NOAA's IRMA, Headed for the Caribbean including Puerto Rico, the DR, Haiti, Cuba, the neighboring islands, and probably Florida and the US East Coast...
It’s looking more likely that Hurricane Irma will affect the U.S. coast — potentially making a direct landfall — starting Friday. The powerful storm strengthened slightly overnight, and as of Monday morning was a powerful Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph. As it tracks west toward the Caribbean, hurricane warnings have been issued for portions of the Leeward Islands and hurricane watches are in place for Puerto Rico.
Additional advisories will probably be issued later Monday as the forecasted track of Irma becomes more clear.
Irma has entered into a favorable environment for strengthening, with warm sea surface temperatures and favorable upper-level winds allowing the storm to intensify even more over the next 24 hours. As of 11 a.m. Monday, the National Hurricane Center predicted the storm will pass just north of the island of St. John on Wednesday morning as a Category 4 with winds over 130 mph.
Late Sunday afternoon, Hurricane Hunters began regular flights into Irma, providing extremely valuable data that has improved forecasts. The immediate track of Irma through the middle of the week is not much of a question at this point; an area of high pressure is firmly in place over the central Atlantic, preventing Irma from recurving and escaping out to sea. That high won’t move much over the next several days, steering Irma due west into the Leeward Islands by midweek.
Overnight, both the American and European models started to show more consistency in a forecasted track for Irma that increases the chances of impacts on the U.S. coast. Irma will probably continue to be suppressed by the strong Atlantic high pressure beyond Wednesday, keeping the storm at major hurricane status and on a trajectory that places the storm in close proximity to Florida by next weekend.
Miss Haiti 2017
Cassandra Chéry was crowned as the winner of the Miss Haiti 2017 pageant at Marriott hotel in Port au Prince last Saturday.
Chéry, 21, was born in Port-au-Prince. She is a model and student in communication. She succeeds Raquel Pelissier, Miss Haiti 2016.
The Miss Haiti contest is the national beauty pageant of Haiti. It is responsible for selecting the country's representatives to the Miss World, Miss International, Miss Globe, MTQI, International Coffee Queen, Panamerican Queen of the Sugar cane pageants (among others).
257 NGOs (NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION) have been prohibited from operating in Haiti
Published 2017-09-01 ¦ Le Nouvelliste
The Moïse-Lafontant administration wants to regulate NGOs (NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION) and international agencies according to its priorities and the needs for the Haitian people.
The announcement was made by the Secretary of the Planning and External Cooperation (MPCE), Aviol Fleurant, last Friday. He reminded that President Jovenel Moïse, considers it essential to take the country away from a status of continually receiving assistance, and instead move it towards development.
To NGOs, Aviol Fleurant set two requirements. First, he indicated that these institutions have to finance what the Haitian people need and not what they consider necessary. Second, the assistance they provide must be within the framework of some leadership from the Haitian government," he explained.
In a nutshell, Aviol Fleurant stressed that the public aid in development has to pass though governmental channels, or the government will reject it. "These requirements are justified based on the trust that the Haitian people have placed in this administration… and this government’s ongoing battle to fight corruption," he said.
At the moment, only 370 NGOs are complying with the requirements of the Haitian government, reported the Secretary. These NGOs regularly submit reports about their work. On the other hand, he denounced other NGOs that haven’t published reports in more than 10 years and continue to work and to benefit from exemption of customs duties. Consequently, by virtue of the decree of September 14th, 1989, the government is revoking the authorization of 257 NGOs to function. A press release stating their names will be published in the media and in the official newspaper “The Monitor.”
Fleurant wants to reassure international partners. “We do not want chase away in NGOs,” he says. However, he indicated that this administration intends to redefine a partnership with these NGOs and international development agencies.
The government of the United States hands over the keys of the police station of Terrier Rouge to the National Police Force of Haiti
For her first public appearance in Haiti, the account manager of the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, Robin Diallo, underlined the important role of the National police in Haiti. She asserted the commitment of the United States to support the growth and the development of this institution.
By participating in the inauguration of the police station of Terrier Rouge in the department of the Northeast, together with the Managing Director of the Haitian National Police Force (PNH), Michel-Angel Gédéon, the Mayor of Terriere Rouge, Marie Evena Daniel Pompilus, and in the presence of local authorities and of the representatives of the international community, Diallo greeted the leadership and the efforts of the PNH to insure the safety of the Haitian population by asserting: "The National police force of Haiti has the trust of its leaders, their commanders, the international community and, especially, the citizens whom it serves and protects.”
She added, ”The United States remains firm in its commitment to support the men and women of this institution, while they build a stable platform for a more prosperous Haiti.”
The building of the police station launched in September, 2016, was financed by the government of the United States through of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). The U.S. Embassy handed over the keys of this building to PNH. This will allow it to maintain the law and order in the region and to strengthen the relations of the PNH with the local community which it is called to serve.
The United States has supported efforts for safety in Haiti for twenty years and completed other infrastructure projects to build police stations and prisons throughout the country, including Port-de-Paix, Cabaret, Cayes and Petit-Goâve.
Haitians abroad give their country $2 billion a year. Now the government wants more.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
In 1765, colonists living in America and Canada were expected to pay into the treasury of the British monarch, sparking the famous no-taxation-without-representation rallying cry and, ultimately, the American Revolution.
Now 250-odd years later, Haitians from Miami to Montreal are embroiled in their own tax revolt. The Haitian government is seeking to levy a universal tax on all its citizens, on and off the island.
And even though it’s a small amount — 10,000 gourdes or $159annually, depending on the exchange rate — the reaction has been no less vehement. For some 2 million Haitians living abroad, who already contribute $2 billion a year in remittances, essentially doubling the country’s annual budget, the insult is clear.
“We need to retaliate,” said Dr. Lesly Kernisant, a New York gynecologist, whose emailed French post entitled “Diaspora: Enough is Enough” in response to the proposal went viral. “We’re not retaliating against our people, but Haitian leaders because they don’t seem to get it.”
Anger erupted last week after the new tax was leaked on social media. It is among several new revenue schemes — fee hikes for property ownership, passports and traffic infractions, and marketing $285 million in bonds to the diaspora, among others — that Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant are proposing in their ambitious $2.2 billion draft budget. The budget also includes a 74 percent boost in salaries, cars, staff and travel per diem for members of parliament.
After the fee was dubbed by critics as a “diaspora tax,” its defenders — from the head of the Haitian IRS to the minister of finance to one of the country’s best-known comedians and government supporter, Tonton Bicha — took to the airwaves and social media. They denounced as untrue rumors that Haitians living abroad would be forced to pay as soon as they arrive at the airport in much the same way visitors must now pay a $10 tourist tax.
Paying taxes, presidential spokesman Lucien Jura said in a Facebook video post, is the price of citizenship.
“Haitians living abroad, what you should know is that Haiti is your country” he said in the message directed at the diaspora. “You can enter [Haiti] as freely as you wish. But if you come from abroad and you come to do a transaction in your country, which is Haiti, purchasing a house, purchasing a car, purchasing land, that means you are someone who has some means. Since you aren’t working in Haiti and there is no real way to evaluate your revenue ...the government has fixed [an amount] for you and generally any foreigner who has come to do a transaction in the country.”
The explanation, however, has done little to satisfy people like Kernisant who is threatening to organize a diaspora-wide boycott of Haiti — “No airlines and money transfers. ...We essentially will paralyze the country” — to teach the government a lesson, if it insists on enforcing the tax.
“I understand you need the tax,” he said. “But if I have to pay taxes, I should at least be able to contribute to the political structure of Haiti. ...Taxation without representation will no longer be acceptable.”
It’s not the money, Haitians say. There is universal agreement that Haiti, which already collects one of the highest taxes on airline tickets in the Caribbean region at $88.90, can use the cash. It’s still reeling from last year’s strike by Category 4 Hurricane Matthew along its southern peninsula and struggling to rebuild from the 2010 earthquake amid a 50 percent drop in foreign aid.
But the lack of accountability and transparency about how the country’s leaders will use the money is unacceptable, they say.
19-Year-Old Haitian-Japanese Tennis Player Pulls an Upset and Defeats U.S. Open Champion
Tennis can be a thrilling sport in and of itself, so when an upset happens… it’s peak excitement! People love rooting for the underdog in general, so upsets are popular in any competition.
Meet Naomi Osaka. Osaka is a 19-year-old 6th seed (No. 45) Haitian-Japanese tennis player. Recently, Osaka’s life changed in a moment after she pulled a huge upset and defeated reigning U.S. Open champion Angelique Kerber. And this happened in the first round with Osaka as a wild card.
Not only did she win, but she blew Kerber out of the water: 6-3, 6-1. Game, set, match! No one saw this coming. Nevertheless, Osaka lost this past Saturday in the U.S. Open’s third round to Kaia Kanepi.
Osaka was born in Osaka, Japan’s second city, to a Haitian father and Japanese mother. When Naomi was three, her family moved to New York to be close to her dad’s family. Naomi currently lives and trains predominantly in Florida with her father, though she also spends some time in Japan with coaches from the Japanese Tennis Association.
When she began to develop into a top-rate tennis player a few years ago, her father, Leonard Francois, chose the Japanese Tennis Association over the United States Tennis Association because of Naomi’s dual passport. She’s played under the Japanese flag ever since and is one of the country’s most highly touted rising stars but she barely speaks the language.
Osaka made her breakthrough on the WTA Tour two years ago when she qualified as a 406th-ranked 16-year-old for the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, California, and beat former U.S. Open champion Samantha Stosur in the first round. At the 2016 Australian Open, the now current ranked No. 127 Osaka came through qualification to reach the main draw. In the second round, she defeated the No. 18 seed.
Unsurprisingly, Osaka really looks up to Serena Williams. And Williams is out here giving her props. “I have seen her play. She’s really young and really aggressive. She’s a really good, talented player. Very dangerous,” Williams said of Osaka, who recorded a 125 mph serve at the 2016 U.S. Open, which is something only eight other women have done. Osaka is winning all around!
Given her young age, Osaka is definitely someone to watch!
Source: USA Today, www.curlynikki.com & www.lunionsuite.com