Evangel University student from Missouri helping Haiti during spring break

Seven students from Evangel University, along with a group of local medical professionals, are spending spring break in Les Cayes, Haiti, to provide medical, optical and dental care through a clinic.
The team is partnering with HealthCare Ministries of the Assemblies of God.
The following students are participating in the trip:
- Adam Grumke, senior biology major from Blue Springs.
- Holly Lahr, junior biology major from Tulsa, Okla.
- Andrew Miller, senior biological chemistry major from Newton, Kan.
- Michael Pezzillo, junior biology major from Shelby Township, Mich.
- Krista Sachen, junior biology major from Brookings, S.D.
- Kirstie Siercks, senior intercultural studies and exercise science double major from Lincoln, Mo.
- Christa Smith, senior biology major from Windber, Pa.
Erica Harris, assistant professor of biology at Evangel, is coordinating and leading this trip.
The following medical professionals are also assisting with the trip:
- Dr. Rick Honderick, physician and '71 EU alumnus
- Dr. Luke Shaw, physician and '03 EU alumnus
- Dr. Rob Puleo, dentist and HCM team leader
- Dr. Jim Robinson, dentist
- Josh Merrill Tjiong, pharmacist
- Rich Malara, optometrist
- Megan Bollier, registered nurse
- Sheila Lander, registered nurse and '73 EU alumna
- Sally Puleo, licensed practical nurse

                                  News-Leader.com
                                             
                                            

Deportees struggle in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti | With his gold teeth, shiny earrings and a life spent mostly in Florida, Serge Michel Dorval is afraid he looks like a rich American to some of the desperate Haitians who live near him in a shantytown alongside a trash-clogged drainage ditch.

It’s a fear that keeps him up at night.

But the 25-year-old is not an American, at least not to the U.S. Government , which deported him and 26 others back to the country of their birth in January in the first wave of forced removals since an earthquake last year destroyed much of the Haitian capital.

Twenty-six of the deportees have been convicted of crimes, and one was judged a national security threat.

Dorval speaks passable Creole, but he left Haiti as an infant and still is learning how to make his way in a devastated country where the vast majority of people have no job nor prospects of finding one.

Living in a tent, he misses hot showers and air conditioning. He misses his young son back in Fort Myers, Fla. He worries that his status as a deported criminal, imprisoned two years for cocaine possession, will make him a target of the police. And he wonders how he will survive.

“I wouldn’t wish Haiti on my worst enemy,” Dorval said outside the tent he shares with two others in a Port-au-Prince camp populated by thousands left homeless by last year’s cataclysmic earthquake. “I’m used to being treated like a human being, but a human life has absolutely zero value in Haiti.”

Dorval’s misery will soon have company. The U.S. government, which halted deportations to Haiti for a year after the earthquake, plans to deport another 700 convicted criminals back to the country this year, said Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She declined to say when they would be deported, citing security rules.

Hundreds of thousands of people from Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador,Jamaica and other nations have been deported to homelands they barely knew since 1996, when Congress mandated that every noncitizen sentenced to a year or more in prison be booted from the country upon release.

Immigration advocates have pleaded for a halt to the Haiti deportations, citing “inhumane conditions” in the country, where a cholera epidemic has killed more than 4,000 people since October.

                                                                                                              All credit to the Washington Times

Bilans des arrestations en Haiti pour le mois de fevrier

                1571 arrestations pour le mois de février

Sur un total de 1571 cas d’arrestation en février, 60 personnes ont été appréhendées pour meurtre dont 20 pour assassinat par armes à feu et 23 par armes blanches, a fait savoir Frantz Lerebours, le porte parole de la Police nationale.

En ce qui  a trait aux viols, 35 arrestations ont été effectuées pour 29 cas pendant le mois de février. Et pour 18 cas d’enlèvement la police a procédé à 11 arrestations. 27 évadés de prison ont été récupérés, a révélé M. Lerebours.

D’un autre côté, M. Lerebours a fait savoir que les bandits accentuent leurs attaques contre les policiers. De 25 février à aujourd’hui, 4 cas d’agression contre la police ont été enregistrés. Un policier a été tué vendredi matin et un autre a été assassiné après son enlèvement.

Le porte parole invite la population à ne pas s’alarmer car, dit-il, la PNH compte donner des réponses appropriées aux bandits.

Par ailleurs, la police a annoncé un train de mesure pendant le carnaval dont l’annulation des permis de port d’arme et l’interdiction de consommes des boisons alcoolisées dans des récipients en verre.

Source: HPN

Dominican Republic neighbor of the Haiti also at risk of an earthquake

The Dominican Republic is at risk of a of sustaining an earthquake similar to the one which devastated Haiti, warned to Monday a group of experts who will meet with president Leonel Fernandez next month, ecaribe.com.do reports. The Columbia University researchers told to The Associated Press that Santiago, with more than one million people and the country’s second biggest city, is at risk  a magnitude 8 earthquake, much stronger than the magnitude 7.0 that killed more than 200,000 Haitians in January last year.

“The next event of this type will probably occur on the other side of the island (Hispaniola)," said the university’s Urban Design Lab director Richard Plunz, who led the investigation. "It could generate very serious damages in the long term.”

Plunz and the rest of the researchers plan to meet with Fernandez at the end of April in Santo Domingo to apprise him of the find.

After Haiti’s quake, the President requested a seismological analysis of the Dominican Republic and a series of recommendations as to how best prepare the country for a disaster of that magnitude

    hope that wont happen