BBC Caribbean News in Brief

Canadian charter airline Skyservice says it is halting all flights after being placed into receivership by an Ontario court.

The company said in a statement that it had been unable to maintain profitable operations because of recent changes in the Canadian vacation tour market and Skyservice Airline’s debt levels.

The shutdown resulted in the cancellation of one flight that had been scheduled to depart Canada for the Dominican Republic on Wednesday, as well as all flights that were scheduled to depart Canada in April.

The 24 year old airline operated a fleet of some 20 Airbus and Boeing aircraft carrying Canadian vacationers to Mexico and the Caribbean.
Earthquake sets back AIDS fight
A senior UN health official says the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January has endangered years of progress in fighting the spread of AIDS in the country.

UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibe, says women and girls living in the camps face a major challenge “and live in a kind of terror of nightfall, when rape and sexual assaults begin”.

The UN official said it was critical that they be protected from violence, or Haiti would see an increase in new infections.

Hait’s HIV infection rate had begun declining among young people before the quake threw its health system into chaos.
Haiti declaration document found
University graduate student Julia Gaffield says she has discovered what’s believed to be the only known printed copy of Haiti’s Declaration of Independence.

According to Duke University, she found the document while researching the early independence of Haiti in February.

Gaffield made the find after she came across an eight-page pamphlet dated 1 January 1804 in the British National Archives in London.

She said the document had been overlooked in the British archives, even as researchers spent decades searching for it in Haiti.