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World saw declines in freedom in 2009, think tank finds

2010-01-13T02:57:00.000-08:00

The unsolved murder of human rights activists in Russia. Their detention, torture and murder in Iran. Their jailing in China and Vietnam.

Attacks on journalists in the Philippines, Pakistan, Mexico and Somalia.

Coups in Africa and Central America.

All isolated incidents around the world that together made 2009 a grim milestone in world freedom, according to a United States think tank that tracks liberty around the globe.

Declines in freedom around the world outweighed gains last year, for the fourth year in a row, Freedom House says in its annual survey published Tuesday.

"This represents the longest continuous period of deterioration in the nearly 40-year history" of the report, writes this year's author, Arch Puddington.

There were only 116 electoral democracies around the world in 2009, the group found -- the lowest number since 1995.

But the world is doing relatively well at democratic elections, compared with some other indicators.
Freedom in the world

"Governments are more likely to permit relatively honest elections than to allow an uncensored press, a robust civil society, and an independent judiciary," Puddington writes.

The report is not all doom and gloom.

There was progress in Iraq, the Balkans, Malawi and Togo, Freedom House said.

And taking the long view, the world was more free in 2009 than when revolutions swept the communist world 20 years earlier. The Central and Eastern European democracies born in 1989 have largely retained their freedom, despite economic pressures stemming from the worldwide recession.

But much of the former Soviet Union is in a dire state. Central Asia is the least free region in the world, according to Freedom House, and contains two of the nine countries that got the survey's "worst of the worst" rating.

Central Asia's former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are on that list, along with North Korea, Libya, Sudan, Myanmar (also known as Burma), Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea and Somalia.
This represents the longest continuous period of deterioration in the nearly 40-year history [of the report].
--Arch Puddington, author of this year's report
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* Human Rights Policy
* Elections and Voting
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Ten other countries and territories fared only slightly better. They are Belarus, Chad, China, Cuba, Guinea, Laos, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, and Western Sahara, which is fighting for independence from Morocco.

Freedom House groups countries into three categories: free, partly free and not free.

A total of 89 countries were rated free in 2009. That's 46 percent of the 194 countries and territories in the survey, representing 46 percent of the world's population.

Freedom House listed 58 countries as partly free. That's 30 percent of the world's countries, with 20 percent of the global population.

The group said 47 countries were not free -- just under one in four of the countries in the world, but just over one in three of the world's people.

China is home to more than half the people in the "not free" category, Freedom House said.

Freedom House describes itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that supports democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights. It has been publishing its annual report since 1972.

Former model recalls horrific acid attack

2010-01-13T02:55:00.000-08:00

Katie Piper had everything going for her -- a blossoming career, a wonderful life and a beautiful face. But that all changed after a horrific acid attack in March 2008 destroyed everything as she knew it.

The young model and television presenter, who was 24 years old at the time, was leaving her apartment in a London suburb when she was attacked by a stranger waiting for her with a cup of sulfuric acid.

Stefan Sylvestre threw the cup of corrosive liquid on Piper, burning the skin on her face, neck, chest and hands. She was also left blinded in one eye.

Sylvestre was asked by Piper's former boyfriend, Danny Lynch, to throw the acid on her face because she ended their short relationship.

To make matters worse, two days before the attack, Piper was raped by Lynch in a London hotel room after ending the partnership.

"It wasn't a random attack and there was a motive if you like," Piper told CNN's Becky Anderson on Connect the World.

Meanwhile Piper's parents were called by the police to tell them what had happened. "I can remember going 'not her face, please not her face'," Piper's mother Diane wrote on The Katie Piper Foundation web site.

"I knew if anything happened to her face as far as she was concerned it would be the end of everything."

Piper spent nearly two months in hospital and was placed in an induced coma for 10 days.

The attack also severely damaged Piper's throat and she was forced to be fed through a tube in her stomach.

Today, Piper now wears a special plastic pressure mask for 23 hours a day, in an effort to flatten her scars.

"You can see looking at me that it physically changed my appearance, but it goes a lot deeper than that."

"It changed my life as I know it -- it changed my career, it changed my relationships with people.

Lynch was found guilty of inciting the acid attack in October 2008 and subsequently convicted on the rape charge in April 2009. He was given two life sentences, and will serve at least 16 years in jail.

Sylvestre received a 12-year sentence for throwing the acid.

With her attackers behind bars, Piper is determined to get her life back on track and rebuild what she can.

"Time was a great healer and I've managed to not get my old life back, but I can rebuild. And I think I've stayed focused and determined."

"It was an attack with the intent to destroy me, and I decided that it wouldn't destroy me and that I would still have a life. I try to stay positive."

Piper has told her story around the world and has started the Katie Piper Foundation to help raise money for burns victims across the UK.

Since the attack Piper has made remarkable progress.

Surgeons took the drastic measure to remove the skin from Piper's entire face and use a skin substitute called Matriderm to re-build the foundations before grafting skin from her back and buttock onto her face -- it's the first operation of its kind to be done in one operation, according to Piper's Web site.

Piper plans to continue her work raising money for burn victims and to help spread the message that there is life after difficult challenges.

"I think it's important to try and set yourself many goals -- try to take each day as it comes," Piper said.

"I think there's a lot of strength that can be gathered from support."

Guatemalan lawyer arranged own slaying, U.N. panel says

2010-01-13T02:54:00.001-08:00

A lawyer who left a videotape saying Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom would be responsible if anything happened to him masterminded his own death last year, a special United Nations commission said Tuesday after an eight-month investigation.

Colom had nothing to do with the killing, said Carlos Castresana, head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.

"Rodrigo Rosenberg, for some reason, decided to put an end to his life," Castresana said at a televised news conference.

Rosenberg was shot from behind in a brazen daylight attack while riding his bicycle in Guatemala City, the nation's capital. He was shot three times in the head, once in the neck and once in the back, Castresana said.

Prominent Guatemalan brothers Francisco Jose Valdez Paiz and Jose Estuardo Valdez Paiz hired hit men at the behest of Rosenberg, who told them he was being threatened by someone, Castresana said.

The two brothers, who own a pharmaceutical company, had been cousins of Rosenberg through a previous marriage and did not know that he was the target of the assassination, Castresana said.

Rosenberg fed information to the hit squad leader that led to his own death, giving descriptions of what the target looked like and where he would be.

"It was the two brothers and no one else," Castresana said. "Not a politician. Not a [government] minister. Not a police chief. No one. Just these two brothers."

About 300 investigators from 11 nations reached their conclusion after an exhaustive examination of 100,000 telephone calls, 9,500 documents, surveillance videotapes, and 135 interviews with 11 suspects and others, Castresana said.

Colom had maintained since the May 10 slaying that he was innocent despite Rosenberg's explosive videotape, which was made public the day after his death.

Guatemalan authorities have arrested 11 men on suspicion that they carried out the killing, but the Valdez Paiz brothers remain at large.

Their lawyer, Alexis Calderon, denied last week that his clients were involved.

"This is a story being made up to implicate people who didn't have anything to do with it," Calderon said.

He also said that he did not know where the brothers were but that they would surrender after Tuesday's conference.

Calderon did not answer calls seeking comment Tuesday.

Arrest warrants for the brothers were issued December 10, Castresana said, noting that the suspects were already out of the country by then.

Rosenberg recorded the tape blaming Colom three days before his death.

He said Colom wanted him dead because the lawyer had been blaming the president and some of his top associates for the slaying of a prominent businessman and his daughter the previous month.

Businessman Khalid Musa and his daughter, Marjorie, were killed, Rosenberg said, because they had refused to participate in acts of corruption as the president wanted.

Rosenberg was Musa's attorney.

Castresana indicated Rosenberg staged his own killing to get back at Colom and high-level members of his government, whom he could not prove were responsible for the Musa killings.

"He wanted to open a box of lightning and thunder," said Castresana, a Spanish judge.

Castresana pointed to several indicators of Rosenberg's state of mind: His mother had died; he was going through a second divorce, and his wife had taken their young children to Mexico; he was bereft at the slaying of Marjorie Musa, with whom he had a close relationship; and he felt a sense of powerlessness because he could not prosecute the people he believed were responsible for the Musa slayings.

May 10, the date of his killing, was Mother's Day.

In two April 21 e-mails, seven days after the Musa killings, Rosenberg wrote, "I can't stop crying" and "I feel like I'm disintegrating," Castresana said.

Rosenberg made out his last will and testament on April 24 and started going public with his accusations against Colom regarding the Musa slayings on May 3.

On May 4, he called a meeting at his law office and said he would be leaving the firm, in which he was a partner.

The next day, Castresana said, Rosenberg asked a friend to buy two cell phones anonymously. Those cell phones, the lead investigator said, were crucial to cracking the case.

Rosenberg used one of the phones to call threats to his personal cell phone and had the other delivered to the Valdez Paiz brothers, who gave it to the hit squad leader. Rosenberg then used the new cell phone he kept to give instructions to the hit squad leader through the second phone, Castresana said.

Castresana detailed how the slaying apparently was meant to be paid through a $40,000 check.

According to the investigator, Rosenberg told his secretary before his death that she would be receiving a check from Panama that should be delivered to the Valdez Paiz brothers. The check had been made out by Luis Alejos, a Rosenberg friend and business associate who at the time was Guatemala's minister of communication, Castresana said. Alejos resigned from office in June, a few weeks after the slaying.

After receiving the check, Francisco Jose Valdez Paiz destroyed it, Castresana said. The businessman paid the 300,000 quetzales ($35,900) for the assassination out of his own pocket, Castresana said.

The investigator said Rosenberg sent Alejos the money to pay for the killing.

Alejos is the brother of Roberto Alejos, the president of the Guatemalan Congress, and a cousin of Gustavo Alejos, who is President Colom's private secretary.

In his videotape, Rosenberg said Gustavo Alejos would be among those responsible for the lawyer's death if it happened.

"If you are reading this message, it means that I, Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, was murdered by the president's private secretary, Gustavo Alejos, and his associate Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of Mr. Alvaro Colom and [first lady] Sandra de Colom," Rosenberg said.

After the tape surfaced, Colom went on national TV with a vehement denial that he or anyone mentioned in the video was involved.

He expressed his sense of vindication in a televised speech Tuesday afternoon.

"I don't have any rancor in my heart," Colom said. "Just immense gratitude for those who waited patiently with us."

The United Nations established the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala in 2006 to investigate corruption and political violence. More than 200,000 people have been killed in the nation since 1970, mostly as a result of organized crime, drug-trade violence and a 36-year civil war that ended in 1996.

There were 6,451 slayings in Guatemala last year, of which only 230 verdicts were achieved, Castresana said. That means, he said, that more than 96 percent of the killings in 2009 were not solved.

Notorious drug trafficker arrested, Mexico says

2010-01-13T02:53:00.001-08:00

Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental, one of Mexico's most wanted drug traffickers, was arrested Tuesday, Mexican and U.S. authorities said.

The capture of the high-level drug trafficker comes on the heels of successful military operations against another cartel last month.

Mexican federal police, assisted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, made the arrest in the city of La Paz, Mexico, the capital of the state of Baja California Sur, DEA spokesman Michael Sanders said.

Garcia Simental was a top lieutenant of the Tijuana cartel until he defected to the rival Sinaloa cartel after a power struggle.

"He is one the most notorious drug lords and was on a list of the Top 24 drug traffickers in all of Mexico" said another DEA official, who asked not to be identified because officials were still gathering preliminary information.

Authorities presented Garcia Simental, together with another man captured in the raid, Diego Raymundo Gutierrez Gomez, to the media in Mexico City on Tuesday.

Garcia Simental is accused of more than 300 murders, most of them since he split from the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix organization in April 2008, Federal Police Section Chief Ramon Eduardo Pequeno said.

One of his jobs for the Arellano-Felix cartel was disposing of bodies, Pequeno said. Garcia Simental is accused of disposing of 300 body parts by dipping them in acid, Pequeno said.

Once he split from the Arellano-Felix cartel, Garcia Simental continued to operate a drug trafficking organization in Tijuana with the help of rival cartels.

The Sinaloa cartel and the Michoacan, Mexico-based La Familia cartel supplied Garcia Simental's group with drugs, which he would smuggle into the United States, Pequeno said.

This splintering of the Tijuana cartel was a cause of much of the violence seen in the border city since 2008, he said.

Tuesday's arrest was the result of more than five months of intelligence operations, Pequeno said.

There was a reward of up to 30 million pesos (U.S. $2.4 million) for Garcia Simental's capture.

Google reports China-based attack, says pullout possible

2010-01-13T02:51:00.000-08:00

Google said Tuesday the company and at least 20 others were victims of a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" originating in China in mid-December, evidently to gain access to the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

"Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective," according to a statement by David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer for Google, operator of the most popular Internet search engine.

Drummond said that as a result of the attacks, Google has decided it is no longer willing to consider censorship of its Google site in China and may have to shut down its site and its offices in that nation.

"These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered -- combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the Web -- have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China," Drummond wrote.

"We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.

"We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China," Drummond's statement reads.

A Google spokesman said the targeted human rights activists were in the United States, Europe and China.

Efforts by CNN to reach the Chinese Embassy in Washington Tuesday evening were not successful.

Google, perhaps best known for its search engine, also provides other computer services, including e-mail, online mapping and social networking.

Haiti was 'catastrophe waiting to happen'

2010-01-13T02:49:00.000-08:00

Haiti's infrastructure was among the world's worst even in the best of times, the country's ambassador to the United States said Tuesday.

"It was a catastrophe waiting to happen," Raymond Alcide Joseph told CNN from Washington shortly after a 7.0 earthquake leveled parts of his home country, cutting power and phone lines in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. "Sadly, it has happened."

He called the result "a catastrophe of major proportions." The capital city is surrounded by hills to which "little flimsy houses" were struggling to hold on, he said.

Frank Williams of World Vision Haiti told CNN from the Petionville section of the capital that the building in which his organization is based shook for about 35 seconds and did not weather it well.

Learn more about Haiti, poorest nation in Americas

"Portions of things on the building fell off," he said. "Fortunately for us, our building remains standing and none of our staff were injured, but lots of walls are falling down. Many of our staff have tried to leave, but were unsuccessful because the walls from buildings and private residences were falling into the streets."
Video: Ambassador: quake 'a catastrophe'
Video: Quake witness: 'People screaming'
Video: Witness describes 'severe jolting'
RELATED TOPICS

* Haiti
* Earthquakes
* Port-au-Prince

In the capital, government buildings were damaged, phone service was spotty and electricity was out, except for people who had emergency generators, Williams said.

The quake's impact also shook the psyches of residents, particularly when aftershocks occurred, he said.

"If there is another aftershock, there is a kind of wail as people are very frightened by it," Williams said. "But most people are out in the streets and just kind of looking up."

Joseph said he had spoken with Secretary-General Fritz Longchamps, who told him buildings collapsed on either side of him as he walked along a street in Petionville.

Catholic Relief Services, international relief agency based in Baltimore, spoke briefly with their person in charge in Port-au-Prince before the line went dead.

Regional Information Officer Robyn Feiser said the representative told them "it's a total disaster." She quotes him as saying, "I never felt anything like this. It was a major hit, and it was direct."

He told Robin their building was shaking but still standing, but the building across the street from them collapsed. He described a cloud of dust everywhere, and people moving into courtyards to get away from buildings.

Eighty percent of Haiti's 9 million residents live under the poverty line and more than half -- 54 percent -- live in abject poverty, according to the CIA Factbook.

In 2008, four tropical storms damaged the transportation infrastructure and agricultural sector, on which two-thirds of Haitians depend, mainly as subsistence farmers.

Citing that World Bank assessment, the Organization of American States said in a report on its Web site, "Among the numerous factors explaining the extent of the loss of lives and goods are the absence of land use zoning and building guidelines, and comprehensive enforcement mechanisms." The OAS report added Haiti has no national building codes.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Timothy M. Carney told CNN that Port-au-Prince was particularly at risk because it grew rapidly from a population of about 250,000 in the mid-1950s to more than 2 million today, all with little oversight.

City planners had called for the surrounding hills to remain undeveloped in order to protect an aquifer. "That didn't happen," Carney said. "People started building up those hillsides."

Instead of building concrete structures, they built shanties, he said. "My fear is that they all fell down."

Haitians in U.S. watch earthquake news and worry

2010-01-13T02:47:00.000-08:00

With phone lines down and communication cut, Haitians living in America are "sick with worry" and scrambling for information about Tuesday's earthquake, while fretting about their troubled homeland and their loved ones.

"Well, we're watching the news unfold, and I just don't know what to think," said Gepsi Metellus, executive director of the Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center in Miami, Florida.

She said her mother, who splits her time between Haiti -- she lives in Pétionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince -- and Miami, just flew back to the island on Friday. While Metellus and others are glued to TVs, she said, "We're not learning a thing. It's just making me sick with worry."

Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere. Plagued with "political violence for most of its history," according to the CIA World Factbook, the Caribbean island nation has suffered from colonialism, coups and corruption since becoming the first black republic in 1804.

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More than half of the country lives in "abject poverty." The nation imports more than four times the goods it exports and about two-thirds of the labor force lacks formal jobs, the CIA reports.

"You worry about everything at this point," said Metellus. She said the Haitian community in South Florida numbers from 250,000 to 500,000 people. "The basic infrastructure we're accustomed to here is nonexistent. To assess the damage is going to be a momentous undertaking."

Complete coverage of the earthquake

Disease is rampant, and it's still common for children to die from drinking and washing in fecal contaminated water. UNICEF estimates that 70 percent of Haitians do not have access to "safe drinking water and adequate sanitation."

Nyvrose Fleurent of Brooklyn, New York, works for the community outreach group Haitian American United Progress and said most Haitian immigrants in the United States have family still on the island. They often financially support family members who aren't able to leave, she said.

She said this while watching the news. Earlier in the morning she had hugged her brother good-bye before he flew to Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti. She had no idea the city would be hit by an earthquake.

Fleurent, 38, remains hopeful her family will be unharmed. Her brother and cousins reside in Cap-Haïtien, in the north, on the opposite side of the country from Port-au-Prince, the city closest to the earthquake's epicenter.

Even so, she worried about the impact Tuesday's 7.0 quake will have on her struggling home country.

"The people who live there can barely make it," Fleurent said. "They can't even eat and get money for their basic needs, so this is going to be a big blow for them. I don't know where Haiti is going to be in the future. It's already so bad."

The State Department Operations Center has set up the following number for Americans seeking information about family members in Haiti: 1-888-407-4747

Appeals for aid after quake strikes Haiti

2010-01-13T02:43:00.000-08:00

Appeals for aid quickly flooded out to the international community on Tuesday after a major earthquake struck Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

"I'm calling on all friends of Haiti and people who are listening to me to please come to our aid," said Raymond Joseph, Haiti's ambassador to the U.S. told CNN's Wolf Blitzer by telephone.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck southern Haiti on Tuesday, knocking down buildings and inflicting a new catastrophe on the impoverished Caribbean nation, its ambassador to the United States said.

"Today as Haiti is going through the worst day in its history I am calling for all others who got help from us in the beginning to help in support," Joseph said. "The only thing I can do now is pray and hope for the best."

The quake struck about 15 km (10 miles) southwest of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince shortly before 5 p.m. Joseph said he had little information about the extent of damage from the quake, but one government official -- the only one he was able to reach -- told him houses had crumbled "on the right side of the street and the left side of the street."

E-mail was the sole means of communication for many.

"Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS...," wrote Dr. Louise Ivers from Port-au-Prince, in an e-mail to the group's offices in Boston, Massachusetts. The clinical director of Partners In Health, which operates nine hospitals and health centers for poor people in Haiti, added: "Temporary field hospital ... needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us."

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Video: Ambassador: quake 'a catastrophe'
Video: 'I felt the house shaking'
Video: 7.0 quake in Haiti
Video: Jean: We need 'immediate aid'

Singer Wyclef Jean, nephew of ambassador Joseph, stressed the need for help for what is considered among the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere.

"We're going to need immediate aid," Jean told Blitzer on CNN. "We're going to need the United States and the international community to react immediately." He founded Yele Haiti, whose community service programs include food distribution and emergency relief.

In Washington U.S. President Barack Obama said the government would "stand ready to assist the people of Haiti."

At the Pentagon, the U.S. military said humanitarian aid was being prepared for shipping, but it was not yet clear where or how it would be sent. A U.S. aviation source said the control tower at the Port-au-Prince international airport collapsed, possibly hindering efforts to fly relief supplies into the country.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters that Washington is offering "our full assistance" to Haiti. "And our prayers are with the people who have suffered, their families and their loved ones," she said. The deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Haiti, David Lindwall, told Clinton that he saw "significant damage" from the quake and said U.S. officials there expect "serious loss of life," Crowley said.

And Clinton's husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton -- now the U.N. special envoy for Haiti -- said the world body was "committed to do whatever we can to assist the people of Haiti in their relief, rebuilding and recovery efforts."

Haiti's government is backed by a U.N. peacekeeping mission established after the ouster of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

The United States has been heavily involved in Haiti commercially, politically and militarily for most of the last century. U.S. intervention under Clinton restored Aristide to power in 1994 after a 1991 coup, and a U.S. jet hustled him out of the country again in 2004 following a rapidly spreading uprising against his government.

With people stripping the trees for fuel and to clear land for agriculture, the mountainous countryside has been heavily deforested. That has led to severe erosion and left Haitians vulnerable to massive landslides when heavy rains fall.

Roads in Haiti were unsafe to travel on because of a lack of lighting and because many buildings along transportation routes had collapsed or were not deemed safe, said Ian Rodgers of the relief organization Save the Children.

"What I can hear is very distressed people," Rogers said. "There is a lot of distress and wailing of people trying to find loved ones."

A representative for the aid group Catholic Relief Services in Haiti described the situation in the nation as "a total disaster," said Robyn Fieser, regional information officer for the group.

Haiti's dense population will increase the risk to its people, Jean said. The nation's need for aid will range from water and food to medical and building supplies.

"This is the worst devastation that we as Haitian people have faced," he said.

Hurricane Gordon killed more than 1,000 people in 1994, while Hurricane Georges killed more than 400 and destroyed the majority of the country's crops in 1998. And in 2004, Hurricane Jeanne killed more than 3,000 people even as it passed north of Haiti, with most of the deaths in the northwestern city of Gonaives.

Gonaives was hit heavily again in 2008 when four tropical systems passed through.

According to the U.N. Office for the Special Envoy for Haiti, unemployment reaches 70 percent nationally, and 78 percent of Haitians live on less than $2 a day.

Experts warned of earthquake risk on Haiti

2010-01-13T02:40:00.000-08:00

Scientists have warned for years that the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, was at risk for a major earthquake.

Five scientists presented a paper during the 18th Caribbean Geological Conference in March 2008 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, stating that a fault zone on the south side of the island posed "a major seismic hazard."

Tuesday's potentially disastrous 7.0 earthquake occurred in Haiti along the same fault line, known as the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault zone.

"We were concerned about it," said one of the paper's authors, Paul Mann, a senior research scientist at the University of Texas' Institute for Geophysics.

"The problem with these kinds of strikes is that they can remain quiescent -- dormant -- for hundreds of years," he said Tuesday evening. "So it's hard to predict when they'll occur."

The findings by Mann and his colleagues followed a 2004 study in the Journal of Geophysical Research in which two geologists found a heightened earthquake risk along the Septentrional fault zone, which runs through the Cibao valley in the northern Dominican Republic.

"This is seismically a very active area of the world," one of the geologists, said Jian Lin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "Geologists should not be surprised by this earthquake."

Lin co-authored the study with geologist Uri ten Brink of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The epicenter of Tuesday's quake was 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Price, the Haitian capital. Its proximity to the country's population center had scientists concerned Tuesday night.

"Because the earthquake was so close to the capital city, because the city is so populated and because the country is so poor -- the houses are not well-built -- it could cause significant casualties," Lin said.

But Mann believes that Port-au-Prince's modest skyline could work in its favor.

"Port-au-Prince doesn't have high-rises," said the geologist, who has visited the city. "It's mostly a low-rise kind of place. And that may be a fortunate thing for them."

The Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault is similar in structure and character to the San Andreas fault of California in that both are strike-slip in nature, meaning the plates move past each other in a horizontal direction, Mann said.

"The island of Hispaniola is caught between two techtonic plates," said Michael Blanpeid, associate coordinator for the USGS's Earthquake Hazards Program. "The North American and the Caribbean techtonic plates are shearing the island, crushing it, grinding it. And as that occurs, earthquakes pop off."

A dozen major earthquakes measuring 7.0 or greater on the Richter scale have occurred in the Caribbean near Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the island of Hispaniola in the past 500 years, scientists said.

The last major earthquake near Hispaniola, a magnitude 8.0 in 1946, caused a tsunami and left 20,000 people homeless, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The last large earthquake based on historical records in the Port-au-Prince area was in 1770, Mann said.

7.0 quake hits Haiti; 'Serious loss of life' expected

2010-01-13T02:34:00.000-08:00

A major earthquake struck southern Haiti on Tuesday, knocking down buildings and power lines and inflicting what its ambassador to the United States called a catastrophe for the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

Several eyewitnesses reported heavy damage and bodies in the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, where concrete-block homes line steep hillsides. There was no estimate of the dead and wounded Tuesday evening, but the U.S. State Department has been told to expect "serious loss of life," department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters in Washington.

Pictures sent to CNN's iReport show homes and small businesses in Haiti that have collapsed.

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The magnitude 7.0 quake -- the most powerful to hit Haiti in a century -- struck shortly before 5 p.m. and was centered about 10 miles (15 kilometers) southwest of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. It could be felt strongly in eastern Cuba, more than 200 miles away, witnesses said.
Video: Destruction in Haiti
Video: Witness describes 'severe jolting'
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Interactive: Measuring earthquakes
Interactive: Haiti map

Experts warned of earthquake risk on Haiti

Mike Godfrey, an American contractor working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said "a huge plume of dust and smoke rose up over the city" within minutes of the quake -- "a blanket that completely covered the city and obscured it for about 20 minutes."

Witnesses reported damaged buildings throughout the capital, including the president's residence and century-old homes nearby, and The Associated Press reported that a hospital collapsed. President Rene Preval is safe, Joseph said, but there was no estimate of the dead and wounded Tuesday evening.

He said an official of his government told him houses had crumbled "on the right side of the street and the left side of the street."

"He said it is a catastrophe of major proportions," Joseph said.

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Frank Williams, the Haitian director of the relief agency World Vision International, said the quake left people "pretty much screaming" all around Port-au-Prince. He said the agency's building shook for about 35 seconds, "and portions of things on the building fell off."

"None of our staff were injured, but lots of walls are falling down," Williams said. "Many of our staff have tried to leave, but were unsuccessful because the walls from buildings and private residences are falling into the streets, so that it has pretty much blocked significantly most of the traffic."

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Haiti's government is backed by a U.N. peacekeeping mission established after the ouster of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

The headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Port-au-Prince collapsed, a U.N. official told CNN.

There was no immediate report of any dead or wounded from the building, but Alain Le Roy, the undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations said of the 9,000-member, Brazilian led-force, "For the moment, a large number of personnel remain unaccounted for."

Outside the capital, several people were hurt when they rushed to get out of a school in the southwestern city of Les Cayes, said the Rev. Kesner Ajax, the school's executive director. Two homes in the area collapsed and the top of a church collapsed in a nearby town, he said, but he did not know of any fatalities.

Les Cayes, a city of about 400,000 people, is about 140 miles (225 kilometers) southwest of Port-au-Prince.

The quake took place about 6 miles (10 kilometers) underground, according to the USGS -- a depth that can produce severe shaking. At least 10 aftershocks followed, including two in the magnitude 5 range, the USGS reported.

Appeals for aid after quake strikes Haiti

Jean Bernard, an eyewitness in Port-au-Prince, told CNN the city had no electricity Tuesday evening. The first quake lasted 35 to 40 seconds, he said.

"A lot of houses [and] buildings went down, and people are still running all over the streets," Bernard said. "People are looking for their wives, looking for their husbands and their kids. It's scary."

Luke Renner, an American staying in Cap-Hatien, a city nearly 100 miles north of Port-au-Prince, said he was sitting at his home when "the whole world started to shake."

"It felt like our whole house was balancing on a beach ball," Renner said. "We heard the whole community screaming and in an uproar during that whole 20- to 30-second window."

"I haven't seen any structural damage here," Renner continued. "With the sun setting it may be difficult to tell. In the morning we'll know for sure."

Because of the earthquake's proximity to the capital, and because the city is densely populated and has poorly constructed housing, "it could cause significant casualties," said Jian Lin, a senior geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

In Washington, President Obama said the U.S. government would "stand ready to assist the people of Haiti." At the Pentagon, the U.S. military said humanitarian aid was being prepared for shipping, but it was not yet clear where or how it would be sent. A U.S. aviation source said the control tower at the Port-au-Prince international airport collapsed, possibly hindering efforts to fly relief supplies into the country.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters that Washington is offering "our full assistance" to Haiti."

The deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Haiti, David Lindwall, told Clinton that he saw "significant damage" from the quake and said U.S. officials there expect "serious loss of life," Crowley said.

And Clinton's husband, former President Clinton -- now the U.N. special envoy for Haiti -- said the world body was "committed to do whatever we can to assist the people of Haiti in their relief, rebuilding and recovery efforts."

The United States has been heavily involved in Haiti commercially, politically and militarily for most of the last century. U.S. intervention under Clinton restored Aristide to power in 1994 after a 1991 coup, and a U.S. jet hustled him out of the country again in 2004 following a rapidly spreading uprising against his government.

The disaster is the latest to befall the country of about 9 million people, roughly the size of Maryland. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and among the poorest in the world.

With people stripping the trees for fuel and to clear land for agriculture, the mountainous countryside has been heavily deforested. That has led to severe erosion and left Haitians vulnerable to massive landslides when heavy rains fall.

Hurricane Gordon killed more than 1,000 people in 1994, while Hurricane Georges killed more than 400 and destroyed the majority of the country's crops in 1998. And in 2004, Hurricane Jeanne killed more than 3,000 people as it passed north of Haiti, with most of the deaths in the northwestern city of Gonaives.

Gonaives was hit heavily again in 2008, when four tropical systems passed through.

In addition, a Haitian school collapsed in November 2008, killing more than 90 people and injuring 150 -- a disaster authorities blamed on poor construction.

Eighty percent of Haiti's population lives under the poverty line, according to the CIA World Factbook.