Fallin elected first female Okla. gov.

Haiti solemnly marks quake anniversary
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- Thousands of Haitians gathered in front of Port-au-Prince's ruined cathedral Wednesday to observe the first anniversary of the catastrophic Earthquake. At 4:53 p.m., the time the earthquake hit, the country will fall silent to officially honor the dead, CNN reported. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, visiting as the U.N. Envoy to Haiti, said the slow recovery is frustrating, but he expects it to pick up. Clinton said delays bogged down reconstruction aft...

Brooklyn Man Tries to Rebuild School in Haiti on Anniversary
The all too familiar sounds of Children learning and playing. This time, it came from Students in Haiti in tents just steps away from where their school once stood. It was a year ago that an Earthquake leveled the two year-old building in Colline, Leogane, located about an hour and a half drive outside of Port-au-Prince. "It was nothing but rubble," said founder of the Colline Academy Jimmy Toussaint, "and it really hurt my heart because I know how much work we put into it and I...

Haiti Marks Anniversary of Earthquake
More than 220,000 people were killed and 1.3 million left Homeless when at 4:53pm local time on January 12, 2010 the Earth heaved for a few terrifying seconds, collapsing homes and businesses, churches and schools -- leaving hellish, nightmarish scenes of devastation and suffering. Thousands of people gathered outside the ruins of the city's cathedral for a solemn Catholic Mass, their hymns floating across the rubble. The women wore perfect white dresses, the men crisp shirts, as incense wafted ...

Miami's 'Little Haiti' marks quake anniversary
Residents in Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood unveiled a Mural from several artists Wednesday as they marked the first anniversary of the devastating Earthquake that was heart-wrenching for the expatriates. "It was hard to paint this mural," said Serge Toussaint, an artist who is among the estimated 80,000 Haitian immigrants living in Miami. "I will remember always that day because I lost my mom, a lot of cousins and all my friends. I don't want to go there. It's too sad." Many in Little Hai...

Katie Couric: Haiti: One Year Later
The former Haitian ruler Jean Claude Duvalier once said, "It is the destiny of the people of Haiti to suffer." That was one of the things I read among my notes as we traveled down to Haiti on the night of January 12th, 2010. The quote sounded fatalistic and unfair. How can an entire population be destined to suffer? But the more you learn about Haiti, the more you realize the situation most Haitians are born into is a cruel semblance of life in the Western hemisphere. There are Mobile Phones a...

Navigating Misfortune And Joy
In the wake of the Earthquake, John Seabrook adopted a girl from Haiti. He marks the anniversary of the disaster: The truth is, I don’t want to associate the earthquake with Rose. And in some ways her arrival seems divorced from the earthquake or even from Haiti. She is our child now, not a Refugee or a Victim, not an orphan any longer. The small everyday responsibilities of being a parent—changing diapers, wiping a runny nose, reminding her to draw only on the paper, feeling pride in her ...

Hotel Montana quake survivors assist Haiti
On Wednesday, the first anniversary of an Earthquake that leveled most of Haiti's capital city, Len and Cherylann Gengel attended their Worcester, Mass., church at 4:53 p.m. to remember the moment the Earthquake hit and killed their daughter, Britney, at the Hotel Montana. The same day, Colorado residents Dan Woolley and Jim Gulley returned to the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, where they survived more than 50 harrowing hours under the collapsed luxury hotel. Lisa Birch, whose husband Jim died...

Haiti revises quake death toll up to over 316,000
Port-au-Prince | Wed Jan 12, 2011 4:14pm EST Port-au-Prince (Reuters) - The death toll from Haiti's devastating 2010 Earthquake was more than 316,000, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said on Wednesday, raising the figures from previous estimates on the first year anniversary of the disaster. "There were over 316,000 people killed," Bellerive told a news conference in Port-au-Prince of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission which he co-chairs with former President Bill Clinton. Previous...

Port-au-Prince prays on quake anniversary
The normally traffic-clogged streets of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince were quiet yesterday as businesses closed and people attended services to mark the anniversary of the worst Natural Disaster in the nation's history. Many people wore white, a colour associated with mourning in Haiti, and sang hymns as they navigated rubble still left in the streets after the Earthquake on 12 January, 2010, that killed more than 230,000 people. Evens Lormil, 35, joined mourners ADVERTISEMENT at the Cath...

Haitians recall 2010 quake "hell" as death toll upped
By Allyn Gaestel and Tom Brown Port-au-Prince | Wed Jan 12, 2011 7:33pm EST Port-au-Prince (Reuters) - Haiti mourned more than 300,000 Victims of its devastating 2010 Earthquake on Wednesday in a somber, poignant one-year anniversary clouded by pessimism over slow reconstruction and political uncertainty. When the precise 4:53 p.m. one year anniversary of the moment the January 12 catastrophe struck, many in the poor Caribbean country's rubble-clogged capital recalled with quiet emotion where...

Braun: Haiti continues to struggle one year after devastating earthquake
HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty ImagesA man missing a leg walks through the remains of the Notre Dame Cathedral on Jan 12 in Port-au-Prince at the one year anniversary of the massive Earthquake that devastated the island country. WASHINGTON, D.C. — Time to talk about Haiti again. A year has passed since the Earthquake and, when events like an anniversary occur, people remember and talk. This is what can be said about Haiti now: "I wish I could be more optimistic,’’ says Sr. Mary Finni...

Year 'was hell for us': Will Haiti be rebuilt?
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haiti mourned more than 300,000 Victims of its devastating 2010 Earthquake on Wednesday in a somber one-year anniversary clouded by pessimism over slow reconstruction and political uncertainty. He spoke at a news conference with former U.S. President and U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton after thousands of Haitians, many wearing white in mourning, attended poignant memorial services around the battered Caribbean country. At one ceremony at the ruins of...

Haitis debris mountain
It may have been a year since the devastating 7.0 Earthquake shook Haiti, but 12 months on, mounds of rubble remain a constant reminder of the destruction caused by the disaster. As the Earth's crust shifted in the late afternoon of 12 January 2010, the country's poorly-constructed buildings disintegrated, leaving many of the 250,000 Victims entombed. According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP), almost 200,000 buildings collapsed in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, creating a...

Haiti Remembers
A year after the massive Earthquake that devastated parts of the Caribbean nation, Haiti remembers the lost and keeps struggling to recover.Port-au-Prince -- At 4:53 p.m., Haiti fell silent. It was a rare quiet time -- 35 seconds -- for this boisterous city normally filled with the sounds of the almost one million people who live on the street. Some marked this painful anniversary in bed, the hurt of memories of the 7.0 Earthquake that killed so many a year ago too much to bear. Others visited ...

Pope Appoints New Haiti Archbishop One Year After Quake
By Francis X. Rocca Religion News Service Vatican City (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI marked the first anniversary of the Haiti Earthquake on Wednesday (Jan. 12) by naming a new Archbishop for the country's capital city. Archbishop-elect Guire Poulard will lead the Catholic Church in Port-au-Prince, succeeding Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, who was killed in last year's quake. Recalling the disaster, which killed more than 230,000 people and left more than 1 million Homeless, The Pope on Wednesday of...

One-Year Anniversary of the Haiti Earthquake
The graph above comes from my colleague Roger Bilham here at the Universisty of Colorado. It shows historical Earthquakes as a scatterplot of deaths and magnitude. Highlighted on the graph of the 2010 Haiti and Chile earthquakes. The Chile earthquake was more than 500 times more powerful than the Haiti quake, but the loss of life was 200 times more in the Haiti quake. Roger distilled lesson of the Haiti quake soon after in Nature (PDF): The future global burden of local Earthquakes could be si...

Jennifer Morgan: Haiti, One Year After the Earthquake: Reuniting Children and Families
Port-au-Prince. It's been nearly a year since I first arrived in Haiti to help lead the International Rescue Committee's efforts to reunite Children and families who were separated by the 2010 Earthquake. Many thousands of Children lost their parents in the disaster, and thousands more lost contact with their living relatives in the chaos that followed. The IRC went to work immediately following the quake, collaborating with the Haitian government and a network of international and local organ...

Haitians in U.S. face deportation
NEW YORK, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- Haitians who took refuge with relatives in the United States after last year's Earthquake may be forced to return home or go underground, a Refugee worker said. A year after the quake, about one million people are still living in tent cities and shantytowns around Port-au-Prince, and little rebuilding has been done. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is granting few visa extensions for Haitian Earthquake refugees. Under the rules, Haitians who were already i...

A year later, Haiti mired in post-quake woes | Photos
Reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti — Gray ribbons of fresh concrete streak the side of Clarisse Brisson's broken home, where she and her family are slowly making repairs. Inside, she reads Bible verses to sustain her. Next door, the neighbor's home is a heap of crumbled stone and rusted iron bars. "We are just living on a daily basis, watching and waiting," Brisson said, sighing and leaning her head against a bent metal doorjamb. "For a year." A year ago, one of modern times' worst na...

Haiti Earthquake Anniversary: Global Relief Efforts Yield Little Progress (PHOTOS)
One year after a devastating Earthquake toppled homes and killed roughly 250,000 people in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country is still reeling from the devastation. As Reuters reports, despite billions of dollars of donations and aid pledges from some of the world's Most Powerful leaders, a 12,000-strong United Nations Peacekeeping presence and an army of relief workers, the debris that clogs much of the city and a million Homeless people living in tents are blunt Testimony to th...

Isobel Coleman: Midwifery: A Smart Investment in Haiti
A year after the devastating Earthquake in Haiti last January, the situation on the ground remains grim: more than a million people are still living in tents, less than 5 percent of the rubble has been cleared from Port-au-Prince, and now a Cholera epidemic, which has already taken thousands of lives, is raging across the country. Despite pledges to "build back better," international efforts in Haiti are struggling just to provide relief. The window for transformative change is closing. Donor ...

Haiti one year later: known be their collective name
It was one year ago today that a major Earthquake devastated Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince. One year ago and one million people remain Homeless, with less than 5 percent of the debris cleared from city streets. One year ago today. Why the lack of meaningful progress with rebuilding efforts? Before you draw any conclusion, let me provide some on-the-ground observations of rebuilding efforts following a similar, though less destructive, Natural Disaster — Jamaica after Hurricane...

Uma Viswanathan: Hope in Haiti's Youth
Six weeks ago, I was walking down a steep and rocky road near our Port-au-Prince base in Haiti. For the first time in almost three years of working in Haiti, I was struck by what it truly means to have a country of 70 percent youth. Everywhere I turned there were small Children and the older teens who watch over them. Fresh-faced, open, vulnerable. It made me hopeful and sad at the same time. The physical and emotional harshness of life here ages people quickly: disease, accidents, and extreme...

Haitians Remember Quake Victims, Consider Future
Several thousand people gathered in front of the collapsed main Catholic cathedral in Port-au-Prince Wednesday for a mass to mark the one year anniversary of the 7.0 Earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people. "We are here to remember the Victims of the earthquake," said Cardinal Robert Sarah. "The lives, the wealth, the properties we lost." The cardinal, who had been sent by Pope Benedict, praised the heroic acts of Haitians one year ago as they helped to pull their fellow citizens from th...

How to help Haiti one year after earthquake (Rep. Maxine Waters)
One year after a catastrophic 7.0 Earthquake struck Haiti, the country is still devastated.  A million displaced Haitians are still living in tent camps, mountains of rubble are piled in the streets, and billions in assistance pledged by the international community has yet to be delivered.  Meanwhile, recent Elections have been widely discredited and are unlikely to result in a government capable of leading recovery and development efforts. So it’s with a heavy heart that I issue this stat