Oh Yeah That: U.S. Ops Complete In Haiti!

What’s new in Haiti? Glad you asked!
• Nonprofits like the Red Cross, CARE and Catholic Relief Services dispense donations slowly; each of those organizations has only spent between 8% and 25% of the money donated to Haiti, choosing instead to retain it for future spending. This is tricky because people get antsy when you don’t give their money to Haiti but all the organizations swear they’re just trying to do it right, so don’t immediately flip out.
• Don’t even try and leave Haiti, because even Jamaica will put you in detention and then ship you right back.
• Brazil just became the first country to donate to the Haiti reconstruction fund run by the World Bank. Yup, the first! So far, the only!
• Some Haitians are concerned that the president has used the state of emergency to stay in power, with the help of the parliament, for too long; demonstrations are ongoing.
• On June 1, “Joint Task Force Haiti,” the U.S. military operation there, will “stand down.” Actually they mostly are pretty stood down already; there are only 850 servicemembers in Haiti; at one point, there were 22,000. Shortly thereafter, “New Horizons” begins, with about 500 soldiers working on engineering and infrastructure.