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From CNN:

Six months after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, most governments that promised money to help rebuild the country have not delivered any funds at all, a CNN investigation has found.

Donors promised $5.3 billion at an aid conference in March, about two months after the earthquake — but less than 2 percent of that money has been handed over so far to the United Nations-backed body set up to handle it.

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Only four countries have paid anything at all: Brazil, Norway, Estonia and Australia.

The United States pledged $1.15 billion. It has paid nothing, with the money tied up in the congressional appropriations process.

Venezuela promised even more — $1.32 billion. It has also paid nothing, although it has written off some of Haiti’s debt.

Click here to read more.

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From NYPost.com:

Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor has pleaded not guilty to charges that he had sex with a 16-year-old girl.

The former NFL star smiled as he arrived at a Rockland County courthouse on Tuesday for arraignment on charges that include third-degree rape. He’s also charged with patronizing a prostitute and endangering a child.

The 51-year-old Taylor pleaded not guilty through his lawyer. Earlier, when a reporter asked if he was guilty, Taylor responded, “Grow up.”

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From MinnesotaIndependent.com:

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., was “giddy” on policy and heavy on appropriating comments from conservative pundits in her key note speech to the Western Conservative Summit in Denver Friday night.

Railing on Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the health-policy adviser at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, for his support for rationing health care and what she saw as an Obama-sponsored takeover of U.S. industries, Bachmann said that the only way to escape the “tyranny” imposed by the last 18 months of Democratic rule was to elect constitutional conservatives to Congress. She then called for a multi-step program to cut government spending, taxes and a host of programs she said would help to get the country back on a constitutionally grounded track

RICHLAND, Ga. – One officer was fired and another quit after a rural Georgia woman who called police to complain of a prowler was zapped repeatedly with a stun gun.

Ryan Smith of the Lumpkin Police Department has resigned and Tim Murphy, of Richland Police Department, was fired for using pepper spray on the woman, Janice Wells.

Wells, 57, says she feared a prowler was outside her Richland house. A minute-long dashboard video from Smith’s patrol car shows the officer pulling up to assist another officer.

What happens is largely hidden by an open police cruiser door, but Wells can be heard screaming “Don’t do that! Don’t do that!” as a stun gun is heard repeatedly zapping.

Authorities say the April 26 struggle began when Wells wouldn’t tell police the name of an acquaintance who had been at her house. Lumpkin Police Chief Steven Ogle says the video is shocking.

Well has hired an attorney.

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NEW ORLEANS — After securing a new, tight-fitting cap on top of the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, BP prepared Tuesday to begin tests to see if it will hold and stop fresh oil from polluting the waters for the first time in nearly three months.

The oil giant expects to know within 48 hours if the new cap, which landed Monday after almost three days of painstaking, around-the-clock work a mile below the Gulf’s surface, can stanch the flow. The solution is only temporary, but it offers the best hope yet for cutting off the gush of billowing brown oil.

Check out our gallery of oil spill photos:

The cap’s installation was good news to weary Gulf Coast residents who have warily waited for BP to make good on its promise to clean up the mess. Still, they warned that even if the oil is stopped, the consequences are far from over.

“I think we’re going to see oil out in the Gulf of Mexico, roaming around, taking shots at us, for the next year, maybe two,” Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana’s oil-stained Plaquemines Parish, said Monday. “If you told me today no more oil was coming ashore, we’ve still got a massive cleanup ahead.”

Starting Tuesday, the cap will be tested and monitored to see if it can withstand pressure from the gushing oil and gas. The tests could last anywhere between six to 48 hours, according to National Incident Commander Thad Allen.

The cap will be tested by closing off three separate valves that fit together snugly, choking off the oil from entering the Gulf. BP expects no oil will be released into the ocean during the tests, but remained cautious about the success of the system.

Pipes can be hooked to the cap to funnel oil to collection ships if BP decides the cap can’t take the pressure of the gusher, or if low pressure readings indicate oil is leaking from elsewhere in the well.

“The sealing cap system never before has been deployed at these depths or under these conditions, and its efficiency and ability to contain the oil and gas cannot be assured,” the company said in a statement.

BP will be watching pressure readings. High pressure is good, because it would mean the leak has been contained inside the wellhead machinery. But if readings are lower than expected, that could mean there is another leak elsewhere in the well.

Even if the cap works, the blown-out well must still be plugged. A permanent fix will have to wait until one of two relief wells being drilled reaches the broken well, which will then be plugged up with drilling mud and cement. That may not happen until mid-August.

Even if the flow of oil is choked off while BP works on a permanent fix, the spill has already damaged everything from beach tourism to the fishing industry.

Tony Wood, director of the National Spill Control School at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi said the sloppiest of the oil — mousse-like brown stuff that has not yet broken down — will keep washing ashore for several months, with the volume slowly decreasing over time.

He added that hardened tar balls could keep hitting beaches and marshes each time a major storm rolls through for a year or more. Those tar balls are likely trapped for now in the surf zone, gathering behind sand bars just like sea shells.

“It will still be getting on people’s feet on the beaches probably a year or two from now,” Wood said.

But on Monday, the region absorbed a rare piece of good news in the placement of the 150,000-pound cap on top of the gushing leak responsible for so much misery.

Around 6:30 p.m. CDT, live video streams trained on the wellhead showed the cap being slowly lowered into place. BP officials said the device was attached around 7 p.m.

“I’m very hopeful that this cap works and we wake up in the morning and they’re catching all the oil. I would be the happiest person around here,” said Mitch Jurisich, a third generation oysterman from Empire, La., who has been out of work for weeks.

Residents skeptical BP can deliver on its promise to control the spill greeted the news cautiously.

“There’s no telling what those crazy suckers are going to do now,” Ronnie Kenniar said when he heard the cap was placed on the well. The 49-year-old fishermen is now working for BP in the Vessel of Opportunity program, a BP-run operation employing boat owners for odd jobs.

James Pelas, 41, a shrimper who took a break from working on his boat at a marina in Venice, La., said he didn’t think the crisis would be over for a long time.

“I ain’t excited about it until it’s closed off completely,” he said. “Oil’s scattered all over the place.”

Meanwhile, the Obama administration issued a revised moratorium on deep-water offshore drilling Monday to replace the one that was struck down by the courts as heavy-handed. The new ban, in effect until Nov. 30, does not appear to deviate much from the original moratorium, as it still targets deep-water drilling operators while defining them in a different way.

As of Monday, the 83rd day of the disaster, between 89 million and 176 million gallons of oil had poured into the Gulf, according to government estimates. The spill started April 20 when the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased by BP from Transocean Ltd, exploded and burned, killing 11 workers. It sank two days later.

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A 48-year-old woman was killed Sunday afternoon when her 1994 Camaro flipped over on the Harford Rd. ramp of the beltway’s inner loop about 5:15 p.m. Danita Hasselbarth was pronounced dead at the scene. SHe lost control of her vehicle and swerved onto a grassy area and then careened backward onto a concrete barrier.

President Obama suggested Thursday that his Muslim middle name – Hussein – makes a lot of Israelis nervous about his commitment to the Jewish state.

When asked by an Israeli interviewer why many Israelis are “anxious about you,” and “feel like you don’t have a special connection to Israel,” Obama said, “Some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is ‘Hussein,’ and that creates suspicion.”

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From the LA Times:

A former transit police officer who fatally shot an unarmed man at an Oakland train station was convicted of involuntary manslaughter Thursday, capping a racially charged case that raised fears in the Bay Area of possible violence after the verdict.

Prosecutors accused the ex-officer of intentionally firing his handgun as he tried to handcuff Oscar J. Grant III on New Year’s Day 2009. Johannes Mehserle, 28, tearfully testified that the shooting was a tragic accident caused when he mistakenly grabbed his firearm instead of an electric Taser weapon during a struggle with Grant.

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The shooting was captured on video by several witnesses. Mehserle, who is white, fired a single round into the back of Grant, who was black and was lying face-down on the station platform. Mehserle resigned a week after the shooting.

Click here to read more.

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There are varying reports of a 5.7-5.9 earthquake that has just hit the Los Angeles Area. There are reports that the earthquake shook buildings in downtown L.A.

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From the NY Times:

It has been six months since the earthquake in Haiti left more than 300,000 people dead and destroyed 280,000 homes and businesses. Haiti still faces a long road to recovery, but one of the biggest things literally standing in its way is earthquake debris.

The quake left an astonishing amount of debris, including concrete and rebar from collapsed buildings, destroyed belongings and human remains. Twenty million to 25 million cubic yards of debris fill the streets, yards, sidewalks and canals of Port-au-Prince — enough to fill five Louisiana Superdomes.

Click below to view photos of the earthquake in Haiti:

According to our research and conversations with aid groups in Haiti, less than 5 percent of this has been removed since January, and even less has been properly disposed of. A draft of the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ debris management plan says it would take a dump truck with a 20-cubic-yard bed 1,000 days to clear the debris, if it carried 1,000 loads a day — or about three years. But the current rate of removal is much lower. Based on our calculations, partially from the United States Agency for International Development’s reports on debris removal programs, we estimate that it could take 20 years or more.

Today, debris is one of the most significant issues keeping Haitians from rebuilding Port-au-Prince and resuming normal lives. Much of the stuff has been left in place or simply moved to the center or the sides of roads. Some streets with especially large piles of refuse are impassable. As a result, it can take hours to travel just a few miles. Meanwhile, schools, hospitals, businesses and homes remain blocked.

Click here to read more.

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ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Ghana president John Atta Mills said the country’s World Cup players will be given national honors and $20,000 each after making Africa proud with their performance in South Africa.

“You deserved to be honored because you have made Ghana and indeed Africa proud by your performance,” Mills said Tuesday at a lunch held in honor of the team, which was greeted by cheering fans on its return to Accra on Monday night.

“You did not win the World Cup but, through your performance, you carried high the flags of not only Ghana but Africa,” he added.

As well as the cash bonus for the players, a government official said members of the coaching team would receive a reward of $10,000 each.

Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, who is from Ghana, wrote in a letter to the team that he was one of millions left “heartbroken” after the quarterfinal loss to Uruguay in a penalty shootout.

RELATED: Ghana Eliminates U.S. From World Cup 2010

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Ghana was denied victory when a blatant hand ball prevented a goal in the final seconds of extra time. Asamoah Gyan missed the resulting penalty and Ghana’s dream of becoming the first African team to make the World Cup semifinals ended when it lost the shootout.

“For a moment, my reaction to those last minutes of drama was ‘how unfair’,” Annan wrote in the open letter which was addressed “Dear Black Stars.”

“But in fact, while you lost the game, you came out winners,” the letter said.

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“I wanted to congratulate you not only on a fantastic performance in which you can take great pride, but also for accepting your defeat with dignity. You won because you were such great ambassadors for the game — and for Africa.”

RELATED: Ghana, Africa’s Last Hope In The World Cup, Loses In Penalty Kicks

Ghana was adopted as Africa’s team during its journey to the last eight of the tournament. The other five countries from the continent all failed to qualify for the second round.

“You won because you brought us all together,” Annan’s letter said. “The lasting trophy to take away from the tournament is this incredible moment of unity.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to warm rocky relations on Tuesday, declaring after a White House meeting that any talk of a rift is unfounded. Obama said the U.S.-Israeli bond is unbreakable.

“The United States is committed to Israel’s security,” Obama said as the two leaders addressed reporters in the Oval Office. “We are committed to that special bond. And we are going to do what’s required to back that up, not just with words, but with actions.”

For the Israeli leader’s part, Netanyahu said of solving years of strife with Palestinians: “We’re committed to that peace. I’m committed to that peace.” And he said that reports of the demise of the U.S.-Israeli relationship are “flat wrong.”

RELATED: What Is The U.S. Role In The Gaza War?

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Netanyahu said without elaborating that he and Obama discussed specific steps that could be taken in the coming weeks to move the peace process forward. “When I say the next few weeks, that’s what I mean,” he said. “The president means that too.”

Netanyahu and Obama talked in the Oval Office as protesters gathered across the street in Lafayette Park and chanted “No More Aid, End the Blockade,” referring to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The meeting between Obama and Netanyahu was their first since a troubled White House get-together on March 23. That session was frosty, coming three weeks after Israel embarrassed Vice President Joe Biden by announcing plans for new construction in east Jerusalem during his visit. The Palestinians expect east Jerusalem to be the capital of their eventual independent state.

Tuesday’s session was much friendlier than the one in March, when the White House kept Netanyahu out of sight of media coverage. This time, the leaders appeared together before reporters in the Oval Office and then went into a lengthy working lunch.

A critical topic was resuming the U.S.-mediated indirect peace talks. Netanyahu has repeatedly said he is ready to meet face to face with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but has given few indications of concessions he might be willing to make.

Specifically, he has rejected demands from Obama and the Palestinians for a full settlement freeze in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and a promise to resume negotiations from where they broke off under his more dovish predecessor, Ehud Olmert.

RELATED: Israel vs. Gaza: 985 To 13 & Counting

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Netanyahu must choose between settlements and peace. “We want to resume direct negotiations, but the problem is that the land that is supposed to be a Palestinian state is being eaten up by settlements,” he told The Associated Press. He said the Palestinian demand that Israel halt all construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and resume talks where they broke off in 2008 “are not conditions; these are obligations.”

Netanyahu endorsed on Sunday the U.S. idea to return to direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, just days after White House officials said Obama would push during the Oval Office session for those negotiations to get under way sooner rather than later.

Addressing his cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu said the “time has come” for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to get ready to meet with the Israelis “because there is no other way to advance peace. I hope this will be one of the results of the visit to Washington.”

Aides to Obama sounded a hopeful tone late last week, telling reporters that weeks of shuttle diplomacy between the two sides by George Mitchell, Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, had paid off and “the gaps have narrowed.”

“We believe there are opportunities to further narrow those gaps, to allow the sides to take that next step to direct talks,” added Daniel Shapiro, the senior Middle East director at the National Security Council.

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Obama and Netanyahu also are expected to discuss Israel’s decision Monday to significantly ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip to let in most consumer goods. Israel’s ban on exports from Gaza and limits on shipments of construction material remain.

Israel came under heavy international pressure, including from Obama and other top U.S. officials, to loosen its 3-year-old land and naval blockade of the seaside territory after Israel’s deadly May 31 military raid on a flotilla trying to break the embargo.

At the time, Obama said the situation was “unsustainable.” He called for a narrow blockade to bar weapons that Gaza’s Hamas rulers could use against Israel while admitting items the territory’s 1.5 million Palestinians need for daily living and economic development.

Obama and Netanyahu also are likely to discuss efforts to end Iran’s nuclear weapons pursuit, including sanctions Obama signed into law last week. That legislation followed a fourth round of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran.

Tuesday’s meeting was the fifth between Obama and Netanyahu and would make up for a scheduled June 1 session at the White House that Netanyahu canceled to deal with fallout from the flotilla raid.

The session follows meetings Obama held at the White House in recent weeks with major Mideast players, including Abbas and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Getting both sides to resume direct talks, which broke off in December 2008, is a huge challenge. One big sticking point is Israel’s continued construction of Jewish housing in east Jerusalem, an area the Palestinians claim as part of a hoped-for future state.

The Palestinians have refused to sit down with Netanyahu until he agrees to freeze construction in areas they want for an independent state. Israel recently said it has no intention of doing that.

Abbas said last week that the borders of a future Palestinian state and security relations with Israel are the two issues on the table. He said direct talks can resume if an agreement is reached on them.

Obama has called on Jerusalem to halt settlement construction and on the Palestinians to show progress on security and inciting violence against Israel.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just about everyone likes Charlie Rangel.

Republicans pump his hand, Democrats put their arms around his shoulders and women of all political persuasions give him pecks on the cheek.

Spend some time with the 80-year-old congressman from New York City who’s been striding the Capitol’s halls for four decades on behalf of residents of Harlem, and there’s little evidence he’s become someone to avoid because of an ethics cloud that’s more likely than not going to darken in days to come.

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Colleagues in both parties still gravitate to the gravelly voiced, outgoing, backslapping Rangel four months after fellow Democrats persuaded — and Republicans hounded — him to relinquish one of the most powerful jobs in Washington, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

“Amiga,” he shouts in the Capitol subway to Cuban-born, Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, using the Spanish word for female friend.

“Amigo,” she belts out in return.

“Hey Ritchie,” Rangel booms as he passes Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., who’s seen by many as a Ways and Means chairman in the future.

Behind the scenes, it’s a different story. A few Democrats have returned money that Rangel raised for them. His influence is sapped.

His wife, Alma, warns him not to be naive about the glad-handling.

“You know,” she tells him, “they’re putting you on.”

How did it come to this?

___

Rangel follows in a tradition of Ways and Means chairmen such as Reps. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., and Wilbur Mills, D-Ark., who waited decades to become congressional titans, then lost that perch through ethical lapses.

“Some members are old school,” said Stanley Brand, a former House counsel and a defense lawyer for many politicians in trouble. “As they rise in seniority … they think less about (rules) changes that occur under their nose.”

RELATED: Rep. Charles Rangel Faces Cash Investigation

Rangel lost his post because his conduct gave Republicans an ethics issue that’s ripe for exploitation, just as Democrats in 2006 and 2008 successfully seized on GOP ethical lapses.

Nervous about losing House seats this year, Democrats persuaded Rangel to step down after the House ethics committee concluded in February in a relatively minor case that Rangel violated the chamber’s rules on gifts. The committee said Rangel should have known that corporate money paid for two trips to Caribbean conferences. Rangel insists he didn’t know. There was no punishment.

More ominous is an investigation into activities far more likely to touch the nerve of voters: Rangel’s failure to pay taxes on income from a Dominican Republic vacation villa; his rent-subsidized apartments in New York; using official stationery to raise money for a college center bearing his name; and his belated disclosure of assets revealing he was far richer than people thought.

___

Rangel joined the Ways and Means Committee in 1974 and ascended to chairman more than three decades later. He says the pain of having his integrity questioned is terrible, but he tries hard not to show it.

He dresses immaculately, his gray hair neatly combed back, the color matching his mustache, and his pocket handkerchief matching his suit. He walks with a spry step.

He remains a workaholic, sometimes forgetting breakfast even though he scoops oatmeal into a cardboard cup at a House cafeteria each morning and carries it back to the office. Some busy days, he warms it in the microwave for lunch.

“There’s been a force out there. People feel they have to say something supportive,” Rangel says as he walks through the Capitol’s underground subway.

“She says it’s unseemly,” Rangel says of his wife’s advice. “I say, ‘Suppose it’s not real. As long as they keep saying these things until I die, what difference does it make?’”

But he admits, “It’s still painful. It’s times like this when I have to reinforce the facts: I’m alive, I’m well, and 60 years ago I could have died when I was surrounded by hundreds of Chinese” in the Korean War.

Rangel came back from that war a Harlem hero with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He says he’s constantly measuring his current troubles against the 20-degree below zero days of Nov. 29 to Dec. 1, 1950, when he was wounded, but survived while fellow soldiers died all around him.

He always falls back on the title of his autobiographical book, which comes from his wartime experience: “And I Haven’t Had A Bad Day Since.”

RELATED: Rangel Says Obama Should Be Careful When He Visits Harlem

___

Long before he was chairman, Rangel took care of his Harlem constituents, many of them poor. He sponsored empowerment zones with tax credits for businesses moving into economically depressed areas and developers of low income housing.

As chairman, he pushed bills with tax relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina, tax breaks for small business and stronger environmental and labor rules in trade agreements, tax rebates for consumers and an increase in the minimum wage. He was a major player in passage of President Barack Obama’s $862 billion stimulus program, one-third of it tax cuts.

But Rangel lacked the power of some of his predecessors.

He was a longtime advocate of health care reform, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., passed him over for guiding Obama’s overhaul to passage. An important part of the House’s climate change legislation was given to another committee, when it could have gone primarily to Ways and Means.

House leaders forced him to reverse himself and manage a bill to tax away Wall Street bonuses after he told reporters that would be a misuse of tax law.

Leadership aides said those decisions were part of the strategy to pass important legislation and didn’t represent a loss of confidence in Rangel. Other committee lawmakers, however, believe Rangel was hobbled by his ethics problems — and these decisions reflected that view.

Says Rangel: “There’s no way I could have taken it personally. The speaker is more hands on in committee work than before.”

But, chatting outside a House elevator, he recalls how things used to be, how the legendary Rostenkowski, who ran the committee from 1981 to 1994, would never have stood for a loss of power. When Rangel was given a leadership post of deputy whip, Rostenkowski asked him whether he was loyal to the committee or the leadership.

“You can’t do both,” Rangel said he was warned.

___

In 1970 Rangel upset a Harlem legend, Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. — a pastor, civil rights leader and a man known for his womanizing and his absence from his district.

This year, Rangel announced his re-election bid days before his birthday. One of his primary opponents is a son of Powell, Adam Clayton Powell IV.

In Harlem, Rangel ruled as one of the Gang of Four — African-American politicians who achieved top political posts: David Dinkins, a one-time New York mayor; Basil Paterson, who rose to deputy mayor and New York secretary of state; and the late Percy Sutton, Manhattan Borough president.

He marched with Martin Luther King. He was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

At a meeting of New York political leaders after the February ethics report, Dinkins spoke about his friend.

“Mayor Dinkins was very emotional,” recalled Lloyd Williams, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce. “He said if not for Charlie Rangel, there would not have been a Mayor Dinkins.”

Dinkins declined in an interview to talk about Rangel’s troubles. “He is my brother, my friend. My interest is in his welfare,” he said.

Williams momentarily seemed worried about Rangel’s future.

“I fear these mistakes will become too much of his legacy,” he said.

Quickly, he switched to a more optimistic tone. “When the venom is out of the air, Charlie will be remembered as one of the most extraordinary political leaders in the history of this country.”

JOHANNESBURG — A 35-year-old American was shot and robbed while walking to his hotel but his life is not in danger, a police spokeswoman said Thursday.

The victim, identified as David James Bueche, was assaulted by four men as he was looking for his accommodation in Johannesburg’s affluent Sandton area late Wednesday, Brig. Sally De Beers said.

Following the assault, Bueche entered a house and the occupants called paramedics. They discovered he had a gunshot wound, De Beers said. The victim had complained of chest pain, but was not aware of the wound, she said.

Bueche’s condition is stable but he will remain hospitalized for up to 10 days, said Mande Toubkin, a spokeswoman for Netcare Sunninghill Hospital.

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Bueche flew into the country from Los Angeles, and told the investigators that he was not here for the ongoing World Cup.

South Africa’s high crime rate has been a concern since the country was awarded the World Cup bid, and officials have stressed they are doing all they can to keep World Cup visitors safe. South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates, with at least 50 people killed each day.

The shooting is a reminder of dangers still facing hundreds of thousands of fans here to watch the tournament.

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