Bahamas Telecom Company (BTC) is going to expand the overall capacity of its submarine cable connecting the Caribbean with the U.S.

The network expansion project has two main goals: increase the revenue potential of the cable and improve connectivity to Haiti.

“We are going to make a significant investment into expanding the capacity of the Miami cable… And we’re looking at investing on expanding the capacity of the Haiti cable,” said BTC’s CEO Geoff Houston in a statement. “We expect to be able to do both of those this year and that will provide new sources of revenue opportunity for the company.”

Although Bahamas Domestic Submarine Network had already been restored following the Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, the Houston believes that the network could be leveraged to provide international links to the area’s wireless operators. In this scenario, BTC would sell capacity to both Haiti-based wireless operators in addition to other service providers looking for a gateway into Haiti.

An upgraded cable would also enable Cable and Wireless Communications, which now owns a 51 percent stake in BTC, a way to connect into its global carrier services business.

Former Swindon Town defender Lescinel Jean-Francois has joined Sheffield United on a two-year deal.

The 24-year-old Haiti international’s contract at Swindon expired this summer and he will be reunited with former Robins boss Danny Wilson.

Wilson brought the former Paris St Germain youngster to the County Ground in January 2009.

Jean Francois had previously been at French side Guingamp and has also played for Scottish side Falkirk.

Wilson told the Sheffield United website: “[He] will thrive on the pressure and expectation, and hopefully we will see that we have got a very good player on our hands.

“He was out of contract and we had contact from his agent, as did a lot of clubs, and we just asked him if he fancied coming in.

“He is very athletic, has a terrific left foot, is comfortable at both left-back and centre-back, so gives you good options.

“What we will see is an aggressive and competitive character and I am very much looking forward to working with him.”

courtesy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/13841909.stm

GUITEAU TOUSSAINT

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – President of the Board of Directors for the National Bank of Credit, Mr. Guiteau Toussaint was shot at his residency in Vivy Mitchel County, P-au-P, Sunday night, by unidentified and armed individuals, learned Le Nouvelliste from police sources.

The death of Mr Toussaint was found at the Hospital of the Communauté Haitienne de Frères.

Chief Michael Gedeon, Director of the HNP, Ouest Department (DDO) confirms the death Mr. Guiteau Toussaint and has dismissed the “theory of the jewelry theft” as too low and believes, according to first data, the author to be intellectual behind this crime. A bullet was shot between the nose and eyes.

A man of good value and exceptional leadership, Guiteau Toussaint (56 years) had a degree in Management from the National Institute of Administration, Management and International Studies INAGHEI.

Also a former Director General of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), Toussaint joined the Bank National de Credit (BNC) established in 1979.

Toussaint is credited for salvaging the BNC from the edges of bankruptcy when he took control and the turned it into a brilliant bank of the Haitian Stat elevating it to the third bank in the country after the Unibank and Sogebank.

Recently, the BNC has gained a lot of momentum after having absorbed the Socabank and currently operates a network of 37 branches across the country.

The BNC also innovated banking on Sundays, which consists of providing customers with access to their accounts seven days a week.

His assassination has created has created a great panic in the neighborhood Vivy Mitchell and around the city.

From: Defend Haiti

May 27, 2011: At a forum held on May 6, 2011 to discuss how to bolster Haiti’s anti-rape laws, Haiti’s then president-elect Michel Martelly promised to address what he called the “very serious” problem of rape.
According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, which organized the discussion, the gathering marked the first time that grassroots women’s groups sat together with senior officials from the ministries of women, health, and justice, as well as the chief prosecutor’s office and the police.

Through its TrustLaw initiative, the foundation is drawing on international expertise to advise Haiti on ways to stem the alarming number of sexual assaults against women and girls living in post-earthquake tent camps. Tightly cramped living conditions put females at risk. In one case, a child was lured into a tent to watch television only to be raped by the tent’s occupant.

More than 600 rape cases were reported in 2010, but actual numbers are likely much higher. Victims are often too ashamed or afraid to file a complaint. A general lack of sensitivity toward female victims of sexual assault and the absence of a legal system to support their claims are part of the problem President Martelly hopes to tackle.

Reducing Violence Against Women and Children

Mr. Martelly, who assumed Haiti’s presidency on May 14, promised part of his mission would be to ensure that “the rule of law reigns in Haiti [and] that justice is for everybody.” Women’s groups have accused male police of not taking rape cases seriously. One change Mr. Martelly supports is the presence of a female agent at every police station so women can feel more comfortable about reporting cases of rape.

Forum participants agreed on the need to create information campaigns to inform women and girls of their legal rights and to more effectively disseminate a currently existing rape hotline. All recognized that a large barrier to justice is linguistic, because French rather than the more common Creole is the language of the courts. Delegates also concurred that doctors and judges need to get on board to put in place a fairer and more effective medical certificate system for rape victims.

A little girl at SOS Children’s Villages in Santo, Haiti.
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courtesy of:

Sos-USA

By Melissa Dribben, Inquirer Staff Writer

In early April, two weeks before she opened her latest restaurant, Talula’s Garden, Aimee Olexy, crowned royalty of the region’s culinary scene, met with her coffee supplier to choose beans she would serve at the end of each finely tuned meal.

He’d brought her usual favorites from Nicaragua, Brazil, and Africa. But a stranger in the cache caught her eye.

“What’s in that little unmarked bag?” she asked.

The supplier didn’t answer. Instead, he brewed a small batch and poured her a cup.

“I loved, loved, loved it,” Olexy said. “It was like a coffee I dreamed of in the morning.” Unlike so many that seduce you with aroma, then disappoint with a slap to the tongue, this coffee was true to its promise. “The smell matched the taste,” she said, with hints of caramel and butterscotch and a toasty finish.

She ordered it – an entire shipping container’s worth, about 33,000 pounds.

A month later, Nelson Robinson, 34, a Haitian coffee farmer, stood in the restaurant weeping grateful tears.

The coffee Olexy had fallen for, Haitian Blue Forest, came from Robinson’s home in the destitute mountains of southeastern Haiti. The beans had been handpicked from semiwild vines that his great-grandfather and neighbors had planted from heirloom seeds linked to ancient Ethiopia.

Robinson told Olexy and her staff how, as a child, he had watched his father burn most of the family’s coffee plantation. Although Haiti was once one of the world’s major coffee exporters, politics and economics had conspired to kill off the trade. Precipitous drops in the price along with rising oil costs made the vines more valuable as a fuel source and the land more useful for growing peas.

After finishing college, Robinson had the chance to emigrate to Canada. Instead, he returned home to the family farm and worked with a coffee cooperative, Coopcab, representing 5,000 families.

They were barely getting by when, in January, a tall, odd American loped into the village – Todd Carmichael, cofounder of La Colombe, the Philadelphia-based roasting company.

Since he started the business 17 years ago, Carmichael has traveled around the “planet,” as he prefers to say in his caffeinated disquisition, searching for worthy plants and deserving farmers. The 47-year-old coffee savant and world adventurer (he holds the world record for crossing Antarctica solo) says his motives are almost as pure as his product.