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The government of Haiti is hosting Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton today, along with a delegation of foreign investors and a crowd of celebrities. They're gathering to inaugurate an industrial park that is the centerpiece of the U.S. aid effort since the 2010 earthquake. The Clintons and others hope the facility will transform northern Haiti by providing thousands of jobs. The industrial park is more than a hundred miles from the slowly-recovering quake zone.

Wyclef's Haiti Charity Is Now Defunct After Mishandling $16M In Donations Aly WeismanOct. 12, 2012, 6:52 PMWyclef's Yéle charity is no longer.Wyclef Jean's Yéle Haiti charity, once what the singer said was the country's "greatest asset and ally" is now defunct and in debt. The charity's collapse comes after years of accusations of mishandled funds, which amounted to a reported $16 million following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. "Yéle was small before the earthquake, with only $37,000 in assets," reports The New York Times. "Immediately afterward, money started pouring in. Mr. Jean said he raised $1 million in 24 hours...

Four of Haiti's five Olympians at the London Games have something in common -- they're not from Haiti. With millions of Haitians living on $2 a day or less and hundreds of thousands of people rendered homeless by a devastating earthquake two years ago, the country struggles to produce world-class athletes. But those with Haitian links are still eager to represent the small Caribbean country. "I still feel Haitian even if I wasn't born there," 21-year-old sprinter Marlena Wesh said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. Wesh, who will run in the 200 and 400-meter races at the...

Criminals in Haiti are preying on vulnerable earthquake survivors, even raping women, in makeshift camps set up in Port-au-Prince after the disaster. "With the blackout that's befallen the Haitian capital, bandits are taking advantage to harass and rape women and young girls under the tents," Haiti’s police, chief Mario Andresol, said yesterday. "We have more than 7,000 detainees in the streets who escaped from the national penitentiary the evening of the earthquake ... It took us five years to apprehend them. Today they are running wild." Rachelle Dolce, who is living at a large makeshift camp on the Petionville Club...

Can Any of These House Underdogs Survive? Stuart Rothenberg June 8, 2012 · 1:48 PM EDT Remember their names: Reps. Charles Bass (R-N.H.), John Barrow (D-Ga.), Bobby Schilling (R-Ill.), Jim Matheson (D-Utah) and Robert Dold (R-Ill.). If any of these five House incumbents survive, it will surprise most dispassionate observers (including some in their own parties). But upsets happen, and each of these candidates has a scenario for victory. Moments after Bass was declared the winner in November 2010, most political insiders figured he would be doomed in 2012. But considering his past electoral success, reports of his political demise...

Orlando Morel was 6 years old when he and his mother left Haiti on a crowded small wooden boat destined for America. Now 24, Morel remembers the blue of the ocean everywhere. And the hunger. When a piece of bread fell into the water, Morel quickly scooped it up. "I will never forget that taste," he said, recalling the salty, soggy bread. Nor will he forget when the Coast Guard showed up in a white boat and rescued him, his mother and other passengers. Eternally grateful, the rescue led Morel to join the Coast Guard, and on Wednesday he will...

Several Democratic senators are calling on the Obama administration to allow Syrians who are already in the United States to stay, at least temporarily, out of concern it would be "too dangerous" for them to return home. The senators want President Obama to invoke what's known as "temporary protected status" for thousands of Syrians in the U.S. The designation typically is given to foreign nationals whose home countries are beset by war or natural disaster and who could face harm should they return. The senators argued that Syrians in the U.S. are in just that kind of predicament, as Syrian...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - A small band of protesters called Tuesday for Haitian President Michel Martelly to prove he's eligible for office as they destroyed posters that bore images of the leader. The 100 or so demonstrators said Martelly should heed requests by lawmakers to show his travel documents in an effort to dispel allegations that he holds dual nationality, which would bar him from office under Haiti's constitution. "We are taking to the streets to tell Martelly to show his passport," protester Ronald Jean-Charles said as others burned posters of the president. "If not, he should step down." The...

When burglar Kesler Dufrene became a twice-convicted felon in 2006, a Bradenton judge shipped him to prison for five years. And because of his convictions, an immigration judge ordered Dufrene deported to his native Haiti. That never happened. Instead, when Dufrene’s state prison term was up, Miami immigration authorities in October 2010 released him from custody. Two months later, North Miami police say, he slaughtered three people, including a 15-year-old girl in a murder case that remains as baffling today as it did the afternoon the bodies were discovered.

On Jan. 12, for the second anniversary of the devastating earthquake, thousands of people flocked to the Shalom Church in Port au Prince, Haiti. The "church" is just a plywood stage under a patchwork of tattered tarps. The crowd was so large that it spilled down a muddy hill toward a tent camp for earthquake victims. Most of the singing, swaying congregation were so far away they couldn't even see the podium. The evangelical mission now claims to have more than 50,000 members and one of the most popular radio stations in Haiti. This church is a product of the...

Sean Penn Appointed Haitian Ambassador LOS ANGELES, USA (defend.ht) - Sean Penn has accepted the job of Ambassador for Haiti, where he has spent the last two years managing a tent camp for displaced Haitians after the earthquake. Sean Penn will now be the "ambassador at large" for the Caribbean nation. Penn was offered the position by Haitian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laurent Lamothe, while at the Cinema for Peace benefit in Los Angeles on Saturday night. Picking up a humanitarian award for his work in Haiti, he told the crowd: "I do accept [the job]," before adding it would...

Compelling new scientific evidence suggests United Nations peacekeepers have carried a virulent strain of cholera -- a super bug -- into the Western Hemisphere for the first time. The vicious form of cholera has already killed 7,000 people in Haiti, where it surfaced in a remote village in October 2010. Leading researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere told ABC News that, despite UN denials, there is now a mountain of evidence suggesting the strain originated in Nepal, and was carried to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers who came to Haiti to serve as UN peacekeepers after the earthquake that ravaged...

Government pledged over $1 billion only to spend most of the money on itself. LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - US relief to Haiti totaled more than $3 billion. Actual Haitian people, the victims of the disaster who needed the most help - got less than 1 percent of that money. That means 99 of every 100 dollars sent to relieve the suffering of the Haitian people and rebuild the country, ended up in the hands of people for whom it was never intended. Instead, the US government has used the disaster to pay itself.   Most will be quick...

Two years after a devastating earthquake, Haiti is struggling to rebuild its ravaged buildings and hundreds of thousands of victims remain homeless. The 7.0 magnitude quake on January 12, 2010, lasted only a few seconds but killed around 300,000 people and left more than 1.5million without homes. Since then, however, reconstruction has been painfully slow, with squalid tent camps housing more than a half a million people in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

More than 500,000 people in Haiti are still living in makeshift tents two years after an earthquake devastated the country. The Caribbean state was hit by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010, which led to more than 220,000 deaths and left 1.5 million homeless.

HAITI wasn’t always the “poorest nation in the Western hemisphere,” though it’s almost impossible to read about the country today without coming across that phrase. In the two years since the earthquake that devastated it, Haiti has experienced political conflict and its first ever cholera epidemic; hundreds of thousands of the displaced are still living in makeshift tents strewn like dusty flags by the sides of highways. It is easy to forget that, for most of the 19th century, Haiti was a site of agricultural innovation, productivity and economic success.

Clinton Foundation facilitates $45 million Haiti hotel dealNovember 28, 2011 | By the CNN Wire Staff Two years after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake leveled Haiti's capital, a deal brokered by former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation will add new lodging for aid workers and other travelers to Port-au-Prince -- in the form of a $45 million hotel. With only about 500 operable hotel rooms, the city has limited space to house aid workers, potential investors and other visitors, according to a news release Monday by the future hotel's owner and its operator. Caribbean cell phone provider Digicel will own the hotel,...

In the months following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, a charity run by hip-hop star Wyclef Jean spent a pittance of the money it took in on disaster relief and doled out millions in questionable contracts. Yele Haiti’s coffers swelled to $16 million in 2010, the most the charity had ever received. But less than a third of that went to emergency efforts, and $1 million was paid to a Florida firm that doesn’t seem to exist, The Post has learned. Jean’s charity, which he founded in 2005 with his cousin Jerry Duplessis, was already troubled when the earthquake struck...

LEOGANE, Haiti (AP) - Haiti hasn't seen many homes built for the poor following a devastating earthquake almost two years ago, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Monday. In a 10-minute interview with The Associated Press, Carter said he noticed little housing reconstruction for struggling Haitians as he drove from the international airport to the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Port-au-Prince to Leogane, a coastal city 18 miles (29 kilometers) west of the capital that was largely flattened in the earthquake because of its proximity to the epicenter. He added that there may be construction in other parts of...

(CNS/Paul Jeffrey) Thousands of Haitians stricken with cholera during the last 13 months are seeking compensation and an improved response to ending the epidemic from the United Nations, according to a petition filed with the world agency.The petition filed by lawyers with Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti in conjunction with the Office of International Lawyers on behalf of more than 5,000 Haitians charges that cholera was introduced into the country by Nepalese troops serving with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti — MINUSTAH — and that the world body has done little in response to the spread...