Content about Social Issues

Although Haiti has shown to have made minor steps up Transparency International's corruption index over four years, I find it ridiculous a democratic nation like Haiti is listed as the 175th most corrupted country in the world.  That's only 7 dips from North Korea which is probably the most inhumane place to live.  Shame on you Transparency International.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti's struggle to rebuild homes for hundreds of thousands of quake victims may be giving the impoverished nation something it has never had: loans to help people buy them. If efforts by international donors and local agencies succeed, at least a few members of Haiti's small middle class will be able for the first time to get a mortgage. Some of the efforts reach even further, offering micro-mortgages for families who make as little as $150 a month.

By DUFF WILSON

PHARMACEUTICAL companies around the globe are donating billions of dollars in free drugs to third world countries grappling with poverty and disease. Abbott Laboratories is taking its philanthropy a step further. The Illinois-based company is donating the time of dozens of workers with expertise in food sciences and engineering, in addition to $6.5 million cash, to build a charitable, self-sustaining nutrition enterprise in Haiti.

Consult any encyclopedia. Ask which was the first free country in America. You will get the same answer: the United States.

But the United States declared its independence when it was a nation with 650,000 slaves who remained so for another century, and its first Constitution said that a black slave was equal to three fifths of a person.

And if you ask any encyclopedia which was the first country to abolish slavery, you will always get the same answer: England.

Shortly after he was sworn in as Haiti’s newest President, Michel Martelly offered the international community a promise that doubled as a challenge: “Haiti is open for business,” he said.

The provocative performer vaulted to political power on vows to transform Haiti’s basket-case economy into a beacon for trade. “We cannot continue with this humiliation of having to extend our hand for help all of the time,” he said in his inaugural speech earlier this month.

Stephen Studdert, a Utah County businessman who orchestrated a 120-person "rescue and relief" mission to earthquake-ravaged Haiti, now aspires to help rebuild the country.

He'll leave the business of food, water and housing to others. But the 62-year-old has ambitious plans to tackle the impoverished country's growing health crisis.

"We're going to build a hospital," Studdert said Tuesday. "We're going to build the American Hospital of Haiti."

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

Even as outsiders feel sympathy for Haiti’s suffering, they tend to look upon it as a country beyond saving.

Now there is a plan to do just that, and it is surprisingly convincing. The lucid, far-reaching reconstruction guidelines that the Haitian government is scheduled to unveil on Wednesday at a donors’ conference at the United Nations should give all who care about Haiti’s future cause for hope.

Haiti’s President went to the White House yesterday with a vision of a Caribbean paradise waiting to be rebuilt after January’s catastrophic earthquake — and a price tag that could rise to $14 billion (£9 billion).

President Préval and his Prime Minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, are in Washington with a sales pitch on which their country depends — but which depends, in turn, on persuading recession-hit donors that the corruption that has bedevilled Haiti for generations can at last be overcome.

France's national anthem blared across the tarmac on Wednesday as Nicolas Sarkozy made the first visit ever by a French president to Haiti, once his nation's richest colony — offering aid to a country prostrate after a catastrophic earthquake.

Haitian President Rene Preval greeted Sarkozy as a brass band played the Marseillaise to start a quick tour of the earthquake ravaged capital and a French field hospital.

The two, both in dark suits, boarded an olive-drab helicopter and peered out of an open side door for an aerial tour of the devastated capital.

UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is still trying to re-establish reliable telephone and internet connections in Haiti, three weeks after the devastating earthquake on 12 January. ITU has also revealed long-term plans to help build telecommunication networks there. ITU is working with the Haitian government and operators to put in place telecommunication infrastructure that could be used for efficient disaster management and for the general socio-economic development of the country.