About Jerry Smith

Haiti– When an earthquake heaped rubble onto Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city, one year ago, there was a sense from many people that this catastrophe could be turned into something positive.

Haiti– Many Haitians in the capital city who survived the earthquake, have filled halls of worship — even when the halls were no longer there.

Haiti — As they combed through a mountain of rubble almost a week after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, rescuers from Los Angeles doubted they would find anyone alive. “It’s like a needle in a haystack,” says lead rescuer Terry DeJournett. Ginette Sainfort had last been seen at her bank but it now looked more like a […]

Haiti– Pope Benedict XVI wrote the following message to mark today’s first anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. The message was read out by Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum”, during a commemorative Mass held in Haiti today.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Biden told reporters at a press conference in Kabul on Tuesday that the United States is willing to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014 if the Afghans want the assistance, seeming to depart from comments he made last month that U.S. forces would be out by that time “come hell or high […]

Haiti — The amount of money raised for Haiti earthquake relief has reached a staggeringly high $1.4 billion in less than one year from the United States alone. Everyone from celebrities to regular people held telethons, bake sales and dinner parties whose proceeds went to help Haiti earthquake victims. A year later, people who opened […]

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — In 2010, Daphne Joseph, a slim, shy teenager, took a pounding from life. She watched with horror as her mother’s mangled body was carted off in a wheelbarrow after the Jan. 12 earthquake. She fell in with a ragtag group of orphans taken under the wing of a well-meaning but ill-equipped community […]

Nashville, Tennessee– Several million people in Southern Sudan are voting this week in the historic referendum on whether to declare independence from a government based in the north. About 55,000 Southern Sudanese are casting ballots in the United States and seven other countries.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A popular Haitian musician, rather than the government’s candidate, should advance to a presidential runoff, an international panel of election experts recommended Monday. The group, convened by the Organization of American States at the request of President Rene Preval, also said that while 50,935 votes were discarded because of fraud, the disputed […]

Haiti — Officer Joseph Jacquet is one of six Haitian-born NYPD officers on a three-month rotation in Port-au-Prince.