PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti

Cholera surge feared as cases spread in capital

Health workers feared a surge of cholera cases in the shantytowns and muddy tent camps of Haiti’s capital as suspected cases piled up Tuesday and a laboratory confirmed cases that originated in the overcrowded city.

Hundreds of people suffered the cholera symptoms of fever and diarrhea in hospitals and shacks built along the putrid waste canals of slums like Cite Soleil and Martissant.

At least 73 cholera cases had been confirmed among people living in Port-au-Prince, but nearly all those were infected outside the capital.

Physicians with the aid group Doctors Without Borders reported seeing more than 200 city residents with severe symptoms

SAN DIEGO, Calif.

Navy shuttles supplies to stranded cruise ship

The nearly 4,500 passengers and crew of the Carnival Splendor have no air conditioning or hot water. Running low on food, they have to eat canned crab meat and Spam dropped in by helicopters. And for two more days, they have no way out.

The ship was moving again Tuesday night after the first of several Mexican tugbouts en-route to the stricken liner began pulling it toward San Diego, where it was expected to arrive Thursday night, Carnival Cruise Lines said in a statement.

What began as a seven-day cruise to the picturesque Mexican Riviera stopped around sunrise Monday when an engine room fire cut power to the 952-foot vessel and set it adrift off Mexico’s Pacific coast.

JAKARTA, Indonesia

Obama sees ties to Islamic world as ‘incomplete’

From the most Muslim nation on Earth, President Barack Obama is reaching out to the Islamic world, declaring that efforts to build trust and peace are showing promise but are still clearly “incomplete.”

Obama on today plans to deliver one of the most personal and potentially consequential speeches of his presidency, reflecting on his own years of upbringing in Indonesia and giving an update on America’s “new beginning” with Muslims that he promised last year in Cairo.

At the same time, the path to lasting peace in the Middle East was hardly looking smoother. A reminder of that difficult road was waiting for Obama when he landed here Tuesday on a steamy afternoon in southeast Asia. Israel’s decision to build more apartments in east Jerusalem, a disputed territory claimed by Palestinians, had already earned a rebuke from American diplomats before a tired, traveling president weighed in himself.

“This kind of activity is never helpful when it come to peace negotiations,” Obama said when questioned at a news conference alongside Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

WASHINGTON

Origins of missile-likevapor trail still unknown

The Pentagon said Tuesday it did not know what created a vapor trail that crossed the skies off the Southern California coast and resembled a missile launch.

Video shot by KCBS of Los Angeles shows an object flying through the evening sky Monday that left a large vapor trail. Pentagon officials were stumped by the event. “Nobody within the Department of Defense that we’ve reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said.

John Pike, an aerospace expert who runs GlobalSecurity.org, said it was likely an airplane contrail visually distorted by the atmosphere.

 

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