Haiti

The Double-A Bowie Baysox announced a raffle to benefit the earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. The team is partnering with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to raffle a pair of 2010 season tickets, and 100 percent of every dollar raised will support UNICEF's relief efforts for children in Haiti. Fans can go to baysox.com to purchase raffle tickets. Each ticket costs $10, and fans can purchase as many tickets as they want until the raffle closes at 5 p.m. Jan. 29. The winner will receive a pair of lower reserved seat tickets for all 71 Baysox 2010 home games.

Silver Spring-based Choice Hotels International Inc. said Friday it's too soon to know whether two hotel projects planned for Haiti will move forward. Less than a week before Tuesday's earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince, the lodging company had announced plans to bring the first global hotel brand to the island in more than a decade. It had planned to open a Comfort Inn this year in the township of Jacmel and to start construction of an Ascend boutique hotel as part of a new luxury development of lodging, housing and shops, also in Jacmel.

Spike Gjerde of Woodberry Kitchen and Bryan Voltaggio of Volt are lending their support to a Wednesday night benefit for Up From Under, a project for building homes in Haiti. The Up From Under benefit dinner and silent action, which is being held at Washington, D.C.'s Long View Gallery on Wednesday, will help raise awareness and funding to build homes for the homeless and those devastated by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The Volt staff is preparing is preparing food for the benefit, alongside Gjerde, R.J. Copper of Rogue 24, Matt Hill of Charlie Palmer Steakhouse and Mike Isabella of Graffiato.

As Haiti begins the process of rescue and recovery from Tuesday's devastating earthquake, Baltimore residents and relief agencies await word from loved ones and colleagues — and are starting to mobilize aid. The quake has left officials of IMA World Health, a Carroll County-based coalition of relief groups, praying for the safety of three senior staff members who were visiting Haiti. IMA, which has maintained an office in the Port au Prince area since 2000, has not heard from newly installed president Richard Santos and two other senior staffers — Ann Varghese, program officer, of Baltimore, and Dr. Sarla Chand of New Jersey — who were in Haiti for meetings with hospital and education officials.

Moise Larose, a Maryland father of seven children, had just left the grocery store and was driving down a dusty road in his home country of Haiti when the earthquake hit. His car began shifting uncontrollably. He watched prominent buildings crumble to the ground. Larose, a sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserves based at Fort Meade, dialed his cell phone, trying in vain to reach his wife and children on Jan. 12 when a catastrophic earthquake destroyed the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, killing tens of thousands.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Of all the dangers facing U.S. forces in Haiti, perhaps none is more feared than the tarantula spider. Except perhaps the poisonous centipede. Or the banana spider, a nasty little critter with a yellow body and a painful bite. Not to mention the millions of mosquitoes and fleas, which can make life impossibly irritating."I've seen tarantulas as big as footballs when they're spread out," said Master Sgt. Timothy McMahon, 37, a veteran of 18 years' service with the Air Force.

The hospital ship USNS Comfort left Port-au-Prince harbor Tuesday night to begin a five-day sail back to Baltimore, its Navy commanders having determined - against the advice of some civilian doctors on the ground - that the floating medical center is no longer needed in earthquake-damaged Haiti. Pentagon officials say they made the decision to recall the 1,000-bed hospital, which arrived in Haiti Jan. 20, after "determining her crew completed the humanitarian relief mission it was directed to conduct."

Of the many deeply moving images from the earthquake in Haiti that have flooded TV and computer screens in recent days, one of the most-discussed has been that of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent for CNN, treating a 15-day-old infant for severe head cuts. The video has raised questions for some in the news media as to how Dr. Gupta handles his dual roles of reporter and medical doctor. But in an interview late Friday, Gupta says he is a doctor first when confronted with people in medical need.

The Navy's Baltimore-based hospital ship arrived close enough to Haiti to take aboard its first patients Tuesday night - providing urgent care to two severely injured quake victims transported from an aircraft carrier near Port-au-Prince. Doctors were treating a 20-year-old man suffering from a spinal fracture and bleeding in the brain and a 6-year-old boy with a fractured pelvis. The patients were brought aboard well before the ship reached its destination and hours after the crew had finished its latest round of training exercises.

As early as Friday, a group of Baltimore-based aid workers from a Johns Hopkins University affiliate plan to land in earthquake-ravaged Haiti and join others from the region and the United States in taking the first steps beyond the rescues. They'll start rebuilding. The mission of the trio from Jhpiego is to re-establish a system that connects pregnant women and newborns with proper care - no small task in a devastated city now facing aftershocks and increasingly desperate people short of medical care, food and water.