From the Associated Press by Ray Henry

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Jan. 31) — The scientist in Dr. David Dosa was skeptical when first told that Oscar, an aloof cat kept by a nursing home, regularly predicted patients’ deaths by snuggling alongside them in their final hours.

Dosa’s doubts eroded after he and his colleagues tallied about 50 correct calls made by Oscar over five years, a process he explains in a book released this week, “Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat.” (Hyperion, $23.99) The feline’s bizarre talent astounds Dosa, but he finds Oscar’s real worth in his fierce insistence on being present when others turn away from life’s most uncomfortable topic: death.

“People actually were taking great comfort in this idea, that this animal was there and might be there when their loved ones eventually pass,” Dosa said. “He was there when they couldn’t be.”

Stew Milne, AP
In this July 2007 file photo, Oscar, a hospice cat with an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, sits outside a patient’s room at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, R.I.

Dosa, 37, a geriatrician and professor at Brown University, works on the third floor of the Steere House, which treats patients with severe dementia. It’s usually the last stop for people so ill they cannot speak, recognize their spouses and spend their days lost in fragments of memory.

He once feared that families would be horrified by the furry grim reaper, especially after Dosa made Oscar famous in a 2007 essay in the New England Journal of Medicine. Instead, he says many caregivers consider Oscar a comforting presence, and some have praised him in newspaper death notices and eulogies.

“Maybe they’re seeing what they want to see,” he said, “but what they’re seeing is a comfort to them in a real difficult time in their lives.”

The nursing home adopted Oscar, a medium-haired cat with a gray-and-brown back and white belly, in 2005 because its staff thinks pets make the Steere House a home. They play with visiting children and prove a welcome distraction for patients and doctors alike.

After a year, the staff noticed that Oscar would spend his days pacing from room to room. He sniffed and looked at the patients but rarely spent much time with anyone – except when they had just hours to live.

He’s accurate enough that the staff – including Dosa – know it’s time to call family members when Oscar stretches beside their patients, who are generally too ill to notice his presence. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, he’ll scratch at doors and walls, trying to get in.

Nurses once placed Oscar in the bed of a patient they thought gravely ill. Oscar wouldn’t stay put, and the staff thought his streak was broken. Turns out, the medical professionals were wrong, and the patient rallied for two days. But in the final hours, Oscar held his bedside vigil without prompting.

Dosa does not explain Oscar scientifically in his book, although he theorizes the cat imitates the nurses who raised him or smells odors given off by dying cells, perhaps like some dogs who scientists say can detect cancer using their sense of scent.

At its heart, Dosa’s search is more about how people cope with death than Oscar’s purported ability to predict it. Dosa suffers from inflammatory arthritis, which could render his joints useless. He worries about losing control of his life in old age, much as his patients have lost theirs.

Parts of his book are fictionalized. Dosa said several patients are composite characters, though the names and stories of the caregivers he interviews are real and many feel guilty. Donna Richards told Dosa that she felt guilty for putting her mother in a nursing home. She felt guilty for not visiting enough. When caring for her mother, Richards felt guilty about missing her teenage son’s swimming meets.

Dosa learns to live for the moment, much like Oscar, who delights in naps and chin scratches or the patient who recovers enough to walk the hall holding the hand of the husband she’ll eventually forget.

The doctor advises worried family members to simply be present for their loved ones.

Richards was at her mother’s bedside nonstop as she died. After three days, a nurse persuaded her to go home for a brief rest. Despite her misgivings, Richards agreed. Her mother died a short while later.

But she didn’t die alone. Oscar was there.

From the Associated Press

FRESNO, Calif. – A conservation group says it plans to sue the federal government, claiming hundreds of protected animal species have been impacted because it has not evaluated or regulated nearly 400 pesticides.
The Center for Biological Diversity sent the Environmental Protection Agency a letter of intent to sue on Thursday. It says the agency violated the Endangered Species Act by not consulting with wildlife regulators about the pesticides’ impacts.
The organization says as many as 887 species may be harmed, including the Florida panther, coho salmon and California condor.
If the EPA does not correct the alleged violations within 60 days, the group plans to file lawsuit.
An EPA spokeswoman says it will review the letter and the potential effects on protected species.

From The Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Ten American Baptists were being held in the Haitian capital Sunday after trying take 33 children out of Haiti at a time of growing fears over possible child trafficking.

The church members, most from Idaho, said they were trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children. But officials said they lacked the proper documents when they were arrested Friday night in a bus along with children from 2 months to 12 years old who had survived the catastrophic earthquake.

The group said its “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission” was an effort to help abandoned children by taking them to an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic.

“In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing,” the group’s spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, told The Associated Press at the judicial police headquarters in the capital, where the Americans were being held pending a Monday hearing before a judge.

The children, some of them sick and dehydrated, were taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children’s Villages, which was trying to find their parents or close relatives, said a spokesman there, George Willeit.

“One child, an 8- or 9-year-old, said she thought she was going to some sort of summer or vacation camp in the Dominican Republic,” Willeit said.

The Baptist group planned to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete, a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, that they were converting into an orphanage, Silsby told the AP.

Whether they realized it or not, these Americans — the first known to be taken into custody since the Jan. 12 quake — put themselves in the middle of a firestorm in Haiti, where government leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to child trafficking.

The quake apparently orphaned many children and left others separated from parents, adding to the difficulty of helping children in need while preventing exploitation of them.

While many legitimate adoption agencies and orphanages operate in Haiti, often run by religious groups, the intergovernmental International Organization for Migration reported in 2007 that bogus adoption agencies in Haiti were offering children to rich Haitians and foreigners in return for processing fees reaching US$10,000.

The agency said some Haitian parents were giving their children to traffickers in return for promises of financial help.

Silsby said the group, including members from Texas and Kansas, only had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children, whom she said they obtained from Haitian pastor Jean Sanbil of the Sharing Jesus Ministries.

Silsby, 40, of Boise, Idaho, was asked if she didn’t consider it naive to cross the border without adoption papers at a time when Haitians are so concerned about child trafficking. “By no means are we any part of that. That’s exactly what we are trying to combat,” she said.

She said she hadn’t been following news reports while in Haiti.

Social Affairs Minister Yves Cristallin told the AP that the Americans were suspected of taking part in an illegal adoption scheme.

Willeit, the SOS spokesman, said the children arrived at the orphanage” very hungry, very thirsty, some dehydrated.” All had their names written on pink tape on their shirts.

Many children in Haitian orphanages aren’t actually orphans but have been abandoned by family who cannot afford to care for them.

Children’s rights groups have urged a halt to adoptions until it can be determined that the children have no relatives who can raise them.

The government now requires Prime Minister Max Bellerive to personally authorize the departure of any child as a way to prevent child trafficking.

UNICEF and other NGOs have been registering children who may have been separated from their parents. Relief workers are locating children at camps housing the homeless around the capital and are placing them in temporary shelters while they try to locate their parents or a more permanent home.

U.S. diplomats met with the detained Americans and gave them bug spray and field rations, according to Sean Lankford of Meridian, Idaho, whose wife and 18-year-old daughter were being held.

“They have to go in front of a judge on Monday,” Lankford told the AP.

“There are allegations of child trafficking and that really couldn’t be farther from the truth,” he added. The children “were going to get the medical attention they needed. They were going to get the clothes and the food and the love they need to be healthy and to start recovering from the tragedy that just happened.”

Silsby said they had documents from the Dominican government, but did not seek any paperwork from the Haitian authorities before taking the children to the border.

She said the children were brought to the Haitian pastor by distant relatives and only those with no close family would be put up for adoption.

The 10 Americans include members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. Friends and relatives have been in touch with them through text messages and phone calls, Lankford said.

The group had described its plans on a Web site where it asked for tax-deductible contributions to help it “gather” 100 orphans and bus them to Cabarete before building a more permanent orphanage in the Dominican town of Magante.

“Given the urgent needs from this earthquake, God has laid upon our hearts the need to go now versus waiting until the permanent facility is built,” the group wrote.

From the Associated Press

NEWPORT, Ore. – Two rare sea turtles stranded last fall on separate beaches in the Northwest took flight Thursday on a Coast Guard airplane bound for San Diego.

The C-130 airplane based at the Coast Guard Air Station in Sacramento flew to Newport, Oregon, to pick up the turtles, named Myrtle and Maude.

The plan is for them to finish their recovery at the SeaWorld turtle rehabilitation center and ideally be released back into the wild.

The Coast Guard crew combined the good deed with a training flight.

Cmdr. Todd Lightle says the mission gave the pilots practice getting in and out of a small airport and handling a unique loading exercise.

The olive ridley turtle, Myrtle, was found on Newport’s Agate Beach and the Green, Maude, on Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula.

From the Associated Press by Michael Casey

HUA HIN, Thailand – A dozen Asian nations and Russia vowed Friday to double the number of wild tigers by 2022, crack down on poaching that has devastated the big cats and prohibit the building of roads and bridges that could harm their habitats.

However, the historic declaration adopted by the 13 countries that have wild tigers includes no new money to finance the conservation efforts. The agreement only includes plans to approach international institutions like the World Bank for money and to develop schemes to tap money from ecotourism, carbon financing and infrastructure projects to pay for tiger programs.

“This is a historic meeting. Before this, not many people paid attention to tigers,” Thailand’s Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Suwit Khunkitti said after the three-day meeting in Hua Hin. “Stopping the depletion of tigers is a very important issue for all of us.”

The declaration will now be considered for approval by heads of state of the 13 countries in September at a meeting in Vladivostok, Russia.

Tiger numbers in recent decades have plummeted because of human encroachment — with the loss of more than nine-tenths of their habitat — and poaching to supply a vibrant trade in tiger parts. From an estimated 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century, the number of tigers today is less than 3,500.

Along with a target for doubling tiger populations, countries agreed to protect core tiger habitats as well as buffer zones and corridors that connect key sanctuaries and national parks. Governments also committed to reduce poaching through beefed-up law enforcement and to minimize human-tiger conflicts through job creation programs and other efforts.

The only setback, delegates said, was a successful effort by China to take out language in the draft declaration that called for maintaining a permanent ban on the tiger trade. China’s concern is the impact the language would have on its domestic tiger trade, which has been banned since 1993 but which they have lobbied to reopen at some point.

Conservationists said the declaration included all the components for ensuring the tigers’ steady recovery, though they warned much work had to be done to ensure all the promises were implemented.

“This is excellent news for tiger conservation,” said Michael Baltzer, who heads the WWF Tiger Initiative and attended the meeting.

“Simply, there never has been a high-level government commitment to take forward tiger conservation,” Baltzer said. “The fact the governments committed to doubling the numbers of tigers shows they have high ambition. They are setting the bar at a high level.”

The World Bank’s Keshav Varma, program director for the Global Tiger Initiative, said the declaration represents a new way of thinking among governments and donors.

“There is a new trend in society to save biodiversity, to be more conscious of climate change, to look at sustainability, to look at green development,” Varma said. “It is a huge change and this is a manifestation of this change.”

Varma and Baltzer downplayed the absence of financial commitments in the document, saying they expected pledges to be forthcoming in Russia as donors get a clearer idea of conservation plans that come out of this declaration and the cost of implementing them.

“Now that we have commitment from governments, the next step is bringing donor partners on board,” Baltzer said. “Even here the donors came together and started talking about how they could be partners in this whole process.”

The meeting was organized by Thailand and the Global Tiger Initiative, a coalition formed in 2008 by the World Bank, the Smithsonian Institute and nearly 40 conservation groups.

The 13 countries attending the meeting were Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.

From The Associated Press

CAIRO – Osama bin Laden sought to draw a wider public into his fight against the United States in a new message Friday, dropping his usual talk of religion and holy war and focusing instead on an unexpected topic: global warming.

The al-Qaida leader blamed the United States and other industrialized nations for climate change and said the only way to prevent disaster was to break the American economy, calling on the world to boycott U.S. goods and stop using the dollar.

“The effects of global warming have touched every continent. Drought and deserts are spreading, while from the other floods and hurricanes unseen before the previous decades have now become frequent,” bin Laden said in the audiotape, aired on the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera.

The terror leader noted Washington’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and painted the United States as in the thrall of major corporations that he said “are the true criminals against the global climate” and are to blame for the global economic crisis, driving “tens of millions into poverty and unemployment.”

Bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders have mentioned global warming and struck an anti-globalization tone in previous tapes and videos. But the latest was the first message by bin Laden solely dedicated to the topic. It was also nearly entirely empty of the Islamic militant rhetoric that usually fills his declarations.

The change in rhetoric aims to give al-Qaida’s message an appeal beyond hardcore Islamic militants, said Evan Kohlmann, of globalterroralert.com, a private, U.S.-based terrorism analysis group.

“It’s a bridge issue,” Kohlmann said. “They are looking to appeal to people who don’t necessarily love al-Qaida but who are angry at the U.S. and the West, to galvanize them against the West” and make them more receptive to “alternative solutions like adopting violence for the cause.”

“If you’re looking to draw people who are disenchanted or disillusioned, what better issue to use than global warming,” he said. While the focus on climate may be new, the tactic itself is not, he said: Al-Qaida used issues like the abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay to reach out to Muslims who might not be drawn to al-Qaida’s ideology but are angry over the injustices.

Bin Laden “looks to see the issues that are the most cogent and more likely to get popular support,” Kohlmann said.

The al-Qaida leader’s call for an economic boycott helps in the appeal — providing a nonviolent way to participate in opposing the United States.

“People of the world, it’s not right for the burden to be left on the mujahedeen (holy warriors) in an issue that causes harm to everyone,” he said. “Boycott them to save yourselves and your possessions and your children from climate change and to live proud and free.”

Al-Jazeera aired excerpts of the message and posted a transcript on its Web site. The tape’s authenticity could not be independently confirmed, but the voice resembled that of bin Laden on messages known to be from him. The new message comes after a bin Laden tape released last week in which he endorsed a failed attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day.

In the new tape, bin Laden refers to the Dec. 18 climate conference in Copenhagen — indicated the message was made recently.

The message — whose length Al-Jazeera did not specify — makes only brief passing mentions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine and instead hits on issues that could resonate at a time of widespread economic woes.

“The world is held hostage by major corporations, which are pushing it to the brink,” he said. “World politics are not governed by reason but by the force and greed of oil thieves and warmongers and the cruel beasts of capitalism.”

To stop global warming, he called for the “wheels of the American economy” to be brought to a halt. “This is possible … if the peoples of the world stop consuming American goods.”

“We must also stop dealings in the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible,” he said. “I know that this has great consequences and grave ramifications, but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America.”

He also called for the “punishing and holding to account” of corporation chiefs, adding, “this should be easy for the American people to do, particularly those who were effected by Hurricane Katrina or those who lost their jobs, since these criminals live among them, particularly in Washington, New York and Texas.”

The message represents a honing of al-Qaida’s rhetoric. In 2007, bin Laden issued a tape in which he warned that human life is endangered by global warning, and he blamed democratic systems for seeking the interests of major corporations, said the U.S.-based Site Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamic militant message traffic.

But in Friday’s message, the anti-democracy rhetoric is dropped.

“It’s populism, pure and simple,” Kohlmann said.

From The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS – President Barack Obama’s intense focus on jobs in his first State of the Union speech hit close to home for the millions of Americans who are in a bad mood over their financial distress a year into his term.

But it was another line in Obama’s speech that highlighted their deep skepticism that the programs the president discussed will ever lead to any real change. Obama called it a “deficit of trust — deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years.”

Many Americans wondered whether lawmakers from both parties would be politically inclined to get jobs and economic plans moving, and whether the nation would be in the exact spot a year from now.

“I just hope that he gets cooperation with it, because you know that if he doesn’t and this creates gridlock and nothing gets done, next year we’re going to be in the same place that we are right now,” said Mary Bartels, a 47-year-old registered nurse who voted for John McCain in 2008 but has since warmed to Obama.

“That’s a very scary thought.”

Obama acknowledged in his speech that the change he wanted everyone to believe in “has not come fast enough” and that economic devastation remains — in joblessness, shuttered businesses and declining home values.

Many citizens who tuned into the president’s speech ached for solutions but were wary of his words — aware that in many places voters are no better off than when they lifted Obama to the White House.

Voters have grown tired of politics and promises, and want action from Obama and other lawmakers.

“You could tell by the body language, how the Republicans just sat there for so much, that tomorrow it will be business as usual,” said Ethan Ehrlich, a 32-year-old nurse-anesthetist from Miami Beach.

Obama’s plan to create jobs was closely watched in states like Nevada and Michigan.

Nevada posted the highest foreclosure rate in the nation last year, with more than 10 percent of housing units hit with at least one foreclosure filing. December unemployment was 13 percent in the state, where rapid tourism growth has collapsed in a spectacular two-year meltdown of job losses, foreclosures and bankruptcies.

Bartels has endured many levels of the financial crisis. Her fiance was laid off from a plumbing job in September and their house fell into foreclosure. She spent months before her foreclosure unsuccessfully trying to persuade lenders to adjust her mortgage, but received few responses. She eventually left Nevada last month and wound up in Washington state.

While she hoped Obama would have talked more on Wednesday about stemming foreclosures and abusive credit card company practices, she said she thinks he is sincere in his attempt to change Washington’s ways.

“He’s trying to get everybody to work together, stop the bickering and the arguing and work together to try to find solutions,” she said. “I think opening that door … that’s huge.”

Anton Fellinger, 47, of Washington Township, Mich., said he thought Obama was humble and stern at different times during his speech. Fellinger, who lost his job nearly a year ago selling marble and tile for new homes, said he gives Obama “a B-minus or C-plus,” for his first year, but credits him for trying to “get things going.”

Michigan’s unemployment hit 14 percent in 2009 amid a historic collapse of the auto market.

“As I look at it, he came into a very difficult situation,” Fellinger said. “He probably got a bit of a wake-up call when he got in and saw what he’s up against.”

But 60-year-old Carolyn Briggs of Tampa, Fla., thought Obama’s speech was negative and insulted the Supreme Court, former president George W. Bush and the American people. She called the address “well-presented,” but not enough to stop her from protesting the president’s Thursday appearance in her hometown.

“He insulted the people who didn’t go along with what he wanted,” she said.

That sentiment was shared by Al Melquist, a 41-year-old unemployed software engineer from Las Vegas who had to abruptly move last year after a bank foreclosed on his landlord following 13 months of missed payments.

Melquist said he felt like he was a child when Obama was speaking to him — a far cry from the Obama he saw on the campaign trail and voted for.

“When he campaigned, it was more like me and you versus the world,” Melquist said. “Now it’s like, ‘I’m King Kong, this is the way it is and if you don’t like it, then I’m not going to give you all the other stuff you need.’”

Frank Beaty, a 55-year-old Las Vegas man who has been raising money for nonprofits while bouncing back from a 2005 bankruptcy, said Obama cleverly challenged lawmakers to scrap their political objectives and asked the public to keep an eye on their motivations.

Beaty, who said he had not voted for a president before Obama and was not sure before the speech whether he would support him again, said the message was exactly what he wanted to hear.

“The country will only survive what we’re going through right now, economically and politically, if somehow we can motivate the public to push politicians to come together and work together for the good of the country and to abandon political posturing,” he said.

From the Associated Press.

STRASBOURG, France – A Jewish cemetery in eastern France was desecrated Wednesday, with at least 18 gravestones marked with swastikas and overturned, police and Jewish officials said.

The desecration in a Strasbourg cemetery came as Jews marked the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp, a symbol of the Holocaust, when the Nazis killed millions.

France’s main Jewish organization, CRIF, said at least 18 tombstones at the Cronenbourg cemetery were found Wednesday marked with swastikas and 13 of them were overturned.

The CRIF’s Marc Knobel said the inscription “juden raus” (Jews out) was found on one tomb.

President Nicolas Sarkozy ”firmly condemns this unbearable act, the expression of odious racism,” said a statement from his office. It asked that those responsible be quickly identified and their acts “treated with the severity called for.”

France is home to western Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim populations, and there are occasional attacks on their schools, cemeteries or places of worship.

From the Associated Press.

AVON, Colo. – A Colorado man says marijuana is the main sacrament of his religion and a drug charge against him violates his First Amendment rights.

Trevor Douglas of Avon says he belongs to the Hawaii-based THC Ministry but was cited with marijuana possession after a Colorado state trooper pulled him over for having an expired license plate. The 25-year-old allegedly had less than an ounce of marijuana and a pipe.

Douglas told the Vail Daily newspaper that his religion is similar to Christianity and that the use of pot is sacred to him, just like wine and bread are sacred to Christians.

“The court is basically trying me for my religious beliefs,” he told the newspaper.

According to its Web site, THC Ministry has offices in Los Angeles; Bozeman, Mont.; and Boulder, Colo.

“We use Cannabis religiously and you can, too,” the site says. “Cultivation and enjoyment of Cannabis sacrament is a fundamental human right provided by God and protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

THC Ministry says it provides “defense to prosecution” to its members who are “sincere practitioners.” According to its Web site, a successful religious defense depends on five things, including sincerity; that marijuana be used in private, like in a church or home; and that the drug, or “sacrament,” not be sold.

Douglas is due in court March 9.

He maintains he is not a drug abuser.

“If it’s part of your religion, you should get security from this prosecution of possession,” he said.

Jan. 12, 2010 was just a normal day for many. For the people of Haiti, it was a day that will be remembered for years to come. In mere minutes, a 7.0 earthquake struck the economically poorest country in the western hemisphere. Destruction ravished the country, demolishing Port-au-Prince (the capital city) and destroying countless homes, businesses, and families. While the death toll is yet to be finalized, the remaining Haitian government has estimated that 150,000 bodies have been buried.

This Jan. 12, 2010 photo shows an injured person being tended to at Hotel Villa Creole in Port-au-Prince, Haiti after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit the Caribbean nation. (AP Photo/Montreal La Presse, Ivanoh Demers)

With major ports and airplane landing strips either destroyed or unmanageable, aid reached the country at an incredibly slow rate. News crews from all over the world were able to traverse the country, located in Hispanola, before doctors, food, and rescue crews. Even when crews arrived the damage seemed too severe: the dead outnumbered the living and the injured traversed the streets. Makeshift hospitals were created in abandoned buildings and alleyways and medical methods reverted to the bare minimum. Water and food quickly ran out, even for workers, as millions worldwide watched the destruction from their living rooms.

As one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, Haiti has been disturbed by major problems for many years. Political unrest, health care worries, and the occasional natural disaster have tormented the French Creole people who live in Haiti. Originally known as Saint-Dominque, the country was known for its French culture and abundance of sugarcane and economical success in the early 1700’s.  However, after a slave revolt in 1791 and the subsequent renaming to “Haiti”, corruption and human right abuses began to plague the country as political security remained unfound. Although things had started to look up for the extremely unsettled people of Haiti, many feared that continue disappointment was around the corner.

The 7.0 magnitude earthquake was no exception. After the initial damage, a reported 33 aftershocks ran across the country, varying from 5.0 to 6.1. The Richter scale, used to measure seismic activities, is the normal method of determining earthquake strength. With a 7.0-7.9 earthquake occurring usually only once every 18 years, the earthquake in Haiti will become infamous in this generation and the next. The United States has not experienced an earthquake of this magnitude in nearly eight years.

Amongst the thousands of dead civilians in Haiti are several key political figures. The Archbishop of Port-Au-Prince Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, Justice Minister Paul Denis, and Missions Chief Hedi Annabi are among the deceased. Opposition leader Michel Gaillard’s body was also found amongst the Haitian rubble. The deaths of prominent leaders will only make the recovery process in Haiti that much more difficult, as looting, distress, and political upheaval continue to run rampant.

According to reports, 3 million Haitians were directly affected by the earthquake and its aftershocks.  With a third of its total population in jeopardy, many fear the country of Haiti will have to be rebuilt from the bottom up.  A CNN reporter spoke on the matter, stating, “In 3 minutes, the country of Haiti was propelled back nearly 100 years into the past. It will take years to pull them back to the 21st century, and that will only be with the help of the world around them.”

Despite the sheer disaster and torment facing the people of Haiti, relief and moments of faith have also swarmed across the country. Although traumatic pictures have surfaced across the internet, many pictures have also surfaced as proof of the strength of the Haitian people. Young children smiling, women holding up their hands to the skies as aid come, and survivors being pulled from rubble unharmed are amongst the damage, lending hope that better days are to come.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper lamented about the disaster, saying “This will soon just become another tragic story in history. People are just going to stop watching. People will forget.” The outpour of support for the crippled nation says otherwise. Guided by George Clooney the Hope for Haiti musical telethon, which aired on almost all network broadcasts on Jan. 22, raised over 57 million dollars in aid. Even as some rescue workers from around the globe pull out of Haiti, hundreds of others are waiting to be sent. Despite the usual temperament of the news media to “forget” stories once past their prime, the devastation and destruction in Haiti will remain in the thoughts and prayers of many long after coverage stops.