's silence.

TV2 TTV:

ANGER DUE TO DRUNKEN DOCTORS IN HAITI.

The government in Puerto Rico has initiated an inquiry into doctors acting in improper ways on pictures from Haiti. The pictures have aroused harm showing doctors from Puerto Rico helping the injured in Haiti posing with firearms, drinking alcohol and laughing while they attended patients. The pictures have been posted on Facebook. The authorities will now investigate whether the doctors broke some rules and thus can be punished for their behaviour.

Text-TV, Danish DR1:

THE REASON FOR THE RECORD-HIGH COLLECTION RESULT IS THE TAX RELIEF.

The tax relief ensured the record-high collection result. The Danes are very generous every time there is a collection for disaster-stricken and needy people. So far Danish companies and Danes have donated 130 million Danish Kroner to Haiti and African women. The collection took place at a very good time which explains the record-high amount collected. It has just been pay day, and this time the pay was affected by the tax relief implying that many Danes and companies felt that they had a financial reserve.

Text-TV, Danish DR1:

THE RESULT OF THE COLLECTION FOR HAITI WAS BETTER THAN EXPECTED.

Last year's record of 72million Danish Kroner collected was broken yesterday. This year's result was record-high 130 million Danish kroner.

The amount donated by Danes and Danish companies allows the relief organizations to make long-term plans for aid to Haiti and Africa. Now the relief organizations can change strategy from direct distribution of water and water purification tablets to establishment of wells and durable water supplies according to Henrik Stubkjaer, who is Secretary General of Danish Churchaid, which is one of the humanitarian organizations involved in the collection.

nancyk58 · February 1, 2010

Updates of the situation in HAITI on 1 February 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 1 FEBRUARY 2010

BBC WORLD:

AIRLIFT FOR VICTIMS TO RESUME.

The USA will resume within hours emergency evacuation flights for critically injured Haitian quake victims, the White House said. Airlifts stopped last Wednesday because of what Washington described as "logistical issues". Doctors warned that some people would die if flights did not resume.

Meanwhile, some Haitian children identified as orphans by a group of Americans who were taking them abroad may have parents it has emerged.

According to German ZDF text the airlifts for victims stopped because it was unclear how to finance the treatment of the quake victims. Florida's Governor Charlie Crist complained that the hospitals/clinics were overloaded and he demanded more personnel and that the injured quake victims be sent to other US states as well.

Swedish SV1T:

PATIENT FLIGHTS FROM HAITI RESUMED.

The flights of severely injured Haitian earthquake victims have been resumed today, but it is still not clear where the patients are taken and who is going to pay for their treatment. The White House announced earlier that the USA is "working with the Haitian government and the international community to meet this urgent need and to save lives". Last week these airlifts stopped after complaints from Florida that the hospitals were overloaded and that it was not clear who was to pay for the treatment of the earthquake victims.

ZDF Text:

SCHOOLS OPEN AGAIN AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE ON 12 JANUARY 2010.

Almost 3 weeks after the devastating earthquake in Haiti struck, schools are open again in the areas that were less affected by the earthquake. In Port-au-Prince it will take several weeks before the schools reopen. According to Unicef about 3/4 of the schools in Port-au-Prince are destroyed or severely damaged. Before the earthquake struck on 12 January, about 600,000 Haitian children went to school. Schools outside the capital Port-au-Prince also accepted children who had left the capital together with their families.

ZDF Text:

UN STARTS MAJOR FOOD DISTRIBUTION ACTION.

Now UN and US soldiers monitor the distribution of food, and according to the World Food Programme WFP there has been no violent incidents reported. Several relief organisations are involved. The UN established 16 distribution sites in Port-au-Prince. 2 million Haitians are to be supplied with food from here in the coming weeks. Haiti's government declared resale of food from distribution sites illegal. At least 180,000 died on 12 January 2010 by the devastating earthquake.

German ARD Text:

REMAKE OF "WE ARE THE WORLD":

Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie asked several artists at the Grammy Awards to contribute to the remake of "We Are the World". THE PROCEEDS WILL GO TO THE EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS IN HAITI according to Internetdienst "E!online". U2-frontman BONO, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Hudson, Usher, Akon, Enrique Iglesias and Toni Braxton have accepted to participate.

Taylor Swift, Beyonce rule Grammy Awards

(02/01/2010 | 01:39 PM - GMA News.TV)

Many participants in the program wore red cross buttons in support of HAITI EARTHQUAKE RELIEF. Mary J. Blige joined Andrea Bocelli in a rousing rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," which was not only designed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the song's big Grammy wins, but to RAISE MONEY FOR THE PEOPLE IN HAITI. The performance, introduced by Haitian native Wyclef Jean, will be available via iTunes.com/target, with the FUNDS GOING TO EARTHQUAKE RELIEF./B]

Beyonce wins 4 Grammys in pretelecast show

(02/01/2010 | 08:54 AM - GMA News.TV)

Mary J. Blige and Andrea Bocelli were to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Grammy wins by "Bridge Over Troubled Water" with a special performance of the classic song, which will be made available on iTunes. THE PROCEEDS WILL BE DONATED TO HAITI RELIEF.

- AP

nancyk58 · February 2, 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA / THE PHILIPPINES

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN THE PHILIPPINES ON 2 FEBRUARY 2010

REMAINS OF PINOY UN PEACEKEEPERS KILLED IN HAITI QUAKE HOME

(02/02/2010 | 07:24 AM - GMA News.TV)

The remains of three Filipino United Nations peacekeepers and a Filipino UN staff member killed in a devastating magnitude-7 quake in Haiti last Jan. 12 arrived home early Tuesday.

Radio dzBB's Manny Vargas reported that the remains of the four Filipinos arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport at 6:20 a.m.

The remains arrived via Philippine Airlines flight PR-103 from Los Angeles.

On the other hand, the Philippine Air Force had prepared full military honors for them at the Villamor Air Base in Pasay City.

Killed in the quake were Filipino peacekeepers DP3 Perlie Panangui, Sgt. Janice Arocena, and Sgt. Eustacio Bermudez Jr.; and UN staff member Jerome Yap.

A separate report on dzRH radio said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was expected to proceed to Villamor Air Base at 9 a.m., for the full military honors for the four.

Last weekend, three batches of Filipinos based in Haiti returned to the country in the wake of the killer quake.

A fourth batch is due to return home this week.

- LBG/RSJ, GMANews.TV

PREDAWN QUAKE ROCKS BAGUIO, NORTH LUZON

(02/02/2010 | 09:49 PM - GMA News.TV)

A predawn magnitude-3.8 quake rocked parts of Northern Luzon Tuesday, but state seismologists said there was no casualty or damage to property.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said the quake was felt at 5:20 a.m., and was tectonic in origin.

In its report, Phivolcs said the epicenter was 17 km northeast of Dagupan City in Pangasinan province. The quake was felt at Intensity III in Dapitan and Urdaneta cities in Pangasinan, and Baguio City, which is currently celebrating the Panagbenga Festival.

Phivolcs also said the quake was felt at Intensity II in Clark Field, Pampanga; and Intensity I in San Roque village in San Manuel town in Pangasinan. No damage was reported and no aftershock is expected.

On Monday, a magnitude-5.1 quake rocked parts of Southern Luzon at 12:56 p.m. Phivolcs said the quake was tectonic in origin, with the epicenter 55 km northwest of Mamburao in Mindoro Occidental.

It said the quake was felt at Intensity III in Paluan, Occidental Mindoro and Intensity II in Lubang, Sablayan and Mamburao in Occidental Mindoro and in Ilijan, Batangas; and in Calapan, Oriental Mindoro.

The quake was felt at Intensity I in Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro.

Also on Monday, Phivolcs recorded a magnitude-3.7 quake at 7:56 p.m., with the epicenter at 47 km northeast of Malaybalay, Bukidnon. It said the quake was felt at Intensity II in Malasag, Cagayan de Oro.

There was no casualty or damage to property in both Monday quakes.

- KBK, GMANews.TV

PHIVOLCS: MAGNITUDE-4.7 QUAKE ROCKS SURIGAO AREA

(02/02/2010 | 11:38 PM - GMA News.TV)

A magnitude-4.7 quake rocked the Surigao area in Mindanao Tuesday night, but state seismologists said there was no initial report of casualty or damage.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the quake was recorded at 7:19 p.m., with the epicenter traced to 97 km northeast of Surigao City.

It said the quake was tectonic and was felt at Intensity III in Socorro, General Luna, Surigao del Norte; and Loreto, Dinagat Island Province.

Phivolcs said the quake was felt at Intensity II in Surigao City and Tandag, Surigao del Sur; and Intensity I in Placer, Surigao del Norte.

The United States Geological Survey said the quake measured at magnitude 4.6 and traced the epicenter to 45 km northeast of Surigao; 100 km south of Guiuan, Samar; 135 km north of Butuan, Mindanao; or 720 km southeast of Manila.

Earlier Tuesday, a predawn magnitude-3.8 quake rocked parts of Northern Luzon but Phivolcs also said there was no casualty or damage to property.

Phivolcs said the quake was felt at 5:20 a.m., and was tectonic in origin. It said the epicenter was 17 km northeast of Dagupan City in Pangasinan province.

The quake was felt at Intensity III in Baguio City; Dagupan City; and Urdaneta City. It added the quake was felt at Intensity II in Clark Field, Pampanga; and Intensity I in San Roque village in San Manuel town in Pangasinan.

Phivolcs said no damage was reported, and no aftershock is expected.

- KBK, GMANews.TV

STRONG EARTHQUAKE STRIKES NEAR PAPUA NEW GUINEA

(02/02/2010 | 08:53 AM - GMA News.TV)

SYDNEY — A strong earthquake has struck in the ocean near Papua New Guinea, but there have been no immediate reports of injury or damage and no tsunami warnings have been issued.

The US Geological Survey says the 6.5 magnitude quake struck on Tuesday 78 miles (126 kilometers) west of the island province of Bougainville. It was 46 miles (74 kilometers) below the surface.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not issue an alert.

The archipelago nation is part of the Pacific Ocean's "ring of fire," where earthquakes of this magnitude are fairly common and rarely cause serious damage. - AP

nancyk58 · February 3, 2010

Updates of the situation in HAITI / news from 1 February 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN HAITI ON 2 FEBRUARY 2010

US MILITARY RESUMING HAITI MEDICAL FLIGHTS

(02/01/2010 | 08:52 AM - GMA News.TV)

MIAMI – The US military will resume bringing Haitian earthquake victims to the United States aboard its planes for medical treatment, ending a suspension that lasted several days, the White House said Sunday.

The military had brought hundreds of critically injured Haitians to the United States aboard its planes before halting the flights on Wednesday. Since then, at least a handful of patients were flown on civilian aircraft, and other flights continued to carry US citizens and other mostly non-injured passengers.

Late Sunday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the medical airlift was on track to resume by early Monday. The White House received assurances that additional medical capacity exists in the US and among its international partners for the patients.

"We determined that we can resume these critical flights," Vietor said. "Patients are being identified for transfer, doctors are making sure that it is safe for them to fly, and we are preparing specific in-flight pediatric care aboard the aircraft where needed."

Exactly what led to the suspension of medical evacuation flights was unclear, though military officials had said some states refused to take patients. Officials in Florida, one of the main destinations for military flights leaving Haiti, say no patients were ever turned away.

However, the suspension took effect after Florida Gov. Charlie Crist sent a letter Tuesday to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying the state's hospitals were reaching a saturation point.

The letter also asked for federal help paying for patient expenses — a request Crist on Sunday said could have been misinterpreted. He also said federal officials have indicated he would receive help covering the costs, totaling more than $7 million.

Crist told ABC News' "Good Morning America" on Sunday he was puzzled by the suspension. Military planes carrying 700 U.S. citizens, legal residents and other foreign nationals landed in central Florida over the past 24 hours, and three of those people required medical care at hospitals, state officials said. However, Florida had not received any critical patients needing urgent care since the halt, said Sterling Ivey, the governor's spokesman.

"We're welcoming Haitians with open arms and probably done more than any other state and are happy to continue to do so," Crist said.

Col. Rick Kaiser said Sunday that the US Army Corps of Engineers has been asked to build a 250-bed tent hospital in Haiti to relieve pressure on facilities where earthquake victims are being treated under tarpaulins.

Several hospitals in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.

US Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said about 435 earthquake victims had been evacuated before the suspension.

Individual hospitals were still able to arrange private medical flights — such as one Sunday that brought three critically ill children to a hospital in Philadelphia.

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia said the trio arrived Sunday afternoon. One is a 5-year-old girl with tetanus, the second, a 14-month-old boy with pneumonia, and the third is a baby suffering from 3rd degree burn from sun exposure after the quake.

Doctors have said the makeshift facilities in Haiti aren't equipped to treat such critical conditions and warn that patients in similar condition could die if they aren't treated in US hospitals.

Crist also has asked Sebelius for better coordination of the evacuations.

The state had been relying on air traffic controllers at Miami International Airport to relay information about the evacuations because the US military flights headed to the state without notice, David Halstead, the Florida Division of Emergency Management's interim director, said Sunday.

"The governor's request is, 'Just tell us a plan,'" Halstead said. - AP

CHAOS EASES AS HAITI FOOD LINES FOCUS ON WOMEN

(02/01/2010 | 11:37 AM - GMA News.tv)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The 79-year-old woman with a 55-pound bag of rice perched on her head gingerly descended concrete steps Sunday and passed it off to her daughter-in-law — who quickly disappeared behind the faded leopard-print sheets that are the walls of their makeshift home on the crowded turf of Haiti's National Stadium.

That personal victory for Rosedithe Menelas and her hungry family was a leap forward as well for the United Nations and aid groups that have struggled to help 2 million people who need food aid after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Under a new targeted approach to aid, Menelas and thousands of other women across Haiti's capital no longer have to battle with men at food handouts that in recent days have been chaotic and dangerous scrums.

"Every time they give out food there's too much trouble," said Menelas, collapsing into a small wooden chair as two grandchildren quickly scrambled into her lap. "Today, we finally got something."

U.N. officials say they are still far short of reaching all of the quake victims estimated to need food.

The U.N. World Food Program and its partners, including World Vision, borrowed an approach that has worked in other disaster zones. The agencies fanned out across Port-au-Prince, distributing coupons to be redeemed for bags of rice sites across the city. The coupons were given mainly to women, the elderly and the disabled.

Men could redeem coupons for women who were busy taking care of children or who otherwise could not make it.

"Our experience around the world is that food is more likely to be equitably shared in the household if it is given to women," WFP spokesman Marcus Prior said at the stadium, now a sprawling encampment of families left homeless by the quake.

Officials targeted women because they are primary caregivers in most households and are less likely to be aggressive in aid lines. Many Haitians agreed.

Chery Frantz, a 35-year-old father of four who lives in a ravine near one distribution center, said men are more likely to try to sell the donated rice.

"Women won't do that because they're more responsible," Frantz said.

Bags of rice will be given out daily for the next two weeks to hold the city until longer-term food efforts can take hold. Workers are handing out 1,700 rations daily at each location. Each bag is intended to help feed a family of six for two weeks with about half the calories they need each day.

WFP said that by the end of the day it had distributed some 377 metric tons of rice to more than 100,000 at nine sites.

Also Sunday, the White House said it was resuming the military airlift of critically injured earthquake victims, having received assurances that additional medical capacity exists in U.S. hospitals. The flights had stopped four days earlier, worrying doctors in Haiti who said hundreds would die without specialized care. Since then, relief groups were forced to use expensive private jets.

The Boston-based aid group Partners in Health arranged for one such plane Sunday to fly a 5-year-old tetanus victim, a 14-month-old boy with pneumonia and a baby boy with third-degree burns to Children's Hospital in Philadelphia.

The White House said the airlift would resume in hours. "Patients are being identified for transfer, doctors are making sure that it is safe for them to fly, and we are preparing specific in-flight pediatric care aboard the aircraft where needed," spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

The US Army Corps of Engineers has been asked to build a 250-bed tent hospital to relieve pressure on the US Navy hospital ship Comfort and on Haitian facilities where earthquake victims are being treated under tarpaulins in hospital grounds. Several Port-au-Prince hospitals were damaged or destroyed.

An effort to help other Haitian children led 10 US Baptists into the arms of police when they were caught trying to bus 33 children to the Dominican Republic. They acknowledged they had not gotten any permissions from Haitian authorities. They were being held without charges on Sunday.

The church members, most from Idaho, called it a "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission" to save abandoned children in the disaster zone. But they put themselves in the middle of a political firestorm over fears that overly quick adoptions could permanently separate children from missing parents — or that traffickers may be exploiting the quake to seize and sell children.

There were some glitches in Sunday's food campaign.

At least a dozen people didn't make it into the stadium before UN peacekeepers from Brazil shut the gates. They angrily waved their coupons outside.

Inside, the Brazilians distributed sardines, corned beef and water when the rice ran out to separate lines of men and women. The crowd surged forward, prompting the peacekeepers to fire several volleys of pepper spray.

Chris Webster, a World Vision spokesman, said his group needed more security before it could open two sites in the seaside slum of Cite Soleil.

But a tour of several sites showed the project was largely successful. People hauled away their rice, often dividing it up among friends and family. Some women quickly turned their bags over to husbands and brothers, but most took it themselves to the refugee camps they call home.

"Bringing food into a situation where people are desperate is always chaotic," Webster said at one site on the city's Rue J. Poupelard. "But this seems like it's going well."

Aid workers worked with community groups and others to make the operation as smooth as possible. UN officials even sought the help of Voodoo priests, who urged people to stay calm, said Max Beauvoir, head of Haiti's Voodoo Priest Association. "Voodoo constitutes a large part of our culture and priests often help mobilize communities," Beauvoir said.

Some recipients said it was their first aid since the quake. "I have a big family and we have nothing," said Nadia St. Eloi, 32, a mother of six who carried her rice bag on her head while holding her 2-year-old son by the arm. She said she still needs cooking oil and beans to make a meal but will make the rice last as long as possible. "We have no meat, so this is all we'll eat," she said.

- AP

HAITIAN CHILD QUAKE VICTIMS FLOWN TO US FOR CARE

(02/01/2010 | 12:57 AM - GMA News.TV)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Doctors skirted a bureaucratic logjam to save the life of two critically ill child victims of Haiti's earthquake on Sunday, flying them to U.S. hospitals on a private jet to avoid a military suspension of medical evacuation flights.

A 5-year-old tetanus victim and a 14-month-old boy critically ill with pneumonia were sent to Children's Hospital in Philadelphia by the aid group Partners in Health, based in Boston.

The airlift had been in doubt after the U.S. military stopped medical evacuation flights on Wednesday night because of concerns that hospitals would not accept the patients as federal and state officials debated who should pay for their care.

Five-year-old Betina Joseph, who developed tetanus from a small cut on her thigh, was in danger of dying if she could not reach a respirator at a U.S. hospital, said Dr. Barth Green, chairman of the University of Miami's Global Institute for Community Health and Development.

"We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don't Medevac them," Green said Friday.

Meanwhile, relief workers were preparing for a woman-only food distribution system in Haiti's capital, launching a new phase of what they hope will be less cutthroat aid distribution to ensure that families and the weak get supplies following Haiti's devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.

Young men often force their way to the front of aid delivery lines or steal from it from others, meaning aid doesn't reach the neediest at rough-and-tumble distribution centers, according to aid groups.

The World Food Program coupons can be turned in by women at 16 sites in the capital starting Sunday, and entitle each family to 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of rice.

U.N. officials say they are still far short of reaching all 2 million quake victims estimated to need food aid.

Both federal and state officials appeared to distance themselves from the decision to suspend the military's medical evacuation flights.

White House officials said they were working to increase hospital capacity in Haiti and aboard the USNS Comfort hospital ship as well as in the United States.

Col. Rick Kaiser said Sunday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been asked to build a 250-bed tent hospital to relieve pressures on the Comfort and on Haitian facilities where earthquake victims are being treated under tarpaulins in hospital grounds.

Several Port-au-Prince hospitals were damaged or destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.

U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said about 435 earthquake victims had been evacuated before the suspension, and that he was "sure the Department of Defense wants to do the right thing."

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist told ABC News' Good Morning America on Sunday he was puzzled by the reported suspension. He said 700 people had come from Haiti to Florida over the past 24 hours and said the state was still willing to help emergency cases.

"It's all hands on deck here in the Sunshine State. We're welcoming Haitians with open arms and probably done more than any other state and happy to continue to do so," Crist said. - AP

nancyk58 · February 3, 2010

Updates of the situation in Haiti / news from 2 and 3 February 2010

STARS GATHER TO COVER 'WE ARE THE WORLD' FOR HAITI

(02/02/2010 | 09:30 AM - GMA News.TV)

LOS ANGELES – Twenty-five years after star-studded anthem "We Are the World" raised millions of dollars to aid famine relief in Africa, celebrities of a different generation were set to gather Monday night to re-record the charity tune to benefit Haiti.

Among those scheduled to perform on the revamped track the night after the Grammy Awards were Akon, Jason Mraz, Bono, Wyclef Jean, Carlos Santana, Enrique Iglesias, Usher, Toni Braxton and Lady Gaga. The session will be held at the same recording studio where the original was cut — the historic A&M complex in Hollywood.

Quincy Jones, who produced the 1985 anthem, announced last week that he planned to redo the song to benefit recovery from the deadly Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti.

The session was all the talk at Sunday night's Grammy festivities. Music producer RedOne said being asked to participate was "the biggest honor a musician can ever do."

"Having Quincy, our father of music ... and Lionel Richie asking me to contribute and help, I said of course, because this is not about me," he said. "It's about Haiti."

Written by Michael Jackson and Richie, the original "We Are the World" thundered up the charts when it was released on the radio and in record stores in March 1985.

An unprecedented number of top pop musicians gathered at A&M the night of Jan. 28, 1985, following the American Music Awards, to record the tune. The song featured 45 American superstars, including Jackson, Richie, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, Bob Dylan and Cyndi Lauper.

The record raised more than $30 million for USA for Africa, a nonprofit organization founded by the singers to fund hunger relief in African nations.

- AP

ZDF Text:

HAITI AID: STARS TO REMAKE "WE ARE THE WORLD". Stars like Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion and Carlos Santana have re-recorded "We Are the World". According to LA Times around 100 artists participated in the remake of the song from 1985 - the eldest being 83-year-old Tony Bennett and the youngest 15-year-old Teenie star Justin Bieber. Producer Quincy Jones announced that the proceeds will go to the earthquake-ravaged Haitians. "We Are the World" was written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson and made 50 million $ for an Africa-aid fund.

ZDF Text:

POPSTARS SINGING A SONG IN FAVOUR OF HAITI.

More than 75 popstars gathered Monday in a recording studio in Hollywood to sing a new version of the charity song "We Are the World" from 1985. The proceeds are earmarked the Haitian earthquake victims. Pink, Celine Dion, Natalie Cole, Jonas Bros, Kanye West, Tony Bennett, Jennifer Hudseon, Akon and other stars participated in the remake in Henson recording studios where the original song was produced 25 years ago. The original version generated 30 million $ for the relief organisation "USA for AFRICA" founded by the popstars.

Swedish teletext:

½ MILLION HAITIANS HAVE LEFT PORT AU PRINCE.

500,000 Haitians have moved from Haiti's severely damaged capital. OCHA says that 90% of those fleeing Port-au-Prince move to relatives in rural districts. A new priority must be to help these host families. The arrival of the inhabitants from Port-au-Prince led to increasing prices of basic goods such as rice and sugar. FAO has asked for 700 million $ to support the agriculture and the production of food.

ZDF Text:

BACKGROUND: GOVERNMENT WITHOUT POWER: NO ONE CAN GUARANTEE SECURITY & SAFETY.

Haiti's government is in a disastrous state: It must rebuild Haiti, but has also lost a lot of its government officials on 12 January 2010 when the earthquake struck. The presidential palace and all ministries have been destroyed except the Social Affairs Ministry. The UN Mission is there, but cannot guarantee security / safety. Prisons have been destroyed, and thousand criminals escaped from prisons that collapsed as a consequence of the earthquake. 33 criminals were caught yesterday. There are unruly crowds in connection with food distribution. "Haitians are not looting, they're are not criminals, they're just hungry", a witness said. Haiti is located in the Western part of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Ocean: 27,000 squarekilometers and a population of 9 million Haitians. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. 80% of the Haitian population must live on less than 2 $ per day. Haiti was once a rich French colony, but Haiti has fallen into poverty due to among other things floods and cyclones.

News from Danish DR1 on 3 February 2010: Unbelievable, but true: We find happy and singing children in the streets of Port-au-Prince. It is as if hope is slowly returning. And there is a determination to rebuild Haiti in a better shape than it was in.

Unicef has started vaccinating Haitian children against measles and tetanus.

nancyk58 · February 4, 2010

Updates of the situation in the Philippines on 2 to 4 February 2010

UPDATES OF THE SITUATION IN THE PHILIPPINES ON 4 FEBRUARY 2010

PREDAWN QUAKE ROCKS BAGUIO, NORTH LUZON

(02/02/2010 | 09:49 PM - GMA News.TV)

A predawn magnitude-3.8 quake rocked parts of Northern Luzon Tuesday, but state seismologists said there was no casualty or damage to property.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said the quake was felt at 5:20 a.m., and was tectonic in origin.

In its report, Phivolcs said the epicenter was 17 km northeast of Dagupan City in Pangasinan province. The quake was felt at Intensity III in Dapitan and Urdaneta cities in Pangasinan, and Baguio City, which is currently celebrating the Panagbenga Festival.

Phivolcs also said the quake was felt at Intensity II in Clark Field, Pampanga; and Intensity I in San Roque village in San Manuel town in Pangasinan. No damage was reported and no aftershock is expected.

On Monday, a magnitude-5.1 quake rocked parts of Southern Luzon at 12:56 p.m. Phivolcs said the quake was tectonic in origin, with the epicenter 55 km northwest of Mamburao in Mindoro Occidental.

It said the quake was felt at Intensity III in Paluan, Occidental Mindoro and Intensity II in Lubang, Sablayan and Mamburao in Occidental Mindoro and in Ilijan, Batangas; and in Calapan, Oriental Mindoro.

The quake was felt at Intensity I in Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro.

Also on Monday, Phivolcs recorded a magnitude-3.7 quake at 7:56 p.m., with the epicenter at 47 km northeast of Malaybalay, Bukidnon. It said the quake was felt at Intensity II in Malasag, Cagayan de Oro.

There was no casualty or damage to property in both Monday quakes.

- KBK, GMANews.TV

PHIVOLCS: MAGNITUDE-4.7 QUAKE ROCKS SURIGAO AREA

(02/02/2010 | 11:38 PM - GMA News.TV)

A magnitude-4.7 quake rocked the Surigao area in Mindanao Tuesday night, but state seismologists said there was no initial report of casualty or damage.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the quake was recorded at 7:19 p.m., with the epicenter traced to 97 km northeast of Surigao City.

It said the quake was tectonic and was felt at Intensity III in Socorro, General Luna, Surigao del Norte; and Loreto, Dinagat Island Province.

Phivolcs said the quake was felt at Intensity II in Surigao City and Tandag, Surigao del Sur; and Intensity I in Placer, Surigao del Norte.

The United States Geological Survey said the quake measured at magnitude 4.6 and traced the epicenter to 45 km northeast of Surigao; 100 km south of Guiuan, Samar; 135 km north of Butuan, Mindanao; or 720 km southeast of Manila.

Earlier Tuesday, a predawn magnitude-3.8 quake rocked parts of Northern Luzon but Phivolcs also said there was no casualty or damage to property.

Phivolcs said the quake was felt at 5:20 a.m., and was tectonic in origin. It said the epicenter was 17 km northeast of Dagupan City in Pangasinan province.

The quake was felt at Intensity III in Baguio City; Dagupan City; and Urdaneta City. It added the quake was felt at Intensity II in Clark Field, Pampanga; and Intensity I in San Roque village in San Manuel town in Pangasinan.

Phivolcs said no damage was reported, and no aftershock is expected.

- KBK, GMANews.TV

PHIVOLCS: MAGNITUDE-3.9 QUAKE ROCKS ILOCOS

(02/04/2010 | 12:31 PM - GMA News.TV)

A magnitude-3.9 quake rocked parts of the Ilocos region Thursday morning, but state seismologists said there was no casualty or damage to property.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said the quake was recorded at 9:31 a.m. and was tectonic in origin.

It said the quake was felt at Intensity IV in Sinait town in Ilocos Sur; Intensity III in Sto. Domingo and Vigan in Ilocos Sur; and Intensity II in Laoag and Pasuquin, Ilocos Norte; Bangued, Abra; and Callao, Cagayan.

No aftershock was expected from the quake, Phivolcs said.

- RSJ, GMANews.TV

HAITI-RELATED FILIPINO NEWS

2 MORE BATCHES OF PINOYS FROM HAITI SET TO ARRIVE

(JERRIE ABELLA, GMANews.TV - 02/04/2010 | 01:30 AM)

At least 41 more Filipinos are due to arrive home from earthquake-devastated Haiti on Thursday and Friday, Malacañang said Wednesday.

A Malacañang statement said a batch of 11 Filipinos is scheduled to arrive Thursday, while another batch of 30 is due to arrive Friday.

Expected to escort the first batch on Thursday is Philippine Vice Consul to Havana Jason Anasarias. To escort the second batch is Philippine Ambassador to Havana MacArthur Corsino.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered the Departments of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Labor and Employment (DOLE), and Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to assist the returning Filipinos.

"Aside from 172 Filipino peacekeepers, there are an estimated 290 overseas Filipino workers in Haiti, mostly occupying middle and upper management positions in the garments, telecommunication, and power generation sectors," the Palace said.

Last weekend, 23 Filipinos Haiti were repatriated. Six arrived on January 29, five on January 30 and 12 on January 31.

ASSISTANCE TO REPATRIATES

As this developed, the government’s labor department assured that assistance will be extended to the returning OFWs from Haiti.

“We will extend whatever assistance is available for them," Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said in a release posted on their agency’s Web site on Wednesday. link to release: http://www.dole.gov.ph/secondpage.php?id=1124

Roque added that he has already directed the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and the regional offices of the Department of Labor and Employment to attend to the needs and welfare of the OFWs.

“I have also tasked all the concerned agencies of the Department to conduct a needs assessment analysis to the repatriates to identify the kinds of assistance they need," Roque further stated.

Meanwhile, a migrants’ rights group earlier called for the abolition of the OWWA Omnibus policies, which it said limits government assistance only to active members of the agency.

“Time and again we have demanded the scrapping of these discriminatory policies of OWWA that limits welfare assistance only to its active members. Such regulation is a disservice to distressed migrants especially those who were forced to be an undocumented worker abroad due to the inability of the government to generate decent jobs here in the country," says Garry Martinez, chairperson of Migrante International, in a statement.

According to Migrante, more than a third of the total 477 Filipinos in Haiti are classified as undocumented migrants, while many other OFWs entered Haiti illegally using tourist visas.

The OWWA Omnibus Policies were implemented in 2003 to limit the agency’s services and welfare assistance only to OFWs who have active contracts and have paid membership dues to OWWA.

“Even if OWWA accommodates undocumented OFWs from Haiti only to show its flexibility would not make the policies of the agency acceptable. On the contrary, it only proves how dysfunctional the OWWA Omnibus Policies are as a guideline in helping OFWs. Once and for all, these policies should be scrapped in order to give assistance to all OFWs, documented or not," Martinez added.

- KBK, GMANews

8 REPATRIATED PINOYS ARRIVE FROM HAITI

(02/04/2010 | 08:39 AM - GMA News.TV)

Eight Filipinos based in earthquake-devastated Haiti arrived home early Thursday, with some of them still trying to recover from their harrowing experience.

Radio dzBB's Manny Vargas reported that the eight arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport aboard a Philippine Airlines PR-103 flight from Los Angeles.

One of the returning Filipinos, Dominador Bagading Jr., was suffering from high blood pressure while Maila Trinidad said she had lost much sleep since the quake hit last January 12.

Trinidad said she and other Filipinos staying at an evacuation center in Haiti took turns watching their belongings from looters.

Many of the Filipinos also said that while they are in relatively good condition, their biggest concern now is their livelihood now that they have returned.

On Wednesday, a Malacañang statement had indicated a batch of 11 Filipinos was to arrive Thursday. Another batch of 30 is due to arrive Friday.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had ordered the Departments of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Labor and Employment (DOLE), and Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to assist the returning Filipinos.

Last weekend, 23 Filipinos arrived home from Haiti.

At the time of the killer quake last January 12, a total of 462 recorded Filipinos were in Haiti — 290 civilians and 172 military and police peacekeepers.

Four Filipinos, three of them members of the RP peacekeeping contingent, were confirmed killed while two others, both civilians, remain unaccounted for.

- RSJ, GMANews.TV

POSTHUMOUS PROMOTIONS FOR 3 RP PEACEKEEPERS IN HAITI

(02/04/2010 | 11:21 PM - GMA News.TV)

Three Filipino peacekeepers who died in the powerful Haiti quake had been posthumously promoted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

NEWS IN RELATION TO NATURAL DISASTERS

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