Most of Canada to receive emergency alert test today
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Surging gang violence in Haiti's capital has left nearly 200 people dead and thousands displaced in the last month alone, according to a United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report.
Heavily armed rival gangs began clashing and seizing territory in Port-au-Prince with new intensity in late April, forcing more than 16,800 people, including children, to abandon their homes and shelter in temporary accommodation. The flare in violence has spilled into dozens of neighborhoods, with hundreds of families caught in the crossfire.
At least 92 of the 188 people reportedly killed between April 24 and May 26 were non-gang members, with another 113 people injured, 12 missing and 49 kidnapped for ransom, according to OCHA.
But given the restricted access to the districts where territorial clashes are ongoing, the office warned the number of people killed could be much higher.
The intensity and duration of the violence has wracked the country as it is still reeling from the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last July, and the power vacuum his killing has left behind. The UN Security Council, meanwhile, is preparing to debate the future of the UN's longtime presence in Haiti, leaving a question mark over its mandate in the country.
"Armed violence has reached unimaginable and intolerable levels in Haiti," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said earlier this month, urging the Haitian authorities to restore the rule of law and calling on the international community to redouble its efforts to prevent the situation from "spiraling out of control."
Officials say that the scale of the gang violence has reached unprecedented levels. Testimonies collected and cited by Bachelet included beheadings, chopping and burning of bodies, and the killing of minors accused of being informants for rival gangs.
Gangs have also gang-raped children as young as 10, a tactic used to punish people living in areas under rival control, Bachelet said.
The clashes have forced 11 medical centers and at least 442 schools to close -- with some burned down and burgled. They have also blocked the two main national roads connecting the capital to the rest of the country, restricting the movement of people and goods.
OCHA said that while the violence appeared to have subsided in the last few days, the situation still remained "highly volatile."
The Haitian Prime Minister's Office and Haiti's Police did not respond to CNN's request for comment. However, Prime Minister Henry has repeatedly said that his government is working to create security in the country.
Haiti has been in turmoil for years, but the violence escalated dramatically since Moïse's assassination on July 7, 2021.
Moïse's killing plummeted the country into political chaos, with opposition groups refusing to recognize the appointment of the current Prime Minister, Ariel Henry. Henry had promised a quick transition of power and elections once he took office on July 20 last year, but has been unable to reach a political deal for the transition or a timeline for elections.
In addition to the security situation and political crisis, Haiti is also suffering from high inflation levels and food insecurity, with one in five children in the neighborhood of Cité Soleil, near Port-au-Prince, under the age of 5 suffering from acute malnutrition, according to the UN.
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has made headlines with his recent arrival in the U.K., this time to celebrate all things Invictus. But upon the prince landing in the U.K., we have already had confirmation that King Charles III won't have time to see his youngest son during his brief visit.
An Ontario man found out that a line of credit he thought was insured actually isn't after his wife of 50 years died.
After more than a century, Boy Scouts of America is rebranding as Scouting America, another major shakeup for an organization that once proudly resisted change.
A first-of-its-kind Canadian research study is working towards a major medical breakthrough for a brain disorder, believed to be caused by repeated head injuries, that can only be detected after death.
In March, Indonesian officials and local fishermen rescued 75 people from the overturned hull of a boat off the coast of Indonesia. Until now, little was known about why the boat capsized.
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
An Ontario woman said it would have been impossible to buy a house without her mother – an anecdote that animates the fact that over 17 per cent of Canadian homeowners born in the ‘90s own their property with their parents, according to a new report.
Canadian immigrants threatened by hostile regimes are urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the 'Countering Foreign Interference Act' so they can feel safe living in their adopted home.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.