In the Wall Street Journal and Miami Herald this morning, news that former President Bill Clinton will be named U.N. special envoy to Haiti. An official announcement is expected today. According to the MH, the decision comes two months after Clinton visited the impoverished Caribbean island with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon—a trip that attempted to raise global awareness about the country’s struggles to rebuild after a series of powerful storms last year. In a released statement to the MH, Clinton said “Last year's natural disasters took a great toll, but Haiti's government and people have the determination and ability to `build back better,' not just to repair the damage done but to lay the foundations for the long-term sustainable development that has eluded them for so long.” The hope is that Clinton’s fundraising power will help to further stir up international support in a country “plagued by donor fatigue, lack of international coordination and a history of political instability.”
The Washington Post reports on Colombia, writing that Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos announced his resignation from that post Monday, saying he will run for President in 2010 if Alvaro Uribe is denied a bid for a third term. The WaPo writes of Santos saying, should he be elected, “the Obama administration would have as a partner a U.S.-educated politician well versed in Washington ways, in contrast to Uribe, a provincial politician with little knowledge of the inner workings of U.S. politics.” The paper says the General has become well-known for his military campaign against Colombian rebel groups and has close ties with many Democrats and Republicans, particularly those who have supported the policies of Alvaro Uribe. Santos comes from a prominent Colombian family which also runs Colombia’s major daily newspaper, El Tiempo. While he has yet to lay out the specifics of a campaign platform, Santos did tell the WaPo in a January interview that, as president, he would continue Uribe’s aggressive military campaign against the FARC.
The New York Times yesterday reported from flood-ravaged Northern Brazil, saying much needed aid is only slowly arriving. In some places entire towns are under water while schools and government buildings have been closed for weeks. Civil-defense authorities have reported that the number of homeless or displaced people in the state of Maranhão has reached 116,000, with at least 10 dead and 93 towns in a state of emergency. In all, at least 45 have died in the affected areas of Brazil. Amidst such a situation, relief efforts have been slow as aid workers are forced to deliver goods by small boats or canoes. And some residents of the region allege that the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has done less for the flooded areas of the northeast than it did for another, wealthier area, Santa Catarina, when it was flooded last fall. For its part, the United States government, as it did after the floods in Santa Catarina, pledged $50,000 to help buy food and water for the homeless.
And, from the LA Times, remembering literary giant Mario Benedetti. The famous Uruguayan author and poet died Sunday at his home in Montevideo at the age of 88. His body lay in state today in the nation's Legislative Palace in a ceremony attended by President Tabaré Vázquez. According to the LAT, Benedetti’s “more than 60 volumes of poems, prose, essays and drama helped secure a prominent place for Latin America in global literature, along with the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa.” Politically, Benedetti was a committed left-wing activist and was forced into exile during the Uruguayan military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. “When I have worries, fears or a love affair, I have the luck of being able to transform it into a poem,” Benedetti once remarked.
In other news, an AP report in the NYT provides a summary of major drug-related arrests in Mexico. The most prominent arrest came in Monterrey where Mexican authorities detained 13 alleged drug cartel members, including one man who had just arrived to take over trafficking operations in that city. The drug lord, Rodolfo Lopez, was arrested in the airport’s parking lot in a sting which included many associates awaiting his arrival. Lopez was to take over for Hector Huerta, who was captured March 24, and had arrived in the Northern Mexico city from Acapulco. Meanwhile, in Southern Mexico, police also arrested a gang of at least six Gulf cartel assassins—among them two women—who were allegedly commanded by top police officers.
From the LAT, AP news that a Haitian man has been charged with human smuggling after federal authorities accused him of piloting a boat packed with migrants that capsized off Florida's coast last week. At least nine people drowned in the accident. The man’s conviction could result in life in prison or even the death penalty, according to the AP.
And in a NYT editorial the paper criticizes President Obama for not going far enough to tighten gun laws in his proposed budget. The editorial says that as a senator and presidential candidate Obama had “urged repeal of the so-called Tiahrt Amendment that constrains efforts by the police and other authorities to combat shady gun dealers and gun traffickers.” But the current budget he has given to Congress contains new language that “would prevent police departments and other law enforcement agencies from disclosing data about crime guns and gun trafficking obtained from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.” Among its weaknesses, the NYT says Obama’s budget would “retain a rule requiring the F.B.I. to destroy the federal background checks required for gun buyers within 24 hours, ostensibly for privacy.”
Photo: Huffington Post
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