Central America & the Caribbean

Cholera may be the next disaster in Haiti as thousands in tent cities face the coming rainy season without sanitation.

"Long-term efforts to help Haiti recover from the earthquake will have to reverse environmental damage such as near-total deforestation that threatens food and water supplies for the Caribbean nation, experts say."

"The poor nation has long suffered from a lack of medical care and rampant disease. With the earthquake, aid agencies must build a healthcare system on the fly."

"Doctors and aid workers worry that a wave of infectious disease may soon spread through Haiti, with masses of the newly homeless clustering in public spaces without clean water or sanitation."

"Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are awaiting the start of a global rescue effort in the wake of the country's devastating earthquake."

Pablo Fajardo is the David to the oil Goliath Chevron Texaco. He represents about 30,000 Ecuadorians in a class action suit trying to clean up the oily mess in their part of the Amazon. The case, filed in 1993, goes back as far as 1964, when the U.S. company Texaco began oil exploration there. The suit alleges that Texaco dumped 18.5 billion gallons of 'produced water' -- which can contain dissolved inorganic salts, dispersed oil droplets and dissolved oil; treatment and workover chemicals; dissolved gases, particularly hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide; and bacteria and other living organisms.

"The island of Bonaire is somewhat of an anomaly in the Caribbean due to its remarkably preserved coral reefs."