Democracy Now!

Haiti is preparing for a massive relocation of survivors of last week’s earthquake out of the capital Port-au-Prince. Some 400,000 people will be moved to camps outside the city. The relief effort has now abandoned most efforts to find people trapped beneath the rubble to focus on keeping the survivors alive. The US is now leading the effort to repair Haiti’s main port.

Authorities in Haiti say as many as 200.000 have died in last week’s devastating earthquake. Another 1, 5 million and a half people have been left homeless. The death toll continues to rise as relief agencies struggle to distribute food and water to those in need. The World Food Programme said it fed about 100,000 people in Port-au-Prince on Monday.

Over the next two weeks, 100 world leaders are expected to attend the UN conference that has been described by some scientists as the most important the world has ever seen. In the opening of Sunday: the mayor of Copenhagen, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Obama administration is moving further away from its stated support for the reinstatement of the ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Porfirio Lobo, a wealthy landowner, emerged victorious with 55 percent of the vote. Zelaya’s supporters boycotted the election, and many Latin American countries have refused to recognize its outcome.

A Western Saharan human rights activist is in the third week of a hunger strike after being deported against her will by Moroccan authorities occupying her homeland. Aminatou Haidar, known as the “Sahrawi Gandhi,” is at the airport on the Canary Islands and is demanding that she be allowed to return to home. Morocco has occupied most of Western Sahara since 1975.

Israel is coming under widespread international criticism for its plan to engage in a new round of illegal settlement expansion on occupied Palestinian land. Israel says it will build 900 new housing units in the East Jerusalem settlement of Gilo. Palestinian Authority leaders began a renewed effort for endorsement of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders.

Zelaya has remained in the Brazilian embassy since defiantly returning to Honduras one week ago. Coup leaders have now given Brazil a ten-day deadline to hand over Zelaya or face the embassy’s closure. Brazil has rejected the ultimatum and says Zelaya will stay as long as he needs. On Friday, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning the embassy siege.

The U.S.-drafted resolution called for further efforts to achieve “a world without nuclear weapons.” But critics of the resolution said it failed to include mandatory provisions that would have required nuclear weapons states to take concrete disarmament steps. The resolution also lacked any call on nuclear states to halt production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.

The Obama administration has effectively abandoned a demand that Israel freeze settlement expansion before the resumption of peace talks. President Obama signaled the shift on Tuesday as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Obama urged both sides to “move forward” and enter final-status talks.

The ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya is in Washington, where he will meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday. Zelaya criticized the Honduran coup regime for blocking his return and going ahead with an election campaign. Zelaya’s meeting with Clinton comes days after a State Department review advised that his ouster be officially declared a “military coup.”