A senior United Nations official has lauded the progress achieved by the men and women of Haiti involved in the cash-for-work program, which was identified as one of the priority activities in the early recovery agenda following the Jan. 12 earthquake, UN officials said on Friday.

The program, coordinated by the UN Development Program (UNDP), enables Haitians to earn an income as they help their country recover from the quake, which is estimated to have affected one third of the 9 million citizens of Haiti, already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Working with local municipal authorities, thousands of Haitians are put to work removing rubble from the streets, removing waste and clearing drainage canals ahead of the upcoming rainy season. They are paid 180 gourdes a day, or roughly 4.50 U.S. dollars at current exchange rates, for six hours worth of labor.

“Although so much more is needed, it is encouraging to see the streets open to traffic, canals being cleaned, and shops open for business — and all of it done by the men and women of Delmas working to rebuild their city one step at a time,” UNDP Associate Administrator Rebeca Grynspan remarked as she visited one municipality on Thursday.

During her visit, Grynspan also reviewed the other areas of support to the government, including restoring its capacity to deliver justice and security services, the agency noted in a news release.

Among the buildings that were destroyed in the 7.0 magnitude quake was the Palais de Justice in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and gone with it were the archives and legal documents related to millions of Haitians, leaving them without proof of property, inheritance and business licenses.

UNDP is working with its partners to help tackle this challenge, including by providing temporary work facilities, office equipment and technical support.

“Problems with land and properties titles and adoption processes will increase with the loss of documentation, human and material resources to deal with those matters,” said UNDP Country Director Eric Overvest.

“A new generation of judges and justice auxiliaries will receive training to meet demand,” he added. “Also, measures have been taken to address the needs of displaced and homeless Haitians, who need protection against possible risk of raising violence, especially against women and children.”

Two days before a make-or-break vote in the House of Representatives, U.S. President Barack Obama visited a Washington suburbs university Friday to push the Health insurance reform. He is also to meet with House Democrats on Saturday, making a last-ditch effort to win over votes desperately needed.

“We are at the point where we are going to do something historic this weekend… The time for reform is right now,” Obama told a cheering crowd of 8,500 at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

He assailed the Health insurance industry once again, saying ” starting this year, insurance companies will be banned from dropping your coverage when you get sick,” and the practice of weeding out people who are sick will end.

Meanwhile at Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders received a piece of good news, as Congressman John Boccieri, a Democrat from Ohio, switched his position to support the bill. He is the fourth House Democrat who opposed an earlier version of the bill to switch sides. His fellow Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich also switched Wednesday.

With House Republicans in rock-solid opposition against the bill, Democrats need every “yes” they can muster within their own rank-and-file. Local media outlets are reporting Obama is to meet with House Democrats Saturday, lobbying their support.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted the Democrats will have the 216 votes they need on Sunday.

Chile’s government has reduced the death toll of the Feb. 27 earthquake to 452 from over 500 previously estimated, with 359 people identified as having died as a direct result of the disaster, Chilean Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter said on Friday.

Hinzpeter said that still there are 96 cases of missing people and 800,000 victims in the affected zones. He also said that there are 200,000 destroyed houses and 40,000 schools with grave structural damages, which affects one million students in the country.

“We believe that our methods represent a responsible working method, because each number represents a person and a family,” said Rodrigo Ubilla, the junior interior minister with special responsibility for the quake, at a broadcast press conference. “We do not want to play with the pain suffered by Chilean families.”

He said that 359 people have been identified and family members have received death certificates for them. Another 77 are close to a clear identification, but awaiting paperwork from the civil registry. Nine bodies have proved very difficult to identify, although it is clear the disaster is the cause of death. Finally, 17 people died in the days shortly after the quake, but authorities doubt that the quake or the tsunami that followed it are the cause.

Chile’s previous government, which left office eight days ago, had at one stage reported up to 800 dead, but reduced the number 10 days after the quake to just over 200 after realizing that some of the bodies had been counted twice. On Thursday, Chilean police estimated that the final toll could reach 630, saying that close to 500 had been identified and a further 130 people remain missing.

On Friday, Ubilla said that the government would not publish an estimate of those missing because they are far more likely to be inaccurate than confirmed deaths. The full list of those whose death certificates had been issued to their families will be published on the Interior Ministry’s web site on Friday, he added.

The quake, which measured 8.8 degrees on the Richter scale, made 500,000 people homeless. Sebastian Pinera, who has been president for eight days, estimated the cost of reconstruction at around 30 billion U.S. dollars.

U.S. Defense Department said Friday the department is considering extending the deadline for the Air Force’s 35 billion U.S. dollar oil tanker program, after a major defense company voiced interest.

Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Pentagon is considering a request from European Aeronautic Defense and Space ( EADS), the European aviation giant which is the parent company of Airbus, for 90 days beyond the May 10 deadline to prepare its bid.

In a statement posted on its website Friday, EADS, which teamed up with Northrop Grumman to bid on the program before the California-based company dropped out, said it is assessing the situation to determine if the company can feasibly submit a proposal. The company said an important prerequisite for an entry into the competition will be a significant extension to the period within which to prepare and submit a proposal.

The U.S. Air Force wants to replace its tanker fleet, some of them built in the 1950s, for years, but has failed to secure a contractor.

There were two major competitors for the bid, Boeing and the Northrop-EADS team-up. The service chose Northrop and EADS over Boeing for its refueler in 2008, but Boeing complained, and the contract was pulled after Congress stepped in.

The Air Force released its new terms for solicitation on Feb. 24 for 179 new planes. Boeing announced this month it will enter the bid, remodeling its 767 commercial aircraft.

Later, Northrop announced it will not bid this time, complaining the new terms favor Boeing’s smaller planes. Northrop and EADS wanted to remodel Airbus’ larger A330 planes. The European Commission accused the United States of protectionism after the Northrop pullout, and Pentagon said it would welcome a proposal from EADS.

Whitman said the Pentagon is interested in the broadest competition possible. “The department remains committed to fair and open competition and welcomes proposals from all qualified offerers,” he said.

Former Colombian foreign minister Noemi Sanin won presidential candidacy from the Conservative Party, officials said Friday.

Sanin, the only female presidential candidate, is expected to compete with front-runner Juan Manuel Santos in the presidential election on May 30.

Campaigning for the presidential election was heating up in February when Colombia’s Constitutional Court rejected a referendum that would allow President Alvaro Uribe to seek re-election.

Former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos from the ruling National Unity party and Sergio Fajardo of the independent movement Citizen’s Commitment for Colombia are the two top contenders.

As a former member of the Uribe administration, Santos is expected to have the president’s backing in the upcoming elections.

In Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Uribe’s party won 24.2 percent of the vote while the allied Conservative Party got 22.3 percent after two-thirds of the vote had been counted.

The opposition Liberal Party garnered 16.6 percent, early results showed.

But the final results were still unknown due to vote-buying complaints.

The legislative elections are widely seen as a strong indicator for the presidential election.

Based on an “extensive review of all available science,” the Canadian Health agency determined that synthetic caffeine in carbonated soft drinks poses no health risk to users if its concentration doesn’t exceed 150 parts per million (ppm), according to the release.

The authorized concentration for non-cola beverages is lower than the maximum of 200 ppm for cola beverages authorized by Canadian food and drug regulations.

Similar levels of caffeine in non-cola soft drinks are currently permitted in the United States and Europe.

Synthetic caffeine is still not allowed to be added to other foods, Health Canada said.

In order to help consumers track their caffeine intake to avoid over-consumption, the health agency required producers to identify the amount of total caffeine on product labels. It also asked them to do a better job of identifying the presence of caffeine on the front of product packaging if newly caffeinated beverage formulations were adopted.

Perez is accused of being responsible for the death and disappearance of hundreds of people during street protests in 1989, which was known as the “Caracazo.”

In February and March 1989, Caracas and other cities in Venezuela saw a series of street protests and demonstrations against the economic measures announced by then President Perez.

The General Prosecutor’s Office accused Perez of violating human rights and corruption.

Perez, who ruled the country from 1974 to 1979 and then from 1989 to 1993, has lived in the Miami area for more than a decade. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 2003.

The measures include school funding, building shelters and aid for the fishing sector.

Some 10 billion pesos (about 19 million U.S. dollars) will be used for minor repairs to schools or building temporary colleges in quake-hit areas to restore classes before April 26, Chilean Education Minister Joaquin Lavin told a press conference.

The quake has left as many as 840,000 Chilean children unable to attend school.

The government will also offer scholarships of 30,000 pesos (58 dollars) a month over six months to support some 20,000 university students who were made homeless in the earthquake. The scholarships will help them to continue their studies.

The cost of the two measures will total 26 million dollars.

Lavin estimated earlier that the reconstruction of public schools and private colleges would cost the government 3 billion dollars.

To support the fishing sector, Economy Minister Juan Andres Fontaine announced a series of government projects, worth 10.5 million dollars, to help rebuild local fisheries, provide 60,000 new jobs to fishermen and buy new ships for them.

The measures will benefit about 9,000 families who were affected by the tsunami, Fontaine said.

The government will provide 20,000 emergency houses in addition to a previous 20,000 financed by the “Chile aids Chile” campaign, Planning Minister Felipe Kast said.

Kast also said that the government would distribute 25,000 tents to poor families in areas where bad weather frequently hits, since it takes time to build temporary houses.

The families will also receive thermal insulation, mattresses, kitchen utensils and an electric kit to withstand the coming winter season.

The quake, which measured 8.8 degrees on the Richter scale, destroyed 20,000 houses, 2,750 schools and 35 hospitals, making 500,000 people homeless.

President Sebastian Pinera Thursday estimated that the cost of reconstruction would amount to around 30 billion dollars, which accounts for about 17 percent of Chile’s gross domestic product.

For six months last year, the soldier-turned conscientious objector was walking and biking around the country, from Atlantic Maryland to Pacific California, talking about peace and non-violent alternatives with folks and youths he met along the way. He even got another veteran Conor Curran he met in Toledo, Ohio, to tag along.

On the eve of the seventh anniversary of the Iraq War, Stieber joined forces with other veterans and activists to set up thousands of faux tombstones under the imposing Washington Monument in downtown D.C., gearing up for a mass anti-war rally on Saturday.

Under the scorching sun rarely seen in March, Stieber stopped occasionally to explain what he was doing to curious passers-by, inviting them to come and join the rally Saturday. In a recent interview with Xinhua at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, he said he wanted to work with other people to raise awareness and encourage creativity on “how to solve problems differently,” other than simply using violence.

Eldest son of a salesman and a Health worker, Stieber was born and raised in the Maryland section of the Washington area. He saw the “big hole” in Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, into which hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed, killing 189 people, including 64 people aboard the plane and another 125 in the building.

In 2006, at the age of 18, Stieber joined the Army right out of high school, to “make sure something like 9/11 never happens again.”

Stieber was shipped to Iraq with 1st Infantry Division in Feb. 2007, on what would be a 14-month tour. But what he experienced there was disillusionment and frustration. As part of the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, he witnessed one of the most violent stretch of the war.

“We went into it thinking we would solve all this problem and make the world a better place, but realized early on we didn’t seem to be helping the problem. For the most part, we are making it worse,” he said.

In retrospect, Stieber said part of the blame should be put on the mindset that violence can solve all the problems, and I-was-right-and-other-people-were-wrong thinking.

The mindset was also partly to blame for driving the country to war, which left over 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead since 2003. Iraqi civilian deaths ran into tens of thousands. Under the obelisk-shaped Washington Monument, Stieber and other activists tried to include each victim’s name on the faux tombstones, but many were just labeled “unknown,” nameless or faceless witnesses to the atrocities of the bloody conflict.

After finishing his service in Iraq, Stieber went back home, and kept thinking about things the military had done to families and neighborhoods in Iraq, kicking down doors and ripping through houses to search for “insurgents,” detaining people, sometimes for no reasons.

“What if a different army comes in and takes me or takes my dad away?” he asked himself. “I know I wouldn’t want it,” he said, and this brought on a huge question about the war.

Stieber applied and became a conscientious objector.

“We had a lot of desire to make the world a better place, but the only way we thought we could do that was through using violence,” Stieber said, noting he wants to connect with youth, encouraging their creativity to solve problems differently, and hence the cross-country tour last year, which he dubbed Contagious Love Experiment.

Stieber said he wants to become a teacher in the future, and has already been accepted by a Maryland university. Rather than enjoying a care-free pre-college life, he will be speaking in front of thousands on Saturday, against the war and for a more peaceful future.

The latest weather satellite will complete its checkout in mid August and be stored in-orbit, ready for activation should one of the operational GOES satellites degrade or exhaust their fuel.

“The NASA team has done an excellent job and the spacecraft performance has been near perfect. Reaching the proper orbit marks a significant milestone, but we still have a lot of work to complete,” stated Andre Dress, the NASA GOES Deputy Project Manager. “We remain focused on the tasks at hand and look forward to complete mission success.”

Since GOES-P was launched on-board a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket on March 4, the satellite has undergone five orbit raising maneuvers before arriving at its checkout longitude of 90 degrees west, where it orbits at approximately 22,000 miles (35,398 km) above the Earth’s surface.

NASA engineers and controllers deployed the Solar Array on March 17 and they will turn on the Imager and Sounder on March 23. The Imager is expected to capture the first visible image on April 5.

GOES-15 is the third and final spacecraft to be launched in the GOES N-P Series of geostationary environmental weather satellites. With two operational satellites, they provide weather observations that cover over 50 percent of the Earth’s surface.