The Trudeau government will be sending more armoured vehicles to Haiti and imposing new sanctions on individuals, says Canada’s ambassador to the UN Bob Rae, who recently returned from a fact-finding mission to the island nation.
Canada is also planning to send three experts to work with the Haitian National Police and make a needs assessment.
Rae’s recent visit to Haiti was his second this year. It followed an earlier fact-finding mission by public servants in response to a U.S. request for Canada to take charge of efforts to save Haiti from anarchy.
The key to Canada’s approach, Rae told CBC News, is to boost and equip the Haitian National Police.
“Now we’re figuring out a way to improve the product that’s going down,” he said. “We are set, there will be more going down. There’s a need for other equipment and there’s a need for more training, and I think for a lot more discussion between us and the National Police about how we deal with the broader issues of the rest of the blockades.”
A blockade of Haiti’s main fuel terminal by the G9 alliance of gangs ended two weeks after Canada and the U.S. sent armoured vehicles to the Haitian police on October 15. That blockade had paralyzed transportation and industry in a country that lacks a reliable power grid and depends heavily on diesel generators.
But the gangs retain control of other territories they’ve seized, including the country’s main courthouse.
Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae makes his way to speak to media at the United Nations in New York on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
“Things are now a bit calmer, but it’s an almost eerie kind of calm, because people are terrified to go out,” said Rae. “The kidnappings are up. They’ve more than doubled over the same time last year.
“And the gangs control easily 70 per cent of Port-au-Prince and significant parts of the rest of the country, and they blockade the main National Highway, which goes from the north to the south. People are living very, very precariously. There’s still a serious food crisis and huge numbers of people living in total poverty.
“So from that perspective, it’s not getting better at all.”
And yet, expectations that Canada will somehow make it better remain high.
‘A leading role’
“We recognize that we will play a leading role in this,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this week, discussing Haiti with La Presse Canadienne.
“This is a challenge that is close to our hearts and there is a level of trust between the Haitian people and the Canadian government that they have less of with other allies elsewhere.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and OIF Deputy Secretary General Geoffrey Montpetit discuss the situation in Haiti on the sidelines of the Francophonie Summit in Djerba, Tunisia on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
It’s not just Canada’s long history of involvement in Haiti and its large Haitian diaspora population that have landed the ball in Canada’s court. It’s also pressure from the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden — which has made it clear that it would like to see Canada take charge on Haiti while the U.S. deals with other fires in other parts of the world.
Henry, Haiti’s de facto prime minister, has asked for a foreign military force to enter his country and take on the gangs. Trudeau made it clear that the cavalry is not on the way.
“We have not taken anything off the table, but with 30 years of experience in Haiti, we know very well that there are enormous challenges when it comes to interventions,” he said in French. “It is clear that our approach has to change this time.”
But while the Trudeau government has said a lot about what it doesn’t want to do in Haiti, it’s less clear about what it will do, beyond providing police equipment and sanctions.
Sanctions may be reaching their limit
Canada has significantly stepped up its sanctions over the past month, targeting individuals at the top echelons of power in Haiti.
Those sanctioned include former president Michel Martelly, former prime ministers Laurent Lamothe and Jean Henry Ceant, Haiti’s richest man and only billionaire Gilbert Bigio, and fellow oligarchs Sherif Abdallah and Reynold Deeb.
Canada accuses all six men of seeking to profit from chaos and impunity in Haiti, and of arming and directing gangs to pursue their political and business goals.
The oligarchs are members of Haiti’s famed “fifteen families.” They control much of the economy and, in some cases, own private ports that have been conduits for the smuggling of arms and ammunition onto the island in recent years.
It’s a country where people are afraid to go out, where women are being raped, where kids are being trafficked, where arms are being bandied about and drugs are being sold, used as a smuggling route to the U.S. and beyond. No country can survive like this.– Bob Rae
Once supporters of the dictatorship of the Duvaliers, many of those oligarchs later backed the Parti Haitien Tet Kale (PHTK or “Bald-Headed Party”) of Martelly, in power continually since 2011.
Some also have links to foreign governments. Bigio’s son Reuven acts as consul for the government of Israel in Haiti, while Abdallah represents Italy.
Having extended its sanctions to the top rungs of Haitian society, it’s not clear how much of an effect additional Canadian sanctions could have. Rae said Canada would like to see its allies — including the United States — back Canada up with sanctions of their own.
“We’d like them to join us in doing more, and to figure out a way to develop a stronger common approach that’s not based on supplanting what the national police does,” he told CBC News.
Rae said he’d also like to see allies do more to help the Haitian police combat gangs that seem to have no problem obtaining weapons — “arms, by the way, that are coming in from Miami.”
Haitian opinion split
Not all Haitians are convinced their police force can defeat the gangs, and the country is divided over the prospect of once again having armed foreigners land on its shores.
Violence and desperation have driven many Haitians to put their reservations about foreign domination aside — as the crew of the USS Comfort discovered this week when America’s hospital flagship docked off the port of Jeremie, triggering demonstrations by local people who want the U.S. military to defeat the gangs that are shooting them, rather than just treat their wounds.
People protest against the arrival of the USNS Comfort hospital ship in Jeremie, Haiti on Dec. 13, 2022. The USNS Comfort was on a humanitarian mission to provide dental and medical services. (Odelyn Joseph/The Associated Press)
But the country also has seen demonstrations against foreign intervention. Pride in Haiti’s hard-won independence is compounded in many cases by suspicion that the foreigners would serve to prop up Henry’s unpopular and unelected government.
If police can’t do the job, and foreigners don’t want to, one option that is already moving forward is the resurrection of Haiti’s long-defunct army.
The army revives
Haiti’s army was once the most powerful institution in the country. It rudely turfed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power in a coup in 1991, and its commander Gen. Raoul Cedras ruled as dictator for three years until he was ousted by U.S. pressure.
Aristide returned to power and abolished Haiti’s army in 1995.
But in 2017, the Army was officially relaunched, and in recent months small groups of Haitian soldiers have been training in Mexico.
Rae supports the idea.
“Name me a country around the world that doesn’t have an army,” he told CBC News. “The main thing to recognize right now is that Haiti has a profound security problem.
“It’s a country where people are afraid to go out, where women are being raped, where kids are being trafficked, where arms are being bandied about and drugs are being sold, used as a smuggling route to the U.S. and beyond. No country can survive like this.
“For many years, the Haitian government said they didn’t want to have an army. But now if they want to have an army, fine, let’s talk about what Canada can do, what other countries can do to be of assistance in making those institutions work.”
Soldiers of the Haitian Armed Forces stands guard during a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Vertieres, the last major battle of Haitian independence from France, at Army headquarters in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Nov. 18, 2022. (Odelyn Joseph/Associated Press)
Rae said a Haitian army could be compatible with Haitian democracy.
“The reason it has a bad reputation is because the Duvaliers used the army as their means of suppressing the population,” he said. “The Dominicans have a very strong army. They also have a thriving democracy. There’s no reason why the country next door can’t have the same thing.”
Haiti’s tiny and poorly-equipped army has so far had little role in fighting the gangs, even after one its officers wept publicly at an event in front of PM Henry as he described his “shame” at being unable to protect the Haitian people.
But so far there has been no Canadian effort to revive the Haitian Army. Instead, the Mexican Army is doing the training.
Restoring democracy
Haiti has delayed elections to the point where it now has almost no elected officials with a real mandate. Of the handful of senators whose terms have yet to expire, two were recently sanctioned by Canada for corruption or links to gangs.
Haiti’s opposition sees Henry as part of the security problem, and foreign governments, the United Nations and NGOs have all agreed that the PHTK has used gangs to try to enforce its rule.
Several opposition groups have united in a coalition known as the Montana Group (after the famous Port-au-Prince hotel where their alliance was formed). Rae met with members of that group while in Haiti.
Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry speaks at a ceremony to appoint members of his cabinet in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Nov. 24, 2021. (Odelyn Joseph/The Associated Press)
While the Montana Group sees Henry as determined to cling to power, Rae disagrees.
“I don’t have any sense Mr. Henry wants anything more than to be a transitional leader who will allow the country to have a full and free election in which he will not participate,” he said. “I could prove to be completely wrong, but I don’t sense any burning ambition on his part to run a country.”
Rae said Canada is not encouraging Henry to believe he has unconditional backing. “I think the sanctions are a pretty clear message from Canada and a number of other countries that the day is over when people would turn a blind eye to the rampant corruption of the country because we felt it was really their problem to fix,” he said.
“We all have an obligation to deal with the lack of transparency and the amount of corruption in the country and to name the people who are the bad actors. And the list is not over yet. Believe me, it’s still coming …
“This is a different attitude and different mindset from a number of countries that are really trying to push back on the Haitian elite and say, ‘It’s time for you to get your act together.'”
Little hope in the short term
And so, for Haiti’s long-suffering people, there seems to be little prospect of immediate change.
Trudeau seemed to acknowledge that in his year-end French-language interview with La Presse Canadienne.
“We have a long history in Haiti and 30 years later, we still find ourselves in a crisis just as serious, if not worse, than the others,” he said.
“We know how much making a mistake or doing the wrong thing could make the situation worse and put many people at risk.”
But while Trudeau insisted he doesn’t want to repeat past mistakes, exactly what Canada does plan to do remains unclear — even after those fact-finding missions.
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.
“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”
More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.
Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.
The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.
However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.
Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.
“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.
What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.
Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.
Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.
Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.
Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.
Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)
There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.
“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.
That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.
Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.
“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.
Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.
When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.
The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.
The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.
Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.
Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.
Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.
(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.
The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.
After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.
Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.
Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.
“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.
Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.
But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.
Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.
Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.
That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.
Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.
Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.
