At least eight people died and two disappeared when Hurricane Tomas struck Haiti the night of Nov. 5 and the morning of Nov. 6. The worst damage was reported in Grand'Anse, Nippes and South departments, located on the long peninsula that makes up the southwestern part of the country, according to a preliminary report by the government on Nov. 6. Homes and camps were flooded in Port-au-Prince, where more than 1 million people still live in improvised shelters 10 months after a Jan. 12 earthquake devastated the capital, but the rains there weren't as heavy as had been feared. (Radio Métropole, Haiti, Nov. 6; Radio Kiskeya, Haiti, Nov. 6)

Hundreds of protesters marched on the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) military base at the city of Mirebalais in Haiti's Central Plateau on Oct. 29, charging that the Nepalese troops stationed there had caused a major outbreak of cholera. At least 330 people had died and 4,714 people had been hospitalized because of the disease as of Oct. 28, just eight days after the first cases were reported, mostly in Mirebalais and in the Lower Artibonite River region in the west. "Down with MINUSTAH, down with imported cholera," chanted the protesters, largely students and other youths.

Dr. Gabriel Timothée, the head of Haiti's Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP), announced on Oct. 23 that there were 208 confirmed deaths so far from a cholera epidemic that apparently broke out in the Lower Artibonite River region just a few days earlier. Of these, 194 deaths were in the western Artibonite region and 14 in Mirebalais in the Central Plateau, including three detainees in the Mirebalais prison. Fifty prisoners were infected, and a total of 288 people were hospitalized in Mirebalais; the number of people hospitalized in the northwest was 2,394. (Radio Kiskeya, Haiti, Oct. 23)

Haitian prison officers are found to have killed 12 detainees "deliberately and without justification," using "inappropriate, abusive and disproportionate force" during a Jan. 19 prison uprising, according to an independent commission, the New York Times reported Oct. 21. The Times obtained an exclusive copy of the commission's report, which said the incident involved "grave violations of human rights." The uprising occurred just days after Haiti was hit with a devastating earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people and left some one million homeless.

On Oct. 15 about 60 Haitians protested an extension of the mandate for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) by blocking the entrance to the mission's main logistics base near the Port-au-Prince airport. The Associated Press reported that the protesters, many of them people left homeless by a major earthquake on Jan. 12, spray-painted slogans on cars and burned the Brazilian flag; Brazilian troops lead the joint military-police mission, which has occupied Haiti since June 2004.

In a letter sent to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton the week of Oct. 4, a group of 45 US Congress members called on the US government not to support presidential and legislative elections in Haiti on Nov. 28 if the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) continues its exclusion of 14 political parties from the ballot. The letter focused on the exclusion of the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004); the letter's author was Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who is said to be close to Aristide and to FL. The elections will cost some $29 million and will largely be financed by the international community, including the US. (Radio Kiskeya, Haiti, Oct. 8; New York Times, Oct. 9 from Reuters)

On Oct. 6 Haitian president René Préval, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) attended a meeting in Port-au-Prince of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (CIRH), the group in charge of monitoring the use of international aid to help the country recover from a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. This was only the third time the group has met since it was formally established on April 21.

On Sept. 24 Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), published an article describing policy changes intended to expand Cuba's small private sector. The changes are part of a plan announced on Sept. 13 to lay off some half million public employees, about 10% of the total labor force, over the next six months; the government expects about 465,000 of the laid-off workers to move to the private sector or to form cooperatives, according to unofficial sources.