US troops secure Haiti presidential palace, hospital

PORT-AU-PRINCE — US troops descended by helicopter to take control of Haiti's ruined presidential palace Tuesday, AFP reporters saw, as the military earthquake relief operation gathered pace.

Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne division arrived in at least four choppers to secure the executive mansion, a once elegant white building in the devastated city center, now surrounded by a vast refugee camp.

From the palace, a 100-strong infantry company headed on foot to the city's general hospital, swamped with injured left behind by last week's catastrophic earthquake, which the Haitian government says killed at least 70,000.

"We are here to provide security to the hospital. We work with the government of Haiti. We have rules of engagement, but we are on a humanitarian mission," Sergeant Bill Smith told AFP.

The arrival was the most spectacular deployment so far in the US military's operation to bring relief to Port-au-Prince, but was not welcomed by some in the crowd who saw the arrival as an affront to Haitian sovereignty.

"I haven't seen the Americans in the streets giving out water and food, but now they come to the palace," said Wilson Guillaume, as some of the homeless living rough in the Champ de Mars square before the palace shouted abuse.

"It's an occupation. The palace is our power, our face, our pride," said Feodor Desanges.

While most Haitians have welcomed the international intervention, there is mounting frustration as what many see as the slow pace of moves to provide food and shelter to the homeless, and looting has broken out.

While army paratroopers took charge of key downtown sites, Marines were landing southwest of the city to link up with UN peacekeepers and prepare to land a larger flow of troops and equipment, a US military official said.

Source:AFP

Canada sending money, troops to assist in Haiti

OTTAWA — The federal government announced Tuesday an additional $80 million for international emergency relief efforts in Haiti as Canadian troops began flying into the southern coastal town of Jacmel, bypassing the clogged airport in the devastated capital, Port-au-Prince.


International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda announced the additional funding for emergency food, water, sanitation, medical treatment, shelter and protection of vulnerable people. That brings the federal commitment to $135 million, including up to $50 million in matching funds for public donations to registered relief organizations. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said public donations exceed $30 million so far.


Canadian Forces personnel set to work in Jacmel, delivering food, water and medical assistance from HMCS Halifax offshore and through the DART — disaster assistance response team — which travelled from Port-au-Prince. The first soldiers also began arriving at the Jacmel airport.


"The first soldiers from Quebec, part of the 3rd Battalion, Royal 22nd Regiment, are already on the ground and hundreds more are en route as we speak," army chief Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie said in an interview. By midnight Tuesday, he said, 1,000 Canadian Forces personnel and other Canadian officials will be in Haiti to help in the aftermath of the earthquake a week ago that has left tens of thousands of Haitians without homes or basic necessities.


"The environment is devastating," Leslie said. "All those poor people, with literally tens of thousands of dead, clamouring for help and support, the security situation is problematic, the distribution of humanitarian supplies is getting better with our presence, but where we're not — we being the international community and those who can help — it's very problematic."


Leslie said Canada is sending a shipload of heavy engineering equipment and heavy vehicles to Haiti on Thursday from Quebec and Canada is working with the U.S. government on getting the deepwater port of Port-au-Prince reopened so the equipment can be brought to shore.


"The big issue is the port," he said. He said the equipment will be brought ashore somehow. The Americans have amphibious assault craft that can carry heavy equipment but Canadians don't, he said.


Oda said the lion's share of the new funds, $60 million, is in response to a United Nations appeal for money for basic supplies and services. Another $11.5 million will go to non-government organizations such as CARE, Medecins du Monde, Save the Children, Oxfam Quebec, the Canadian Red Cross Society, the Centre for International Studies and Co-operation and World Vision. Another $8.5 million is in response to an appeal from the International Federation of the Red Cross to pay for emergency help to an estimated 300,000 people.


"We are committed to playing a significant role in responding to the impact of this disaster, not only in these early days of rescue and relief operations, but also in addressing longer-term recovery and reconstruction needs," Oda said.


The relief funds are separate from what the military costs will total. Defence Minister Peter MacKay had no information about the military price tag when asked at a news conference Tuesday.


Leslie said the focus now is getting the job done.


"We go into crisis mode and we are absolutely focused like a laser beam on saving lives and getting as many of our troops there as we possibly can," he said. "We'll worry about the money in a couple of weeks."


The number of missing Canadians had gone down to 699 by Tuesday morning.

Source:canada.com/

Haiti Relief Comes Rolling in From Banks

Several banks, large and small, responded quickly to the tragic Haitian earthquake by pledging money directly or setting up funds through which customers and employees can contribute.

Through Monday, at least 24 institutions and financial services firms had pledged more than $14 million in aid to Haiti after the Jan. 12 quake that killed up to 200,000 people and left at least 1.5 million homeless, according to reports.

“The recent earthquake in Haiti has caused unprecedented devastation and tragic loss of life, and at U.S. Bank we understand how important it is for us to step up and provide financial assistance in support of the relief efforts,” said Richard K. Davis, president and CEO of U.S. Bancorp, in a statement.

Meanwhile, as donations from the U.S. poured in, news emerged this week in the UK that millions of donations to Haitian refugees were being held up because of glitches with banks’ anti-fraud software, which often block out-of-norm payments of credit and debit-card holders. The BBC noted that banks sometimes halt payments to charities because a standard tactic by card thieves is to test stolen cards with charity organizations to see if the card has been reported lost. An HSBC spokesman told BBC Radio 4’s Money Box that the “vast majority” of Haitian donations have gone through. For more on that story, click on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8463286.stm



Here’s a partial list of financial institutions that have made donations to the earthquake relief effort:

Deutsche Bank: $4 million through AmeriCares, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam America and Partners in Health. The donations came from all of its US agency equity trading commissions on Friday.

Citigroup: $2 million to American Red Cross and other local organizations involved in reconstruction efforts.

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs: $1 million each.

Bank of America: $1 million to victims of the earthquake, as well as a $500,000 grant to the Haitian Relief and Development Fund.

JPMorgan Chase & Co: $1 million in company and employee contributions, which will include funds for Red Cross and CARE.

Jefferies: $1 million of Friday’s net commissions to the Red Cross, Unicef, Save the Children and the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund.

State Street: A $400,000 grant through the State Street Foundation’s Disaster Relief Emergency Assistance Fund to Oxfam America’s Haiti Earthquake Response Fund. Also matching employee contributions through Oxfam America and global Oxfam chapters up to $100,000.

Harris Bank/BMO Financial Group: $250,000, as well as waiving fees on sending drafts and fund transfers to relief efforts.

Visa, MasterCard and American Express: Each pledged between $200,000-$250,000, as well as a waiver on interchange fees for donations. Discover donated $100,000, as well as pledging $1 million through a card-member matching program.

BBVA Compass: Up to $100,000 in dollar-for-dollar matches to customer contributions.

New York Life Insurance Co.: $100,000 the Red Cross, plus another $150,000 in matching employee contributions.

Northern Trust: Pledged $250,000 in aid to the Red Cross.

US Bancorp, M&T Bank, TD Bank and Wells Fargo & Co: $100,000 each to the Red Cross.

Astoria Federal Savings: $25,000 to the Red Cross, and up to $25,000 in matching contributions through February from customers at its branches in New York. Astoria will also match two-for-one on each dollar contributed by its employees, up to $5,000.

Both The State Bank and Park State Bank & Trust in Colorado are teaming with mobile transactions firm Bling Nation to donate 1 percent of all mobile transactions to the Salvation Army for 30 days.

Northfield Bank Foundation (NY): $25,000 to the American Red Cross International Response Fund.

Source:americanbanker.com/

UN to send 3,500 more peacekeepers to Haiti

The United Nations agreed Tuesday to send 3,500 more peacekeepers to Haiti -- a decision that came amid rising tension between relief workers and increasingly desperate earthquake survivors.

The UN Security Council agreed unanimously to the increase. The troops will bolster efforts by 7,000 UN peacekeepers and 2,000 police already there, to maintain security and support earthquake relief efforts.

Haitian officials are now saying the death toll from last week's earthquake will hit 200,000.

Some 70,000 bodies have now been recovered from the rubble and trucked off to mass graves. The latest casualty report from the European Commission, which cited Haitian government figures, doubled previous estimates of the dead, to approximately 200,000.

European Commission analysts estimate another 250,000 have been injured and a staggering 1.5 million are now homeless. Most of those are sleeping in the streets of the capital or trying to find transportation to get out to the countryside, where some hope food is easier to find.

For those who stay, accessing the aid that is being brought in is a huge challenge.

CTV's Tom Clark, reporting from Port-au-Prince, says the problem isn't a lack of aid, as it was in the early days of the quake aftermath -- now it's a matter of distribution.

About 100 aircraft a day, loaded with food, water and supplies, are now being allowed to land at the capital's only airport. They include huge Hercules C-130 and C-17 transport planes that are coming in around the clock, 24 hours a day.

As well, the U.S. military says it will begin using two additional airports to bring in aid in the coming days.: one in the town of Jacmel, where Canada's DART team has based its efforts; and another airfield in neighbouring Dominican Republic.

"So there's no shortage of aid arriving. The real problem is getting it out to the people," Clark told Canada AM Tuesday.

"I liken it to taking all that aid and getting it through the eye of a needle."

With the port in the capital blocked and badly damaged, distribution of supplies can only come through the city's lone airport.

Getting it out to the people from there is proving a further challenge. Most infrastructure is completely destroyed, and many roads are blocked and impassable, Clark says.

"And even if you get into the neighbourhoods, you have the problem of how do you distribute aid without causing a riot. That has already happened a few times here," he says.

The U.S. military tried to do an air drop of relief supplies from C-17 transport planes Monday, parachuting pallets of ready-to-eat meals to a secured area outside the city, rather than landing and unloading at the crowded airport.

"But that created a riot on the ground," says Clark. "Then they tried passing it out through iron gates. When they finally ran out, the mobs just broke down the gates and took the last of the stores.

"So there's a clash between the desperation, the need for help and the need for order."

United Nations relief agency officials said the security situation was largely under control and had not hampered distribution of food rations to 270,000 Haitians so far.

"The situation is tense but calm. Of course there are lootings because the population is on edge," Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the UN Office for the Coordination of humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Reuters in Geneva.

Still, there have been reports of outbreaks of violence. In the huge Cite Soleil slum, gangsters who escaped from the city's notorious main penitentiary are reportedly reassuming control. Police are urging citizens to take justice into their own hands.

"If you don't kill the criminals, they will all come back," Reuters reports a Haitian police officer shouted over a loudspeaker.

Nighttime is especially dangerous is some neighbourhoods, prompting some locals to carry machetes and travel in groups to fight bandits.

Medical relief workers say they are treating gunshot wounds in addition to broken bones, with many of those bullets coming form the same police forces charged with protecting citizens.

Clark reports that in some neighbourhoods, citizens have set up blockades at the ends of their streets, in an effort to prevent bandits from coming in.

United Nations Chief Ban Ki-moon says he had recommended to the Security Council that 1,500 police and 2,000 troops be added to the 9,000-member UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, to provide further security.

Alain Le Roy, the UN peacekeeping chief, told reporters that the reason for more troops is three-fold: securing the humanitarian convoys; creating a "humanitarian corridor," and building a reserve force in case the situation "unravels" further, he said.

Clark says the key to keeping the lid on the violence is to get the food, water and supplies out to the people quickly.

"Everybody knows the consequences of not getting the food out and that's that you could reach a tipping point where desperation simply overwhelms the relief effort," he said.

Source:edmonton.ctv.ca/

Wyclef Jean Fights Tears at Yele Haiti Press Conference

As people continue to question Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti foundation, the former Fugees member told reporters that while he made mistakes he didn't take any money.

"Yele's books are open and transparent, and we have been a clean bill of heath by an external auditor every year since we started," Jean said in a press conference on Monday. "On the books, it looks as though there was benefit, but there was not. It was done with the intent to do anything other than efficient."

As Spinner previously reported, the Smoking Gun published reports last week questioning the charity's finances. According to the site, Jean and his partner were paid for various administrative and production expenses. While Yele Haiti has so far raised over $2 million since the 7.0 earthquake that hit the country last week, Jean's fundraising efforts may be threatened because of the allegations.

"The Haitian on the ground of course are going to suffering, frustrated, violent," Jean said while fighting back tears. "I tell them I do not cry for myself that I cry for them."

However, the heated debate isn't stopping Jean from moving forward with his plans to help. He has called for an "exodus" from the capital city and asked for assistance in constructing massive tent communities to serve as a refuge for earthquake victims. "We need to migrate at least two million people in different parts outside of Port-au-Prince," he said. "And I give you my word. If I tell them to go, they will go. But they need somewhere to go to." Check out the video of the press conference below.

Source:spinner.com/