Prime Minister Ariel Henry said on Monday he would resign once a transitional council takes over, following escalating violence by powerful gangs that has caused thousands to flee their homes.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with regional Caribbean leaders and representatives from Haiti’s government and opposition in Jamaica this week, told reporters on Wednesday that he expects the transition council to come together in the next couple of days.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a regional intergovernmental organization, has detailed the sectors, political parties and alliances to make up the nine-member council, but has not yet said who will be appointed.

However, Haiti’s most powerful gang leader, Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier, who had threatened to overthrow Henry, “dismissed” the transitional council, the Miami Herald reported on Wednesday. Reuters was not able to independently confirm Cherizier’s position.

A day earlier, several dozen protested against the transition plan, burning tires in downtown Port-au-Prince, but the city was for the most part calm.

Henry traveled to Kenya last month to secure Nairobi’s leadership of a long-delayed security mission to fight the gangs, which the UN believes control most of the capital. Violence escalated in his absence and he remained stranded in Puerto Rico when he resigned.

Blinken said on Wednesday he had received assurances from Kenyan President William Ruto that the African nation was prepared to lead the mission “as soon as this new council is stood up” and an interim prime minister is picked.

Many details on the security force, such as its size, who will contribute troops, its funding, and how it will operate on the ground, have not been decided. Countries have been wary of involvement after abuses in past interventions.

Although progress continues to lag, in Canada, like Haiti a former French colony, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised his country would remain “very, very active,” without specifying commitments.

Meanwhile, US Southern Command – a military branch encompassing Latin America and the Caribbean – said it was deploying a team of anti-terrorism Marines to bolster embassy security and help “non-emergency” personnel leave Haiti.

Non-essential United Nations staff are also set to start leaving Haiti because of the volatile security, according to a UN spokesperson, who did not say how many were considered non-essential. The body employs 267 international staff and 1,220 locals in Haiti.

Neither body commented on the reason for the specific timing of their departures.

In the US state of Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, an anti-immigration hardliner, said state law enforcement would deploy more than 250 additional officers and soldiers and more than a dozen air and sea vessels to the southern coast “to protect our state.”

‘You cannot go anywhere’

Although many residents of Port-au-Prince resumed their business on Wednesday, buying produce from street vendors and collecting water in containers, people remain blocked from large parts of the capital that remain under gang control.

There was little sign of visible gang activity, however, and no new attacks reported on key infrastructure or government offices.

MSC said it had suspended all shipping calls at Haiti’s main cargo port terminal, which it said remained “not fully operational” after containers were looted. Shipments will be diverted to Caucedo in the Dominican Republic, it said.

“Things have gotten stranger. You cannot function. You cannot go around. You cannot go anywhere,” said Louis Jean Ezechiel, 31, from the hillside Petion-Ville district. “All other places in the country are inaccessible.”

American author Mitch Albom said he, his wife and eight others working at an orphanage in Haiti were evacuated overnight on Monday by helicopter with help from Republican lawmakers.

Haiti has long been impoverished and politically volatile, but has become increasingly lawless since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, with the country’s outgunned police struggling to maintain security against increasingly powerful and brutal gangs and with protests against the unelected Henry.

James Boyard, a security expert at the State University of Haiti, said calls from some sectors in Haiti for an amnesty for gang leaders constituted “a deliberate strategy to make this idea more morally acceptable.”

If such an amnesty were issued, he said, this could see gangs’ alleged financial backers, who have been subjected to international sanctions, off the hook.

Haitian immigrants in New York voiced wariness of more international intervention and worry about family members facing insecurity back home, children who cannot go to school and a growing exodus of educated young people moving abroad.

Radio Soleil station director Ricot Dupuy said people were “cautiously optimistic” on the plan brokered with CARICOM in Jamaica but feared if the gangs remained uncontrollable, more people would flee the country.

The UN estimates more than 360,000 people have been internally displaced and thousands killed amid food shortages and widespread reports of rape, torture, arson, ransom kidnappings by gang members.

“Haiti has been transformed into hell and the international community contributed significantly to that,” Dupuy said. “When a house is on fire, you can put all the police, all the guns you want, but I’m not going to stay in a house that is burning. I’m going to run. And when I run, I won’t care where I go.” – Rappler.com

“We acknowledge his resignation upon the establishment of transitional presidential council and naming an interim prime minister,” said Caribbean Community (CARICOM) chair and Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, thanking Henry for his service to Haiti.

Henry traveled to Kenya late last month to secure its leadership of a United Nations-backed international security mission to help police fight armed gangs, but a drastic escalation of violence in the capital, Port-au-Prince, during his absence left him stranded in the US territory of Puerto Rico.

Ali said the presidential council would have two observers and seven voting members, including representatives from several coalitions, the private sector, civil society and one religious leader.

The council has been mandated to “swiftly” appoint an interim prime minister, he added, and anyone who intends to run in Haiti’s next elections will not be able to participate.

Henry’s resignation comes as regional leaders met earlier on Monday in nearby Jamaica to discuss the framework for a political transition, which the U.S. has urged last week to be “expedited” as armed gangs sought to topple his government.

Regional leaders, speaking with representatives from various sectors of Haitian society, have looked into establishing the transition council intended to pave the way to the first elections since 2016.

Henry, who many Haitians consider corrupt, had repeatedly postponed elections, saying security must first be restored. Haitian senators’ last terms expired at the start of 2023.

“We all know that urgent action is needed on both the political and security tracks,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier Monday, calling for the creation of a “broad-based, inclusive, independent presidential college.”

Blinken had said the council would be tasked with meeting the “immediate needs” of Haitian people, enabling the security mission’s deployment and creating security conditions necessary for free elections.

Haiti declared a state of emergency this month as clashes damaged communications and led to two prison breaks after Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier, a leader of an alliance of armed groups, said they would unite and overthrow Henry.

More mission funds

Henry’s resignation comes alongside regional talks over participation in an international force, which he had requested to help police fight the gangs. Their brutal turf wars have fueled a humanitarian crisis, cut off food supplies and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday the United States would contribute an additional $100 million to this force and $33 million in humanitarian aid, bringing the United States’ total pledge to the force to $300 million.

It remained unclear how long it would take the funding to be approved by lawmakers and transferred. A UN spokesperson said that as of Monday, less than $11 million had been deposited into the UN’s dedicated trust fund – with no new contributions since Haiti declared its state of emergency on March 3.

Mexico’s foreign minister added that the country had contributed an unspecified amount of funds, and called for more action to stem the trafficking of arms to Haiti.

The UN believes Haitian gangs have amassed arsenals of weapons trafficked largely from the United States.

The United Nations estimates more than 362,000 people have been internally displaced, half of whom are children, and thousands have been killed in the conflict, with widespread reports of rape, torture and ransom kidnappings since 2021.

‘A bloody revolution’

In Haiti, gang leader Cherizier has threatened to go after hotel owners hiding politicians or collaborating with Henry. He demanded the country’s next leader be chosen by the people and live in Haiti, alongside their families.

Many influential Haitian political figures live abroad.

“We’re not in a peaceful revolution. We are making a bloody revolution in the country because this system is an apartheid system, a wicked system,” Cherizier said.

Residents in the capital saw heavy gunfire over the weekend as armed men downtown surrounded the National Palace on Friday night and by Sunday the United States had airlifted staff from its embassy. On Monday, authorities extended a nightly curfew until Thursday.

Washington said it was looking to expedite the deployment of the planned security mission.

Henry first requested an international security force in 2022, but countries have been slow to offer support, with some raising doubts over the legitimacy of Henry’s unelected government amid widespread protests.

Many in Haitian communities and abroad are wary of international interventions after previous UN missions left behind a devastating cholera epidemic and sex abuse scandals, for which reparations were never made.

Mike Ballard, intelligence director at security firm Global Guardian, said if gangs take control of ports and airports, they would be in charge of humanitarian aid to the country, adding he did not believe Kenyan forces would effectively police or maintain peace.

“Countries with actual stakes in the region will need to step up and help shore up security,” he said, pointing to the United States, neighboring Dominican Republic and other CARICOM members. – Rappler.com

The detained man is suspected of being the nexus between Medellin-based traffickers and the European crime groups Ndrangheta – based in Italy – and Mocro Mafia, which operates from the Netherlands, police said in a statement.

“He was known by police authorities for having collaborated in the past with a historical leader of (the Medellin Cartel) between the 80s and 90s,” the police statement said.

A police source with knowledge of the investigation identified the man as Julio Andres Murillo Figueroa, and named the cartel leader he had links to as Escobar.

The operation leading to the suspect’s arrest began after an exchange of information between the Spanish National Police’s fugitive unit and their counterparts in Colombia, the statement said. – Rappler.com

In order to restore order, the government has imposed with immediate effect a curfew throughout the West territory for a “renewable period of seventy-two hours,” the statement said.

“Between six in the evening and five in the morning on Monday 4, Tuesday 5, Wednesday 6 and this Sunday, March 3 2024,” the curfew will apply.

Law enforcement, firefighters, ambulance drivers, health personnel and duly identified journalists would not have to comply with the curfew, the statement added.

The emergency decree follows a dramatic escalation in violence over the weekend that has paralyzed parts of the capital, damaged communications and led to two prison breaks, including one at the country’s largest prison.

The chairman of Digicel, a major telecoms provider to the Caribbean country, said that lines had been affected following days of street violence in parts of the capital.

Field teams on Sunday afternoon managed to fully restore the connection, Digicel Chairman Maarten Boute said in a post on X, thanks to the “brave technicians who worked tirelessly, in very precarious conditions to make this possible,” he added.

Heavy gunfire has caused panic in recent days after calls by gang leader Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer, for criminal groups to unite and overthrow Henry. Cherizier heads an alliance of gangs and faces sanctions from the UN and the United States.

Armed groups on Saturday night attacked the country’s largest prison, defying Haitian police forces who had called for help. Reuters visited the National Penitentiary on Sunday where there were no signs of police officers and the main prison doors remained open.

“I’m the only one left in my cell,” one unidentified inmate told Reuters. “We were asleep when we heard the sound of bullets. The cell barriers are broken,” he said.

It was unclear how many inmates were on the run. Sources close to the institution said it was likely an “overwhelming” majority. The penitentiary, built to hold 700 prisoners, held 3,687 as of February last year, according to rights group RNDDH.

One voluntary prison worker on Sunday said that 99 prisoners had opted to remain in their cells for fear of being killed in the crossfire. These included several retired Colombian soldiers who were jailed for their alleged involvement in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

The bodies of three inmates who had attempted to flee lay dead in the courtyard of the jail complex on Sunday.

Cherizier this week warned locals to keep children from going to school to “avoid collateral damages” as violence surged in the prime minister’s absence.

Nearly 15,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in recent days, with 10 sites hosting internally displaced people emptied over the weekend, according to the U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Prime Minister Henry, who came to power in 2021 after the assassination of the country’s last president, Moïse, had previously pledged to step down by early February. He later said security must first be re-established in order to ensure free and fair elections. – Rappler.com

A video shared online shows the scale of these 20-foot-long (6.1-meter-long) reptiles as one of the researchers, Dutch biologist Freek Vonk, swims alongside a giant 200-kilo (441-pound) specimen.

It was thought that there was only one species of green anaconda in the wild, the Eunectes murinus, but the scientific journal Diversity this month revealed that the new “northern green anaconda” belongs to a different, new species, Eunectes akiyama.

“What we were there to do was use the anacondas as an indicator species for what kind of damage is being done by the oil spills that are plaguing the Yasuni in Ecuador, because the oil extraction is absolutely out of control,” researcher Bryan G. Fry said.

Fry – an Australian professor of biology at the University of Queensland who for almost 20 years has been investigating anaconda species found in South America – told Reuters the discovery allows them to show that the two species split from each other almost 10 million years ago.

“But the really amazing part was, despite this genetic difference, and despite their long period of divergence, the two animals are completely identical,” he said.

Although green anaconda snakes are very similar visually, there is a genetic difference of 5.5%, which surprised the scientists.

“Which is an incredible amount of genetic difference, particularly when you put it in the context that we’re only 2% different from chimpanzees,” Fry said.

Anacondas are incredibly useful sources of information for the ecological health of the area and the potential impacts on human health of oil spills in the region, Fry said.

Some of the snakes they studied in parts of Ecuador were heavily polluted by oil spills, and the anacondas and arapaima fish are accumulating a large amount of the petrochemical metals, he added.

“That means that if arapaima fish are accumulating these oil spill metals, that they need to be avoided by pregnant women, just like women avoid salmon and tuna and other parts of the world for fear of methylmercury,” he said. – Rappler.com

“Various issues of Russian-Cuban cooperation in the field of security were discussed,” Russia’s security council said in a statement cited by Interfax.

“Nikolai Patrushev assured Raul Castro that Moscow remains committed to the spirit of strategic partnership between the two countries,” it said.

The war in Ukraine has triggered the worst crisis in Russia’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, according to Russian and US diplomats.

After the West slapped what US and European leaders cast as the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a major economy, Russia has turned away from Europe and the United States and has boosted ties with countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

Putin has an invitation to visit Cuba. – Rappler.com

The platform said the video had violated their policies on harassment and cyberbullying. It later republished an edited version without the reporter’s private information.

In response, Lopez Obrador accused the platform of censorship and said it was acting with an overbearing and authoritarian attitude.

The message was accompanied by a picture of the Statue of Liberty, which he said had become a “empty symbol.” YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, Lopez Obrador read aloud a letter from the Times requesting comment on a story reporters were preparing about a shelved US government investigation into allegations that his allies met with and took millions of dollars from drug cartels after he took office in 2018.

Then he read the phone number of Times’ bureau chief. The same day, Mexico’s freedom of information body INAI said it was initiating an investigation into his revealing the number.

After the news conference, the Times issued a statement that called it “a troubling and unacceptable tactic from a world leader.”

Making public a journalist’s private phone number is particularly worrisome in Mexico, one of the most dangerous countries in the world for reporters outside of war zones, especially for Mexican journalists investigating criminal gangs and widespread corruption.

Lopez Obrador frequently attacks the news media during his daily press conferences.

“She is slandering us and if she is very worried, then she should change her phone number,” Lopez Obrador told reporters after the video was released. “Above the personal data protection law, there is the dignity of the president.”

In the days that followed, social media users published the private numbers of one of Lopez Obrador’s sons and both candidates for the country’s June presidential race, Claudia Sheinbaum from the president’s MORENA party and rival Xochitl Galvez.

Galvez said that she had gotten a flood of messages since her number was published – both critical and supporting – and that she would not change it.

MORENA’s New York committee protested outside the Times’ office in New York City on Sunday afternoon.

The New York Times story in question, published just after Lopez Obrador revealed the reporter’s phone number, noted that the United States never opened a formal investigation and that officials ultimately shelved the inquiry.

Lopez Obrador denied all accusations and said it was “completely false.”

That story came on the heels of other recent reporting from other media outlets about a different US investigation into possible collusion between a drug cartel and Lopez Obrador associates to accept money for his 2006 presidential campaign in exchange for leniency.

Lopez Obrador has denied those accusations, calling them slander, and responded by saying the journalist who broke the story was a “mercenary in the service” of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which carried out the investigation.

Concerns about media safety have remained consistent throughout Lopez Obrador’s presidency. In January, the theft of the personal data of hundreds of journalists in Mexico, including addresses and copies of voter ID cards and passports, raised fresh worries.

International free-speech organization Article 19 has documented 163 journalist murders in Mexico since 2000. – Rappler.com

“Russia must be made to pay for its aggression,” British Foreign Minister David Cameron told the closed session, according to his office.

The top diplomats from the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, France and Norway made similar remarks on the first day of a two-day meeting.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told reporters that Lavrov calmly replied to Cameron’s remarks with “a set of alternative facts” about events in Ukraine.

Lavrov did not speak to reporters. Russia’s justification of its “special military operation” in Ukraine, which began two years ago, initially was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. More recently, Moscow has emphasized that it needs to defend against Western aggression.

The meeting was set to prepare the agenda for a G20 summit in November. At a summit in September, G20 leaders adopted a declaration that avoided condemning Russia for the war in Ukraine but called on all states not to use force to grab territory.

Cameron also noted the death of dissident Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison last week.

Eide said the G20 session in Rio focused mainly on conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.

“We have to support Ukraine until it emerges as a free and independent sovereign country without another army on its soil,” the Norwegian minister said he told the meeting.

Eide said the ministers who spoke at the meeting agreed with the need for a two-state solution in the Middle East but there was no consensus on how to achieve it.

Brazil, this year’s president of the G20, opened the foreign ministers’ meeting by blaming the United Nations and other multinational bodies for failing to stop conflicts that are killing innocent people.

Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira called for “profound reform” of global governance as Brazil’s top priority this year.

“Multilateral institutions are not adequately equipped to deal with current challenges, as demonstrated by the Security Council’s unacceptable paralysis in relation to ongoing conflicts,” Vieira said at the meeting.

“This state of inaction results in the loss of innocent lives,” he said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brasilia on his way to the Rio meeting and expressed US support for Brazil’s agenda to make global governance more effective.

The top US diplomat discussed Israel’s war in Gaza with Lula amid a diplomatic spat after the Brazilian leader likened Israel’s war to the Nazi genocide during World War Two, a US spokesperson told reporters.

Lula’s accusations last week of atrocities by Israel in Gaza triggered a diplomatic crisis with an Israeli reprimand and Brazil recalling its ambassador. – Rappler.com

Opposition parties earlier on Monday had asked the body to void the results of the February 4 Congress elections and redo the vote after the hand count of ballots revealed several irregularities.

However, it is unlikely the election authority will agree.

Just hours after polls closed Bukele declared himself the winner of the presidential election, and his party victorious in the Congress ballot.

Despite Bukele claiming at the time that his party had won 58 out of 60 seats, in the days that followed, El Salvador’s electoral body began a hand count of the vote after declaring a failure in the voting system following numerous reports of irregularities, glitches, and power and internet outages.

Electoral authorities on Sunday confirmed Bukele’s whopping win with almost 85% of the vote and on Monday that his party now controlled a 54-seat super majority.

A super majority in Congress is seen giving Bukele unprecedented power, including allowing him to change the country’s constitution and continue to shelve constitutional rights in his popular crackdown on the country’s gangs, which has drawn criticisms from rights groups.

The right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and National Concertion parties will each hold two seats and the Christian Democratic and VAMOS parties will hold one seat a piece.

On Monday the leaders of ARENA and two emerging progressive parties, Nuestro Tiempo and VAMOS, said they had documented 69 “anomalies” in the voting and vote-counting process.

Among the anomalies cited were failures in the system meant to process and send ballots; duplication, and in some cases, triplication of votes in favor of Bukele’s party; ballots abandoned in voting centers; and broken seals on packages containing votes.

Over the weekend an electoral mission from the Organization of American States (OAS) expressed concern about the delay in the vote count and problems that arose in the hand count.

The OAS observers cited the electoral body’s “lack of control” over the voting and vote count process, problems with vote authentication, and poor training of people entering results.

They also noted Bukele’s New Ideas party outnumbered the opposition for election observers and noted members from the party had intimidating attitudes towards the opposition while trying to obstruct the election observation mission and the press.

VAMOS deputy Claudia Ortiz told journalists they had called for the election results to be voided and the vote repeated “due to serious violations of the Constitution, serious violations of citizen’s political rights and of all the candidates and especially because the principle of not falsifying the will of the people has been seriously violated.”

The leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) party also called for congressional results to be nulled due to “fraud” and “manipulation,” according to congressional candidate Karina Sosa.

During his first term, Bukele used his New Ideas party’s congressional majority to pack courts with loyalists and overhaul state institutions, paving the way for him to run for a second term despite a constitutional ban on re-election.

In June, the body passed electoral reforms that analysts and opponents say favored New Ideas. The reforms cut the number of deputies, dropping the seats available to smaller parties, and changed the formula for how vote totals would translate into seats allocated to each party.

Under the new system, despite New Ideas congressional candidates winning 71% of the vote, they will hold 90% of the seats in congress. – Rappler.com

The protests, one of several in recent years meant to “protect” the National Electoral Institute (INE), come after Lopez Obrador sent a sweeping package of constitutional reforms to Congress, which would include an overhaul of the INE.

Organizers said 700,000 people turned out, which could mark one of the largest protests against Lopez Obrador as his administration comes to a close.

The Mexico City government, which is controlled by Lopez Obrador’s MORENA party, said just 90,000 people attended. The disparity in counting turnout has also occurred at previous pro-INE demonstrations.

Lopez Obrador has made it no secret the package is meant to influence debate before June 2 voting in which his political successor Claudia Sheinbaum is likely to win, though the president has said it is unlikely most reforms will pass.

One would turn the INE into the National Institute of Elections and Consultations, which would take over the country’s local electoral bodies and shrink the number of counselors heading the group. It would also require electoral judges be elected by popular vote.

“Authorities are seeking to eliminate (autonomous institutions), to subordinate them or take them over,” Lorenzo Cordova, the former head of the INE, said to the crowd. “We’ve seen a ferocious attack against these institutions.”

The president has long shared his dislike of the INE, including accusing the electoral body of helping to engineer his defeats when he ran for the presidency in 2006 and 2012.

Protesters on Sunday accused Lopez Obrador of meddling in an attempt to concentrate power in the hands of his party’s government, though Lopez Obrador has said he will respect the results of the election.

Demonstrators also used the protests to speak out against other hallmarks of Lopez Obrador’s administration, including what they allege is a failure to curb widespread violence and social spending programs.

“The current government is leading us to catastrophe,” said Maria de los Angeles Lopez. “To be afraid of going out on the streets, to be afraid our money will no longer be enough, that is why I came out to protest.” – Rappler.com