BRIEFS

WORLD

LES CAYES, Haiti – Thousands of Haitians
sought shelter in schoolhouses Saturday as the
death toll from Tropical Storm Noel rose to 143
across the Caribbean.

Heavy rains continued to pound Haiti, leaving
U.N. and Haitian officials temporarily stranded as
they toured Haiti’s flooded southern peninsula.
Noel, which was lashing the northeastern
United States with high winds and rough surf
Saturday, is the deadliest storm of the 2007 Atlantic
hurricane season, with the greatest devastation on
the waterlogged island of Hispaniola, shared by
the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Desperation set in at shelters in the volatile
Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil, with people
at one schoolhouse complaining on Saturday
that U.N. guards abandoned the site overnight,
allowing for a group of machete-wielding men to
enter and threaten to rape young women.
The Haitian government, still struggling to
rebuild after years of turmoil, has been almost
entirely dependent on overtaxed international
aid groups and U.N. peacekeepers to cope with
the disaster.

Impoverished Haiti is particularly vulnerable
to flooding because people have cut down most
of the country’s trees to make charcoal, leaving
the hillsides barren and unable to absorb heavy
rain.

“It rained for two days without stopping,” said
44-year-old farmer Marcel Delswain. “We lost our
land. We lost our food. We feel abandoned.”

NATION

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Hundreds of people
gathered at the Capitol here Saturday to urge
prosecutors to bring hate-crime charges against
six white people charged in the alleged beating,
torture and sexual assault of a black woman.

The authorities say the accused, three men and
three women, including a mother and her son and
a mother and her daughter, held the woman, 20,
captive for days at a trailer. The authorities say
the six sexually assaulted the woman, beat her
and forced her to eat feces.

“Hate crimes are out of control in America,”
Malik Shabazz, a legal adviser to the woman and
a founder of Black Lawyers for Justice, said at the
rally. “Nooses are being hung, and our women
are being raped by white moms.”

“What happened,” he said, “was a hate crime,
and we want this prosecuted as a hate crime.”
Shabazz staged the rally despite a request by
the city’s black ministerial association and the
NAACP not to hold it for fear it would harm the
prosecution’s case.

The victim attended the rally wearing a T-shirt
with the message “Protect the Black Woman.”

LOCAL

LURAY – A hiker missing in the Shenandoah
National Park since Sunday has been
found.

Park officials say 40-year-old Christopher
David Beach of Fredericksburg was found
around 11 a.m. in a culvert under Route 211,
about a mile west of Skyline Drive, the only
road through the park. Beach was responsive
and talking to rescuers, and he was taken to
Winchester Medical Center, where he is in
stable condition.

Beach’s fiancee called the park Sunday
evening, saying Beach was despondent and
had walked off into the woods near a gift
shop and restaurant.

Approximately 100 employees and volunteers,
including dog teams, searched for
Beach over five days.